THE HETERARCHY.
a thesis process blog.
WELCOME TO THE HETERARCHY
267 ⅜ Canal St.
216 E 14th St.
models.
INTERSPACE
Doug Jackson Studio Thesis Show, 2017
how do we display 19 unique but subtly interrelated projects?
interspace consolidates projected imagery, models, augmented reality, and extra content commentary into one space, laid out on 70+ boxes regulated in a grid formation.
detail.
section.
Fifth Year Section Show
216 E. 14th St.
on standardization.
THE ENTROPICS.
As aforementioned, THE HETERARCHY shall deploy first as a series of entropic interventions. These shall be titled THE ENTROPICS. They will be distributed amongst metropolitan areas, combatting the hierarchical authority of THE CITY.
As of now, there are five entropic categories: THE CIRCULATION, THE INFILL, THE FIFTH FACADE, THE STREET, and THE VACANCY.
THE CIRCULATION
THE CIRCULATION category fulfills the basic function of vertical circulation. However, it pushes the definition of circulation by shoving a new space between two disparate buildings that generates areas for both confrontation and solitude. Interventions that are part of THE CIRCULATION category will fall onto some intersection between two spectrums: one ranges from same to different programs, while the other will range from same to different external appearances.
THE INFILL
THE INFILL category will seek to induce spatial exploration of empty lots. Empty city lots are particularly interesting compared to other empty lots because they are surrounded on all sides by existing building walls. THE INFILL will change the way people see blank walls and empty space that has been “put on hold,” so to speak, by the city. Yawning gaps will be subdivided into human-sized spaces. They’ll disregard city fences, seizing control of this free space, giving it to the city's inhabitants.
THE FIFTH FAÇADE
THE FIFTH FAÇADE is just fancy architectural jargon for the rooftop, but in redefining the rooftop as such, we combat the way the hierarchy has induced us into thinking about rooftops. While THE CIRCULATION category intrudes between buildings and THE INFILL category fills empty space, THE FIFTH FAÇADE category will float above its building(s)—its prey—but will be so much more than a façade. It refutes property lines, air rights, and the prevailing attitude regarding rooftop space, depositing a veritable landscape upon this unexplored façade.
THE STREET
THE STREET is an extension of a current trend in urban design thinking: streets ought to belong to the people, not to automobiles. No matter that streets are scaled to cars. Humans are highly adaptable; it's one of our greatest strengths. THE STREET category aims to flatten the hierarchy of who (what) inhabits the street landscape.
THE VACANCY
THE VACANCY category subdivides empty, unused space. A fascinating (though ultimately unrelated) fun fact about New York City is that the amount of vacant space littered across the urban fabric can house the city's entire homeless population, with room leftover. While THE VACANCY is not a proposal for a solution to this conundrum, it does address this vast amount of unused space.
the new establishment.
Like obsolescence, building tolerance (one manifestation of lateral thinking) is a process. Architecture’s role in this process is of paramount importance: architecture is the most easily visible and most widely accessible part of the design industry. It should highlight both problems and solutions, bearing the marks of its social, historical, physical, and technological context, even if that context is no longer contemporary (architecture does not exist in a vacuum, so it should not act/look that way). In this way, architecture can then profoundly affect cultural behaviors (and elicit new ones) in pursuit of liberation.
What follows is a proposal for how exactly architecture will do that.
First, entropic interventions will take place. These, acting like Lebbeus Woods’ scabs, will highlight instances of entropy and allow people to recognize the presence of time. Ma, wabi-sabi, and mono no aware are new concepts that can be introduced into an open system, and their ‘differenceness’ will help the cultural shift into heterarchy. These will be localized and contextual.
Second, as the interventions too become obsolete, appreciation of depreciation will be established.
Third, a new architecture shall be introduced, as a result of the affects that the interventions had on individuals. It will provide an alternative experience that humbles humanity while activating anarchistic predispositions of human behavior.
Lastly, the hierarchy will be dismantled and replaced by heterarchy.
heterarchical beginnings
DESIGN STUDY 3
People rarely even attempt to reimagine spatial usage. To do so would mean conflict—conflict with others, with authority, or with the hierarchy. This conflict is not necessarily violent (though it could be—additional reason why people avoid reimagining spatial use). Perhaps a traditionally stationary program spills into a corridor, which is traditionally animated.
This exploration of heterarchical space superimposes three heterarchical systems over a hypothetical existing hierarchical system (i.e. a city block). Inspired by Bernard Tschumi’s Le Fresnoy Art Center, DESIGN STUDY 3 also seeks to decompose human expectations of exterior, interior, and circulation.
space and time.
The visualization of time is so immensely valuable to the human experience because it is one of few hyperobjects[1] that we are all collectively aware of and accept. The actual passage of time is the only way we understand it, so that is specifically what architecture should strive to embody. So far, we have generally only considered cyclical time—years subdivided into seasons, days into hours—a byproduct of production and assembly lines. How will this building respond to sun paths in the winter versus the summer? How can we activate this plaza after the 9-5 workers leave? Seldom do we ask: What will happen here in thirty years, when the fashions have changed and our living habits have evolved? However, asking this question should not lead to design that attempts to anticipate stylistic evolution; that’s for the fashion industry. Instead, consider this: There is no value to be found in purely formal architecture. The current hierarchical structure dictates that certain aesthetics are better than others. In other words, obsolescence is a hierarchical construct. A thing’s obsolescence is related to its time, its datedness, its relevance…our interpretation of time, too, is a hierarchical construct.
The relationship between architecture and time is a given, but we must change the nature of this relationship. The way it is now, time begins to destroy architecture, devaluing it. This perception must change. We must remember that old architecture is relevant. Jun’ichiro Tanizaki waxes poetic about this, Japanese concepts of wabi-sabi and mono no aware[2], and the value of impermanence and aging, in his book In Praise of Shadows. He talks about the patina on silver, the intensity of wood grain over time, the luster of grime on pottery—all things that accumulate over time. He talks about losing sense of time when he encounters certain qualities of light and even the lack thereof. “[B]y cutting off the light from this empty space [our ancestors] imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament…for me, the most exquisite touch is the pale white glow of the shoji in the study bay; I need only pause before it and I forget the passage of time.”[3] Throughout the book, Tanizaki criticizes the (non)qualities of glaring lighting and polished silverware as superficial; they reflect (quite literally) Western (non)sensibilities towards the delicacy of time. As a writer, Tanizaki calls for this type of sensibility to resurface in the literature world, but it is clear in his text that there are architectural applications. In a culture where we equate time to capital and we never truly pause to consider beauty, only architectural space can bring about a change in these habits. Arata Isozaki, an architect who started working in the 1960s, works extensively with the concept of ma, another Japanese concept that equates time and space. Architectural space is synonymous with the events that happen within it. [4] Though technically we can say that this concept is also a hierarchical construct, it is not currently regarded as part of the same hierarchy that decided that time was cyclical (that is, Western society). THE HETERARCHY brings together all interpretations and relationships between space and time.
That is why THE HETERARCHY matters, why those of us who construct the world we inhabit must contribute to THE HETERARCHY, to design heterarchically.
THE HETERARCHY allows for any and all relationships between any and all things. THE HETERARCHY allows for comparison. THE HETERARCHY creates the foundation for open-minded understanding and tolerance.
[1] Hyperobjects are “massively distributed entities” that we can conceive but cannot touch or see. Timothy Morton, “Poisoned Ground: Art and Philosophy in the Time of Hyperobjects.” Symploke, Vol. 21 (2013) 37.
[2] Wabi-sabi: acceptance of transience and imperfection. Wabi is about austerity; sabi about patina. Mono no aware: awareness of things, relating to their transience.
[3] Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows (Sedgwick: Leete’s Island Books, Inc., 1977) 20-21.
[4] Arata Isozaki, Ma: Space-Time in Japan (New York: Cooper Hewitt Museum, 1979).
time.
[S]ometimes architects understand that permanence can only be experienced through change, whereas stopping time merely results in an endlessly drawn-out moment.
-Ilka & Andreas Ruby
“Spatial Communication,” p 27.
What is heterarchy?
a fluid-dynamic [social] structure
- Lebbeus Woods
a utopian antithesis of hierarchy
- Jennifer Fletcher
Why does heterarchy matter?
THE HETERARCHY is a new social order.
THE HETERARCHY promotes lateral thinking. THE HETERARCHY allows for multiple relationships between any and/or all the objects within the system. THE HETERARCHY is not an issue of aesthetics, or time; it is precisely the opposite. THE HETERARCHY is a system of tolerance. It is a system of balance and unbalance, of comfort and discomfort, of the expected and unexpected. THE HETERARCHY combats the hierarchy.
However, THE HETERARCHY is not anarchy: without structure (i.e. hierarchy), anarchy means nothing. If hierarchy is orderly and ranked, heterarchy is unranked, and anarchy is disorderly.
Woods created conceptual heterarchical architecture (basically coining the term 'heterarchy') as a way to combat the world's architectural response to war. This thesis is but a basic application of his concept—and that is all it is, a concept. He never imagined that it could be realized, that it could potentially change the way we live.
Architecture already affects the way we live. Purposeful, heterarchical architecture can rewire our entire society.
But why must we change? A good question, and an easy one to answer: Our society is hierarchical, and this hierarchy is destroying us. Just read the news.
As it stands now, hierarchical structure is a societal system brought on by cultural behaviors. Richard Sennet, in a series of essays compiled into the text Practicing Culture, argues that “Culture is a set of practices rather than static representations; culture is made and remade in countless small ways and occasional bursts of innovation. Culture is something people do.”[1] Culture behaves in open and closed systems [of society] the same way entropy does; to use Sennet’s words in his essay “The Open City,” in closed systems, entropy reaches “equilibrium and integration,” and in an open systems entropy dissonantly allows for evolutionary growth “rather than erasure.” The closed system is like a hierarchy: “every part of the system has a place in an overall design; the consequence of that ideal is to reject, to vomit out, experiences which stick out because they are contestatory or disorienting; things that “don’t fit” are diminished in value."[2] For contestatory things to diminish in value, they must first exist…architecture does not need to bring forth contradictory behavior, because it is already present. We shall task architecture to prevent its own value from deteriorating, to be the open system, to be heterarchical, and to draw out new cultural behaviors.