Based on the essay Architecture and Freedom? Programmatic Innovation in the work of Koolhaas/OMA by Kim Dovey and Scott Dickson
The authors of this essay attempt to reveal how OMA and Rem Koolhaas use programmatic innovation to reinterpret a building and create social roles and implications within. The important thing that seems to run through almost all of OMA’s work is the idea of the social encounter. They always go to great lengths to create an ambiguous plan in order to promote “chance” encounters. These ambiguities involve the space, enclosure, visibility and permeability of the project. This brings to the table not only the idea of physical encounter but also sight encounters. To see and to be seen. In various projects of OMA they allow the unsuspecting visitor to be seen throughout the building. Is it in our natural tendency to become the voyeur? What if the unsuspecting visitor wasn’t unsuspecting?
They go on to discuss the idea of the correspondence model whereas spatial zones “correspond” to social groupings and high correspondence is when all those who share a spatial zone also share a social label. In this case space operates to exclude random encounter and to keep “difference” at a distance. In the next paragraph they say “each of these is a contradiction: random encounter would undermine the social reproductive function of interior space, and the determinism of interior structures would kill urban space.” Koolhaas prefers to play with the tension of these two. What is intriguing about this idea, as it coordinates with my thesis is that in certain opportune times, when two high correspondence zones collide, education can occur. Is there a way to make buildings educate? If I am walking to the grocery store and pass a museum, is there a way to make the museum make me think differently about something?
yo yo yo
ReplyDeleteyou should talk to bryan about the koolhaas changing interaction through program stuff. that was a huge huge part of his thesis. this is also similar to how i began to think about things too. i wanted a building to be able to manipulate a person's environmental perceptions. def a better route than ' i want architecture to make a better community, or a better life for people blah blah blah blah'
i'd be careful about the word 'educate.' maybe it 'imparts' something on the visitor, or it 'leaves' them with something they didn't have before. maybe it 'manipulates' (i was a sucker for this one) or 'alters'. i'd push on bringing this further too. buildings have been done that are designed for ultimate interaction, or for 'unplanned' spontaneous interaction. a building can impart, educate, alter. but what specifically makes a building alter or impart? what are you going to test in your project to make the building do this?
how does the building (physical) vs. the program contribute to this imparting of an experience or the gaining of something that someone had not had previously?
something that helped me in prep was diagraming. can you diagram this? it will help a ton in design.