Athens Research Proposal

Tomorrow the Canterbury School of Architecture will be flying off to Athens. Exactly on these dates last year I was visiting Athens as well so when I sat down with Sam Lowe and Cia Helenius to talk about what we would be mapping I was excited to share more than a few experiences.

We stayed at cheap hostel north of Omonia, an area that on google maps looked central and well connected to the rest of the city, little did we know it was famous for its dereliction. There was a concrete high-rise by our accommodation that was completely abandoned. The entrance was boarded up in corrugated steel and the windows had been smashed all around it so all that was left was the blackened concrete. I wouldn't dare photograph it for fear of being branded a female target of the rich touristy kind. The feeling continued down the walk towards Monastiraki then suddenly, by simply crossing Ermou, everything changed.

There are two things that would be interesting to map based off this experience:
1. The fringe between central Athens and it's surroundings.
Done by:

• Photographing both sides of the street
• Marking the differences in architecture and iconography
• Photographing and mapping the differences in graffiti

It might be interesting to compare this line to that of ancient Athens and it's socio-economic districts. Is there a relationship between the three? The reason why I'm using graffiti as a form of mapping is because it portrays the character of the district. For example:

 

Graffiti felt like such a big part of Athens and a very direct way of injecting meaning onto specific architectures which brings us to the second mapping:
2. The instances of meaning (interaction between an individual and their surroundings).
Done by:

• Counting the number of pedestrians vrs population in the area
• Filming human interaction (number of people involved, towards objects or humans, environment response)

There were certain sites that stood out to me especially during last year's trip to Athens, particularly a little plaza filled with wooden second-hand objects right at the historical fringe. It was filled with human interaction and the graffiti was straddling art and tags. I'll be recording, through a more personal manner, my own experiences of the sense of place through sketching.




One last thing: I mentioned in conversation how if the Athen's Olympic park of 2004 is abandoned and yet they spend 9 million a year in maintenance, why don't they just leave it to become derelict? Sam instantly compared it to the telecommunications protocol. If a call fails, hang it and "try again later".

-RCM

Creating Meaningful Architecture

The first spark of interest into game design occurred when playing Portal in 2011. I had been a part of videogames and MMORPGs for years but the complexity of creating a game space didn't visibly form until I placed two portals in Apperture's lab chambers and hopped through them. Entertainment became an academic puzzle as I tried to figure out the rules behind videogame levels and why their spaces were responding in such meaningful ways.

The experience of space and creating a meaningful moment has in a way always been at the heart of my projects. From the Introspective's exploration of immersion and the Cardboard Project's experimentation of connection in first year; to second year's analysis of the occupy experience and venture into using Unity3D as an architectural design tool; and finally to this year's Memento Vita.

This research thesis ties the theory together into a 6000 word package that is still growing as more videogames become published and the theory of experience expands. It is a theme that I hope to research over the years, into my Master's and further into expertise. The contents of the thesis are as follows and the entirety of the thesis can be found here.

Introduction

I. Relationships with Space
I.1 Semiotics
I.2 “I” in the Virtual
I.3 Perception of Time and Space

II. Creating Meaning
II.1 Designing from a Narrative
II.2 Designing from a Game Mechanic
II.3 The Lusory Attitude and Pleasure Complex
II.4 Playtesting Emergent Systems

Conclusion

Bibliography

-RCM

Athens Project Introduction

Deep breath... it's time to get back to work with the Athens Project.

We are to research and design a mechanism that will enable or reposition the social and political position of Athens by looking at how the Olympic structures have transformed the city.

How architecture creates meaning by referencing theory of game design was the topic of my research thesis and what place displays a larger crisis of meaning than the 2004 Olympic park of Athens? In my thesis I make a quantic definition namely that space is directly linked with time and movement. As such space cannot exist without the movement of its users. When there is no life, there is no space. Like the palace of Sanssouci that lay abandoned after Frederick the Great's death, the Olympic park of Athens too lays desolate of life. Time and movement has stopped and with it, space. It now has just one meaning: stagnation.

By a rather interesting chance the Olympic park of 2004 was designed by Calatrava, an architect from my home-city of Valencia with a tendency to design sculptural structures. It is this very top-down form of designing of his, putting the user as secondary, that risks experience and meaning. As I discussed in my thesis, ancient Greek architecture was actually very user-centric. Home of democracy and center of the Occupy, it has a history of bottom-up structures designed to produce a very intense sense of meaning. Calatrava designs the Olympic park as an auditorium for visitors to observe the spectacle when the Athenians created architecture as a stage for us to act for the gods.

The goal for this project is then this: to re-inject meaning into Athens. As discussed, the way to achieve this is by putting the user central to the experience and have the architecture respond in a way unique to them. So far it is a very broad goal in need of a specific architectural program to achieve it but the trip to Athens will help with that.

-RCM

Memento Vita: The Final Thoughts

The project essentially started with this: an architectural detail at the Barbican. A circle cast in the concrete especially for the fire hose. Ironic how a building set for a utopian future decided to encase its technology in stone. It really made me wonder: if technology is altering the way we live, what say does it have over our architecture?

To help answer that question I looked at the industry that is pushing our spatial relationships with technology the furthest: videogames. It is an industry that has boomed through the credit crunch and moved $68 billion in 2012. There are 10 million "hardcore" gamers in the UK who with every game bring a bit of what they've learned into the real world. With dreams of headsets being left in the 90s and holodecks emerging in patents, videogames are becoming spatial not just in the virtual but in the real. The epitome can be found in the world of e-sports.

I created a video to better explain this concept. The audio and first image is accredited to Michael Highland. E-sports footage accredited to Fnatic. Animations, renders and video/sound editing made by me.




There are many concepts of game theory that I was very excited about implementing. Flow, Magic Circles, the Lusory Attitude, Emergence all weaved together into an architectural response for an event and residence space.

There are various things I have learned about architecture's relationship with technology. First of all that while technology does change our relationship with space, architecture is often too slow to keep up. We therefore cannot create architecture for future technologies, just for future human and social relationships. Architecture is about creating meaning and volumes for meaningful experiences to occur in.

-RCM

Memento Vita

The massive digital spectacle is offering us a magic circle than we can escape to that can and will give us more meaningful experiences than the real world. The internet has made the world smaller and denser. The human mind cannot grasp the vastness of the network so we group individuals into communities. In the small online community, we can find our place in the collective, share our view of utopia and help contribute to its virtual creation. Here we can find meaning and create a collective greater than the sum of its parts.


Litany Against Being Transported Into An Alternate Universe

If I'm going to be happy anywhere
Or achieve greatness anywhere
Or learn true secrets anywhere
Or save the world anywhere
Or feel strongly anywhere
Or help people anywhere
I may as well do it in reality.

In the words of Jane McGonigal, games aren't a waste of time. Instead, they are an opportunity to improve the real world. Rather than a "memento mori" or "carpe diem", games and the spaces in which we play these games can be our memento vita.

Nearing a Brick Wall

This week has so far been the most difficult in this project's history. There is something about being told to link my project even further to the Olympics that has just drained my creative juices. What do you do when you reach that point yet you still have to produce a heavy amount of work?

At the intercrit my tutor suggested going through the route of e-sports and graphene then using that simple, centered concept as an answer to the wider philosophical questions. Probably the best piece of advice I've been given while seriously stuck on a project: make it simpler.

In the meantime, I went to a series of talks at Digibury in which Andrew Jackson explained the act of making. He mentioned the concept of Flow which I had come across when reading Rules of Play. It sparked an interesting discussion between other visitors and myself  in which we discussed the magic circle, our states of flow, flow in video games and the dangers of escapism. Even after the event, it sparked a  conversation in response to Sam Lowe's project where I mentioned that I don't believe there are experiences for experiences sake but experiences to attempt to reach a state of flow. There was one mode of phrasing coming from Jackson that essentially helped me break through the brick wall. He described the sensation of flow as "becoming your environment".

So here it is, the visual statement, simple and concise. Now I can tackle this project with momentum again.






































-RCM

UK Internet Usage: An Infographic

Quick compilation of data on the UKs internet usage as a way of showing cyberasation is happening.