Vicente
Guallart
Media, Mountains and Architecture
Media, mountains and architecture are interfaces of three inhabitable natural realms : the digital, the natural, and the artificial. Three manifestations that call for a new organization of the way they interact : the physical world is transformed by the emergence of the digital world ; the constructed environment is transformed by what used previously to be called "natural" ; the digital develops its own internal laws and builds its own operative world. All three phenomena vibrate simultaneously when faced with any kind of human action. My projects explore people's capacity to construct an inhabitable environment by assuming this new threeway interaction. Starting from the hypothesis that the end purpose of architecture is not (solely) to build but also to define environments where human life can be organized, I work as much through action as through omission ; with stones as well as with glass and "bits" ; in urban and rural territories ; and in the physical and virtual worlds. As a traditionally constructed interface, architecture must thus redefine its aims in the face of the emergence of the digital world, which encompasses and transforms everything, and through which people become immersed in a new reality. This situation might in addition give rise to an historical gap between a dazzling, luminous, thrilling and creative world on the one hand, and a deteriorated, dark and decadent physical world on the other. But these two worlds form just one and must be constructed at one and the same time. This situation produces a new operative system in which the architect must be able to take part, by making the most of all the physical and digital means within his reach. The architect must consequently assume the fact of experiencing, today, a moment when new paradigms are being invented, a moment when we are defining new human activities, and changing existing situations, which require new constructed references. It is moment of linguistic fervour, of inventing and experimenting with new materials, of developing new constructive processes, incorporating natural and artificial forms of energy, defining viable growth, recycling and re-informing cities, a moment of getting acquainted with new relationships in the physical world through an experimental passage in the virtual world. It is thus important to think about this new hybrid condition of the world that is peculiar to our day and age. The natural, the artificial, and the digital. By way of media, mountains, and architecture.
Vicente Guallart
