Reading Two: Techniques, Technology, Temporality in Time

The first chapter deals with techniques and technology. It begins describing the feedback loop between technology and culture, where advances in one lead to more in the other. With potential for innovation like never before, architects must sieze opportunity to utilize new digital technologies to drive this process forward. They must participate actively in this feedback loop.

The loop consists of technologies, which lead to technical innovations, which then call for new techniques, which then create feedback. A technology can be defined as the “purely technical or scientific advance,” towards a cultural context with an overall aim at greater efficiency. New technologies result in technical advances, which are new innovations that continue to drive the process forward. The difference between a slow and a fast internet modem would be an example of such an advance. In response, new techniques are necessary, which are defined as skills and strategies that users must adopt to make the most from the technical. These lead to cultural feedback and fuel the process continuously.

The author praises new techniques and their adoption in architectural practice. New techniques incorporate feedback from culture, destabilize traditional practice to be more daring and innovative, are process-driven meaning they lead to new techniques, and are most importantly interdisciplinary, which allows for a greater amount of potential possibilities. Often what were once new techniques are detatched from this feedback loop and eventually become static and routine over time. Even three dimensional modeling programs have merely taken the place of traditional methods with only improved efficiency in mind. The author defines the best digital practices that are ultimately a part of the feedback loop and take more innovative approaches as “technological design practices.” The firm of Charles and Ray Eames serve as a good example. They used technological advances during World War II to produce a series of techniques that built on their past work so that the firm could produce much more innovative work over time. While many of their designs focused on efficiency and mass production, they constantly worked as part of the feedback loop to drive their technology and design process forward.

Contemporary technological practices “must fully engage the conditions and possibilities of the digital age.” Zaha Hadid leads a good example of such a firm. These firms must employ techniques that seek to be a part of the feedback loop that yields “catalytic cultural effects.”


The next chapter deals with temporality and time. Architecture has typically resisted time in consideration of design. The author suggests a different approach, embracing time as an “ally in the production of transformative design.” He argues that technological practices use “temporal techniques” to make innovative designs that engage with the feedback loop. Two theories of temporality are introduced: physical and thermodynamic. Physical temporality suggests that time is “reversible.” This means that there is no change in the fundamental properties of materials over time. From this perspective, time is reduced to a numerical aspect only. The past and future states of materials are symmetrical. This essentially describes stagnation over time. Thermodynamic temporality suggests that processes are “irreversible.” Unlike physical temporality, the past and the future states of materials are assymetrical. This is both quantitative and qualitative, containing a numberical component of time as well as a potential for qualitative change. This is essentially dynamic over time.

The default method for approaching time in architectural practice is similar to the physical theory is generally done subconsciously by ignoring it. Technological practices consider their approaches to designing with time closer to the thermodynamic theory, incorporating it dynamically. They consider themselves and their modes of practice as momentary configurations that are in a constant state of flux.

These firms employ “temporal techniques” which can continue to change objects even as they are built. Traditional practices develop their schemes by clarifying them with the end in mind through top-down approaches. Efficiency is a strong determinate in the design process for such firms. Technological practices see the design process as irreversible. Each development builds on the last and never is the final product known. These firms seek to “generate unanticipated catalytic effects.” Each step takes the design in a new direction.

Other similar techniques are then introduced: temporal, generative, and transformative. Temporal techniques seek to be a combination of traditional and technological practice methods, combining virtual and numerical components. Generative techniques borrow strategies and programs from other industries. Two examples of architects who use these are Greg Lynn of FORM and Lars Spuybroek of NOX. Both use a set of information, like contextual conditions and differences in program, to shape their projects through analyzing the unexpected outcomes that the computers produce. The programs do the drawings and designing, but the firms give them their directions based on trial and error approaches to those products. The transformative techniques change materials irreversibly in time, leading to enexpected results. In this approach, objects have zones of influence that determine the ways they interact and their resulting forms. This approach also reveals no clues of the final product.

Overall, the author feels that static design methods make static buildings. Working dynamically instead allows architects to produce catalytic works that in turn continue to fuel the feedback loop and lead to innovative possibilities.