| Appendix to EASA Scandinavia 1997 first bulletin
The world of In society today evolution means time, speed and mobility. Questions of Communication and Identity in the global network of people and knowledge are no longer foreign to most of us, at least in the "developed" world. Media becomes important in the massive flow of information where we all (with a little technical help) can travel around the world, visit Picasso or play games with a friend in Hong-Kong from our own livingroom. Internet-access was said to be "the christmas-gift of the year" in 1996, just as the mobilephone, the fax and other media-gadgets have been the previous years - we all want to have access. Distances are getting smaller, between the humans and the computerscreen and other technics indeed, but are we really getting closer to each other? Are the new medias, where we all can be reached every second of our life, really making us more aware of the world we are living in, our present. Or are they, instead, making us lost in a society where more and more people feel constantly as if they are missing out on something. When we forget the phone at home we cannot stop thinking on who might call, when we cannot open the e-mail we become nervous and as we see the mass of information on internet we become afraid to miss whatever we do not find. We zap between TV-stations, read several books at the time. We never seem to have time enough to concentrate on one thing - at the same time we do our laundry, cook, talk to a friend on the phone, watch MTV, listen to the radio, wait for wet paint on our renovated chair to dry and regret not being more active. The media brings us closer to the global world - still we travel more than ever and tourism is becoming one of the biggest industries in the world. We go to N.Y. for a weekend, to Asia to discover ourselves and get restless if we are not in constant movement. We have best friends in foreign countries and family spread in many cities, many of us even have "several families" - as familylife also fragments and a marriage today is lucky if it lasts more than 5 years. We move, change our lifes and create new goals faster than ever. If we are not constantly producing we feel worthless and the goal of our educational system is to create good producers and consumers to fit in this new world (see CEE documents on education 1991 and 1993 where the "students should be treated like clients, not initiated to learn but to consume" and be educated to fit to the industrial production and consumation). Society spins faster than ever and we all follow at high speed. Ironically enough the time of daily travel also seem to be the only time we have to contemplate. On a train, or in a bus you have an excuse to "do nothing" and for many it is the only time of the day to relax. But many choose not to and bring their lap-tops, their mobiles and other items to use even this small moment of peace to production as whenever you stop you risk to confront your own agony. What does all this meen to us as architects? What are the situations we design for; the people, their homes, their life, lusts and dreams? Is the text above a picture of an exaggerated nightmare or are we trapped in our own technical evolution? What other visions are possible, and where do we go from here? How can we control technics to develop instead of developing under the control of it? To be afraid of technic and to flee from it would be just as silly as an excessive belief in its power to solve all our problems. The question of how to find the right balance remains. Just outside of Brussels in Belgium is one Architects response to this "New society" of electronic media. It is called "the House of the Future". A house that is designed for a life with new electronic design incorporated in every part of daily life and constantly connected to the net. Even though the young guides do their best to explain the qualities of daily life in such a comfort the vision is quite frightening. You cannot make a simple move without a remote control to guide you; you shop, close your curtains and vacuum your carpets via a computer-screen and human contact is minimised as all communication with the outer world is possible via the screen. You can program the people welcome at your front door, as well as your dinner for a fortnight. And whenever you are running out of toiletpaper your computer will tell you to order some more via the net. If you question the magnetic fields or the firerisks or what happens in time of an electronic breakdown the guide cannot answer. And the future suddenly seems as distant as the nature you only can look at through wide windows operated by the programmed system of ventilation. When you leave the house you feel as if you have been visiting all your hopes of what will NOT be the future and you feel suddenly convinced to create a world that is, instead, built on human contact, trust, understanding and curiosity. On a theoretical level it may seem practical to be able to live and direct your environment by a programmed unit. In reality you feel reduced to a thing without feelings and easily fall into the reactions programmed for you - dependancy, mistrust and detachment. As architects we may have a great impact on the life and habits of many people. Many architects before us have had strong visions on their task "to change the world"; on how to make life better for as many as possible within the everchanging reality. "ACCEPT the ongoing present" was the slogan of the Swedish functionalists at the "Stockholm Exhibition" 1930 when they argued that architects should no longer flee from reality in historical backwardness but look forward and create a better future within the reality that surrounded. Le Corbusier created the modulor as a new measurement for a new man and the modern movement swept over the world in his footsteps. As young architects today we are supposed to have strong visions and be willing to both change and accept. But architects today also seem filled with a stronger anxiety and a less optimistic belief in the future. Bernard Tscumi has mentioned this anxiety (in a conference on "Anyplace", Canada 1995) as "not because the architects do not know where they are going, but because they have an unbelievable amount of power", and that the awareness of this enourmous, indirect, political power make them question. When the architect is in charge of a project he is at many times the one who has all the information, which today especially implicates a lot of power. He is the one who puts all the shattered pieces and visions together into a completed project and building. This "wholeness" makes other disciplines look at architecture as a place of certainty as they ask themselves where they and the world is going. But there is no place of certainties. We hope that the place of EASA this summer will be - as well as it should be within any conference - "to ask questions, to discover new questions and to find the frontiers of uncertainty". Both on society today and on the society we are all - active or passive - helping to create as our future. That EASA will be an active place for communication, both in physical contact and on the net. And that we together will find not answers, but a way to question and develop - to be able to dare to face the future with confidence. The process starts right here, right now, with your reaction. What happens when the train does not stop? During the 19th century our society went through one of its bigger changes in recent time - the railroad was constructed. As an invention for industry and for the infrastructural development the steam-engine and the railroad has had a great impact. With its help the West was conquered and great industrial areas were exploated. The technics of the "Industrial age" had found a fantastic means of transport, still vivid today. The train became, together with Henry Fords invention of the car, a symbol for modernity, freedom and democracy. But the first railways were far from welcome everywhere, just like todays' highspeedtrains also encounter a lot of opposition. Propaganda against the railroad in the 19th century meant the trains would provoque everything from extensive fires to deafness. And it was said to lead to economic disaster as cows, hens and other animals would get so scared that every agricultural production would be impossible. Optimistic propaganda on the other hand imagined a brighter future - as soon as the railroad came to a village its poverty would turn into progress. Many today find the future of the prosperity of their city seems uncertain to as the railroad develops. The new highspeed-trains demand for solutions as levelled crossings, wider and straighter tracks and security constructions. They do no longer stop in many smaller cities and the pleasing sound of the railwaysignals turns into a fast whizzing when the train passes at rattling pace. As speed of an object increases any object next to it seem to go slower or even stand still. In the same way the railroad marks a difference where it passes - this is a village no longer worth a stop, a place where time stands still. Big urban constructions are made; old station buildings are torn down and replaced by side-scenes, acoustic walls put up and old roads altered - all in the name of high speed. Any protest is seen as a future-hostile. And the trains run by faster and faster as many smaller cities go through one of the bigger social changes since the railway was first constructed. Speed and mobility has never been as highly estimated as today. The train, that not so many years ago was seen as a transport for women, children and retired (those without a car and thus without freedom), today competes with the plane and other means of fast transport. You work, meet, take a walk or a nap, or eat comfortably while you travel easily from city-center to city-center. Railwaystations turn into international travelcenters with recognisable hightech-symbols, as in airports. "Oldfashioned" stationsareas are changed into new urban landscapes with levelled crossings, new structures and foreign materials. For many cities these urban changes mean regress and decay. The city that grew and prospered with the railway now dies with the loss of it. Those who do not have a car suffers the greatest loss in a society where personal mobility is a stronger image than ever of freedom. But all kinds of mobility are not welcome - even not in the society of today that praces movement more than ever. Mobility has become the ideal of our society - but where, who or what did it come from? And why is not mobility in the form of nomad societies or immigrant flows welcome in such a society on the move? Whatever speed you travel in it might be able to judge or contemplete whatever goes on around you, outside of your own speed, if you do not get off and think for a moment. Society today goes through a great architectural, urban and social change that will have an important impact. At the same speed our cities develop from city-centers to city-peripheries. And our lifes get both more stable and more mobile as new technology offers new modes of encounters but also new lusts to discover, on a global level. The train and the development of the infrastructure of the railroad has had an enormous impact on our society, and it continues to grow. But railroads all over Europe are also battling economic problems and decreasing traveller statistics, even though the train is a very economic and, relatively speaking, very ecological. As a global morality should rise with global thinking and communication trackbound traffic should have a bright future as an economic and ecologic alternative, thus the last word on the railroads' influence on our daily life is far from said. But it is high time that we take this impact seriously and open a discussion on to which future we want to connect it and our society Potential virtuality?!? In Wim Wenders future film "Until the end of the world" (1992) the main characters become addicted to their dreams recorded night-time by computer and replayed daytime on portable units. The people no longer live in the present but exist only in the past (as recordings) and the future (as hopes of what they might see on next days recordings). As a vision of the future the film no longer seems strange - the addiction, the lifestyle and the characters of the film get very close to today. But the virtual world we are most familiar with does not consist of our proper dreams but of games, communication and spatial adventures in cyberland. Communication media tend to take over our present and project it into other times. In the film "Strange Days" (1996) people also become addicted to recordings of emotions or senses - their own, somebody elses or fake. An evil industry producing the new media-drug, transmitted by a cyberhelmet, helps you "experience" sex, violence, rapes and crimes. Peoples addiction to a reality far from their own present is again the theme in the film that also seem to try to evoke some kind of question of ethics in a new mediabased society. The tempo is high and the images shattered - as in a MTV-clip or a fast computergame - just as many of the visual impressions that constantly surround us today. Our world is based on visuality and speed is the president in the united nations of fascination. Because it is a fascinating world. And the examples given above are not a start of a debate against virtuality, only a remark that there are also questions to be asked. "All is not gold that glitters" and if we do not demand quality in the shimmering screens and images sent to us they will soon seem both scary and hollow. You cannot blame video for violence, sure, but you can certainly ask if an exaggerated acceptation and misuse of the media helps to create the blunt distance it takes to hurt. Peter Greenaway (architect and film-maker) has said, in an interview about the violence in his latest films, that he tries to show "reasons to, and effects of, violence". "- It is not like when Donald Duck gets a brick in his head and stands up to walk away in the next image. In my film he will get to hospital for six months and traumatised for the rest of his life". To express that there are thus also intelligent ways to make a media speak and pass on a message. It is always important to question who the sender of the message is, what he wants you to see, what you really see and whether you want to react the way he wants you to or not. In the same way we could question if the "spatial" quality in cyberspace is high enough, and how it could be improved to pass on a better, social, network. There is an ocean of information existing already, where many are afraid to drown. It would need to be structured to get accessible - within this field some of us might find an important task. As professionals, as architects, what can we do within this new virtual landscape? Can we become the urbanists of this field of information, in the same way that we try to structure the potential comprehension of the world around us? Can we as architects find a new role to seak communication and understanding between different fields of structures and people - a role that for a long time has been ours in the building section but that seems to be more and more let over to others. Is there a new spatial field to discover in "cyberspace"? But experiencing and discovering this new spatial field we cannot flee into a virtual grotto and stop communicating with the world around us. On the contrary it is time that architects come out of the grotto where many of them sit today and lick their wounds because "nobody cares about them". As quality communication becomes more and more important, we should be the first to take ourselves seriously on the fact that we can, we may and we want something in the society of today; that we have visions for the future. We could start ask questions and show that we are willing to search for answers. We, ourselves, must be the ones to start this conversation with the world, because we were the ones quitting it. For too long architects have only been talking to the surrounding in a language no one understands or - even worse, only to ourselves (as architects today cannot seem to get any understanding but from other architects). We must show that we do care, and we must start by doing, as nobody else will do it for us in a society that spinns all faster. Many are afraid of virtual space. As architects we have been working within it since centuries back, with projects and dreams. Architects like Boullé or Lebbeus Woods, and many, many more seldom realises anything outside of this field of visions - still they have an impact on their times. It is all about communication. As architects we should be able to structure and analyse lots of information into projects and discussions. We should have a clear, systemised vision of things and we should be masters in communication to transmit a distinct interpretation. As architects we should be well fit to design qualitative space even within the "cyberdimension". We all search for new fields to explore, of new roles as architects within a society that is changing. Maybe this could be one of them? ...and what was all this reading worth? Our hope is that EASA -97 can become a start for conversations and questions. These texts were created as a first text-appendix to the January bulletin as an attempt to join you with our questions and thoughts around a small part of the complexity of society today and - within that and in reaction to it - EASA in Scandinavia 1997. We hope you want to join; react to it and help us to develop it. We need your reactions to our thoughts, your ideas to workshops, debates and actions. Be angry or happy but never set - please discuss, question and provoke us. We need it as well. Tove Wallsten P.S. A source for the developing of these texts and some more reading: -"Anyplace", Ed. Cynthia C. Davidson, the MIT Press, 1995 and: your daily paper! |