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Memory of Conduits
Memory of Conduits

Type
Research – Thesis

Author
To Ching Hing Derrick

Year
2011

An Accepted Pseudo-Absence of Conduits – the body of “building services”.

The theories and thinking concerned in this essay are based primarily on Martin Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling Thinking”; Christian Norberg-Schuls’s “The Phenomenon of Place”; Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s “Phenomenology of Perception”; Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message” & Victor Hugo’s “This will Kill That”.

Perception is the background of experience which guides every conscious action. And man’s perception dwells in his memory. The built environment covers a huge territory in our perception of various senses. And within which, conduits of various kind of building services propagate a significantly large portion of domain within both the physical and perceptual territories. Despite Victor Hugo stated that Architecture will no longer be the dominating medium in comparison with the press and with more recent invention, the information network, perceptual influences of the built environment upon us do survive in its persistent and unavoidable manner.

Commonly one unavoidably starts his every day in the same room, walks in the same corridor, and travels through the same fragments of the urban fabric and repeats that every day on and on. The effect or message embedded in these everyday scenes, either by will or by the effect of butterflies, will unavoidably be absorbed by people who dwell therein, bits by bits, day by day. However one must take the initiative first to make contact with specific medium of press, or of electronics before they can be influenced by those media. Hence the influence of the built environment still persists, in its old ways. What is changed is only the content, anchor and perspectives, but not the nature of the environment as a media. While the influence of media other than the built environment is still, in varied degrees, subject to the recipients’ choices, the influence of the built environment is irresistible.

Therefore, the phenomenal qualities of the built environment would direct men’s perception of the world , of its phenomenon and hence their consciousness of what abuts them. In that sense, a willfully designed and constructed environment could irradiate specific perceptual effect which sustains men’s intensity of consciousness upon chosen issues, and consequently induces collective interest and gathers intellectual inputs upon those matters. In other words, if we construct the perceptual layer of the environment with purpose, the way we build, architecture can act as a catalyst of mankind’s intellectual progression by gathering men’s consciousness around favored issues. Ideas are transcribed into the environment and absorbed by men who dwell therein day by day.

However we should immediately notice that, with or without a willful purpose, the perceptual influence of the built environment will still continue to work. Its inertia is eternal. Hence if we lose track of what is transcribed and feedback in and from the built environment, we completely lose control of our consciousness of the world through “things”.

The pipes ducts & cables are the Things of which resources, energy and signals are contained and brought to proximity and existence around men within these objects. The ways that these things are designed set up our perception and consciousness pattern with the respective phenomenon they contain and channel.

Right now the conduits of our built world are commonly devalued as mere utilities; their forms and pattern are subjected only to efficiency and convenience. And due to their bizarre appearance resulted from untamed arrangement in comparison to other tectonic components, they are always concealed or left untreated, as if we all agree that they are “invisible”. We tried to construct an absence out of the conduits. However in our dense urban context, what is resulted perceptually is actually quite the opposite.

We must admit that the scenes constructed by the conduits form quite provokative impression perceptually. Its pattern has the aesthetic of its own. However quoting Marshall McLuhan, it is only too typical that the “content” of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium. Right now what is cognitional (the message) about the conduits has nothing to do with what it has done to human life (the content). Our mind is easily imprisoned in the nostalgic appreciation of the bizarre appearance of the conduits pattern. It hindrances us from penetrating deeper into the origin of what has or should be transcribed into the conduits. And if we indeed surf our mind deeper into the messiness, we found that the aesthetics or the perceptual qualities were transcriptions of nothing related to human will. It is a result of a complete autonomy of the conduits themselves, resulted from a pseudo-absence that we have granted them since modernist’s rejection and escape from confronting the conduits.

This memory of an accepted pseudo-absence of the conduits has propagated quite thorougly among us. It severely diluted our consciousness in pioneering relationships between technology of habitation and architecture. This would impair the development of the twp, both singularly and mutually. Therefore we must look for a breed of architecture that acts argonistically to this decendent of pseudo-absence. This will be an architecture that construct the presence of the conduits; making sure that the content and the message shall cohere, and perceptually obvious of being an reacting force against its origin – the pseudo-absence.

Memory of Conduits
Memory of Conduits

類型
研究 – 論文

作者
杜澄興

年份
2011

公認的被忽視的管道 – “服務建築”的本體。

這理論和觀點主要基於海德格的《築、居、思》;諾伯舒茲的《場所現象》;莫里斯·梅洛-龐蒂的《知覺現象學》;馬歇爾·麥克盧漢的《媒介即訊息》和維克多·雨果的《這會弄死它的》。

認知是體驗的背景,引導著每個有意識的動作。而且人的認知在他的記憶。在我們不同感官的認知中,建築環境覆蓋巨大的城市。當中在不同建築類型的管道重要地散佈巨大的物理與感知的范圍。儘管維克多·雨果表示,建築與媒介和最近的發明相比,它不再是主導的媒介,但資訊網路、我們身上的認知被建築環境造成持久和不可避免的影響。

通常情況下,人無可避免地在同一房間開始他的每一天,每日重複行走著一樣的路綫並穿過城市肌理。植入式的日常場景中的效果或資訊,不論是主動願意或收到蝴蝶效應的影響,將無可避免地被居住其中的人們通過每日漸漸地吸收。但是在人們被這些資訊影響之前,他們必須主動接觸特定的媒體或電子產品。因此建築環境的影響以舊的方式存留。所改變的只是内容,錨點和角度,而不是作爲媒介的環境。雖然建築環境以外的媒介影響仍然在不同程度上取決於受眾的選擇,但建築環境的影響是不可抗拒。

因此,高質的建築環境會引導人們的認知,從而引導他們對周圍事物的意識。從這個意義上說,一個含設計與建造環境可以產生特定的感知效果,維持人對問題的意識程度和引發興趣並會投入當中。換句話說,如果我們有目的地建立感性環境,建築可以通過聚集人們圍繞感興趣的問題並成爲人類進步的催化劑。想法會被環境記錄並被居住其中的人們通過每日的吸收。

但是我們應該立即注意到,不論是否有或沒有目的,建築環境的認知的影響將會一直發揮其作用,是不變的慣性。因此如果我們失去了在建築環境記錄和響應的蹤跡,我們就會完全地失去通過“事物”對世界意識的控制。

管道和電纜是包含資源、能量和信號的東西,這些物體圍繞和接近人們並存在著。這些物體建立了我們的認知和意識,以及它們各自所包含的現象。

現今在我們的建築環境中的管道普遍地被貶值視爲純粹的公用設施;它們的外形和模式都是受效率和方便所影響。與其他建築元素作對比,由於奇怪的外觀都是由不受控的佈局所形成,它們總是被隱藏或未被對待,就像我們全部都同意它們是“不可見的”。我們嘗試建立管道的存在。但是在我們高密度的城市環境,事實上所發生的是頗爲相反的。

我們必須承認由管道構建的場景在感知上形成了相當刺激的印象。它的圖案有其的美學。然而,引用馬歇爾·麥克盧漢的話,任何媒體的“内容”會使我們看不到它的特徵。現今所認識關於管道的認知(資訊)與我們人類的生活(内容)沒有關係。我們的大腦在欣賞以前的懷舊很容易被管道的奇異圖形所束縛。它障礙我們瞭解更加深入的起源或被管道記錄的事物。而且如果我們真正地腦海中更深入地探索混亂,可以發現美學與感性所記錄的事物與人類意志沒關聯。這就是管道完全自發性的結果,自從現代主義者拒絕和逃避面對管道,我們便承認它們是一個“偽缺乏”。

公認被忽視的管道在我們的思想中徹底地傳播。它嚴重地削弱我們在開發建築居住與科技之間關係的意識。這會損害兩者單獨和互助的發展。因此我們必須尋找建築的產物並消除“偽缺乏”。這會是一個建立管道存在感的建築;確保内容與資訊的連貫性,並有明顯的感知去對抗它的反作用力 – “偽缺乏”。