Chapter 2: Improvisation in Architecture: An Interpretation of Our Role
Yona Friedman
Architecture, in a general sense, could be described as a set of “protective boxes,” disposed in arbitrary patterns provided they rest linked by paths. In a paper about theoretical physics, I described it as an “assembly of constituents into a meaningful whole”. A sense of meaning derived from a participatory culture of encouraged user-assembly and experimentation.
The last half-century has brought the opportunity for improvements to this scheme. The maturing of certain technologies has facilitated it, and more importantly, its access. First of all, architecture can be “mobile:” boxes and the pattern ordering them can be moved, disposed and re-arranged at will. This trend of change corresponds to individual and social need (and how data increasingly facilitates catering to these). Secondly, new technologies make such “improvisation” relatively easy and economically low-cost. It can be effectuated by the layman-user himself, without expert assistance. In such case, industries promoting “do-it-yourself” methodologies are an important sector of production that empowers the user and his lack of necessity for that expertise.
My “space-chain” structures follow that definition, facilitated assembly of box-like volumes, cubes, dodecahedra/tetrahedral into a “building” (to use this term for convenience); similarly to mainstream architecture space-chain structures, but consisting entirely of circles. Thus, these volumes can be fitted to any other, as they have circles for common faces. Combinations of such volumes are nearly limitless. Basic configurations are like “atoms” – made of “particles”. They are not necessarily compact: intermediary spaces between such “atoms” are part of the whole. Such “atomic” architecture contains “inside-insides” (the boxes) and “outside-insides” (intermediary spaces). Their assembly becomes a sculpture of two kinds of “insides”, a “sculpture of voids”. In the handling of internal space you can produce an infinite variety through experimentation. I built many models on these guidelines. Some of them were built in real scale. They were not “planned” the customary way, with drawings, but improvised as models. These intuitively improvised models served as “plans”.
In spite of my “mechanistic” definition, it could be seen as a specific object of art; “a sculpture observed from inside.” Slowly, architecture is trending to become a sort of “folk-art”, as it happened with music, photography and most fine arts. As a consequence, the trade of architecture slides from that of “planner-technician”, towards that of an “artist”, that of a “sculptor of void”, whose prime material is “architectural space”. There rests the question of “planning”. The prime material of architectural urban planning at any scale is human behavior, that of the “user” – the inhabitant. The person who knows that material best, is obviously the user himself. The user, like the computer, relies on a feedback loop between the user and the changes he makes himself periodically. He cannot give a verbal expression of that knowledge (little less may that attempt be interpreted by the architect, or computer fully, as imagined by the user), but he knows how to implement it.
The instrument we would really need is imagination in the literal sense of the term. “Thinking” is effectuated in images, not in words. These images can then be translated into playful models, or materials that aid the understanding of the translation from imagination to physical space. This could be as easily represented as playing with cardboard, accurately representing a spatial idea. This physical action that is representational aids the inhabitant in conceiving, or communicating an architectural idea or image that he cannot otherwise portray. He can then, for example, reconfigure it endlessly, and again and again, slowly learning the space from the inside as a physical expression of that imagination. Thus, the teaching of architecture is taught from art of these voids by fruit of imagination; of spontaneity; of improvisation. The inhabitation’s function becomes the canvas of the inhabitant: its technical aspects are better assessed by an engineer. Through this process we move away from the exclusivity of professions. “Imagining” architecture does not mean or necessitate specialized expertise. It is a common ability, like dreaming, speaking or cooking.
I mentioned “imagination” as the principal tool of our intellect. All design, art, poetry, scientific theories are its products. Even mathematics is created by the process of imagination. Imagination is essential to conducting all human activity. Most of our actions are not necessarily rational, but are rooted in imagination. (Improvisation is imaginative and only partly rational). It is intrinsic to the concept of personality — the first and utmost characteristic of concern when architecting. It implies catering to change, and variation over time.
An architect cannot foresee these changes. It is not his dwelling. Nor is it the computers. What I am in fact trying to foresee, is that the opportunity for the inhabitant to foresee for himself. In that practice, through experimentation the inhabitant performs improvisation by trial and error. This becomes a personal educational process. All inhabitants have the freedom to arrange their interiors. Any inhabitant can decide where to put a table. Through this, he performs practical architecture with all the elements that are mobile.
Inhabitation is like theatre. It is an art. It is an expression of infinite human behavior. Human behavior is what determines the architecting of our environment. The daily relationship between the occupant and what he occupies is a continuous performance. In order to perform, architecture has to be handled as easily as furniture. It does not necessarily mean that it would change every day, but it is the knowledge of the possibility to do so that provides the inhabitant with freedom. The inhabitant is an art-chitect.
If employed by the user, perhaps a computer could, more successfully at least, – if it studied our patterns over time, synthesizing it into data sets – slowly suggest best suiting changes. In any case, no matter how intelligent, it would limit the improvisation to a mere list of “pre-determined” possibilities. Almost regulating, if not dictating that improvisation, eradicating the opportunity for a process of discovery that has been automated (as it discards less relevant options). Its employment however, is a judgment left open to the individual user, as they would regulate it.
It is fashionable to talk about artificial intelligence, in fact, concerning computing or any prospect of a heavily technologically influenced future, we always if not often do. It signifies, in a simplified way, a dumb machine which, at receiving some signals (observation), starts to follow a more or less complicated pre-established program. However, my interest would be better inclined by “artificial imagination”. “Artificial imagination” is different: it implies the construction of something still not existing. It implies things such as curiosity, and spontaneity, which are playful exercises constituting the culture of the emotional project that is architecture.
Aldous Huxley considered, as a biologist, that the human species’ mental superiority comes from our ability to “imagine”. At a point in time, during my early fascination with “artificial imagination” I tried to imagine (yes, yes, to imagine) a kind of program for approaching that idea. I don’t want to get into too many details (I don’t have them, but could tentatively), but for having imagination you have to build a personality, a unique one, for the computer: a personality with all its special preferences, phobias, and trespassing logic. We all have such a personality, even the dumbest ones.
Planning, projecting, predicting futures implies imagination, not logics. It can mislead, but it is indispensable. Planning, projecting, foreseeing future means personal imagination. You cannot do it for somebody else. (By this principle, architecting should be done individually). We are still quite far away from “artificial imagination”.
Artificial imagination might be possible. To reach it, the right approach to employ would be through the investigation of improvisation. Imagination cannot be planned. Even if it could, it should not.
The way for improvisation to flourish is by allowing it to blossom freely, free of pre-established rules, or order, or conditions that would dictate its outcome or flourishing. You imagine a “scene”; you don’t begin by analysis. Improvisation is intuitive; it is not necessarily fruit of conscious reasoning. Imagination is strictly holistic.
But, even if it were to already work, you cannot use as a substitute for your own imagination. There are trades, like that of architecture that pretends that a professional can do it for you. (Pretending, in the case of claiming an architect is to architect for you, but, that the architect also attempts to falsely impersonate you, in the process of architecting for you). However, this “normalized” misconception is not evident: you have to use your own imagination. This leads to trial and error. Trial and error processes remain reasonably utile if sustaining no important risks as a playful engagement towards architecting.
For instance, practically everybody is able to dispose his mobiles (French for furniture, literally, flexible and mobile) in their respective homes, by simply pushing them around. Techniques exist that permit the pushing around of entire rooms. If such techniques are simple and at very low cost you can create your own premises, without architects. (The employment of readily available software may aid this process, empowering the user to designing in a 3D virtual space without the aid of a specialist). That leaves, for architects, an entire field: that of “art”.
It is not so much building that is the architect’s domain. Architecture could be an art. Not that practices today; blowing up very mediocre sculpture in size would result in architecture. At its’ core, architecture is the art of “sculpting the void”, the art of “shaping space”.
To discover that aspect of architecture is surely not the task of “artificial imagination”; neither that of the inhabitant. The inhabitant can discover the organization of space as most adapted to his way of life, to his habits, or his “taste”. But, for discovering that kind of new art, art that even great professionals missed, it is not too probable that a layman finds it alone. It needs long series of experimentation. The nearest to this kind of architecture, only a few painters did arrive — Piranesi, for example.
But, practical examples might exist. For example, spaces crossed by inextricable bridges, like in some industrial plants, or some freeway interchanges (but at another scale). I had it in some of my models, but it cannot be seen as models one see from the outside. Models are sculptures, but I saw them from the inside through 3-Dimenstional recording. It was a great surprise. More than I had expected it to be.
I think that architectural space as raw material for a sort of art-chitecture can be created. Architecture as “social art” can be materialized easily: “mobile architecture” and improvisation by use. But the “Ville Spatiale” approach might be a way for attaining that quality of “sculpture of the void” as well. Models and 3D recording make experimentation easy. Architecture can thus become a “folk art”, but folk arts generally follow visual examples of artists’ art. I am too old for such a program, but it is a concept that is waiting to be discovered.
Art-chitecture might be a trend worth exploring, in making architects’ role more reliant on creativity, without retaining the necessity of bullying individual users towards an architect’s imposed output. Computer-imagination, when achieved, could be poorer then human imagination, as even imaginative computers will not experience emotions, in the human sense. Emotions are not abstract; they are strongly linked to our physiology.
In any case, there are easy techniques for “imagining” a “scene”. Anyone can and should do it. For example, recording an image, a scanner-operated device analyses it, and translates it into digital signals. A photographic camera and operating with film, record all points of the image simultaneously. That’s the first step towards holism.
A painter – a human mind – translates what he sees through emotional interpretation of shapes, colors and accents. That’s beyond holistic imagination. Perhaps, there could be written software, which works like the film camera. Maybe even like the painter.
In the past, these ideas have been met with reluctance. The idea that the architect may no longer be a “master-builder” but that rather, a facilitator of the layman’s opportunity to architect for himself is scary to many. Like the architect, his practice is conservative. He doesn’t like change either. A concerning part of this conservatism that throughout my life has caused considerable blockage is economic. The difficulty in the expression architecture comes from the parking of capital. Funding of inhabitation requires security, so that it may preserve the investment. This is why institutions have always attributed stability to lack of change over time. This is my experience with mainstream architecture and the blockage of real estate.
Slowly however, I think we move towards the understanding that not even inhabitation is permanent. As mentioned, architecture depends on human behavior, and human behavior is changing. Especially through the aid of the Digital Era, who’s content adjusts so quickly to each user’s preferences. It is so easily recyclable and adaptable — fluid. Always changing: it encourages this. That is why I still propose this architecture. As we start to understand that nothing is permanent, we realize that not even how we live in our inhabitation should be – if, that is, we even live in the same one at all. Change cannot be predetermined; it is unplanned so that we may plan it intuitively. Always imaginatively improvising, with images and models to best serve a routine that might never be constant. But we may predetermine the need for change, and thus plan for the unplanned. And let the individual be an imaginative planner, providing for his constantly changing needs.
This approach might be the right one for a “people’s architecture”. I presume it is possible. I already tried it.
Paris, France, 16 January 2017
copyright Marianne Friedman and Fond Denise et Yona Friedman 2024