NOTHING | SOMETHING

The starting point of this thesis were the concepts of “thing”, “object” and the dipole “subject-object”.
A journey back in time, to the pre-industrial and industrial times, has been the motive for studying the way human perceptions change and how this transformation affects the design of objects and spaces.

Nowadays, design is called upon to take on a new role and face new challenges as both our relation with technology and perception change.

The question is: what are we actually designing today?

Introduction

Architectural design starts with the idea, inside the mind and through the perception. It evolves over time, is influenced and adjusted to the data of each period we go through. The way I perceive the world outside of me, the things and objects I come across daily, sets the foundations and codifies the way I design.

The Hybrids

Our era is characterized by hybridism, fluidity and diffusion. The subject is no longer the reference point, while we experience the world in a state of immersion and we can no longer control it. The objects and the things we use obtain new properties, They acquire a different meaning for us as we begin to perceive them differently and develop new relationships with them. They are content-determined, they become personal again and they are free. They become hybrids of things and objects.

//TheThing

Can we define the thing? In greek the word is «πράγμα»(pragma) that comes from the verb «πραχθέν» (prachthen) that means to produce. The handcrafting quality is what creates the things. Things always exist within a relational nature, remain always connected to their environment. They are in proportion to man, they develop relationships with each other and can exist without the subject. In the pre-industrial era things, human and the environment coexisted in harmony.

//TheObject

The existence of the object is entirely dependent on the subject. Object signifies I am against, I am standing opposite. Objects are in our perception and ontology, we distinguish them by names, qualities and species. Objects appear on the Industrial Era, during the human attempt to interpret and control the world around him. The will to acquire full control of his environmet through order and organization leads to the standardization, the categorization and ultimately to the automation of objects. The industrial objects lose their handmade quality and uniqueness and are removed from their surroundings.

The Perception

Due to the ambiguity of the word, thing carries the notion of intermediary. On the contrary, we perceive objects through codes by which our interpretive perception gives them meaning and substance, in a way we can use them as facts. An object can be perceptibly transformed into a thing when it can no longer perform its common function. When an item breaks or malfunctions, it is personalized. Bill Brown writes, “We face the thingness of objects when they stop working for us.”

In every era, the way we perceive the reality changes as each time it is determined through the prism that man perceives the world. Today, technology is this prism that encloses the human cognition. Technology places people and things in a new digital convention. The thing-object and object-subject dipoles begin to be abolished.

However, technology is a tool and a mean for humans to achieve theis goals. Man has always evolved with the tools he used, which were part of his evolutionary process. The tools of the pre-industrial and industrial times were an extension of human capabilities and their use was part of natural selection giving humans the evolutionary advantage. The tools of the Digital Era such as the computer are replacing capabilities whilst they gain some level of autonomy in their operation.

The Design and the New Direction

Changes in the way we perceive the space and objects around us in the digital environment and the use of new technologies inevitably lead to a change not only in the nature of architecture but also in its purpose. Today’s design is characterized by flexibility and scalability, leading to new spatial searches. Also, is digital, translated, personalized, creates metaphors and based on logic. According to Antonino Saggio, the purpose of a building today is not only to be functional, stable, spatially rich or habitable, but to remind itself of something beyond itself.

For Henry Lefebvre space is a representation or conception produced experientially by the user. The result of architectural production will be more efficient when the synthetic process takes into account the senses and logic that lead to a multidimensional experience. Ιn that way, architecture of today emphasizes more on the relation of the user with his environment meaning the experience and the atmosphere, the function, but also the interaction.

So, new types of architectural design arise, such as responsive and behavioral design.

//Responsive Design

Responsive design is based on the response of the produced object or space to the user and his movements. One of the greater examples are “smart” objects or smart environments. The principles of responsive design focus more on the interaction with the user and the customization of each object that he uses like the cellphones or the personal computer.

//Behavioral Design

Behavioral design, focuses more on the way that the user perceives the object and the psychological traits that the user tend to give to objects or spaces such as its movement or its behavior. A behavioral object is not perceived as a simple functional or moving object, but a moving being with some levels of perception. In order to design a behavioral object, we have to focus on more intangible aspects such as the behavior, the movement and the human perception rather than the form or the function of the object or the space.



You can access the full thesis here:

nothing/something[EN]

nothing/something[GR]