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This promiscuity is not the same thing as an unethical practice, but it is one that executes its ethics at arm’s length from morality and moralism (much like life itself.) One word that Hernan repeats to describe his interests, his method and his projects is “contamination.” In the context of “rituals” (of romanticism and rationalism), contamination suggests an economy of transgression, perhaps some persistent and idiosyncratic variation on what Georges Bataille tried to describe as an erotics of excess and a general economy of energy and value. That would not be incorrect, but it would be incomplete. Contamination is not always transgressive. Which is the real priority? The act or the infraction? It may come down to whether you take Hernan at his word that his architecture is not meant to introduce a new hegemonic urban form (one better suited to a culture of planetary-scale computation than the spreadsheet-driven layouts of consultant urbanism or their more-decorative shadow, mainstream Parametricism) but is rather, in his words, “salt.” You don’t want to have a diet without salt, nor do you want a diet of only salt. In this, he maintains that the parasitic posture of his projects is not an interim strategy to gain a foothold on the host’s body before taking it over and replacing it with its own replicant genome. Instead the supplemental, parasitic and thereby ‘transgressive’ relationship between his form and that of the given site is required in order to hold the two in their delicate tension. Contaminated The real may have the last say on this. Contemporary Biological Sciences are much more invested in contamination and symbiotic parasitism as foundations of life than many imagine. Far from seeing these as exceptions to the rule, increasingly they are the rule. There are theories of the origins of complex life as based on a durable contagion, of the complexity of life on land being due to nested parasitism (animal living inside an animal living inside an animal, and on), and research on the microbial gut biome as a key factor in the health of the host body, including yours. As far as biological life is concerned, the corruption of bodies by other bodies is the norm. Another word you will hear Hernan use to describe his projects is “coherencies.” By this he means moments where disparate elements and motifs congeal, perhaps by surprise, into a temporarily stable order or patten, which itself may participate in another plural order or pattern at a different scale within the whole, or even in relationship with the external body onto which the whole has attached itself. These constitute local constraints within the global system or vice versa. They are repeatable. They may have a grammar, suggesting a proper and improper usage and a more exact timbre of their communicative voice. In some ways the invention of these coherencies is the general innovation that practices such as his offer to design in general. They are sampled, sequenced, misused, automated, and show up in supermarket facades in Guangzhou and soap commercials in Glendale. This is the counter-contamination that makes the whole cycle work. I wonder then how we will ultimately compare these coherencies to what Rem Koolhaas identified as the “elements” of architecture at this year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture? Koolhaas formalized elements into a single table indexing the variance in their deployment throughout the world, a forensics of Modernism as a global/ local system dynamic of another sort. In other words, will we 1
want to add these “coherencies” to the existing architectural table, as exotic and fragile transuranic elements that can only exist for a few seconds under extreme laboratory conditions? Or, will we come to see them as the basic terminology of another architectural century? The former would suggest that Hernan is right, and that his forms are spices like Livermorium (Lv), Plutonium (Pu) or Californium (Cf). The latter would suggest the Biologists are right and that successful symbiosis, parasitism, contamination and epigenesis are how new life emerges in the long run. Over time the transgressive significance and peculiarity of the coherencies being hatched will slowly dissolve. The surgeon becomes the butcher. The butcher becomes the designer. The designer makes new meat.
HERNAN DIAZ ALONSO APPOINTED NEXT DIRECTOR OF SCI-ARC The SCI-Arc Board of Trustees appointed Hernan Diaz Alonso, architect and educator, as the school’s new Director beginning September 2015. Diaz Alonso will succeed Eric Owen Moss, SCI-Arc director since 2002, whose term concludes next year. The appointment was announced by Chairman Jerold B. Neuman, following the Board’s quarterly meeting in September. “It is my honor to announce that the Board of Trustees has finalized its search for the next Director of SCI-Arc, and after over a decade of extraordinary service by Eric Owen Moss, we are placing SCI-Arc’s future in the amazing mind, heart and hands of Hernan Diaz Alonso,” said Neuman. “We are committed to maintaining the trajectory of the school and, in the coming year, will be reaching out to alumni and supporters around the world, celebrating the great work that has been done by the current administration and providing the best possible platform from which Hernan can continue to move SCI-Arc forward and, in fact, accelerate its momentum.” “SCI-Arc’s task, in perpetuity, is to go where we haven’t been, and report on what we find,” said SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss. “Hernan Diaz Alonso is the perfect architect to continue this expedition.”
A faculty member at SCI-Arc since 2001, Diaz Alonso has served in several leadership roles including Coordinator of the Graduate Thesis program from 2007-2010, and Graduate Programs Chair from 2010 until the present. He has been widely credited with spearheading the transition of SCI-Arc to digital technologies, playing a key role in shaping the school’s graduate curriculum in recent years. “SCI-Arc is a unique institution and I feel fortunate for being able to call it home for the past 13 years,” said Diaz Alonso in an address to faculty, students and alumni. “Our school is an ambitious institute, and I share this ambition to showcase to the world the many different ways in which architecture and design can change it.” While serving as Graduate Programs Chair, Hernan Diaz Alonso worked alongside SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss, Academic Affairs Director Hsinming Fung and Undergraduate Programs Chair John Enright to successfully oversee a school recognized worldwide for its research and exploratory tradition. Together, they guided SCI-Arc in establishing a global standard for architecture education in the 21st century, ensuring a clear vision for the school and a solid reputation among peer institutions.
BENJAMIN H. BRATTON is a theorist whose work spans Philosophy, Art and Design. He is Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Director of The Center for Design and Geopolitics at the University of California, San Diego. He is also a Professor at The European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. His next book, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, is forthcoming from MIT Press (2015).