From Object to Field: Field Conditions in Architecture and Urbanism Stan Allen Stan Allen’s ‘From Object to Field’ clearly articulates an approach to heterogeneous space in architecture and urbanism that contrasts both Modernist ideals of space as a uniform plane and Cubist concepts that informed Past-Modernist collage techniques. A series of historical case studies, such as the Cérdoba Mosque and non-architectural referents, offers a summary genealogy of the field within architecture and aesthetics, In many ways, Allen’s use of the field complements Robin Evans's idea of the ‘matrix’, extends the implications of Banham’s atmospheric architecture and can be understood as a translation of Deleuze and Guattari’s presentation of ‘smooth space’ into the realm of design. Allen's Presentation does more than offer the ‘field’ as another design trope, in that the field significantly alters the Modernist relationship between form, programme and space, as well as blurring the normative boundary between ‘the discrete architectural building and larger urban forces and conditions. In that way, the article implies a deterritorialisation of disciplinary striations of the environmental disciplines, such as architecture, landscape and city planning, moving from the design of discrete artefacts to a choreography of multitudinous relations. The field describes a space of propagation, of effects. It contains mo matter or material points, rather functions, vectors and speeds. It describes locel relations of difference within fields of celerity, transmission or careering points, in a word, what Minkowski called the world. Sanford Kwinter, 1986 Field conditions move from the one toward the many, from individuals to collectives, from objects to fields. The term itself plays on a double meaning. Architects work not only in the office or studio but in the field: on site, in contact with the fabric of architecture. ‘Field conditions’ here implies the acceptance of the real in all its messiness and unpredictability. It implicates architects in a material improvisation conducted on site 1 real time. Field conditions treat constraints as opportunity. Working with and not against the site, something new is produced by registering the complexity of the given. A distinct but related set of meanings begins with an intuition of a shift from object to in recent theoretical and visual practices. In its most complex manifestation, ‘field ditions’ refers to mathematical field theory, to non-linear dynamics and computer simulations of evolutionary change. It parallels a shift in recent technologies from analog object to digital field. It pays close attention to precedents in visual art, from the abstract 119° From Object to Fieldpainting of the 1920s to Minimalist and Postminimalist sculpture of the 1960s, Post-war composers, as they moved away from the strictures of serial music, employed concepts such as ‘clouds’ of sound, or, in the case of lannis Xenakis, statistical music in which complex acoustical events cannot be broken down into their constituent elements, The infrastructural elements of the modern city, by their nature linked together in open- ended networks, offer another example of field conditions in the urban context. Finally, a complete examination of the implications of field conditions in architecture would necessarily reflect the complex and dynamic behaviours of architecture’s users, and speculate on new methodolagies to model program and space To generalise, a field condition would be any formal or spatial matrix capable of unifying diverse elements while respecting the identity of each. Field configurations are loosely bounded aggregates characterised by porosity and local interconnectivity. Overall shape and extent are highly fluid and less important than the internal relationships of parts, which determine the behaviour of the field. Fields work neither through regulating grids nor conventional relationships of axiality, symmetry or hierarchy. The rules of combination have less to do with the arrangement of distinct and identifiable elements, as with the seria! aggregation of a large number of relatively small, more-or-less similar parts. Field conditions are relational, and not figural, they are based on interval and measure. Scale matters; field conditions depend on repetition, and require a certain expanse to register. Field conditions have a special capacity to make abstract forces visible. A plate af iron filings will register the patterns of a magnetic field, but the filings are not the field - they are simply the graphic record of the invisible forces of the field itself: as Kwinter asserts ‘no matter or material points, rather functions, vectors and speeds’. Field conditions are bottom-up phenomena, defined not by overarching geometrical schemas but by intricate local connections. Form matters, but not so much the forms of things as the forms between things A description of the properties and potentials af what | am calling field conditions does not claim to produce a systematic theory of architectural form or composition. What is intended here is a catalogue of working strategies, available for appropriation, testing and adjustment, in the field. The theoretical model proposed here anticipates its own irrelevance in the face af the realities of practice. These are working concepts, derived from experimentation in contact with the real. Field conditions intentionally mixes high theory with low practices. The working assumption here is that architectural theory does not arise in a vacuum, but always in a complex dialogue with ongoing practice. Geometric vs Algebraic Combination The diverse elements of classical architecture are organised into coherent wholes by means of geometric systems of proportion. Although ratios can be expressed numerically, the relationships intended are fundamentally geometric. Alberti’s well-known axiom that “Beauty is the consonance of the parts such that nothing can be added or taken away’ 120. Space ReaderConaitiona, conte Architect 121. From Object to Fieldss Hilgeto expresses an ideal of organic geometric unity. The conventions of classical architecture dictate not only the proportions of individual elements but also the relationship between individual elements. Parts form ensembles, which in turn form larger wholes. Precise rules of axiality, symmetry or formal sequence govern the organisation of the whole. Classical architecture displays a wide variation on these rules, but the principle of hierarchical distribution of parts to whole is constant. Individual elements are maintained in hierarchical order by extensive geometric relationships in order to preserve overall unity.” Geometry is the invisible scaffold that at once controls the distribution of parts, but disappears in the final building. The masque at Cordoba, Spain, under construction over a span of nearly eight centuries, offers an instructive counterexample.’ When the mosque was founded in the eighth century, the type form of the mosque had already been clearly established: an enclosed forecourt flanked by the minaret tower, opening on to a covered space for worship, perhaps derived from market structures, or adapted from the Roman basilica, The enclosure is loosely oriented toward the quibala, a continuous prayer wall marked by 2 small niche (the mihrab). In the first stage of the Cérdaba Mosque [¢ 785-800], the typological precedent was respected, resulting in simple structure of 10 parallel walls perpendicular to the quibolo, supported on columns and pierced by arches, defining a covered space of equal dimension to the open court. The directionality of the arched walls operates in counterpoint to the framed vistas across the grain of the space. The columns are located at the intersection of these two vectors, forming an undifferentiated but highly charged field. Complex parallax effects are generated as viewer moves throughout the field. The entire west wall was open to the courtyard, so that once within the precinct of the mosque, there is no single entrance. The axial processional space of the Christian church gives way to non-directional space, a serial order of ‘one thing after another’. 122 Space ReaderAAA ee ee | ‘debe, Spain (shaded ares indicates original extent) fer adr Pedro Feduel 123. Fram Object to FieldThe mosque was subsequently enlarged in four stages. Significantly, with each addition, the fabric of the original remains substantially intact. The typological structure is reiterated at larger scale, while the local relationships remain fixed. By comparison with Western classical architecture, it is possible to identify contrasting principles of combination: one algebraic, working with numerical units combined one after another, and the other geometric, working with figures (lines, planes, solids) organised in space to form larger wholes.° |n Cérdoba, for example, independent elements are combined additively to form an indeterminate whole. The relations of part to part are identical in the first and last versions constructed. The local syntax is fixed, but there is no overarching geometric scaffolding. Parts are not fragments of wholes, but simply parts. Unlike the idea of closed unity enforced in Western classical architecture, the structure can be added on to without substantial morphological transformation. Field configurations are inherently expandable; the possibility of incremental growth is anticipated in the mathematical relations of the parts. It could be argued that there are numerous examples of Western classical buildings that have grown incrementally and have been transformed over time. St Peter's in Rome, for example, has an equally long history of construction and rebuilding. But there is a significant difference. At St Peter's, additions are morphological transformations, elaborating and extending a basic geometric schema. This contrasts with the mosque at Cérdoba where each stage replicates and preserves the previous stage of construction by the addition of self-same parts. And at Cordoba, even in later stages when the mosque was consecrated as a Christian church, and @ Gothic cathedral inserted into the continuous and undifferentiated fabric of the mosque, the existing spatial order resists recentering. As Rafael Manea has observed: ‘| do not believe that the Cérdoba Mosque has been destroyed by all these modifications. Rather, | think that the fact that the mosque continues to be itself in the fece of all these interventions is a tribute to its own integrity.’° The integrity that Moneo identifies is not an overall form to be preserved, or a set of geometric relationships, but rather the tight interlock of part to part, and the architectural precision of the elements themselves: column, arch, skylight, and the interval that structures their relationships. In more recent practice, Le Corbusier's Venice Hospital employs a plan syntax of repeated self-same parts, establishing multiple links at its periphery with the city fabric. The project develops horizontally, through a logic of accumulation. The basic block of program, the ‘care unit’ formed of 28 beds, is repeated throughout. Consulting rooms occupy open circulation spaces in the covered space between. The rotating placement of blocks establishes connections and pathweys from ward to ward, while the displacement of the blocks opens up voids within the horizontal field of the hospital. There is no single focus, no unifying geometric schema, As in the mosque at Cérdoha, the overall form is an elaboration of conditions established locally.” 124 Space ReaderWe know of two ways to unfocus attention. Symmetry is one of them; the other is the over-all where each small part is a sample of what you find elsewhere John Cage Walking Out of Cubism Rosalind Krauss has described the painting practice of Barnett Newman as using a sequence of plane/line/plane to ‘walk out of the imperatives of Cubist space and close the door behind him.? It’s a telling phrase that reminds us that in large part, the story of post-war American painting and sculpture is a story of this effort to move beyond the limits of Cubist compositional syntax. Sculptors in particular, working under the shadow of Abstract Expressionist painting, felt that a complex language of faceted planes and figural fragments inherited from pre-war European artists was inadequate to their larger ambitions. It is this sense of the exhaustion of available compositional models or more accurately, a mistrust of the idea of composition itself, that triggers the need for new process-based working strategies that are so impartant to the emergence of Minimalism in the mid 1960s, Robert Morris's refusal of composition in favour of process, or Donald Jude's critique of ‘composition by parts’, are evidence of this effort to produce a new model for working, a model that might have some of the canceptual power and sense af inevitability that characterised the abstract painting of the previous decades. Minimalist work of the 1960s and 1970s sought to empty the artwork of its figurative or decorative character in order to fareground its architectural condition. The construction af meaning was displaced from the object itself to the spatial field between the viewer and the object: a fluid zone of perceptual interference, populated by moving bodies. 128. From Object to Fieldby Inis A Foundation. Li ED Artists such as Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Morris or Judd sought to go beyond formal o compositional variation, to engage the space of the gallery and the body of the vie In written statements, both Judd and Morris express their scepticism toward European ( Cubist) compositional norms, and reassert ideas of process and fabrication. They place their work instead in a specifically American context: ‘European art since Cubism h: been a history of permuting relationships around the general premise that relationships should remain critical, American art has developed by uncovering successive premises for making itself* (Morris), Both single out Jackson Pollock for his decisive contribution Judd notes that ‘mest sculpture is made part by part, by addition, composed ...”. For Judd, what is required is consolidation: ‘In the new work the shape, image, color and surface are single and not partial and scattered. There arer’t any neutral or modera’ areas or parts, any connections or transitional areas.’ The aspirations of Minimalist work are therefore toward unitary forms, direct use of industrial materials, and simp combinations: @ ‘pre-executive’ clarity of intellectual and material terms. Minimalism decisive tectonic shift activated the viewing space and reasserted the artwork’s condition as ‘specific object’ 126 Space ReaderNo Pattic Gallery. N 2. Six Bio A couresy lery, New York 127 From Object to FieldAnd yet if Minimalism represents a significant overturning of pre-war compositio principles, it remains indebted to certain essentialising models in its reductive fori language and use of materials. Its objects are clearly delimited and solidly constructed (Judd’s later architectural constructions confirm this essential tectonic conservatism). Minimalism develops in sequences, but rarely in fields. It is for this reason that the work of artists usually designated “Postminimal’ is of particular interest here." In contrast to Andre or Judd, the work of artists such és Bruce Nauman, Linda Benglis, Keith Sonnier, ‘Alan Saret, Eva Hesse or Barry Le Va is materially diverse and formally improper. Words movement, technology, fluid and perishable materials, representations of the body — all of these ‘extrinsic’ contents that Minimalism had repressed — return in modified form. Postminimalism is marked by hesitation and ontological doubt where the Minimalists are definitive; it is painterly end informal where the Minimalists are restrained; it remains committed to tangible things and visibility where the Minimalists are concerned with underlying structures and ideas. These works, from the wire constructions of Alan Saret, to the paured sculptures of Linda Benglis, to the ‘non~ sites’ of Robert Smithson introduce chance and contingency into the work of art. They shift even more radically the perception of the work, from discrete object to a record of the process of its making, in the field The artist who moves mest decisively in the direction of what | am calling fiele conditions is Barry Le Va. Partly trained as an architect, Le Va is acutely aware of the spatial field implicated by the sculptural work. Beginning in the mid 1960s, he began making pieces, some planned in advance, others incorporating random process, that thoroughly dissolve the idea of ‘sculpture’ as a delimited entity, an object distinct from the field it occupies. He called these works distributions: ’... whether “random” or “orderly” a “distribution” is defined as “relationships of points and configurations to each other” or concomitantly, “sequences of events.”” As with the other examples described above, local relationships are more important than overall form. Time anc process become decisive variables in making the work, The generation of form through ‘sequences of events’ is a principle that can be found in many field-like phenomena: and it has precise organisational implications. Le Va signals a key compositio principle emerging out of Postminimalism, and linked to previous examples: the displacement of control to a series of intricate local rules for combination, or as ‘sequences of events’ and not as an overall formal configuration. And in the case of Postminimalism, this is often related to material choices. When working with materials such as wire mesh (Alan Saret), poured latex (Linda Benglis) or blown flour (Le Va), the artist simply cannot exercise a precise formal control over the material. instead the artist establishes the conditions within which the material will be deployed, and then directs its flows. In the case of Le Va's felt pieces, it is a matter of relating fold to fold. line to line. In later works from the 1960s, the materials themselves become so ephemeral as to function as a delicate registration of process and change 128. Space ReaderField Constructions The common element in these two examples — ane from within the culture of architecture, and one from outside - is a shift of emphasis from abstract formal description to close attention to the operations of making. Questions of meaning and composition are secondary. In the case of the masque at Cérdoba, the architects gave only rudimentary consideration to the exterior form (which was dictated by and large by the constraints of site), but paid close attention to measure and interval of the individual elements. In the case of the Postminimal artists, there is a sense of giving in to the promiscuous logic of the material itself: to let matter itself shape and calculate its possible configurations, only loosely directed by the artist. This is a crucial point, and it is in this sense that the idea of field conditions connects up to new attitudes toward fabrication and form-making, and the question of standardisation, in contemporary architecture. Today it is possible to imagine (and with computer fabrication, increasingly easy to realise) a form af construction that advances not from the whole down to the part, seeing the detail as the verification of a larger compositional idea, but from part to part: starting with the individual element, and specifying the manner in which it joins the next element, and the next, moving outwards from the smallest part to the whole. (As Jasper Johns has remarked: ‘Why take the part for the whole; why not take the part for the part?’) Difference or figure can be produced 129° From Object to Fieldincrementally, out of repetition and the constructional logic of the fabric, as opposed to a disjunctive break imposed from outside. In this case, the joint or the detail is not an occasion to articulate the intersection of two materials (as is the case, for example, with an architect such as Carlo Scarpa), but is instead the locus of an intensive design energy that proceeds outwards to condition the form of the whole. This way of working is not necessarily new. The Uruguayan engineer Eladio Dieste (working in the 1960s, without the benefit of the computer) applied his knowledge of statics and the strength of materials to brick construction. Based on his theoretical knowledge and extensive practical experience, Dieste knew exactly how far he could displace one brick from the next in the construction of a wall and still maintain the integrity of the construction. These small displacements repeated many times create astonishing figural effects, producing difference without disjunction. The transitions remain small and incremental, and do not produce breaks - there is nothing of fragmentation in this lanquage — but the overall effect is one of unexpected formal permutations that are all the more convincing for the way in which they are produced out of the intemal logic of constructional system. Here, without resorting to facile metaphors of flow, we can say that the fabric of the building responds fluidly to circumstance without giving up any of its solidity. Field conditions in this sense becomes a way to rethinking questions of identity and difference: part to whole, local difference and overall stability. The field is a material condition, not a metaphor. Field conditions have to do with organisation, matter, and making, going beyond the conventional opposition of construction and form-making. By looking for a precise and repeatable link between the operations of construction and the overall form produced by the aqgregatian of those parts, it is possible to begin to bridge the gap between building and form-making Constructional decisions at this local scale are insistently geometric and have formal implications. By remaining attentive to the detail conditions that determine the connection of ane part to another, by understanding construction as a ‘sequence of events’, it becomes possible to imagine an architecture that can respond fluidly and sensitively to local difference while maintaining overall stability. The American City: Open Field The rectilinear grid is one of architecture's oldest and most persistent organising devices. From the outset, the grid supports a double valence: at once a simple and pragmatic means to partition territory or standardise elements, and at the same time an emblem of universal geometries, with potential metaphysical or cosmological overtones. But the grid is out of favour today. On the one hand, the consistency of the grid is suspect because it may work to suppress local difference in favour of essentialising universals; conversely, the association of the grid with technocratic efficiency suggests that the grid is simply 2 technical instrument, barren of meaning. Either the grid carries too much meaning, or not enough. 130 Space Reader13: From Object to FieldA closer attention to specific cases allows for a more nuanced reading. In 1784, a committee chaired by Thomas Jefferson produced a report outlining the way in which the newly acquired Western Territories of the United States were to be settled. Fearing land speculators (who might take advantage of the complexities of traditional metes and bounds surveys), Jefferson proposed that the territory be surveyed before being sold, divided up into a system of regular squares aligned with the principal meridians.”” Passed into law in 1785, the survey commenced just west of the Ohio River, and eventually extended to the Pacific Ocean. It imposed a system of regular land division, easy to measure and subdivide, projected unconditionally over all the open territories of the American continent: a vast, geometric net thrown indifferently over all of the loca variation of geography, topography, culture and history. |t was unprecedented in scale and ambition. The Fifth Principal Meridian, for example, traverses six stales, running unbroken from Arkansas to the Canadian border in Minnesota. There are exceptions of course. “Correction lines’ had to be introduced to offset the convergence of the north-south survey lines, and local geological inconsistencies that wreaked havoc on compass headings created ‘shatter zones’ where lines had to be sharply angled to meet up. Nevertheless, the Jeffersonian grid is at once a powerful symbol of democratic equality and at the same time an expedient means to manage vast quantities of territory, It is a heroic effort to impose measure on the immeasurable expanse of the American landscape. What is interesting in this context is the way in which this expansive, universal grid is made visible in cities and towns. The earliest examples of aricded planning in the New World were Jesuit colonies, defensive enclaves organised hierarchically around the cathedral square in imitation of Spanish models. In sharp contrast to these self-enclased units, and equally distant from the figural concepts of 18th-century town planning in Europe, the American cities of the Midwest and the West are local intrications and perturbations of the extended Jeffersonian grid. The town is an elaboration of the order applied to the farmland surrounding it. The grid is given as a convenient starting point, not as an overarching ideal. The brute facticity of the grid overrides any transcendent geometric order. As the authors of New York City’s 1811 Commissioner's Plan wrote, ‘a city is to be composed principally of the habitations of men, and strait-sided and right angled houses are the mast cheap to build and the most convenient to live in. The effect of these plain and simple reflections wi decisive’'* Over time, the accumulation of small variations establishes a counterprinciale to the universal geometry of the grid. Because it does nat insist so much on its ideality, t! grid accommodates the accidents of geography in a relaxed manner: it simply stops, picking up again on the other side of the river, mountain range or canyon. Extensive subdivision, addition and subtraction create local variation that also tends to undercut the regularity of the arid. In these American cities, pragmatics unpacks the ideality of the grid, just as the unthinkable extent of the grid itself nullifies its status as an ideal object. These American cities are prototypical field conditions. Local variations of topography or history are smoothly accommodated within the overall order; borders are loosely defined 182 Space Readeron For Shs & Angele ard Bu y. Toronto 183. From Object to Fieldand porous. These cities have no fixed edge, because they are only a local instance of 2 larger, field-like order. Through highways and train lines that follow a similar organising logic, they are connected with one another in larger networks. Organisation and structure display almost infinite variety, within patterns that are publicly legible and institutionally manageable. The order adjusts to local contingency without campromising its overal sense of coherence. Veriation and consistency; difference and order - the very American ideals of individual freedom and collective responsibility — are held in delicate balance. Thick 2D: Moirés, Mats All grids are fields, but not all fields are grids. One of the potentials of the field is to redefine the relation between figure and ground. Legal and social theorist Roberto Mangabeira Unger has identified the traditional attributes of religious expression in the architecture of iconoclastic societies as ‘blankness, vastness and pointing’." Unger's terminology could also apply to the basic attributes of what | am calling field conditions. The field is non-fiqural, hence ‘blank’ and resistant to semiotic interpretation; the field is necessarily vast, that is to say, it needs expanse and a sufficient number of repetitions to register as @ field, and not @ fragment. The third term, ‘pointing’, is less obvious, but important in this context. The ability of an architecture to point ‘to a world outside this world’ (Unger) implies something more complex than a simale opposition between the figurative and the abstract, between field and the figure. It reaffirms the capacity of an abstract system to carry meaning, and trigger differences: a directed field. Formally, it suggests that the figure could be understood not as a demarcated object read against 2 stable field, but as an effect emerging from the field itself: as a moment of intensity, as a peak or valley within a continuous field What is intended here is a close attention to the production of difference at the lacal scale, even while maintaining @ relative indifference to the form of the whole. Authentic and productive social differences, it is suggested, thrive at the local level, and not in the form of large-scale semiotic messages or sculptural forms. Hence the study of these field combinations would be a study of models that work in the zone between figure and abstraction, models that refigure the conventional opposition between figure and abstraction, or systems of organisation capable of producing vortexes, peaks and protuberances — effects that introduce cifference and direction pointing’) — cut of a system of repeated individual elements that are themselves regular and organised into a larger, coherent whole Some of these organisational strategies are simulated, or anticipated in purely graphic form. A moiré, for example, is a figural effect produced by the superposition of two reguler fields. Unexpected effects, exhibiting complex and apparently irregular behaviours, result from the combination of elements that are in and of themselves repetitive and regular. But moiré effects are not random. They shift abruptly in scale, and repeat according to complex mathematical rules. Moiré effects are often used to measure hidden stresses in continuous fields, or to map complex figural forms. In these cases, 134 Space Readerfoirs Paster and Algoritimic Simulation of Bat Reproduced by perm Jniversity Pres 188 From Object to Fieldfigure and field can never be separeted out as distinct entities. In either case there is an uncanny coexistence of a regular field and emergent figure In the architectural or urban context, the example of moiré effects begs the question of surface and depth, The field is fundamentally a horizontal phenomenon — even a graphic one — and all of the examples described so far function in the extended plan dimension. Instead of refusing this characteristic, it is worthwhile examining it more closely. The superposition of two systems already implies a sectional condition. Althaugh certain Past- Moder cities (Tokyo for example) might be characterised as fully three-dimensional fields, the prototypical cities of the late 20th and early 21st century are characterised by horizontal extension. Los Angeles, for example, is an extended field condition, a loose-knit urban fabric, stitched together by freeways, and porous to the natural landscape it inhabits, What field combinations seem to promise in this context is a thickening, and intensification of experience at specified moments within the extended field of the city. The monuments of the past, including the skyscraper (a Modernist monument to efficiency), stood out from the fabric of the city as privileged vertical moments. The new institutions of the city will instead occur at moments of intensity, linked to the wider network of the urban field, and marked not by demarceting lines but by thickened surfaces. Flocks, Schools, Swarms, Crowds In the late 1980s, artificial life theorist Craig Reynolds created a computer program to simulate the flocking behaviour of birds. As described by M Mitchell Waldrop in Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, Reynolds placed a large number of autonomous, bird-like agents, which he called ‘boids’, into an on- screen environment. The boids were programmed to follow three simple rules of behaviour: first, to maintain a minimum distance from other objects in the environment (other boids, as well as obstacles); second, to match velocities with other boids in the neighbourhood; third, to move toward the perceived centre of the mass of boids in its neighbourhood. As Waldrop notes: What is striking about these rules is that none of them said ‘Form a flock’ ... the rules were entirely local, referring only to what an individual boid could do and see in its own vicinity. If a flock was going to form at all, it would have to do from the bottom up, as an emergent phenomenon. And yet flocks did form, every time.’ The flock is clearly a field phenomenon, defined by precise and simple local conditions, and relatively indifferent to overall form and extent. Because the rules are defined locally, obstructions are not catastrophic to the whole. Variations and obstacles in the environment are accommodated by fluid adjustment. A small flock and a large flock display fundamentally the same structure. Over many iterations patterns emerge Without repeating exactly, flock behaviour tends toward roughly similar configurations, not as a fixed type, but as the cumulative result of localised behaviour patterns. 136 Space ReaderFusdolf Braunbur of Hill ane. 137 From Object to Field5 x 4 g o z E & 138. Space ReaderCrowds present a different dynamic, motivated by more complex desires, and interacting in less predictable patterns. Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power has proposed a suggestive taxonomy: open and closed crowds; rhythmic and stagnating crowds; the slow crowd and the quick crowd. He examines the varieties of the crowd, from the religious throng formed by pilgrims, to the mass of participants in [a] spectacle, even extending his ‘thoughts to the flowing of rivers, the piling up of crops and the density of the forest. According to Canetti, the crowd has four primary attributes: the crowd always wants to grow; within a crowd there is equality; the crowd loves density; the crowd needs a direction.” The relation to Reynolds’ rules outlined above is oblique, but visible. Canetti, however, is not interested in prediction or verification. His sources are literary, historical and personal. Moreover, he is always aware that the crowd can be liberating as well a5 confining, angry and destructive as well as joyous. Composer lannis Xenakis conceived his early work Metastasis as the acoustical equivalent to the phenomenon of the crowd, Specifically, he was looking for a compositional technique adequate to powerful personal memories Athens - an anti-Nazi demonstration - hundreds of thousands of people chanting a slogan which reproduces itself like a gigantic rhythm. Then combat with the enemy. The rhythm bursts into an enormous chaos of sharp sounds; the whistling of bullets; the crackling of machine guns. The sounds begin to disperse. Slowly silence falls back an the town. Taken uniquely from an aural point of view and detached from any other aspect these sound events made out of a large number of individual sounds are not separately perceptible, but reunite them again and a new sound is formed which may be perceived in its entirety. It is the same case with the song of the cicadas or the sound of hail or rain, the crashing of waves on the cliffs, the hiss of waves on the shingle’ ® In attempting to reproduce what he referred to as ‘global acoustical events’, Xenakis drew upon his own considerable graphic imagination, and his training in descriptive geometry to invert conventional procedures of composition. That is to say, he began with a graphic notation describing the desited effect of ‘fields’ or ‘clouds’ of sound, and only later reduced these graphics 10 conventional musical notation. Working as he was with matevial that was beyond the order of magnitude of the available compositional techniques, he had to invent new procedures in order to choreograph the ‘characteristic distribution of vast numbers af everts’."* Crowds and swarms operate at the edge of control. Aside from the suggestive formal possibilities, | wish to suggest with these two examples that architecture could profitably shift its attention from its traditional top-down forms of control and begin to investigate the possibilities of a more fluid, bottom-up approach. Field conditions offer a tentative opening in architecture to address the dynamics of use, behaviour of crowds and the complex geometries of masses in motion 139° From Object to Fieldributed Institutions There exists a strong historical connection between the precise rules of axiality, symmetry and formal hierarchy that govern classical architecture and the traditional type-forms of Western institutions. The library, the museum and the concert hall, as much as the bank, the city hall or the law court all appeal to the stability of classical order to signify their status as durable institutions. In the 20th century, the utopian programs of early modem architecture sought to render the institutions of liberal democracy as transparent bodies. Lightweight steel skeletons and glass curtain walls signalled literal transparency, while a functional and compositional dynamic made visible the separate elements of these increasingly complex programs. More recently, there has been an attempt to open up these institutions by mere radical compositional breaks and strategies of decomposition. However, the extent to which compositional variations are capable of refiquring these institutions reaches a limit point. While the rules of composition that govern these Modernist compositions of fragments may be new, the underlying assumption, that composition is concerned with the arrangement of and connections among those parts (which has clear origins in classical theories of composition), persists. There are nc simple equations of organisation and behaviour, of politics and form. ‘Men have dreamed of liberating machines,’ writes Michel Foucault, ‘but there are no machines of freedom, by definition’ |n Foucault's analysis, while there are constraining architectures, there are no specifically liberating architectures: ‘| do not think that there is anything ~ by its nature — absolutely liberating. Liberty is a practice ... The quarantee of freedom is freedom." Non-hierarchical compositions cannot guarantee an open society or equality in politics. Democracy, it has been said, has less to do with the ability to do things as with the ability to undo things. The search for new institutional forms is all the more urgent given that, under pressure of technological or societal shifts, institutions are already changing from within. As the social, political and technical roles of those institutions are called into question, the corresponding typologies lose their special capacity to order and represent the space of these institutions. In the case of the library or the museum, for example, what was once a place of certainty, an orderly deposit of knowledge, arranged in familiar and agreed- upon categories, has been eroded by the onrush of media, consumer culture and telecommunications. Architecture’s capacity to represent and shelter that collective memory has in turn withered. To design a library or a museum today is to contend with an entirely new set of expectations. Above all, it means to recognise an ever-increasing uncertal about what constitutes knowledge, who has access to it and how it is distributed. Perhaps @ more radical shift is required. Field conditions oppose conventional Modernist modes of composition as much as [they oppose] classical rules of composition. The provisionality of the whole undermines the classical aspiration to totality; the self- similarity of the parts, and the intricacy of connection works against Modernist fragmentation. In the field condition, overall form emerges out of conditions established locally. The claim here is that the notion of field conditions might be a starting point to 140. Space ReaderMen Ray Space Writngs 1928 Copysiqht Man Ray Thusy 141 From Object to Fieldrethink conventional institutional form through the concept of the field. The organisational principles proposed here suggest new definitions of ‘parts’, anc alternative ways of conceiving the question of relationships among those parts, The form of these institutions does not attempt to represent, metaphorically, the new condition of the institution, nor does it attempt to directly instigate new ways of thinking or behaving Instead, by forming the institution within a directed field condition, connected to the city or the landscape around, a space is left for the tactical improvisations of future users. A ‘loose fit’ is proposed between activity and enclosing envelope When Michel Serres speaks of the inevitability of static, of accidents and disruptions that undermine any formal system defined by points and lines, he is not so far from what is intended here: Stations and paths together form a system. Points and lines, beings and relations. What is interesting might be the construction of the system, the number and disposition of stations and paths. Or it might be the flow of messages passing through the lines. In other wards, a complex system can be formally described ... Qne might have sought the formation and distribution of the lines, paths, and stations, their borders, edges and forms. But one must write as well of the interceptions, of the accidents in the flow slong the way between stations ... What passes may be a message but parasites (static) prevents it from being heard, and sometimes, from being sent. More than a formal configuration, the field condition implies an architecture that admits change, accident and improvisation. It is an architecture not invested in durability, stability and certainty, but an architecture that leaves space for the uncertainty of the real. Notes aki, wi aly hack y close to thos Xenaks ‘A.concept from experience: the norion fa forces, just as the marmetic bbe created by varying the ursion’ (Nouritaa Ma escential characteristic ts oistance in field! fc aleeitic, magnetiv er qravitatior sound might of ire filing | london), = yis thal ea re... These variable cis ig indivisible, or diminis University of Minnesota Peoss (Misr 3 The following discussion was aay. 286 GeptemberOctober 1285}, pp 2 This we The ortier is no! rationalistic ana uncer'y afer anotier vente Obje! ), emphasia in b el Moneo. La ¥ noun phrase ist fen from Donald fucks lise ook, 1868; republished in Donal Design (Halifax), 1975, p 184) 142 Space Readerval as ised] symbols to expr muias, ccquat in, anal ig defined as ‘the branch of mathematics tha Monee, ‘La Vidal pp eth the mascpe at Carder: 4, How lo Bs ee ‘Mat Urbanism," is this volume; ‘Mat lvsiidin jess XLV, S son unites, can be said to epitemise wich the labore, and the ineivicins nuflled crdlas. based om inte change’, At the time th examples (cor the Te he anonymous cel liv where the funetions come to nes freedoms of action throug patems oF Sarkis, (ed, Cited in Rosalind ¥ Spe in fact, Postminimatism d Post’ here implies a dependence and opposition rather than iogical sequences. Nol ie the absence of women» the ranks ef she Vinimelsts; Postminimalises would {a Benglis or Eva Hesse tain Qhuidity in 0 oped vnth the Postminimalists. ertain decreas le without the Robert Pin erican Art, 196 ine Livingston, B Andro Linklater sity that could is tum bo acres of 50 square ch whole n specially hove wilh a sh 08, p 178. ‘The Boter Futures of Architects than seven limes an alll produc dvanlacyes Linddster, M ans and Gren st, ‘Space, Knowledge and Power in (New York), 1984, p 267 logy, History pa7 $ Allen, ‘From Object to Field’, Practice: Architecture, Technique and Presentation (revised and expanded edition), Routledge (Londor/New York), 2008, p 251. Originally published in S$ Allen, ‘Frorn Object to Field’, AD Architecture afier Geometry, Profile No. 127, John Wiley & Sons Ltd (London), 1997, pp 24-81. Reprinted by permission of Stan Allen. 143 From Object to Field