4 A Retrospective on the Decade's Spaces

As the 2010s come to a close, the prone mind reflects on the decade and the changing spaces that have come to define it. It even drifts towards ranking the best buildings or awarding best-ofs, but such lists inevitably falter as it is implausible that any compiler experienced and considered each work of the past ten years in its own right. Higher-profile projects perennially prevail. Why pretend at all? Let us drop the masquerade of an objective list in favor of general narratives. Such flexibility reopens the feasibility of a top ten list that outlines the decade's spatial advents and maturations. While MALarch commits to specific places for each of its entries, here we dismiss any such notion of specificity. Our space is that of the decade in all its ambiguities. The messy 2010s embraced clickbait and the pre-digested article, and so this entry will reflect that ambition while still holding off from concrete conclusions. Instead of story in a compilation, let us embark through the spaces of the decade with a compilation of stories.^A

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The space of the decade — only the future will tell what we missed. Illustration by Joric Barber.

To begin, we can address the single most prominent trend of this past decade: the rehabilitation and reoccupation of industrial and infrastructural spaces. One need not look further than the lauded High Line to see how impactful these spaces can be.¹ But DS+R's masterpiece is but one example of too many to list here. Across the globe, developed countries have returned the mines that no longer dig, the factories that no longer make, the warehouses that no longer store and the waterfronts that no longer ship to the public as production moves out of cities or, as has been more often the case, to other nations entirely. Like all things in an environmentally-conscious world, space is both recyclable and limited, especially in dense urban centers. Repurposed post-industrial spaces reclaim the city for the people with a recentered focus on sustainable lifestyles as no one wants to live in clatter and smog forever. In this way, the 2010s offered a utopian vision of the humanist city as a way forward in tumultuous times.^B

¹ The High Line opened in 2009, but who likes clean-cut decades anyway? Besides, its discursive components are more at home alongside the conversations of the 2010s than those of the 2000s.

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DS+R's the High Line and Landing Studio's Ink Underground reclaim post-industrial and infrastructural space for the people. Illustration by Joric Barber.

These adaptations of modernity's remnants are themselves a small segment of a much greater trend that extends beyond architecture's confines. While no consensus on terminology has accepted, many have proffered the term metamodernism. In generations prior, the idea of postmodernism explained contemporaneous architectural endeavors as mediating between traditional and modern spaces and forms.² But after all the philosophizing of postmodernity, this juxtaposition falls apart. Traditions evolve — for example, the Gothic of Medieval master builders is neither the Gothic of Viollet-le-Duc nor Ralph Adams Cram nor Demetri Porphyrios, but all have nonetheless come to epitomize the Gothic tradition in their own manner — and what was once so brashly modern has become, well, traditional.³ The dichotomy at the base of postmodern architecture, eroded by postmodernism's deconstructive tendencies, can no longer support the spatial claims it did in the late-20th century. Architects must find new ways to create theoretically novel spaces. Instead of oscillating strictly between traditional and modern, metamodern spaces jump between ironic and sincere, interesting and banal, comforting and confusing. The poles themselves are fuzzy, not wanting to be pinned down. On the one hand, they refuse to commit because they don't want to limit themselves, while on the other, they overcommit because they don't want to come of as half-baked. They are simple and slippery, yet refined and rich. Such a complex concept deserves more than a paragraph in a pseudo-top ten list, so instead of continuing to fall short of conveying its theoretical prowess, let's move on and return to it in future entries.^C

² This definition comes from Fredric Jameson's "Spatial Equivalents in the World System" in his seminal Postmodernism: or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 97–129. While most architects would refer to Venturi or Rossi when discussing postmodern architecture, the literary critic opts instead for Gehry, whose own house becomes subject to Jameson's critique as an exemplar of the traditional/modern collocation.

³ In addition to the dissemination of its forms into the cultural conscious, the Modern Movement's foundation lay in creating a new tradition. What else would the teachings of the Bauhaus be if not founding a methodology for future designers to follow?

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The metal meshes over stark forms of OFFICE KGDVS's Dar al Jinaa/Dar al Riffa and SO-IL's Kukje Gallery present the tensions of metamodern space. Illustration by Joric Barber.

While so far it may seem that the 2010s bolstered utilitarian and theoretical spaces, many of its highest profile developments were quite the contrary: they were spectacular spaces. Parametricism holds a leading role in this realm. Though earlier decades lay claim to the fundamentals of its extravagant forms, their persistence after a premature epitaph in 2008 demonstrates how we are stuck with images that stick.⁴ The passing of Zaha Hadid, queen of curvilinearity, further solidified parametricism's place in the canon of the decade. But these are not the only reasons to include this oft-derided 'formalism' in our recollection; they genuinely produce unprecedented spaces and offer a means of navigation through global markets. Love them or hate them, the computational endeavors of the late-20th century continue to produce compelling architecture where others have failed given the circumstances of an ever-later capitalism. Icons sell.^D

⁴ The epitaph in question — not limited to parametricism per se, but rather to starchitecture at large — is Nick Ouroussoff's "It Was Fun Till the Money Ran Out," which appeared in The New York Times on 19 December, 2008 after the world economy suffered tremendous losses at the hands of over-zealous, starchitect-struck developers. For better of worse, we quickly brushed aside the lessons Ouroussoff hoped we had learned the minute the money came back, though some hope can be found in the second paragraph of this entry.

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Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center presents: The Spectacular Spaces of Parametricism! Illustration by Joric Barber.

Parametric design can be accessible too. Rather than focus solely on imagery as its selling point, parametric software also promotes itself through its integrated approach to the draughting process. Its pageantry can become pragmatism. The flamboyance of computational design tools like Grasshopper — not an intrinsic property of the tool, but this association perseveres in the minds of many — can reduce to the efficiencies of building information modeling programs such as Revit. BIM is no new-comer to the scene, but it has undoubtedly gone from a specialized program to an industry standard over the course of the past decade. After all, it is a logical progression in the lineage of hand-draughting and CAD. Where its predecessors created representations of architectural space, however, BIM software creates architectural space from which it in turns pulls representations. This streamlines a slew of processes (no longer must draughtsman check each detail call-out to ensure the drawings correspond) and allows a more tangible element of building to occupy the design process. While this may burden architectural thinking if adopted too early, it undoubtedly accelerates the movement between design and construction by pre-constructing the building in its design.^E

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The building can be built before it is built thanks to the power of BIM space. Illustration by Joric Barber.

Speaking of which, in the realm of construction, automated methods have become viable solutions. Though the 2020s will tell if drones really can replace masons and so forth, the 2010s pulled such talk from science-fiction to reality. Within the architecture studio, 3D printers and CNC routers found themselves as common model-making tools, with neither being strangers to job sites. Manipulations of the material realm came astride the complexities allowed ever more easily by computational tools. Where the 1990s made architects jump through hoops to realize their digitally-derived forms, the 2010s simply made the digital into material. The computer could conceive, but now the computer can create as well. The construction process collapses into the increasingly powerful computer model and its computer-driven manufacturing devices. It's no wonder so many have fallen for (to?) BIM.^F

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Architects use computers to design; why not use them to construct as well? Illustration by Joric Barber.

The consolidation of draughting and building has freed other forms of architectural representation. Since Brunnelleschi and his Renaissance buddies, much of representation has focused on conveying space. The perspectival techniques invented by those 15th-century Italian architects directed the discipline for centuries. With time, parallel spatial drawings found their own niche in conveying diagrammatic ideas from third-person vantages. But both parallel and perspective drawings agreed on one point: representing three-dimensional ideas in a two-dimensional medium. The 2010s saw a surge in reversing these Renaissance sensibilities. The image is a two-dimensional object, and anything it represents becomes inherently two-dimensional. Attempts to trick the eye with technique don't remedy the underlying issue of a mismatch in media. Two dimensions are ill-equipped to show three. The 2010s embraced this eschewal. The oblique became flatter. The perspective collaged and collapsed. Since representational space could no longer be considered space, atmosphere and affect took over as the matters represented. With bold colors and playful patterns, the flattened axonometric declares that there's no room for space here any more.^G

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This is a drawing. What? Were you expecting a building? Illustration by Joric Barber.

Space, at least before it materializes, had to find a new home. Or perhaps it found a new home and left a vacant representation for those aforementioned new tenants. Either way, technology reappears — a common character amidst the numerous narratives recounted retrospectively here. While 3D-models always promised the perception of space before its actualization, their images failed to move beyond the static. Space is immersive; renderings omissive. With the dissemination of augmented- and virtual-reality devices, however, 3D-models have become occupiable as they never quite were but always wished to be. Certainly there is still much room for improvement — phenomenologists will decry that high-tech goggles replicate the visual alone (and reproducing the nuances of smell or air viscosity does seem a gimmick) — but the methods will follow the technological advancements. With walkthroughs as easy to produce as installing a plug-in, architecture can exist before it is built. Again the 2010s reverse Renaissance thinking: Alberti believed architects produced drawings, not buildings, but now architects really do build their work, just within the digital realm. Everything from space to its representation to its construction bleeds together as technology improves.^H

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Enter new spaces without leaving your home through the comfort of virtual- and augmented-reality. Illustration by Joric Barber.

Technology does not improve for architecture alone. Designers are peripheral beneficiaries to the popularity of video games. The market drives the matter, and architects often seem content to weasel their way through projects with cracked or educational software licenses while still complaining about the program's deficiencies. No, architecture is by far not the only actor in the advancement of spatial technologies. In fact, it is not even the only producer of spaces: video games have managed to create spatial experiences that likely seem more pertinent to many people than buildings do. One could go so far as to point out that future generations of architects will declare Minecraft as what sparked their interest in the discipline, just as Lego enticed generations prior⁵ But Lego, despite its myriad merits, cannot claim to create immersive space with the ease that Minecraft can. Lego builds models of worlds; Minecraft builds the worlds themselves. Although virtual, these worlds are still spaces, and their spatialities will grow across the next decade and draw more players into their digital domain.^I

⁵ The author sank much of his youth into both games, but vehemently denies they had anything to do with his going into architecture.

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Minecraft! Illustration by Joric Barber.

The virtual environments of video games and the ilk pale in comparison to the greater digital sphere. The internet is nothing new, but its interconnectivity has increased drastically as more and more people obtain faster connections to the world wide web, and as more platforms provide new ways for those people to connect. The aforementioned atmospheric images often exist for Instagram. Social media has changed how architects produce work, but that scratches the surface. The Twittersphere has replaced the town square in the dissemination of information and the gathering of people in what is essentially worldwide real-time. The chaos of livestream chats furthers this for niche events as viewers flood messages faster than the eye can read. It is no wonder emojis have become the lingua franca of the internet: they need neither time nor translation. As time reconfigures for the internet age, so to does space. Cyberspace, so to speak, has no three-dimensional aspect to it; it is but pixels that browsers decode from raw data. Since the Enlightenment, empirical data has fastened its stranglehold tighter on societal thought, so it follows that data wishes to replace space with its imperative objectivity as well.^J

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Kids these days never experience the real world. They're off surfing cyberspace. Illustration by Joric Barber.

This list-cum-essay is far from complete,⁶ but hopefully it provides some outlines to the spaces of the decade and how we built and occupied them. So much has changed in the last ten years, and all those changes happen within the backdrop of space. It can be difficult to discern changes in the set when the plot compels, but such spatial manipulations are eventually what allow for future twists to occur. Cataloguing the developments of space promises revelations. Architecture is a slow-moving, utilitarian artform, but its spatial domain (however invaded by sculpture, video games and other media it may be) remains one of humanity's most potent creative inventions. Literature and painting may lead the way, but it has been said that space is the final frontier. Let us look forward to exploring it — and all that happens in it — further in the coming decade.

⁶ The astute will note that there are in fact only nine narratives in this perverse top ten — unless one opts for the easy out of including the space of the decade itself. The tenth (and why stop at ten?) is indeterminate and open. MALarch wants to hear what you think. Tweet us.