Being There

Ironically, while popular culture has embraced this new interpretation of electronic space, architects are slow to realize the cultural impact of computing. Most, even those trained on computers, think of them as drafting machines. CAD models are considered merely proposals for future buildings. Unlike a conventional drawing or model, however, the object within the computer has a life of its own. A liberating one, at that.

It may have three or more dimensions. It may be endlessly questioned and modified. The object may embody something else or be part of a group which interact in unprecedented ways. In fact, the many dimensions of meaning in cyberspace has led to a cybereal architecture which will have dramatic consequences for the profession.

Imagine, for example, a library taking shape within a computer, every detail rendered precisely using CAD software. This time, though, every book the library is to contain has been included in the model. Moving through the stacks, we see every volume of the intended library arranged on the shelves. If we pause to open a book, we see the entire text along with illustrations, possibly catching a whiff of musty paper.

Would the construction of this library be redundant?

Let's say the book we opened was an illustrated text on the work of Carlo Mollino. Opening it to look at the illustrations, we would find them to be windows onto a world where Mollino's works could be visited, his designs built and former buildings reconstructed. The experience would be difficult, if not impossible, to realize physically. Further, our library could be visited simultaneously by anyone online, not just the local community.

Our model helps us navigate the information that would be housed in a real library. As we shal see, many building types could be transformed this way: schools, offices, even museums. The spatial metaphor validates the designer's work without the need for physical construction.

A strictly rational approach to the design of this environment can be a liability. Gottfried Mayer-Kress, working at the Center for Complex Systems at Champagne-Urbana has been part of a team designing virtual reality interfaces for computer systems. In one example, a featureless room houses four boxes, each labeled with a different topic. Upon entering one of the boxes, one finds four more identical to the first. Within each of these lie four more, and so on.

While this nesting of volumes seems rational, the user gets lost within the first few iterations. Mayer-Kress believes that another level of orientation must be developed in order to make this system work, perhaps something based on urban form or architecture.

Cities usually offer enough variety and detail for us to distinguish one space from another. Landmarks provide reference points in the open, while windows and doorways maintain our link to spaces beyond. The formal structure of architecture makes urban space navigable. Without it we would have to relearn our actions every time in a new, unmarked environment.

Architecture already plays an important role in current designs for computer interfaces. E-world, a new online service from Apple, offers services housed within building shaped icons. Magic Cap, an operating system developed by General Magic, will allow the user to stroll down an electronic Main Street to use applications. Presently buildings merely serve as icons for computer functions.

Designers like Jim Leftwich and Clayton Graham are already proposing the next generations of these interfaces. Working in the Bay Area in California, they have collaborated in the design of computer operation systems using architectural metaphors. (ill. 8). Leftwich,trained as an industrial designer, has done considerable work in developing devices and graphics for computer interfaces. His interest in virtual reality has lead him to explore cyberspatial operating systems which would be accessed using goggles and gloves (ill.9).

Recently he has developed an interface for a major medical supplier which employs imagery taken from a standard office environment (ill.10). Presently intended for PCs, this format could be used in immersive environments providing telecommuters with interesting alternatives to showing up at work.

In another project Leftwich proposes an illusory sphere which mediates between the designer's environment and a virtual space beyond (10a). In this case the sphere holds images and pallettes used in the design of a house. Here, the sphere is a cybereal object since, unlike the house, it is not intended to be built.

Similarly, Clayton Graham has proposed other ways in which computer systems might be represented in cyberspace. Among them are modular building/machines which have rooms for specific computer applications (ill.11,12). "After all,"says Graham," you don't cook a meal in your bathroom. Why shouldn't you be in a different place when you are doing a drawing than when you are working a spreadsheet?"

Several architects are already looking into the nature of cyberspace and its architectural consequences. The crucial issue in designing for cyberspace is the designer's attitude toward the object. Architects are used to having their sketches and designs evolve into physical objects. That's the point of technical drawings and CAD software.

There are three unspoken assumptions behind this. The first is that the final result of the process is physical. The second is that the design process is controlled by the designer. The third is that the result of the effort is final and "objective". Each of these assumptions is being challenged by designers of cyberspace.

Take for example Steve Perella's designs for a facility for the manufacture of computerized clothing. Perella's approach toward the design process is familiar, leading as it does to a physical plant. Many of the building's surfaces, however, are actually screens for projection of information and images. They are so prevalent, in fact that the information begins to obscure our spatial readings of the interior (ill. 1,2). Although the building is physical, we read through the surfaces the images of cyberspace.

Ed Keller, a former collaborator of Perella, has carried this idea further by inviting us to the other side of the computer screen. Several of his projects are not intended to be built physically, remaining environments to be visited through the use of a computer. His Center for Environmental Terrorism remains non-physical despite its building-like appearance (ill. 3). It seems decidedly more architectural than Perella's project mainly because of its use of ground planes and recognizable architectural features.

Comparing these projects reveals one of many paradoxes of designing for cyberspace. If the result of Perella's effort is to be physical, the challenge is to make the architecture deny its materiality. If the result is to remain in cyberspace, the challenge is to give it presence without relying on materiality. In Keller's case, the conventions of architecture substantiate the project.

Not all objects in cyberspace are consciously designed, however. Computers, given the right instructions, can produce some striking designs on their own. At least this is the proposal of Constantine Terzides and Emmanuel George Vakalo at the University of Michigan. Some of their work was produced algorithmically, then further articulated to produce the final result. Looming cubical clouds and splintered wreakage are dictated by program (ill. 5,6,7). The designer may not even be present at conception.

Once again we are faced with the nature of the object. If it lacks material, what is it made of? Works by the Terzides/Vakalo team indicate that the object is a projection of information processed by program. A different program for the same information would lead to a different result. The arbitrariness inherent in this is unsettling. Would we be misled by our illusion?

One answer is provided by Laura Kurgan, an architect working in New York City. She believes that the illusions distract us from the true nature of cyberspace. In an installation at the New Museum in Manhattan, she used teleprompters and computer monitors to create filters for seeing cyberspace (ill. 7a). Looking through the filters one could view the rest of the gallery through a scrim of data from the Dow Jones computers (ill. 7b). Cyberspace is everywhere, our senses aren't tuned to pick it up. We use sensory extensions like TVs and computers to experience it.

Another challenging answer is found in the work of Marcos Novak. If form in cyberspace is made of information, the same information may be expressed as music, as art or mathematical theorems. In fact, one may be translated to another in a kind of high-tech synaesthesia.

This volatility of representation lies at the heart of Novak's work. His projects for a Liquid Architecture (ill.13) describe form which is subject to its information content. As a file gets larger, so does its iconic representation. Graphic files may display their contents on their surfaces. Their massing may represent logical structure. All is in flux, changing form as the content changes (ill.14).

Some of this work has had an acknowledged influence on Clayton Graham's and Ed Keller's more recent projects (ill. 4). A crucial difference however, is Novak's understanding of form. If Graham's architecture is analogous to real world objects, say houses, Novak's objects are digital and abstract. Their form shifts with their content and with the viewers perception. His is a world of nuance and fleeting moments (ill.15).

Novak's Navigable Music, for instance is designed to express the relativity between the project and the participant. Movement across a data-landscape, imagine a computer model of a convoluted site, produces a specific series of sounds according to where the participant goes. Another path would play a different tune, each route being unique.

Novak's images of cyberspace are beguiling, sometimes forbidding (ill.16,17). A sense of vertigo pervades some of these images since most of the keys we use to orient our bodies are missing. More troubling is the idea that everything we see may be unique, formed to our particular viewpoint.

This extreme of contingency may prove limiting, however. If everything is subject to such relativism, how could a consensus develop within cyberspace? What would become common values in an electronic community? Who would be the occupant of cyberspace?

Architecture can't supply all the answers to these questions. Cyberspace is still under construction and the user of cybereal architecture is still being defined. We have to look elsewhere for guidance.

Perils of Cyburbia

Cybereal communities already exist. Considerable work is already going into building and analyzing cyberspace. The precurser to Gibson's Matrix is today's Internet, a global network of connected computers which has grown from the military's ARPAnet and numerous electronic bulletin board services.

While bulletin boards and the Internet act as larger structures for communication, another form of electronic environment has been developed called a Multi-User Domain, or MUD. In the early 80's a British student created a computer program which simulated in text form the settings for the game Dungeons and Dragons. Players of the game play specific roles. One could play a wizard or damsel in a medieval setting complete with castles and perilous countryside.

Since then hundreds of MUDs have sprung up on the networks, largely for playing games. In most cases MUDs are experienced in text form. Playing in a MUD is like reading a novel and writing it at the same time. Spaces and objects are described verbally from a file in the host computer. Characters' behavior is directed by players typing at remote keyboards. The illusion of the common space is created by the shared scenario and the computer's placement of the players within the scene.

Say I am playing an evil dwarf in Dungeons and Dragons. If I type @emote leers "Gimme that Miesian rigor!", the host computer adds format information and prints my message on the screen. Players of the game will see: "The evil dwarf leers and says,'Gimme that Miesian rigor!" Though the words are mine, my actual identity is disguised by the persona of the dwarf.

The use of text is largely due to the limited capacity of lines to carry graphic information. This is being resolved by having graphic environments stored on the player's computer. This reduces the amount of transmission time needed to get information from the host computer to the player. In this case, only the changes in an environment are transmitted, vastly reducing the processing required.

While the technology is interesting, the spaces described can be astonishingly banal. Some of these environments were discussed recently at a symposium entitled "Electrotecture" sponsored by ANY and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Alluquere Stone, a sociologist specializing in electronic culture presented a few slides of Fujitsu's Habitat, a corporate MUD operating in Japan. The images were crude cartoons of a DisneyWorld-like setting peopled by Cewpie-dolls with interchangeable body parts. Ms. Stone wryly described the scenario as "quotidian". But the trouble with MUDs is that they do become electronic theme parks. Others besides Dungeons and Dragons are based on fantasy adventures, science fiction, even Star Trek itself. Still, the role-playing and staged quality of the MUD remains. What would a MUD be like without the theme?

MIT's Amy Bruckman and Xerox PARC's Pavel Curtis have anwered this by creating professional MUDs for media scientists. Curtis' LambdaMOO is a cyberspace extension of the physical buildings at Xerox PARC. Many people who log onto their system and move around in Lambda MOO are surprised at how much it resembles the actual facility at Xerox Parc. Real visitors who have used the MUD can navigate the buildings by recognizing landmarks and features found online. Although LambdaMOO (MOO=MUD Object Oriented) includes the roads used to access the real building, Curtis says that most users bypass these and flash into the facility directly. Once oriented, they begin to move about within the MUD.

Amy Bruckman's MediaMOO at MIT's Media Lab also takes in the architecture of a host building. Some of the rooms, like the ballroom on the sixth floor are cybereal fabrications: the building has only five floors. Since cyberspace has no features inherently, MUD designers sometimes adopt existing architecture as a point of departure. The purpose of these building extensions is to help orient the new user by employing spatial clues.

Identity Crises

According to Brenda Laurel of Interval Research, Cyberspace is a kind of psychological theater in which participants are free to play any role they wish. Instances of gender-swapping are commonplace. Experiments in role playing are inspiring considerable sociological and psychological research. Shirley Terkel at MIT, for instance, has written on the potentially therapeutic role MUDs can play in personality development. Amy Bruckman, also at MIT, is studying the use of MUDs in education.

Most community activity presently happens in the MUDs or on the Bulletin Board Services. In contrast to the ambiguity of individual identity on the Net, BBSs and MUDs often have very specific agendas. Special interest groups sometimes run MUDs as a common turf for a dispersed community. There are electronic communities for women, gays, the elderly and various ethnic groups.

Unlike the real world, most of these communities have only a single theme, making them havens and ghettos at the same time. If they are seen in the same role-playing light as the fantasy MUDs, however, they become areas of experimentation for the users, not only personally but societally.

These communities may, in fact, play for society the role that CAD plays for architecture. They diagram a possible physical society according to the ideals of specific groups. Along with telecommuting and remote shopping, they could lead to dramatic changes in physical cities. Concurrently, these disembodied communities might merge with each other in larger MUDs, say something like the present Cybercity. This would lead to a form of cybereal urbanism with unforseeable consequences .

The Body in Question

Without a nature to guide or contrast the architecture, we must rely upon cultural conventions to situate ourselves. The underlying orders of architecture can have very real consequences here. Entry, primary views and faces, axes and edges all become vital for bodily orientation. A lack of these keys could result in discomfort for the user, vertigo and nausea.

One way around this is to create an intermediate framework within the electronic space. The virtual consoles and dashboards seen in popular video games and Jim Leftwich's spherical interface would be examples of this. Although what is seen through the windshield is dynamic, the body is grounded in the virtual vehicle.

Other forms of orientation might not be so abstract. For example, the role that form plays in defining memories. There might be monuments erected in this space which are recreations of buildings torn down or never built. As a building is completed in the real world, say Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona, it would slowly disappear from cyberspace. Mies' Barcelona Pavillion would have entered cyberspace when it was first demolished, only to disappear upon its reconstruction a few years ago.

This overlap between real and cybereal architecture might lead to a hybridization of both. An embodied virtual reality would allow points where the cybereal touches upon the real, grounding one while enriching the other. One could imagine walking the streets of Rome and have the buildings reveal their history upon inquiry. Possible cybereal annexes to museums and libraries might enhance the use of a building by extension into information space.

Towards an Augmented Reality

Although our virtual library may be a few years off, automated bank tellers already redefined the presence of the bank institution. William Mitchell, dean at MIT's architecture school, sees a recombinant architecture resulting from this. When we can find an ATM in an airport, student union or shopping mall, it is time for us to reconsider the role of building types in our society.

Building types hosting information-related programs would be subject to this decentralization and hybridization. Examples would be office buildings, museums, theaters, schools and, as mentioned, libraries. A type may simply become a symbol in the way graphic icons are used in a computer.

Another way that the cybereal will manifest itself was described by Glenn Goldman and Steve Sdepski at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. They feel that the interactivity and entertainment value of cybereal environments will up the ante for physical design. "People used to the real-time responsiveness of cyberspace will be impatient with architecture as we know it," says Goldman. "If architects don't catch on to this in time, it will be the special effects houses in Hollywood that will be setting the expectations of future clients."

If architecture becomes a division of the entertainment industry it will be no surprise to those contemplating the future of theme parks . Although the change must seem inevitable, there is no reason to assume it will be total. Technological revolutions have a way of being absorbed by our culture rather than overwhelming it.

Cybereal architecture will not replace real architecture any more than virtual reality will supplant our own. Technology affects everything but replaces nothing . When the telephone was invented people worried that personal contact would be lost to phone conversations. It didn't happen. Instead, another channel was opened for people to communicate. Our present society would be inconceivable without the telephone. Cyberspace might become as indispensable. It may become the next best thing to being there.