Metatecture entries

ABOUT METATECTURE

In an era were the tables are rapidly turning and written language is incrementally persuaded to follow its fully grown and pragmatic child -the spoken one- some of us find ourselves either endorsing this change as Darwinian and necessary, while at the other end, some of us can’t help it but instead defend the value of the “Established” and its well-deserved endurance.

What we might rescue from these opposing views, is not which acronyms or adjectivizations are deemed appropriate, but the mutually agreed fact that for both sides of the spectrum, language is crucial and powerful, beautiful and complex and as we see nowadays, unpredictable.

In the early 1910s, a decade before he played an integral role in Europe’s Avant-garde movement along Picasso, Tzara, Ernst and Braque; the Chilean Poet Vicente Huidobro begun a literary movement called “Creationism” (independent or even an antonym from the religious concept of Creationism), simply to support poetry as the action of creating a “truly” new idea, a feeling, an image, a thought… something so genuinely new that by inference had be unique, something that implied and required a revision of the written language to catapult this “New” entity back to our comfortable consciousness and indeed construct a virtual reality that could have not been possible with our common language equations.

It follows that when the term Metatecture is proposed her, it is not to challenge neither Language nor Architecture -even knowing it is a necessary side effect- but essentially to link this two contrasting concepts on which the Metatecture Entries are built upon. The “Meta” before the concept of “Tectonics”; the built, the tangible.

In fact, the need to use the word” Metatecture” could have been avoided if the term “Architecture” appeared in the XX century after the works of Carl Jung, who proposed the idea of Archetypes while working on social psychiatry. Archetypes, often regarded as shamanistic by those who are not familiar with the realms of the psyche and its abstraction, is now difficult to correlate with such a tangible field as it is the Architecture.

But it was not always the case. “Architecture”, the concurred semantic construct, comes from centuries ago and along the way the “Archi-” prefix lost its true meaning. “The highest” in favor of “The Primitive”, the spiritual and transcendent connection between mind & matter, in favor of the mechanistic apprehension of reality… sprinkled with colorful splashes of Art.

To sum up, a final dissociation of form and function, our current paradigm, and the honest reason why the Metatecture Entries are presented to you.

Metatecture is then, to forego a more exhaustive semantic analysis, simply “beyond the tectonics”.

What is there beyond the tangible reality of materials, textures, shadows and lights in the field of Architecture?

Nothing really, if we address it from the materialistic perspective. Can we agree however that the intangible exists? If so, can we agree then that we interpret tangible reality as we would interpret the intangible, both with intangible means on tangible grounds?

Furthermore, can we say that every single iteration worth of human memory is subject to a subjective approach? It is very difficult to accept but nevertheless certain; academia excels at finding fact-based causality and procedural approaches to convey efforts and establish communications.

The fact remains that, even when studying the strictest of sciences, facts are inherently dependent on assumptions and assumptions must always rely on interpretation.

Conveying hermetic ideas is not an easy task, languages give us the opportunity to do so but again, we are forced to find common grounds or as Huidobro proposed, to perform “a coup d’état” to create .

If it is clear for me and for you what is an apple, a very definite and static object; concepts such as intellect, dependency and possibility to name a few, require us to bridge and consolidate multiple ideas, expanding our chances to subvert a cohesive message, giving birth to the vastness and unpredictability of communication happening (most certainly right now) “between the lines”. A path so powerful and volatile to convey ideas founded in the unknown alchemy of subconscious interpretation. Carl Jung’s Archetypes deal precisely with communication at this level.

In all evidence we must interpret to communicate and coexist, our interpretation of the environment happens at an individual level and it is supported by years and years of induced customization, what we call our very own and personal perspective.

At this point the ideas behind C. Jung work came to mind several years ago after the intuitive realization that there must be an unspoken thread unifying us. We share subtle traits beyond race, age and culture and these traits are the basis concepts we use to structure cognition and communication at the archetypical level.

Several years ago, while still studying Architecture and following common academic precepts, I asked myself a very simple question, a question that I never saw across my studies in the field and that made me look like a fool in front of my peers. For voicing this question I received a fair share of resistance, and a heart breaking one of indifference.

When directly asked by a board of academics after a long and quite infrequent discussion on the very nature of Architecture, I felt the board reached a saturation point and for them it was necessary to find a yes or a no, a concrete and absolute answer to which I could be bound to.

What is then for you Architecture?

I remember vividly scrutinizing my fingers and the lines running through my hand growing darker as I gently closed the fist.

I answered without a single thought process; I just opened my mouth and felt warm air coming out.

Nothing but air.

THE VOID

In Berlin, Germany, and almost one hundred years ago something quite formidable was about to dawn and change the approach to Architecture’s education from that day forward; in this case in quite a positive way.

Those were magnificent times; driven artists, writers and intellectuals would put their lives on the line to defend their ideas and so, manifests, schools of thought and subversive associations flourished in Europe.

Among them was the Bauhaus School of Architecture, a true revision of cognition and the overall approach to Architecture. The Bauhaus became quite popular and is still regarded as the most prevalent approach to teach and learn Architecture; even if it is almost 100 years old and even if the true principles are quite difficult to duplicate. You see, it was intrinsically a subversion-driven group with subversive individuals, and by contrast, those who duplicate are not subversive by nature. The Bauhaus then eventually became a Dogma; every new idea eventually becomes obsolete.

What is quite peculiar however, is an unknown fact, presumably coincidental, driven by chance. In a completely different discipline, around the same time and in the very same city, the Berlin School of Psychology developed the “Gestalt psychology”.

It happens that eventually, to be precise in 1927, renowned Gestalt psychologists decided to visit the Bauhaus School of Architecture and soon enough Architecture students, such as Vasily Kandinski, were attending Gestalt courses in the Dessau-Bauhaus School. Quite an atypical crossroad that could have been the birth of abstract painting and with it, the abstract interpretation of the tangible world. Mr. Kandinski is credited as being the first abstract purist painter.

Nowadays Architects not only lack the most necessary business education that any professional required to perform in a capitalist environment is in desperate need of, but have lost also this opportunity to understand human perception and interpretation of reality in a field where it should be mandatory.

The Gestalt theorists claimed a basic idea, the human eye sees objects in their entirety before perceiving their individual parts, they propose that the sum is greater than its components. If that is the case 1+1 is no longer 2. For instance, we could say is 3 and there is a “floating one” that, well, is somewhere between the zenith and the nadir.

Could it be the Nothing? A Void? Could this surplus beyond the utilitarian components be the essential one?

The holistic approach of the Gestalt School focused on the understanding of the whole as a necessity to acquire and maintain stable percepts, and just perhaps the emptiness is the canvas on which the visual apprehension is anchored.

Metatecture is built around the primacy of the Void, the angular stone (ironically a weightless one but nevertheless occupying mass) as the unifying thread and simultaneously, the ultimate purpose of Architecture.

It is a baffling concept to many, since we tend to classify a building by its visual and tangible components, when its very essence, like a wet fish, effortlessly escapes our hands.

The Void and our interaction with it is the primary driver to determine space functionality and comfort. Think about it. It is the very first constant in the equation, preceding light, preceding any tangible material.

The Void itself is not tacitly related to the purpose of the space, it is the purpose. To sleep, to eat, to work and to play, when we think of any activity, it has to happen primarily in the space-time continuum.

There is a reason why we avoid chaos and constantly organize our houses and bedrooms and drawers, if the void is not healthy, we suffer.

It could be worth at his point to revise the concept of Entropy, but for the moment let’s just revise its definition;

A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.

THE FLUX

“Everything is in a state of flux, including the status quo”.

Robert Byrne, American writer and billiard legend.

It is not just easier but maybe a bit more entertaining to revise this idea when it comes from such a character, a true Billiard master. The cause-effect relationships we see in the game between the stick and the billiard balls in a finite green rectangular universe, while being a formidable system on which mathematical calculations are magically manifested through the apex of focused intuition, in the utmost silence, in astronomical alignment, in this perfect instance where nothing but nothing else exists but you and the game, just before releasing the decisive hit… Well all this is also a quiet a testament of how we are intrinsically dependent and bound to assign a cause or a set of causes to explain and digest an effect, a response.

In a closed system, an “in vitro” type one such as the billiard game, we can definitely rely on the cause-effect paradigm. Mathematically put, an equation with only quantifiable constants will definitely have a single quantifiable answer.

There are certain days however, where relativity among constants arises and in fact, in most days we have to deal with variables, beyond ideal constants and their ideal attributes. A myriad of possible answers face us without even the need to fall into quantum physics.

Is Architecture one of those cases where we find ourselves at the mercy of many possible answers?

Now, if we are to explain the success of a given space we will inherently look for a set of causes, the more tangible the cause the more probable we will factor it in; since it is easier to communicate, since it is in all appearance self-evident, since it appeases our quest for answers, since it helps us borrow a cognition structure to rely upon.

Can the cause-effect paradigm be proposed instead as a cause-effect fallacy? Would it be such a crude understatement?

From Darwinist scientists to Dadaist artists, from politicians to anarchists, from the most evolved cultures to the most primal ones; the paradigm of chance is highly considered and accepted by many. It is not hard to find those, in any sphere of society, who are thrown aback or even blindly follow and praise the doctrine of chance, sometimes even as the manifestation of God’s will or as the source of genuine inspiration.

Chance; an indiscernible and ever-repeatable suite of events, a lightening fiercely traveling from the clouds to the ground changing angles, splitting, merging and hitting one single tree in the rain forest in just a matter of milliseconds destined to be unique. Wouldn’t it be terrifying if destiny was not unique?

If chance is unexplainable, it is because it is essentially a seemingly chaotic system of variables. But these variables, as unquestionably free and erratic as they are, would they follow any type of rule? Are they bound to anything? Even if metrics are yet to be developed to quantify all the plausible answers and consequently those with a higher chance of occurring, is there any common trait?

Is there anything we can translate into a green rectangular billiard’s table?

Metatecture embraces chance as it firmly believes, it is dictated by the Path of Least Resistance. Beware, for this is quite an ambitious statement. The underpinning above is that the equation of any suite of events in any organic, inert or ethereal system will gravitate towards the Path of Least Resistance based on the precept that electromagnetism, for what we do understand of it and for the immensity of what we are yet to understand, seems to govern all relationships between entities.

From the sub-atomic level, through the Alpha range of the human brain up to seismic activities and the macro cosmos, electromagnetism will follow the path of Least Resistance. From the ball picked up at the lottery, through river formations and urban deployments there exists this overpowering rule. An oblique incalculable hypotenuse rule?

While Metatecture acknowledges the Void as the unquestionable unit, it supports with the same emphasis the Flux and its subordination to the Path of Least Resistance as the thread establishing constantly a newer and “more contextual” connectivity. If in the brain neurons are as critical as the synapse among them, in Metatecture respectively, the Void and the Flux are equally important and inter-dependent.

The Flux, a malleable and plastic spider web.

But please tell me what, what makes the Flux tick through the Void?

What is the fundamental force driving the Flux through the Void?

What is a force, if not fire manifested.

THE FIRE

In 1527, 35 years after Cristopher Columbus discovered America, the Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro and his crew barely arrived to an Island right of the Coast of what is now Ecuador called La Isla del Gallo… or the Rooster’s Island.

Pizarro set up camp to await much needed reinforcements from the Spanish Crown before continuing his expedition South. For Pizarro and every single Spaniard, venturing on these trips was a golden, rather unique opportunity to obtain fame, wealth or redemption. Big risk and big rewards. Historians tell us that Pizarro’s army had fought it’s way south from Panama undergoing quite a tumultuous and unsuccessful journey, just to find themselves on this island, with a weakened and demoralized crew, not far from mutiny.

When the Spaniard rescue vessel coming from Panama city appeared on the Horizon, Pizarro prayed to God and thanked him for this new opportunity to continue exploring the Southern hemisphere and attempt to conquer the mighty Inca Empire.

The Incas were well known and respected by the tribes that Pizarro had previously encountered. The legends of vast riches that the Inca harbored had kept Pizarro and his crew alive and restless through thick and thin.

However, the Spaniard vessel brought instead a Royal notice to stop their pursuit and immediately return to Panama for further instructions. It is at this inflection point where history says that Pizarro stood on the beach, draw his sword, cut a line from East to West on the sand and spoke to his crew.

“To the North of this line lies the road back to Spain, where poverty and obscurity await… and to the South of this line lies the Inca Empire and a chance of riches and glory”.

Only thirteen Spaniards crossed the line into the South and the rest of the crew returned to Spain.  What follows for “Los Trece de la Isla del Gallo” or the Thirteen of the Island of the Rooster in English, was nothing short of epic.

Much so, that I find myself, 500 years later remembering them.

What pushed these men towards the impossible?

What made them disregard every reasonable argument and instead voluntarily walk straight into the smallest of probabilities?

If the Metatecture principles are anchored on the Void; the absence of matter, the essence of life through which the Flux -i.e. Us,- navigates through, following the path of least resistance, then we must ask ourselves what is the mysterious force behind the said path?

What drives us to take one step after the other and what makes us stop?

Light, or lack thereof.

The only congruent and common denominator for every action that we take.

Light in the larger sense of course as much as in the very tangible one.

Light as in Light to matter.

“Think to Be

Fly to Exist

Jump to Feel”

It occurs to me that the force of Light comes as much from our quest for purpose, as it comes from us running intuitively into darkness.

It occurs to me too that in the deep ends of the Universe, where light does not exist and all is absolute darkness; time nor space exist.

I understand then the most essential formula as follows:

“Light is life and Life is light”.