DYNAMIC TIME, INFORMAL ORDER, INTERDISCIPLINARY TRAJECTORIES SPACE-TIME-INFORMATION AND NEW ARCHITECTURE Manuel Gausa Fora long time we have been defending a reading of the production of current architecture based not only on disciplinary reference, professional practice or the mere succession of events, but on a ‘transversal’ view of the contemporary scene, making it possible to relate the definition and organization of the habi- tat and the environment (ultimate essence of archi- tecture) to the proper interpretation - scientific, so- cial, philosophical and artistic—of space, time and its associates. This approximation is not especially new. Itrelates to similar attempts aimed at connecting the (‘local’) critical diffusion of the facts - the technical or artistic creation -with a proper (‘global’) cultural under- standing of reality. ‘Knowing the nature of things in order to act upon them’? This isa ‘holistic’ vocation that traverses the recent history of critique, from Veyne to Virilio; from KUbler to Jencks. Yet perhaps it has been the paradigmatic Space, Time ond Architecture, written by Sigfried Giedion in 1941, which has best reflected in its time the will for interaction within architecture, art and ‘science. When Giedion published his book in 19.433, ithad been only 36 years since Albert Einstein pro- claimed his famous Theory of Relativity that was to ‘exert so much influence on our understanding of the ‘universe. On its own the term ‘space-time’ used by Giedion assumed voluntary scientistic resonances that implicitly suggested the correlation between the new aesthetic experimentations and the new scientific theories about relativity.4 These theories had done away with the Aristotelian (and with it, the Newtonian) conception of time as essential, meta- 68 physical --separated from space- to end up with new ‘ones definitely involving both concepts: fromthen ‘on, the measurement of time depended on the posi- tion of the observer in space and therefore on the relative movements ‘The compact idea of a continuum universe, hierarchi- cal and absolute, was substituted for the fragmented idea of discontinuous experiences in ‘relative posi- tions’ that had left their mark on a great part of the modern movement and our later tradition and inter- pretation of space. With great skill, Ignasi de Sola-Morales notes® the comfortable analogy between Einsteinian space-time and the analytical cubism or ‘post-cubism’ of I’Esprit Nouveau where ‘more traditional terms such as order, geometry and composition, recaptured the roll of tools facilitating the understanding of the new archi- ‘tecture’, which the first analysts of modern architec- ture had already put forth. This led to the substitu- tion of the classical ‘absolute’ order — continuous, homogeneous, compact and determinist-for anew ‘one, more relative and discontinuous but not less convinced of the strict (rational) control of form and results.’ The Einsteinian vision of the universe essen- tially underlay this vision of ‘determinist’ control. Einstein himself had never accepted a universe gov- erned by chaos or chance - ‘God does not play dice’— but rather 3 universe ordered by generalizing rules thatimply the predictability of the results.* We could say, though, that the modern concept of space that is, the relativist attitude towards space- meant the transition of the hierarchical dea of composition to the more free idea of position, but the latter still con- tinued to underpin itself in the stable and coherent definition of some prefigured results based on the strength of vertical vectors (volumes) and their pre- cise (exact) organization on the horizontal plan. The horizontal and vertical planes as elementary (‘ratio- nalist’) Cartesian geometries had to transform them- selves into the basic mechanisms of a fragmented spatial conception, but stil related to strict prefigur- ing definitions.Giedion himself wrote: ‘Volumes are those that en- gender space. Today architects should constantly confront the task of arranging volumes in diverse heights in reciprocal correspondence. The new his- tory starts with the optical revolution that abolished the hierarchical perspective with only one point of view. Today we are able to perceive the energy of volumes freely situated in space and without any relation to perspective ...’? Dynamic systems properties We are still using the remains of this modern con- ception of architecture — positional, Euclidean and linear ~in the same way that we use ancient scientif- iclaws such as gravity and even relativity, still ‘func- tional’ to.a great extent, though hardly operative when measured against the complexity of phenom- ena that we now know define our surroundings. As put forward by mathematician Peter Saunders, physicists themselves do not believe anymore in that eternal universe, solid and exact, which yielded so much support to the determinist paradigm. Today, he continues, a dynamic universe has been suggested in its place, where space and time depend, indeed, of the observer and where the majority of all properties ‘only existin an uncertain way, hardly predetermin- able. ‘The Newtonian paradigm, and a large share of the Einsteinian one, now faces the challenge of a‘squirmy’ universe in which the majority of the processes, in- cluding those of more apparent stability, are extraor- dinarily undisciplined and end up displaying non- linear behaviour, a product of its own interactive and dynamic character. In such processes, the (global) position in space should combine with the impact of the (local) information that every ‘particular’ situa~ tion (or moment) contributes to the whole. This in- formation affects the whole considerably, continually: modifying its trajectories. The global system varies when varying ~ and accumulating ~ the received lo- cal information. The study of the dynamic systems, 69 related to chaos theory and quantum mechanics, has shown a progressive development in the last 50 years thanks to the recent technological capacity to simu- late (and calculate) by computational methods tra- jectories of uncertain and complex geometry"; it has also unveiled the evidence of the ‘uncertainty prin- ciple’ which governs our universe, representing an- other step towards an understanding of it beyond the theory of relativity." Although there is not yet ‘awhole theory on this matter, we know today, as Stephen Hawking notes ‘the principle of uncertainty ~ related to the interactivity and the dynamic charac- ter of quantum information —has already profoundly affected our contemporary view of the world, and in spite of the fact that more than fifty years after their exposition, these theories still have not been totally appreciated by philosophers and creators, its setting ‘out has meant in any case, the end of the determinist dream that was introduced in the 18th century, the ‘Age of Reason, by Laplace and Newton, subsequently evolving until Einstein.’ ‘Quantum mechanics and the chaos theory introduce an ‘inevitable element of randomness in science’; indeed, they donot suggest precise and invariable (unique) results but announce only possible ‘proto- cols’: systems and combinations of results, as well as the probability of their generation, depending on tactical processed information." Here we could say that classical space and modern ‘space-time! was followed by an ‘informational (in- teractive) space-time’ causing more instability and indetermination in our understanding of the universe but, at the same time, allowing the permanent intro- duction of the influence of information (diversified and abstract, individual and global, contradictory and combinable), as well as its undisciplined effects upon the dynamic manifestation of processes. Our universe, our cities, our behaviour, even our time, respond largely to dynamic, non-linear processes." However, architecture continues relying on models based on rigid, pre-established, implicitly unchange-able and permanent structures: pure, strict and in- disputable. In some of his recent writings Cecil Balmond has noted on more than one occasion the situation of separation and disharmony between new science and’old' architecture. How to relate architecture — as defined on the basis of fixed forms and static structures~to the current investigations on dynamic ‘systems? he asks, How to achieve a translation from the new science to a new architecture? Due to the Cartesian tradition we divide a priori space into compartments according to strict vertical and hori- zontal lines. Our projects reinvent the topography of rigid skeletons, right angles and of an order un- derstood as rigorous delineation. Butin the irregular rhythms and in the diversity we see around us, he continues, reality is more unpredictable and rich in situations. Chaos manifests itself as a suc- cession of diverse orders, rather different from that traditional idea we call ‘order’. Is this a new order that is neither ‘informal’ nor forcibly random and arbi- trary, based on a ‘series’ of certitudes, as well as chang- ing and surreptitious information? Informally there are no established rules or fixed patterns suitable for indiscriminate copying, but only a rhythm of inferred relations and interconnections among events." Our challenge nowadays as architects is to produce few mechanisms of action, responding to the stimu- Wiof aglobal ‘new’ order in a constant state of excita- tion. An order sensitive to the dynamic (interactive) processes that define our understanding of the con- temporary universe ~and of time. Indeed, complex processes, defined by what we shail here call the < factor associated with: a high degree of infor- mation, the incertidumbre (uncertainty) principle; indeterminateness, instability and incoherence; Infrastructural property; inmanencia (immanence), intermittence and interactivity; vocation for incom- pleteness; infinitude; and above all, as Balmond himself notes, a tendency towards the ‘informality’ directly associated with its apparent ‘indiscipline’. 70 Routine and disciplinal convention favours indeed the use of repetitive laws ~ continuous and foresee able=like traditional forms of action. These tend to ‘refer to linear processes, based on stable trajectories, fixed and balanced (com)positions. Their trajectories show indeed multiple fluctuating and/or combinatory movements ~ "latent states’, diverse and possible - which yield to precarious situ- ations of equilibrium. They are movements which generally speaking, although they tend to seek sup- port in generic schemes that show a greater or lesser degree of prediction and recurrence (‘certitude isles’), trace surprisingly ‘spontaneous’ and by defi- nition increasingly free trajectories: ‘while the linear systems have almost always only one point of equi- librium, the non-linear systems have more than one state of equilibrium which includes bifurcation points, as well as transmissions from a stable trajectory to- wards another one, causing great changes at brief intervals’.6 These speak of a topology of tracing, based on the movement and interaction of the parti- cles~on the strength of individual information that includes its own (positive) alteration of the initiat schemes and therefore a higher versatility with re~ gard to what is contingent, the ‘exterior’. The traditional idea of order that marked the classi- cal interpretation of space (based on the idea of composition as a hierarchical relation, but alsoasa cohesive, closed figuration, predictable among the parts)”, had been impugned by the modern ideology, expounding an alternative ‘new order’ associated with a relativistic interpretation of space and time (based on the spatial position as a freer connection, but not less strict for this reason- measurable ~ among the objects). Position as organization but also as an inalterable, sharpening principle (in tune with the proper ‘ideological’ - dogmatic- moment of modern time-space). ‘The contemporary change of paradigms, and the new idea of time associated with it, brings about anew unprejudiced and ‘informal’ order based on disposi- tions, open to diversity and individuality. Disposi-tions as combinations but also as tactical decisions, produced from a processed reading, deliberate and flexible, of variable information able to bring about multiple and heterogeneous events. Decisions rather than design. Criteria rather than figuration. Operative, but at the same time infrastructural cri- teria more than figured (or prefigured) answers. Versatile systems rather than spottess compositions. During this century we have seen the transition from the classical notion of time and space: continuous, solid, absolute, static, exact and regulated but also ‘eternal, symbolic, metaphysical and ritual (based on the ‘harmonic’ aesthetics of evocation) toa modern ‘space-time’ : discontinuous, fractured, relative, precise but also rigid, inalterable and mechanical (as derived from the functional and machinist rigour, severe, technical, typological, precise). ‘The contemporary ‘space/time’ nevertheless pres- ents itself asa progressively unprejudiced landscape, mutable and ~as it has been said - informal; subject tothe strength of the individual and the contingent, of the heterogeneous as much as the diverse but also of the infrastructural. A ‘space-time’ of intercon- nected and interactive messages possessing anew dimensional vector in information. A ‘space-time- information’, combinatory, ‘open’ and differential; probable rather than regulated, precise or exact; tactile and digital rather than evocative (ritual) or mechanical; opportunist rather than symbolic or dog- matic; mutable rather than eternal or positioned. Ifthe concept of modern space in its time meant the transition from the idea of composition, as regulation (of the position), 2s co-relation, the concept of con- ‘temporary space means, today, the transition from the idea of position to the idea of disposition-asa tactical decision, but also as a possible combination of information. From a predictable vision of the uni- verse we first evolved to a measurable one; today we have arrived at a differential one. From the acceptance of that odd situation of cohabi- tation, made of pacts and cross-breedings, today we are able to understand the culture of the contempo- rary project. Departing from a willingness for inter- vention, based on the acceptance of a hybrid contract (rather than on the imposition of anew-unique- totalizing order), with its own starting conditions that require us to apply selective criteria instead of pre-established models: flexible (dis)positions, able to process received information and ‘mutate’ with it. This isa hybrid, fluctuant and elastic situation that translates anew ‘unforeseeable’ order, defined from the premise of complex geometries of variable top- ology and freer and ‘extroverted’ forms. Spirals, curls, shining lights. Triptych of time ‘Wee shall consider various approaches of this con- temporary interpretation of space and time=in con= nection with the new understanding of the dynamic systems favoured by the new technologies high- lighting some potential in connection with the proper implicit notions of order, structure, geometry and growth, as well as with other more ambiguous no- tions, such as the past and the present-memory and history -or perception, occupation and appropriation. ‘Approaches to be realized by means of some funda- ‘mental trajectories - spirals and chizomes, intertwine~ ments, curls, jumps or sparkles, enabling us to link the events with, just as in their own dynamic sys- tems, a ‘condensing generic movement’ around cer- tain recurrent diagrams or figures: ‘odd attractors’ of an habitually fractional geometry, allowing us to talk about an ‘undetermined pseudo determinism”®, associated with the properties of that new ‘space-time-information’. By doing so, we shall stimulate the investigation of ‘new approaches to the project: organizational sys- tems, flexible and able to generate ‘relational’ struc- tures that are more open, but also able to articulate the appearance of spaces of contradiction and inco- herence.1 Paradoxes Unusual utterances as possible protocols associated with the local system but suddenly generating ‘rebel- lious dynamics’ in the meta-superior system global- ly~ thus distorting its convention when articulating apparent combinations (or absurd ones). Intrusive movements that destabilize the ‘dynamics of routine’ through proposing unexpected trajectories, combi- nations, ete. We have written once’ about the transgressive will of the contemporary project and its capacity for put- ting forward and resolving new paradoxes in the system through the proposition of ‘alternative’ so- lutions destined to knock down the orthodox codes (and secular ones) of the discipline by merging dis- parate concepts (up and down, exterior and interior, inside and outside, background and figure, private and public, etc) in new hybrid unions, These are pos- sible protocols that are put forward at the same time ‘in the system and outside it~ they serveit and they destabilize it -while laying at the bottom of the ‘undisciplined’ definition itself of the dynamic sys- tems, alluding to the flexible character of the form and order associated with them, as much as toits own (and implicit) possibility for transgression and alter- ation. 1 Paradoxes, operatives 1 Tobe oneself and several others at the same time: to be case and class’. ‘The matter would be to access the unfinished defini- tion and the ‘infrastructural’ character of the dynamic systems through the analysis of combinatory mech- ‘anisms, destined to bring about processes of spatial ‘organization in which the final form manifests itself ‘as the precise snapshot of an interrupted develop- ment (a formin a ‘state of latency’ -on ‘standby’ ~ able to be associated with incompleteness and infin- itude, properties emblematic of all open systems). Mechanisms constructed through basic evolvable geometries (armatures, matrixes, tornados, rhizom- "4 atous meshes), capable, nevertheless, of embracing surreptitious information, and mutating along with them. Evolutive diagrams manifested through “im- manent structures’ ~ although flexible when varying the scale and mutable in their development ~acces~ sible from the mathematical theory of fractals in which also globalism and fragment respond to open parameters such as ‘clambering’ and self similitude. The relationship with genetics as ‘basic information’ would be interesting and capable of provoking com- plex interactions, starting from elementary initial guidelines: ‘configurations’ of variable development from which serialization, interaction and internal displacement—or untwisting ~ permit a growth and virtual mutation of form in combinatory ‘spirals’ proper of an ‘open’ time and definitely incomplete. 2 ‘Theefficacious past is the transferred now’ Finally we shall look at that undisciplined ~and ap- parently incoherent ~ characteristic of the dynamic systems applied to the ambiguous relations that can develop between memory and action: ‘now’ and ‘then’, history and actuality, past and present, no more as solid categories, stagnant, but as open and manageable coordinates, compressible or expand- able in new unexpected combinations. Beyond a linear —static- reading of the events, | would defend a possible ‘tactical’ reading - free of prejudice-made of jumps, leaps, setbacks and twistings: a naughty and contemptuous game of associations and displace~ ments in which the past always ‘re-encounters’ the present and the present moves back to the past. The ancient behaviourist direction - chronological, hier- archical, purist and dogmatic ~ of the historiographic orthodox readings gives way to an operative view — tactical and activist - where dialogue does not imply reverence or respect for the past, but complicity be- tween ‘cultural echoes’, like elements of tuned in- formation, suddenly detecting each other and inter- twining. Trajectories in motion -not stagnant compartments — that allow strange associations between ‘now’ and‘then’, no longer as ‘anticipation’ and ‘actuality’ but ‘as search sequences, in resonance, in which even cer- tain images of the past- why not? ~could be seen as images of the present, abducted ‘backwards’; wit- nesses of a ‘remembered’ action transported by the curls of a space-time of curved dimensions. History ‘as a linear ~and disciplined ~trajectory of events giving way toa ‘landscape of offers and possibilities’ with changeable angles, unexpected tumbles and interpretations free of prejudice. Expressions of an ‘entropy of a non-linear order that would imply a dis- continuous idea of progress, based on thrown and caught folds, curls, tangles of ‘messages’: signals —light pulses - whose trip intersects our interests and reveals information until ‘now’ hidden and sud- versity Press, Cambridge, 1941. 6 Sold-Morales,ignast op. ct 4 Soli-Morales,ignasi,'La 7 Theconceptof relativity, ‘onstruccién delahistoriadela which came into being atthe arquitectura’ (The construction turn of the century inart and ofthe history of architecture), science simultaneously, implies ‘in Quederns, 181/182, April- that the coherence of things ies Sept. 1989, pp. 192-207. ‘not in their subordination 2 ‘5 ‘Both Aristotleand Newton central, dominant principle but believed inabsolutetime. That intheir reciprocal relations. It Js, they believed that one could states thatreality hasno inherent ‘unambiguously measurethe hierarchical structure, governed Intervaloftimeetweentwo _byafixed entre repudiates ‘events, and that thistime would an absolute frame of reference bbethe same whoever measured within which all things and It. provided they usedagood events are relative, considering, dock. Time was completely sep-_allframes of referencetoberel- cate fromandindependent of ative instead. But fa rom being space. Thatiswhat most people a chaos of unrelated fragments ‘would taketo be the common- _thispolycentricreaity has senseview. However, wehave complex coherencein which hhadtochange our ideas about things, though autonomous, fe ‘spaceandtime. Although our linked through purely reciprocal apparentiy commonsenseno- relations; acoherence inwhich tions work well when dealing these relations areas important ‘with things like apples, or plan- _asthethingsthemselves.’Strau- oh ven, Francs, Aldo von Eyck's Orphanage: A Modern Menu iment, AIPublishers 1996. 8 ‘The whole history of science ‘has een the gradual realization that events donot happen in an axbitrary manner, but that they feflect a certain underlying o- der, which may or may not be divinely inspired’. Hawking, Stephen W.,0p. cit 9 Giedion, Sighted, op. 10 See Saunders, Peter, ‘Non- lineaty: Whatisitand wy t matters in Di Cristina, Guseppa (ed. Archtectre and Science, ‘Wiley Academy, London, 200 1 "Theso called ines systems behave na very simple way: they are never chaotic thei tr Jectories ae aay foreseeable ‘usto reveal very different char- acteristics of the non-linear sys ‘tems. Mathematical analysis has, confirmed that. The theory of ‘chaos has originated from that {elatoeship between comput ‘ried instrument and mathe- imavcalanalsis: the comouter ‘eveslste the mathematician phenomenatobestudiedand ‘the mathematician demons ates the limits of the computer...” Ekeland, lar, LeChoos, Flam marion, Paris 1995. 12 Having, Stephen W..0p. ot 13 Ekeland, Ivar, op. cit. 14 Saunders, Peter, op. 15 See Baimond, Cecit, ‘New Structure and the Informa’ ‘Archiectura Design, vol. 67, 9°10, 1997, pp. BB-96. 16 See Sounders, Peter, op.ct 17 The conventions of classical architecture dictate not only the proportions of individual ele- ments but alsa the relationship between individual elements. Parsform ensembles which in turn formiarger wholes. Pre- cise rules of eat, symmetry «formal sequence govern he cxganiation ofthe whole. Clis- swcal architecture displays a wide. variation on these roles, but the principle of hierarchical distri- bution of parts to whole scon- stant Individual elements ae maintained inberarchicl order byextensve geometric relation- shipsto preserve overall unity” ‘Alen, Stan, Distributions, Com bination, Fel’ in wav, no. 014.1997 18 “The Chaos Theory hat con- tnibuted by puting forward» the notion of infinite growth; “in spiral’, an expression charac- teri ofl evolvable and open ‘processes; yet it also implies: the ambiguous notion of inter- twining. The cutis a Tangled Hierarchy, capable of causing the suroriaing conversion ont ‘self (asin the celebrated Klein's Bottle) of several hierarchical levels -read here, for example, “verritory’, “city”, landscape’, ‘building’ et. wolating its owen initial hierarchical princi- ple. In that way a surprising and disconcerting phenomenon arises, ctng propositions to ‘end up talking about other su- pevior propositions that in turn ‘efert0the intial ones’. See Hofstadter, Douglas R., Godel, Eicher, Bch: An Eternal Gold Brod, Penguin Books, London, 979.