Impending Certainties: Hypothetical Future of Architecture

With the boom in technological advancement, what was once magical, described in science fictions, is now mundane. We swipe our hands over artificially lit surfaces to have objects from around the world delivered to us by the next dawn. These objects recognize our voices. We can, with an instant’s notice, communicate with others from around the globe with nothing but an armband, an ear insert, and a small black box in our pocket. Experiencing virtual realities is going to be a part of daily life. Design thinking, idea generating and making drawings are now doable in virtual space. As architects of building and spaces, we have the responsibility to be adept at this transformation, considering their impact on our trade. The studio of Fall 2016, takes on the challenge of engaging both the impending certainty that technology will continue to inform and adapt our spatial environments and simultaneously speculates on the hypothetical futures of architecture. The first step of this exploration was thoroughly analyzing spatial anomalies of a game, tv show, or science fiction etc. Later considering one of the anomalies of these art pieces as “possible” we had to develop design ideas associated with the transformation of space, time and materiality.

In the first phase, my group mate Margaret Petri and I studied the game Contrast. The game begins with Didi Malenkaya and her ‘imaginary’ friend Dawn. Didi resides in a world where the people are all shadows, except for herself and Dawn (gamer). They are the only individuals who appear in the 3D form, although Dawn has the ability to change from 2D shadow to 3D human form in an instant. Didi’s mother Kat. works as a singer. Didi’s father, Johnny is associated with gangsters. He accumulated a series of unpaid debts and was forced to pass bad checks that eventually landed him in jail. That’s why Kat left him. However, he wants to come home. Johnny plans to organize a big circus, where the main attraction will be the famous illusionist Vincenzo. To help her father, Didi, along with Dawn, tries to ensure that nothing will go wrong in the circus. They repaired all the circus props to their full glory. The whole game continues around solving puzzles to repair things, collecting luminaries, helping Didi to go somewhere etc. Dawn with her power of travelling both 2D and 3D world accomplishes the difficult tasks of repairing not only a broken circus ground but also some broken relationships.

The second part of this speculative project deals with the idea of "Meta-realizing" the World Wide Web space as an accessible one. Considering one of the anomalies from the game “Contrast” as “possible” with the unprecedented technological advancement, a hypothetical proposal has been developed for a Meta-Real world, which will overcome the physical limitations of WWW by 2070. People will be able to experience websites, as they experience three-dimensional spaces nowadays. How this phenomenon will question the existence of the redundant material world spaces, and how it can put forth arguments around the definition of architectural spaces in the Meta-Real world were the main two queries. My two groupmates (Arman and Mahan), and I hypothetically designed an advanced interface through which one can move back and forth between the Meta-Real dub-dub-dub world and the material world. Our proposed system is an advanced version of visiting different https:// which follows the existing one, however, the idea embeds with the corporeal occupation of space, without any virtual reality headsets or similar assistance.

Co Authors: Arman Salemi, Mahan Navabi, Margaret Petri

Studio Critic : Brian Lonsway, Amber Bartosh, Syracuse University School of Architecture