Grav­i­tiv­i­ty

Introduction

The the­mat­ic focus of the jour­nal – name­ly the pro­gram­ming of archi­tec­ture in rela­tion to its tec­ton­ic nar­ra­tive – is reflect­ed in the fol­low­ing arti­cle through ques­tion­ing whether, in con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture, the rela­tion­ship between the pro­gram­mat­ic struc­tur­ing of a building’s con­tent and its means of con­struc­tion remains rel­e­vant in a time of post-struc­tur­al social rela­tions. The tec­ton­ics of build­ings, ground­ed in their rec­og­niz­able artic­u­la­tion and syn­tax – which we, in prin­ci­ple, com­pare to so-called sol­id struc­tures – are con­trast­ed with the dynam­ics of bod­ies with­out organs and desir­ing machines, as the­o­rized by philoso­phers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

On the basis of the­o­ret­i­cal insights into archi­tec­ture as a dynam­ic respon­sive form, which are con­sid­ered through the wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed con­cept of tem­po­ral lay­ers close­ly relat­ed to archi­tect Stew­art Brand, we rel­a­tivize the impor­tance of tec­ton­i­cal­ly and the­mat­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent build­ings. Part I explains that in a time when archi­tec­tur­al form is con­stant­ly trans­form­ing – dri­ven by the eco­nom­ic and social cur­rents of con­tem­po­rary soci­ety – such con­sis­ten­cy is sub­ject to strong for­mal dis­in­te­gra­tion that grad­u­al­ly erodes and under­mines the mean­ing and iden­ti­ty of con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture. Through analy­sis of the var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions of tem­po­ral lay­ers, it is empha­sized that the dynam­ic respon­sive­ness of archi­tec­ture is not only con­nect­ed to util­i­ty and econ­o­my but also address­es its users in an exis­ten­tial sense – through its rela­tions to grav­i­ty, mat­ter, mass, and time. 

Brand’s under­stand­ing of architecture’s capac­i­ty for con­tin­u­ous adap­ta­tion and trans­for­ma­tion is often cit­ed as a tool for a prag­mat­ic and sus­tain­able response to cur­rent eco­nom­ic, social and envi­ron­men­tal needs. Yet, as an argu­ment for our the­sis – that through the dynam­ics of chang­ing archi­tec­tur­al form architecture’s iden­ti­ty is grad­u­al­ly dis­solved – we present sev­er­al exam­ples of con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture that man­i­fest the influ­ence of the lay­er­ing of the building's skin on the poten­tial dis­so­lu­tion of its mean­ing and iden­ti­ty. Cit­ing sev­er­al exam­ples of tem­po­ral lay­er­ing in con­tem­po­rary build­ings and pub­lic spaces, we posit the the­sis that among all of the lay­ers, a building’s struc­tur­al sys­tem plays a crit­i­cal role in enabling archi­tec­ture to with­stand the increas­ing­ly inva­sive influ­ences of a post-struc­tur­al society.

Part II intro­duces the con­cept of grav­i­tiv­i­ty, where unlike the tec­ton­ic con­sti­tu­tion of build­ings, we explain those design prin­ci­ples that allow archi­tec­ture to embody tem­po­ral and spa­tial resistance.

In the Face of Solid Structures

It is axiomat­ic that Archi­tec­ture, as a social activ­i­ty, is deeply embed­ded with­in its his­tor­i­cal socio-polit­i­cal con­text. Con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture oper­ates with­in an unpre­dictable and rapid­ly chang­ing con­text of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism in which rec­og­niz­able social struc­tures are becom­ing increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to dis­cern. More specif­i­cal­ly, emer­gent social con­di­tions are usurp­ing pre­vi­ous­ly pre­dictable pow­er rela­tions and insti­tu­tion­al modes of operations.

In their col­lab­o­ra­tive work Anti-Oedi­pus, French philoso­phers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guat­tari drew a telling pic­ture of this sit­u­a­tion. Anti-Oedi­pus will serve as the basis for an overview of the prac­tice of archi­tec­ture in increas­ing­ly uncer­tain times, as we believe that – although they are far from being the only authors to analyse con­tem­po­rary social dynam­ics – they pos­sess the inter­pre­ta­tive pow­er that offers crit­i­cal insight into social process­es. Rather than offer­ing straight­for­ward answers, their crit­i­cal­ly provoca­tive chal­leng­ing of estab­lished social con­ven­tions prof­fers ques­tions and new ways of think­ing soci­ety[1]. Although the authors describe social struc­tures by devel­op­ing def­i­n­i­tions and con­cep­tu­al net­works that do not address archi­tec­ture per se, we can nev­er­the­less apply their the­o­ret­i­cal base­lines to the role of archi­tec­ture in the con­tem­po­rary world.

In their texts, Deleuze and Guat­tari shed light on the socio-struc­tur­al rela­tion­ships that are evi­dent yet sys­tem­i­cal­ly hid­den from us; they describe those social process that con­tin­u­al­ly take place before us.

Their goal is clear: to demys­ti­fy, by means of care­ful analy­sis, rigid, hier­ar­chi­cal, con­trol­ling social sys­tems – so-called sol­id struc­tures[2] – that place indi­vid­u­als into pre­de­fined posi­tions with­in insti­tu­tion­al and ide­o­log­i­cal frame­works, and func­tion under[3] the pre­text of objec­tiv­i­ty, under­stood as an inevitable process of struc­tur­ing con­tem­po­rary social organ­i­sa­tions. But Deleuze and Guat­tari claim oth­er­wise: social process­es are not sys­tem­i­cal­ly estab­lished before­hand, but evolve organ­i­cal­ly, from themselves.

Accord­ing to Deleuze and Guat­tari life takes place out­side strict­ly defined sys­tems. It is non-lin­ear, chaot­ic, and embed­ded in flows of desire. The authors cen­tre their writ­ing around the con­cept of desire, and unlike psy­cho­analy­sis[4] define it as a pro­duc­tive and cre­ative force – the force that gen­er­ates social con­nec­tions, rela­tion­ships, and new pos­si­bil­i­ties of oper­a­tion. This con­sti­tutes the basis for their con­cept of ​“desir­ing machines” (machines désir­antes), which can be described as the basic unit of social dynam­ics. To be more pre­cise – desir­ing machines take part in social life and con­nect bod­ies with people’s desires in con­crete process­es of func­tion­ing in the mate­r­i­al world.[5] Desir­ing machines are always already embed­ded in, but nev­er com­plete­ly defined by social con­di­tions. Their con­nect­ing is not hier­ar­chi­cal, but net­worked – they con­nect with oth­er oper­a­tions that ​“are think­ing, feel­ing and work­ing in sim­i­lar direc­tions.”[6] They define their own mode of oper­a­tion, i.e. act­ing irre­spec­tive of social­ly deter­mined con­di­tions and sol­id struc­tures. Desir­ing machines are only able to func­tion this way because of ​“bod­ies with­out organs” (corps sans organes) – con­cep­tu­al fields where desire can work beyond social hier­ar­chies. Bod­ies with­out organs can be defined in two ways: first­ly, they are an exam­ple of anti-struc­tures, where desire oper­ates irre­spec­tive of the pre-set order. It is for this rea­son that they, sec­ond­ly, rep­re­sent the basis for new, unpre­dictable pos­si­bil­i­ties of action.[7] Sum­mer­ly, bod­ies with­out organs are unsta­ble, chang­ing forms sub­or­di­nat­ed to con­tin­u­ous chang­ing desires, thus allow­ing them an open field of action: a dynam­ic, unsta­ble, and open struc­ture where pos­si­bil­i­ties emerge that are not pre­de­ter­mined, but are cre­at­ed through the desire desire ema­nat­ing from bodies.

As aforenot­ed, con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture oper­ates with­in a rapid­ly chang­ing world in which sol­id – social – struc­tures are increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to recog­nise. To be able to sur­vive in such an unsta­ble and unpre­dictable world, archi­tec­ture has devel­oped ways of adapt­ing to new expec­ta­tions, desires and behav­iours of its users.[8] Risk­ing over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, we nev­er­the­less feel com­pelled to note that such an archi­tec­tur­al prac­tice, sub­or­di­nat­ed to ongo­ing social dynam­ics, is becom­ing increas­ing­ly sim­i­lar to the log­ic of bod­ies with­out organs. Archi­tec­ture is becom­ing less iden­ti­fi­able, both in terms of use (pro­gram) and mean­ing (what it communicates).

Here is where, if we under­stand archi­tec­ture as a social activ­i­ty in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, an impor­tant con­tra­dic­tion occurs in the under­stand­ing of archi­tec­ture as a social activ­i­ty. Although the authors fore­ground unor­ga­nized and non-hier­ar­chi­cal action, it can­not be com­plete­ly denied that a cer­tain mea­sure of order and organ­i­sa­tion remains nec­es­sary for one’s exis­tence in the world. Our premise is that archi­tec­ture plays a key role, as in its essence it is sub­ject to cer­tain laws of physics and spa­tial lim­i­ta­tions. It is there­fore impor­tant that we under­stand sol­id struc­tures in their oth­er sense – as an inter­nal log­ic of archi­tec­ture itself which is based on order, com­po­si­tion, organ­i­sa­tion, and laws of con­struc­tion. In oth­er words: for archi­tec­ture to be able to man­i­fest itself in the mate­r­i­al world, it requires a cer­tain order – a struc­ture that makes its func­tion and mean­ing possible.

On this basis, we can dis­cern a cer­tain dual­i­ty of con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture. On the one hand, archi­tec­ture is inevitably bound to order, struc­ture, and the mate­r­i­al con­di­tions that make its very exis­tence pos­si­ble. On the oth­er, it allows for process­es to unfold with­in a social field that is increas­ing­ly unsta­ble, non-lin­ear, and shaped by flows of desire. To bet­ter under­stand how this dual­i­ty is expressed in space, we can explore it through the con­cept of tem­po­ral lay­ers. These allow us to think of archi­tec­ture not only as a mate­r­i­al con­struct gov­erned by phys­i­cal laws, but also as a prac­tice embed­ded in time.

Part I
Temporal Layers

To under­stand how described social rela­tions reflect in archi­tec­tur­al space we should first define what it is that forms the space of archi­tec­ture. Even though space is char­ac­ter­ized as a void, that is an absence of mat­ter, an emp­ty space defined by its own char­ac­ter­is­tics and prop­er­ties of lim­it­ing sur­faces, its man­i­fes­ta­tion is only pos­si­ble through the mate­ri­al­iza­tion of the phys­i­cal enve­lope that sur­rounds it. Archi­tec­tur­al space is there­fore defined by the mate­ri­al­iza­tion of its skin.[9]

We have above posit­ed that con­tem­po­rary social rela­tions, dri­ven by post-struc­tur­al social forces, defy archi­tec­tur­al space. In addi­tion to its own metab­o­lism and ongo­ing repro­duc­tion, the con­tin­u­um of func­tion­ing desir­ing machines and bod­ies with­out organs also requires a con­stant meta­bol­ic trans­for­ma­tion of the space in which desir­ing machines oper­ate. This process nev­er stops run­ning and takes place at dif­fer­ent timescales. Metab­o­lism of space is a reflec­tion of the dynam­ics shaped by con­tacts, inter­plays, con­trac­tions, trans­for­ma­tions and metab­o­lisms of con­tem­po­rary society’s con­tents and activ­i­ties. Its key trait is best described with the con­cept of becom­ing[10], which in philo­soph­i­cal terms replaces the con­cept of being. Noth­ing is just what it is any­more, but is already that, which it is always becom­ing anew. Deleuze and Guat­tari say as much when they write that becom­ing means to gen­er­ate move­ment that does not fol­low a tem­plate.[11]

The archi­tec­tur­al space of becom­ing is there­fore a space capa­ble of its own con­tin­u­al trans­for­ma­tion from one form to anoth­er, from one mate­ri­al­iza­tion to anoth­er, but with no final form. The ques­tion of dynam­ic trans­for­ma­tion, metab­o­lism and repro­duc­tion of space, through its mate­r­i­al skin is there­fore the key to under­stand­ing the rela­tion­ship between social process­es and archi­tec­tur­al space.

An impor­tant shift in the under­stand­ing of the post-struc­tural­ist ontol­ogy of space occurred when archi­tec­ture began to be under­stood pri­mar­i­ly through the dimen­sion of time at the expense of the dimen­sion of space. The for­mal frame­work that allows for such con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion of archi­tec­tur­al space, first­ly through its for­ma­tion of the dynam­ic skin com­pound of var­i­ous envelopes, can be found in the con­cept of shear­ing lay­ers devel­oped by Amer­i­can archi­tect Stew­art Brand​​[12]​​, as well as in Fran­cis Duffy's four lay­ers of time in buildings​[13]​, and in the lec­ture 200, 100, 50, 20, 10 by Aus­tri­an archi­tect Diet­mar Eber­le[14].

Accord­ing to the cit­ed authors, under­stand­ing how archi­tec­ture oper­ates over an extend­ed peri­od of time requires us to accept that its adap­ta­tions and trans­for­ma­tions occur at dif­fer­ent inter­vals and in dif­fer­ent parts of a build­ing. The authors there­fore divid­ed the con­stituent ele­ments of build­ings into lay­ers, with the aim of more pre­cise­ly defin­ing the caus­es and for­mal con­se­quences of the changes that take place with­in them. Stew­art Brand and Fran­cis Duffy base their approach on the prin­ci­ples of prag­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of build­ings to the inevitably nec­es­sary changes over a longer peri­od of time. In doing so, they look for mod­els in ver­nac­u­lar and anony­mous archi­tec­ture. Diet­mar Eber­le, by con­trast, is con­sid­er­ably more aca­d­e­m­ic in his inter­pre­ta­tion, attempt­ing – through the nam­ing of indi­vid­ual build­ing com­po­nents and their expect­ed lifes­pans (200 years, 100 years, etc.) – to define the poten­tial impact on the iden­ti­ty and mean­ing of con­struc­tion in a spe­cif­ic cul­tur­al con­text. For him, tem­po­ral lay­ers also rep­re­sent a frame­work for under­stand­ing tra­di­tion and continuity.

All three approach­es to under­stand­ing the struc­ture and func­tion­ing of a build­ing enve­lope share the idea that the skin that defines archi­tec­tur­al space is com­posed of sev­er­al envelopes bro­ken down into lay­ers that can be trans­formed or replaced inde­pen­dent­ly and in dif­fer­ent inter­vals. The building’s skin, and con­se­quent­ly also the archi­tec­tur­al spaces which it sur­rounds, are no longer homoge­nous, but split into onion-like lay­ers. Since they are defined by their expect­ed life­time and rates of change, we can call these lay­ers the tem­po­ral lay­ers of the archi­tec­tur­al skin. Said authors, who agree that archi­tec­tur­al space mate­ri­al­izes through tem­po­ral lay­ers, each pro­pose a dif­fer­ent set of lay­ers that are key to under­stand­ing the hier­ar­chi­cal­ly struc­tured, but con­tex­tu­al­ly and tech­ni­cal­ly inde­pen­dent lay­er­ing of the archi­tec­tur­al enve­lope: Brand iden­ti­fies six, Eber­le five, and Duffy four lay­ers. They dif­fer in the detail to which they break down the inter­nal spa­tial sep­a­ra­tions in var­i­ous spaces (the inner­most lay­er of the build­ing skin) and the impor­tance they attribute to the phys­i­cal­ly invis­i­ble, yet nor­ma­tive enve­lope of the urban struc­ture (the out­er­most lay­er). All of them iden­ti­fied four fun­da­men­tal lay­ers: the struc­tur­al frame­work, inter­nal par­ti­tions, instal­la­tions and oth­er mechan­i­cal sys­tems, and var­i­ous con­tents and activ­i­ties, which mate­ri­al­ize with equip­ment and oth­er objects in a building’s interior. 

It should be not­ed that, at least for Brand and Duffy, the rea­son for such under­stand­ing of the build­ing struc­ture is in the first-place prag­mat­ic. It has to do with the building’s capac­i­ty to react to chang­ing expec­ta­tions and desires of its users and adapt to the ongo­ing tech­no­log­i­cal progress that allows build­ings to main­tain ​“tech­ni­cal” pace with the times. Both Brand and Duffy make it clear that ​“lay­er-less” build­ings, unable to allow for flex­i­ble changes and adap­ta­tions, are rigid, and inca­pable of keep­ing up with their own progress. Rather than a mul­ti-lay­ered struc­ture based on a philo­soph­i­cal under­stand­ing of the build­ings life-span, for them tem­po­ral lay­ers are in fact a util­i­tar­i­an and prag­mat­ic reac­tion to a soci­ety of rapid change, needs, and spa­tial trans­for­ma­tions. How­ev­er, Eber­le is much more cau­tious: He rec­og­nizes in tem­po­ral lay­ers also the poten­tial keep­ers of tra­di­tion, long-term mean­ing and resis­tance in space.[15]

The umbrel­la prin­ci­ple of tem­po­ral lay­ers implies that the lay­ers of a building’s mate­r­i­al enve­lope fol­low one anoth­er based on their longevi­ty, from the longest- to the short­est-last­ing, as a rule from the out­side in. A building’s exte­ri­or form is long-last­ing, stead­fast, and in turn city-form­ing.[16] It is mate­ri­al­ly and for­mal­ly defined by the tem­po­ral lay­er with the longest life­time. Grad­u­al­ly mov­ing from the exte­ri­or of the build­ing to its inte­ri­or – towards its actu­al use – we see inter­nal divi­sions and par­ti­tions emerge which are increas­ing­ly close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the building’s chang­ing con­tents and users. The authors admit that com­mer­cial build­ings are the most dynam­ic, fol­lowed by res­i­den­tial build­ings, and only then fol­low pub­lic build­ings. Such lay­er­ing makes sense, both onto­log­i­cal­ly and pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly, because it reg­u­lates the rela­tion­ship between (exte­ri­or) pub­lic inter­est and expec­ta­tions of the mass­es, and one’s per­son­al (inte­ri­or) desires and expec­ta­tions. The per­ma­nent, the com­mon, and the pub­lic unfolds out­wards, where­as the indi­vid­ual and the pri­vate remain more or less cov­ered within. 

The names of the lay­ers dif­fer in the works of Brandt, Duffy, and Eber­le. For eas­i­er under­stand­ing and for the pur­pos­es of our arti­cle, we will assign names to the lay­ers while remain­ing con­sis­tent with the log­ic that Brandt pre­sent­ed as the orig­i­nal clas­si­fi­ca­tion. Thus, we will des­ig­nate the lay­er that defines the geo­graph­i­cal set­ting, lot or urban loca­tion of a build­ing as the place (orig­i­nal­ly, accord­ing to Brandt: the site). The lay­er that encom­pass­es the building’s façade and roof enve­lope will be des­ig­nat­ed as the enve­lope (orig­i­nal­ly: the skin). The lay­er that entails the load-bear­ing sys­tem, i.e. all struc­tur­al ele­ments of a build­ing, will be called the skele­ton (orig­i­nal­ly: the struc­ture). The lay­er that con­sists of tech­ni­cal equip­ment and oth­er instal­la­tions in a build­ing that sup­port its mechan­i­cal oper­a­tion will be referred to as the tech­nol­o­gy (orig­i­nal­ly: the ser­vice). The lay­er that defines the inte­ri­or lay­out of pro­grammes and activ­i­ties that take place in a build­ing as well as all par­ti­tions and sep­a­ra­tion ele­ments that allow for diverse and phys­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed use of a building’s inte­ri­or, will be des­ig­nat­ed as the lay­out (orig­i­nal­ly: the space plan). The inner­most lay­er, which includes all mov­able and part­ly mov­able fur­ni­ture and oth­er equip­ment used in a build­ing, will be called the equip­ment (orig­i­nal­ly: the stuff). This expla­na­tion aims to pro­vide read­ers with a clear­er under­stand­ing of the indi­vid­ual lay­ers while main­tain­ing con­cep­tu­al con­sis­ten­cy with Brandt’s terminology.

A more detailed read­ing of Brand’s approach, how­ev­er, reveals that the ​“fast” lay­ers are posi­tioned also on the exte­ri­or side of the building’s skin, whose resis­tant, long-last­ing struc­tur­al core is thus often obscured by rapid­ly chang­ing tem­po­ral lay­ers from both the inner and the out­er side. Most of the rea­sons for this struc­tur­al speci­fici­ty derive from the indus­tri­al devel­op­ment of the build­ing enve­lope. In approx­i­mate­ly eighty years the sol­id, rigid, weak­ly porous stan­dard mason­ry enve­lope which was the most com­mon build­ing tech­nique in Europe and was com­mon­place until the mid-19^th cen­tu­ry, evolved into a com­plex tech­nol­o­gy-based semi-per­me­able and trans­par­ent enve­lope sub­ject to con­stant progress, upgrades, and improve­ments.[17]

If build­ings are noto­ri­ous­ly trans­formed in their inte­ri­ors by the dynam­ics of chang­ing con­tents, desires, and con­sumer habits of their users, their exter­nal appear­ance is con­stant­ly shed­ding and alter­ing just as rapid­ly as façade-enve­lope tech­nol­o­gy evolves, enabling the main­te­nance of increas­ing­ly more and more rigid indoor cli­mat­ic con­di­tions. As a result, the rigid tem­po­ral lay­er of the skele­ton, both from the out­er and inner side, is veiled by the log­ic of fast fash­ion. Brand points to the above as con­ser­v­a­tive­ly pro­gres­sive; build­ing his case on exam­ples of grow­ing organ­isms of build­ing types, such as mobile homes and bun­ga­lows; he goes so far as to rel­a­tivize even the most endur­ing of lay­ers, the place, only to legit­imize it in the process of its own repro­duc­tion, mul­ti­pli­ca­tion and frac­tal­i­sa­tion as tem­po­ral­ly sus­tain­able and thus legit­i­mate in the long term.[18] His inter­pre­ta­tion of grow­ing ​“roots” of mobile home com­pounds[19] reads as a case of mod­ern ver­nac­u­lar, or as a mod­el of architecture’s capac­i­ty to con­form to the needs of its users in a dis­tinct­ly prag­mat­ic, spa­tial­ly non-hier­ar­chi­cal[20] manner. 

But architecture’s short-lived, two-sided enve­lope opens the door to spa­tial schiz­o­phre­nia and decom­po­si­tion of a rec­og­niz­able iden­ti­ty. Schiz­o­phrenic because through con­tin­u­al changes of the inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or appear­ance of a build­ing the two grad­u­al­ly move away from one anoth­er, each acquir­ing its own inde­pen­dent iden­ti­ty alien­at­ed from more sus­tain­able and long-lived tem­po­ral lay­ers. This means that even if a build­ing was orig­i­nal­ly designed with all its tem­po­ral lay­ers in visu­al har­mo­ny, its exter­nal and inter­nal lay­ers are grad­u­al­ly aban­don­ing their orig­i­nal iden­ti­ty and dis­tinc­tive­ness. Archi­tec­ture has had to live with the con­se­quences of the phe­nom­e­non described above for rough­ly 30 years[21], faced with trends like the rapid surge in ​“start-ups”[22], and sus­tain­abil­i­ty-dri­ven tech­no­log­i­cal revival in build­ing tech­nol­o­gy and facade envelopes[23] – all the while with an effi­cien­cy – and prof­it-dri­ven cap­i­tal­ist moder­ni­ty grad­u­al­ly dis­solv­ing archi­tec­ture beyond recog­ni­tion, into a state of obscu­ri­ty, schiz­o­phre­nia, and meaninglessness.

Irre­spec­tive of whether Brand’s under­stand­ing of tem­po­ral layers is the cause or result of cur­rent social rela­tions described in the first chap­ter, the above leads us to assume that his inter­pre­ta­tion of mul­ti-lay­ered mate­ri­al­i­ty of the skin of an archi­tec­tur­al space is direct­ly relat­ed to the con­cept of bod­ies with­out organs in which desir­ing machines live their fast and short-lived dreams. By artic­u­lat­ing the struc­ture of the build­ing enve­lope into tem­po­ral lay­ers – capa­ble of respond­ing autonomous­ly to social needs, expec­ta­tions, and desires, inde­pen­dent of the coher­ent core of the build­ing – archi­tec­tur­al space has become able to func­tion as seam­less bod­ies with­out organs. The trans­for­ma­tion of space, in line with the needs and expec­ta­tions of soci­ety, now unfolds smooth­ly and with­out con­flict. The schiz­o­phrenic com­po­si­tion of the indi­vid­ual tem­po­ral lay­ers of the archi­tec­tur­al skin allows it to con­tin­u­ous­ly adapt and yield to these needs and desires.

It is for that, per­haps iron­ic, rea­son one can see how Brand’s scheme of shear­ing lay­ers of change has been applied by sev­er­al sources[24]​ as one of the cri­te­ria in life-cycle assess­ment of sus­tain­able build­ing design. Iron­ic because the key val­ue of a sus­tain­able soci­ety is not only its capac­i­ty for con­stant and prompt adap­ta­tion, but also its resis­tance and abil­i­ty to uphold val­ues and its iden­ti­ty and to mate­ri­al­ize memory.

Cukrarna Gallery: The Displaced Logic of Temporal Layers

As pre­vi­ous­ly explained, the con­cept of tem­po­ral lay­ers, allows build­ings to man­i­fest them­selves through sev­er­al for­mal­ly dis­tinc­tive parts which evolve in var­i­ous time cycles, thus con­struct­ing their spe­cif­ic, long- and short-term iden­ti­ty most­ly defined by their time inter­vals. But what hap­pens when this log­ic is reversed – when the idea of lay­ers is evi­dent, but dis­placed, deformed, placed out­side its own, char­ac­ter­is­tic util­i­tar­i­an framework? 

Cukrar­na Gallery, locat­ed in the cen­tre of Ljubl­jana, Slove­nia, whose tem­po­ral lay­ers are dis­tinct and thus iden­ti­fi­able, is our first exam­ple, not in terms of any typ­i­cal hier­ar­chy or sequence of tem­po­ral lay­ers as described by Brand, Eber­le and Duffy, but as en exam­ple of their dis­ar­ray due to the building’s rela­tion to the phe­nom­e­na of bod­ies with­out organs. The build­ing, built in 1828, was orig­i­nal­ly a sug­ar fac­to­ry. In 2021 Cukrana was com­plete­ly ren­o­vat­ed and, through exten­sive struc­tur­al and pro­gram­mat­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tions, trans­formed into a con­tem­po­rary art gallery. Over the cen­turies, its pur­pose changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly: first, with the intro­duc­tion of new sug­ar pro­duc­tion tech­nolo­gies, man­u­fac­tur­ing was grad­u­al­ly aban­doned, and after the earth­quake of 1895, ​“Cukrar­na assumed an unusu­al role as a refuge for the most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of soci­ety: earth­quake vic­tims, artists, chil­dren, patients, released pris­on­ers, and new­com­ers with­out shel­ter.”[25] Among oth­er things, it pro­vid­ed a home to many lit­er­ary artists of the Sloven­ian mod­ernist move­ment in the first half of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. The orig­i­nal build­ing was char­ac­ter­ized by its very low yet rel­a­tive­ly robust floors, illu­mi­nat­ed by numer­ous small square win­dows. Dur­ing the ren­o­va­tion, all inte­ri­or parts, floors, and walls were removed, leav­ing only the out­er shell and a recon­struct­ed roof of the orig­i­nal structure.

The build­ing is cur­rent­ly com­prised of two con­stituent parts – the his­toric and the con­tem­po­rary – involved in a rela­tion­ship of struc­tur­al and for­mal inter­de­pen­dence. In a way, both these ele­ments are deformed and tak­en out of their usu­al con­text: the his­toric part has been stripped of its func­tion and con­tents, while the con­tem­po­rary one does not sup­port itself its own foun­da­tion, hav­ing been hung on the rem­nants of the past: the exte­ri­or walls of the his­toric – orig­i­nal – build­ing. Both ele­ments have there­fore lost touch with their basic struc­tur­al log­ic. Since only the perime­ter wall and the gable roof remain of the his­toric part – it is a rad­i­cal­ly reduced shell, where the only tem­po­ral lay­er left is the skele­ton, the struc­tur­al lay­er, which for that rea­son also func­tions as the enve­lope and inte­ri­or lay­out. Every­thing else – the equip­ment and as a result the use of space – has been removed. In the authors’ words: ​“The ground floor [of the exist­ing build­ing] is the only part of the build­ing that receives nat­ur­al light – both gallery vol­umes are exe­cut­ed as ​‘white cubes’ intend­ed to serve as art exhi­bi­tion spaces with reg­u­lat­ed light, air con­di­tion­ing, tem­per­a­ture, and humid­i­ty. Two float­ing cuboids are dressed in per­fo­rat­ed sheet met­al… to give the new spa­tial inter­ven­tions a uni­form exte­ri­or…”[26] The con­tem­po­rary con­stituent is thus attached to the his­toric enve­lope, its entire struc­ture lit­er­al­ly hang­ing from it. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]

The con­tem­po­rary insert is an archi­tec­tur­al form with three clear­ly dis­tin­guish­able tem­po­ral lay­ers: the ​“exter­nal” enve­lope (placed inside the exist­ing build­ing), inter­nal steel skele­ton, and an added, non-trans­par­ent inte­ri­or lay­er that defines the lay­out of gallery spaces. The para­dox is in that the lay­out, is the deep­est and the most hid­den lay­er, (which is nor­mal­ly used to be sub­or­di­nat­ed to the skele­ton and the enve­lope) stand­ing out as the dom­i­nant pro­gram­mat­ic, geo­met­ri­cal and for­mal fac­tor that defines the shape and struc­ture of every­thing else. Informed by gallery use, the inte­ri­or divi­sion of space dic­tates the dimen­sions and rhythm of the steel frame­work and in turn the entire archi­tec­tur­al mass of the con­tem­po­rary insert. Clear­ly, this is a dia­met­ric shift in the hier­ar­chy: it is not the struc­tur­al frame­work that defines the lay­out of the pro­gramme, but the pro­gramme defines the struc­ture of the frame­work – in the con­text of a hang­ing form. The lat­ter is only pos­si­ble because the enve­lope and the frame­work already exist, allow­ing the tem­po­ral lay­ers of the new insert to func­tion as well as present them­selves in a dif­fer­ent, invert­ed manner.

The most fas­ci­nat­ing fea­ture of this exam­ple is the dou­ble skele­ton: the exter­nal his­toric walls that are for­mal­ly dom­i­nant, yet devoid of con­tent, and the inter­nal tech­ni­cal skele­ton of the con­tem­po­rary insert, which is sub­or­di­nat­ed to the inter­nal log­ic of exhi­bi­tion spaces. There’s a gap­ing void between the two sys­tems, both phys­i­cal and sym­bol­ic. With­in, the void there is no con­tact, no intrin­sic tran­si­tion, just an unfilled dis­tance: an emp­ty zone that car­ries ten­sion and unan­swered questions.

Described archi­tec­tur­al con­struct of dis­ar­rayed tem­po­ral lay­ers brings us to the phe­nom­e­non of bod­ies with­out organs, some­thing that can be read in urban space through the con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous lens of touris­ti­fi­ca­tion and cul­tur­al con­sump­tion[27]. In this case, the spe­cif­ic dis­po­si­tion of tem­po­ral lay­ers could be inter­pret­ed as the spa­tial expres­sion of cul­tur­al con­sump­tion: arranged across a sequence of aes­thet­i­cal­ly defined, for­mal­ly honed set­tings, the gallery spaces gen­er­ate per­me­able expe­ri­ences in severe con­trast to the orig­i­nal his­toric build­ing – its rhythm, its orig­i­nal struc­ture of low storeys and its mnemon­ic ref­er­ences to the broad social range of its for­mer res­i­dents. It seems to be an attempt at insert­ing a flow of con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion into the rigid struc­ture of his­to­ry – one that can­not pro­ceed with­out fric­tion, con­tra­dic­tions, and for­mal tensions.

If con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al con­sump­tion is an expres­sion of bod­ies with­out organs – unin­ter­rupt­ed flows of desire, sequences of aes­thet­ic effects, seri­al­ized expe­ri­ences – then Cukrana rep­re­sents a phys­i­cal effort to insti­tu­tion­al­ize this flow with­in a strat­i­fied archi­tec­tur­al shell. The result is an inhar­mo­nious whole with nei­ther of the con­stituent parts dom­i­nat­ing, each inscrib­ing itself into anoth­er through ten­sion. His­to­ry becomes a stage and the gallery a play pro­duced by the city – moment, an event, a fan­tas­ti­cal visu­al expe­ri­ence. [ 3 ]

Cukrana does not reject tem­po­ral lay­ers, it relo­cates them. It does not demol­ish his­to­ry, but trans­forms it into the load-bear­ing struc­ture for some­thing rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent. It could be argued that it con­fi­dent­ly sub­dues the load-bear­ing struc­ture in order to be some­thing oth­er: no longer a sol­id struc­ture, but a sus­pend­ed flu­id, a para­phrase, and embod­i­ment of bod­ies with­out organs. And there­in, in this very trait, resides its essence: con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a con­tin­u­um, but can also express a rup­ture – a gap between form and sub­stance, between the skele­ton and what hangs from it. Giv­en this, a new log­ic of time man­i­fests – the log­ic of bod­ies with­out organs, cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion and the archi­tec­tur­al void. Cukrar­na Gallery is an exam­ple of con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture that decom­pos­es the con­cept of the skele­ton in order to rel­a­tivize its dom­i­nant mean­ing. If at first sight the entire project seems to be based on the acknowl­edg­ment of the exis­ten­tial role of the archi­tec­tur­al skele­ton, a more detailed analy­sis of its con­flict­ing role in the building’s struc­ture demon­strates that far less rigid tem­po­ral lay­ers play a supe­ri­or role.

Homelessness and Consumerism: The City as a Symbiosis of Structures and Bodies Without Organs

The fol­low­ing illus­trates the con­cepts used here­in to describe exposed post-struc­tur­al social rela­tions and the divi­sion of archi­tec­tur­al form into dynam­ic sys­tems of tem­po­ral lay­ers. The inter­est, con­cern­ing the over­all argu­ment, is whether con­tem­po­rary urban phe­nom­e­na such as home­less­ness and con­sumerism can be described apply­ing the same terms as those used for a sin­gle build­ing, like in the pre­vi­ous case. A mod­ern city appears as a com­plex com­po­si­tion of two inter­twined sys­tems: sol­id struc­tures and bod­ies with­out organs, refer­ring to Deleuze’s and Guattari’s ter­mi­nol­o­gy. These two sys­tems are not in con­flict, they cohab­i­tate in con­stant fric­tion, inter­ac­tion, and with­in the trans­for­ma­tion of urban space. 

We typ­i­cal­ly think of cities it as ordered, clear­ly orga­nized struc­tures defined by the rules of clas­si­cal urban­ism[28], i.e. the sep­a­ra­tion of pub­lic, semi-pub­lic and pri­vate spaces, for­mal rules of design and oper­a­tion, com­mu­ni­ty util­i­ties, traf­fic reg­u­la­tions, and archi­tec­tur­al norms. Such sol­id struc­tures estab­lish order, bound­aries, places, ter­ri­to­ries, sta­bil­i­ty, and pre­dictabil­i­ty. On the oth­er hand, there are bod­ies with­out organs emerg­ing across urban space – elu­sive, flu­id and equiv­o­cal sys­tems that evade sta­ble orga­ni­za­tion and are con­stant­ly trans­form­ing – becom­ing – some­thing anew.

Bod­ies with­out organs are spa­tial sys­tems with­out a per­ma­nent form or final rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al image, but with an eter­nal desire[29] to be some­thing dif­fer­ent: e.g. shop­ping malls, city cores rede­vel­oped for tourists, shared traf­fic spaces where var­i­ous users inter­act with­out pre-defined rela­tion­ships. Sim­i­lar­ly, amuse­ment parks and hyper-pro­duc­tive urban adver­tis­ing land­scapes embody a con­tin­u­um of desires, inten­si­ties, flows and tran­si­tions where no sol­id forms exist; rather, they rep­re­sent a series of con­tin­u­ous shifts and changes. Bod­ies with­out organs have no begin­ning and no end; they min­gle and inter­twine – com­mer­cial flows inter­sects with tourist flows, infor­ma­tion flow with enter­tain­ment, the visu­al with the mate­r­i­al. A city of con­sump­tion is noth­ing like our nor­ma­tive per­cep­tion of a city formed by streets, squares and parks. It is an end­less, inter­twin­ing land­scape with­in the oth­er­wise solid­ly con­struct­ed world.

Even though sol­id struc­tures and bod­ies with­out organs embody dif­fer­ent spa­tial log­ics, they cohab­i­tate with­in cities. Bod­ies with­out organs increas­ing­ly inter­fere with the clas­si­cal struc­ture of the urban fab­ric – per­fo­rat­ing and stretch­ing it, redi­rect­ing its per­cep­tion. Urban space thus increas­ing­ly los­es its exis­ten­tial qual­i­ties, mor­ph­ing into a stage for mak­ing desires come true. It is no longer an area of exis­tence, but is trans­formed into an event plat­form for instant expe­ri­ences and con­sump­tion – a field of intensities.

In the log­ic of bod­ies with­out organs home­less­ness is sit­u­at­ed as its dop­pel­ganger. Seem­ing­ly ban­ished from the flows of con­sump­tion, home­less­ness not only cohab­its with them, but even reaps their ben­e­fits. The more smooth­ly the sup­ply and demand machine runs, the more obso­lete mate­ri­als are gen­er­at­ed. And home­less­ness uses them for its own ben­e­fit. The pres­ence of the home­less in urban space does not func­tion like an illog­i­cal for­eign body, but as an inte­gral (oth­er) part of the con­sump­tion land­scape that par­tic­i­pates in an equal­ly rel­e­vant sys­tem of desires, demands, and needs. Like con­sumers, the home­less take part in the cycle of urban inten­si­fi­ca­tion. Con­sumers embody what the sys­tem of infi­nite pro­duc­tion of goods desires, and the home­less what this same sys­tem spurns – as well as expels at the end of the lin­ear cycle of con­sump­tion. Home­less shel­ters and shop­ping malls com­bine a com­mon fea­ture, where nei­ther of their users builds a last­ing, nur­tur­ing and mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship with the urban space, which in turn makes shap­ing one’s per­son­al (and urban) iden­ti­ty impos­si­ble. The log­ic of bod­ies with­out organs simul­ta­ne­ous­ly expels them from space and places them inside a shear­ing con­tin­u­um of spa­tial shallowness. 

The typ­i­cal spa­tial phe­nom­e­na of these two con­struct­ed spaces, the shop­ping mall and home­less shel­ters, can be thus analysed in a sim­i­lar fash­ion. In terms of tem­po­ral lay­ers, they rep­re­sent for­mal extremes of the same phe­nom­e­non. A shop­ping mall is out­ward­ly rep­re­sent­ed by a rapid­ly chang­ing enve­lope that adapts to trend, taste and com­mer­cial expec­ta­tions – which in turn con­stant­ly regen­er­ates through the act of con­sump­tion. While under the glossy façade hides the util­i­tar­i­an skele­ton – a struc­tur­al lay­er that is tech­ni­cal, invis­i­ble, and has no aes­thet­ic aspi­ra­tions. Lay­outs are made up of cheap, replace­able mate­ri­als that change rapid­ly, but even not as rapid­ly as equip­ment, which is in fact replaced every sea­son. Sim­i­lar­ly, lay­er­ing in home­less shel­ters is defined by sheer need, and takes shape through the mate­ri­als at hand and impro­vi­sa­tion. The enve­lope, a frag­ile pro­tec­tive struc­ture made up of plas­tic, tex­tile or in the form of a tent, is vir­tu­al­ly instan­ta­neous­ly erect­ed, ephemer­al, and sub­ject to wear and theft, which trans­lates to a dynam­ic exchange.[30] It is dif­fi­cult to speak of actu­al lay­outs in such shel­ters, even though it is some­times hard to tell the dif­fer­ence between their envelopes and lay­outs, which seem to con­verge in pecu­liar ways. Makeshift shel­ters for the home­less are often noth­ing more than uni­cel­lu­lar for­ma­tions and are often erect­ed with­out a skele­ton, nei­ther tech­ni­cal nor sym­bol­ic. Rather than set­ting up a skele­ton as some­thing of their own, the home­less mere­ly appro­pri­ate already hab­it­able space: bridges, over­hangs, fences, bench­es, alcoves – appro­pri­at­ing those parts of the city which act as a part of its indis­pens­able infra­struc­ture. We can there­fore con­clude that for both, the shop­ping mall and itin­er­ant home­less abodes, the out­er­most and inner­most tem­po­ral lay­ers play a much more impor­tant func­tion­al and mean­ing­ful role than the cen­tral lay­er of the skele­ton, which is rel­e­gat­ed to the back­ground and obscured in the first case, or adopt­ed and impro­vised in the sec­ond. Both forms there­fore point to the same log­ic of an urban body with­out organs: the over­grow­ing and obscur­ing of sol­id struc­tures, their vacat­ing, mor­ph­ing into con­tin­u­ous­ly new envelopes.

It is impor­tant to under­stand that this is not a case of oppo­si­tion between order and chaos, between a clas­si­cal city and its anom­alies, but of two sides of the same process. The city decom­pos­es and regen­er­ates through the ongo­ing rela­tion­ship between struc­tures and bod­ies with­out organs. Every muse­um exhi­bi­tion, every sea­son­al sale at a shop­ping mall, every germ of a card­board shel­ter under the bridge is an expres­sion of the same flows of desires and inten­si­ties that trans­form urban space. To under­stand bod­ies with­out organs in a city means to under­stand how tem­po­ral lay­ers inter­act and for­mal­ize in a man­ner for­eign to them, and how desire, not exis­tence, shapes a space: be it in a seem­ing­ly organ­ised shop or an impro­vised shel­ter, in glossy but ​“pho­ny” cen­tres or derelict outskirts.

Through the descrip­tion of the archi­tec­ture of the Cukrar­na Gallery and the prin­ci­ples by which home­less­ness is capa­ble of re-appro­pri­at­ing the built fab­ric of pub­lic space, we have point­ed to two instances where the seem­ing­ly straight­for­ward and tech­ni­cal­ly coher­ent hier­ar­chy of Brand’s tem­po­ral lay­ers becomes invert­ed and col­laps­es into self-con­tra­dic­tion. In this inver­sion, the mate­ri­al­iza­tion of space opens itself to bod­ies with­out organs. These bod­ies claim the space, inter­lac­ing it into a sup­ple, inde­ter­mi­nate form. The next exam­ple how­ev­er dis­tances one from the broad­er urban con­text to the scale of an archi­tec­tur­al object to demon­strate how the log­ic of dis­place­ment, lay­ers, and insta­bil­i­ty rep­re­sents itself in a com­plex archi­tec­tur­al form. Focus­ing on spa­tial expe­ri­ences that are no longer lin­ear, but shaped through an inter­play of var­i­ous tem­po­ral and spa­tial flows. 

Kunsthal: Beyond Temporal Layers

Kun­sthal, by Dutch archi­tect Rem Kool­haas, is an exam­ple of an archi­tec­tur­al object that is rad­i­cal­ized by ques­tion­ing the rela­tion­ship between time, space, and the (un)predictability of expe­ri­ence. In the con­text of our rapid­ly chang­ing world, the building’s spe­cif­ic tem­po­ral­i­ty[31] – its dis­tinc­tive mode of exist­ing, unfold­ing, and being expe­ri­enced in time, which allows it to per­sist and oper­ate beyond imme­di­ate func­tion – is strange­ly man­i­fold. Fol­low­ing Deleuze’s and Guattari’s argu­ment that con­tem­po­rary social life is no longer struc­tured through sta­ble forms, but through net­worked, non-lin­ear con­nec­tions of desire, flow and move­ment, Kun­sthal does not appear as a coher­ent, com­plet­ed archi­tec­tur­al whole, but via a ten­sion between dif­fer­ing tem­po­ral and spa­tial lay­ers. This inter­sec­tion­al ten­sion can be explained based on the three aspects of the building’s design.

First, its design negates the spa­tial log­ic of tem­po­ral lay­ers. This is indi­cat­ed by the exte­ri­or, allow­ing for a pro­vi­sion­al expla­na­tion of the building’s enve­lope and skele­ton: the columns on the south façade are of dif­fer­ent sizes and shapes. The strik­ing hor­i­zon­tal steel gird­er on the top of the build­ing does not have a load-bear­ing func­tion. The stone cladding on the upper floor of the north façade is near­ly flush with the glaz­ing on the ground floor, which has no vis­i­ble struc­tur­al sup­port, sim­i­lar to many oth­er ele­ments in the inte­ri­or. The tech­nol­o­gy, lay­out and equip­ment appear as a kind of simul­ta­ne­ous expres­sion of ele­ments, stack­ing of sev­er­al lay­ers one on top of the oth­er so that they are dis­cernible only in their sin­gu­lar­i­ty. It is as if none of the ele­ments had a func­tion with­in the whole of the archi­tec­tur­al design. [ 4 ]

​​Even the rel­a­tiv­i­ty of place can be explained in these terms: due to the archi­tec­tur­al prin­ci­ples of the Kun­sthal, the con­cept of site, which is usu­al­ly fixed and unam­bigu­ous, becomes rel­a­tive to and sub­ject to per­cep­tion, expe­ri­ence, and time. Once inside, vis­i­tors lose a sense of space and time, and the build­ing, as a result, appears anti-tec­ton­ic. Koolhaas’s keen inter­est in the tec­ton­ic nev­er­the­less comes through in the architect’s delib­er­ate use of cer­tain ele­ments in unex­pect­ed ways. To elab­o­rate, Kun­sthal is designed to chal­lenge our usu­al per­cep­tion of a muse­um build­ing. The fol­low­ing pas­sage says as much: ​“See­ing each ele­va­tion is essen­tial to know­ing the build­ing and to see­ing it in rela­tion to Koolhaas’s view of time. This no longer seems like a sta­t­ic box but rather a series of pic­tures that play back in the mind. I am remind­ed of Jean-Luc Godard’s filmic jump cut, where time between frames van­ish­es, no longer pro­vid­ing a con­tin­u­ous nar­ra­tive sequence and momen­tar­i­ly dis­lo­cat­ing the view­er with new visu­al infor­ma­tion.”[32] Sum­mar­i­ly, the object sets up diverse and unpre­dictable sce­nar­ios and with them oper­at­ing con­di­tions in the man­ner of bod­ies with­out organs. It is a non-hier­ar­chi­cal space: mov­ing around the space, vis­i­tors lose their sense of direc­tion and aware­ness of their spe­cif­ic loca­tion, which in the con­text of tem­po­ral lay­ers is called the place layer.

Sec­ond­ly, Kun­sthal mate­ri­al­izes the dynam­ic rela­tion­ship between the object’s archi­tec­tur­al form and pro­gram­mat­ic inde­ter­mi­na­cy. The build­ing appears as a delib­er­ate attempt at decon­struct­ing a space in which it is impos­si­ble to rec­og­nize clear, ide­al­ized forms. In place of a har­mo­nious, bal­anced com­po­si­tion we see spa­tial defor­ma­tions reveal­ing before us – bro­ken lines, stag­ger­ing, unusu­al cross-sec­tions and unex­pect­ed pas­sages, ascents and descents that con­scious­ly under­mine estab­lished archi­tec­tur­al prin­ci­ples. The object’s forms derive not from pro­por­tions, but from delib­er­ate­ly deformed enti­ties that cre­ate the sense of spa­tial uncer­tain­ty of bod­ies with­out organs. Rather than a sin­gle whole, the build­ing appears as an open, frag­ment­ed space that can only be com­pre­hend­ed through move­ment. In this sense, Kun­sthal is in fact a result of move­ment itself. [ 5 ]

Through the third aspect – the cre­ation of con­di­tions – the observ­er sens­es Kun­sthal not mere­ly as an ​“object-form”[33], but as a series of spa­tial effects that the space is capa­ble of (not) fore­see­ing. The building’s infra­struc­ture func­tions as the ves­sel of expe­ri­ence of the space. To some degree, Kool­haas him­self said as much in his essay Field Trip: ​“Its impact was entire­ly inde­pen­dent of its appear­ance. […] I would nev­er again believe in form as the pri­ma­ry ves­sel of mean­ing.”[34]

The pri­ma­ry idea of the the­sis that Kun­sthal so rad­i­cal­ly chal­lenges – the fun­da­men­tal rela­tion­ship between form and func­tion, i.e. their assumed inde­pen­dence that the build­ing obscures, inverts, or even can­cels. Rather than an unchang­ing answer to a cer­tain use, the build­ing is designed as an archi­tec­tur­al con­di­tion for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the emer­gence of var­i­ous spa­tial sce­nar­ios that have not yet been writ­ten. And this is exact­ly what it is – a space of mul­ti­ple sce­nar­ios: a diver­si­ty of spa­tial rela­tions, pos­si­bil­i­ties, and accu­mu­la­tion of sto­ries. The archi­tec­ture offers vis­i­tors the idea of free use, which makes way for a dif­fer­ent tem­po­ral­i­ty and pres­ence from what was expect­ed. This open­ness, unpre­dictabil­i­ty, and decen­ter­ing of mean­ing opens to the con­cept of grav­i­tiv­i­ty. With its con­scious dis­tance towards fixed mean­ings and delib­er­ate decon­struct­ing of the archi­tec­tur­al form, Koolhaas’s design estab­lish­es archi­tec­ture as a prac­tice that defies rapid change and sim­ple pro­gram­mat­ic solutions.

Part II
Gravitivity

Grav­i­tiv­i­ty is a com­po­nent of a built space through which space is re-ground­ed and embed­ded in time. It is a local tem­po­ral char­ac­ter­is­tic of a space, which sep­a­rates it from those objects and beings that move freely around it, and from the mat­ter that is sub­ject to rapid change, decom­po­si­tion, or metab­o­lism. The grav­i­tiv­i­ty of a space unques­tion­ably stems from its need to with­stand, by means of a sound tech­ni­cal and mate­r­i­al design, the forces of grav­i­ty and oth­er loads asso­ci­at­ed with a space. Grav­i­ty is a uni­ver­sal force that sur­rounds the Earth, defin­ing the basic phys­i­cal behav­iours of all bod­ies in near­ly iden­ti­cal quan­ti­ty and direc­tion. With­out grav­i­ty, the plan­et as an accu­mu­la­tion and con­den­sa­tion of mat­ter would not form and as a result, the phe­nom­e­na such as the diver­si­ty of mat­ter, life, and in turn sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence with­in a space would nev­er devel­op and take shape. Grav­i­ty not only defines the behav­iour of all mat­ter on the plan­et, but enables its exis­tence. Grav­i­ty is an invis­i­ble, but omnipresent force that shapes the phys­i­cal, bio­log­i­cal, and chem­i­cal con­di­tions for life on Earth. With­out it, the plan­et would not be able to con­tain the atmos­phere or hold water, there would be no day and night, plants would not grow upwards, and humans would not even be capa­ble of walk­ing. Grav­i­ty is one of the key foun­da­tions for a sta­ble bios­phere – the for­ma­tion and exis­tence of mat­ter, life, and space as we know depend on it.

Although grav­i­ty defines the basic phys­i­cal con­di­tions for key atmos­pher­ic, hydro­log­i­cal, and bio­log­i­cal process­es on the plan­et, its all-encom­pass­ing pres­ence is so ubiq­ui­tous that it is no longer seen as some­thing spe­cial or dif­fer­ent – we have come to take it for grant­ed as some­thing omnipresent and uni­ver­sal. Its uni­ver­sal­i­ty is com­pa­ra­ble with the heart’s beat, the con­trac­tion and expan­sion of the lungs, and evap­o­ra­tion of sweat on the skin. Its unques­tion­able phys­i­cal con­stan­cy thus pushed to the back­ground of our actions, turn­ing into a part of our sub­con­scious rou­tines. In what way then does the fact that a built space must com­ply with the laws of grav­i­ty shape its sig­nif­i­cance for humans liv­ing in space and time?

To grasp the term grav­i­tiv­i­ty, it is impor­tant to dif­fer­en­ti­ate it from two well-estab­lished and mean­ing­ful­ly relat­ed con­cepts of tec­ton­ics[35] and anato­my of space[36]. Ken­neth Framp­ton explains tec­ton­ics through its ety­mo­log­i­cal roots, i.e. as the expres­sion of con­struc­tion of spa­tial struc­tures com­posed of sev­er­al small­er car­pen­try ele­ments inte­grat­ed togeth­er in an archi­tec­tur­al way. Archi­tec­tur­al way derives from the man­ner in which mate­ri­als are worked, i.e. tech­nique, as well as from the need for sol­id and endur­ing – thus use­ful – struc­tures. Inter­est­ing­ly, he inter­prets the con­cept in very broad terms, rec­og­niz­ing the impor­tance of assem­blage and joints in the broad­er sense of the word. For him, tec­ton­ics means that trait of archi­tec­ture which in its essence assem­bles and joins spaces and con­tents rather than just mat­ter. His under­stand­ing of tec­ton­ics was influ­enced by the­o­ret­i­cal con­cepts of Karl Otfried Müller, Karl Böt­tlich­er and Got­tfried Semper.

Akos Moraván­sky uses the con­cept of anato­my of space to focus on the sim­i­lar­i­ties between built struc­tures and liv­ing beings, recog­nis­ing in both a (build­ing or liv­ing) body made up of a skele­ton and mus­cles, sol­id and soft struc­tures, i.e. the sup­port­ing and sup­port­ed sys­tems. His inter­pre­ta­tion of sim­i­lar­i­ties derives from key authors who laid the foun­da­tions of mod­ernist under­stand­ing of archi­tec­ture: Got­tfried Sem­per, Vio­l­let-le-Duc and Hen­drik Petrus Berlage. Frampton’s tec­ton­ic is there­fore some­thing capa­ble of con­struct­ing (through the process of join­ing small­er parts into a whole) its integri­ty, coher­ence, and iden­ti­ty, while pre­serv­ing the aware­ness of the process, mate­r­i­al, and the traces of human crafts­man­ship. Moravánski's anato­my, on the oth­er hand, is a sys­tem that is func­tion­al­ly and struc­tural­ly sep­a­rat­ed from oth­er parts of the build­ing, defy­ing grav­i­ty and allow­ing the build­ing its nec­es­sary load-bear­ing capac­i­ty. Both authors rec­og­nize the cul­tur­al ele­ments of these char­ac­ter­is­tics of archi­tec­ture, which through cen­turies of devel­op­ment trans­form into artis­tic, styl­is­tic, and mean­ing­ful char­ac­ter­is­tics of construction.

On the one hand, grav­i­tiv­i­ty is the physis of the space that has to do with its tec­ton­ics and anato­my, but owing to its uni­ver­sal­i­ty, mat­ter-of-fact­ness and imma­te­ri­al­i­ty it is also a metaphor – a covert­ly veiled thought, i.e. a men­tal trans­fer of a gen­uine onto­log­i­cal mean­ing of space. Not only some­thing that is, some­thing mea­sur­able and ana­lyt­i­cal­ly explic­a­ble (e.g. by using math­e­mat­i­cal tools of sta­t­ic analy­sis), grav­i­tiv­i­ty is also some­thing that only rep­re­sents and meta­phys­i­cal­ly inter­prets the ter­ri­to­r­i­al and tem­po­ral inde­pen­dence, i.e. expul­sion of archi­tec­tur­al space from the con­crete here and now.

As a phys­i­cal per­cep­tion of grav­i­ty, grav­i­tiv­i­ty is imme­di­ate­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble, mate­r­i­al, and empir­i­cal, but at the same time it is also omnipresent and unaf­fect­ed by time[37], pos­sess­ing the prop­er­ties of the uni­ver­sal, all-encom­pass­ing, and eter­nal. It is an unmedi­at­ed ele­ment prop­er to a body and as such is tac­tile.[38] It is an ele­ment that is nev­er pure­ly con­cep­tu­al or such that it would demand a men­tal inter­pre­ta­tion of the per­ceived, con­verse­ly, it is sen­so­ry, direct­ly bio­log­i­cal and there­fore ontic (in the nar­row sense), it is of this world, and thus mate­r­i­al. An exam­ple of such grav­i­tiv­i­ty at work is the res­i­den­tial-com­mer­cial com­plex of Ljubljana’s Fer­ant Gar­den (1975)[39] designed in 1975 by the Slovene archi­tect Edvard Ravnikar. The build­ing is con­struct­ed direct­ly over the archae­o­log­i­cal rem­nants of the Roman set­tle­ment Emona, erect­ed between 14 BC and 14 AD.[40] With Y‑shaped con­crete columns that dom­i­nate the space of the half-buried base­ment gallery, the archi­tect upheld the programme's exten­sive struc­tur­al frame on six points where the build­ing, its mass and its essence bare­ly touch­es the ground. By means of this ges­ture, he phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly con­nect­ed the hor­i­zon­tal space of the more than 1000 m² gallery (which also receives day­light through the open­ings on the two lon­gi­tu­di­nal sides) with the pub­lic space out­side with­out hav­ing to add any addi­tion­al sup­port­ing walls. [ 6 ] The hor­i­zon­tal open­ness, and the gallery’s attach­ment to its sur­round­ings evoke a feel­ing of an unin­ter­rupt­ed flow of the space, where­as the unadorned mate­ri­al­i­ty of the con­crete columns pierces through the space as a con­trast, mass, pure physis. [ 7 ] A very sim­i­lar approach to spa­tial design was used in the design of the house in Uehara (1976) by Japan­ese archi­tect Kazuo Shi­no­hare.[41] Run­ning in two per­pen­dic­u­lar direc­tions, V‑columns ​“rough­ly” cut through the cen­tral liv­ing quar­ters of the home, like inde­pen­dent bod­ies or house­mates. [ 8 ] [ 9 ]

Like in the case with Ravnikar’s gallery, the tech­ni­cal solu­tion, the log­ic of load bear­ing, and even under­stand­ing of the object’s syn­tax of tec­ton­ics mat­ter far less than the ​“raw” imme­di­a­cy of these struc­tur­al ele­ments, which intro­duce an excep­tion­al­ly pri­mal, direct, and hap­tic pres­ence of weight and sub­stance into the oth­er­wise home­ly fam­i­ly house. In both of the described cas­es, grav­i­tiv­i­ty does not man­i­fest itself through the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of archi­tec­tur­al syn­tax or the speci­fici­ty of mate­ri­al­i­ty, but through the sheer pres­ence of mat­ter, which enters space on equal terms with human form, pres­ence, and relent­less­ness. Grav­i­tiv­i­ty can­not be described in an ana­lyt­i­cal man­ner; it is both sub­lime and real. 

The oth­er impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic of grav­i­tiv­i­ty is its non-ter­ri­to­ri­al­i­ty, time­less­ness and in turn detach­ment from the present, and con­se­quent­ly from the con­text of con­crete time and space. Archi­tec­tural­ly, this is man­i­fest­ed through a design of a building’s skele­ton or load-bear­ing sys­tem that does not spec­i­fy an explic­it method of con­struc­tion or com­po­si­tion, nor does it pre­scribe its exact mate­r­i­al and sub­stance. It has no desire to be con­crete, pre­cise in the man­ner of struc­ture and com­po­si­tion, pre­cise in the choice of mate­r­i­al and its sub­stance, but delib­er­ate­ly evades such pre­ci­sion – wish­ing instead not to be under­stood as some­thing express­ly con­crete, fleet­ing, and replace­able. It shuns any straight­for­ward, leg­i­ble inter­pre­ta­tion of time, both in terms of its for­ma­tion and its disintegration. 

Prof­fer­ing the ques­tion of the tem­po­ral dimen­sion of a building’s struc­tur­al frame­work, the con­cept of grav­i­tiv­i­ty is close­ly relat­ed to tem­po­ral lay­ers. Accord­ing to Brand, Eber­le and Duffy, the part that ensures its solid­i­ty, struc­tur­al sup­port and in turn the basic spa­tial geom­e­try is assumed to be more, or even the most long-lived.

Its longevi­ty and endurance, as a rule longer than in any oth­er lay­er that makes up the build­ing enve­lope, ensures hier­ar­chi­cal co-depen­dence of assem­bly and dis­as­sem­bly, because the struc­tur­al skele­ton is in fact the sup­port­ing sys­tem to which all oth­er sub­or­di­nat­ed ele­ments attach in one way or anoth­er. If the timescales of the struc­tur­al skele­ton were short­er than those of oth­er lay­ers, the sup­port­ed parts would require chang­ing in par­al­lel with any inter­ven­tion into the sup­port­ing parts. Hier­ar­chi­cal inter­de­pen­dence trans­lates to tem­po­ral inter­de­pen­dence, demon­strat­ing the neces­si­ty of design­ing the struc­tur­al frame­work to last. The sys­tem of tem­po­ral lay­ers is there­fore sub­ject not only to the prin­ci­ples of tem­po­ral dynam­ics and adapt­abil­i­ty of dif­fer­ent lev­els of a building’s use and adap­ta­tion, but also to the hier­ar­chi­cal inter­de­pen­dence of a building’s com­po­nent parts or lay­ers, which is imma­nent to this sys­tem. Accord­ing to Brand, Eber­le and Duffy, a sound build­ing design that pays atten­tion to the inter­nal hier­ar­chy of lay­ers ensures its sus­tain­abil­i­ty, longevi­ty, and capac­i­ty of adap­ta­tion to unex­pect­ed changes and uses that come with unpre­dictable future. In archi­tec­ture, the struc­tur­al skele­ton plays the lead­ing role, hier­ar­chi­cal­ly gov­ern­ing all oth­er lay­ers but the place (which remains inde­pen­dent). The skeleton’s struc­ture direct­ly and indi­rect­ly deter­mines the mate­r­i­al and spa­tial ele­ments of archi­tec­tur­al space.

Con­tem­po­rary works of archi­tec­ture respond to the rela­tion­ship between grav­i­tiv­i­ty of a space and the dom­i­nance of the struc­tur­al skele­ton in dif­fer­ent ways. Most con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­tur­al pro­duc­tion does not pay any note­wor­thy atten­tion to the struc­tur­al skele­ton, which is treat­ed as a util­i­tar­i­an, prag­mat­ic, and tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect­ly set sys­tem that mere­ly serves its pur­pose for a con­crete space and time in which it was cre­at­ed. This means that its ​“dom­i­nance” is nei­ther specif­i­cal­ly under­lined and pre­sent­ed, nor does it reveal its longevi­ty or even time­less­ness. Its place in the archi­tec­ture of bod­ies with­out organs is in the back­ground, where it does not show off its senior­i­ty and hier­ar­chi­cal supe­ri­or­i­ty. In order to facil­i­tate con­stant trans­for­ma­tion and metab­o­liza­tion of oth­er tem­po­ral lay­ers, the struc­tur­al skele­ton lingers at the lev­el of sup­pressed growth[42] – like a skele­ton that only loose­ly fits with the organs cling­ing on to it. With its inva­sive dynam­ics, the life of bod­ies with­out organs grad­u­al­ly comes to demand that the struc­tur­al skele­ton adapts to it as well. As a result, the lat­ter grad­u­al­ly becomes ampu­tat­ed, bro­ken, and ulti­mate­ly bare­ly recognizable.

To explain this fur­ther, the sys­tem of tem­po­ral lay­ers requires archi­tec­ture to ensure the lay­ers main­tain their hier­ar­chi­cal inter­de­pen­dence, in line with the dynam­ics of their timescales. Most build­ings, how­ev­er, are not designed with this prin­ci­ple in mind; what’s more, the expect­ed scope and dynam­ics of change in the use of a space also calls for spa­tial inter­ven­tions (e.g. into struc­tur­al ele­ments and the façade enve­lope to accom­mo­date the cur­rent needs of the building’s pro­gramme) that often out­run the envis­aged timescales of tem­po­ral lay­ers. This is why through increas­ing­ly destruc­tive and unstruc­tured trans­for­ma­tions, where the lay­ers no longer alter­nate accord­ing to an orga­nized prin­ci­ple, the com­plex­i­ty and aggres­sive­ness of the space of bod­ies with­out organs dis­solves and rubs out their leg­i­bil­i­ty and identity.

Grav­i­tiv­i­ty is resis­tance against this process. A build­ing designed to pur­pose­ful­ly rein­ter­pret the prin­ci­ples of grav­i­tiv­i­ty man­i­fests the role of the struc­tur­al skele­ton in sev­er­al ways. To begin with, its form and pres­ence con­sis­tent­ly defy the process­es of con­stant trans­for­ma­tion of desir­ing machines. The physis of the skele­ton tran­scends the exclu­sive­ly util­i­tar­i­an role of the struc­ture. What’s more, it even tran­scends the lim­i­ta­tions of the tem­po­ral lay­er, because the skele­ton lay­er might come with the func­tions of the enve­lope or tech­nol­o­gy lay­ers. It is vis­i­ble, per­ceived, present, and exces­sive­ly defin­ing. As fol­lows from the above, it is con­tra­dic­to­ry to the prin­ci­ple of tem­po­ral lay­ers, because it impos­es on the lay­ers with more intense dynam­ics and author­i­ty. It is irra­tional and there­fore sub­ver­sive; it com­pro­mis­es the ratio­nal­i­ty of the struc­ture of a space, but only in order to pro­tect its being. More than the skele­ton of a mam­mal it resem­bles the shell of a ver­te­brate. It is rigid, crude, and archa­ic, but only to main­tain its pres­ence and longevi­ty. As such, it helps archi­tec­ture to stay reground­ed and embed­ded in time, despite the poten­cy of desir­ing machines. So that it can exist in its own, i.e. mate­r­i­al, yet time­less man­ner. Grav­i­tiv­i­ty rep­re­sents itself through the raw mate­ri­al­i­ty of the struc­ture, its gener­ic reg­u­lar­i­ty and its lyri­cal auton­o­my, through the capac­i­ty of its own indi­vid­u­al­i­ty that tran­scends the ques­tion of the right or wrong pro­gramme. Through uni­ver­sal­i­ty of its con­tent on the one hand, and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty of its form on the other.

The final part of the paper presents two case stud­ies of archi­tec­tures at dif­fer­ent spa­tial scales, both of them demon­strat­ing how the prin­ci­ples of grav­i­tiv­i­ty find their expres­sion in space, and how they allow archi­tec­ture to main­tain its auton­o­my and iden­ti­ty in increas­ing­ly pre­car­i­ous times of our mod­ern world.

DAAR: Refugee Camps and Articulation of Time

The first exam­ple illus­trat­ing the prin­ci­ples of grav­i­tiv­i­ty focus­es on the ten­sion between tem­po­rary, infor­mal abodes (sim­i­lar to those dis­cussed above for the home­less) and per­ma­nent built struc­tures. Refugee camps are an expres­sion of the spa­tial chal­lenges that come with increas­ing­ly uncer­tain liv­ing cir­cum­stances. They are a spe­cif­ic form of spa­tial adap­ta­tion to cri­sis sit­u­a­tions, where the need for safe­ty and respon­sive­ness often falls vic­tim to lim­it­ed time and resources. Our basic argu­ment, name­ly that grav­i­tiv­i­ty allows us to under­stand archi­tec­ture as a prac­tice capa­ble of per­se­ver­ing in the world, is espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant in the case of refugee camps.

The point of depar­ture is that these spaces, which in the con­text of con­tem­po­rary social insta­bil­i­ty rep­re­sent an extreme spa­tial sit­u­a­tion, emerge as a response to dif­fer­ent socio-polit­i­cal crises and man­i­fest them­selves as exam­ples of forced tem­po­rary hous­ing and impro­vi­sa­tion. They are inter­est­ing because they reveal the gaps in our under­stand­ing of archi­tec­ture as a sta­ble, per­ma­nent, and planned activ­i­ty. They invite one to reflect on rela­tion­ships between space, time, and struc­ture. Where­as in the pre­vi­ous chap­ters we dis­cussed archi­tec­ture as an activ­i­ty that artic­u­lates cer­tain order and sta­bil­i­ty, refugee camps in gen­er­al rep­re­sent the exact oppo­site. They come not from the struc­ture, but from the mode of oper­a­tion of bod­ies with­out organs. Work­ing at the inter­sec­tion of archi­tec­ture, art, and pol­i­tics, the DAAR (Decol­o­niz­ing Archi­tec­ture Art Res­i­den­cy) col­lec­tive has been research­ing these ​“unpromis­ing”, uncer­tain spaces for more than a decade, inves­ti­gat­ing and inter­ven­ing in the con­text of Pales­tin­ian refugee camps.[43]

The refugee camp Dheisheh will serve as an exam­ple of their spa­tial prac­tice[44], show­ing how over decades an orig­i­nal­ly dis­or­gan­ised struc­ture can evolve into a per­se­ver­ing, func­tion­al and com­mu­ni­ty-shaped urban struc­ture. Dheisheh demon­strates the capac­i­ty of a space to solid­i­fy even in the absence of spe­cif­ic plan­ning. More specif­i­cal­ly: it reveals a form of grav­i­tiv­i­ty that does not derive from ini­tial sta­bil­i­ty, but from every­day use, impro­vi­sa­tion, and group action through time. How?

Since 1949, the camp area has evolved into a ​“sol­id” urban struc­ture with all basic infra­struc­ture: water, elec­tric­i­ty and a sewage net­work. In place of tents, its inhab­i­tants built con­crete objects and paved the streets. Chaot­ic, seg­ment­ed, and devoid of any organ­ised guid­ance, the camp’s archi­tec­tur­al struc­ture is a result of decades of an impro­vised, often infor­mal con­struc­tion process, through which peo­ple took the ini­tia­tive to adapt spaces to meet their dai­ly needs. This seem­ing­ly chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion, how­ev­er, grad­u­al­ly comes to shape a new kind of order – an unplanned, but nev­er­the­less estab­lished spa­tial log­ic that evolves from a col­lec­tive con­struc­tion prac­tice and its tem­po­ral lay­ers. This can be read as a tran­si­tion from an ​“unsol­id” to a ​“sol­id” struc­ture, which is based on spa­tial per­se­ver­ance. [ 10 ]

DAAR’s prac­tice serves as a good exam­ple because of their unique way of artic­u­lat­ing the socio-polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances of our day. Their spa­tial research does not inves­ti­gate a refugee camp as a tem­po­rary and there­fore insignif­i­cant space, but as a spa­tial real­i­ty present here and now. DAAR see refugee camps not as mere­ly util­i­tar­i­an struc­tures, but as poten­tial archi­tec­tur­al spaces, which is evi­dent in their Con­crete Tent projects[45], spa­tial inter­ven­tions through which DAAR explores and for­mal­izes the con­tra­dic­tion between the tem­po­rary and the per­ma­nent. The project presents a tent-shaped con­crete struc­ture that sym­bol­i­cal­ly embod­ies the con­trasts between mov­able and immov­able, tem­po­rary and per­ma­nent – as a para­dox of per­ma­nent tem­po­rari­ness. The tent there­fore embod­ies the reverse process of tran­si­tion, from a non-sol­id to sol­id struc­ture, where grav­i­tiv­i­ty plays its role inde­pen­dent­ly of the course or stage of the con­struc­tion process. The mate­r­i­al per­ma­nence of the con­crete struc­ture thus allows the tent to become a per­ma­nent ves­sel of mem­o­ries and of the com­mu­ni­ty iden­ti­ty of its res­i­dents. [ 11 ][ 12 ]

A broad­er con­clu­sion that offers itself is that even in the most extreme con­di­tions, archi­tec­ture has the poten­tial to har­ness grav­i­tiv­i­ty in order to artic­u­late time, struc­ture, and reground­ing. The built refugee city of Dheisheh and Con­crete Tent projects are impor­tant in that they demon­strate the neces­si­ty of architecture’s pres­ence in any giv­en social con­text. As such, archi­tec­ture has the capac­i­ty to intro­duce order to the world, order that under­pins human habitation.

DARS Office Building: Manifestation of Gravitivity

In many exam­ples of con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture, the tem­po­ral lay­ers man­i­fest them­selves through a mul­ti-lay­ered con­struc­tion, where the struc­tur­al ele­ments usu­al­ly stay hid­den, cov­ered from the out­side by the enve­lope lay­er and by the lay­out lay­er from the inside. In the case of DARS office build­ing, a reversed log­ic is at play: not only is the tem­po­ral lay­er of the skele­ton exposed, it also assumes a dis­tinct­ly promi­nent, even dom­i­nant role. Tak­ing on much of the sub­stance of the enve­lope lay­er, the skele­ton becomes the exter­nal face of the build­ing. The building’s load-bear­ing struc­ture is divid­ed into two lev­els: the inte­ri­or of the build­ing rests on four strong mono­lith con­crete stair­ways, while the periph­er­al part car­ries a steel frame pushed to the out­er side of the ther­mal enve­lope and shaped as a deep, yet slen­der hon­ey­comb. Clear­ly defin­ing spa­tial rela­tion­ships, the inter­nal part of the struc­ture is rigid and final, while the out­er pro­trudes out­wards from the enve­lope plane, evad­ing any attempt at a pre­de­ter­mined divi­sion of space or artic­u­la­tion of the façade enve­lope. It is a uni­ver­sal build­ing skele­ton defined by the steady rhythm of 250-cm-long inter­vals, but inde­pen­dent of the building’s inter­nal struc­ture. Mate­ri­alised on the exte­ri­or lay­er of the build­ing, the struc­ture with its explic­it pres­ence is more than a load-bear­ing core, but serves in the first place to rep­re­sent the building’s mean­ing. Tak­ing on the job of the enve­lope, it does not per­form it in the reg­u­lar way, i.e. through the pre­dis­po­si­tion of win­dows, ver­ti­cal artic­u­la­tions, or rhyth­mi­cal artic­u­la­tion of the con­tent, but in an open, grid-like, near­ly decom­posed man­ner. [ 13 ]

All oth­er tem­po­ral lay­ers are more or less sub­or­di­nat­ed to the skele­ton, but still main­tain their dynam­ics, timescales, and even inde­pen­dence. The façade enve­lope as such is no longer there; what remains is a con­tin­u­ous ther­mal coat, inter­rupt­ed only by reg­u­lar­ly spaced win­dows for nat­ur­al ven­ti­la­tion. The tech­no­log­i­cal lay­ers, instal­la­tions, HVAC and light­ing sys­tems are insert­ed into the space as sec­ondary ele­ments that oper­ate hor­i­zon­tal­ly with their own log­ic of dis­tri­b­u­tion and oper­a­tion, but are ver­ti­cal­ly (cable and con­nec­tion rout­ing-wise) sub­or­di­nat­ed to the skele­ton. With the skele­ton removed from con­tent-ded­i­cat­ed parts of the build­ing (those that serve the company’s activ­i­ties), the lay­outs (par­ti­tion walls between rooms) enjoy full free­dom, nev­er obstruct­ed by the building’s load-bear­ing ele­ments. This gen­er­ates ten­sion between two worlds: the sta­ble and finite one, and the reset­tling world, which is con­stant­ly sub­ject to change. The frame­work is clear, sta­ble, sta­t­ic, where­as the use of the build­ing remains open, dynam­ic, poten­tial. This ten­sion is under­lined and clear­ly expressed, yet in essence non-con­fronta­tion­al. [ 14 ]

The build­ing itself is in no way a body with­out organs. Its form is there and it does not dis­in­te­grate into flows. Quite the oppo­site – it puts in place a clear and sol­id struc­ture. Nev­er­the­less, it accepts dynam­ic, change­able sys­tems – eco­nom­ic, func­tion­al, social – that we under­stand as a part of bod­ies with­out organs of the con­tem­po­rary urban and eco­nom­ic social appa­ra­tus. These bod­ies may oper­ate inside the build­ing, but their suprema­cy is inter­cept­ed: they are nei­ther supe­ri­or to the struc­ture, nor do they break down the skele­ton or take on a form. The build­ing does not refuse them, but it does not give them pow­er either. There is a sub­tle rela­tion­ship some­where between hos­pi­tal­i­ty and restrain, open­ness and resis­tance. [ 15 ]

Grav­i­tiv­i­ty is the key con­cept to come out and express itself in the two-fold rela­tion­ship between a sol­id structure and bod­ies with­out organs. Inside, it is man­i­fest­ed as a mono­lith­ic pres­ence: unar­tic­u­lat­ed con­crete tow­ers devoid of human scale, cor­po­re­al to the point of being bru­tal. They evoke a sense of mass and pres­ence. They are imme­di­ate, tac­tile, cor­po­re­al – not to be observed, but felt. The exter­nal man­i­fes­ta­tion of grav­i­tiv­i­ty, on the oth­er hand, is abstract: the geo­met­ri­cal grid of the frame­work that is bro­ken down to the human scale – office cells, indi­vid­ual func­tions – and at the same time com­plete­ly alien­at­ed, non-tac­tile, dig­i­tal. It func­tions as a con­cep­tu­al scheme – tech­ni­cal, repeat­able, and stripped of any local specifics. The embod­i­ment of the con­cept of grav­i­tiv­i­ty as defined above is man­i­fest­ed in a dis­tinct­ly archi­tec­tur­al, artic­u­lat­ed man­ner. Assum­ing, sub­vert­ing, and set­ting back the log­ic of tem­po­ral lay­ers with­out com­pro­mis­ing their orig­i­nal role, grav­i­tiv­i­ty reveals itself through the embod­i­ment of the skele­ton and sub­sists as the fun­da­men­tal iden­ti­ty of the space. The space is thus reground­ed, but with­out being caught in a con­crete place. For peo­ple work­ing in and think­ing about this space, reground­ing appears as the pos­si­bil­i­ty to defy life’s uncer­tain­ties. For us, liv­ing at a time of con­stant changes in busi­ness dynam­ics, tem­po­rary organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­tures, and flu­id spa­tial arrange­ments, the reground­ing of grav­i­tiv­i­ty means regain­ing and main­tain­ing our capac­i­ty to per­ceive state and dura­tion.

With its longevi­ty, its unre­lent­ing pres­ence, and man­i­fold role in the sys­tem of tem­po­ral lay­ers, the skele­ton becomes the ves­sel of grav­i­tiv­i­ty. It car­ries an alle­gor­i­cal reflec­tion of resilience against dis­so­lu­tion, incor­po­re­al­i­ty, dis­per­sion into bod­ies with­out organs. [ 16 ]

Gravitivity as a Condition of Perseverance

The paper offers a reflec­tion on the con­nec­tion between archi­tec­ture and social struc­tures and pro­pos­es a def­i­n­i­tion of the new con­cept of grav­i­tiv­i­ty so as to define this con­nec­tion. Based on the analy­sis of dif­fer­ent views on the lay­er­ing of the archi­tec­tur­al enve­lope of a build­ing, which we call ​“tem­po­ral lay­ers”, we want­ed to bring to light var­i­ous attempts at defin­ing the rela­tion­ships between con­tem­po­rary social con­di­tions and archi­tec­ture. Tem­po­ral lay­ers served to define archi­tec­ture as a prac­tice with its own tem­po­ral­i­ty, which is dif­fer­ent from the tem­po­ral­i­ty of the rapid­ly chang­ing con­tem­po­rary soci­ety. The exam­ples offered in Part I cor­rob­o­rate that, each reveal­ing in its own way the con­cur­rent action of con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture at two lev­els: first­ly in terms of ten­sion between sol­id structures and bod­ies with­out organs, and sec­ond­ly at the lev­el of tem­po­ral lay­ers of the archi­tec­tur­al envelope.

Part II devel­ops the con­cept of grav­i­tiv­i­ty to help us under­stand why and how archi­tec­ture becomes embed­ded in time. We illus­trat­ed our the­sis that grav­i­tiv­i­ty allows us to think archi­tec­ture as a spe­cif­ic prac­tice capa­ble of per­se­ver­ing in the con­tem­po­rary world with two top­i­cal exam­ples at dif­fer­ent scales: a refugee camp and an office build­ing. We demon­strat­ed that both draw a clear line between the tem­po­ral­i­ty of the con­tem­po­rary socio-polit­i­cal con­text and the tem­po­ral­i­ty estab­lished in the world by archi­tec­ture. The two exam­ples may be con­flict­ing, but it is in this con­flict that the pres­ence of grav­i­tiv­i­ty reveals itself. It rep­re­sents the poten­tial that tran­scends social cir­cum­stances and estab­lish­es itself as a link between tem­po­ral lay­ers of a space: place, enve­lope, skele­ton, tech­nol­o­gy, lay­out, and equip­ment. Grav­i­tiv­i­ty estab­lish­es itself as that which allows archi­tec­ture to oper­ate regard­less of expec­ta­tions and cur­rent uses of a space. It allows archi­tec­ture to per­se­vere – not only as sol­id change­less­ness, but by being able to resist decay. As such, grav­i­tiv­i­ty can be under­stood as a tool that re-exam­ines estab­lished archi­tec­tur­al con­ven­tions and tran­scends them through its own log­ic of per­se­ver­ance – transcendence.

Through the expla­na­tion of the the­o­ret­i­cal frame­work of tem­po­ral lay­ers, as well as the analy­sis of sev­er­al archi­tec­tur­al works, we have high­light­ed those char­ac­ter­is­tics of building’s form that grant archi­tec­ture – gov­erned by the expec­ta­tions and needs of con­tem­po­rary post-struc­tur­al soci­ety – the capac­i­ty and strength to sus­tain time­less­ness and embed­ded­ness in space. The def­i­n­i­tion of grav­i­tiv­i­ty as we have devel­oped it, con­sti­tutes the min­i­mum con­di­tion for under­stand­ing architecture’s embed­ded­ness in time. It enables archi­tec­ture to tran­scend the inher­ent fragili­ty of local cul­ture and con­text, as illus­trat­ed by select­ed exam­ples, which demon­strate how grav­i­tiv­i­ty allows archi­tec­ture to oper­ate inde­pen­dent­ly of the estab­lished rela­tion­ship between form and func­tion and to extend its rel­e­vance beyond imme­di­ate use.