Google and the Architecture of Knowledge Part Two

On Wednesday, May 20, Lev Manovich, one of the leading New Media Scientists and Visual Arts professor at the University of California, held an interactive lecture with the self-assigned title "What would Google do with Architecture?". The lecture was placed within the lecture series "The Architecture of Knowledge - The Future of the Public Library" of the Netherlands Architectuurinstitut NAi. I was dealing with his benchmark book "The language of New Media" in an essay two months ago, so it was interesting to see the naturalized russian immigrant in full action.

Library - Media Archive - Web

Manovich sees an evolution in the typology of archives. From the traditional library with physical objects to a media archive (with broadcast material) to the web as interactive and ever-growing database of knowledge. This enormous amount of information changes the conception of knowledge, so Manovic. Knowledge is knowing where the information is stored. The web is organized in a non-hierarchical way, attached metadata (tags) describing the content replace a traditional folderstructure.

Data Mining Society

Tagging every scene of daily broadcast material manually is a task almost impossible to perform, so automatic semantic notation programs that are currently developped will play an important role in the future. With the attached metadata, finding patterns in massive amounts of data and acting upon them has emerged as one of the key new paradigm. Software like Googles adsense, Last fm or Farecas.com permamently scan your personal actions and general trends on the web and come up with personalized ads, music or airplane rates. Sensenetworks.com even goes further and analyzes realtime locations of individuals with a GPS phone feeding back information about patterns of similar users.

With API data including geotags provided for many photos on flickr Lev's research lab evaluated the top twenty landmarks according to the amount of all taken pictures on each location. An automatically created map with the density of taken pictures is one emerging representation for indexing the density of media and popularity of spaces and is typical for the new paradigmatic shift.

From "Object Recognition" to "Looking for Pattern"

OLD: Statistics / Modernity
- know what we are looking for
- working with a sample of a population
- modeling population as a normal distribution

NEW: Data Mining / Software Society
- not know what to look for - scan for unusual pattern
- working with whole population
- by aggregating information from different databases one can find information and knowledge which does not exist in any of them individually
- sampling extrapolation

According to Manovich, Google search is a new cultural methodology. Google deos not look at a sample of web pages, it analyzes all. From "Top 40" model to a "Long Tail" model. In this model every object finds its user.

When asked about his political position and his responsibility as researcher, Manovich refused to be political: "If Google was running the world, it would be more efficient than the bureaucracy we have now. I do not believe in cultural critique. Instead we can produce new structures. With my design lab I want to create new representations." Digital literacy is the key for accessing this new world, unmediated spaces will be conquested. He finished with "Architects, you need to think like Google!"

We all leave digital shadows even if we don't want to. I can be seen on Google Street View even if I wasn't cybernetically active. Maybe Manevic is right and the global Mediatization is as inescabable as the global industrialization a century ago. The quicker we learn the language the more we can profit from it.

What does the non-hierarchical organization in media science mean for architectural production and organization? Will hierarchies in spatial production disappear as well? Should architecture integrate media and technology into its spaces or merely use it for production? Is architecture non-hierarchical? Who is setting priorities if not the architects? Manovich's line of thought and joyful experimentation is certainly enriching for a attaining a certain flexibility in intellectual thinking.

lab.softwarestudies.com

Lev Manovich's lecture was announced to be published on www.tomaat.org

The Stranded Decorated Shed

Maybe this isn't even worth a mention, but do to my momentary architecture project which is dealing with the hybridity between buildings and ships I decided this is entertaining enough. My father spotted this surprising landmark on the way to the historic windmills in Kinderdijk. Venturi would have loved this one. But do to its large scale the facade manages to be more than just a simple decoration. Seen from across the river its base is hidden behind the shorebanks. This irritates, but the riddle is solved at second glance. Advanced postmodernism, maybe? Satelite pictures reveal the two and a half dimensional character of the decoration depicting the building as a banal crossing between an offshore cruizeship and a factory building with rooftop parking.

Google and the Architecture of Knowledge Part One

{should have been posted on Wednesday, May 20}

Two months after the launch of Google Streetview in the UK and the Netherlands I got photographed in the streets of Delft by a google Streetcar while on my forthdaily run today. I saluded the the car with an expressive jump and a grimace and got reminded by a bunch of giggling schoolgirls shouting from their bikes that I will be made inrecognizable.

I wonder if a expressively jumping guy with an orange basketball pant is inrecognizable. Indeed Google has run into problems with privacy advocates and authorities around the world, pictures had to be blurred, removed or retaken. The hunt for the top ten strangest Street View pictures and speculations about the stories behind them has long started.

If we understand mapping as an abstract representation of reality then we might question if Street View - understood as geotagged, systematically shot panoramic images - technically still counts as such or if new definitions of mapping are needed. Google does not only blur faces and carplates, they also blur the border between three dimensional representation, and momentary snapshots of reality. Street View is just another step in the company's successful conquest of a seamless inclusion of preferably all information types of varying privacy into one enormous interactive database.

One recalls Deborah Hauptman's remark in David Harvey's book "Condition of Postmodernity" that local information and means no longer are necessary to map a region and that mapping is related to power aspiration. Spatial information is now gathered by satelites and a technologically equipped car, exceeding the precision of a local geometrician. A private company measures the entire world much more efficient than any public institution has ever been cabable of.

Instead of continuing on a path of criticism it is more interesting to observe the development of seamless integration. Still, the 3D city model and the 360 views are two mutually integrated but separate representations, interconnected with a cinematographically dramatized fly-in/out camera shot. Will the barrier between the two representations eventually fall? Is the panoramic image with integrated hyperlinks just another small step towards an ever higher resolution of the mediatized world?

WTF? T?F In Superdutch Orange

The opinions about Winy Maas and the dutch architectural office MVRDV divided. But one cannot deny their excellency in staging contradictory projects. The Why Factory (T?F) is a Think-Thank initated by Winy Maas and the TU Delft and "concentrates on the production of models and vizualizations for future cities. Anywhere. T?F makes new cities! It researches possible directions of our urban futures." (www.thewhyfactory.com)

T?F just moved into their new studio space in one of the new courtyards of the "new old" Architecture Factulty building of the TU Delft. The tribune designed by MVRDV has triggered a big discussion. Not so much because of its spatial disposition as for its signal color. One recalls the discussions about the superdutch orange studio house for the graphic design firm Thonic in 2003 that had to be repainted in green later on. I recall that as a quarter dutchman and prospective architect I also painted the walls of my room orange once. I was seventeen and I really liked it. I thought the tribune in Delft was a temporary installation for the demonstration of national pride during the queens day festivities two weeks ago. Originally even the historic brick walls of the old factulty building circumscribing the new hall were supposed to be painted. Unfortunately the old building is a registered national heritage, so the walls cannot emit the bright orange haze and have to do with being drowned by it, just like everything else around it. In terms of the International Design Seminar (www.indesem.nl) which is happening this week at the faculty one might argue that provocation equals user-friendlyness. However, the unpredictable sequence of follow-up colors and further modifications (by users) is an event to be followed.

Marcos Acayaba - Casa em Guarujá

On my last weekend in Brazil, before returning to the Netherlands, I was very fortunate to be hosted by the familiy of Flávio and Rosana Acayaba at their weekend house in Guarujá, a city on the coast about one driving hour (depending on traffic) away from the city of São Paolo. I also had the chance to see the famous wooden beach house of Flávios Brother Marcos Acayaba. Marcos is a renowned practicing architect and Professor at the FAU-USP, his wife Marlene an influential art and architecture historian.

The house is located about twenty driving minutes north of the city in a gated community called Tijucopava. Aside from the context of the semi-privatised public territory which is a urban phenomenon to be discussed separately, the architecture of this house uniquely interacts with the lush atlantic forest. The elaborateness of the wooden construction manages to bundle the entire load of the house to the minimal amount of beddings needed for stability. The vertical force coming form the hexagonal wooden structure is dramatically condensed on to eighteen tilted girders that merge on three steel round profiles bearing on concrete foundations. The minimal impact on the soil and the widening towards the top attest not only for a mastery of the material wood - Brazil by the way does not have a carpentry tradition - but also for an intense examination of the context. Other houses in this hilly atlantic forest are mostly made of blocks and concrete, displaying the usual cacophony of neogreek capitels and mexican tile roofs on a terraced lawn. They seem fatuitous compared to the described sensible assimilation.

Two lectures of his house were of particular interest to Marcos: One by an american journalist who felt "like walking in the trees" and an other lecture by a family not particularly familiar with architecture and art in general who saw in the large living room "a space like a circus". The hexagonal structure fixes three directions, but they are dissolved by large glass windows and bay balconies indeed giving the impression of an almost circular space. What I find equally interesting as these two lectures is that the house somehow subverts the contradiction present in european architectural thinking resulting from an understanding of Gottfried Sempers four Elements. Consisting purely of framework and enclosing membrane it finds a to me unprecedented synthesis between the two. The house manages to generate an elegance and cozyness found in buildings true to the principle of cladding of Adolf Loos. But besides this representational value it is even more ontological and radical than the the buildigs of contemporary Swiss Architects such as Christian Kerez. Kerez's radicality is of course compromised by tightened climatic and legal requirements. But his architecture creates the opposite of the ease I found in the Acayaba house. It proves that a demonstration of ontological principles can substitute a highly contextual, representational yet comfortable and simultaneously elegant architecture.

Apparently, there will be some of Acayabas work displayed in the next issue of ARCH+.

Introduction

Definitions

snippet |ˈsnipit|
noun
a small piece or brief extract : snippets of information about the war.

tape |tāp|
noun
a narrow strip of material, typically used to hold or fasten something : a roll of tape | a dirty apron fastened with thin tapes.
• [often with adj. ] long narrow flexible material with magnetic properties, used for recording sound, pictures, or computer data.
• a cassette or reel containing such material.
• a recording on such a cassette or reel.
• (also adhesive tape) a strip of paper or plastic coated with adhesive, used to stick things together.
• a strip of material stretched across the finish line of a race, to be broken by the winner.
• a strip of white material at the top of a tennis net.
• a strip of material used to mark off an area.
• a tape measure.

verb [ trans. ]
1 record (sound or pictures) on audio or videotape : it is not known who taped the conversation.
2 fasten or attach (something) with adhesive tape.
3 ( tape something off) seal or mark off an area or thing with tape.

*Source: Apple Dictionary

In Hip-Hop DJ culture, before the age of mp3's and online media, snippettapes were used as promotional tools for forthcoming LP Records. Generally these music cassettes were only two times three minutes long, playing short track extracts. Snippettapes are related to mixtapes, DJ-mixed compilations mending tracks generally from different artists into a coherent continuous mix.



Occiliating between three cultures

I am a student of architecture at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. When graduating from Gymnasium in 2004 I did two documentary Films about sustainable construction in Switzerland, one commissioned as a promotional film for Minergie, a state-owned company that promotes and certifies low energy houses. I started with my studies in 2005 with a pervailing interest in sustainability - widened from a technical viewpoint to a plurality of factors informed by a better understanding of cultural, sociological, philosophical and historical perspectives. I currently study a semester abroad at the TU Delft, Netherlands to better understand part of my cultural background (my grandmother was born and raised in Apeldoorn, Netherlands). After five rigidly guided semesters at the ETH Zurich, the loose rythm and freedom in Delft leaves room to critically develop a personal stance in architectural thinking.

My second year architectural design professor put the perspective of present-day architecture students into words: "The social agenda of the modernist avant-garde architects and urbanists was about a minimum living standard for a rapidly growing urban population resulting from industrialization in the western world. You as the future genereation are at an even more interesting point in history: There is an unprecedented number of persons that need a minimum living standard all over the world, but global ressources are extremely limited. The most interesting question thus is: How will we deal with this?" It is in Brazil I found a segment of this fascinating yet simultaneously paralyzing task. I first visited Brazil last year and attended an urban reseach workshop with the ETH Zurich at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Sao Paolo (FAU USP) in August. I was particularly struck by the political dimension of the discussions amogst the students, something almost entirely lacking in Switzerland. Modernism as a social project is persisting in Brazil where the postmodernistic critique was replaced by intellectual and artistic resistance due to the military regime from 1964 to 1985. It might be therefore that architects in Brazil until today are - more so than in Europe - somewhat peripheral figures in the design of the cities. A second reason I see for a prevailing modernist ideology in Brazil is the pure necessity for amelioration of the the precarious spatial and especially hygienic conditions resulting from rapid and uncontrolled growth of urban fabric in metropolitan areas.

Jorge Oseki, a professor at the FAU-USP who died in July 2008 described stated that "Brazilian architects are married to nobody, that is why they only talk to themselves". Oseki was very critical of the architectural practice in São Paolo, he saw Brazilian architectures impotency due to the limitation as an autonomous art and the lacking engagement with the economically and politically powerful, leaving the development of the city in the hands of engeneers, real estate developers and informal settlers. A fellow student from São Paolo, Luís Pompeo, studied and worked for one and a half years in the Netherlands. He was fascinated how Dutch architecture scene managed to successfully take advantage of the flourishing economy in the past two decades and achieve international reputation through it. At this point it is interesting to speculate that the architectural culture in Brazil might have been preserved in all its radicality exactly through its isolation and resistance. A radicality that is architectonically articulated in elaborated constructions with wide spans. This brazilian "elaborated lightness" again has influenced quite a few renowned swiss architects in their practice devoid from any political content.

I like complexity and contradiction in the relationship between ethics, politics, social and economic demands within the field of architecture.

Three weeks ago I got back from my second visit to São Paolo where I participated in a workshop organized by a group of ambitioned students from the TU Delft. (www.urbandetectives.com) Our group of fifteen dutch and eight brazilian students tried to approach informal processes in the city from different angles and - like detectives on a case - looking for indices revealing the complexity of these processes. In the spirit of the present day ephemerity substituted by the digital age this Blog is a collection of snippets. Like an Architecture Jockey, at this point still digging in the crates of the urban environment, I am randomly looking for these rare pieces that need to be dusted off, spicy tunes with multivalent political messages. Today, precisely one year after the total burndown of the Architecture Faculty of the TU Delft and in midst of the financial market crisis, everybody at the TU is emphasizing the opportunity for repositioning such a loss and such a crisis provides. If we have indeed arrived at a threshold moment, anecdotes and critical observations are my contribution to the discussion over priorities in architectural and urbanistic production.

The decks are empty, the needels sharp. Let's Record!