1: formless ; 2: events and spaces

TOPIC 1: Formless

As computer aided design becomes more and more common among the younger generation, complex form making and construction has been made easier for architects. The process of design is commercialized and generalized in a way that it is losing the sensuous connection to life.

“The creative act in which a work of architecture comes into being is beyond all historical and technical knowledge. Its focus is on the dialogue with the issues of the time.” (- from Peter Zumthor: Thinking Architecture)

Architecture is about human perception of space, which in turn is done by connecting our senses to the built environment. As the space unfold itself second by second to us, the atmosphere created by the environment as a whole triggers an emotion, which inspires thoughts and memory footprints.

How can one design without a form? How can one design without any preconception of what his architecture would be like? Is there a way to distill architecture to its purest essence, and is it possible to reverse a design process in order to reinterpret the architecture as the collective of atmospheres?

TOPIC 2: Spaces and events

“Can one attempt to make a contribution to architectural discourse by relentlessly stating that there is no space without event, no architecture without program? ….Our work argued that architecture – its social relevance and formal invention – could not be dissociated from the events that ‘happened’ in it.” (- from Bernard Tschumi: Questions of space)

If I talk about “program”, you automatically relate named functions to the images of various spaces.

In this age when many of the large architectural projects taken up by developers, the term “program” becomes a hot key for fast visualization of a space, but this also lead to a disintegration of the final product from the actions and events.

If the event itself is a space making action, what, and how, can we learn from the events in order to design? If program is neutral, and the space is not, what is the missing element between the two?

If there is no program, can the architecture still exist within the event?