Reading review 2

How buildings learn: Where you can build your imagination

Using the same frame to observe different objects is a powerful way of revealing their differences. I wanted to deal with the different human traffic between physical and digital space, and how these changes in people’s movement make a big difference in the creative field. Also, I’d like to talk about how it has affected the feature of interaction spaces.

I chose the Carnegie Museum of Art and Adobe’s portfolio building site to represent each sector. Above all, I think due to invisibility in the technology of digital space, opportunities for creative autonomy in those spaces are much higher than physical spaces. Specifically, the effect of technology is relatively less visible in the digital world’s thin layered form. Therefore, the lack of technology awareness leads users to feel there are no limitations and to act creatively. Likewise, people can take multiple roles and feel like existing independently.

Before describing my observation, I will briefly introduce the concept of 6 Shearing Layers of Building that argued by Stewart Brand; a framework that allowed me to compare two objects from the same angle. He said a building is consist of 6 layers that have different rates of change, so the building is always torn apart and that is what the building itself is.

This is a Pittsburgh’s art museum that built-in 1895 by industrialist Andrew Carnegie and it took step by step 6 layers, not as fluid and more rigid.

This place adjoins a busy road and it welcomes people as they descend a few steps and enter through a wide, glass-lined doorway. At the same time, the vertical and rectangular shape of the overall structure felt heavy and non-variable.

Consistently, the interior structures such as staircases and walkways were also massive. The outward appearance of the building was expected to be maintained over time by adopting large panel-type concrete and hanging large posters indicating current exhibitions.

Inside, I watched how visitors navigated the space. In Natural History collection, the area sustained different smells, humidity levels, temperatures, and light from place to place. (e.g. Polar world: As soon as I entered, I could feel the cold air.) Which means the service was not applied collectively but being used as part of space experience and appreciation.

Upon returning to the Art collection, I realized although the space plan was largely classified by type of artwork, several layers inspired the overall space plan. For instance, through temporary walls, paint color, infographics, and show stands, I could understand various identities within the same space. Since they deal with both modern art and ancient art, I was able to find everything from white cube galleries to the room of ancient architecture. However, half of them seemed to be fixed exhibits.

Overall, the museum captured Pittsburgh’s emotions and had a stable feeling. At the same time, it was an art museum that was more of an “appreciate” than an “experience.” With the feeling of being safe from the outside, I could wander around the space meditatively.

Adobe Portfolio is one of Adobe’s products that work as a designing tool for personalized website and showcase for creative works of individuals. It follows 6-layer structure more dynamically, and layers can disappear or become thinner in some cases.

The site has a thin layer of structure and skin, some surrounded layers are fluidly circulated. If I assume there a spectrum of technology visibility in digital spaces, this Adobe Portfolio can be considered as easy tech one. Because instead of using stuff like HTML, CSS, Java, people can create their piece by grasping the empty template provided by Adobe. This low visibility of tech avoids making people overwhelmed by measure, instead of lead them to focus on original goals.

Various technologies drive this platform works as the service layer of the building. This is because optimizing the device, simplifying the service by connecting to other platforms, the fort and grid systems, and domain name becomes working guts.

Space plan will be a core UX, that is ‘an information structure designed for the process of creating a website’. This can be changed by the site’s update or data of the user flow.

Thus, like the museum, this space is completed when filled with things. The difference is the stuff has more power to gather people and make a community. Attractive portfolio stuff calls people together, and people make stuff again. Accordingly, they can circulate, build, experience and consume at the digital space.

To sum up, users naturally can get more autonomy while using digital space as their canvas because they already have a creative purpose when visiting and interacting with this site. In contrast, the chance of expressing creativity in an art museum is limited and likely to become passive.

While comparing two spaces, the major difference was people’s movement. In physical museum spaces, people should follow the rules of physics. In contrast, the inconsistent movement became the inherent nature of digital space. In this regard, I felt that technology might be the most important factor of interaction design since it changes conventional approaches and affects the operation of each layer. I thought the object here takes a distinctive value, unlike the stuff in Brand’s theory. This kind of transition in the importance of layers makes a more interesting narrative for spaces. Isn’t the dynamic makes the art more interesting?

References

Brand, S(1994) How buildings learn: What happens after they built

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