Trans-ports
2000-2002
Trans-ports was a collaborative proposal with Kas Oosterhuis in the context of Rotterdam’s stint as the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2001, to open the first entirely information- and time-based visitor pavilion in the world. Not only would the interior be completely covered by media panels, allowing it to become endlessly reprogrammable, but the construction of the pavilion would also be an extension of an internet website that would algorithmically decide the shape and size of the building volume by means of expanding or contracting pneumatic bars. As a consequence, the pavilion would mirror the ultimate consequences of the triumph of the digital, becoming stronger than any analogue reality. The proposal, perhaps fortunately, was rejected.
Digital Gothic
a new architecture of light
Most people who theorize about the fate of architecture, and its ongoing tendency towards lightness, focus on the constructional aspect. They talk about the use of mirrors in the 18th century, new construction techniques in the 19th, modernist transparency and screen façades in the 20th century. For these people the 21st century will mean architecture that is even lighter, using all kinds of synthetic materials and fast click systems.
There are also theorists who concentrate on the conceptual level. These thinkers explore the progressive immaterialisation of the architectural object, its gravity, its integrity and its solidity. They come up with either a sort of minimalism, a neutral, abstract space-oriented approach, or all kinds of aberrations of the platonic volumes: deconstructivism, blobs, and so on.
