tHE GHOSTS OF Contexts’ Past, Present and Future

THE PROJECT

The idea of a building is always derived from a precedent. From the paleolithic ages, architecture has attempted to mimic what already exists in its surroundings. Primitive timber structures mimicked the arched geometries of caves that preceded it. Over the years the idea of the precedent has taken different forms with the shifts in the way we live, the rise of new industries and the way in which architecture has been practiced. What we initially considered as the context, the space that surrounds and grounds a building has also expanded in its manifestation and influential capabilities.

The conversation between the context and the built has moved on from mere aesthetic relevance of the building to architecture being an agency of and for the people, culture, socio economic growth and ecological sensitivity set across a period in time

Context in Transition Past to Present

When discussing a vibrant, dynamic and everchanging context, one must refer to the global city of New York or as it is rightfully called,’ The city of scaffolding’. New York has secured a reputation for being one of the busiest cities in the world, its fast-paced nature allows it become an experimentation ground for ideas that can traverse timelines in terms of relevance. This global city has a rich history closely associated with its built environment, here the old and new sit beside one another and belong to the environment they are placed in.

Our studio project, as a part of the Advanced Architectural Design program at the University of Pennsylvania aims to explore the idea of an addition to the New York Stock Exchange dealing with NFT (Non Fungible Token) mining. To understand our motivations and approach to this project, it is important to understand the following precedents.

The Guggenheim Museum by Frank Gehry in Bilbao, Spain.

A building that gave rise to the term Bilbao effect. As a building the Guggenheim does not attempt to blend in or fit in with its context. With its titanium sheets cladded onto form the buildings unique form sitting beside the river Nervion, the museum stands apart from its surroundings. Though the building stands apart it stays sensitive to its context on two accounts.

The way the museum is planned demonstrates an awareness of context. In (Figure 1) One can observe the treatment given to the Museum Façade varies drastically from the river front to the back that sits beside the city. The more muted structures near the roadways helps transition the museum into the field within which it sits.

The techniques and methods employed in the construction and production of the Museum has enabled the economic revival of Bilbao city. The advent of using 3D modeling software’s to conceive this building’s unique imagery brought a lot of attention onto the museum and by extension the City of Bilbao. It is also region specific in its use of titanium, a material locally available yet not widely applied, which despite its contrasting form has been driven by the Context it resides in, and in turn has contributed more back to the city it resides in

Figure 1 : Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain by Frank Gehry

While the rendering of this building stays true to its intention and function as a museum, another building of Gehry’s situated in Lower Manhattan worth referring to is the Beekman Tower (Figure 2). This building reinterprets the typology of the urban fabric it sits within. It is able to call back to well established ideas of aesthetics within the city while not falling prey to nostalgia[1]. With the Rock bed of New York allowing for skyscrapers to be constructed, this 87-story tower borrows from its context to reinstate a brand-new identity in the skyline

Another building that responds in contrast to its immediate environment is the Louvre, Paris. Sitting in the court of the Louvre Palace, France is a Pyramid made of Glass and steel (Figure 3). Similar to the Eiffel tower, when unveiled the Louvre pyramid was considered an architectural joke. The form is borrowed from the Pyramids of Egypt and the material is alien to the classical Palace it is surrounded by. Yet with time the museum has grown to become more culturally integrated to the fabric of Paris.[2] The pyramid allows the museum to be introverted to the court it occupies. The glass and steel represent the time it was conceived. Though it is perceived as an alien object in its context, during its conception, I.M.Pei in collaboration with Saint Gobain, customized a glass to ensure that the green tint that often comes with glass panels is eliminated, providing an untainted view and reflection of the Louvre palace. [3]

The period in which the Louvre was built influenced its materiality and form. It was however time that revealed its significance and how relevant it was culturally to the City of Paris.

Buildings are complex beings that reside in ever changing contexts and cultures. They are occupied by periods in time rather than points. In ‘Give me a gun and I will make all buildings move: An ANTs' view of architecture’ by Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva there is a quote that goes ‘But one of the other advantages of taking a gull-in-flight view of buildings would be that context could be done away with.’[4] Here context is seen as a static entity, but often times the context constantly evolves with the building. In the case of Guggenheim, Bilbao, the museum as a formal entity could be uprooted and placed in any corner of the world and it would function, by doing so it would also raise a lot of concerns on its relevance. It is the welding of the museum into the cities realities that makes this Guggenheim an important piece of architecture.

In the case of the Louvre, Paris. The context in a sense had to catch up with what the new building aesthetic meant for the Louvre and in extension France.

These cases do not consider the context as just physical entities to be responded to. The contexts here reside in complex systems of economies, culture, and international identities. In these precedents the images of the gull in flight indicate to its dynamism in an ever-changing context.

The Studio project worked on by my partner Yifan Lyu and I (Figure 8), perches on top of the historic New York stock Exchange. Its intent is to function as a site for mining NFTs, the latest addition to the currencies of the time. The main users of our establishment are non-human entities, servers.

There are rarely any precedents for a building of such typology. The ones that could be considered precedents do not dwell within the realm of aesthetics and design. In ‘ The building where we keep the world’ by Liam Young, the author describes data centers owned by Google and Facebook. These places are essentially warehouses in the countryside built only for servers. In this paper he quotes “The data center is a typology without history. The contemporary aesthetic language of the server farm is derived from the expectations of what an IT worker thinks they should look like after watching a lifetime of science fiction films.”[5] When a certain typology like the one presented in our studio has no precedent, it is easy to borrow from other allied fields of design and art that hint at something being futuristic. But as an architect it is essential to acknowledge that the future is a result of the developments in the present.

It is essential that one takes note of the developments in the physical and virtual context while designing such a space. With our site being on top of the New York Stock Exchange, the impact of our rendition to this space is crucial. The façade becomes an extremely important component of this project as its imagery could represent the language to be adopted for the rise of spaces being catered to non-humans.

When one looks around Manhattan a few things become extremely apparent. The value of land is extremely expensive and as a designer one must minimize the area occupied by inhabitable spaces such as the façade. Due to the dynamic nature of the context a lot of buildings need to sit beside historic buildings. Manhattan is also densely populated with buildings and experiences a huge influx in population from tourists to working population that contribute to its financial and cultural progression.

In our design rendition to this program, we have optimized the façade to be extremely compact and well detailed. As you can see in figure 8. We have managed to achieve a sense of dynamism in the façade by ensuring that in the pursuit of imagery we are not sacrificing the habitable spaces. Like the Burj Doha, by Jean Nouvel (Figure 4), our façade with its intricate apertures reveals itself in varying degrees of visibility and scale. Engraving a strong visual image of the new typology at hand[6]. For a tourist in Manhattan whose interaction with architecture is mostly from the exterior this is a unique experience of layers, reflectivity, and ornamentation.

This project catering to the digital markets is an extension of the NYSE a classical building with Corinthian columns and pediments. A similar relationship is observed in the Hearst Building( Figure 5) by Foster and Partners. According to the project description by the architects “The new tower rises above the old building to a height of forty-four-stories, linked on the outside by a skirt of glazing that encourages an impression of the tower floating weightlessly above the base.”[7] Borrowing from this idea, and acknowledging that our design is going to be viewed from an ant’s point of view. The design sits lightly onto the NYSE using steel grid frames. From the interiors of the NYSE one can investigate the spaces packed with servers through openings in the floor slabs making it a point of visual interaction between those who use the NYSE for trading traditional financial assets.

Figure 5 Hearst Building by Foster and Partners

In an already packed physical context a mining site will generate loads of heat that need to be addressed. A fully enclosed building would trap the heat inside making it hazardous. The openings provided on the façade and the floor slabs allow for simple and steady dissipation of heat from the building (Figure 6).

Even though the space is primarily catered towards servers, it does acknowledge that machines require some level of human interaction as well. To cater to the humans that would be accessing these spaces the building is provided with large apertures that can be accessed by a ramp where one can experience what a mining space is on one side and have view of Manhattan through the other. The context of Manhattan is also home to a lot of birds, The grids seen on our façade ( Figure 7) allow for other life forms to interact with the building without hindering its functionality.

This project deals with the context and its varying scales of interaction, from the physicality of it to its impression and identity. These server centric spaces are not stripped of their humanity, they are curated keeping in mind that this is a project set in the near future but is not devoid of its present and past. The modular detailing and figural moments present in multiple layers of the façade provide a much-needed relief from the repetitive and fenestrated skyscrapers of Manhattan. Any project shall be relevant to its period in time only when it can be realized in the realities of its environment. In Introduction, A Mythology of Technology, Lo-TEK design by Radical Indigenism by Julia Watson she quotes “The destructive one-size-fits-all approach of high-tech heralds a homogeneity and uniformity that fundamentally counters the heterogeneity and natural complexity of ecosystems.”[8] . This quote is true for architecture in the digital age, especially ones that embark on new technologies and typologies. It is important to acknowledge that data and mining centers are an inevitable part of our lives and cannot be tucked away in the outskirts for long, and so it is imperative that as designers this emerging typology does not receive a homogenous rendition across the globe. A mining center in New York City must look and function differently from one in Seoul, Korea or Mumbai, India. The ghosts of contexts past present and future must inform the way we design otherwise we would be building spaces that fail to acknowledge that the world is a diverse place and its differences need to be celebrated.

Figure 8 Eleevation and Sectional Perspective

Bibliography

Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva. 2013. "Give me a gun and I wil make all buildings Move." 113.

KOHLSTEDT, KURT. 2016. 99 Percent Invisible. July 25. https://99percentinvisible.org/article/legible-cities-fitting-outstanding-architecture-everyday-contexts/?utm_medium=website&utm_source=archdaily.com.

Ouroussoff, Nicolai. 2008. "Looking Skyward in Lower Manhattan." New York TImes. May 31. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/31/arts/design/31beek.html.

Partners, Norman Foster and. 2006. Foster and Partners. https://www.fosterandpartners.com/projects/hearst-headquarters/.

n.d. Re-thinking the Future. https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/architectural-facts/a2352-10-things-you-did-not-know-about-louvre-pyramid-by-i-m-pei/.

2016. ToweInfo. February. https://thetowerinfo.com/buildings-list/doha-tower/.

[8] Watson, Julia. n.d. "Introduction, A Mythology of Technology." Lo-TEK Design by Radical Indigenism,TASCHEN 20.

Young, Liam. 2017. "The Building where we keep the World." Edited by ed. Alejandro Zaero Polo and Jeffrey Anderson. Immanent Commons: Seoul Biennale 25.

Log 54, Dark Matter University, ' The other day we shared a Doc...', Winter/Spring 2022,Coauthoring ,P4.

Stan Allen, “Field Conditions,” Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), pp. 92-103 or from Landform Building (2010). ,Part1 ,P25

Yung Ho Chang, Alexander D'Hooghe and Sanford Kwinter,"Fight Club: The Fabric Chang versus Monument D'Hooge ,Thresholds , 2008, No. 33, Formalism (2008) ,P15.

tHE GHOSTS OF Contexts’ Past, Present and Future

context study

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