P A R A L L A X I S : The 100th Monkey Effect

By Patsopoulos Nikolaos

2011 Patsopoulos Nikolaos

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Architecture School of Architecture Pratt Institute January 2011

P A R A L L A X I S : The 100th Monkey Effect By Patsopoulos Nikolaos

Received and approved:

______________________________________________________Date________ Thesis Advisor

______________________________________________________Date________ Thesis Advisor

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

Intro Scenario Goals of the project - Generic - Specific

p. 1-2 p. 3-6 p. 7-9 p. 7-8 p. 8-9

Social Condenser - The Club - Leonidov Formalities of a Social Condenser Strategy and Tactics Example: La Villete Project - Similarity and Difference - Skyscraper - La Villete - Today - Formulations Seagram Forming the strategy The Void Manahatta Poromechanics - Rats The five elements

p. 11-16 p. 12-14 p. 14-16 p. 17-18 p. 19 p. 20-26 p. 20-21 P. 21-22 P. 22-23 p. 23-25 p. 25-26 p. 27 p. 28-31 p. 32 p. 33-34 p. 35-40 p. 38-40 p. 41

The presence of the Void as an event The spatial experiment realm - Examples - Floating Islands The Surface, the Solid and the Void - The Surface - The Solid - The Void - More examples - The name of the game is Symbolic Superstudio - The grid - Learning The Super surface - Acting - Construction vs. Excavation - Create vs. Demolish - Add vs. Subtract - Material vs. Debris - Combination vs. Fragmentation - Height vs. Depth - Build vs. Shape - Hut vs. Cage - What is next? - Return or enter

p. 42-44 p. 45-49 p. 45-47 p. 47-49 p. 50-54 p. 50 p. 50-51 p. 51-52 p. 53 p. 53-54 p. 55-57 p. 58-60 p. 58-60 p. 60 p. 61-69 p. 63 p. 63-64 p. 64 p. 64 p. 65 p. 65-66 p. 66 p. 66 p. 67 P. 67-69 p. 69

Midterm Response - The grid - The frame - The sculptures

p. 70-77 p. 72-74 p. 75-77 p. 77

Description of the Thesis Project - First Part - Second Part

p. 78-121 p. 78-98 p. 99-121

Bibliography - English Bibliography - Greek Bibliography - Web Resources - Films

p. 122-135 p. 122-131 p. 132-133 p. 133-134 p. 135

You cannot say I hold the present time in too much esteem; and if I do not always despair of it, its only on account of its own desperate situation, which fills me with hope Karl Marx

If one means by violence a radical upheaval of the basic social relations, then, crazy and tasteless as it may sound, the problem with historical monsters who slaughtered millions was that they were not violent enough. Sometimes, doing nothing is the most violent thing to do. Slavoj Zizek

Using a showcase we would like to experiment on the way buildings could be able to be reactivated, a kind of derive action. By saying this we do not only imply the building as a volume, but as social and functioning entity of a larger human community. Starting from analyzing the building itself, through extensive studies that have revolved around it since the late 50s, we would try and deconstruct its elements in an effort to see the problem that needs to be dealt with. Everything is part of this analysis, from the construction method to the architects peculiar thought about the users habits. A particularly interesting element of this part will be the documentary by William H. Whyte called The social life of small urban spaces [1980]. The film itself deals with the ideal criteria that urban spaces would follow in order to be successful. As a prime example of this, the plaza in front of the Seagram is used. The lessons learned from the film will be directly incorporated into the design procedure of the thesis project.

The thesis will mainly deal with the idea of conversion. Architecture is a vessel that travels through the seas that society has chosen for a path. Based on the scenario of a total systemic collapse, that would give ideas for a new approach to the way architecture would be thought as; we choose to work on one of the most oppressive buildings present, the Seagram building by Mies Van de Rohe

[Scenario]

If you wake up at a different time and in a different place, could you wake up as a different person? the narrator asks us... Our question, after taking a good look at our societys achievements in a globalized scale , could or better still should be instead if we were to wake up in a different time and in different place, could we awaken in a whole new civilization?... The concurrent crisis is not merely an economical one. Economy is only its withering faade; the whole structure that the western world had been dreaming and constructing for the better parts of the 19th and 20th century, is at its knees. The global wealth and commodity distribution network is showing its limits and its real intentions. As David Harvey has stated, the name of the game has transformed into Accumulation by dispossession. People all over the world are stripped away from their basic rights, and of course left with no means of reacting, in order for the wealth to be accumulated by the people that exploit them. Wealth is not being mentioned here only as pure capital, but every form that it can transform itself to, from major firms to real world resources We have really entered the stage of capital- cannibalism To continue with Professor Harveys theory, he makes clear that a revolutionary theory is needed right away. In his proposal it is stated that social change is attributed through the dialectical unwrapping of relations between seven stages within the body politic (sic) of capitalism, as viewed in an ensemble of activities and practices. These stages are 1. Technological and organizational forms of production, exchange and consumption

2. Relations to nature 3. Social relations between people 4. Mental conceptions of the world, embracing knowledge and cultural understandings and beliefs 5. Labor processes and production of specific goods, geographies, services or affects 6. Institutional, legal and governmental arrangements 7. The conduct of daily life that underpins social reproduction There is no macro scale for architecture away from todays realities. Utopia and dreams help us set the path, but critical thinking that derives deep from within our civilizations foundations is what should help us follow trajectories that could reshape us and the perspective in which we engage the world. We need to find ways that alienate themselves from what we call consumer economy. Let us find pleasure and gratification far off the coastlines of profit and its counterparts, for if we settle with anything less Sisyphus will be our nemesis, once again. Bring the obligations, the duties and the responsibilities back to the people , and not to institutionalized departments that operate under the umbrella of representational democracy. People should be citizens rather that consumers. Architecture must once again re-play a vital role into the societys shaping. Not to be cornered as expensive tool for just a few. It could set the framework into which, as some time ago Hassan Fathy suggested where people, cultures and whole societies would be able to define their space. So in order to conclude our scenario in a macro scale, it would be set into a future not much further than today. When the situational awareness of the society would

call for a critical rethinking of the way we inhabit our cities. The infrastructure would still remain relatively intact from the class war that would have erupted, but civilization would have to cope with the new questions that would have risen. But there is no macro scale for architecture away from todays realities. Utopia and dreams help us set the path, but critical thinking that derives deep from within our civilizations foundations is what should help us follow trajectories that could reshape us and the perspective in which we engage the world. We need to find ways that alienate themselves from what we call consumer economy. Let us find pleasure and gratification far off the coastlines of profit and its counterparts, for if we settle with anything less Sisyphus will be our nemesis, once again.

The micro scenario will of course be a more in depth view of the macro scale. So in this base we will use the urban context of the city of New York, and more specifically the borough of Manhattan, that has long served as the showcase of new liberalism and the profit above all concept. We will look into a specific building, and see how it could interact will all the new concepts and ideas that would be formed around it.

The sustainability of the city, even in scales of buildings will play a great role to the whole project. After all, nobody would survive somewhere without food and water The micro society and the way it would organize itself inside the buildings, not as simple tenants but as active ingredients of the built environment is also a critical element of our project.

Using the examples given by S. Latouche and T. Fotopoulos, we could use the localities to establish a new kind of ecological and immediate democracy. Especially Takis Fotopoulos pursues a critique of the representational form of

todays

democracy

The introduction of representative democracy had nothing to do with the size of the population: it was intended to act as a filter, i.e. as the very antithesis of isegoria, which means equality of speech a necessary requirement of classical democracy []Representative democracy is democracy made safe for the modern state

[Goals of the project] After two full semesters of researching the end goals of the thesis project can be projected in two very distinct and complimentary categories. We will call the first one, the generic setting and the second one the specific. What makes this distinction is firstly the amount of specificity and secondly the degree of time that we spent in order to research and answer the question that was posed. So in the first category we can include matters of the general socioeconomic structure surrounding our final scenario, and of course the future of our proposal as a whole. The second group can be attributed to the architectural elements that have been introduced here, as well as the way that they were supposed to contribute and function. Generic As we have stated numerous times in this thesis, we are no futurologists nor can we expect to accurately predict the future in any sense. What we are in human creatures with a conscience and an opinion. As far as we witness the systemic crisis that has crippled the lives of millions of people and has returned most of the western economies decades back in terms of social security and justice, we cannot help but to imagine that the worst part is still ahead of us. Under these conditions it would be at least idiotic to continue to rely, for the context of our scenario on an already fragile system. That is what makes it necessary to look ahead. With our limited knowledge, our even more limited experience, but with the help and guidance openly by our enthusiasm for life, we march ahead. To a future were no human can be held captive, by trends, objects, images or anything else that lack substance. To a future so vaguely described, that being able to define it seems almost like hubris. We use only what we know that would help our present mutate into what we can imagine being our

future. Against everything that is being prescribed for us today, an uncanny feeling of diffused misery and destruction, we can still hope and dream about tomorrow. There is still going to be life in the future, and no matter where the situations take us, where life is theres always hope. That is the message that we would like this thesis to convey. We can always rely on the society of humans, under the condition that it too relies on itself. With this in mind, we incorporated into the project the necessary features that could make such a society at least sustainable. Using ideas transfusing though multiple theorists and disciplines, we came up with the idea of the sustainable islands. Much like the floating islands in the contemporary impressive graphic illustrations, we imagine them in a two dimensional level, virtually floating in open fields that are producing goods that can sustain them. In the end the generic goal that we have set for the thesis is to be incorporated into this spatial dance of production and sustainability. Specific The second set of goals that has been termed specific can be more easily comprehended through its scale. Where in the first set the scale covered the large scale of the context and overall civic scheme, here we are dealing more with the medium scale of the individual city island and the small scale of the formatted design element. The ancient Greek city state finds its evolution here in the form of the city island. As the city state was always in a constant effort to remain sustainable, so should the city island. Vast and sparsely populated areas are no longer viable and realistic. The age of mass individualized transportation will come to an end. Cities and their remaining fragments will become denser and will gain in height.

The goal for this particular scale is to introduce this new iteration for the city of the future that would successfully combine the necessary characteristics of the new city islands and subsequently enhance the role of the social factor, as this has been stated in the large scale. Of course due to time and knowledge limitations this goal set will be neither completed nor absolute. As we manifested in the beginning we are only aiming towards a prediction not a prescription. For the last scale, the odds are naturally higher. This is the main focus of the thesis and the main architectural element that will come out of it. In reality all of the previous scales conclude into this one. The main objective here is to tackle a series of problems that come with the definitions that we firstly defined in the manifesto. We must come up with a new form of spatial arrangement that would be able to act as a social activator. On the one hand, although there are precedents that we have mentioned earlier which we will continue to analyze through this book, we must incorporate their successes and their failures. On the other hand we must understand and evaluate the fact that the final outcome must be agile enough to be able to host not only a vast variety of functions but also to exist in different social formations. So the goal sets for the small scale are not only more difficult, but are also much more important for the success or failure of the thesis itself.

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Basic Set of Ideas that need to be understood

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[Social condenser]

Social condenser. The term originates from the early 20s in the post revolutionary Soviet Union. According to Moisey Ginzburg, one of the most prominent figures of the constructivist movement, the goal of architecture had changed. It was not to merely erect buildings, but to transform the nations way of life, to mutate the ordinary man to a new inconceivable social creature. The revolutionary rhythm was taking everything into consideration and revision, under this glance the word social condenser came to life. This was not an ordinary leisure place. It was the center of gravity for the emerging new culture. Lenin himself once stated that the founding of the Soviet Union was equal with the discovery of a new continent. Not only he was right, but having said that we come close to realize that the condensers and their given formations were the pilgrimage of the new adventurers. Like the electrical condensers that transform the nature of the current , the architects proposed the social condensers were to turn the self centered individual of the capitalistic society into a whole man, the informed militant of socialist society in which the interest of each merged with the interests of all. Anatole Kopp To realize these formations the soviet architects mostly used two main types of structures; the Club and housing. We will involve ourselves mostly with the first case as this is the type of formation that we are mostly linked to through the thesis.

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The Club First of all what must be explained is that the Club had nothing to do with the term that coins todays common sense. What we have today refers to the private, closed spaces reserved only for small groups of people or wealthy members. To quote El Lissitsky: The important thing about a club is that the mass of the members must be directly involved. They must not approach it or be channeled into it from the outside as mere entertainment. They themselves must find in it the maximum self expression. *+ The ultimate role of the club is to liberate men from the oppression of the State and the Church. Lissitsky went a step further when he named these new formations as social powerhouses, as he believed that freed from centuries of oppression, finally the human intellect would find the time, the space and the combined resources needed to create the driving shaft of the society. The first years that followed the revolution the idea stood mostly on improvisations. That was a result of the still fluid state of the project in hand. It was not until 1925 that the first Club was actually realized and immediately came face to face with a whole new world of problems. The most important one, that will also follow us to the design table, was the question of program. With a vast set of goals like the one the clubs were expected to serve, it was almost impossible to come up with a multifunctional plan of that extent. The original Clubs were supposed to have some amenities, but nothing could prepare them for the demands they had to fulfill. The answer that was given was a twofold one. On the one hand, the element of improvisation took over the structural part of the demands. Nobody knew better than the workers themselves what was that they

13

needed, so in the Clubs they were the masters of themselves. Improvisation and direct democracy was the hand solver in the first part of the equation. For the second part, the spatial riddle, the answer had to come with a form flexible enough to serve the ever transforming needs of the inhabitants and also stand still as a symbol of a new era. As it is commonly known, that answer was given by the constructivists, when they abandoned the older designs of a failed society, to create something new and capable of meeting the above criteria. The most important aspect is that they also decided to trust the inhabitants, as much as the institutional system seemed to be. The spaces were designed to be extremely multifunctional and completely transformable in terms of space, volume, quality and in extreme cases even locality. In order to be able to sustain at least a minimum of referenced activities, the central guidelines gave an example of proposed Club activities. According to central guidelines Proletkult clubs had to provide extensive educational services, including classes in the social sciences, art history, law, and socialist theory. In addition, they were supposed to offer a broad array of creative artistic workshops. Yet another crucial function of the club was the transformation of daily life (byt ) to reflect the values of socialism. In this area, however, the center issued no specific instructions; presumably, new patterns of social interaction and collectivity would emerge in the laboratory of the club itself. Lynn Mally In addition to that most of the Clubs that had adequate space, tried to extend the horizon of their activities by incorporating exterior facilities such as sports grounds, pools and even cinemas. Of course the list of these

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programs had to be extensive and literally unending, as the transformation process of these spaces was indefinite.

Leonidov In an attempt to broaden the extent of our research and also make clearer the spatial formation that we are presenting, we will analyze the work of Ivan Leonidov, one of the most important and influential figures of the time. More precisely we will investigate his proposal on the Club of a New Social Type. The proposal started its process sometime in the early 20s, when there was special interest in the mass production of the new workers clubs. Finally in 1928 Leonidov published two variants of an experimental design for a Club of a New Social Type Leonidov treated the club complex as a kind of social culture center, with a winter garden, a general purpose hall for lectures, cinemas, planetarium, laboratories, an open ground for glider competitions , motor racing, war games, a sports hall, a pool and a park. In architectural terms, it represented a broadly conceived and loosely organized park like composition with, as its centerpiece the great hall roofed by a parabolic vault like covering. S.O.Magomedov One of the most interesting elements of his proposal is that Leonidov conceives the social club as some kind of a park, which contains various cultural and educational facilities. In addition to this, he further extended the usual program of a workers club (library, conference hall, labs, cinema etc), to involve a whole new spectrum of events like sports areas, winter gardens and more. This not only shows his will to test the new formation to

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its limits but also to experiment with the vast frontiers of emerging programmatic desires. In terms of design, he proposed a linear formation that aligned the four specific programmatic sectors. Then each sector was in turn subdivided, using a strict gridiron pattern, to further accommodate the proposed facilities. The first sector was reserved for scientific and historical research, the second for mass activities, the third for demonstrations and the last one for physical activities. Instead of following his predecessors and using a single elemental building, Leonidov used his program as a series of repetitive events. Under this scope he succeeds into creating an environment prone to improvisation, and in the same time to keep the over unity of the project intact. These are the headquarters of the cultural revolution, which on the basis of mass independent work and of wide ranging development of workers initiatives will organize the whole system of spreading political knowledge , the whole system of cultural development I. Leonidov

The same ideas we can follow also, although in a completely new scale, when he proposes the new urban settlement of Magnitogorsk. He designed a linear settlement, which composed of three interconnected lines of separated programs (sport, residential, cultural) that were served by a major highway, the main provider of communication for the settlement. Apart from the obvious similarity in terms of linearity, with the previous project, he also uses the same design trick by dually subdividing the elements of the plan. By this way not only he defines the different programs, but he also manages with the checkerboard system to create some kind of fractal organization, that on the one hand does never repeat

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itself, and on the other through repetition it succeeds to go on forever. It is this way of subdividing that finally organizes the settlement.

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[Formalities of a Social Condenser]

It is easily understandable that one the main challenges when we deal with this kind of program is the simple fact that there is no actual program, or to be more exact, the possibilities of it are infinite. In order to escape this really dangerous shallow waters, we must investigate the way, that the pioneers of this idea, used to steer themselves out. At first glance it seems that one of the most important elements of the solution can actually be found on the problem itself. The multiplicity that creates the problem will eventually be the factor that will give birth to the solver of the riddle. Much like the DNA based algorithms of modern day biophysics, the people that create the demand, will be engaged through a system of solutions, in order to discover and subsequently create the solution that fits the society they are a part of. Catherine Cook gives rise to the question when she explicitly speaks about the general unknowns and the particulars. General Unknowns were those identifying characteristics of the epoch as a whole, whose influence must permeate the entire design and construction process of the new society. In Style and Epoch, Ginzburg, discusses the social, national and economical peculiarities of a culture, as inevitably influencing building form. From further analysis of their own he recognizes four of these peculiarities for the soviet transition. The first was that the individual client had been replaced by a collective one, a whole society, which was trying to build a new way of life; the second was a concomitant shift in the position of architecture, to become a member of the overall plan. The third was a conjunction of these factors to produce a new, ideological and technical status of norms and standard types. The fourth and final one was an overriding methodological obligation under the new ideology, to solve

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the architectural task like any other, only through precise evaluation of its unknowns and the pursuit of a correct method of solution. C.Cooke How form should relate to an evolving content. C.Cooke This last observation shows us the extent of the problem. An ever evolving content can never be productively served by any spatial formulation, except one that has been recreated to fit its specific needs in relation to time and space. This recreation needs to be done co temporally with every evolution. The only way for a spatial form to do such a thing, is for it to be constructed, every time by the sheer element of the evolution, the participants. So if the participants are the ones that recreate the space every time, where is the architects role and consequently what is the quality of the spatial solution to be given? The only way for the architect to be involved a solution like that is to become a participant. By this we do not imply anything different than for him to trust the evolution of his design to the hands of those that it is being addressed to. In architectural terms this can only mean only a handful of things, and of those it is our concrete belief that the only way is the production of a strategy.

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[Strategy and tactics]

When we are talking about the definition of strategy, we could not avoid the reference to the work of Michel de Certeau. What he does is that he defines the term strategy by introducing to us another term, tactic. According to him strategies are able to produce, impose and tabulate spaces in which they operate, whereas tactics can only use, divert and manipulate space. Following his example we can refer to strategy as the syntax of an established language, when the tactics is the act of speaking. In reference to Certeaus discussions, strategy is mainly an index of governing principles, and defines what we do. When tactics are actions of operational logic, and define how we realize what will be done. This mutual, diachronic and interactive relationship between strategy and tactics constructs the mechanism of strategic way of design and produces, reproduces, manipulates and controls the operational tools to cope with the programmatic indeterminacy of an unstable context O.Ozkan So if we add in the equation the above elements we can clearly understand that a participatory design refers to a strategic process that must be formulated for a defined and given space, but furthermore it can be forever evolving in order to fit what Koolhaas calls programmatic indeterminacy of an unstable context.

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[Example: La Villete Park Proposal, O.M.A.]

In order to follow on the previous considerations, we felt it would really enhance our research if we were able to track down a modern equivalent. Of course due to the historical events that shaped our century, the Soviet Union no longer exists, and even if it would, the Constructivists and their theories, were scrapped before the 15th celebration of the October revolution. There is however one project that tried to play around and reintroduce, in a somewhat distorted way, the old notion of the social condenser. This was the 1982 proposal for the La Villete Park that was submitted by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Strangely the whole project tends to signify an important turn for OMAs future work, but in the same time it really consists of all the theories that Rem Koolhaas was working on since the beginning of the 70s. Most importantly for this thesis, there is another crossover with the theoretical work of Rem Koolhaas, since in his book Delirious New York; he first recognizes the ability of the American skyscraper to act as a social condenser. The ultimate goal of this research will be to come up with the basic rules, on which we will try to set up our strategic approach to the Seagram building.

Similarity & Difference Koolhaas is a well known studier of Leonidovs work. So it is not shocking to discover major similarities between the theoretical approaches of the two. But similarities are not the only things that someone discovers in such a cross-reference. Where Leonidov talks about the social role that a condenser ought to play in a rapidly emerging society and in front of him a

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whole nation takes form and shape, Koolhaas defines it as part of a programmatic architectural process. []layering upon vacant terrain to encourage dynamic coexistence of activities and to generate through their interference, unprecedented effects R.Koolhaas We can understand the immediate relative positions of the two architects, but is still very intriguing to investigate what a 1920s idea can do in the 21st century dynamics

Skyscraper As we noticed before in Delirious New York Koolhaas provides the facts that give ground to his argument that an American skyscraper can indeed be a social condenser. First in hand comes his notion of the Grid as transformation of a strategic individuation tool and the Skyscrapers as a tactical tool within each plot of the Grid will be analyzed in detail. He goes on to describe how the grid acts as a main strategy that formulates the rigid parts of what he calls the Culture of Congestion. It is also very interesting to mark his positions as we are well aware that if there is one monolithic gridiron structure in the world then that is the Seagram building. The important part is to note that the grid may engulf the blocks but because of that it allows the inside of them to turn completely wild, baring no relation whatsoever with the neighboring blocks. Using the same tools and with the addition of A.M. Walkers sketch, Koolhaas turns his attention to the American skyscraper. Easily he notes the similarities between the horizontal grid of the city and the vertical grid of the skyscraper. He also refers to them as activity generators.

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As a vehicle of Urbanism, the indeterminacy of the Skyscraper suggests that in the Metropolis no single specific function can be matched with a single place. Through this destabilization is possible to absorb change that is life by continuously rearranging functions on the individual platforms in an incessant process of adaptation that does not affect the framework of the building itself. R.Koolhaas The individuality of the blocks becomes the condition for the separate planes of the scraper. This multi functionality poses as the ignition for the building to be given the term social condenser. The instability of the Culture of Congestion, finds its spatial match in the skyscraper. Once again the participants were up to the task of creating a form effective enough to survive and shape the concurrent timeframe. The grid retains the valuable specificity while the scraper hosts the madness of the congestion. Problem solved; for now.

La Villete In brief, what OMA did in the La Villete competition is to firstly regard the park like a park-like condenser, the kind that Leonidov was envisioning in his sketches. Then they used the primmest example of a contemporary condenser, the skyscraper, and manipulated him in order to create a strategy that addressed the site. That manipulation, as Koolhaas himself admitted, was to lay the section of a skyscraper on the site and use the basic functions of it to work. Here we must introduce another important element that OMA used in the proposal. As Leonidov had done years before, they also needed a vessel to act as a carrier for the formulation like the grid acted for the city or the line for Leonidov. Their answer to this was the two-dimensional strip that

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was multiplied and applied to the north south axis of the site and acted as the signifier of the system, the specificity. Next in line were the circulation paths that were already predefined. And they acted as a skyscraper designer would by tolerating them. After that they applied a formula for the dispersion of the minor elements of the site, the causes of congestion. The biggest elements on site were already there, but gained a new significance with their inclusion to the strip system. So the last but also important detail of the design was the element of nature. They organized this, using three different kinds of formations in order to cover their linear, free formed and programmatic needs.

Today Interestingly, there still exist types of social condensers today. Under different scopes and programmatic goals of course but it is still really fascinating to recognize elements in contemporary formations. Museums and Libraries - bring visitors together for the shared aim that they require the resources held there. Although some areas within these buildings may be restrictive to certain activities and so may inhibit true social interaction, they may still encourage some level of 'social collision' between the users of the building, perhaps stemming from what visitors may observe within. Swimming Pools and (Theme) Parks

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- may be used in a similar way to the above, yet in a more recreational sense. It could be said that these spaces are used generally for entertainment or sport, most likely by groups rather than individuals, although it is argued that the fact that visitors usually have to pay to use these facilities would limit their true potential to encourage social interaction between the broadest demographic. Student Accommodation - similar in function to some aspects of the Narkomfin Communal House, student accommodation (particularly the catered type where only limited kitchenettes are provided) is intended to cause inhabitants to occupy their own private spaces (study bedrooms) for only some of the time, as cooking/ dining/ entertainment facilities are located elsewhere, usually in communal blocks nearby to the study bedrooms. This encourages inhabitants to make use of the communal facilities in order to carry out every day jobs, and it is usual that social interaction occurs during the course of this. It may be said that the occupation of student accommodation acts to 'socialize' students in the transition (usually) from the private family home environment to university life and its context. Even in self-catered student flats, or 'clusters', inhabitants still live in groups where the kitchen/ bathroom etc is shared; interaction between members of this unconventional 'household' will still take place, yet in a limited way in comparison with larger student halls. Bars, Clubs and Restaurants - Although seemingly very every day, the purpose of these establishments is to provide a place for visitors to socialize against the backdrop of food/ drink/ dancing/ celebration and so on. Generally speaking, people visit such places in groups, with the shared intention to socialize. Again, visitors have to pay for the privilege of eating/ drinking in the ambience of these establishments, and perhaps they are not a social condenser in the true

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sense. Yet they highlight the so-everyday-as-to-be-almost-overlooked connection between social gatherings and the consumption of food/ drink as a communal activity. The House - [+ Does, in some ways, act as a micro social condenser. Should a house be occupied by a family or group of individuals, it is likely that each resident will have their own private space within the house, or at least a space that they see as being their own. The living room, kitchen and similar spaces are pseudo-public, in that although they are private in a sense that they are not accessible to non-residents, they are shared by the residents of the house. As the residents of the house are very likely to meet or 'bump into' each other in these pseudo-public spaces, this implies that social interaction may occur in these areas, in a more 'public' sense than in the more private realms of the house . OMA

Formula(tion)s Following the phenomenal analysis of O.Ozkan, where he analyzes in its full extent the Villete proposal made by OMA, and his consequent investigations of Koolhaas manipulations and their causes, we would like to quote his resulting theory and use it to further enhance the investigation for a new social condenser. Formula 1: Socially interactive, programmatically condensed architecture

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+ To define a flexible and unified organic process with active improvisation of users Formula 2: Minimum architecture, maximum program + To define a script that combines the void with an intense program. Formula 3: Innocent pleasure inside versus corruption outside + To define the limits of the inside and to establish a spatial relation between the inside and the outside Formula 4: A city (the skyscraper) within a city (the grid) + To create a pattern of activity generators that guarantee perpetual programmatic instability Formula 5: Architectural specificity with programmatic indeterminacy + To create an envelope that can absorb perpetual state of revision O.Ozkan

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[Seagram]

All of the previous research was aimed at the proposed transformation of the Seagram building into a social condenser. This effort shares a lot of similarities with both Koolhaas and Leonidov visions. On the one hand, it is set up to be situated in an environment pretty much in the same state that Leonidov was living in. A society in the (r)evolutionary verge, with a lot of questions to ask and few answers to give. On the other hand, the same society would evolve out of the Culture of Congestion that Koolhaas describes. The madness, the overflow, the indeterminacy will all be present elements. The same can be said for the need of a society to acquire understand and affiliate itself with an important element like that. As Ginzburg stated, there always were and always will be social condensers of sorts, those are the powerhouses of any given society. Restructuring them essentially means that the society around them has already re institutionalized itself, and the keepers are to follow. The Seagram offers all of the above mentioned elements to constitute an ideal new formation. It is a monumental spatial solution that acts as a very particular symbol. And symbols are for change to pass right through them. In terms of design elements, it is a building situated in a grid, strictly posed on a grid, and Cartesian in every possible way. Mies would never have acted differently, as he actually never did. Using the evolution of the rigid concrete slab, the three dimensional ribbon as a vessel of real proportions, we will attempt define the ever-changing programmatic indeterminacy.

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[Forming the strategy]

Taking into consideration the method previously explored by the Constructivists and Koolhaas, in order to deal with an identical problem, we will closely follow in their footsteps as long as this is to the benefit of the project. Firstly we will start by posing the question of the programmatic indeterminacy. Not quite as the previous counterparts did, we will attempt to map out the programmatic formations of the soviet condenser, the La Villete Park and lastly as far as we can the American Skyscraper. This is been done by keeping in mind the fact that we are talking about spatial solutions aging from nearly a century back to 20 years old. It is necessary to investigate what types of programmatic elements could be further needed, or on the other hand would be considered obsolete. Of course the goal of this project is not to act as a fortuneteller or even more as a anthropologic study, so the investigations are only valid under the scope of creating the strategy needed to address the specific problem. After referencing the programmatic elements, the next step would be to assess the requirements of each and every one. Different needs of light availability, volume, structure o even situational issues that need to be dealt with. The multiple nature of the elements, makes it necessary for us to map out these relationships in order to be able to pre calculate them later on. Following the requirements investigation, we believe that we should take a deeper look into the circulation diagrams. Firstly by investigating the available circulation modes, or even search for additional ones, and then proceed to cross examine them with the already set up programmatic formation. Through this process, the conditional state of the provisional neighbors or clusters will become much clearer and easily articulated.

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Parallel with the previous research, it will also be crucial to state some kind of hierarchy between the different elements of the program. That will give the necessary weight lists in order to result in a direct and adjustable result. An additional important element of the strategic implementation, although not in first glance functional, is the division of space between the smooth and the striated. This also can be considered as a succession on Koolhaas theory of the void, in his infamous Berlin Wall project. The main idea behind this duality, apart from the obvious interconnection procedure, is the ability to host and serve even wider forms of program. When Gilles Deleuze talks about striated and smooth space, he masterfully uses the example of the nomadic and the sedentary. This distinction coincides also with the one between the war machine and the state apparatus. If we suppose here that the ribbon structure, the real element upon which everything else is projected, can constitute the idea of striated space, then it is easily admittedly that the void could take the role of the war machine. Neither the roles, nor the names are coincidental. On the one hand, the condenser, being a structure and furthermore using a completely pre striated space as its emerging realm, will absolutely be a striated space. Even more it needs this kind of striation in order to further implement Leonidovs multi subdivision tactic. So it is a striated space, emerging from striated elements aiming to further striate it. The above action although at first glance looks like an extremity, in reality it is something that helps a lot with the definition of its oppositional space; the smooth space. In this case the smooth space can be traced as the void created between the slabs, or the habitable space all over. Someone may also argue that taken into section view, the Seagram as every American Skyscraper is an absolutely striated space that engulfs multiple voids.

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The idea here is to reformulate these voids, and set them free to cluster, disperse and ultimately to be able to serve our basic programmatic formalities. This is the real war machine, the ever changing element. The war is between the continuous re institutionalization of the society as a whole. Here is where the prominent, the expected (the law) meets the unforeseen, the unexpected (the logos). In order to visualize this struggle we would have to use another part of Deleuzian terminology and talk about the primacy of the line (striated) and the primacy of the point (smooth). These voids, with nothing in particular to add to the structure, but the whole point of the structure would be to accommodate them, can also act in another level of physicality. The ribbon, posing as the striated and rigid structure can only formulate itself by means of Euclidean space, after all it has to be capable of continuous registry and expected behavior. On the other hand, the void can be the host of Riemann space. That can be an experimental procedure, solely part of minor science, which awaits its turn to become part of the striation. After all as Deleuze argued, between the state and the nomad, the state always wins, so why not try to change the state from within by influencing its own formulations on the strategic perceptions of the state. The last thing to be added to this strategic list of actions is the idea of circulation methodology. One of the things that Leonidov and OMA share in common, under different reasoning, is the strict set up of the basic moving axis. Although once off these axis, the movement is more or less set free, before this it completely appropriated. The Seagram due to its medium size provides us with the unique opportunity not to pre appropriate the circulation routes and therefore try to predict the movement of the people. The plaza gives us the ideal starting point for the diffusion process that can actually be transformed into the element that inserts the incoming population. Another advantage gained from using this

31

method is that we can completely eradicate the centrality of the axis, once the entry point becomes a multiplicity.

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[The void strategy]

As we mentioned before, the voids are incorporated into the condenser in order to act as the experimental forefront of the given structure. In reality, the soviets did not have the luxury of establishing something of the kind, so they used the open plan arrangement instead. In our case we would like to take this notion a step further and add the third and fourth dimension into it. Not all of the empty space between the ribbon elements can be appropriated as void, but also no space can be excluded from this functionality. The idea would be for them (the voids) to be occupied by short lived experimental structures, test the institutional framework to its limits and beyond. There will be no specificity for the form, function and goal of these occupancies, after all there is no possible way to predict now the spatial formations of tomorrow, but you can provide the space for it to evolve from.

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[Manahatta]

One of the basic foundations behind the conception of this theses project is the profound relation that comes onto play when we consider the country and the city. As Marx had always been arguing, through the capitalist methods of production this balance is irreversibly shattered. Proof to the wise is the obvious trouble relationship that our civilization shares with our environment. To be more factual, Paul Crutzen recently suggested that our civilization has had such an influence and impact on the environment that it would be fair to call this era the anthopocene era. Coming back to our main staging, the area of New York City and more particularly the Manhattan borough, we paid very close attention to the environmental history and its subsequent evolution. Starting point was the main attributes that were discovered when the Dutch settlers first set their camp site in the southern tip of what was until then known by the indigenous populations, Manahatta or the island of the thousand hills. Vast forests and marshlands, in conjunction with the unwelcoming climate, drove the native Indians to use Manahatta island only periodically and not in a regular basis. The only settlements were located far into the north, closer to where Harlem lays today. So there was no wonder that at least in the begging there were no direct conflicts between the natives and the settlers. From the start, in order to sustain the settlements, the Europeans were forced to begin a massive effort to de-forestate the dense woods that surrounded their grounds. This effort was continued up until the point of almost absolute eradication of the forests and most of the indigenous flora and fauna. Today, the only thing that stands to resemble the environment that once stood in Manahatta is Inwood Hill Park.

34

Eric W. Sanderson suggests that in the process of time Manahatta transformed into the Manhattan that we known today through a series of tradeoffs. The impressive variety of flora and fauna gave its place to the unending variations of capital formulations in the modern city of New York. In addition to this the ecological abundance gave its place to the economical abundance of its citizens. These steps have altered the environmental stability of this place forever. The thousand hills have been leveled long ago, and the streams and torrents have mutated into concrete pavements and luxury entrance halls. What is left for us to do is not just to document this degradation and report on it. On the contrary, what we would like to achieve in the context of this thesis, is contradict the notion that these actions flow only in one direction and reverse the current. We will try to make this lost stability, resurface. Not in terms of a series of makeup actions here and there, but by inducing a systemic reconfiguration to the core of the classic clash between the city and the country.

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[Poro.mechanics] Transpierce the mountains instead of scaling them, excavating the land instead of striating it, bore holes in space instead of keeping it smooth, turn the earth into Swiss cheese. G. Deleuze + F. Guattari
Text inspired from Machines are digging (chapter of Reza Negarestanis Cyclonopedia)

Poromechanics is a term widely used by H.P. Lovecraft in order to talk about the conditioning of what he calls the inner field. Negarestani on the other hand takes on this term and uses it in an way that adds not only to its meaning but also to its productive effect as a (w)hole. Therefore he turns it into a system, a way to talk about the relationship of the solid and the void and the subsequent results that they provide. In his essay titled Poromechanics: archeology of psychoanalysis and militarization of archeology he states: Deleuze and Guattaris holey space can be addressed both as an event and entity. As an event it demarcates the limitropic degeneration of a whole which never effectuates full annihilation or complete effacement (hence the nomenclature ( )hole complex) and for this reason it perpetuates a poromechanical decay whose incessant dynamism is maintained by differentiation between solid and void. As an entity, the holey space is characterized by its anomalous distribution of consistencies through the poromechanical space. The politics of the holey space is defiant toward the existing models of harvesting power, manipulating and analyzing events on the surface. For the world order, inconsistent events around the world are failures or setbacks since they resist the contemporary dominant political models. According to the politics of poromechanical earth, however, inconsistencies, regional disparities and insidious non uniformities across the globe constitute the body of the ultimate politics. The emergence of two entities (political formation, military, economic, etc.) from two different locations on the ground is inconsistent, but according to the logic of (

36

)hole complex they are terminally inter-connected and consistent. In terms of emergence, consistency or connectivity should not be measured by the ground or the body of solid as a whole but according to a degenerate model of whole and the poromechanical entity. Following these ideas, a few years later he adds up to the previous passage that void might exclude the solid, but solid must include void in order to architectonically survive. In addition to this according to Negarestani solid needs void to engineer its composition in case and under every circumstance. If we get back to basic Deleuzian analysis, it is quite obvious that the solid/void contradiction as expressed by the previous excerpts, can be easily translated into a striation/smoothing condition, where the solid takes the place of the smooth space and the void the place of the striated topography. As an analogy, but as a real life condition, this relativity is stunning. As we will try to show later on, the Deleuzian line of emergence can penetrate all the vast field of possibilities that lie in the materialized substance of the solid. This reminds us of the indeterminacy factor that came as a conclusion when Koolhaas was addressing the congestion element. All of this is necessary in our effort to provide our project with a systematic approach that will not only be able to metabolize itself but facilitate the transition to new social forms, that we are not yet capable to grasp or even foresee. Continuing with the text, Negarestani claims that in terms of Earth the holocaust of freedom can be attained by engineering the corpse of solidus through installing underground machines at molecular levels that exhume (ex + humus: un-ground) the earth from within and without, turning it into a vermicular and holey composition whose strata is not dismantled but convoluted in every level of its composition.*+ By correcting its consolidating processes, the solid sells its integrity to the abysmal convolutions inspired by the void, through which the pathological

37

survival of the solid becomes the most basic factor in its irreversible lyses and degeneration. This exhumation process is the key to understanding the interaction between the solid and the void. We may not be able to predict the exact way that the future generations will try to direct their experiments, but what we can do is provide them the tools to start with. Even in terms of pure materiality, it is way easier, given the correct tools to carve your way into something, than try to construct it around you. In any composition, the solid narrates the anomalies created by the void *+ It is a short analytical step to witness that the solid works mainly as two different entities overlapping each other and functioning concurrently: 1. As a compositional entity whose behavior can induce changes to the

compositional side of the void through Surface Dynamics. 2. The solid as an entity is inherently possessed by the void.

In order to conclude this early setting up, the solid and the void will be the main element that we are going to have to implement into our system of solutions. As previously exemplified the solid plays the role of the infinite possibilities and the eternal phasing of evolution. Anything can happen when the material of creation is already present. Another important fact would be the use of the surface in the game. That could give us the necessary background actualization, because after all, the surface has been the main habitat of the human kind so far Lastly but most importantly, the void That is the real protagonist, in every aspect of this matter. All of the experimentations, the trials and even the figurative ideas, can be address through and with the void. The exact results may never emerge to be what we nowadays expect them to be, but this is the ultimate beauty of providing the material elements that can be indeterminately utilized in the future, near or far

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The next stage is to try to define the aggregators of the interactions. The element that will ignite the void creation, by addressing the process of exhumation. Again, Negarestani in his text has a very interesting suggestion to make about these elements. As he states, by using the foreword of Lovecrafts work, he introduces the idea of the Rats as exhumation machines...

Rats Negarestani uses Lovecrafts poromechanical cosmology where

exhumation is undertaken and exercised by units called Rats. Rats are exhuming machines: Not only fully fledged vectors of epidemic, but also ferociously lines of un-grounding. They germinate two kinds of surface cataclysm as they travel and span different zones. Firstly, static damage in the form of ruptures rendered by internal schisms, uplifts, dislocations, jumps and thrusts which expose the surface to paroxysmal convolutions and distortions; and secondly the dynamic anomaly of seismic waves dissipating as the rats flow in the form of tele-compositions (ferocious packs). There is a lot of interesting facts about the use of Rats as the acting proprietors. First of all, even if we take the term literally, as every action taken in nature rats act like that to fulfill a basic chain of demands. Either they are digging to create the passage way that will lead them to a food source, or they are digging in order to escape, or even to hide their newborns. In any and every case the action of digging not only has a more specified goal, but also the literal exhuming comes as a consequence, that has neither been though about nor been calculated. In the same type of actors, where the creation of void refers mainly to the meeting of basic necessities, we could easily put a more manageable

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element, the ant. For thousands of years the ants have roamed the earth, literally exhuming gigatons of soil in an effort to sustain their way of living. Every corridor, every chamber they have ever created had to fulfill a specific function. There is a very strict hierarchy included in the very being of the ant colony. As we learn from Steven Johnsons Emergence, everything starts to be created around the queen ant. The queen being the main aggregator is also the key provider of the colony. All the ants are being born from her. So in a not so strained analogy, she is the literal Rat. Everything begins to fall into place around her, the main corridor are created, the chambers, the storage and the circulation compartment. Still following the most basic rule of nature, that of survival. The same adheres to the structures made by termites. On the other hand, if we decide to see the rat term metaphorically then we have a totally new problem in our hands. This is the way that we are willing to use the rat term, so we will try to maneuver through the delicate metaphorical structure consisting of humans and our life structure. The basic idea behind this research is to be able to provide an experimentation zone. As we said before, we are not willing to return to the misfortunes of the past, where architecture was expected to create single handedly a brave new world. But on the other hand we definitely dont want to fall victims of todays indifferent stance towards the experimentation of the social structure. The ideal balance has to be researched. In our case, we are mainly trying not to direct, but only provide and influence experimentation. As with most cases in human history, only when we have the appropriate tools, we can start the testing runs

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So what if, instead of providing old retrofits or failed utopian predicaments, we actually provide the appropriate tools? Then maybe people can transform themselves to Rats, in order to address themselves, according to their own necessities, the basic evolutions that they want to pursue.

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[The five elements]

Following up on the previous research on what the void could really specify, we come across the Japanese religious theory of the five elements. Those elements in ascending order of power are earth, fire, air, water and void. Void is referred to as Ku and is the strongest among elements because it represents spirit, thought and unrestrained creation. It is also associated with power, creativity and inventiveness. We can easily understand the importance of the void as the ultimate functioning layer of all importance, since it is what exists before anything becomes.

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[The presence of Void as an event]

Here we would like to involve ourselves we the idea of the Void as an event. Negarestani himself tried to give this functionality to the Void but instead he preferred to talk about it as an entity. The world is everything which happens Wittgenstein First of all, in order to prove the eventful nature of the void, we must understand and define what an event really is. To do this we will mention and refer to an extensive array of excerpts in Deleuzes work especially from the book The logic of Sense. Axiom 1: Unlimited becoming becomes the event itself The Void, with its unlimited possibilities and endless boundaries, clearly constitutes what Deleuze refers to here as unlimited becoming. The position, the role or even the function of the engulfed space is ever changing and therefore eternally becoming. In a peculiar turn of terms it could ideally constitute the materialization of what Trotsky called constant revolution. As Badiou argues, the event is the ontological realization of the eternal truth of the One, the infinite power of Life, it is in no way separated from what becomes. *+ To the contrary it is the concentration of the continuity of life, its intensification, it is what gives the multiplicities of life and he concludes The event is the becoming of becoming: the becoming of unlimited becoming Axiom 2: The event is always that which has just happened and that which is about to happen, but never that which is happening

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The main difference for this second axiom is the introduction of the element of time. Again, we would like to follow Badiou with his analysis where he states: The event is a synthesis of past and future. In reality, the expression of the One in becoming is the eternal identity of the future as a dimension of the past. The ontology of time, for Deleuze as for Bergson, admits no figure of separation. Consequently, the event would not be what takes place between a past and a future, between the end of a world and the beginning of another. It is rather encroachment and connection: it realizes the indivisible continuity of Virtuality. It exposes the unity of passage which fuses the one-just-after and the one-justbefore. It is not that which happens, but that which, in what happens, has become and will become. The event as event of time, or time as the continued and eternal procedure of being, introduces no division into time, no intervallic void between two times. Event repudiates the present understood as either passage or separation; it is the operative paradox of becoming. This thesis can thus be expressed in two ways: there is no present (the event is re-represented, it is active immanence which co-presents the past and the future); or, everything is present (the event is living or chaotic eternity, as the essence of time). The sheer importance of the time element in the event structure is intriguing. We can also attribute this importance to the most basic arguments of the necessary creation of what we call the spatial experiment realm. The past is what will help us create and promote an evolved future, but in order to do this in the present, it must provide us with the appropriate tooling and resources. For Deleuze, the event is the immanent consequence of becoming or Life. A. Badiou Although the Void itself would be sufficient into translating the function of becoming, there is here something much more than that. The Void that gets created always has to serve the function that made its existence necessary. In order for this function to arise and to be actualized, through the creation of the

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Void, there has to be a whole procedure of human interaction in multiple levels. These levels can be from the most basic organizational levels (administration, work force) to the more complex ones of spatial decision making (assembly meetings, proposals etc.) these are exactly the core elements of what Deleuze names becoming, this unitary activity comprising of all levels of intellectual and physical activity, and finally this is what we want to address through our spatial experiment realm. The outside is not a fixed limit but a moving matter animated by peristaltic movements, folds and folding that together make up an inside: they are not something other than the outside, but precisely the inside of the outside. Deleuze

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[The spatial experiment realm]

Apart from the already given justifications that necessitate the creation of such a realm, we have to think in more reactionary terms. In other words, this is the fundamental action of a society: to code the flows and to treat as an enemy anyone who presents himself, in relation to society, as an uncodable flow, because, once again, it challenges [met en question] the entire earth, the whole body of this society. *+There is a fundamental paradox in capitalism as a social formation: if it is true that the terror of all the other social formations was decoded flows, capitalism, for its part, historically constituted itself on an unbelievable thing: namely, that which was the terror of other societies. *+Because it was the ruin of every other social formation. Deleuze It will be interesting to turn this weaponry on the system itself. This negation of flows can turn in to a negation in spatial arrangements, capable of producing the elements that will tear it down. The evolution will begin, the (re)volution will ignite its beginning

Examples Thinking of actualizing our realm, the first thing that comes into mind is soil. The penultimate material that our civilization has relied on, for centuries. Since the end of the hunting gathering period, soil was used to define the most essential figures of human evolution. Manuel deLanda stated that, the differentiation on the use of soil, among a vast amount of elements, led to the final phase of the human settlement. Through his analysis it is easier to understand the significance that the use of the soil

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can have to the evolution of a given society. The first example would be to investigate the way that ants and termites correlate to it. There is a vast bibliography on the way that these insects have used the ground since the beginning of their existence. It is not only their hunting ground; they feed, make war and circulate in and through it. They make their nests and passage ways on it. In reality there is no other living organization, more sufficient than the ants and the termites, to witness the use the soil. What is particularly interesting to us, regarding this research is the way the ant society defines its structure in the most concrete way, by the presence of specific chambers. These chambers constitute an unwritten pattern and rule book that has to be followed by the entire colony if they were to survive. In some given relaxed perspective, so does the human society structure. The difference here is that we humans mainly elect to construct our edifices instead of using space already provided by the underground. That usually necessitates much more resources and effort, than the excavating process, and also does not give the opportunity for a more direct approach to what is being achieved, since for many years structures were slaves of the technical deficiencies of their contemporary methods. Imagine, if one day a group of ants, suddenly and unexpectedly, started to dig a completely new chamber structure in the nest. Let us look beyond the reasonable doubt of the fact that in nature nothing ever just happens or that there has to be a pretty good explanation for such a move. This new element, would completely throw of the sum of the hierarchical structure of the nest. It would be a time stopping experiment that would most probably lead to the fast extermination of the members that created it. Imagine if this new chambers where to be implemented in order to constitute a new kind of change in the society figure of the time. Of course

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the ants are in no such position as to be able to incorporate a drastic change like that under democratic or even experimentation means. But what about the people? If only this kind of elaborate experiment surfaced in a human community willing to try it out. Maybe it would actually lead to a complete disaster, or not. Then maybe a new kind of social formation would start to emerge and articulate itself spatially. The least it could actually provide is a kind of playground for though that could only mean that a better chance would be given to the advancement of socializing or even the way we regard any given institution to date. So if the ant farm provided us with the elemental material, then the next step would be to find an analogy fittingly sufficient to our scales and values. For this particular research timing is all that matters. In the recent James Cameron film Avatar there is an unimaginable depiction of what we are looking for. The floating islands.

The floating islands The floating islands are a formation known, for water use of course, and experimented upon for many years. Even geological formations have been given this name due to their physical resemblance. The islands that we witness in the virtual realm of the movie are air floating structures, that seem like a monstrous force ripped them of the surface and by ignoring every term of basic physics, it left them levitating in mid air. A small historical background reveals that the idea of the floating islands is not new or profound. The first time that something similar is actually mentioned, is in the ancient Greek epos of Odyssey, written by Homer

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around 8 century BC. There he talks about a floating island on which the mythical city of Aeolia is situated. Aeolus the god of winds was born in that city according to the text. The next important mentioning of a similar formation is Laputa a city in the book Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726). The writer includes in his description detailed views of this imaginary place and its inhabitants. Also it is very interesting to add that the floating island has a detailed area, in which it can maneuver, that itself is part of the same kingdom. The third example comes much later in 1943 when C.S. Lewis writes his fictional novel Perelandra. In the novel there are a lot of floating islands featured in the surface of Venus. The final example, although these references do not exhaust the vast amount of material available on these formations, is the Cloud Nine project by B.Fuller. Based on the architects calculations, a small increase in the internal pressure of the spheres would result to their instant and safe levitation without the use of other technology. It was a utopian project trying to discover the importance of space and time regarding to big communities. In the end it was not favorably recognized, but it did mark the beginning of the first realistic approach to an airborne human settlement. Apart from the visually stunning imagery, the floating islands create an ideal precedent to the object of our research. It actually redefines all the bad qualities of the underground structures (light, air circulation etc) and keeps all the attributes that we have been arguing about. As a bonus element the surface that remains on these imaginary sightings, can act as an ideal direct analogy to the contemporary way of formatting. So in order to summarize in the second research level, the floating islands, although unrealistic, are an ideal element to make visibly comprehensible our basic ideas. We will use them as they incorporate the 3 main factors that we have been referring to; the surface (s), the soil (S) and the void (-S).

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In another level of thought, these three key players actually fall well into the category that we have started to set up since the first phase of our research, the Lacanian Elements (Symbolic, Real, Imaginary). In an attempt to clearly state what we are thinking about this comparison, we will try to make a small parenthesis here in order to explain further.

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[The surface, The soil, The void]

Using the previous mode of distinction, we will define each element in question as part of the three categories.

The Surface It has been used to host the constructions of human civilization ever since man came out of the protective womb of the cave. It functions as a level of consistency for everything that has ever been built. During every age of the human history, situations changed, institutions changed even settlements advanced, but the element of the surface retained its pre historical significance. As has been frequently stated in the political thoughts of the 19th and 20th century, surface and the notion of ownership over it, gave rise to the presence of capital and its repercussions. It became not only the base that we step on, that we build on but also the measure of our collective value. Given the foretold arguments, it is easy to understand the central role that the Surface element has played in the evolution of human civilization. In short, not only it has been the plane of our existence but it constitutes the Symbolic since all of the symbolic structures are not only laid upon it but also defined by it.

The Soil It is the element that first and foremost shapes and supports the surface level. As Negarestani states, the surface merely depicts what the

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underground (the soil) wants to express. The obvious visualization of this would be the mountain ranges or even the lakes, formations that have been created due to the subsequent manipulation from the soil. Also apart from being the supporter of all that stands above it, soil also is a vector of change. Not only though centuries of small and almost unnoticeable formations but also sometimes through the use of more violent and abrupt natural incidents (i.e. landslides, quakes, volcanoes). It has been used also to produce a steady flow for material leading to construction or other uses that deal with everyday needs, but its main role was always to be there, because when it went away, in any form, cataclysmic events occurred to the adjacent civilizations. Due to the characteristics attributed to the Soil, it is quite safe to say that it fits perfectly with what Lacan named the element of the Real.

The Void The last element of our small parenthetical analysis is what will have to prove itself in the course of this whole research. The void, in various forms during the course of human history and especially in the field of utopian thinking, has always played a key role. Some of the forms it could take where obvious, like the ideas of flying into the void (air), living into the void (underwater or underground) or even living into a void that flies into the void (space). The first set of ideas, regarding flying structures, where not so utopian in context as they were in terms of how close they came to be realized. From living (flying) into the air for a few seconds during the first human flight (Wright brothers) to the creation of magnificent air levitating cities (Fuller),

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the airborne structures were not mere figures of imagination but were goals in active pursuit. Next in line is the underwater and underground realm. There is a vast bibliography on success and failure to build habitable spaces and communities underwater. This research however will not involve itself with this kind of formations, since we believe that there is no particular advantage for new social institutions to be created while in the water due to the fact that there is an immense lack of all that make up a healthy human settlement (i.e. air, light, food) On the other hand there has been more than a simple urban legend surrounding the underground communities. For different reasons every time (production, protection, burial, circulation etc.), there are a handful of constructed underground spaces active even today. Mines might be the first thing that comes into mind, but we are more intrigued by the fictional myth of the inner Earth. Although we are well aware of the fake character of it, the scientific interest of formations being created in such an environment would be immense. Last but not least is space. No need to mention here the availability of projects in this particular area, and because of this specific overexploitation we would not prefer to involve ourselves with it. The extensive list of examples comes to prove that the Void and its features have long ago captured the imagination of artists, politicians, utopian thinkers, authors and many more. The key word in order to define the place of our element in the Lacanian trio is imagination. The void has always had protagonist roles in works of fiction and fantasy. There would be no other ideal definition for it, if not the Imaginary.

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More examples This section is reserved for a more specific architectural example. The example in question is the proposal by OMA for the Tres Grande Bibliotheque Jussieu. Despite the fact that the proposal does not adhere to the sum of our intentions, we feel that is a good precedent to look into and analyze. The first interesting element of the proposal is the initial effort to break the striation of the grid. To achieve this, the architects presented a system of inclinations (most of them operational in the form of theaters, amphitheaters etc) that deals with the gridiron. The next step is even more radical, as they introduced into the core of the building a milieu of voids. These voids where to house specific functions attributed to the buildings program. One of the feelings left from the proposal, is that the maneuvers did not go all the way. The inclinations were not enough, and most importantly the void formations were not communicating with each other. So the project can be viewed as a really important ancestor to the way we would like to address the building.

The name of the game Now that we have defined the basic players of this research, it will be a bit easier to track down their evolution, as the design and theoretical approach advance. We are interested not only in the juxtaposition of the three elements and the spatial results that they can provide, but also to see if from these provisions there would be any chance for a differentiation in the already established institutional formations of today.

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Under no circumstance can we act like a fortuneteller, although for systems sake will try to put our own imagination to the test, what we would like to do is to provide with the appropriate tools a society of people willing to experiment.

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[Symbolic]

One of the most impressive aspects of Freuds work has to do with what he called the narcissistic illnesses of man. According with his own theory, in an attempt to place his unconscious discoveries, man has suffered successive humiliations to the very foundations of his centurys long beliefs of superiority. Copernicus was the first one to throw humans off their central placement in the universe, by proving that the sun was the actual center and not earth. Following him, Darwin forever took away the pride of human beings as the centrifuge of intelligence, by proving through the evolution theory our blind emergence. Lastly, Freud himself proved that human is not even the landlord in his own house. The predominant role of the unconscious forever drove away sentimental linearity and traceable reasoning. Now, we would like to try to investigate, how not even the solidness of our own spatial volume is a given. In the way that we accept and recognize and thus legalize our institutions, we can also admit that we accept, recognize and thus legalize the un - changeability our living or acting space. The symbolic [S], the real [R] and the imaginary [I]. These are the main elements, according to the progressive French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan , that all things can be described with. In an attempt to spatialize this theory, we are using examples set forward for us by Slavoy Zizek , an psychoanalyst himself that is trying to investigate the depth of Lacans proposals . According to Zizeks designation there is no sound and secure way to assume a direct link between elements and signified objects or terms. Having this into mind we will try to translate as close as possible the terms and their given meaning, to the spatial context of the project.

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[S]. the symbolic meaning calls for the essential rules of the game that involves every given society structure. In a game of chess, that would be the rules that comprise of the game itself. [R]. the real. A really important element that actually includes in its definition all of the secondary but yet crucial pieces of environmental or other conditions, that may affect the subject in an immediate manner. In the chess play, the real would be the environmental conditions surrounding the game, the health of the players, their intelligence etc... [I]. this last designator comes to cover the ground left by the other two. It is easier to understand it if somebody thinks in terms of Saussures signified. All the attributes that we imaginary give to an object in a completely humanistic and subjective way. In our example, it stands for the names and the proposed (designated) chess moves, the shapes of the pieces etc The symbolic space acts like a yardstick against which I can measure myself. This is why the big Other can be personified or reified in a single agent : the God who watches over me from beyond, and over all real individuals , or the cause that involves me ( freedom , communism , nation ) and for which I am ready to give my life. *+ In spite of all this power , the big Other is fragile, insubstantial , properly virtual, in a sense that its status is that of a subjective presupposition. It exists only in so far that the subject acts as it exists. It is similar that of an ideological cause like Communism or the Nation: it is the substance of the individuals that recognize themselves in it, the ground of their whole existence, and the point of reference that provides the ultimate meaning , something that they are ready to give their lives for . Yet the only thing that truly exists is the individuals and their activity, so

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this substance is actual only in so far as individuals believe in it and act accordingly. Slavoy Zizek

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[Superstudio]

Superstudio or SUPERSTUDIO as the team preferred to name itself, was an avant garde architectural team created in Italy in 1966. The founders were Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia both architects from the famous Architecture school of Florence. Along with another architectural and design team of the era and closely related to them even in terms of spatial proximity , the ARCHIZOOM ( an association by Andrea Branzi, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello, Massimo Morozzi; and two designers Dario Bartolini and Lucia Bartolini), they formed what was coined as the Radical Architecture Movement. We will not go in depth into the history or the implementations of their work, because this is firstly easily traceable throughout the internet and secondly it is not the goal of the project. Instead we want to investigate some elements that this radical movement explored and see if we can also rely on their interpretation to further enhance our projected goals. One of the first elements of their work that we are interested in is the way the SUPERSTUDIO and the ARCHIZOOM use the grid formation. We focused on two projects (one for each team), the Continuous Monument (SUPERSTUDIO) and the Non-Stop City (Archizoom).

Although these two projects share a lot in common they also have a lot that differentiates them. Common is the utopian perspective of them and the use of the grid as a starting point, also similar is the ideal that they have upon commenting on their contemporary consumerist society. Almost everything else is contradicting one another. In the Continuous Monument the ideal of a society held together only by a thin grid (or grid structure), that can supply them with their necessities, is central. In Non-Stop City, the inhabitants of

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this limitless urban (?) formation are actually depending on a multitude of newly invented pieces of furniture and their houses that are completely self-enclosed and artificially air-conditioned. There is much more in this comparison and we will not address it here. What we are really interested is the use of the grid (the similarities and the differences) and the way that the two revolutionary thinking teams regard its relationship with nature; and of course Mies

The grid In the Continuous Monument, Superstudio uses the grid and the grid structure to create an overcoat that would make the totality of our planet habitable. In the graphics that follow their utopian project we can see the spatial formation that is constituted by a rectilinear grid, literally in every environment found on our planet. In one of the very few (and early) sketches we can take a glimpse of what is happening inside this grid. We can see structures like the ones we are used to inhabit today, stacked one on top of another, like a linear city of humongous proportions. In this case we understand that the grid and its spatiality create the environment for the city structure (urbanism) to invade everywhere. Inside of this seemingly uniform grid, everything can be happening. The exterior faade of this project in no way is able to depict or even interact with what is happening inside of it. But in a very strange way, the exterior is the only way for the interior to exist. This is in very close proximity to the Miesian way to think about a faade. Furthermore, in another set of envisioning the team sketches out an entirely new condition for the grid. Here we can see a family of inhabitants roaming around a open plane field that is constituted by a never ending grid. According to the team this grid is the ultimate provider of the needs

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that those people have. What is really interesting to us at this point is the way that this particular grid interacts with nature and the native ground. In the collage we see the grid plane covering the whole extent of the field. In the same extent there are parts of the grid that seem broken off and reveal the reality that it was protecting us from. Even the presence of the cactus as a natural element, is indicative of the teams attitude against nature. In the same way, when we take a closer look at Mies work (Farnsworth, Seagram, Stadtgallerie, Lake Shore drive etc), then we realize an important similarity between the two. When the grid wants to host a natural element, it does not distort its presence, it doesnt even react, it just opens a whole wide enough for the element to fit in. It is not a reactionary measure it is an involuntary one. The same can be said about the Non-Stop City project; although here the moves are more randomized and the set of rules seems a lot more figurative and free. The natural element has no continuity, and it is still encased in the grid. The grid here is much more two dimensional, and all of the focus is being laid on the architectural objects themselves.

Learning Having these great examples to look up to, we had a hard time realizing the difficulty of the process we elected to follow. The diagrid formation that will cover our structure, is not two dimensional or three dimensional per se. It relates upon the elements it encounters, and it formulates itself accordingly. It never breaks or subsides, but it can be taken apart when need.

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[The Super Surface]

In the late 60s the already provocative studio of Superstudio presented and shocked the architecture and art world with a conceptual study under the name of The Continuous Movement. The goal of the project was to start a debate on the modernist exaggerations on the potentially utopian future of architecture. The exhibit consisted of a single structure of ridiculous proportions that engulfed the extents of our planet. The structure was a single surfaced gridiron that was situated unaltered in every environment and condition on earth. This idea came as an emblematic contradiction to the contemporary norm of the time that spoke about monolithic ideas turning into the ultimate solutions for the future. The grid is, above all, a conceptual speculationin its indifference to topography, to what exists, it claims the superiority of mental construction over reality - Rem Koolhaas In their own words: (A)ll architecture will be created with a single act, from a single design capable of clarifying once and for all the motives which have induced man to build dolmens, menhirs, pyramids and lastly to trace a white line in the desert. It is easy to feel the underlying sarcasm of the architects in this statement. In the same context Charles Jencks added that the project was a mixture of fascist total urbanization and absolute egalitarianism. Jencks remark is really a significant one although it seems to contradict itself. The absolute urbanization realized with the infinite expansion of the grid, was the agent that provided the nominal inhabitant with the absolute freedom not only to be able to live nomadically wherever he desired but also due to the functions of the grid he could also be sustained by it.

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This extreme depiction of human control over not only the elements of nature but also man himself, wanted to act as a parody of the modernist to tamper with space. Ultimately this gesture also stood ground against the capitalist fetishism of objects, when we witness the family of people living in a bare tent and the grid providing all of the rest necessary supplies. In its extreme striation the grid provides all of the appropriate elements for the creation of smooth space, as Deleuze taught us. Following this idea we would like to add the famous Ode of Horace, exegi monumentum aere perennius, (I built a monument more lasting than bronze). Although Horace stated the above to prove the superiority of the soul against materiality, it is suitable to note that in the same way this project, in its own way, found a way to buy in this drama of monumentality. But that was then, in the late 60s. More than 50 years have passed and the introduction of the World Wide Web, has given a reasonable amount of approval to their point. It might not be able to supply humanity with housing, but it sure can provide everything else. Despite this, the words of C. Jencks about egalitarianism and freedom continue to buzz in our ears. So we would like to have another go into the implications of this particular project in our contemporary world. In order to do this more efficiently we would like to connect the notion of the grid, with that of the Surface, and in the same way that of the Void to that of the Solid. Also we are not willing to investigate the implications of whole range of newer and older propositions but just to come up with a result that would give us an idea of a contemporary rival of the Supersurface.

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Acting One of the most obvious but also important differences between the two elements of our contradiction (surface and solid) is that the former is mostly bonded with the idea of open space as simultaneously the latter is with the idea of the underground. When we think about what defines a surface what comes into mind is most often the idea of a plane, distorted or not. On the other hand the idea of the solid is tied with the notion of any shape in the three dimensional environment.

Construction vs. Excavation In our debate on a surface somebody constructs or erects a component, whereas in a solid we can merely excavate or dig into. This is a fundamental difference in this contradiction. When we think about construction, especially in a surface, the conceptual idea is only the first step in this process. The lack of materials and the necessary hunt for them is a major disturbance in the actualizing process. If it was possible to have the materials in situ, then it would be much easier for us to formulate and again reformulate the concept. That is exactly what the presence of the soil signifies. The infinite possibilities of conceptual aggregation of space, when the material is already present. Of course this doesnt mean that there is no further material necessary for the stabilization of this perpetual space. We could look into this supplementary material as the type of elements coming off a mining facility. It is only there to keep space from collapsing, not to define it

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In another level it is really easy to understand how this stabilizing factor can be managed in terms of parametric formations. Undoubtedly, the functions that necessitate the full extent of given elements that cannot be omnipresent will not be included in the interior of the condenser, but in the exterior of it. Examples of these functions are the gardens (crops etc), the open space, education (part of it) and sport activities (again only part of it). Create vs. Demolish Creation is mostly linked with the merging and erection of materials, whereas demolition is its counterpart. If we take the two definitions literally then we could also argue that creating means bonding as demolishing means dissolving. Having in mind this feature, it will be really interesting to investigate the appearance of space as the result of the demolition of the solid. Again it is not a profound neologism as the creation of space in the underground (solid) is something long materialized by the miners of the world.

Add vs. Subtract This contradictory pair needs not much of an explanation. As we have further noted the act on the surface always has been that of adding elements to create space, where in the solid realm this creation can only be achieved by subtracting. Provoked from this nihilistic negligence, the negative action of dis-creating the space is in reality what might as well provide us with part of the answer

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Material vs. Debris We have involved ourselves so far in the investigation of the actions that constitute the contradiction between surface and solid. If we look a little bit later in the same process there are more interesting facts popping out. One of these is the remains of the actions once those have finished. On the one hand we have the part of the materials that went unused and can be either reused or recycled and on the other hand we have the plain debris as a result of the excavation. There two major differences here. The first one is that in the first case the materials that remained unused can be salvaged in order to be once more active ingredients to another structure whereas in the latter case the remains cannot constitute any activity in the future. That comes as a result of the fact that the space in the void is consisted of anti volume, so the volume of the debris is no longer desired in this situation and under any form and condition. The second major difference has to do with the inherent quality of the remains. The surface structure will give us a multiplicity of different materials like the ones that we have to use in order to build a sustainable construction. The solid will only give us part of its self that we no longer desire. So the immediate result is the uniformity of the extracted material as a (w)hole.

Combination vs. Fragmentation As we previously demonstrated a key element of differentiation between our main participants is the way they interact with materials around them. In the same perspective we would like to add that although in the case of the surface the (various) materials have to be combined in order to create

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a uniformity, in the latter case the uniformity of the sole material has to be fragmented in order to create the spatial quality.

Height vs. Depth When a construction is situated on the surface one of its main indicators is that of the height of the construction. Even today in the middle of the 21st century depression buildings are still trying to surpass each other in terms of height. Contrary to that the space engulfed in a solid does not count height as its primer characteristic but depth. Again the visual example to be stated here is again the mine.

Build vs. Shape So far we have investigated the results and the excuses behind our two elements. Now it is time to think about the actions that create them. When we imagine a structure on the surface the most logical term that could follow this activity is building. Everything that we have previously stated regarding the erection of structures on a surface can be incorporated into this term. On the other hand, the same term fails to apply to the soil condition. Despite of the close resemblance of the two actions, the most appropriate term for the inter soil activity would be shaping. So shaping and building are the two different sides of the same coin in this situation. The operational difference between them is something that will also help us define the way that this newborn functional device will be able to operate.

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Hut vs. Cave The last but not least comparison for our two basic elements, the surface and the soil is historical. We do not argue that this is an absolute composition but at least a relative one that will be able to help with the advancing of our study. In the most accurate anthropocentric history, our earliest ancestors took refuge to the caves. Physical structures created as cavities in the same soil that surrounded them, they were the ideal housing locations for our not so sophisticated ancestors. On the other hand, with the advancement of our mental capabilities and the acquisition of the most delicate techniques, human beings became the builders of their own habitat, the hut. So we can safely argue that there was a shift from the soil formations to the ones of surface. Maybe this would be the ideal moment to re propose a return to basics, a return to the soil. Now that we mastered the surface, we can try our very best into taming the soil itself

What is next? Maybe it would constitute the upmost detrimental clich, but the whole meaning of the present article was to make an excuse for our introduction of the Soil (Void) element. Although an initial proposition of this thesis was aiming towards introducing a more approximated approach, one that would also include a transitional background, this has changed. For it is more important to be able to make direct and as detailed as possible bold

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propositions for the future, than simple predictions that fluctuate like the wind. Karel Teige argued in his 1950s article that the contemporary metropolis was a city of spatial proximity but social distance. The truth is that his argument is still very well alive and kicking nowadays. All of the institutions forged since then, even if they have had some limited success never were successful enough to close an already chaotic gap. That is true for either side of the Cold war. The human being is above all a social product Marx always has reminded us, so the failure of our societies to impose and stabilize social peace and justice, is always intravenously fed to the newborn members. What we lack is neither communication nor information, we already have more than can handle of both of them. In fact Ian Buchanan stated that we suffer from having much of both. As he adds what we lack is creation and will to experiment. To be able to resist the present. The creation of concepts in itself calls for a future form, for a new earth and people that do not yet exist The story of all our institutions is one of historical process and not of stabilized objects. But we have not witnessed much of a change in our institutional formation in the past century, or at least not as much as in the other sectors of life. Even now with the incorporation of new forms of communications and cyber relations, the institutions are trying to adapt merely their faade to match the changes. Nothing has changed. Our political regimes seem more resilient than ever, even nowadays when the economic structure of their own liking and choice fails to provide us with answers.

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We are sure now, that reproducing ghosts of the past can give us no answers. As Sanford Kwinter argued What is certain is that in the coming age we have lost the option of standing still.

Return or Enter Returning or entering the spatial design field with our results is on its own a challenge. What we have learned is not to fold on the powers of the past because they have failed miserably. On the other hand the kingdom of freedom can only be situated on the kingdom of necessity stated Marx and we have no reason to contradict him. The formations of the old society must be understood and fought from within, not from the interventionist god, a role frequently played by the architects but by the society itself. What we concretely understood is that our role is to provide them with the tools that would facilitate an experimental dialogue between what is necessary and what is not, between what is being imposed and what debated, between what is surplus and what essential, what is now and what is tomorrow

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[Midterm Response]

In response to the midterm review it has deemed fruitful to think over the commentary that took place from the critics. The main problematic focused in the linking between the final result and its predecessor. This text aims to regain the linkage between these two phases and while doing that to strengthen the approach on the work of Mies van de Rohe. The main questions that will be answered here concern firstly the choice of the actual site (why the Seagram bldg, why Mies) and then will move forward through an in depth look in basic Miesian elements to (re) discover the linkage that seemed lost. So why the Seagrams bldg? What it could possibly have that would interest us so much, as to place it as the ground zero for our scheme? In late 1999, just before the millennium entered our way, there was a major public vote in New York City. Those days, as in every other big or small settlement people got the millennium frenzy. That meant that everything around them had to be reevaluated in order to be accepted into the completely advanced and new era (or not so). So the frenzy included a mass public participation in all kinds of voting contests that all had in common the millennium reference. In those days everything had the denomination 2000s or of the millennium, as if people in a massive scale were reevaluating their lifes work and surroundings. Of course, not eluding this mania, in New York City there was a rather extensive competition organized by the New York Times in order to find out what was the millenniums most important building. The result was rather (or not) surprising. The then 42 year old (now it is 52 years old) building surpassed every other major construction in NYC, and was voted first. What is impressive is that the bldg itself has been overly criticized through the years from almost everyone. Even Rem

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Koolhaas once stated his disappointment when he first came to the big apple, excited to see it but was left discouraged and strangely disaffected. Still, even today it remains the most expensive piece of real estate in NYC and one of the ten in the western hemisphere. The name and the figure of the building is one of the most recognizable in the history of modern architecture whilst it has been copied more times than any other. This love to hate structure has defined the skyline of the modern cities more than any other man made element of construction. In all honesty, no matter how subjective somebody is, there are other impressive projects around us that have existed the past 40 years, many of which were more radical, utopian, even more extravagant, but none had ever proven to be so successful. This success is a key point to understand why we wanted it to be a main figure in our transformation. When the game is changing nobody wants to deal with the losers because it doesnt really matter. On the other hand, taking down the competitions head may as well lead to a paradigm shift. This is not the only reason. Furthermore, in the Seagram, people can witness one the most successful fusions of classic and gothic elements that have ever been erected. On the one hand, the classic elements easily spotted in the absolute symmetry, in the balanced massing, the raised plaza, even the triple division of the tower into the base, the shaft and the crown. In addition to that the same goes for the stable repetition of the columns and the beams. Some critics have also made the linkage with antiquity because of the presence of bronze. On the other hand, the gothic elements can be traced to the materiality of the selected components, the pink marble, the travertine, the bronze. Even more in the relations of the working elements of the construction, the glass wall (reminding us the great gothic churches), and the steel frames

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Ultimately this means that messing with the Seagram means taking on thousands of years of western architectural taste being balanced between the classical and the gothic tracery. So that is why the Seagrams and no other.

In this second part we will have to analyze the Seagrams in order to show the obvious and the not so obvious traces that link our end result to it.

The grid The first obvious thing that we want to discuss is the grid and the way it functions not only in the particular example but in most of Mies work. This is one of the most elemental components that the architect was basing his projects and subsequently, is the key in understanding our transformations later on. In most of his mature work Mies van de Rohe was using the grid as a key ingredient not only for his programmatic manifestations but also for the final realization of his projects. The grid that was used obeyed most of the times to two rules. The first one was the span of the given structure and the actual length that could be accommodated according to the given materials, technical solutions or even desired effects on the ground (i.e. the Neue Stadtgallerie). The second rule was the configuration of the grid to be fitted into the site, or the necessary portion of the site that was linked to the project. Those two main parameters, when combined, gave the architect the necessary base for the introduction of the final compositional grid. Based on that particular grid where all the rest steps of the procedure.

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The clue here is not only to understand the significance of the above statements but also to trace this procedure into the course of time into Mies work. From the time that the grid was introduced as a design decision maker there has been practically no significant change until the Seagrams. It didnt matter if the project was a warehouse, an institution or a summer house; furthermore it made no difference the volume, height or even the placing of the construction. So as we can see the Seagrams obeyed the same rules the Farnsworth did. The only addition was the fact that the plan was repeated in height as many times as needed. In essence what we have in hand is an absolute two dimensional grid. The two dimensional grid, so profoundly praised by Mies, for its ability to create such an agile environment (open plan), is only partly successful. All of the open space created and the consequent functional mobility in the operational plan, is heavily constrained in the X, Y plane. Even if we multiply this in the Z axis in order to create the skyscraper formation, then we still keep the design constrained to the same axis. That is the situation that occurs for every bldg Mies has ever made and is more that a floor in height. The easy way to witness this is by tilting the Miesian high structure on the side and evaluating the result. The tilted construction resembles a completely different ideal than its previous state. Here we have a weird analogy between the height and the width of the floors; some kind of traditional Dutch housing extravaganza. This exaggeration helps us define the element of our research. When the slab met the two dimensional grid the result is deceiving. The supposedly open space falls victim to the constraints of the plane. That is why we say that the two dimensional grid that Mies operated on is only the bearer of

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the signal to the road of open and fully functional space. Still in the project plans that were made for most of the constructions we can sense a secluded will to break free. We are mostly referring to the plants and supporting elements that were drawn on them. Many other architects at the time, as they still do today, present the surroundings rather minimally. Mies on the other hand did not. The trees elude in the grid invading it and making them distinctively obvious for the observer in most of his finished plans (take a closer look at the plans for the Farnsworth house, the Toronto bank, the Lake Shore drive, the Bacardi bldg etc.) In our design the slabs give their place to another grid in order to form a completely three dimensional spatial realm. As arbitrary as it might sound, the element that bounds all of it together is that of the Soil. It is the form in which the grid lives and operates. In order for the grid to fully progress in the three dimensional environment and because antigravity machine remains fictional, materiality is needed. Every grain of sand is in its own relative position a point in a vast extent of gridirons. Furthermore this gets even better when the Soil itself can be continuously re-appropriated, allowing the unending construction and destruction of unending grid patterns. The Z axis is now free to intermix with the rest of the parameters set by the given functions and demands. The only constraint here is in reality the human imagination and its consequent drives. Paraphrasing Mies we can surely agree with his trademark quote Less is more, if only less is all it can actually become.

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the frame The second element of the upmost importance for the definition of our work is the frame and its use in Mies work. Most of the bldg structures he created in his mature stage were containing a given hierarchy. This given hierarchy firstly placed the grid, then the functions and then concluded with the skin of the enclosed environment. This skin was used mostly to segregate the interior from the exterior but also to visually connect it. This connection came in the form of transparency of the frame. Starting from the first glass skyscraper that he presented as the future of the urban settlement, right to the end (his last built work the Neue Stadtgallerie in Berlin), the glass (transparency) has always been a key element. In the same degree what also mattered was the way he was making the frame part of the faade and consequently relating it to the built volume. The exterior faade always comprised of a multiplication of similar elements masterfully resolved to create a unity. This multiplication is especially obvious in the Seagram bldg and is what constitutes a great deal of its character. He called the frame as a reflexive architectural ornament but in real terms we do not see this happening. One of the rare moments that something like this take place has been infamously called the bank joke. building the Toronto Dominion Bank he had to model specific partitions in order to block his transparent windows, or else everything would become seeable (sic).*+ So he made a display of everything and nothing and vice versa.

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What we have here is a case when instead of making the frame and the faade react to the needs he evades the action. Instead he creates a supplementary move to counteract with his unwanted transparency. The same move has been done in the Seagram bldg when we take a look at the sides of the construction that host the main circulation core. Transparency here in not needed but instead of giving away the uniformity of the faade system he prefers to enclose an opaque element (in this case the marble) to counter it. We really are interested in this activity, but we want to take it a step further. As with the grid (passing from a 2d grid to a 3d one) we would like to transform a non reactive faade to one that can really participate into the creation or host the volume it confines. In order to do so, we also will follow Mies first steps by taking as a faade base a simple element that would create our unity via multiplicity. In our case, this element is the most agile in terms of spatial mobility in the 3 dimensions, the triangle. By using the triangle we succeed into creating the diagrid. The diagrid is a planar formation that can (depending on the resolution of it) recreate any geometric shape or condition. Following the conditions that we set, this diagrid is going to be created by a light, waterproof material that also has the ability to stretch. This material is called elastic polymer and it has an added benefit to it, it is translucent. The translucency will give us the lighting conditionality that we want because it would be able to allow light in but obstruct the eyesight. When vision is needed then the material is removed as a whole. In addition to that the structural system we have created to host our surface, is capable of doing that.

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In this way the flexibility of the plan and the section is not being followed by the faade.

the sculptures Continuing on the analysis of Mies work on Seagram we come into a very interesting point, the sketches. While Mies was working on the bldg, he created a series of sketches in order to think about things that he was interested in. What is fascinating about his sketches is that he did only 2 documented sketches of the Seagram and the Plaza. On the other hand, there are more than 15 pages of documented sketches that deal with the sculptures that would be hosted on the plaza. That is an indication of the importance that the architect gave to the specific element. Maybe the elements that act as depots for the surplus soil can be the sculptures of Mies. His ideal of a plaza able to host a vast variety of sculptures will be revised and revived.

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[Description of Thesis]

First Part Board 1. As an initiation for the final presentable, we wanted to begin with narrating a story. A story that can be repeated and negated as many times as possible. In order to do so we decided to create some type of default storyboard, that can fulfill two basic goals. On the one hand it acts as a narrating device that brings the spectator into the plot of the story that the design is structured within. On the other, it makes clear that the whole idea of the thesis is not to come up with a unique a stabile theorem of completion but on the contrary, everything presented is designed to be constantly changing and alternated. In a short description, we begin by depicting a city facing a systemic collapse. This will have a devastating effect not only in the surface elements of a structured society, like our own, but will shake the foundations of any given characteristic that leaded up to the particular point. Next we argue the direct relation of these changes with the shaping of the urban centers. The reason why the urban centers are targeted here is double. Firstly the massive urbanization has been a characteristic mostly triggered by the industrial revolution and the accumulation of capital mainly by the civic cores and secondly it is a vital fact regarding our showcase scenario. Through the storyboard we follow the steady transformation course of the massive urban centers, to fragmented but more sustainable unities. As arbitrary as it might seem this course is actually basing its nodes to a materialist logic and confines its certainties to the smallest extent. An important thing to keep from this element is the fact that this is not an irreversible path and surely it is not a linear one. Also it is necessary to note the transformative relationship between the

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operators (people) and the operatives (buildings). The building can no longer remain an inactive element with following a linear timeline. It must become an active reflector of life, a life vessel. Continuing with the presentation we presented the four basic guidelines that would act as helpers for this uncharted journey. The first helper came from the realm of nature sciences. As with every design, it is our firm belief that the genius loci should be able to play a crucial part in the creative process. In this case the Manahatta project that was realized by Eric W. Sanderson was a reliable resource in our attempt to further investigate the historic location. Through this investigation we came across really amazing datasets that allowed us to understand the significance of the process we were following. New York City lies today in a site that was as, if not more, important for the life circle of the entire east coastline. In the presentation we elected to focus in the long lost balance between nature and human activity. As we stated on the board the Manahatta transformed into the Manhattan we recognize today through a series of exchanges. These tradeoffs include the abandoning of the fauna and flora abundance in favor of the currency and the ecological stability for economical prosperity. This lost balance is

portrayed by a dollar sign acting as the main balance instigator and the weights are on the end the fauna and on the other the flora. The next important helper to be mentioned in the opening board was the work of Jacques Lacan. More exactly the part of his extensive work that we mostly were interested in was his idea of the S.R.I. (Symbolic, Real and Imaginary). It would really take up to much time and effort to directly and accurately explain all the essence of this particular theorem, so we will restrain ourselves in a short description. If we could imagine this theory applied directly into a built project then that would mean that the Real feature would include all the real life laws of physics the structure would have to adhere to in order for it to stand ( to mention

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a few examples, gravity, wind forces etc). Next in line is the notion of the Imaginary. This could be best explained as the totality of experiences a built structure can offer to its occupants or short time visitors. The extents of the enclosed space, the volume, the overall lighting and in general everything that comes to partake in a complete experiential diagram can be subject to this category. The last significant category of this theorem is the idea of Symbolic. We are particularly interested in this due to the overall importance that it plays in the creation of the design process. In short what the symbolic includes is the sum of ideas and ideological meanings that a built environment might be able to convey. It is crucial to note here that the reason why we are particularly interested in this part of this trilogy of notions is the simple fact that it is our firm belief that it is something constantly missing from the architectural production of today. Since one of the main attributes of this thesis was to refer directly to the political nature of architecture, it only comes natural for us to spend a little more time examining the idea of the Symbolic nature. Although the symbolic came into existence through Lacans rethinking of the idea of the Imaginary order, it soon became the upmost important order to define the subject. According to D. Massey {David Macey, "Introduction", Lacan, Four, p. xxii and p. xxv} the symbolic order in Lacans work is of very close resemblance of the idea of the cultural order in the work of Levi-Strauss. To advance it even further, Lacan argued that through this notion he understood the importance of the Saussurrian dialectics and came to the conclusion that his psychoanalytic process was indeed a talking cure. Although he finally declined this approach in the decades to come, it is important to note the central role he had already given to this notion. For us what is important is this idea that the symbolic order is since then attributed to the human condition. In a plain nave way, we can argue that the symbolic order is bonded with the necessity of human beings to interpret the real order, understand and act on and through it.

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What we argue for is the necessity of contemporary architecture to be reinstated in the realm of the symbolic. Globalization and total Capitalism have successfully transformed every notion of revolt to elements completely absorbable and indistinguishable from the rest of the mass culture system. The old motto was keep your friends close and your enemies closer and that is exactly what the systemic handling is realizing. In order to be able to escape from this maze of uniformity our mission was to understand the extents of the symbolic realm, and try to manipulate our way around it. Whether this has been a successful attempt only the resulting violent opposition can show. Going into the third helper, this time it originates from the field of literature. In his impressive written study Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials the author Reza Negarestany introduces us to a series of unfamiliar oddities. From these elements we were especially drawn into two of them; the idea of transpiercing and the rats. More on this subject can be found on the special chapter dedicated to it. In short we want to explain the connection between the design and theoretical process and the elements themselves. The first two helpers in conjunction with the opening storyboard gave us the initiation process we wanted. We set up the scenario; a post capitalistic world, we defined the key players; nature and rebalancing, and with this third helper we addressed the problem of the actors. In order to extrapolate the main idea behind the thesis we intentionally researched for a key element that would allow us to realize and materialize our thoughts. Since this is an architectural thesis and in addition to the materialist concourse of our beliefs it was only natural for us to come up with a resulting actor from the natural and existing world; the soil. The soil has always been a key player in the history of human kind. A hand full of historians have argued that the different ways in which societies dealt with it were the main identifiers of their technological and cultural advancement. If fire was the main ingredient behind the processes that brought us here, then the soil was the

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sidewinder that was always affected by it. Caves, castles, Bedouin tents and many more ways of habitation through the years have always relied on soil. This is why we believe that it is the ideal actor for the play that we are setting here. Negarestani also shares a lot in common with our point of view and in addition to this he offers the manipulators that can handle the soil element; the rats. Our plan was to use the soil and reactivate it. Today and for the quite some time now the majority of architectural projects either completely neglected the very existence of it treating it as a two dimensional plane or try to forge an iconic treatment for it that usually tends to reduce it to landscape and similar secondary formulations. What we forget is that in reality and away from any theological similarities everything is soil based and soil based is everything. It doesnt make any difference whatsoever if the contemporary architectural feats are made out of space age materials; they are still originated from the underground deposits as everything else. Using the already existing construction technology we will attempt to redefine the way the soil can be used as a hosting device, being able to do so means that we would need a particular element to act as driver and chief manipulator for our shaping purposes. As Negarestani argues in his writings the rats are the ideal intrusion artists and consequently the chief corresponding manipulators of the soil mass. As rats of course even if the writers refers to them literally we only do so in metaphorical fashion. Humans and their main urges to create and recreate would be the actual rats. The soil would act as the mass of possibilities. As in Deleuze and Guattari world of ideas, this soil could resemble the plane of immanence. An ideological ground of no dimensions or where dimensions do not mean anything and the layers upon layers of activity are the only proof of the planes existence. This infinite roundabout of possibilities is the culmination of our efforts. We want to believe that there is a way for the construction process to be separated from the economic strata and regain its long lost significance. Even in the Middle Ages, the

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constructions of any scale of format where created with an additional burden to carry; that of the signified object. Now the only thing that is left to be signified is the amount of wealth incorporated into the construction of a given built environment. The soil can provide us with this sea of alternating possibilities. Possibilities left to be defined by processes of direct democratic means; although this in particular will be something that we will further discuss in another part of this research. As many architects through the years have noted, when people decide to built something they take into account everything except maybe what is the most important. Buckminster Fuller used to ask of a buildings weight, for he believed that in the society that emerged in front of him weight would be the key element of mastering the future. In this case we have to alternate this question and rephrase it by asking before a structure how long are you planning to stay here? Of course given the particular economic foundations it is not easy to tear down built structures. Even more now, when the newly invented environmental institutions have successfully imposed further constrains in the building codes. In a world driven by Capital, nobody would be dumb enough to afford to derogate his investment. That is where the synergy between our parts comes into play. When there are no economic constraints, then the rest are left where they should have been, the collective decision making processes. Space and functions are no longer constituted as answers to money ordering devices but could be used to serve and protrude a societys will to experiment if not to advance. This is the moment to introduce our fourth and final helper. To be able to further understand the questions posed by us in this thesis, we had to go back and research our way through what are some answers given to similar questions through the years. Of course it would be impossible for us to present here the extensive bibliography that our research included, so this will have to add to end

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of this book. Furthermore we mainly wanted to present here what we think fitted best as our research driver and guidance. After the Octobers revolution and the end of World War II, it became clear that the game of the Cold War had been set up. This gave rise to a world of problems but also to another one of possibilities. Usually these possibilities do not arise from the main counterpoises but from the formations in between. This brings as no surprise the political turmoil in countries like Germany, France, Greece and Italy mainly in the 60s and 70s. As a result of this turmoil ideas were put into question and new conditions arose. Architecture as a field heavily influenced by political changes was also affected. This affection is the key figure of our fourth and final helper. We concentrate mainly in the architectural scene of Italy in the late 1960 when the in the main avant garde scene come the Radical Design Groups. This brings us right into the time period were experimental architectural groups begin to form, destined to researched novelties and disturb still waters for good. Two of these groups that meet the above mentioned characteristics are ARHIZOOM and SUPERSTUDIO. There is extensive bibliography available in order for anyone interested to commence further analysis on them. What we were specifically interested in the work of these two architectural groups was their notion of novelty experimentation. Especially the idea of the SUPERSURFACE, a notion first introduced by Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia is of extreme importance for the understanding of the thesis further development. What the super surface really was is simple and extremely complex in the same time. At a first glance it looks like a mainly two dimensional plane taking over the known terrestrial surface and through the eliminating procedure of nihilism eradicating any form of differentiation. If we pay a closer attention to the intended result, new facts begin to arise. The flat two dimensionality gives its place to a three dimensional grid that acts as a

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connector and separator simultaneously to the external environment. In reality the grid seems to act as a container of alternate possibilities. These characteristics given intentionally from the architects to these elements are of great importance to us for we would like to extend their theorem a step further. In addition to the above another part of the work of these particular groups that is of great importance to us is their ideological stance and attitude. As presented in the board the quote of the now infamous Superstudio manifesto is conclusive to our arguments: Architecture never touches the great themes, the fundamental themes of our lives. It remains at the limit and intervenes only at a certain point in the process, usually when behavior has already been totally codified, furnishing answers to rigidly stated questions. Even if its answers are evasive, the topic of their production and consumption avoids any real upheaval. *+ Architecture presents no real proposal since it uses instruments accurately predisposed to avoid any deviation Superstudio Manifesto

Board 2 The second board in turns deals with the specific environment the thesis project will reflect on. Apart from this we advance into detailed and concise investigation of the proposed site and the elements that it comprises of. In sequence with the above we dive into the main programmatic goals of the suspected design solution and finally take a look at a farce that only history knows how to set up. First of all we have to continue a series of thoughts that were initiated earlier on. With the introductory chapter on Manahatta we explained why we regarded New York City and the borough of Manhattan as a central design exploration device for

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the thesis. Please refer to the specific chapter that explains in detail why the Seagram building and the work of Mies Van de Rohe in particular were selected to act as key sites and ideas. To start we initiated a design analysis of the Seagram building itself and tried to deconstruct it. We were mainly interested in the analogies of the classical three parts, the repetition of the consecutive floors, the floor layout and the structuring diagram, the methodology of the beams and columns and finally the way that the faade structure is bonded with the rest of the building. After this we researched the notion that formally shaped the design; the setback zoning regulations. It is common knowledge that this is the main attribute for the Seagrams final formation. To proceed we took a further view into the construction methods used to hinge the exterior faade and its secondary elements. This is a crucial point to understand the way in which the exterior image of the building does not represent the internal logic. Additionally it allowed us to come into closer quarters with the overall construction technology used to create the building at the time. We called these researches physical ones. They owe this title to the fact that for this particular part of the investigation we based our info on details on factual elements and existing drawings. The next phase, which is more intensive and important, is the theoretical ones.

External Order For this part we wanted to replicate the timeless connection of the modernist approach and romance with the volumetric cube. By using the ideal cube of 3 by 3 meters, we divided the total volume of the encased structure into segments. The result gave us an algorithmic totality which we could easily manipulate keeping the overall volume equal. After

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experimenting with this idea we advanced into the notion of outside inside environment. One of the main problems of keeping a absolute shape (rectangle, square etc) is the difficulty of introducing radical alterations to the uniformed mass that results from it.

Accumulation through Repetition In this case the repetitive element of the slab is forced naked out of the building to disclose the unholy accumulation process that lies in the heart of the modern building. The contradictory relationship of the two dimensional open-plan and the separating divisional force of the slab come into play here. This forms a bubble of alternative reality that will be further explored in the next paragraphs. The title of this subsection is taken from the David Harvey notion of accumulation through dispossession which in turns is derived from the classical Marxist analysis of original accumulation of capital. With our twist we wanted to imply the danger lurking into the over repetitive and robotic gathering of forms of capital not only in terms of economics but also by more materialist means (infrastructure, built environment etc).

Free Following the previous findings we wanted to explore here the notion a subsequent alternative realities within a built structure. When Rem Koolhaas first coined the notion of the culture of congestion in his book Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, he had used as point of departure for his idea the American skyscraper. He argued that in every level in the built environment there can be something totally different going on. He even re-introduced the famous sketch by A.M.

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Walker, where the idea of what the skyscrapers would look like, was depicted in the beginning of the century. We then argue that not only his theoretical approach still stands to this date but due to the technological advancement it has been further enhanced. Now it does not take a change in floors or even rooms to complete alternate the environment. It is merely a matter of private secular space. In response to these modifications we claim that there has to be a way where a new dimension can be introduced in order to be able to deal with this. At this moment we would like to introduce the concept of the fourth dimension (time) to be used efficiently and effectively as an alternating force in the design process.

Connect Between the seemingly liberated spaces there has to be a connective tissue in order for them to operate as uniformity. In earlier times the systems that provided us with these capabilities used to be completely top down. The management oriented systemic was introduced in the Ford production line and until recently it was not easy to transform it or even get rid of it. With the introduction of the Post Fordism method of production (or else coined Flexibilism) these top down systems came to an end. To the markets pleasure the new technologies were quickly assimilated in order to help provide the new system with their extensive capabilities. These capabilities are the ones we are aiming at. We investigated the necessary relationships between the different systemic elements and the way they operate in order to deconstruct, analyze and reuse in the design process of our thesis. It is not a easy process and surely not a simple one so in the boundaries of the time limits set in front of us we tried to incorporate our findings. The main areas that were affected are the production communications, the

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necessary sustainable analogies and most and foremost what we call the directly democratic system of governance.

(R)evolution This last part of the subsection holds the greatest importance. This is the result that culminates what we have researched so far and brings direct impact to our given testing ground. To start we would like to present a passage taken from Colin Rowes infamous book Collage City. Replace functional organization for human association and participation would substitute imposition... In the ideological realm we believe that this simple but so provocative phrase bring about all the necessary components for us to complete our set mission. Of course we do not believe that quitting every function would automatically provide us with the answer to our questions, but the main question to answer here is to whom and what this functionality refers to. We would like to get rid of the bleak and unfriendly functions that refer to mere economical statures and substitute them with functions that really would help serve the society in terms of bottom up re-contextualization and even more in terms of just survival. When we apply this to our concurrent model, the Seagram building some things get really obvious from the start. The actual way the picture was meant to be read is from the top to the bottom. It must be read as a vertical timeline with its two extremes into the past and the future. Starting from the top we have the normal picture of the Seagram building in an empty terminal space. This is made specifically for us to focus on the re-contextualization of the special quality that lies in front of us. As we advance in the imaginary timeline we slowly realize that the image of the building begins to break up. These

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breaks seem more like tears and leaks than normative fractures. Further down the distortion is getting more obvious and simultaneously more intensive. The more extensive the damage, the more it tends to dissolve the overall image. Reaching the end of this process we can witness here the unique qualities of the process at hand. Everything is dust and returns to dust and with this partly theological, partly materialist assumption we can signify the ultimate transformation of the principal symbolic figure into a pile of dust. This dust is what is left of the old systemic when the processes are over and this is also the first material at hand to help us rebuilt a new systemic diversion. Until the next one While investigating our materials and conducting extensive research through the net we came across something unexpected. It turns out that in the same decade the Seagram building was built, the company had simultaneously order a group of top level scientists, futurologists and many more to commiserate and come up with what the future world would look like. This project was named Men who plan beyond tomorrow and it took nearly 2 years to be completed. The idea behind it was that a company so strong could really predict the way things were going to play out. Unfortunately for the company, it did not outlast its predictions but in turn many of them came true. In many cases there is a shocking resemblance between what was forecasted 50 years ago and todays reality. Telecommunications, global internet, IMAX cinemas and many more are in the list of what is included in the final outcomes of the research. These results were showcased as part of a publicity and advertising campaign named after the initial projects name. Using this weird coincidence we found it very fitting that their building and overall site would be used by us in an attempt to predict what might happen in the near future under a different systemic condition.

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Concluding this part of the second board all of these mentioned above were included in the summing sketch on the far left of the board, in an attempt to further explain the placement of our researches on the building. Having extensively studied the site and the building, with our helpers in position, it was time to move forward in the overall design process. Since our effort involves something close to a novelty, we wanted to have a much historical backup as possible. Going through the history of civic and revolutionary architecture one can trace specific times that held interesting resemblance to our proposal. In order for us to be able to propose a program we had to dive into the history of these examples and extract all the necessary components for us to work with. Due to the lack of space and time, we had to narrow down the showcased scenarios to the bare minimum. We choose four examples that we regard as the most sufficient and vital for our exploration. Starting with the American Skyscraper sketch by A.M. Walker in the turning of the century, moving on to the dates just after the Soviet revolution of 1919 with the examples of the Soviet Social Condenser and the cross example of Leonidovs proposition on the same objective and finally for a more contemporary view we elected the competition proposal set forth by the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.) for the La Villete park in Paris

With A.M. Walkers sketch a whole new series of thoughts initiate around the possibilities of the new architectural production. In the sketch we can see the expectation of the role that the multistoried buildings would be called to play. This is the depiction that led Rem Koolhaas in his originating ideas towards his Culture of Congestion and the Delirious New York theme. We can imagine how important this was in the beginning of the 20th century and the way that this would be accounted for in the collective

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unconscious for the years to come. For the time being, we restrain ourselves on imagining the obvious similarities between the slabs of the Seagram and Walkers imagination. Using part of Koolhaas theorem on the Culture of congestion, we understand the necessity of a defining programmatic discourse. What became known as the American skyscraper could effectively take on any needed program and transform at any given time. The only constraints are those that deal with the structural limits of the building and of course the economical measures around it. The second picture is that of a soviet social condenser. For more details there is a more extensive research on the chapter specifically aimed at this subject. In short, the program of the first condensers was to create a center point for the new society to form. New and then untested ideas were to be hosted here. The new soviet man, as they had been calling them, was to be originating from these spatial and ideological battlefields. Again the program was flexible enough but this time there was a little more definition to it. At least there was a specific goal on sight. Common areas and activities that involved great numbers of inhabitants were among the chief priorities for these spaces. In the same time, not very far away from where the condensers were being planned, another soviet intellectual and pioneer was making his own propositions for the same subject. Although Ivan Leonidovs plans were ahead of the technological capabilities of his time it is still very interesting to read through what he thought would be the ideal programs to be enacted on the initializing of the social order. He still stands more or less on the same terms with his fellow countrymen, but he insists more on the technological aspect. Cinemas, pools and sport events are more in the central focus for him as a programmatic ideal.

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In the last of this ordeal is the OMA proposal of the La Villete competition. What is the significant factor for this proposition is that in its contextualizing it also took into consideration the previous programmatic features that we mentioned. Through a series of processes that we mentioned in detail in the particular chapter, the OMA group managed to make the arguments up to date and freshen up the perspectives of their involvement. The form of the condenser was re discovered and through this analogy we were given a whole new set of predication. In our case we found this experiment useful and through its understanding we realized how far we could stretch the idea of the social condenser.

Black Boards In order to help with our design solution and further enhance our ability to think in three dimensional terms, we decided to use the idea of the black boards. These were small black boards made out of strengthen museum board which measured 15 inches by 20 inches. In the final presentation, a number of these boards were introduced in order to help the viewers understands more clearly the processes that took place. As the final printed boards were divided into two main sections (idea design solution), the same stood for these boards. So following this process we are going to introduce the significance and the role of the three first black boards that were part of the first section of the presentation. Black Board 1 In the first board our goal was to use our initial ideas and test them in the model level. Since from the design research of the previous semester we had came up with a spatial model that partially represented the ideal of the S.R.I. (Symbolic, Real, Imaginary), we wanted to give it a try and literally form it. So this first experimentation model is just that, a literal translation, following the notion of the

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investigation. We wanted to desperately find the connections between the jagged edges and the raw spaces of the ribbon like structure and make it obey to the circumstances of our own choosing. Also we had in mind the fact that although this was a preliminary model, in the end it would have to be incorporated into our design specimen, the Seagram building. As we were making and analyzing the model, we started to understand a couple of significant problems that arose. First of all, the model itself stood well as a fictional model but it would never do so in real life. All the open spacing and the particularly interesting breaks and formations would be lost when we would bring reality to meet our idea. The second problem was that although on paper the idea looked sufficient to express a number of complex ideas, in reality it did not. As harsh judges we had to accept that it was just a complicated ribbon structure, only there to recreate what we thought we had seen as an opportunity. In order to understand further what the problem was, we used some wisdom that we inherited by intensively reading books like Bernard Tschumis Manhattan Transcripts, or Koolhaas Delirious New York. If we wanted to recreate a new social condenser then we would have to understand the complicated features that hid behind the society itself. As architects and engineers, we wanted to trace this back to the ultimate social spatial tool, the city. So the bottom part of this board was used to host a small and very humble investigation of the kind of a problem a city is. In our effort to do so we recreated a very small fraction of a fictional place, a non existing urban environment, and tried to analyze the relationships and the bonds between the forming pieces. Even using a significantly reduced amount of solvers it was still obvious that the amount of information and counteraction was immense. Even more we quickly realized that a simple spatial environment would never be able to host but an insignificant fracture of the multiple diversities that form the urban environment and subsequently the human society. Curiously

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enough this board proved to be one of the most important mind openers of them all. It showed us that a single solution is not possible and that we would have to think completely outside of the box if we were to meet our given research criteria.

Black Board 2 Moving on to the next board we were still hanging on to the idea of the ribbon structure, although we recognized the necessity of radical modifications. So we created a bigger in scale model that took up the whole board and started recreating what we had already been taught by our previous experiments. It is easy to spot the differences between the earlier model and the new one, since now we attempted to incorporate all of the given complexity that would be needed into the model itself. This actually was the last chance that the ribbon structure had in order to prove itself capable of addressing our goals. The material of the ribbon divided itself into two different cases. The main directive ribbon that would provide the core structure and walking space and the secondary smaller but far more agile ribbonet that would act as the attractor and final formulator of means and spaces. Both of those elements were created in a way that even they would be able to host different conditions on their grounds. The result was the semi-continuous notion of the line was shattered into distinct sections of underlying materiality. Gridded structures, stripped narrows and voided surfaces were only some of the projections that were inflected on the model and its elements. But it ultimately failed. It could not provide the connective elements that we had witnessed on our earlier experiment and in addition to that it we unable to handle the informational grid that was projected on it, since in reality it always had been a linear universe when we already knew that a parallel universe would be the only solution. Still it was instructive in two main ways. Firstly it familiarized us with the idea of information cramping and its results. This was particularly easy to detect when we

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were running into spatial fields of the model that were used to host too much information (uses). One could not make out the specific intentions of the place and even less the fact that this space was intended to be designed in a bottom up fashion. The second lesson learned from this board was the idea of simplified complexity. What was in front of us was a bad example of complexity under chaos. Trying to handle all the specifics of the project it turned out to be an impossible feat. We had to come up with an idea that would provide us the much needed complexity and hosting ability and in the same time in would have to be simple enough to built at least in the near future.

Black Board 3 The last of the experimentation black boards. In this last one we wanted to go back to the basics. The scope that we aimed here was to start over from the other edge of the line and investigate what we had on our hands. So far we had an idea of what was working and what was not. In short, we had the idea but not the way to fruitfully express it. Taking into consideration the fact that we were dealing with one of the most important built environments of the western world (for more information refer to the appropriate chapter about the building itself.), we understood that we would have to pay closer attention to the objects on hand. First step we took here was to create and model an exact replica (in 1.50 scale) of the Seagram building. Through the process of making it and the subsequent study that this necessitated we became acquainted with what we were dealing with. The former research now found a literal material ground to be justified and tried out. The model itself made clear what the possibilities and capabilities for the structure were and what it could manage. Simultaneously we started the deconstruction process. Dividing the totality into its pieces and dismantling the relationships between the various parts was a very delicate but important procedure. In the end, when we decided the way to set up the final experimentation board we kept

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the most important finding for the presentation and disregarded the rest. The main interesting figure that arose from this was the activity and significance of the grid. The way that Mies Van de Rohe had planned for the structure to obey the given grid was a noticeable indicator of the way any attempt on the structure should be handled. Although we made efforts to deconstruct the main comprising elements from the Seagram building, an attempt clearly showcased in this last board, one result clearly remains. The only main element that remain when the deconstruction process is over is the same one that created it; the grid.

Conclusion of the 1st part This initial part of the thesis was by far the most strenuous and time consuming. When somebody deals with ideas profoundly buried into the inner core of what gives life and shape to our existing society, it is not an easy thing to shake and grasp. As the fish is not aware of the water that surrounds it, most of us carry on our lives without understanding the most basic features that keep our society running. These features are the ones that need to be apprehended and well understood. Through them we can dream on a different world based on ideals that are currently being distorted and frowned upon. Even more, for us as architects there is an even bigger cause of concern. Architecture always has been and needs to continue being a social science. In the course of the latest century, this image has been seriously damaged. After the aftershocks caused by the First World War, there was a unique opportunity with the eruption of the soviet revolution to redefine the present and the future of many things, architecture included. Unfortunately as with many cases the dream did not live on. The rapid Stalinization of the USSR, the consequent collapse of the most prominent free minded states to hard line conservatism (Germany, Italy, Spain) and the overall scene of humanity of the time did not pose as an ideal environment for hope to prosper.

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After the end of the Second World War the world had already split into two very distinct parts. Even if the short lived prosperity of the social state (in Europe) and the immense economic growth (in the US) brought about glimpses of hope and experimentation attitudes in the decades of the 60s and 70s, there was always the element of this separation that came to cover everything up. Architecture more or less followed blindly this perspective. This is its fate. It is not a completely free of guilt and cost art form and it has to obey a vast variety of rules that themselves have been set up by the society. So in order to address the architectural issues of at least the 20th century, we need to address the social history of the world in the same time. Using the work of the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, we researched the history of our world so far. We can say or suggest nothing on our future if we are not fully aware of our history. This is a lesson well learned that has to become a given for our and the future generations. Returning back to our thesis project, everything said or implied in the above texts had to be incorporated in to the second part; the design solution.

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[Initiating the second part]

In order to be able to explain more efficiently the vast amount of information that we will have to introduce in this part, we will follow a specific set of rules. Firstly as we tried to do in the first part we will address the solution by scales. This means that we will try to expose the information relative to the project in an order more indicative to the appropriate scale. As an example we will start with the bigger picture, the social constitution and what we believe the overall context would be. After this we will introduce the scale of the city of New York and more specifically the borough of Manhattan. Following this will be the notion of the city center and in the end the final scale will include the condenser and the rest of the necessary elements that were designed for this purpose. The above mean that this time we will have to start with some theoretical contextualization; move on to the first black boards and then advance to the presentation boards.

Context As we proclaimed in the opening sequence the worlds that would host our solution would not be identical to the one we are living today. Marx once stated Freedom can only exist as a necessity, and todays world does not necessitate freedom to exist. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the beginning of the 1990s (many will claim this date to be even earlier than that, placing it closer to the midst of the 80s decade) the capitalist system ceased to have restrains to its reach. After a relatively short period of inactivity the masterminds of the economic development realized the extant possibilities that this could mean for further exploitation. Professor David Harvey argues in his latest book The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, that Capitalism in order to sustain itself needs

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at least a median growth increase (in yearly measures) of 3%. Finding ourselves in the verge of the first decade of the 21st century we are actually witnessing the results of this claim. With the present rate of growth, the system needed to discover more pores in order to exploit them and continue its advancement. Not only is this getting increasingly difficult but furthermore due to the globalization affect the main economical centers are constantly shifting causing economical crisis to spread globally. In a nutshell what Harvey argues and we totally agree is that given the circumstances there is no way that capitalism will transform itself into an ethical and just global system. The bending of laws according to profit needs and the complete lack of regulatory procedures are only some of the inherited characteristics of a system mostly relying on greed. Because of that we proclaim that a change is needed. Of course we do not believe what the soviet pioneers believed in the 20s when they felt that through architecture they could change the world. Now we have grown wiser from their mistake and efforts. It is clear that if architecture is to take action to a global change that would be mainly by reflecting it, as a soon as possible. If we want to be very optimistic then we might allow ourselves to state that in some cases architecture could reach as far as influencing parts of the population, through specific spatial manipulation. In a system that relied on debt to survive, we will have to rely on people to avoid making the same mistakes. It is not at all important if this system will be called communism, anarchism, druidism or whatever else. What is important however is the pillar on which it will be based on. According to our limited knowledge but our unlimited dreaming abilities, humanity has reached and surpassed the level where it needs to obey to well informed leader for guidance. We can be the change we have been waiting for, as S.Zizek has argued, and it is our firm belief that this can and will happen.

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Through the history of the 20th century, in times of great despair and turmoil, there was nothing else that made people survive than the social formation. Human is a social animal and has to be treated like one. Greed and excessive wealth are inherited side effects of a mind washing that has lasted more than a century. We have to put our trust on human ecology; we have to give a fair chance to the notion of direct democracy. Even our most advanced cities are designed in order to avoid this chance. The urban metropolis of today is so big in population and surface that nothing can control it except perpetual violence and oppressive control systems. Even then, when the population explodes there is nothing to stop it. Presidents flee like hunted, revolutions rise and changes are being made through public will and action. If there is a chance for a more just future this will not be in these massive uncontrollable formations. We must begin to break up what was set up for profit production. Locality and countryside have to be resurrected. Slice the monsters to smaller more sustainable pieces that can not only provide for themselves but also govern themselves through direct principals. What we are suggesting here is not profound and revolutionary. Many before us have argued that this would be the only way to a livable future. Even Ebenezer Howard with his garden cities was very aware of the incoming situation. Years after him Apostolos Doxiadis, a renowned urban theorist and architect that was responsible for the plan of Islamabad, stated in his work Anthropopolis that the mega metropolis of the world stood no chance of surviving into the next century. He went on suggesting the ideal size of a city around 200.000 inhabitants. The last term we would like to mention in this introductory part is the notion social autonomy. It is understood by now that society is a sort of formal convention, a rule based system that needs to be agreed upon in order to function. This agreement is sealed in what we call the social contract. This contract is widely known under different names, mostly as constitution. Every population that forms

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a national authority has its own constitution. Through a complex system of legislations, even more contracts and agreements come to enforce an even smaller window of allowed activities for the population under rule. With time these systems have brought us in conditions that have not only relinquished our ability to act, but have de-capacitated our sense of autonomy. Without autonomy there can be no freedom, and without freedom there can be no future.

Black Board 4 We begin the second part of the presentation with the largest scale on our project. The borough of Manhattan that once hosted the bulk of the economic empire of New York City is now gone. It was rendered unsustainable and parts of it had to be cleared out. The overall population of the general area will remain mostly stable but this would only happen because of intense densifications of more suburban territories that nowadays face deterioration. With this method we can create more free space to given to ground production. The city cannot survive anymore on services and aerial products; it needs to start providing for itself. In order to showcase this scenario, we took as an example the borough of Manhattan. In the model that was created we spotted 7 distinct city centers that would remain a habitation and working place as the old city. These centers were to be intensified in terms of population and built space. The rest of the island would act as a planting ground, able to sustain at least partially the demands of the city. As implied by the model the island would be restructured and reformed as a selfsufficient organism. The old infrastructure like the subway and the main roadways would remain to provide further assistance to the new environment. Of course we are absolutely aware of the fact that even with these changes the city would not be able to be completely off the production grid, but we are confident that a transformation of this size and extent would have a profound effect on the lifestyles and eating habits of the residents.

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Most of the green spaces would remain, if not enlarged. Furthermore the connection between the shoreline and the inner island would be enhanced once the massive freeways that block the movement disappear. We didnt have the time to research on total changing principles so as we understand the mass transit and the cars would be also in use, though for a much less percentage since the distances would be much shorter now.

Board 3 The actual way this board was designed to be read is counterclockwise. So the first important graph on the board would be the depiction of what the model on Black Board n.4 was about. Based loosely on the Pyramid of Healthy Nutrition by Harvard University, we sketched out a rough plan of the different plantations and crops that would be necessary and needed to be present in a city wide harvest. These figures are not detailed or accurate; since this was not our intention, but someone can have a pretty good idea of what would that situation look like in reality. The main idea behind the process of this scale is actually the most fundamental Marxist duality; the city and the country. According to the old Marxian logic, the separation of the city from the country brought the one against the other and ended up with the city exploiting all the rural pores in order to create and augment its capital. Of course this segregation does not end here but goes deep into the core of Capitalism to every level of its existence. What Marx believed was that when the separation between the urban and the rural areas would be lifted there would be no way for the system to further segregate its servants and create the necessary dynamic difference. Subsequently it would collapse. Curiously enough this idea was one of the main goals behind the minds of the pioneer and revolutionary architects in the beginning of the 1920s. The whole

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notion of the linear city at the time was based around the belief that it could bring the city into the country and vice versa. Arguably the most profound team to be backing up this idea was the De-Urbanists. In short, DeUrbanism was a short lived architectural and political movement mostly advocated by Moisey Ginsburg and Mikhail Okhitovich in the beginning of the 1920s. Although the only actual remnant of their important work is the NARKOMFIN project, designed by Ginsburg for the Ministry of Finance in Moscow in 1929, the main driver behind the theory was Okhitovich. In his most significant work, the competition for the expansion of the Soviet capital, we can trace around the main ideas of his theory. He called the proposition Moscow: The green city, and then proceeded to dismantle the city in pieces. He believed that through a series of well interconnected networks offering the basic necessities (power, water, and communications); there was no reason for the cities to remain as they are. In any case the cities were formed on the basis of protection and strength in unity. Now that there was no immediate threat and the networks could provide everywhere, the old city cramp up was a relic. So in his proposal the inhabitants choose where they would stay, having at their disposal the vast extremities of the Russian countryside. All the businesses, the ministries and everything else would follow the same path. The basic provisions would come and find them. The idea was simple; there can be no separation between country and city when there is no city anymore. Of course there are many interesting complications and inventions in the work but we will have to move on since this is not our main focus. What we would like to keep from the above, is the failures of the projects and what they ultimately show us. Even today, with a connection network far more advanced than the one the Soviet had back then, Okhitovich proposal would be a nightmare to realize and maybe the most unsustainable habitation on the planet. But what remains sound is the main idea. The breaking up of the city. If we would

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attempt that in smaller scales, not in the extremities, then there could be an ideal solution where the fragments of the old cancerous city would be absorbed into the countryside without a problem. As we stated before, this is not at all a new idea. Theorists from all over the world and of different time periods have continuously argued about it. This is why in our project and in this scale we followed exactly this path. With this next element on the board, we begin to dive deeper on the main formations of the design solution. Now that all our compositional pieces are on the table it is time to proceed on to the final formational hypothesis. While we were investigating the role and the architecture of the social condensers we also came up with a system to find out if there were any similarities apart from their profound differences. Out of this we got early on an astonishing result. All of the predecessors of our project were either situated in a park or they constituted themselves a park. So we decided that in our design solution a park would also be included. Apart from discovering the overall character of the proposal, we quickly understood that there was no simple or straightforward way to deal with all of the given problems. There would never be a single solution adequate enough to accommodate all the multitude of complex phenomena that a society requires. So we started to think out of the beaten path. Our solution came when we looked deep into the theory that we had laid in front of us and realized that the main thing that we had to do was fairly simple; to just let go. Although sometimes letting go is the most difficult thing, we understood that we had to lay off the effort to try and control everything. In any case we would only be able to think a specific amount of details or specificities and that would be less than inadequate to suffice the much needed role that it would have to play. Instead of doing a controlled linear development we decided to create a kind of a toolkit. This toolkit would be provided as a social experimental device in order to

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be incorporated into the given social order. In this way we can be sure that firstly this experiment will not be silenced by individual efforts to accumulate and secondly that any given characteristics would be dependent on the individual society. Also this toolkit should have in its inner core the ability to be agile and transformable enough even through dimensions of time or even scale. So we started the experimentation process. Through various physical models we ended up back to where we had begun. The Seagram and the grid. From the start we had noticed the absolute crucial role that the quality of the grid would play in the project. In time we came to realize that this quality would not only be secondary but instead it could transform itself into the ideal productive element of our planned device. Next in line when we addressed our aforementioned helpers back on the first board we realized that the actor was waiting for us there all along. The soil offers the ideal material, as it is agile enough to move in every direction, it can be stratified by the notion of the grid, since in reality it constitutes a three dimensional grid on its own and lastly it is a realistic option to work with. So the device was beginning to shape itself. The grid gave us the absolute mobility by transforming itself into material and this material was the soil. This is signified on the board with the far right diagram depicting the passage from the two dimensional grid to the three dimensional and from there on to the materialization into soil. The next step was to set the dimensions and the rest of the context of its existence as a device proposed to be used. Since the soil would be our actor the play would be the excavation. The work of Negarestani gave us a good indication on this direction. So if the device was a soil formation, then the social order would be able as a given and through direct democratic means to transform it through transpiercing the solid (refer to the specific chapter on transpiercing). We knew right away that the problem of the scale would also be a significant one. The factors to consider would be the size of the proposed society to serve and of

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course the space that we would have into our disposal. For the first factor we decided that we would keep true to the work of A. Doxiadis and hold the specific city center at a limit of 20.000 inhabitants. This number multiplied by 10 that could be the number of the rest city centers would give us the proposed urban center population (200.000). So having the number 20.000 was a significant progress and a specificity to think about. From the given number since our plot would be the first in a row of many we calculated that there should be space to accommodate at least the 10% of the given population. In this order the number we have at hand was 2.000, as the quantity of people to be hosted when the device will be used for a massive event. After that the next step was to define the work area that we could use. The old lot of the Seagram building was a traditional New York City block. This meant that it was quite narrow and inadequate for our intended purpose. To solve this problem we decided to include in the affected area the neighboring blocks. This gave us a lot more space to work with but also it still meant that the overall dimensions where not out of scale for the rest of the specific city center. The remaining problem for dimensioning was the device itself. Looking into the technology of today it would not be a far stretch to say that the idea shape to act as a vessel would be a square. Apart from the symbolic significance of the square shape as the ultimate democratic shape, it also helps us as it provides us with the most stable geometry available. As a tribute to Mies the extant simplicity of the proposed device would be such that even he would envy. So in the end we sum up by having a square of given dimensions (30 feet to 30 feet) capable of hosting max 2.000 people when it is meticulously excavated in various forms and functions. Then a new problem arose. If the function of the devise is to be excavated into form every time the social order calls it to, then we would have to come up with a plan to store the soil and when needed return it back to its original location.

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Since the overall cubic meters of the proposal are immense (close to 27.000m3), that meant that any move on this part would have a significant effect on the park and its surroundings. Again here Mies and the Seagram came to our rescue. When we were digging into the history of the conception and the creation of the project, we discovered an important detail. Mies loved his buildings and he often devoted most of his time, while working on a project, on hundreds of sketches about them, trying to imagine how the final outcome would look like. In Seagram, this was not the case. He actually drew only a handful of sketches and he invested all of his time into sketches of the statues and the sculptures that would be placed on the open ground of the Seagram plaza. So after all Mies was looking forward for a sculpture garden that he never managed to get. So we thought that if we take the total volume of the soil and disperse it through the lot in forms driven by multiple attractors that would eventually give us the functional garden of sculptures that Mies would have liked. So we did. We started as the upper left diagram of the board signifies, by taking the overall volume of the soil and broke it down into manageable pieces. For these pieces we devised a specific algorithm in order to place them, form them and ultimately give them their functions. Here we must mention the fact that we didnt forget the detail that if this place was to become a park then it should also be able to function like one. In any case this would not be an ordinary park, left alone and abandoned without any relevant uses. In a society like the one we have contextualized our project to exist, there would be multiple functions that could be hosted in those places, which from now on we will be calling them the Depots. These depots could act as small libraries, workshop spaces, relaxing grounds, toilets, storage rooms and many other uses that may be needed for. Of course the primary function for most of them would be to host the soil coming from the freshly excavated ground of the Condenser.

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In the board on the lower side in the middle part we can see the different zones that the part was split up to. Those zones were made up to provide a different variable in the algorithm and more importantly to create a feeling for the distinct character of those depots in different spatial conditions. So in the diagram we can also witness the placement of the individual depots (in the upper right corner) and the different character that their combination provides to the in between space. It is our firm belief that these spaces can be used for a million uses beyond our imagination and most importantly beyond our control. As for the depots themselves, there are a couple of distinct qualities that each one has. First of all the scale is relative to the function. The depots that are meant to hold the most amount of soil are situated closer to the condenser (subsequently closer to the center of the park) and they are the biggest in size and volume. Next in size come the primary functions which host spaces like toilets, libraries and other centers of activity around the park. After them come the secondary functions that deal with issues like storage, energy production and distribution and anything else that is vital for the normal operation of the project. Last but not least but still smallest in size come the more accessorial parts of the depots. Here one can find places to sit, information stands and many other actions that may link further the proposal with the outside. Apart from scale the second characteristic that these depots acquire individually is transparency. The soil hosting depots are mostly transparent whilst the other kinds are often completely opaque. The reason for this being that we would like for the wanderers of the park to know what is going on into the Condenser. If the hosts are full and dark that would mean that something big is arranged inside the condenser and that might intrigue people further in entering the place. The last diagram relevant to the depots in the board is the one on the bottom far into the left where a small portion of the proposed depots are being displayed.

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Most of the upper part of the board is being occupied by a diagrammatic section of the park that serves into showcasing all the latter details that we have mentioned above and the way all of this gets combined and works together. Through this diagram someone can understand more clearly the notion of the multiple in between spaces and witness the paths the citizens must go through in order to reach their final destination the Condenser. All of the above bring us to the final scale and last proposal of our thesis project. The Condenser. As we have mentioned so far it is meant to be a cube full of soil ready to be formulated into function through direct decision making from the social order that commands and defines it. It does not have a specific purpose on its own, other than to serve and protect the wishes of the society at hand. In order to exemplify exactly what we mean in terms of the projects functionality we had to come up with a showcase scenario. So we allowed ourselves the freedom of action to pose for an instance like we were the sole decision makers on a society as described above. Thinking rationally we resulted into believing that one of the first things we would be able to ask from our Condenser to formulate into would be an assembly hall. We found this idea very fitting with the rest of the proposal and decided to stick with it. So the next move was to find a way to create this assembly hall that would fit the appropriate number of people and only by using specific non sci-fi methods of today. Again the ideal here was to think outside of the bow, and to do it this time we cheated. We thought that it would also be very interesting if we tried to recreate an ideal function using principles borrowed from an older idealistic and non realized project. We started the intensive research in order to track down our objective and it did not take long. If the square and it three dimensional translator the cube can be regarded as forms of perfect stability then there is only one shape that can counteract this; the sphere. Fortunately there are a few examples in the history of architecture that architects have theorized on the shape of the sphere.

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One of these examples is tienne-Louis Boulle. It would be a waste of precious time and space to try and include his entire story in this paragraph so refer to the specific chapter on him and his work. Using the sphere as Boulle we came up with a plan to incorporate the perfect sphere into the cube and through their subtraction to create the space for our assembly hall. But this was only the beginning of the design decisions. After the inner space decision, we came across some serious problems created by the soil and its qualities. First of all through researching we found out that in order to stabilize successfully the soil element there were some conditions that had to be met. First of all soil, although it might appear to be stable, is in fact extremely unstable. Actually there are cases that it can act as a liquid, when under the correct amount of pressure and location. This meant that we would have to plan our constructions as if we were really digging underground. The soil would need to be boxed in and the geometry of the containing surfaces would have to be for the better part concave, to withstand the tremendous weight pressure. We successfully analyzed this procedure and mapped it out in a construction document that we will introduce later on, the important part to keep is the fact that now we knew that there were important restrictions that needed to be followed if we wanted this really to by actual and viable. Next came the question of ventilation. The massive volume would not allow big openings neither that would that be possible under the threat of collapsing. The main issue here was not the air coming in but mainly the air coming out. There was a serious danger of CO2 building up inside the domed structure and that would be a catastrophic event. With the problem came also an opportunity. Apart from the exhaust there was also the issue of natural light intruding into the main hall. Even if we had an entrance level, it would never be sufficient to provide our whole space with enough light. This problem was especially more intense in the middle of the hall, the same area that the gas built up would happen. Then we had on our

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hands a double problem which got solved by using a simple and single solution; we pierced the soil. In specific and strategically elected points, based on the orientation, the winds and the placement in the domed structure we designed exhaust tunnels. These tunnels were wide enough to allow sunlight in, or if not it directly then the biggest percentage of it through occlusion. Using this technique we managed to exhaust the gas and provide the center of the hall with enough light to suffice. After that was solved we had to think about the problem of circulation. Bear in mind that we didnt want to use any electricity if possible and that we would only keep it for the additional artificial night lighting. Hopefully we would not need any heating or cooling energy loads since soil with widths over one meter (3 feet) is one of the best insulators we could ever dream of. In terms of circulation that meant that we would have to come up with a solution adequate to serve handicap people, wheelchairs, elderly and small children, without the help of an elevator. Usually in similar problems the solution lies on the use of ramps. The problem that ramps have is that they are space hungry and often there is not enough room to be placed. In our situation things turned out to be quite different. Due to the relative big dimension of the cubes sides (30 feet or 10 meters) it was easy to strap around the main core of the condenser the ramp system. As shown in the last diagram on the lower right side of the board, with this method we can successfully divert the circulation from the ground level to the entrance level that is situated near the middle section of the structure. The last obstacle to overcome while working on the inside structure of the building was this particular entrance level. We had decided to follow this solution from the very beginning because it was an effective way to disperse the incoming population evenly to the whole assembly hall since its section is circular. In addition to this there could be opportunities to host different functions if needed in the same level, prior or as the assembly would meet. The questions started

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when we realized that this entrance level was in reality the only actively weak spot for the whole structure. More than half of the immense weight of the soil and any other added elements would be forcing upon the columns of this level. The only way to deal with this problem was to embrace it. With the accumulated knowledge that we gained going through mining techniques and other conditions of extreme engineering we soon figured out that in our case, the columns would not be the elements that we would have to focus on but the other way around; we would have to attentively carve out the circulation diagrams and the subsequent openings. In order to do so we once again referred to mathematical computations. With the help of a specific algorithm we created a given number of solutions that according to our calculations would be adequate to sustain the weight of the structure. From these solutions we elected the best possible one that met our design criteria. Those criteria were the correct distribution of openings around the main hall, the connectivity between the different chambers and finally the maximum clearance that we could find. After a long and tiring process we got what we were asking for and finally the interior part was solved and sound for our given solution.

Exterior Surface One of the most demanding elements in the overall process was the exterior surface of the condenser. In the construction plans we have included multiple details to demonstrate how the system would operate. Since we explained above the interior implications we feel that it is for the best to include here the explanation for the exterior as well, even if that means that we will deviate a little bit from our set path. Since our Condenser is in a oversimplified way a soil cube, we needed to come up with a system in order to protect it from the elements (snow, rain,

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wind). The same system would also have to carry out two more important functions of the structure. I would have to effectively encase it, so it would not escape and simultaneously be agile enough to allow it to formulate into any scheme possible. On a first glance those three functions not only contradict each other but also it seems close to impossible to meet the requirements. Going back to the mining manuals we learned vital information about the processes that they follow in similar conditions and also we got a firsthand experience of the tools and materials that they are using. In a mining tunnel even before the digging operation is over, the special machine immediately starts shouting out a special form of reinforced concrete, called ganite. This material is further enhanced with additional supplements in order to achieve maximum strength as quickly and as effectively as possible. So in our case imagine the cube encased in its positive sides with this reinforced concrete material. This will also act as our basic strategic agent whenever there is any necessity for small intrusions into the inner core of the soil. It is good that the whole purpose of the ganite concrete is to be fast and agile and most importantly one man operated. Concrete is still not the ultimate protection from the elements since it too needs to be protected. In order to do so, we created a second layer that would act as the main connection between the outside environment and the casing. The challenge here was that we needed this skin layer to be extremely agile and also it needed to be very light, since we knew no more weight could be tolerated from our columns on the weak entrance level. The solution was fairly simple. Instead of creating a skin for the casing, we allowed the casing to create a skin for itself.

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As it is demonstrated in the technical drawings, the skin is nothing more than superlight, translucent surfaces that are positioned on the casing by attaching on specific spots. That allows us to create any surface underneath and still we would not have to care about the cover because the cover would be composed on its own. The elements that create the skin are hinged together and can be removed from the overall composition in order to leave room for openings or whatever else might be needed.

Black Board 5 Returning back to our black boards now that we have finished explaining the basics of the projects will be far easier. In this specific board the goal was double and for that reason it has been split in the middle. The first part deals with the idea of the park positioning in relation to the city center in question. Although the park might appear to be situated in the middle of the sub-city, it must not fool you. The final proposal calls for a massive number of these elements and not a French garden type singular ornament. The model does however give the correct impression in terms of scale and significance as part of the sub-city. Also it allows us to understand how a partial fragment of our New York City would look like if it had been plunged into a field of crops and vegetation. We believe that this image is a powerful tool that can be used today for us to realize how far we are standing from an ideal balance between the city and the country and the subsequent notions of sustainability. The second half of the board is to showcase an example of how could the park look like. In this scale, the detail allows us to dive deeper into the specifics of our instrument and lets us have a closer look at the result. The Condenser is appearing in the middle, inactive of course, and the positions of the depots are already calculated in by the successive algorithm. In plain words, this is the transformer, exposed.

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Board 4 In this last board there is not much theory that needs too much explanation. Because of this we will only describe here what is being shown on the board itself. On the left hand we see the two main plans (included in the drawing section as well) of the Condenser activated according to our own scenario. On the middle we see a small portion of the overall scheme of the park and mostly the positioning of the depots. This was done in order to better demonstrate the different kinds of depots and the ways that these would coexist and cooperate to create a truly unique environment. On the right side of the board one can see the sections and the details of the different kinds of depots. It is important to note here that although all the depots have been carefully and fully detailed, that does not mean that these are supposed to be the only active programs for them. Each time the social order can reestablish them at will since their main goal is to remain unstable and transformable over time. The last diagram on the board is a final calculation that shows the way that the depots are part of the condenser and the condenser part of the depots.

Black Board 6 This is the last black board and it is really straightforward. Here we have the three main depots modeled in section. The first one is the main soil hosting type. We can see the details of the soil extraction hatch and the ladder designed to make the access easier. The second on is the depot that can be used as a discussion room, in order to serve the sharing of ideas and commiseration between people. Here we see the details of the skylight structure, the main note board and the seating that are provided. Last of the three showcased models come the depot that hosts a small library. Again we deem it unnecessary to explain further the extreme importance of knowledge in a just world. The shelves, the table and again the skylight are parts of the introduced details for this particular type.

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Excavation process One of the details that we want to discuss further in this presentation is the process of excavating and resetting. As we stated earlier one of the main ideas behind the use of the soil element was the fact that it could be reset. This means that the agility of the soil allows us to create whatever we desire but when this is over we can always return the toolbox to the primary condition. In order to do so in a realistic and feasible way we had to devise a particular technique that could be used for this action. As we can see specifically in the plan entitled A1 Diagram, this is the creation technique that we would suggest in order to build our scenario proposal. The first step includes the setting up on the sides of the condenser of all the necessary side structure in order to make every inch of the external surface approachable. Once this is done the next step in to commence the drilling (piercing) operation; for his part we found an unexpected ally. The ventilation and lighting shafts that we had designed earlier are very well fitted to be the initial intrusion points. This means that the drilling operation would start going through a number of these shafts down to the main core of the auditorium. In the way to its goal, the drillers would shout ganite concrete in an effort to stabilize the shaft and their escape route, if necessary. In the end this would be the complete ventilation and lighting shaft without any further a due. Continuing on the process the next step would be to start digging out the circum reference of the dome structure. By doing this we can safely secure with a step by step condition, the stability of the dome. Simultaneously we can start piercing through the ceiling to the open surface in order to create the remaining shafts. Once the above steps are completed we can start the strenuous process of the soil extraction. That would require a small transformation of the ramps that would lead to the exterior and from there to the depots that would host them. In the meantime even before the extraction ceases we could start working on the

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creation of the entrance level. This might appear to be a simple step, but in reality it is the most difficult and important step. The columns would need to be carved out exactly in order to be able to sustain the sum of the soil weight. From the entrance level, we can initiate the excavation of the circulation ramps that encircle the building. Last thing to be done now would be to further reinforce the sitting formations of the assembly hall and make sure that the external surface complies fully to the needed requirements (ventilation, light, views). Once this is also taken care of then we can render this process complete and the new formation is ready to be used as planned.

Resetting process Equally important with the above procedure is the exact opposite of it; the resetting process. In order for our proposal to be able to accommodate the ever changing needs of the social order that defines it, it needs to get ready for a new formulation every time. So in the direct opposite way than the above procedure we will explain exactly how after the condenser would have been formulate into the assembly hall it would easily and quickly reset itself. Step one in this process would be of course the clearing out of any additional elements that were installed in order to serve the previous function. So mechanical installations such as light fixtures, microphones as well as bulk objects like seats, doors, boards and everything relevant would have to be evacuated and stored into the appropriate storage spaces provided in the depots. Next in line would be the demolition part. Initially the part that was reinforced in order to host the seating would have to be broken down. Simultaneously there would have to start setting up the exterior scaffoldings as was previously done in the opening sequence. Then the first loads of soil hosted in the depots would arrive to be

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situated in the place that once was the assembly seats. The concrete from this operation due to its nature and quality would be easily recyclable and put back into the production circle for another use in a future formulation. After the previous steps it would be time for the most delicate resetting procedure. The demolishing of the entrance level and the circulation ramps would be something very important and also difficult to deal with, but thanks to the pre supposed plan now it does have a fitting solution at hand. First it would require the restructuring of the external surface of the condenser. When this would be over then the soil would come and set in order to reform and secure the structural soundness of the element. The same goes to the entrance level treatment. Specific demolition placement would be replaced by incoming soil injections until the affected area balanced again. It would be time then for the dome structure to be dealt with. Since most of the structure so far has been reset, the dome does not pose any major challenge. The way that the people would go out, was the way they originally got in; through the ventilation and light shafts. Again with the method of structured and controlled demolition of the reinforced parts, the dome would be torn apart and the soil would be reinstated in its previous condition. It is important to note here that we have specifically designed this process in such a way that in the end result, every affected piece and element of the original idea gets back to its reset state. The condenser must be left as it was with no pieces of concrete or other external elements inside, since these could accumulate in the future and saturate the piercing and drilling process completely. In the end the external surface would be put back together and the soil machine would be able to start its re activation process once more.

Future Plan

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As its easy to be understood from the beginning of this project, in reality it is a prototype. We never thought that something like this should either be unique or unrepeatable. On the one hand we hope that the direct governmental processes will actually make the creation of more places like this necessary and on the other we believe that once this prototype and its potentials were acknowledged by the majority of the given society then its method and function could also spread into other sector of habitation. Maybe the same idea could be used as housing solutions, agile enough to transform themselves according to the needs. Or even more the factories of tomorrow could bet on a similar solution to provide them with the workspace adequate for any business plan. The reality is that the strength of this idea is also its main weakness. We had since the beginning no intention to frame it into a specific spatial context and this is something that can actually make a design skyrocket or come back and bite us. It has always been our strong belief that at least ideologies and utopias always are worth the effort even if sometimes or more correctly most of the times they fail miserably. Who knows where the limits of this design are? Surely not us. Using time on our side and getting away from the vanity of stability and sturdiness, we believe that this is material that even whole cities can be constructed with. Sand dunes are known to engulf whole cities of even portions of them. The inhabitants of these places come into terms with the situation and are always ready for the constant change. In a world that relies on information and with most of its drivers on top gear, architecture must remain alert and ready. So even if we are swimming of the waves that swept away the sandcastles of the past we should continue on pressuring and hoping cause, for us at least change is something that makes us move forward and moving forward is always something good.

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- Utopia is what moves ahead two steps, when you have barely have taken one. When you try moving closer it always leaps away. - Then why do we need Utopia? - Because it always makes you move forward

Eduardo Galeano

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Greek Bibliography + . . : , 1975. + . . : , 1978. + . . : , 2007. + . . : , 2005. + . . : , 1975. + . . : , 1962. + Murray Bukchin. 1936. : , 1991. + Raul Vaneigem. . : , 2000. + . . : , 1994. + . . : , 1999. + Herbert Marcuse. . : , 1979.

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+ Lawrence Ferlingetti. . : , 1987.

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+ PRETTY DAM PURE. LebbeusWoods.net, 2010. Web. 25 Oct. 2010. + MIES IS MORE (amended). LebbeusWoods.net, 2010. Web. 16 Oct. 2010. + Radical Criticism Within Supermodernity .Aparienciapublica.blogspot, 2007. Web. 17 Aug. 2007. + Cities and Cosmonauts 3. kosmograd.com, 2010. Web. 27 Dec. 2010. + Cities and Cosmonauts 3. nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot, 2010. Web. 27 Dec. 2010. + The Functionalist Deviation. themeasurestaken.blogspot, 2007. Web. 13 Nov. 2007. + Icons in the Fire. themeasurestaken.blogspot, 2008. Web. 10 Nov. 2008. + Towards a Communist Couture?. themeasurestaken.blogspot, 2007. Web. 21 Aug. 2007. + A Pod of One's Own. themeasurestaken.blogspot, 2007. Web. 20 May. 2007. + Ballard's Banlieue Radieuse. themeasurestaken.blogspot, 2007. Web. 08 May. 2007. + Revolution in the Garden. themeasurestaken.blogspot, 2007. Web. 19 Apr. 2007. + Industrial Island Machine. themeasurestaken.blogspot, 2007. Web. 02 Apr. 2007. + Building Brazilification. themeasurestaken.blogspot, 2006. Web. 03 Noe. 2006. + Sooner or later you will all be in trouble.. .occupiedlondon.org, 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. + Sooner or later you will all be in trouble.. .occupiedlondon.org, 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. + Picture Material. fuckyeahtylerdurden.tumblr.com, web 2009-2011

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Films + Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Fox 2000 Films, 1999. DVD + Stalker. Dir. Andrei Tarkofsky. Gabarov Interallianz, 1979. Videocassete + Surplus. Dir. Eric Gandini. Atmo Media Betwork, 2003. DVD + On modern servitude. Dir. Jean Franois. Temps Bouleverses, 2007. DVD + Skyland. Dir. Mathiew Delaporte. Method Films, 2005. DVD