Authors:Javier García-Germán Pages: 6 - 15 Abstract: ResumenA lo largo de las últimas dos décadas, y ante la creciente preocupación por el medio ambiente y el cambio climático, la arquitectura ha explorado las oportunidades abiertas por los campos de la termodinámica y la ecología. Centrándose en un enfoque cuantitativo, se ha echado mano de estas disciplinas para responder con rigor y precisión a este reto. Esta cuestión se ha abordado principalmente desde un punto de vista técnico, centrándose en cuantificar el rendimiento termodinámico de los edificios, pasando por alto los aspectos culturales aún cuando son igualmente importantes. Es por tanto importante que la arquitectura compense este enfoque técnico y cuantitativo con una perspectiva cualitativa, de modo que se aborden de manera integral cuestiones que hasta ahora han sido independientes como son el clima de un lugar, la atmósfera que se genera en el interior de un edificio o la vida cotidiana de sus usuarios. A diferencia de los enfoques paramétricos que han dominado la arquitectura termodinámica durante la última década, la revisión de la idea de tipología es una buena herramienta disciplinar para integrar el clima de un lugar con los patrones de la vida cotidiana de sus habitantes. Los tipos climáticos muestran de una manera explícita cómo la arquitectura puede interactuar entre el clima exterior y la forma en que las personas viven y socializan, ofreciendo el potencial para conectar la organización espacial y material de un edificio con el comportamiento de sus habitantes, uniendo los asuntos cuantitativos con los cualitativos. Este escrito recorre las ideas que fundamentan esta cuestión. Partiendo del campo de lo psicosomático y de situaciones y comportamientos cotidianos de sus habitantes, se explorará cómo las tipologías climáticas ofrecen un conocimiento disciplinar de interés para comprender las conexiones que existen entre la arquitectura, el clima y su uso y habitabilidad. Mediando entre lo técnico y lo cultural, este escrito aspira a aproximarse a una nueva idea de tipología que, integrando su estructura formal y material con los microclimas que induce y con el comportamiento de sus usuarios, supere el determinismo performativo para proponer una interacción abierta entre la arquitectura, la atmósfera y el cuerpo humano.AbstractDuring the last two decades, in the context of a growing awareness of the environment and climate change, architecture has explored the design opportunities opened up by the fields of thermodynamics and ecology. Focusing on the quantitative and performance-oriented approaches that have prevailed in recent years, architecture has explored new design potentials. However, this new sensibility has been approached primarily from a technical point of view and has focused on quantifying the thermodynamic performance of buildings, overlooking the equally important cultural aspects of this endeavor. Apart from this quantitative and technical approach, architecture needs to have a qualitative outlook if it is to address the connections that exist between the local climate of a given place, the effect of the spatial and material particularities of architecture on interior atmospheres, and the everyday lifestyles of its users. Contrary to the parametric approaches that have dominated thermodynamic architecture during the last decade, climatic typologies are a powerful tool in bridging the gulf that exists between a given local climate and specific everyday life patterns. Climatic typologies —both historical and contemporary— very explicitly show how architecture can determine the interaction between outdoor climate and the way people live and socialize, offering the opportunity to connect the spatial and material lineaments of architecture to the specific physiological and psychological behaviors of its users, bridging the gulf between the thermodynamic processes induced by architecture and the everyday behavior of its inhabitants. This essay presents the architectural ideas that ideologically ground the approach. Starting from human psychosomatic behavior and everyday behavioral situations, the essay will explore how climatic typologies, both historical and contemporary, offer disciplinary knowledge essentially to an understanding of the connections between architecture, climate, and living patterns. Mediating between the technical and the cultural, this essay seeks to redefine the idea of typology, conflating the formal and material structure of the architectural type, with the microclimates it elicits and the behavior of its users. Superseding performative determinism, it proposes an open interaction between architecture, atmosphere, and human body. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:Javier de Andrés de Vicente Pages: 16 - 27 Abstract: ResumenLa introducción del concepto de entropía en la arquitectura permite entender el profundo vínculo que hay entre la degradación de la energía y la degradación de la materia, bifurcando la atención hacia el consumo diario de energía de un edificio a lo largo de su vida y hacia el coste energético que implica levantar —o reparar— la propia construcción. En definitiva, dos enfoques para entender el impacto de la construcción sobre el medio. El primero, nos habla de aquella arquitectura que utiliza las energías libres que proceden del aprovechamiento de las variables climáticas como herramientas de diseño. El segundo se refiere a esa arquitectura que, en sus distintas variantes, recupera el patrimonio construido. La reflexión que aquí se plantea pasa por hibridar ambos enfoques de entender el impacto de la construcción sobre el medio, aproximándose a la intervención sobre el patrimonio construido a partir del empleo de principios termodinámicos. Para ello, se apoya en el análisis de dos intervenciones contemporáneas consideradas como paradigmáticas que operan sobre piezas del patrimonio industrial transformándolas para usos culturales. A diferencia de los habituales criterios de intervención basados principalmente en el léxico, el contexto o el programa, estas obras reflejan una forma de recuperar el patrimonio desde premisas de diseño fundamentadas en intercambios de energía con la atmósfera del entorno próximo y abiertas al cambio. Ambas, en cierto modo, son una forma de entender la arquitectura como esa “dialéctica del cambio entrópico” de la que hablaba Robert Smithson. Así, desde un dualismo material y conceptual que aúna presente y pasado, energía y memoria, ambas intervenciones generan imágenes memorables. En última instancia, su estética, basada en el ensamblaje, la hibridación y la contraposición, tanto a nivel energético como material y formal, busca hacer visibles las tensiones y dificultades inherentes al paso del tiempo por arquitecturas pasadas.AbstractThe introduction of the concept of entropy in architecture has brought to light the tight bond that exists between the degradation of energy and the degradation of matter, shifting the focus to the daily energy consumption of a building during its lifespan, as well as to the cost, in energy terms, of constructing —or repairing— that particular building. In short, it has given way to two different approaches to understanding the impact of construction on the environment. The first approach refers to the kind of architecture that uses free energies generated from an efficient use of climate variables as a design tool. The second approach refers to the kind of architecture that, in its different variants, chooses to restore built heritage. The purpose of this article is to hybridise these two approaches to the impact of construction on the environment by examining architectural intervention on built heritage through the lens of thermodynamic principles. To this end we will review two contemporary interventions that have paradigmatically transformed old industrial buildings into new cultural premises. Far from applying standard intervention criteria, largely based on architectural language, context or programme, these restoration works follow design premises that are founded on energy exchanges with the neighbouring environment, and that are open to change. In a way, both exemplify how architecture can be understood as a “dialectics of entropic change”, as coined by Robert Smithson. From a stance of material and conceptual dualism that blurs the lines between past and present, energy and memory, both interventions generate memorable images. Their outward appearance, based on assemblage, hybridisation and contrast, both in terms of energy, form and matter, ultimately seeks to showcase the tensions and challenges inherent to the passing of time in architecture. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:Lluis J. Liñán Pages: 28 - 37 Abstract: ResumenEste artículo traza una analogía entre el agregador, un formato digital basado en la recopilación dinámica y sintetizada de contenidos externos, y tres obras de la oficina francesa BRUTHER: un proyecto teórico de 2018 publicado en la revista Cartha, su manifiesto en 99 notas y el Centro de Investigación de Nueva Generación en Caen. La analogía se construye en base a los planteamientos del crítico de arte David Joselit, para quien el agregador es un formato que, debido a su ubicuidad en la ecología mediática contemporánea, traslada sus lógicas a muchos otros ámbitos, incluidos el del arte y la creación. Dichas lógicas promueven la congregación de entidades singulares y diferenciadas en una superficie y espacio común, algo que resulta en formas que no presentan jerarquías definidas ni persiguen la síntesis ni la finitud, sino la movilización de aproximaciones múltiples e individualizadas. Tal y como se refleja en el manifiesto de la oficina gala, el trabajo de BRUTHER se asienta igualmente en la congregación de referencias materiales e imaginarias singulares y diferenciadas, cuyo encuentro persigue la movilización de nuevas ideas y motivaciones proyectuales. El proyecto publicado en Cartha y el Centro de Investigación se presentan aquí como dos productos derivados de esta lógica: arquitecturas generadas a partir de la recopilación de materiales de procedencia diversa y de nivelada importancia que, en su coexistencia, alimentan la generación de curiosidades, intuiciones y escenarios espaciales.AbstractThis article draws an analogy between the aggregator, a digital format based on the dynamic collection of external contents, and three works by the French office BRUTHER: a theoretical project of 2018 published in the Cartha journal, its manifesto in 99 notes and the New Generation Research Center in Caen. The analogy is based on the proposals set by art critic David Joselit, for whom the aggregator is a format which, due to its omnipresence in the contemporary media ecology, transfers its logic to many other spheres, including art and creation. These logics promote the gathering of differentiated entities in a common space and surface, something which results in forms that do not exhibit defined hierarchies nor completion, but foster multiple and individualized approaches. As reflected in the manifesto of the French office, BRUTHER’s work is also established on the gathering of unique, differentiated material and imaginary references, the meeting of which seeks to mobilize new ideas and design intuitions. The works published in Cartha and the Research Center are presented here as two products stemming from this logic: architectures generated from the collection of materials of diverse origin and of level importance that, in their coexistence, feed the generation of curiosities, intuitions and spatial scenarios. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:Eva Gil Lopesino Pages: 38 - 51 Abstract: ResumenEsta investigación interdisciplinar explora el enorme impacto del desarrollo de los computadores digitales y las tecnologías de la computación en la formación, representación y recepción de la arquitectura a partir de mediados del siglo XX. Este artículo se centra en el vínculo entre arquitectura y computación, específicamente, en el materializado a través de los espacios arquitectónicos generados literalmente por ambas disciplinas: el dispositivo tecnológico ‘edificio’ y el dispositivo tecnológico ‘computador’. Al inicio de la investigación se describen los dispositivos tecnológicos (computadores) pertenecientes a las pre-generaciones de computadores (dispositivos electromecánicos y electrónicos) y a la Primera Generación de la Computación (dispositivos digitales), según la genealogía propuesta por el ingeniero electrónico estadounidense Gordon Bell, en 1980, y por el comisario Paul E. Ceruzzi, en 2003. Se estudia, en concreto, uno de los tres computadores digitales más importantes desarrollados en EE.UU., perteneciente a la Primera Generación: el Whirlwind I o WWI, un mainframe desarrollado en el Campus del Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) entre 1945 y 1956 por Jay W. Forrester y su equipo. Este caso de estudio es uno de los primeros ejemplos de la arquitectura de la computación: Es un dispositivo tecnológico (edificio y computador) que constituye un espacio que se habita y se recorre. Este ejemplo sirve de punto de partida para el análisis del nacimiento de la era digital de la computación y el desarrollo de la arquitectura moderna, que coincidieron en el tiempo y evolucionaron en paralelo. Es en estos espacios de los primeros computadores digitales donde se vislumbran una serie de características que pudieron influir o ser influidos por las arquitecturas que se estaban desarrollando en la disciplina puramente arquitectónica en este mismo periodo. Unos espacios que, pese a no estar recogidos habitualmente entre los que configuran el relato de la arquitectura moderna, deberían ser incluidos en el mismo ya que en ellos se ensayan, en un campo alternativo, cuestiones que de otro modo se estaban desarrollando en los espacios de la modernidad.AbstractThis interdisciplinary research explores the enormous impact that digital computing technologies have had on how architecture has been formed, as represented and received since the mid-20th century. It focuses on the link between architecture and computing, particularly as materialised through architectural spaces generated literally by both disciplines: the technological device building and the technological device computer. Our research begins by describing technological devices (computers) belonging to the pre-generations of computers (electromechanical and electronic devices) and to the First Generation of Computing (digital devices), according to the genealogy proposed by the American electrical engineer Gordon Bell in 1980 and the curator Paul E. Ceruzzi in 2003. Specifically, it studies one of the three most important digital computers developed in the United States. It belonged to the First Generation: The Whirlwind I or WWI was a mainframe developed on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) between 1945 and 1956 by Jay W. Forrester and his team. This case study is one of the first examples of computational architecture: It is a technological device (building and computer) that constitutes a space which is both inhabited and travelled through. This example acts as a starting point in the analysis of the birth of the digital era of computing and the development of modern architecture, both of which coincided in time and evolved in parallel. These spaces of the first digital computers provided the first glimpse of a number of characteristics that would influence and be influenced by the architectures that were being developed in the purely architectural discipline at the time. Although these spaces are not usually included among the ones told about in the narrative of modern architecture, they should be included in it, as they were used in trying out issues that were otherwise being developed in the spaces of modernity. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:Salvador Haddadi Pages: 52 - 65 Abstract: ResumenEl concepto de híbrido se ha empleado desde finales del siglo XX para describir diversas arquitecturas con múltiples usos interrelacionados. La simplicidad de la actual definición ha generado confusión entre los híbridos y otras tipologías como los condensadores sociales, las megaestructuras arquitectónicas y los rascacielos. A esta controversia cabe sumar teorías contemporáneas que niegan la caracterización multifuncional de la arquitectura híbrida. Mediante un análisis comparativo de carácter funcional (uso), tipológico (forma), topológico (sistema) y semántico (definición verbal), se pretende esclarecer las diferencias entre los edificios híbridos contemporáneos y las otras tipologías o clasificaciones arquitectónicas. Esto permitirá obtener una definición actualizada del concepto de edificio híbrido, así como corroborar la hipótesis de la caracterización topológica de los edificios híbridos contemporáneos. Más allá de obtener una definición categórica, se pretende evidenciar un método de diseño y exponer la hibridación arquitectónica como estrategia o herramienta de proyecto.AbstractThe hybrid building concept has been used since the end of the 20th century to describe architectures with multiple interrelated uses. The simplicity of the current definition has led to confusion among the hybrid and other typologies, such as social condensers, architectural megastructures and skyscrapers. In addition to this controversy, we must take note the contemporary theories that reject the multifunctional characterisation of hybrid architecture. Through a comparative analysis of functional character (use), typology (shape), topology (system) and semantics (verbal definition), the intention is to clarify differences between contemporary hybrid buildings and other typologies and architectural classifications. It will provide an updated definition of the hybrid building concept and will verify the topological characterisation of contemporary hybrid buildings. Beyond achieving a categorical definition, the idea is to evince a design method and present architectural hybridisation as a strategy or project tool. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:Alejandro Jesús González Cruz, Nicolás Maruri González de Mendoza, Rafael Pina Lupiáñez Pages: 66 - 79 Abstract: ResumenEl origen de la forma en el proyecto contemporáneo se ha convertido en un enigma. La realidad del proceso del proyecto queda superpuesta, diluida y oculta por las narrativas construidas, posteriormente, por sus autores. En un momento, en el que el proceso adquiere mayor relevancia que el propio resultado, un relato ‘simulado’ es, aparentemente, más comunicable, que el proceso en sí mismo. Además, la existencia de territorios múltiples, y simultáneos, de aproximación a la forma, revela la complejidad y la diversidad a la que se enfrenta un arquitecto para realizar un proyecto. En este escenario, Luis Moreno Mansilla y Emilio Tuñón, caso de estudio de la investigación, afirman que, frente a los procesos de identificación positivista, que encuentran en las necesidades (función, lugar, técnica, presupuesto,…) el argumento y la respuesta formal del proyecto moderno, es en los procesos de oscilación, y en su motor de arranque, determinado por sistemas abiertos y flexibles, reglas de juego y diagramas, donde se desencadena una forma abstracta y genérica, origen del proyecto contemporáneo, que se concreta y especifica en su contacto con la realidad. El proyecto de arquitectura del MUSAC, es un ejemplo contemporáneo de la obra de estos arquitectos, donde los intereses personales, u obsesiones privadas, se encuentran con las necesidades públicas, a través de los sistemas de campo, formados por unos patrones de comportamiento local y una logística del contexto. El MUSAC, un caso dentro de la evolución de tramas incluidas en la genealogía de los mat-buildings, encuentra en la noción de campo de los sistemas, un conjunto de reglas de juego que posibilitan el crecimiento, la adaptabilidad y la transformación, así como, la excepción y la singularidad. La investigación propone el análisis crítico de la geometría “visible” del MUSAC reconstruyendo un hipotético proceso de proyecto, o narrativa construida por los arquitectos para justificar el proceso, utilizando el dibujo como herramienta capaz de desvelar, descodificar y descifrar las diferentes capas que forman el proyecto.The origin of the contemporary project’s form has become an enigma. The process of drawing up a project ends up being a superimposed, diluted reality, hidden by the narratives constructed by their authors. At some point, in which the process becomes more important than the result itself, a ‘simulated’ story is apparently more conveyable than the process itself. In addition, multiple simultaneous approaches to the form reveal the complexity and diversity that an architect faces when undertaking a project. In this scenario, Luis Moreno Mansilla and Emilio Tuñón, the architects of the subject of this paper, state that in the face of processes of positivist identification, it is in the project’s requirements ( function, place, technique, budget, ...) that the argument and the formal interpretation of the modern project is born. It is in the oscillation processes, and in its starting mechanisms, determined by open and flexible systems, play rules and diagrams, that an abstract and generic form is generated, the origin of the contemporary project, which is later defined and limited by its contact with reality. The MUSAC’s architecture project is a current example of the work of these architects, where personal interests or private obsessions meet public needs, through field systems formed by local behaviour patterns and context logistics. The MUSAC, a case within the evolution of frames in the genealogy of mat-buildings, finds withing the field systems notion a set of play rules that allows growth, adaptability and transformation, as well as exception and singularity. This research makes a critical analysis of the “visible” geometry of the MUSAC by reconstructing a hypothetical project process, or a narrative constructed by the architects to justify the process, using the drawing as a tool capable of unveiling and decoding the different layers that gave form to the project. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:José Manuel de Andrés Moncayo Pages: 80 - 91 Abstract: ResumenEntre 1881 y 1883 Arturo Soria y Mata publicó una serie de artículos de temática urbana en el diario El Progreso en los que exponía los rudimentos de su teoría urbana y esbozaba su propuesta de Ciudad Lineal. En estos primeros escritos de Soria subyace una visión orgánica de los fenómenos urbanos que integra los procesos de consumo de materia y energía necesarios para el desarrollo de la vida urbana en un concepto a la vez único y complejo de ciudad. El desarrollo de esta metáfora orgánica conlleva para Soria y Mata el reconocimiento del metabolismo urbano como lugar de oportunidad y proyecto para la mejora de las condiciones de vida. El paralelismo entre organismo urbano y cuerpo humano es la clave de esta metodología operativa mediante la que el autor concibe avanzados sistemas de abastecimiento, comunicaciones o recogida de deshechos basados en el potencial de las nuevas tecnologías para organizar y mejorar las ciudades de su tiempo. De esta visión nacerá su propuesta definitiva de crecimiento urbano, la Ciudad Lineal, llamada a establecer una red residencial que conectará los núcleos de las ciudades existentes preservados como centros de negocios y disfrute. El pensamiento orgánico de Soria es un antecedente histórico relevante para la consolidación de una ecología urbana. Su estudio y reivindicación aspira a reconciliar los retos y aspiraciones urbanas contemporáneas con un capítulo menospreciado de los fundamentos del urbanismo moderno.AbstractBetween 1881 and 1883, Arturo Soria y Mata published a series of articles on urban issues in the newspaper El Progreso, in which he exposed the roots of his urban theory and outlined his proposal for a Linear City. In these first writings, the organic vision of the urban phenomena developed by Soria integrates the processes of consumption of matter and energy necessary for urban life in a concept of the city that is both unique and complex. The development of this organic metaphor entails the recognition of urban metabolism as an opportunity for improving living conditions. The parallelism between the urban organism and the human body is the key of this operational methodology, through which the author conceives advanced supply, communications or waste collection systems based on the potential of new technologies to organize and improve the cities of his time. It was from this vision that his definitive proposal for urban growth was born, the Linear City, which was fated to establish a residential network that connected the core of the existing cities, preserved as business and leisure centers. Soria’s organic thinking is an important historical precedent to the consolidation of an urban ecology. The purpose of studying and advocating it is to reconcile contemporary urban challenges and aspirations with an underrated chapter of the foundations of modern urban theory. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:Javier García-Germán Pages: 98 - 100 Abstract: AbstractDuring the last two decades, in the context of a growing awareness of the environment and climate change, architecture has explored the design opportunities opened up by the fields of thermodynamics and ecology. Focusing on the quantitative and performance-oriented approaches that have prevailed in recent years, architecture has explored new design potentials. However, this new sensibility has been approached primarily from a technical point of view and has focused on quantifying the thermodynamic performance of buildings, overlooking the equally important cultural aspects of this endeavor. Apart from this quantitative and technical approach, architecture needs to have a qualitative outlook if it is to address the connections that exist between the local climate of a given place, the effect of the spatial and material particularities of architecture on interior atmospheres, and the everyday lifestyles of its users. Contrary to the parametric approaches that have dominated thermodynamic architecture during the last decade, climatic typologies are a powerful tool in bridging the gulf that exists between a given local climate and specific everyday life patterns. Climatic typologies —both historical and contemporary— very explicitly show how architecture can determine the interaction between outdoor climate and the way people live and socialize, offering the opportunity to connect the spatial and material lineaments of architecture to the specific physiological and psychological behaviors of its users, bridging the gulf between the thermodynamic processes induced by architecture and the everyday behavior of its inhabitants. This essay presents the architectural ideas that ideologically ground the approach. Starting from human psychosomatic behavior and everyday behavioral situations, the essay will explore how climatic typologies, both historical and contemporary, offer disciplinary knowledge essentially to an understanding of the connections between architecture, climate, and living patterns. Mediating between the technical and the cultural, this essay seeks to redefine the idea of typology, conflating the formal and material structure of the architectural type, with the microclimates it elicits and the behavior of its users. Superseding performative determinism, it proposes an open interaction between architecture, atmosphere, and human body. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:Javier de Andrés de Vicente Pages: 100 - 103 Abstract: The introduction of the concept of entropy in architecture has brought to light the tight bond that exists between the degradation of energy and the degradation of matter, shifting the focus to the daily energy consumption of a building during its lifespan, as well as to the cost, in energy terms, of constructing —or repairing— that particular building. In short, it has given way to two different approaches to understanding the impact of construction on the environment. The first approach refers to the kind of architecture that uses free energies generated from an efficient use of climate variables as a design tool. The second approach refers to the kind of architecture that, in its different variants, chooses to restore built heritage. The purpose of this article is to hybridise these two approaches to the impact of construction on the environment by examining architectural intervention on built heritage through the lens of thermodynamic principles. To this end we will review two contemporary interventions that have paradigmatically transformed old industrial buildings into new cultural premises. Far from applying standard intervention criteria, largely based on architectural language, context or programme, these restoration works follow design premises that are founded on energy exchanges with the neighbouring environment, and that are open to change. In a way, both exemplify how architecture can be understood as a “dialectics of entropic change”, as coined by Robert Smithson. From a stance of material and conceptual dualism that blurs the lines between past and present, energy and memory, both interventions generate memorable images. Their outward appearance, based on assemblage, hybridisation and contrast, both in terms of energy, form and matter, ultimately seeks to showcase the tensions and challenges inherent to the passing of time in architecture. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:Lluis J. Liñán Pages: 104 - 106 Abstract: This article draws an analogy between the aggregator, a digital format based on the dynamic collection of external contents, and three works by the French office BRUTHER: a theoretical project of 2018 published in the Cartha journal, its manifesto in 99 notes and the New Generation Research Center in Caen. The analogy is based on the proposals set by art critic David Joselit, for whom the aggregator is a format which, due to its omnipresence in the contemporary media ecology, transfers its logic to many other spheres, including art and creation. These logics promote the gathering of differentiated entities in a common space and surface, something which results in forms that do not exhibit defined hierarchies nor completion, but foster multiple and individualized approaches. As reflected in the manifesto of the French office, BRUTHER’s work is also established on the gathering of unique, differentiated material and imaginary references, the meeting of which seeks to mobilize new ideas and design intuitions. The works published in Cartha and the Research Center are presented here as two products stemming from this logic: architectures generated from the collection of materials of diverse origin and of level importance that, in their coexistence, feed the generation of curiosities, intuitions and spatial scenarios. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:Eva Gil Lopesino Pages: 106 - 109 Abstract: AbstractThis interdisciplinary research explores the enormous impact that digital computing technologies have had on how architecture has been formed, as represented and received since the mid-20th century. It focuses on the link between architecture and computing, particularly as materialised through architectural spaces generated literally by both disciplines: the technological device building and the technological device computer. Our research begins by describing technological devices (computers) belonging to the pre-generations of computers (electromechanical and electronic devices) and to the First Generation of Computing (digital devices), according to the genealogy proposed by the American electrical engineer Gordon Bell in 1980 and the curator Paul E. Ceruzzi in 2003. Specifically, it studies one of the three most important digital computers developed in the United States. It belonged to the First Generation: The Whirlwind I or WWI was a mainframe developed on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) between 1945 and 1956 by Jay W. Forrester and his team. This case study is one of the first examples of computational architecture: It is a technological device (building and computer) that constitutes a space which is both inhabited and travelled through. This example acts as a starting point in the analysis of the birth of the digital era of computing and the development of modern architecture, both of which coincided in time and evolved in parallel. These spaces of the first digital computers provided the first glimpse of a number of characteristics that would influence and be influenced by the architectures that were being developed in the purely architectural discipline at the time. Although these spaces are not usually included among the ones told about in the narrative of modern architecture, they should be included in it, as they were used in trying out issues that were otherwise being developed in the spaces of modernity. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:Salvador Haddadi Pages: 110 - 113 Abstract: AbstractThe hybrid building concept has been used since the end of the 20th century to describe architectures with multiple interrelated uses. The simplicity of the current definition has led to confusion among the hybrid and other typologies, such as social condensers, architectural megastructures and skyscrapers. In addition to this controversy, we must take note the contemporary theories that reject the multifunctional characterisation of hybrid architecture. Through a comparative analysis of functional character (use), typology (shape), topology (system) and semantics (verbal definition), the intention is to clarify differences between contemporary hybrid buildings and other typologies and architectural classifications. It will provide an updated definition of the hybrid building concept and will verify the topological characterisation of contemporary hybrid buildings. Beyond achieving a categorical definition, the idea is to evince a design method and present architectural hybridisation as a strategy or project tool. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:Alejandro Jesús González Cruz, Nicolás Maruri González de Mendoza, Rafael Pina Lupiáñez Pages: 113 - 117 Abstract: The origin of the contemporary project’s form has become an enigma. The process of drawing up a project ends up being a superimposed, diluted reality, hidden by the narratives constructed by their authors. At some point, in which the process becomes more important than the result itself, a ‘simulated’ story is apparently more conveyable than the process itself. In addition, multiple simultaneous approaches to the form reveal the complexity and diversity that an architect faces when undertaking a project. In this scenario, Luis Moreno Mansilla and Emilio Tuñón, the architects of the subject of this paper, state that in the face of processes of positivist identification, it is in the project’s requirements ( function, place, technique, budget, ...) that the argument and the formal interpretation of the modern project is born. It is in the oscillation processes, and in its starting mechanisms, determined by open and flexible systems, play rules and diagrams, that an abstract and generic form is generated, the origin of the contemporary project, which is later defined and limited by its contact with reality. The MUSAC’s architecture project is a current example of the work of these architects, where personal interests or private obsessions meet public needs, through field systems formed by local behaviour patterns and context logistics. The MUSAC, a case within the evolution of frames in the genealogy of mat-buildings, finds withing the field systems notion a set of play rules that allows growth, adaptability and transformation, as well as exception and singularity. This research makes a critical analysis of the “visible” geometry of the MUSAC by reconstructing a hypothetical project process, or a narrative constructed by the architects to justify the process, using the drawing as a tool capable of unveiling and decoding the different layers that gave form to the project. PubDate: 2020-12-30
Authors:José Manuel de Andrés Moncayo Pages: 117 - 120 Abstract: AbstractBetween 1881 and 1883, Arturo Soria y Mata published a series of articles on urban issues in the newspaper El Progreso, in which he exposed the roots of his urban theory and outlined his proposal for a Linear City. In these first writings, the organic vision of the urban phenomena developed by Soria integrates the processes of consumption of matter and energy necessary for urban life in a concept of the city that is both unique and complex. The development of this organic metaphor entails the recognition of urban metabolism as an opportunity for improving living conditions. The parallelism between the urban organism and the human body is the key of this operational methodology, through which the author conceives advanced supply, communications or waste collection systems based on the potential of new technologies to organize and improve the cities of his time. It was from this vision that his definitive proposal for urban growth was born, the Linear City, which was fated to establish a residential network that connected the core of the existing cities, preserved as business and leisure centers. Soria’s organic thinking is an important historical precedent to the consolidation of an urban ecology. The purpose of studying and advocating it is to reconcile contemporary urban challenges and aspirations with an underrated chapter of the foundations of modern urban theory. PubDate: 2020-12-30
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