The following article is drawn from a 1993 interview with architect and theorist Paul Virilio from the book "The Virtual Dimension"
The image that accompanies the title of the chapter, Architecture in the Age of its Virtual Disappearance is a black and white photograph of the "Cathedral of Light" designed by top ranking Nazi Albert Speer for the famous Nuremburg Rally on September 11, 1937. The quote that accompanies was made by Neville Chamberlain who described it thus, "The effect was both Solemn and beautiful, it was like being in a cathedral of ice." I find it interesting that this image and the quote accompanying it, are, in a sense, the preface to the interview. While the subject of the article pertains to the growing dominance of digital technology in the tradition driven field of modern architecture, that's not really ALL it is about. Aside from the Cathedral of Light, there is another (European) architectural work mentioned in the context of what Virilio is trying to talk about made about; the palace of Versailles's Hall of Mirrors. He brings up how the manner in which the mirrors and candle light are used to not only compensate for lack of space within the Hall, but to create a genuine virtual space in it's own right. A space that is arguably related to the Cathedral of Light and others, and that fits into an essential statement which can help shed light on the expanding definition of architecture in the 21st century.
And speaking of the hall of mirrors, we should take some time to make a point about a new architectural material that does not simply REFLECT light, but which generates it as well. If a mirrors and glass, materials which are designed to inadvertantly display the dissolution of traditional architecture, the picture screen is surely another. There has always been a question of what is space and what is not space, and to what end it defines the building. at issue essentially, is what is defined as space, and what is defined as material? in the past, glass was a material, but not a defining structural material used in architecture itself. This changed with Mies Van Der Roe of course. Some time in the not too distant future, we may see a structure that is made ENTIRELY of screens (or almost entirely) something that could in essence be the contemporary equivalent to the Crystal Palace in London, a true technological feat in it's own time.
When looking to non European countries, one finds yet more correlations between space, and non space, to the borders of what is architecture and what is not. One such is ofcourse, the Ise shrine in Japan. The Shrine has been perpetually built up and torn down every 17 years for centuries in order for the shrine to appear to be perpetually new and clean. While physically, the shrine is not there after it's been torn down and while it is not technically the same structure, in actuality, and by it's own merit, it must be considered to be among the oldest free standing structures in Japan. There is a virtual element to it, and a very strong one at that, for even while it has been totally dismantled, the space is heavily guarded and scrutinized so that it can be built up exactly where it is supposed to stand. because since it has been continuously rebuilt throughout it's history.
In traditional Korean architecture, there is what is known as the Madang, an empty space that functions as just that. Empty space. It is not a courtyard, or commons area, it is intended to help structure the architectural evnironment of whatever it is housed in.
"Centuries ago matter was defined by two things, mass and energy. Now we must include a third, information. While mass is still linked to gravity and maeriality, informatin tends to be fugitive. The mass of a mountain ofr example is something invariable, itis immobile; its informatin however changes constatnly. for a prehistoric mand the mountain is a nameless mass. It's information is to be an obstaclein his way. Later the mountain slowly ceases to an obstacle. It takes on other meanings, for instance that of the holy mountain. It gets painted in perspective, photographed, analyzed and exploited for resources. The mountain for us contains a whole world of information."
"If you concede that architecture, in a primary sense, has to deal with statics, resistance of materials, equilibrium, and gravity. Any architect works with the mass and energy of a building and its structure. But in terms of information, architecture still stays somewhat behind the behind the present development.
Your writings about disappearance as a new mode of appearance are linked to a set of scientific approaches giving new emphasis to time, for examp,le the theoris of chaos, catastrophe, and complexity. Ana,lyzing the devolpment of forms, the theory of morphogenesis severly shakes up every discourse about form in architiecture. It defines form no longer as something static ub constanly changing and re-emerging in new configurations. Could this altered notion of form affect architecture?
"It is not easy for me to answer this question since, for me, architecture is just about to loose everything that characterized it in the past. Step by step looses all its elements. In some way, you can read the importance given today to glass and transparency as a metaphor of the disappearance of matter. i tanticipates the media buildings in some Asian cities with facades entirely made of screens. In a certain sense,the screen becomes the last wll. no wall out of stone, but of screens showing images. The actual boundary IS the screen.
What used to be the essence of architecture is more and more taken over by other technologies. The terminology defining architecture has been dispersed through the fields of technology, economics, and music. Contemporary architecture is incresingly becoming something which is nearly unrecognizable. Largest contributing factor to this development, the dissolution and dispersal of architectural space, is mobility. The territory of the internet is no longer confined to nodes that can be placed on a map listing public libraries, coffee shops and hotspots. It is now a space as ubiquitous as the very air we breath (and we must be in agreement that it is fundamentally a space that we inhabit).
Because of the increasing replacement of hitherto material elements of architecture by technical substitutes, a term like high-tech architecture appears tautological. "High technology" would be enough; it is unnecessary to add "architecture". It is certainly not by chance that many architects today use the vocabulary of airplanes and space shuttles. to design something immobile they apply the aesthetics of a vehicle-which bears some paradox in itself.
You could put it another way by saying that architecture today integrates elements that used to be part of something else. A hybridization of hitherto unconnected genres merging together into something new. As for example the encounter of tectonics and electronics in virtual space.
One of the consequences of virtual space for architecture is a radical modification of its dimensions. So far, architecture has taken place within the three dimensions and time. Recent research on virtual space has revealed a virtual dimension. Unlike the three known dimensions of space, this dimension can no longer be expressed in integer numbers but in fractional ones. It will be interesting to see how this is going to affect space. To some degree, virtuality has been haunting architecture for a long time. It announced itself in a set of spatial topologies. The alcove, for example, is a kind of virtualized room. The vesituble could be called a virtualized house. A telephone booth then virtualizes the vestibule; it is almost not a space, nevertheless it is the place of a personal encounter. All these types of spaces prepare for something and engage a transition. Thus virtual reality tends to extend the real space of architecture toward virtual space. That's why it is no longer a question of simply putting on a head-mounted display, squeezing into a data-suit, promenading within virtual space-as Jason Lanier, Scott Fisher, and many others do.
The space of the future would be of both a real and virtual nature. Architecture will "take place," in the literal sense of the word, in both domains: in real space (the materiality of architecture) and virtual space (the transmission of electromagnetic signs). The real space of the house will have to take into account the real time of the transmission.
Architects try increasingly to design space directy with spatial means (the model, for example) instead of taking the two dimensional detour of the drawing. To reach beyond the limitations of ordinary computer aided design, there are attempts to apply virtual reality as a design tool for architectural design. After having defined a space within a conventional computer model on the screen, one enters this space virtually to continue to design "from within".
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