Publisher
Vol 13 No 2 (2019)
Issue # 25 | Autumn/ Winter 2019 | The Human, Conditioned
In a moment in which the term Man, and the humanist tradition which followed from it, have been challenged in feminist, queer, poststructuralist, and postcolonial critiques, which questioned its nature, or even pondered if we are actually human, Footprint 25 seeks to add to these perspectives cases of what we call radical conditioning, in which some architectures bypass assumed values of humanism and operate under a wholly different set of values, emanating from industrial and post-industrial economies and its technological developments. Unfolding in the study of histories, architectural types, aesthetics, atmospheres, systems, and users, the research articles and visual essays included in this issue shed light on the many ways architects, advertently or inadvertently, coalesce with forces intending to condition humans. Ultimately, this issue questions how these spaces, in which humans and their artifacts interact in unprecedented ways, could provide architecture with the timely opportunity to challenge our anticipated redundancy, and reconsider its own humanism in order to charge it with new meanings.
Issue editors: Víctor Muñoz Sanz and Dan Handel
2019-12-12
Vol 13 No 2 (2019)
Issue # 25 | Autumn/ Winter 2019 | The Human, Conditioned
In a moment in which the term Man, and the humanist tradition which followed from it, have been challenged in feminist, queer, poststructuralist, and postcolonial critiques, which questioned its nature, or even pondered if we are actually human, Footprint 25 seeks to add to these perspectives cases of what we call radical conditioning, in which some architectures bypass assumed values of humanism and operate under a wholly different set of values, emanating from industrial and post-industrial economies and its technological developments. Unfolding in the study of histories, architectural types, aesthetics, atmospheres, systems, and users, the research articles and visual essays included in this issue shed light on the many ways architects, advertently or inadvertently, coalesce with forces intending to condition humans. Ultimately, this issue questions how these spaces, in which humans and their artifacts interact in unprecedented ways, could provide architecture with the timely opportunity to challenge our anticipated redundancy, and reconsider its own humanism in order to charge it with new meanings.
Issue editors: Víctor Muñoz Sanz and Dan Handel
2019-12-12
Editorial
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The term Man, and the humanist tradition which followed from it, have been challenged in feminist, queer, poststructuralist, and postcolonial critiques, which questioned its nature, or even pondered if we are actually human. What we seek in this issue of Footprint is to add to these perspectives cases of what we call radical conditioning, in which some architectures bypass assumed values of humanism and operate under a wholly different set of values, emanating from industrial and post-industrial economies and its technological developments. These architectures dictate the creation of spaces in which the human body has to operate, and to which it needs to adapt in order to survive. The research articles and visual essays included in this issue shed light on the many ways architects, advertently or inadvertently, coalesce with forces intending to condition humans. Unfolding in the study of histories, architectural types, aesthetics, atmospheres, systems, and users, authors propose inquiries along two main directions: the first trajectory highlights the prolific use in spatial design of concepts borrowed from cybernetics and information technology for the conditioning of human behavior through the built environment; the second deals with architecture conditioning the creation of new subjectivities, placing the body as the territory of intervention. Understanding these spaces, in which humans and their artifacts interact in unprecedented ways, could provide architecture with the timely opportunity to challenge our anticipated redundancy, and reconsider its own humanism in order to charge it with new meanings.
The term Man, and the humanist tradition which followed from it, have been challenged in feminist, queer, poststructuralist, and postcolonial critiques, which questioned its nature, or even pondered if we are actually human. What we seek in this issue of Footprint is to add to these perspectives cases of what we call radical conditioning, in which some architectures bypass assumed values of humanism and operate under a wholly different set of values, emanating from industrial and post-industrial economies and its technological developments. These architectures dictate the creation of spaces in which the human body has to operate, and to which it needs to adapt in order to survive. The research articles and visual essays included in this issue shed light on the many ways architects, advertently or inadvertently, coalesce with forces intending to condition humans. Unfolding in the study of histories, architectural types, aesthetics, atmospheres, systems, and...
The term Man, and the humanist tradition which followed from it, have been challenged in feminist, queer, poststructuralist, and postcolonial critiques, which questioned its nature, or even pondered if we are actually human. What we seek in this issue of Footprint is to add to these...
Victor Muñoz Sanz, Dan Handel1-6
Article
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Fitness gymnasiums shape subjects and establish communities. The extraordinary rise in the number of high-end, architect-designed fitness gymnasiums responds to, and accelerates market demand as individuals adapt to societal expectations. Yet going to the gym is not experienced as an external directive. It is felt as a desire to be one’s best, to live fully, to succeed. The central role played by design is to (re)produce the desire to voluntarily subject oneself to regimes of self-control and self-transformation. This article looks at how the diverse architecture and interior design of the fitness gymnasium creates this desire and constructs subject positions. Today’s gymnasiums reference elements of bathhouses, spas, surgical clinics, sanatoria, monasteries, discotheques and nightclubs, factories, homes, clubs, hotels, S&M dungeons, massage parlours, beauty salons, cafés, and, even, art galleries – albeit not all in one space. We analyse the richly diverse aesthetics of several commercial chains of gymnasiums and explore the affective experiences established through the manipulation of atmospheric qualities.
Fitness gymnasiums shape subjects and establish communities. The extraordinary rise in the number of high-end, architect-designed fitness gymnasiums responds to, and accelerates market demand as individuals adapt to societal expectations. Yet going to the gym is not experienced as an external directive. It is felt as a desire to be one’s best, to live fully, to succeed. The central role played by design is to (re)produce the desire to voluntarily subject oneself to regimes of self-control and self-transformation. This article looks at how the diverse architecture and interior design of the fitness gymnasium creates this desire and constructs subject positions. Today’s gymnasiums reference elements of bathhouses, spas, surgical clinics, sanatoria, monasteries, discotheques and nightclubs, factories, homes, clubs, hotels, S&M dungeons, massage parlours, beauty salons, cafés, and, even, art galleries – albeit not all in one space. We analyse the richly diverse aesthetics...
Fitness gymnasiums shape subjects and establish communities. The extraordinary rise in the number of high-end, architect-designed fitness gymnasiums responds to, and accelerates market demand as individuals adapt to societal expectations. Yet going to the gym is not experienced as an external...
Sandra Louise Kaji-O'Grady, Sarah Manderson7-24 -
The body of work by British architect Cedric Price (1934–2003) is largely concerned with architecture’s relationship to technology and its impact on society. As contemporary architecture finds itself confronted with similar issues today, Price’s designs are being revisited and hailed for their prospective and inventive visions. As such, it seems timely to ask if Price’s designs can be regarded as precedents for future projects that aim to couple participation and technology through architectural design.
In this article, I depart from the economic logic of today’s digital platforms to analyse the participatory elements Cedric Price designed for Oxford Corner House (1965–66) to be ‘self-participatory entertainment’. As user participation has gradually been capitalised on through the evolution of digital technologies, I argue that the conditions for what participatory architecture entails have changed in turn. Whereas Price regarded the transfer of information as an activity for users of the Oxford Corner House to engage with freely, the operation of today’s digital platforms instead suggests that such activities are entirely facilitated in order to retrieve information from its users. In order to make this argument, I look at how Cedric Price envisioned digital technologies to sustain participation and in turn how he understood the concept of user participation and its relation to the architectural programme.
The body of work by British architect Cedric Price (1934–2003) is largely concerned with architecture’s relationship to technology and its impact on society. As contemporary architecture finds itself confronted with similar issues today, Price’s designs are being revisited and hailed for their prospective and inventive visions. As such, it seems timely to ask if Price’s designs can be regarded as precedents for future projects that aim to couple participation and technology through architectural design.
In this article, I depart from the economic logic of today’s digital platforms to analyse the participatory elements Cedric Price designed for Oxford Corner House (1965–66) to be ‘self-participatory entertainment’. As user participation has gradually been capitalised on through the evolution of digital technologies, I argue that the conditions for what participatory architecture entails have changed in turn. Whereas Price regarded the transfer of...
The body of work by British architect Cedric Price (1934–2003) is largely concerned with architecture’s relationship to technology and its impact on society. As contemporary architecture finds itself confronted with similar issues today, Price’s designs are being revisited and hailed for...
Nina Stener Jørgensen25-46 -
The emergence of financial institutions such as the exchanges or bourses of northern Europe in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries made possible the emergence of speculation in financial instruments. Speculation evolved into a game with its own logic, and the implied ethos of the speculator prioritised abstract notions and self-interest.
This article investigates the relation between this ethos of speculation and architecture in this timeframe. During this period, the architecture of the exchanges transformed; what was a square with an inside at the outset gradually became an enclosed institution with representative façades toward the end of the period. The transition of the physical environment of exchange and the increasingly complex financial instruments interact, and this interaction is traced through a sequence of exchange-structures inspired by one another.
The question explored is: what is the relationship between the emergence of an ethos of speculation and the architectural space of the exchange? This relationship can be discussed in terms of a different kind of conditioning that has less to do with industrialisation, but which could, in extension, form a starting point for discussions on architecture’s role in the formation and conditioning of homo œconomicus.
The emergence of financial institutions such as the exchanges or bourses of northern Europe in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries made possible the emergence of speculation in financial instruments. Speculation evolved into a game with its own logic, and the implied ethos of the speculator prioritised abstract notions and self-interest.
This article investigates the relation between this ethos of speculation and architecture in this timeframe. During this period, the architecture of the exchanges transformed; what was a square with an inside at the outset gradually became an enclosed institution with representative façades toward the end of the period. The transition of the physical environment of exchange and the increasingly complex financial instruments interact, and this interaction is traced through a sequence of exchange-structures inspired by one another.
The question explored is: what is the relationship between the emergence of an...
The emergence of financial institutions such as the exchanges or bourses of northern Europe in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries made possible the emergence of speculation in financial instruments. Speculation evolved into a game with its own logic, and the implied ethos of...
Fredrik Torisson47-68 -
When Robert Propst set out to transform the white-collar office, he began with a research protocol: observe, notate, quantify, represent. This process, based equally on the production of data and the use of representation to turn that data into information, led to Action Office, a system that aimed to transform every action and surface of the office environment into a data-rich cybernetic loop. For Propst, the key to turning the office into a space that produced information, rather than merely managed it, was display; as he wrote, ‘Action Office 2 provides no place for paper to hide or die – all paper material is displayed. You can see it, it is all signalled or marked and it will feed back a strong purge signal when it becomes overabundant.’ Propst’s Action Office system mobilised display to produce an information environment that cuts out noisy signals to frame clear communication.
When Robert Propst set out to transform the white-collar office, he began with a research protocol: observe, notate, quantify, represent. This process, based equally on the production of data and the use of representation to turn that data into information, led to Action Office, a system that aimed to transform every action and surface of the office environment into a data-rich cybernetic loop. For Propst, the key to turning the office into a space that produced information, rather than merely managed it, was display; as he wrote, ‘Action Office 2 provides no place for paper to hide or die – all paper material is displayed. You can see it, it is all signalled or marked and it will feed back a strong purge signal when it becomes overabundant.’ Propst’s Action Office system mobilised display to produce an information environment that cuts out noisy signals to frame clear communication.
When Robert Propst set out to transform the white-collar office, he began with a research protocol: observe, notate, quantify, represent. This process, based equally on the production of data and the use of representation to turn that data into information, led to Action Office, a system that...
Phillip Denny69-84
Visual Essay
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In the late 1950s the Quickborner Team developed a cybernetics-inspired design methodology for organisations, focusing on information flow, with the aim to fully automate administrative labour and to make the organisation constantly adaptable to unpredictable future challenges. Participant analysis allowed them to quantify communication in an organisation and with that envision a new kind of office space. The so-called Bürolandschaft (office landscape), seemingly-endless, chaotic looking interiors, would allow for efficient information flow. One significant aspect of Bürolandschaft design is the non-hierarchic organisation of workers in teams that were bound to quantified decision-making processes, yet addressed as experts, scientists and creatives, ultimately conditioning them to participate voluntarily in reaching the organisation’s goal without questioning
In the late 1950s the Quickborner Team developed a cybernetics-inspired design methodology for organisations, focusing on information flow, with the aim to fully automate administrative labour and to make the organisation constantly adaptable to unpredictable future challenges. Participant analysis allowed them to quantify communication in an organisation and with that envision a new kind of office space. The so-called Bürolandschaft (office landscape), seemingly-endless, chaotic looking interiors, would allow for efficient information flow. One significant aspect of Bürolandschaft design is the non-hierarchic organisation of workers in teams that were bound to quantified decision-making processes, yet addressed as experts, scientists and creatives, ultimately conditioning them to participate voluntarily in reaching the organisation’s goal without questioning
In the late 1950s the Quickborner Team developed a cybernetics-inspired design methodology for organisations, focusing on information flow, with the aim to fully automate administrative labour and to make the organisation constantly adaptable to unpredictable future challenges. Participant...
Andreas Rumpfhuber85-100 -
The divorce between the disciplines of architectural design and systems engineering in conjunction with the scientisation of comfort-standards encourages a year-round and day-round comfort routine to the contemporary human. In his proposal for Air Architecture, French artist Yves Klein proposes the opposite: an architecture devoid of the responsibility to temper human environs. Mechanical machinery enables an architecture to come, while Klein’s proposal for an Architecture of Air imagines a future adaptive-human. Before the popularisation of interior weather, Native populations employed adaptations, or experience a ‘change of human sensitivity’, much like native plants and animals do in order to survive their environment, much like the transformation that Klein describes. In a world where resource reduction and scaremongering tactics regarding climate change do not accomplish enough, we must think towards a more enriched human existence, for a thriving, strengthened human race. Klein uses architecture to imagine a new, joyful world to come, encouraging human evolution through the employment of playful mechanics.
The divorce between the disciplines of architectural design and systems engineering in conjunction with the scientisation of comfort-standards encourages a year-round and day-round comfort routine to the contemporary human. In his proposal for Air Architecture, French artist Yves Klein proposes the opposite: an architecture devoid of the responsibility to temper human environs. Mechanical machinery enables an architecture to come, while Klein’s proposal for an Architecture of Air imagines a future adaptive-human. Before the popularisation of interior weather, Native populations employed adaptations, or experience a ‘change of human sensitivity’, much like native plants and animals do in order to survive their environment, much like the transformation that Klein describes. In a world where resource reduction and scaremongering tactics regarding climate change do not accomplish enough, we must think towards a more enriched human existence, for a thriving, strengthened human...
The divorce between the disciplines of architectural design and systems engineering in conjunction with the scientisation of comfort-standards encourages a year-round and day-round comfort routine to the contemporary human. In his proposal for Air Architecture, French artist Yves Klein...
Elizabeth Gálvez101-118 -
The focal point of this essay is the turn from the display of objects to the display of environments, a change that blurs the line between the body and the display, and arguably absorbs the subject into the object. This turn is enabled by the digital age, as well as ‘the experience economy’, and is manifested in the rise of immersive display systems. The Selfie Museum epitomizes this cultural shift. In the Selfie Museum, subject and object aren’t the sole dichotomies that are conflated; physical space combines with the virtual image; the still moment merges in the temporal experience; and two-dimensional projections are overlaid onto three-dimensional structures. As a result, architects become ‘experience designers’, virtual reality is a mode of design practice, and an ‘instagrammable’ moment is a project deliverable. In this essay I simultaneously acknowledge these changes and critique them. At the same time, I offer the combination of apparent oppositions as a potential new set of tools that can help rethink aspects of the architecture discipline and profession. By studying the Selfie Museum as both an architectural typology and a socio-political entity, I challenge the traditional museum as an institution, classic body image perceptions, and the common concept of a tourist destination.
The focal point of this essay is the turn from the display of objects to the display of environments, a change that blurs the line between the body and the display, and arguably absorbs the subject into the object. This turn is enabled by the digital age, as well as ‘the experience economy’, and is manifested in the rise of immersive display systems. The Selfie Museum epitomizes this cultural shift. In the Selfie Museum, subject and object aren’t the sole dichotomies that are conflated; physical space combines with the virtual image; the still moment merges in the temporal experience; and two-dimensional projections are overlaid onto three-dimensional structures. As a result, architects become ‘experience designers’, virtual reality is a mode of design practice, and an ‘instagrammable’ moment is a project deliverable. In this essay I simultaneously acknowledge these changes and critique them. At the same time, I offer the combination of apparent oppositions as a...
The focal point of this essay is the turn from the display of objects to the display of environments, a change that blurs the line between the body and the display, and arguably absorbs the subject into the object. This turn is enabled by the digital age, as well as ‘the experience...
Nitzan Zilberman119-136