Distractive Architecture
The internet has blurred the lines between physical spaces, making traditional architectural functions obsolete. Buildings are now backdrops for experiences, and interiors have become the focus. This shift has blurred the boundaries between public and private, work and leisure, leaving us vulnerable to constant external stimuli. Architecture must adapt by understanding the digital forces shaping our lives and designing spaces that offer clarity and prioritize well-being. It needs to become a refuge in our increasingly chaotic world.
The city oncea tapestry of distinct nodes—libraries, municipal halls, theaters—each a stagefor specialized clusters of information, now finds itself enveloped in theunavoidable embrace of the internet. The internet, a technology just like thesteel beam, the car or the elevator before it, fundamentally reshapes the urbanexperience. Physical boundaries dissolve as encrypted keys and iris scans grantaccess to data streams from any location. The café is now a library, the parkbench a municipal office.
Facades onceproud markers of hierarchy and function, now recede, their thickness minimized,their materiality fading into transparency. In this fluid, hyper-connectedreality, architecture can no longer compete in its old way, for once even itsmaximum size is far to small to host newly formed social structures in to whichour lives are plugged. All the bubbles are popped, but we have no plan..
Architecturebecomes a backdrop, a stage for experience rather than a container for program.Architecture now is more emotional, modern patterned wraps are new facades,announce possible stages of experiences inside.
Theinterior is the focus of contemporary culture, which made us infinitely morevulnerable. Play to discover, represented by bright colors and curves, aresingled out to define our human nature: Yes do before think, but don’t forgetto think.. The absence of categories makes free time, private moments, publiclife, consumption and production become one blur. Dark boxes behind old facadesare ready to supply us with the resources for consumption while on the outsideattacks with a thousand arrows target each of our microbreaks to fill up leadsgenerating spreadsheets. Can architecture find back its role of shelter? Notonly from climatic differences, but also to say the least keep the thingsoutside that disrupt our a sense of home and belonging? Architects should studythose spreadsheets, data structures, sensors and learn to design them. We needto know more about our brains than Coca Cola. From within the thick ofthings, create protected pockets of clarity within our architecture. If nothierarchies, at least prioritizations. Architecture is the slow version of ourcollective thinking. The city is the continuous aggregation of what we think isreality.
