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| Philipp Oswalt | 1998 | |
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Implantationen | Nature in Contemporary Architecture |
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The continuing decoding of the construction principles of the living
make it possible for people to intervene systematically into the building
plans of living beings, to change existing living beings in accordance
with their own conceptions and - at least theoretically - to conceive
of new living beings. At the same time, man's technical constructions
acquire more and more characteristics that until now, have been reserved
for the living. Among these are self-reparation, self-direction, the ability
to learn, self-reproduction and artificial evolution. These developments
lead to a blurring of boundaries between the 'natural' and the 'artificial'.
The two spheres are beginning to interpenetrate and fuse with each other
(which does not mean that at the same time, all contradictions disappear
or that problems diminish). Nature is no longer something given; rather
it is something that is made. 
This cultural process forms the background against which 'nature' in contemporary
architecture will be thematized in a new way - as in the work of Jean
Nouvel, Francis Soler, François & Lewis, O.M.A., MVRDV and
Herzog & deMeuron. In recent years, 'nature' has been a constitutive
element in a large number of projects. There has been a fusing of natural
elements and architecture which is not the nostalgic attitude of the call
for a return to nature, but instead is based on a radically modern conception.
Nature is understood as both an artificial and an artistic element. These
ideas and the first designs arising from them came into existence in the
early years of postmodernism. The No-Stop-City project of 1970 by Archizoom
Asociati is an example of this: in an endless, artificially air-conditioned
interior, campers' tents are set up among huge boulders. With their project
for Braunschweig inner city, Haus Rucker & Co developed an analogous
concept: they provided for the implantation - in the public spaces of
the city - of reconstructions of mountains and mountain peaks that were
tied down with ropes: 'the mountains as the very concept of the eternal
and the immovable had become mobile and the apparently moveable built
objects took the place of the mountains. If mountains collapse, that perception
which takes them to be the orientation points of a lasting order also
collapses.'[1]
Early examples of the integration of natural emements into the interiors
of buildings were already in existence in postwar California. The most
of radical of these is the house that Albert Frey designed for himself
in 1963/64. A large boulder formed the centre of the building: it lay
at the meeting point between the sleeping, living and dining areas, at
the same time projecting through the façade, and thus linked interior
and exterior.[2]
Based on a radical conception of use, the experimental treatment of technology
and the idea of flowing space, a large number of traditional architectural
categories were surmounted, and yet the idea of nature remained conventional
all the same: it was seen as something given that was encountered and
integrated into the work. Decontextualization In contrast
to this, today's works thematize the artificiality of nature, and in so
doing, the possibility of manipulating and transforming nature, of being
able to reproduce it anywhere. Among other things, reproducibility enables
nature and vegetation - originally bound, like architecture, to the ground
- to emancipate themselves from it and gain autonomy. This was Le Corbusier's
point of departure for his idea of the roofgarden,[3]
whereby he still considered the roof to be a reproduction of the landscape
that was originally there. A series of architectural fantasies implemented
the potential of the reproduction and replication of nature. This is the
way Rem Koolhaas, in his book 'Delirous New York' portrayed a 1907 design,
in which a whole skyscraper consisted only of stacked up gardens and country
houses.[4]
SITE was also pursuing the same idea with 'Highrise of Homes' (1981),
Gaetano Pesce with a project for a twin tower in San Paolo (1987-89),
West 8 with the project of a 'Vertical Park' for the Seagram Building
(1996) and MVRDV with their Dutch Pavilion for Expo 2000 in Hannover,
whereby the latter must be the first project of this kind that is to be
actually carried out. The pavilion consists of a stack of Dutch landscapes,
ranging from 'natural (sea, forest) to entirely 'synthetic' (tomato plantation,
multimedia cinema).
The logical conclusion is that vegetation's autonomy from the ground leads
to the horizontality of vegetation and landscape being thrown into question.
The French botanist Patrick Blanc, who also worked as a consultant on
Jean Nouvel's French Embassy in Berlin, has been developing a system over
the last few years for vertical gardens - he calls them 'vegetal walls'
- in which plants grow on vertical surfaces without a substratum of earth,
nourished only by a circulating fluid. These prefabricated transportable
'walls' can be positioned at any angle - even overhead. O.M.A. pursued
a similar idea in the project for the modernization of Breuninger's Department
Store in Stuttgart: one of the façades is to be developed as a
vertical park that one can actually go into. The idea of the garden or
park is entirely dissociated from any notion of 'ground', and gravitation
does not play a role any more. Vegetation becomes 'material' that decontextualizes
and is implemented in architecture so as to produce an effect of alienation.
Other natural
substances like stone and dead plant parts are employed by the architects
Herzog & deMeuron and François & Lewis. The unprocessed
natural material is to be perceived divorced from its original context.
Conventional perceptual models are thrown into question and new qualities
revealed as potentialities of the material. Herzog & deMeuron's Dominus
Vineyard in Napa Valley (1995/97) is a good example of this: the walls
are made of wire mesh baskets filled with stones of varying size. In spite
of their weight, these walls are transparent and let light into the interior.
In François & Lewis' project for the renovation of an office
building in Rouen (1995), pine needles from the surrounding pine forest
were poured into the spaces between the double-glazing.
In these projects, material is implemented mainly in view of its visual
appearance and perception. It does not matter whether it is natural or
artificial. Herzog & deMeuron have implemented industrial products
in the same way - one only needs to think of the copper bands of the signal
box in Basel or the cast iron elements for the residential building on
Schützenstraße in Basel. The principal characteristic is rather
that an available material will be taken up and used in a new context,
in so doing gaining new qualities. Nature does not embody an ideal, but
instead a quality of givenness like technical civilization. It is a matter
of total indifference and at the same time undecidable whether the material
is natural or artificial. The sole difference may consist in the 'natural'
material usually forming a different vocabulary with respect to tactility,
form and scent. Intensification While the
latter examples aesthetically explore the potential of natural material
principally in novel placements (and contexts), the conceptual inclusion
of nature in architecture opens up a wide range of possibilities. Thus
the question of how nature can be compressed and how its qualities of
use and experience can be intensified was the basis for MVRDV's project
for the Dutch pavilion. The office developed this theme in several ways:
1. The building consists of a stack of completely different landscapes. This heterogeneity is maximized through the changeability of some of the landscapes. Through its independence from the 'ground', the 'rain storeys' and the tomato plantation storey are mobile and can be reconfigured at any time. 2. The landscape elements not only have design tasks, but are also simultaneously functionally integrated: plants gain bio-mass as fuel, plants generate foods, plants purify water. Together, the different biotopes form an artificial ecosystem. They are integrated into a water and energy circulation and thus become the technology of the building. 3. The program and the landscape are fused with each other: the water storey serves for showing films, the forest storey is used for offices and exhibitions and in the vegetable plantation are conference and VIP rooms. MRVDV has already linked landscape and program in the VPRO building in Hilversum: the roof garden is part of the office landscape - it has an electricity supply and outlets for the computer network and telecommunications. The landscape becomes the 'setting' for very different programs like offices, library, conference room etc., which usually exist only in interiors from which nature is excluded. An analogous
compression of landscape as well as its fusion with programs has developed
in the leisure industry, with the Center Parcs. In this new type of building
for short holidays under glass there is a variety of artificial landscapes:
jungle, cliffs, white water course, climbing wall, bamboo forest, ski
trail, sea with beach and palms, lagoons and coral reefs, all within a
very small space.[5] In order to intensify the experience, attractions
like giant slides, Finnish saunas, Turkish steam baths, rebirthing, herbal
baths, whirlpools and beauty centres are integrated into this 'nature'.
The landscape is compressed and intensified. Center Parcs thus appear
to be superior to nature outside. 'You could never give your children
as much fun in the woods at home as you could at Center Parcs.'[6]
The desire for maximum intensity of experience takes the place of authenticity
and originality. The Disappearance of Authenticity Artificial
nature is available everywhere, independent of the weather, comfortable
and reliable. In the last few decades an innumerable quantity of wave
pools, indoor ski runs and climbing gyms have been erected so as to enable
the practice of sports connected with the landscape independently of location
and time of year. The artificial landscapes are not only safer, more reliable
and more comfortable than their natural models - they can also be changed:
For example, in climbing gyms, the angle of the walls (and thus the degree
of difficulty) can be hydraulically varied, and by changing the panel
configuration, a large number of different climbing routes can be generated
in a very small space (analogous to the reconfiguration possibilities
in the Dutch pavilion).
Because of their accessibility and maximized use value, artificial landscapes
have become gathering-places where teenagers in particular meet. In the
German-speaking areas, there are already circa 500 climbing gyms, and
they are no longer sought after only to prepare for climbing in the mountains,
but have become a leisure activity in themselves.
In the studies on tourism it has been realized that consumer expectations
have changed and that a new type of tourist has developed. The 'post-tourist',
as he/she is called, 'knows that tourism is a game or a series of games
in which there is no presupposition of authenticity. The post-tourist
consciously participates in this game (...). He/she has discarded the
naivity of the tourist seeking authentic experience who is disappointed
when he finds inauthenticity. Las Vegas, Disney World or the postmodern
shopping mall would disappoint tourists searching for authenticity, and
yet they could be extremely attractive for the post-tourist.'[7]
The exhibition
organizer Jeffrey Deitch has also thematized the disappearance of authenticity
in connection with an exhibition on 'artificial nature': 'The truth has
become obsolete today. For hundreds of years - in art, philosophy, poetry
- the search for 'truth', both moral and aesthetic, was essential. (...)
Now, at a time when the sciences are dedicating themselves to creating
artificial life and computers generate virtual realities, when it is a
more a question of image than of substance and when everything is marketed,
from cars to politicians, the search for truth might have become obsolete.
There is no absolute reality any more, just the possibility of multiple
realities, each of them as 'real' or as 'artificial' as the next. There
is no longer the absolute reality of nature. The end of the modern age
coincides not only with the end of 'nature', but also with the end of
the truth.'[8]
This development has led to the artificiality of nature being not concealed
but consciously thematized in a series of architectural projects. Thus
O.M.A. imitated natural stone walls by using black concrete at the Congexpo
in Lille and in the apartments in Fukuoka. In Herzog & deMeuron's
projects, the Spitalapotheke in Basel and the Tate Gallery in London,
parts of the façade and the projecting canopy respectively are
formed of a combination of plastic and living plants. Analogous to 'tissue
engineering', the artificial ivy here forms the supporting tissue for
the ivy plants. In MVRDV's RVU office building in Hilversum, some of the
lava stones in the rock garden are cast in plastic and lit from the inside,
so appearing to glow from the heat within.
These conscious articulations of non-authenticity go beyond a postmodern
ironic game with imitation and forgery. It amounts to a fusion of nature
and artificiality. Hybridization Today,
nature and technology are no longer considered to be opposites. For decades
now, the figure of the cyborg in science fiction has represented a synthesis
of nature and technology. In medicine the substitution of technical aids
(prostheses, pharmaceutica) for bodily functions, carried on for centuries
now, has developed incredibly quickly in recent years. It is now not only
entire organs that are replaced by mechanical apparatus like artificial
hearts, but also electronic components like artificial ears that are successfully
integrated into the human nervous system.[9] In other domains too, a synthesis of nature and technology
is taking place. Industrial ecology, which came into being in the seventies,
pursues the goal of inserting the material and energy currents generated
by man into natural cycles. In this connexion, it is not a matter just
of achieving a production cycle as close as possible to nature, but of
the idea of integrating technical civilization and nature into a global
system.[10]
The American Kevin Kelly describes the fusion of biology and technology
in his book 'Out of Control': 'The sphere of that which is born - everything
that is nature - and the sphere of that which is made - everything that
is constructed by man - are becoming one. Machines are becoming biological
and the biological is becoming a technical construction.'[11]
When the
natural is introduced into architecture, there is a reciprocal interpenetration
and fusion of both domains; opposites - city and landscape, architecture
and nature - dissolve into each other. This is the way Jacques Herzog
and Pierre deMeuron view their work with nature: 'We see artificial and
natural processes as one entity, as a continuum. We no longer believe
that nature and society, nature and city confront each other dialectically.'[12]
And furthermore, 'we believe that architecture should fuse with life,
the artificial with the natural, the mechanical with the biological.'
Therefore it is their intention in architectural research 'to discover
or invent technologies to make architecture come alive (..), to bring
together the artificial and natural processes in our lives and to fuse
them.[13] Thus Herzog and deMeuron
develop plant curtains for the Hypopassage project in Munich and the new
office building for Ricola in Laufen. The veil of plants defines spaces.
The architectural space comes into being as much through plant elements
as classical architectural means (e.g. solid walls and ceilings). The
former opposition between totem and living, technical and natural dissolves
in this total synthesis. Rendering landscape The fusion
of landscape and architecture takes place in contemporary architecture
in a multitude of ways. In addition to the direct inclusion of organic
and living 'materials,' for some years now there has been a tendency to
render buildings landscapes, which is to say, to make them into landscapes,
as we have seen in the work of O.M.A. (projects like the Congress Centre
in Agadir1990, the Jussieu Libraries 1993) MVRDV (e.g. Sloterparkbad Amsterdam
1994 and the office building already mentioned, VPRO 1993-97), FOA (Ferry
Terminal Yokohama 1994), Peter Kulka/Ulrich Königs (Sportstadium
Chemnitz 1995) or Enric Miralles (Eurythmics Centre Alicante 1993/94).[14] The intention is to implement the quality
characteristic of landscape, of an ongoing and at the same time, heterogeneous
space in architecture. By bending, folding and distorting the floor slab,
a continuous space with locally differing qualities comes into being -
as it does in a natural landscape which, with its hills and valleys, forests
and water, forms a continuous, but locally starkly differentiated space.
While the flowing space of classical modernity was thought to be neutral
and homogeneous, today a heterogeneous continuum is formed by means of
artificial topography.
O.M.A.'s project for a congress centre in Agadir, in which the dunes of
the surrounding desert are continued through the building with the aid
of architectural means, exemplifies this. The topographically distorted
floor slabs of the open ground floor form a heterogeneous space, which
merges seamlessly with the surroundings. Mendes de Rocha had already followed
and implemented an analogous concept for the Brazilian pavilion at Expo
1970 in Osaka. The pavilion, which was supposed to embody a synthesis
of nature and artifact, consisted of a rippled concrete floor which formed
an artificial topography, with a roof hanging over it to provide shade.
In this way a space varied in itself but without defined boundaries came
into being, in which interior and exterior flowed into each other. For
Rem Koolhaas, the quality of such a space consists therein, that 'in this
way, programmatic elements can be freely positioned in an architectural
landscape without comprehensiveness or conventional definition.'[15] The building is hardly more than a terrain which is
to be settled. Through its topographical development, the terrain acquires
a variety of different areas that diversify the space and form the settings
for different programs. The absence of hermetic boundaries and classifications
typical of nature and its characteristic multiplicity and dynamics are
thus carried over into architecture.[16]
Inversion Through
the rendering of the interior space landscape, the classic conception
of interior and exterior is subverted. This becomes even clearer in the
'Land Art' works, where earthen material is implemented in interior spaces,
thereby effecting an inversion of interior and exterior: for his 'Earth
Room' in 1968, Walter de Marias distributed 45 cubic meters of fresh earth
through the rooms of the Heiner Friedrich Gallery in Munich. Hans Haacke
heaped up a biotope about a meter high in a room for the 'Earth Art' exhibition
at Cornell University in 1969, and sowed quick-growing grass over it.
Günther Ueckers' installation consisted of a ton and a half of sand,
sticking out of which were two steel slaps that slowly rotated, powered
by an invisible motor.[17]
All these works, whether of earth, sand or grass, implant landscape, which
is to say exterior space, in interiors. MVRDV's Dutch pavilion throws
our classic conception of interior and exterior into question in an even
more complex fashion: the pavilion is a stacked landscape. The exterior
space becomes interior space. Classic interior space activities - like
libraries, conference rooms or offices - are simultaneously integrated
into the landscape. Interior space becomes exterior space.
The natural elements refer to a reality lying outside the building. They
throw into question the finishedness and completeness of the space, extending
it to the outside. The American 'Land Art' artist Robert Smithson had
this idea when he developed his conception of sites/non-sites at the end
of the sixties: 'site' is for Smithson an existing free space, an extensive
landscape, while 'non-site' is an artistic representation or mapping of
such a 'site' in a gallery or museum.[18]
The materials found at the 'sites' have been organized by Smithson into
a series of 'non-sites' since 1968. The unworked/raw natural materials
like stone or sand are heaped up in the exhibition rooms or poured into
open containers. In this way, they refer to another space lying outside
the room. These sites-nonsites (sic) could perhaps be read in a Foucaultian
fashion as heterotopia, as real spaces (in contrast to Utopias) which
nonetheless contradict the cultural settings: '...influential places,
in which the furnishing of society are inscribed, in a manner of speaking,
counter-placements or abutments, Utopias actually realized, in which the
real places within the culture are simultaneously represented, contested
and subverted...'[19] Formlessness The fusion
of architecture and nature - whether it takes place through the inclusion
of materials from nature, or through the translation of landscape qualities
in architecture - marks the turn away from the mechanical age which influenced
the architecture of classic modernity so strongly. This turning away from
the architecture of a 'Neue Sachlichkeit' goes far beyond the counter-designs
of an organic architecture (like F.L. Wright, Hugo Häring or Hans
Scharoun) or a deconstructionist architecture (like that of Daniel Libeskind
or Peter Eisenman): the inclusion of nature throws into question not only
the exact, the right-angled, the standardized and the homogeneous, but
also the hygienic, hardness, smoothness, firmness and the constructed.
It discovers for architecture the amorphous, the soft, the damp, the living,
the unpredictable, the dirty, the rough and the formless. It amounts to
an extension, a broadening of the programmatic, thematic and formal canons,
an extension that today can be realized as much through technical constructions
- one only needs to think of 'artificial life', fractal geometries or
smart materials - as through 'natural' substances.
This disruption of an established canon by the introduction of natural
elements, took place already in Baroque architecture, e.g. the Fontana
di Trevi in Rome with its boulders, or the rampant growth of decoration
in the Spanish and Latin-American Baroque.[20] Then, as now, an anti-classical turn was taking place
in architecture, a questioning of the eternal and the absolute, of boundaries
and control.
Similar developments can also be seen in contemporary art, as Rosalind
Krauss and Yves-Alain Bois have shown with the exhibition 'L'Inform' at
Centre Pompidou in 1996. Taking as their point of departure Georges Bataille's
article 'L'Inform', they put on show methods of declassification and unclassification
in art. In the catalogue, Bataille's idea of the formless is explained
most clearly in a passage by Michel Leiris: 'Starting from the fact that
language and saliva have identical sources (the organ mouth), every philosophical
discourse can be legitimately imagined with the image of the spitting
speaker. Due to its inconsistency, its undefined contours, its relatively
inexact colour and its dampness, it is the epitome of the formless, the
unprovable, the non-hierarchical.'[21]
Spit is not only a metaphor for the formless because of its materiality,
but above all because it evades philosophical speech, which is to say
that it cannot be conceived with our traditional concepts. The works shown
in the exhibition, like Robert Rauschenberg's 'Dirt Painting' (1953),
Andy Warhol's 'Oxidation Painting' (1978) or Joseph Beuyss' 'Fettstuhl'
(1964) are characterized principally by the use of organic materials like
earth, plants, burnt wood, oil, Vaseline, milk, honey or soap bubbles.
However, it is even more characteristic that the works are not composed
and constructed, but are rather the results of processes. Methods of stirring,
mixing and of allowing substances to run were implemented as much as processes
of weathering, rusting, going mouldy and decaying. The concrete form of
the works escapes the artist's control and in some works, there is no
longer even a finished, unchangeable object. Ways of Working In today's
architecture, there are varying approaches to conceiving of the design
not as a construction, but as something developed from processes which
take into account the characteristics or the elements of the formless.[22]
In this way, the process of folding for example, as it is implemented
to generate landscape buildings, is not based on that which is precisely
fixed but instead, represents a processs in which the form is the result
of reacting flexibly to local particularities - regardless of whether
they are part of the surroundings or part of the program. In other works,
methods of excavating, hollowing out/undermining or digging are used.
This is the way O.M.A.'s H-Projekt (Centre for Social Studies & Research,
Seoul, 1996/97) came to be a building largely underground, cut out of
the existing rock which at the same time form the finish for the walls
and the floors. Jean Nouvel's museum in Salzburg (Competition project
1989) is a labyrinth of underground passages cut into a mountain; in the
connecting passageways the rock is left in its raw state and its natural
unevenness becomes part of the architecture. The work of Herzog/deMeuron
and François & Lewis that is based on the heaping up of natural
materials left in their raw state has already been mentioned. The method
of heaping up is significant in this context, in order to maintain or
intensify the formlessness of the material.
In other work, elements of the formless are taken as 'objets trouvés'.
While these projects are thoroughly constructed and composed in their
entirety, some elements are found in nature and will be integrated in
the building unchanged. Their specific form is not designed; rather it
results from processes that escape the architect's control. The logs -
left in their raw state - that form the columns in the lower exhibition
hall of the Rotterdam Kunsthalle by O.M.A. are examples of such an approach.
O.M.A. wants to use a large erratic boulder as a support for the suspended
exhibition floor for the SNU museum in Seoul (1996-99) presently under
construction. The architectural integration of such 'objets trouvés'
or ready-mades disrupts the homogeneity of the building. The objects refer
to something else, something outside the building (and architecture).
The finished wholeness of the project is destroyed.
The ways of working that are staged enable natural elements to be included
in the work and at the same time, to maintain their formlessness. And
yet all the same, these processes are controlled by the designer who,
in so doing, determines the final appearance of the building. Some of
the works of art and artistic techniques mentioned, like Andy Warhol's
Oxidation Painting or Robert Smithson's work with entropy, are more radical
in their approach, as they integrate into the work processes that escape
their control and which continually change it.
Herzog & deMeuron's work with rainwater comes closest to such a concept
of the formless. In their factory building for Ricola in Mulhouse-Brunstatt
(1992/93) as well as in the project for the Kunstkiste in Bonn, rainwater
runs down concrete walls where moss and lichen form, and the polluted
rainwater turns the concrete brown. 'The water trickling down causes a
fine film of flora to form, a kind of natural drawing.'[23]
Jacques Herzog explains this idea in an interview: 'One or two days after
the rainstorm, water is still running slowly down the façade, almost
like in Douglas Gordon's 24th video. And when it dries, it becomes mouldy,
but it is still beautiful.'[24] In the studio for Remy Zaugg in Mulhouse-Pfastatt (Herzog
& deMeuron 1995/1997), the rainwater collects on the roof, and it
can be seen through the large horizontal skylights. The air pollution
from a neighbouring industrial estate colours the water and thus the skylight
as well. The building becomes an indicator of the ecological conditions.
Processes that have been seen as negative until now because they destroy
the purity of architecture now become the starting point of a concept
- whether it is the growth of algae and moss, the deposits from industrial
waste gases or the condensation of humidity, as in one project of the
Berlin architect Jürgen Mayer Hermann. He designed a condensation
window for a private residence; its panes often fogged up due to high
temperatures and high levels of humidity inside, and therefore formed
a shield against people seeing in, generating an intimacy within.[25]
Other works
provide for the building being settled by plants or animals. Jean Nouvel's
H-Projekt in Seoul (Museum and International Community Center, 1996/97)
is formed of an artificial landscape of boulders to whose soil, prepared
by drainage and ground ventilation, the pine forests of the surrounding
landscape will spread. The rubble walls of Herzog & deMeuron's Californian
vineyard offer nesting places and refuge for birds and insects, and thus
become living walls, a biotope. All these
projects change through natural processes like sedimentation, growth and
settlement, which escape the direct control of the architect as well as
the user. In this way, these works gain an autonomy from the author, they
take on a life of their own.
Such 'liveliness' in a work is no longer dependent on the inclusion of
natural processes. With the arising of the debate around 'Artificial Life',
a turn to artifacts that show qualities of the living, like reproduction,
mutation, or evolution has now taken place in computer sciences. Since
the end of the eighties, the former zoologist Tom Ray has been experimenting
with computer programs that reproduce themselves, mutate and die out too.
On his computer he prepared 'cultures' of computer viruses which brought
forth in an evolutionary process automatic forms of sexuality and parasitism.
He wants to develop this concept further into 'digital agriculture,' taking
an evolutionary route.in order to 'breed' new computer programs [26]
Since the sixties, scientists have been pursuing the idea of artificial
evolution out of which resulted the first commercial applications like
self-optimizing programs capable of learning[27]
or intelligent software agents.[28] Very early it became apparent that certain mathematical
problems could not be solved within a reasonable time by linear calculation,
but rather through the generation of a large swarm of different possible
solutions that have to be tested and selected.
In computer sciences we therefore see a paradigm change from linear causal
chains to complex structures, from constructing to automatic evolution.
This thesis is also the basis of the book 'Out of Control' mentioned above,
and which its author Kevin Kelly summarizes as follows: 'The world of
the made will soon become like the world of the born: autonomous, capable
of adapting and creative, but - logically - beyond our control.[29]
Already in 1988, the philosopher Vilém Flusser was speculating
about how the biotechnologies change our existence: 'It is the art of
making the living artificial and the artificial, living. Of creating works
of art that maintain and reproduce themselves, and even engender further
living works of art. A whole new world of artificial living beings and
living works of arts is coming into existence. (...) It is in the nature
of the thing that biotechnology will intervene in the 'content' and the
'form' of life, and therefore manufacture a life of which we have not
even dreamed until now. (...) This way art will actually become 'creative,'
it will produce life, and not just metaphorically.'[30]
This development throws our understanding of ourselves radically into
question. According to Flusser, it requires of us that we entirely rethink
politics, ethics, science and religion: 'I am convinced that we are going
to have to rethink all the categories at the very least, if not to give
them up altogether. It is not a matter at all of regressing to Fascist
biological thought of the recent bloody past, because biology will no
longer be seen as the unchangeable given, but as quite the opposite, that
which is to be designed.'[31]
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| Notes : [1]Haus Rucker & Co, ???, p. 132. [2]Joseph Rosa: Albert Frey, Architekt. Zürich 1995, p. 119f. [3]Le Corbusier, Oeuvre complète 1938-46, Zürich 1946, p. 140f. [4]Rem Koolhaas: Delirious New York, New York 1994, p. 82ff. [5]Center Parcs Katalog 97/98 der Center Parcs GmbH, Cologne. [6]Welt am Sonntag 25.6.96. [7]Heinz-Günter Vester: Authenzität, in: Heinz Hahn, H. Jürgen Kagelmann (eds.): Tourismuspsychologie und Tourismussoziologie, Munich 1993, p. 123f. [8]Artificial Nature. Catalogue for the exhibition of the same name. Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens 1990. [9]Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6.1.1993, p. N4. [10]Kevin Kelly: Das Ende der Kontrolle, Bollmann 1997, p. 249ff. [11]Kevin Kelley, op. cit., p. 7f. [12]Jacques Herzog/deMeuron in conversation with Alejandro Zaera, El Croquis 60, 1994, p. 8. [13]Jacques Herzog in conversation with Jeffrey Kipnis, El Croquis 84, 1997, p. 11ff. [14]See also Charles Jencks, Begriff der Landschaftsgebäude bzw. Architektur als artikulierte Landschaft, in : Die Architektur des springenden Universums, Arch+ 141, Aachen 1998, p. 103ff. [15]Rem Koolhaas/O.M.A.: Explanatory text on the H-Project (Seoul), Conceptual Design Booklet, 196. The interior of the H-Project is organized in an analogous way as artificial topography. [16]See also the concept of smooth space in Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari: Mille plateaux, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris 1980. [17]See Patrick Werner, Land Art USA, Munich 1992. [18]Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Berkeley/London 1996, pp. 100ff, 174ff. [19]Michel Foucault: Andere Räume, in: Aisthesis, Wahrnehmung heute oder Perspektiven einer anderen Ästhetik, Leipzig 1990, p. 39. [20]See Arch+ 96/97, Aachen 1988, p. 64ff. [21]In: Rosalind Krauss, Yves-Alain Bois: L'inform (Formless). A User's Guide. New York 1997, p. 18. [22]See Ana Klingmann, Philipp Oswalt: Formlosigkeit, Arch+ 139/149, Aachen 1998. [23]Arch+ 129/130, 1995, p. 26ff. [24]Jacques Herzog in conversation with Jeffrey Kipnis, in El Croquis 84, 1997, p. 11. [25]See Daidalos Nr. 68, Berlin 1998, p. 144. [26]Kevin Kelly, Das Ende der Kontrolle, Bollmann 1997, p. 391ff, Tom Ray: Evolution as Artist, in: C. Sommer, L. Mignonneau (eds.): Art@Science, Vienna 1998, p. 81ff. [27]For example, Evolver, a program for Macintosh for the calculation of tables. See Kevin Kelly, op. cit. p. 401. [28]Pattie Maes: Agenten. Intelligente Software, in Schlüsseltechnologien, Spektrum der Wissenschaft Spezial 4, Heidelberg 1995, p. 38ff. [29]Kevin Kelly, op. cit., p. 8ff. [30]Vilém Flusser: Leben und Kunst (for 'Spuren' Hamburg). Manuscript, Flusser Archive, Munich. [31]Vilém Flusser: Leben und Leben lassen, Spuren Nr. 24, July/August 1988, p. 19ff. |
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Philipp Oswalt published in : Arch+ 142 | Aachen | 1998 & Politische …kologie Nr. 71 | Mźnchen / Neuhausen | 2001 Location: http://www.oswalt.de/en/text/txt/implant_p.html |
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