The sixth material : [information as the par excellence factor in order to transform society pulse into architecture]

Abstract

Information as the par excellence factor in order to transform society pulse into architecture Information is increasingly becoming an integral part of architecture and urban environment. It acts as a communicative tool, which architecture and its practitioners employ to interact with its users. It allows for buildings to tell a narrative story and thereby educate, entertain or advertise. In this context, a new generation of buildings and spaces are emerging characterized by "consciousness" to the changes in the operational and social framework. The present thesis explores further this complex relationship between information and architecture. It argues that information can be considered architecture's new construction material. The sixth building material after wood, stone, concrete, steel, glass and textile is the information. Information - actually its collection, classification, diffusion, transmission and above all formalisation and operationalisation - is the driving force behind the change that we witness nowadays.<br />In the context of the above this thesis explores:<br />- How information can be conceptualized within the context of architecture - How information can be identified, in terms of sources, target groups and scope - How information can be collected and what could be the available tools to the architect in this respect The upshot of the dissertation is implemented through a constant interaction between theoretical research and experimental praxis, in the form of interactive prototypes. We install diverse micro-architectures (or systems) in order to analyze the urban behavior. These prototypes function as provocation factors in the city - in the reality itself - through their physical interactivity, namely the fact that the architecture itself changes. The provocation is in constant motion. So actually, the research experiments are momentary inquires. During their sojourn, through the communication and the interaction with the visitors, the prototypes supply information. The material supplied by a prototype is investigated over again, in order to provide the necessary information for the construction of a new prototype. Through these prototypes, extracting conclusions from one in order to design the next, we explore urban moments.<br />These prototypes function as tactical, flexible and digital, more operative cartography: evolutionary models of simulation and development, intended to select bits of basic information (and situations) related to abstract elemental codes (precise and indeterminate at the same time). Through the prototypes, the results of mobility, interchange, migration and communication are mapped.<br />Therewith, this research endeavours to compress meaningfully not so much the reproduction of the whole reality, or part of it, but rather a representation - a scanning - of its most strategic bits of information.<br />The prototypes are open, connectable in every dimension, breakable, reversible, and always modifiable, just like the medium of architecture they are modelling; actually they represent spaces of experimentation.<br />Through this thesis we register the numerous variations of the theory and the thought. This work doesn't try to invent formulas; it represents just an impulsion to alteration. After all, to represent a reality is to begin to transform it.<br />