Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Architecture for De-materialized Man


This project is an attempt to represent the topic of “integration of man and the environment” through the lens of post-humanism. The existing approach to the environment (by humans) is, for most part, aligned with the principles of “Humanism”, which basically sets a hierarchy in which human will sits on top of everything else. This has led to certain attitude towards the environment that does not holistically take into consideration the fact that human being is a thread in a fabric, that could be titled the “Universal Environment”.



Keywords:

1 Humanism


 In general emphasizes the value and authenticity of human beings and is generally in favor of individual thought as opposed to established doctrines and creeds. However by studying human issues both in contemporary and historical context, it becomes clear that not all of them have been addressed properly and need is felt for a different approach.

2 Post-humanism


 Post-humanism, which strives to move beyond mindsets and concepts that are based on fundamental approaches of humanism to human nature and its existential definition.

3 Post-materialism

Developed in 1970’s (By Ronald Ingelhart), post-materialism is based on two primary hypotheses, “scarcity” and “socialization”, it observes the transformation of individual values from materialist, physical and economic to new individual values of autonomy and self-expression.

4 Universal Environment

 The term environment has normally been synonymous with nature, while by “universal environment”, it is intended to put forward a concept which nature as well as other aspects of human life, most notable of which being ethics, society, etc. are included in an “Integral entity”.


 Concern

 Due to the speed of the developments in techno-scientific sphere it is for the first time (or at least will be in near future) that the more important question is less “What is the best solution?” but more “How to implement the solution?”
Therefore it is necessary to take the right approach and find and provide proper answers to questions such as: “What truly defines the growth of our civilization?” or “What are good measuring criteria?” or maybe above all “What is the environment and what is the relation between Man and the environment?”



“….All technological progress of human society has been geared towards the redundancy of human species as we currently know it”

-Robert Pepperell -


“Economic growth has been a primary goal to our today’s policies, while Genuine Progress Indicator (an economic growth index that takes environmental and cultural issues into consideration) has been neglected (according to GPI the growth of our society has almost been zero, during the past couple of decades)”

-Dan O’Neil-



We can conclude that “having more” is not the most accurate criteria for improving the quality of human life. In fact putting human in the center of universe have led to a consumerist approach to the environment which does not seem to have taken all of the issues into consideration, instead it has put notions such as “having” or “consuming” above “doing” or “being”. Furthermore, in the context of architecture and design,  it also indicates the necessity for the issue of the relation between human and environment to be viewed and discussed, not just on system detail level, but well before that, on strategizing and decision making level.



De-materialization of Man

 De-Man theory in line with the fundamental principles of post-humanism, regards human beings as an element in a universal environment which operates based on mechanics of ethics and values under which economy acts as a regulative subsystem, and thus calling for an architecture that employs a similar vision as logic underlying different layers of thinking and design. Simply put it proposes a decoupling process of humans (and their habitat) from the materialist tendencies and redirecting the design strategies toward a more holistic approach.
 It questions how human is being human? And how the advent of technologies (and the way they affect cultural and social routines) can be taken advantage of in putting forward a truly symbiotic design strategy?






Preliminary Sketches






1 comment:

  1. There is a bit of a conflict in the initial tenet that "humans sit on top of everything else" against the idea that the same human is also merely a thread in a fabric. It is problematic that you spend energy outlining what humanism is but the humanism-post-humanism, post-materialism, and de-materialism of man issues outline a shift in thinking (Hobbes/Rousseau) to even more secularized conditions, to that of smaller economic stimuli, and ultimately to a "universal environment". The concern that you outline is not directly tied to this issue outlined here but instead describes a condition where architecture serves as a measure of a civilization. Architecture fundamentally tries to do precisely that.
    Your design still lacks a clear "holistic approach" that you are claiming. It is quite unclear how in the last sentence you seem to deal with everything from symbiotic architecture to integration of technologies. It is far more invaluable to speak to the nature of consistency in presenting a position that deals with architectural ideas so that these latter terms do not pop out at random.
    The design itself is still very primitive (despite the interesting form) but does not really speak to many of the points you are raising in the positioning statement.Keep in mind that this level demands a greater level of presentation of your architectural work.

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