The hole in the wall
I was in Copenhagen last May 29-30 to get my annual dose of ideas and inspiration overload at the conference aptly called reboot. It’s an annual gathering — a community event to be more precise — that’s been going on for a decade; it has been a crossroads of digital technology and change where practical visionaries meet and reboot.
From the organisers’ own words: “2 days a year. 500 people. A journey into the interconnectedness of creation, participation, values, openness, decentralization, collaboration, complexity, technology, p2p, humanities, connectedness and many more areas.”
I like being in reboot, mainly because it’s so different from your usual corporate conferences. There’s an air of excitement and anticipation, but everyone’s just cool to everyone. The energy sizzles in the air and good will just overflows. It’s good to be stuck in such a place that houses stories and inspirations of people of different nationalities, who share ideas as artists, writers, bloggers, developers, entrepreneurs, researchers, analysts, teachers, cultural workers, designers, information architects, and so much more.
I almost did not go after having had long, tiring and bad day at work, but it’s a good thing I did. I really needed to shut down and reboot ;-)
Walking through walls
This year’s theme was ‘Free’: not just the price, but the freedom to flow, create and re-create spaces and interfaces around and within us.
One of the topics that struck me the most was the talk on ‘walking through walls’by Molly Wright Steenson. It was a military strategy used by units of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on its attack on the city of Nablus in April 2002. Described as ‘inverse geometry’ as it re-organised the ‘urban syntax’, it used the streets, roads, alleys, or courtyards that constitute the syntax of the city in a non-traditional way; as well as the external doors, internal stairwells, and windows that constitute the order of buildings, the soldiers moved horizontally through blasted walls, and vertically through blasted ceilings and floors. Because the rebels interpreted the spaces made by doors, windows and alleys in a traditional manner — places where you can walk through or enter, but also places where you can be trapped and confronted — Aviv Kochavi, then commander of the Paratrooper Brigade decided to perceive these spaces not in the same way as every architect did. He considered it forbidden territory and thus looked for other ways of moving through the spatial boundaries they were in.
“…. We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through, and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. Not only do I not want to fall into his traps, I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. I need to win. I need to emerge from an unexpected place. And this is what we tried to do.”
I found deeply interesting the unexpected way the space — or the interface — was reinterpreted by the military. In this case, it was not the spatial boundaries that created and directed movement, but it was the movement itself — the walking though walls — that recreated the space around it. “Walking-through-walls” re-conceptualised the city as not just the site, but also the very medium of warfare.
I find this very relevant in our work with experience architecture, where we give structure to and analyse information on different digital platforms: it reminds me to keep on rethinking the interfaces we design and develop; to challenge the usual flows of data and how users access it.
But although I have a grudging admiration for this perspective, the tactic of ‘walking through walls’ has greatly impacted the democratic spaces offered by both public and private domains. By invading and worming through the domestic interiors, the inside has been turned to outside: private domains became thoroughfares of conflict where fighting takes place ‘…within half-demolished living rooms, bedrooms and corridors of poorly built refugee homes, where the television may still be operating and a pot may still on the stove.’
If they have walked through walls and reinvented the spaces around them, what could have then been removed or displaced? Which pathways have been blocked or rendered impassable and which new spaces are going to evolve, adapt and perhaps fill in the gaping holes in the walls?
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From the organisers’ own words: “2 days a year. 500 people. A journey into the interconnectedness of creation, participation, values, openness, decentralization, collaboration, complexity, technology, p2p, humanities, connectedness and many more areas.”
I like being in reboot, mainly because it’s so different from your usual corporate conferences. There’s an air of excitement and anticipation, but everyone’s just cool to everyone. The energy sizzles in the air and good will just overflows. It’s good to be stuck in such a place that houses stories and inspirations of people of different nationalities, who share ideas as artists, writers, bloggers, developers, entrepreneurs, researchers, analysts, teachers, cultural workers, designers, information architects, and so much more.
I almost did not go after having had long, tiring and bad day at work, but it’s a good thing I did. I really needed to shut down and reboot ;-)
Walking through walls
This year’s theme was ‘Free’: not just the price, but the freedom to flow, create and re-create spaces and interfaces around and within us.
One of the topics that struck me the most was the talk on ‘walking through walls’by Molly Wright Steenson. It was a military strategy used by units of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on its attack on the city of Nablus in April 2002. Described as ‘inverse geometry’ as it re-organised the ‘urban syntax’, it used the streets, roads, alleys, or courtyards that constitute the syntax of the city in a non-traditional way; as well as the external doors, internal stairwells, and windows that constitute the order of buildings, the soldiers moved horizontally through blasted walls, and vertically through blasted ceilings and floors. Because the rebels interpreted the spaces made by doors, windows and alleys in a traditional manner — places where you can walk through or enter, but also places where you can be trapped and confronted — Aviv Kochavi, then commander of the Paratrooper Brigade decided to perceive these spaces not in the same way as every architect did. He considered it forbidden territory and thus looked for other ways of moving through the spatial boundaries they were in.
“…. We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through, and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. Not only do I not want to fall into his traps, I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. I need to win. I need to emerge from an unexpected place. And this is what we tried to do.”
I found deeply interesting the unexpected way the space — or the interface — was reinterpreted by the military. In this case, it was not the spatial boundaries that created and directed movement, but it was the movement itself — the walking though walls — that recreated the space around it. “Walking-through-walls” re-conceptualised the city as not just the site, but also the very medium of warfare.
I find this very relevant in our work with experience architecture, where we give structure to and analyse information on different digital platforms: it reminds me to keep on rethinking the interfaces we design and develop; to challenge the usual flows of data and how users access it.
But although I have a grudging admiration for this perspective, the tactic of ‘walking through walls’ has greatly impacted the democratic spaces offered by both public and private domains. By invading and worming through the domestic interiors, the inside has been turned to outside: private domains became thoroughfares of conflict where fighting takes place ‘…within half-demolished living rooms, bedrooms and corridors of poorly built refugee homes, where the television may still be operating and a pot may still on the stove.’
If they have walked through walls and reinvented the spaces around them, what could have then been removed or displaced? Which pathways have been blocked or rendered impassable and which new spaces are going to evolve, adapt and perhaps fill in the gaping holes in the walls?
Labels: architecture, cities, democratic spaces, flows, spaces, walking through walls
posted by delunna | 10:44 PM
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