hyperlinked architecture

hyperlinked architecture

Architecture is a field obsessed with its periphery. Celebrated practitioners are the rebels who define a generation by redrawing boundaries. From Eiffel to Dieste, from Le Corbusier to Patrick Schumacher, what is not-quite-architecture is quickly and eagerly consumed.
While interesting, we are not concerned with the boundary of architecture (or adding to the many publications that seek to identify and spotlight its shifting perimeter). Instead, we intend to pursue hyperlinks: the projects or practices that connect spatial experience to external processes, tools, media, contexts or experiences, with an emphasis on those connections made through technology (networks, digital fabrication, and media).
Hyperlink is a term intentionally chosen. Emblematic of the Internet’s origins, it refers to a structure that connects disparate ideas or contexts by enabling transition. A hyperlink is the vector of online experience. Applying the term to architecture carries a wide array of implications and questions: what is the medium of a hyperlink? can connections be drawn across scale, from furniture to building to global dynamics? can online digital hyperlinks connect to physical space? what is the ‘browser’ and what is the ‘interface’?
We suggest a new concept – or, interrogative device – that we call hyperlinked architecture. It refers to a set of spatial experiences and events that are identified not by their physical form, but by two interrelated factors:

1. a (research-driven) process of design, peripheral to architecture
2. a dynamic and connective operation in space, not only experiential but also experimental – that is, specifically intended to interrogate and reveal something about the ways that humans inhabit space
3. a representation strategy that breaks outside of closed discourse in the field of architecture

Although projects exist in this sphere, the territory of hyperlinked architecture has never been articulated or delineated. The first step toward a deeper understanding – and ultimately advancing the practice of hyperlinked architecture – is to collect related work and attempt to understand their underlying commonalities or differences, working toward a functional taxonomy. Our initial solicitation will compile a heterogeneous set of projects and writings that can be parsed in meaningful ways. Rather than adding to the rising pile of ‘cutting-edge architecture’ compilations, we will attempt to understand how these projects are conceptualized, executed and experienced.
We are interested in extending the term ‘research’ to encompass a set of practices and protocols involved with spatial inquiry, whether material, performative, communicative, social or pedagogical. Our project is a publication, an event, and an open aggregator of work, intended to cast light on an emerging approach to spatial interventions; or, hyperlinked architecture.