Aether Architecture, where brick and mortar meets the digital era
Our project, “re:orient – migrating architectures” explores the local aspects of China’s global significance and increasing influence. The project seeks to forecast possibilities which are now detectable only in connection with retail, but which will, in all likelihood, determine the built environment, which is being transformed under the pressure of ever-cheaper products. The project follows up these ideas with the presentation of spaces, architectural devices and materials that create new contents, and indicate ways of turning these constraints of the market to our benefit, and show how to infuse mass products which are designed to have a short life-span with lasting cultural values.
www.reorient.hu
Aleph is an experimental kinetic façade, that uses the spaces, people and objects it faces as a palette to display messages of reflections from hidden viewpoints. When looking at a small mirror, it reflects a fraction of the space around us; when looking at a mirror façade, it reflects most things around us, containing segments that are dark or bright, red or green. But if we build a matrix of small mirrors that can adjust their angle according to the site they are facing, we can create a display that uses the ever-changing flux of the place to show images from certain points in space. Bengt Sjölén and Adam Somlai-Fischer; www.aether.hu/aleph
Induction House - Fishtank 2003 Aether induction house is an architecture prototype looking into ways of treating digital media as physical matter. The surface of a computer projection is unfolded onto a translucent structure, becoming a spatial experience for the visitors. Layers of digital information, behavior and ambience share projection territories and create a vision for a non-screen-based computer environment. This enhanced physical space serves as a test bed for creating a blend between architectural and new media designs. Adam Somlai-Fischer, Anita Pozna, Peter Hudini
MS: Looking at your projects one easily gets the impression that your work is more about art than architecture. Even though you are not producing buildings, your work is permeated with the logic of production of space, critically exploring the relationships between society, technology and space.
ASF: Yes, this is very true. During my final year in architecture school my colleagues and I became very interested in the connection between designing spaces and the contemporary experience – by which I am referring to a historical moment where my private space is in my desktop, through which I am involved in public forums and my friends reside in my mobile. I’m not saying that any of this makes buildings redundant, I’m simply saying that it’s an opportunity for and the responsibility of architects to embrace all available means to create contemporary space.
MS: In other words, to cross architectural “brick and mortar” technology with digital-era technology?
ASF: Yes, our aim has been to bring together the culturally motivated thinking of architecture and the functionally motivated culture of tech engineering. One of the first crossings we did as a group (Anita Pozna, Peter Hudini and I) in 2002, while still students, was building physical models that helped us design websites (1, 2). Not for the sake of functionality, but to define atmospheres, to make aesthetic choices. At the time we didn’t like the fact that the web was flooded with graphic-design aesthetics that basically originated in print technology. We were very aware of an endless array of other possibilities, rather than just mimicking a book layout.
[1: www.aether.hu/mirallestagliabue.htm; 2: www.aether.hu/responsiveoctopus.htm]
MS: The vision of ubiquitous computing grew not only out of elite, high-tech research laboratories but out of low-tech cheap lighters, out of playing silly songs.
ASF: With the emergence of cheap electronics, people start to hack/tinker around, and this is an obvious path. Closed technologies don’t allow for this. For example, high-tech “smart homes” with embedded, hidden and closed control systems invisible to the users are scarier than they are fascinating. I believe it’s important that we can all write, not only read. That we can shoot videos, not only watch movies. One might claim that in this century, to gain your own freedom, you need to develop at least some degree of technological literacy.
MS: Your organizational schema of collaborative practice can be defined as a loose network. I believe your decision about the organizational schema of collaborative practice is a strategic one, already structuring your work. Can you compare it to the traditional practice of “individual authorship”?
ASF: This is actually due to a couple of very pragmatic reasons. Working more and more with technology, writing programs, dismantling electronics, etc., we had to collaborate a lot with others. Our collaboration had to work as a flat-structure, sharing authorship, sharing ideas, motivation, to create something that was generated by the team and not led by a single architect. Collaborative practice evolves through time; you can’t really envision it in advance.
MS: It’s difficult, uncommon even, to work that way in the architectural profession with its strong hierarchical structure and control.
ASF: Of course we’re aware that in professional architectural practice, there’s a legal responsibility of the head designer/architect. But historically, great buildings are not recognized as great only because they don’t fall apart! I find the role of lead architect highly overrated. I think if you compare architects with large teams of other disciplines, for instance producers, even curators, then you realize that they do have a conceptual lead, they make strategic choices; but many of the ideas that are incorporated into the final work arise from teamwork. You never see a film where only a producer is credited or a show where the artists aren’t visible.
Credits
Anna Baróthy (designer), Balázs Bodó (media researcher), Attila Bujdosó (architect), Panni Dávidházy (trend consultant), Pierre Földes (composer), Krisztián Kelner (architect), Ida Kiss (architect), Gergely Kovács (architect), Melinda Matúz (architect), Attila Nemes (curator), Anita Pozna (architect), Gergely Salát (sinologist), Adam Somlai-Fischer (coordinator), Barbara Sterk (media artist), Tamás Szakál (media artist), Samu Szemerey (architect), Zsuzsanna Szvetelszky (communications expert)
Author: Marko Studen, with Adam Somlai-Fischer, of Aether Architecture, Budapest, Hungary
