Rachel Hampton
II. A Complaint Revisited.

Man is sleeping. He has lapsed into a coma. He doesn’t shudder at rampant corruption, of a nation of excess gone terribly awry, of bloodied bodies bloating in the sun. Someone needs to grab the paddles and send a course of electricity through his veins. Modern man must be woken.

Architecture must be this bolt of energy, this surge of consciousness. It is the only prescription that exists in the everyday life of this comatose patient. This bolt must be directed through a realm of experience, because experience is what will link designed space and projects to the modern man. Humans live through a realm of experience.

Yet experiential architecture is everywhere: cathedrals, Wal-Marts, homes – every building is rife with experience, be it good, bad or banal. The key is to deliver a better experience is by directing experience. The architectural plea made on modern man’s senses needs to be more penetrating, more resonant. He needs to be made to understand his surroundings, his environment – he needs to be made conscious. How do we achieve this new, potent experience, and how to we recognize that this experience must be for the modern man, who differs greatly from his counterparts of ten years ago?

WHAMMY! KAPOW! MOVE BITCH GET OUT THE WAY!

Modern man (and woman, of course) moves.

Movement is a phenomenon that has endured since humans crawled out of the primordial seas. Years after we oozed into life, we learned to haul root crops out of the soil and how to stalk prey. Today, we pace down grocery store aisles, scooping up Cheerios and cellophane-wrapped chicken. We push down on the gas peddles with heel-clad feet, and hurry to work. We slam things when we’re angry, we dance when we’re elated, we drum our fingers when we’re bored. Our chests heave with heavy sighs. We live through motion today, more than ever.

And in living through motion, we understand through motion, especially where it is not the usual or the norm. A teetering college-kid indicates a drunken co-ed. A forehead-wiping, stuttering man indicates a potentially nervous character. A hand-clapping, squealing toddler indicates a delighted child. Whether we intend to or not, we communicate through our actions and movements. Movement is our narrative through which we read life. It is a narrative that needs no written or spoken words. It is how we first connected as a species and how we continue to understand (or misunderstand) each other.

So what is with this stagnant architecture? These leaden blobs of building? These stagnant one-liners of architecture? Of course we can’t expect them to get up and walk around and teeter around drunkenly or giddily-slap their hands. They don’t even have hands. And if they walked, we’d never be able to find them, and if they danced, how the hell would we get to the entrance. But what architecture can do is recognize motion and the kinetics of modern man, and see that as a gateway to his experience.

Society is not used having an architecture that responds to man’s kinesthetic. Of course they know paint, structure, even space. Many elements, wonderful elements, found in good design get lumped into the category that is the jaded modern experience. Architecture that subtly responds to movement, something so real, so physical and so entirely dependent on an essential human trait, can offer possibility. It is an experience that is not one of the five senses, but an action linked to all senses – and thus a mode of perception that must be utilized. To enter this gateway of experience is to wake modern society.

How is this channel of experience achieved? In several, crucial ways. Architecture must:

1. Architecture must recognize the movements and trajectory of modern society.
Design needs to be conscious of the physical motion of an occupant. This can mean that architecture moves itself in response to society, or that society is moved around design in some way.
2. Movement can be physical, as well as non-physical (i.e. the perception or implication of movement)
2. A building’s narrative is crucial to how it is perceived, and thus how it is experienced. As one moves through a building, they develop a relationship with the cast of characters (spaces), the setting (site), and the plot (program). While physical movement is crucial to understanding the narrative, the narrative itself is not a concrete thing that can be moved or moves, even though it depends on the built environment to give it form. It is the idea of a trajectory, of the fact that architecture can flow. Narrative is developed from within and is based on the way one uses the building. A narrative is another form of movement that affects how we perceive architecture.
3. There can be movement, and an anti-movement, motion and anti-motion. Movement and motion have implications of action. Anti-movement can be described as where there is less movement or action. It is not stillness, but it is stillness defined by the amount of mobility it contains, however small or negligible. Anti-movement is the contrast of movement. Motion can be more thoroughly experienced if it is in conjunction with anti-movement and anti-motion, as contrast brings new consciousness.

Architecture needs to subvert, to overthrow, to squeeze and cough and push its way into modern existence! An architecture for modern society, an architecture for the numb populace must be decidedly kinetic and contrasting. To have an architecture of the appeasing, stable sedentary is to smother the comatose patient with a pillow, snuffing him out of existence.