Smart
House
Architecture
is more than a series of techniques that are designed to protect us from a
storm. It is a measurement instrument used to summarize knowledge and it is
capable of organizing social space and time. Traditional architecture, which
deals with serial space and time intervals is not relevant to the postmodern
condition, which is characterized by a multitude of heterogeneous spaces and
moments. Our private house has become accessible to penetration of new sites,
spaces and temporality. This process that evaded our attention is made possible
by new technologies which creeps into our household accessories such as
telephones, TVs, Internet enabled PCs and Internet enabled devices. These
accessories enable constant interaction between the outside and the inside. This
interaction privatizes and condenses the whole universe into our house’s
interior. This diffusive penetration is being gradually substituted by
information overexposure. Information overexposure occurs when streamed and
pushed information, without our interference or control, contaminates our
immediate environment. Information overexposure forces the architects of the
future to consider advanced technological infrastructure that will provide the
option to plug into the information stream while enabling some control over it.
What is the house that deserves our inhabitation? The house produces and provides the conditions for our household activities; so it reflects our temporal way of life. The house, which will be shortly introduced, attempts to foresee the near future and reflects a new type of world. A world in which time management is more important than territorial management and the right to be post-modern (the right for plug-ins and optical fibers that enable faster and further connections) is more important than the right of citizenship (The right to receive a national passport). We can reposition the questions about time and space through Bill Gates’ house.
Where
do you want to go today?
Hello,
Welcome to Bill Gates’ house. This is your house server speaking. I wish you a
pleasant temporary stay. The house is at your service and is glad to host you.
First,
you must wear the electronic pin so the system can process your activities. The
tiny transmitter role is to identify you and to update the system about your
location within it. From that moment, the house always knows your whereabouts
and other residents or guests location relatively to yours. Remember; the house
watches you; Tracking you. The house is the host and it is ready to serve you at
any time you wish to be served. As you walk the transmitter “speaks” with
the computer control system which processes the locality you “write” and
your favorite content selections. If you have been in the house before, the
computer already knows some things about you. Your activities were recorded so I
already know your TV viewing habits, your favorite Internet sites or visual art
pieces and your musical taste. You should act naturally, ignore me, I’m your
slave and you’re my master. The things you do, like choosing the lightning or
selecting a room temperature will be inputted and processed through sensors.
They will be translated to individual information that is valid just for you.
Everything is tailor-made for you. The information that will be provided to you
is compatible with your personality. Your actions within the house are not
isolated or discontinuous; this is the beginning of a long acquaintance. The
house learns to get to know you as an individual (As you would expect from
fellow human beings) until it can predict what stuff you like better than you
would. When two or more persons are inside a same room, The internal environment
is calculated based on the mutual preferences. The Computer cross-references the
room member’s pre-stored data and projects the magnified common interests back
on the interior.
Tele-hospitality
As
you will find out, this house support dynamic actions in the sense your acts add
to and cover-up the current occupant objects of self-representation which are
virtually superimposed on one of the many huge screen-walls. Among other things,
the screen walls uncover important works of art from the tradition of art
history, selected from about one million pieces that were copyrighted by the
house owner or by Corbis – A media company he owns. There is no one image,
like a singular authentic wall-hanged picture that is meant to express something
meaningful about the resident.
Every image is camouflaged behind every other image. There is no last or final image that is capable of appearing as there is no last or final guest that can surprise. The technology produces and enables the conditions for a new kind of hospitality to exist. In this hospitality, You have the right to momentarily borrow a place someone else owns by redecorating the walls with your own private history. It is possible that the environment you create will enable you to meet with surpluses of yourself that has by now turned to immigrants in a system that is too huge to become your own; A system that is too densely weaved for you to escape. Technology, by itself has no ideology. Ideology appears when someone or something practices technology. Technology is silenced only when the house is left without tenants or visitors. Than, only the naked screens hint the installation mechanisms, the implemented regime.
Tele-Vision
– the roots of non-space
The
personal computer is the open architecture Tele-Vision of the future. A set-top
box with a Modem is the interface (as the automated taller machine) that is
capable of plug-inning the projection screen/monitor to Cable, Phone or
Satellite. A TV screen can be found in every room you walk into. It is tuned to
your favorite channel. The movie or the news follows you as you move from room
to room. The events clone themselves from the “outside” to your own
temporary territory. When Ted Turner decided in the eighties to establish a
global news network, he transformed, thanks to satellite broadcast technology,
the audience local immediate to a sort of a global broadcast arena of global
events. The TV/Computer screen broadcast to you the living daylight of another
day, of another distant place. The daily cycle has changed. A new kind of day
takes its place beside the solar/astronomical day, the candlelight day and the
electronic day. This is a virtual day that appears in the broadcasting schedule.
It has no connection to the “real” Calendar day.
The
chronological and the historical time - the time that passes, is replaced by a
time the exposes itself all the time. Thanks to Satellite broadcasts, dimensions
and spaces have become undistinguished from their electronic signal rate of
reception inside a condensed unity of a timeless viewing space. If space is the
one that keeps that everything is not in the same place, this limitation brings
it to a placeless place - the same place where televised events are projected.
The place becomes interchangeable by will, your will.
Bye Bye
It
takes time, but you’ll get used to this. Technology is a matter of getting
used to. Technology is swirling and addictive. When you get used to this you
won’t have it any other way. But, after all, here at the house, your loyal
server reduces you to an aggregate of preferences. Reduction to a system of
means and ends that is achieved by concealed mechanics and electronics.
Reduction of life to a bundle of relations and goals, as in Cybernetics. The
experimental model house that wants to offer you entertainment and make you
creative in a cozy atmosphere encounters difficulties that are hard to describe
in concrete terms. It still does not succeed to surprise, to improvise or just
be outright spontaneous. People like to be surprised every once in a while. The
house should learn to surprise us.
Is
the fact that the emphasis in this house is on applications and not on
traditional architectural design is a precedent to a process, in which
architecture becomes an outdated technology? A decaying form of control? What is
a house? Who is the stranger in my home? Who is the guest? These are some of the
questions that are brought to attention by our pilgrimage.