3.4 Augmentation through apps
The Ideathek seamlessly spans over not only the physical building but also its virtual extensions. This blending between real and virtual becomes even more apparent if we consider just a few possible functions for an augmented-reality app. Suppose the building and all items was equipped with a RFID-system the app could then be used to locate books and equipment quickly and easily with the help of electromagnetic waves. For the book racks, this would have an important implication: it would no longer be necessary to arrange books in any order at all. Through the app, one could find a book and then put it back on any shelf. It would still be found again. The collection could in this way be curated by the community itself. There could be other gimmicks in this app, such as a heat map to easily find available and suitable workspaces . Or a function to embed community generated virtual contents as augmentation into the building to exhibit art works or diagrams publicly.
4 Conclusion
Architecture can provide the suitable spaces for epistemological subjectivations/encounters with knowledge as libraries did in the past, but only if architectural design manages to expand into the depths of space opened by digital technologies. The boundaries between reality and simulation are blurring and architecture cannot limit itself exclusively to the “physical” but must include all spatial levels between virtual and physical. It must open itself up and create coalitions with other design disciplines, ranging from interface design to even supposedly unfamiliar fields like software engineering.
Some might wonder why there is still a need for physical places at all, why shouldn’t everything happen fully virtually? I think that this point of view reproduces a binary logic again and denies the full range of human experience. To produce something like knowledge we are very much dependent on our perception, affect and bodies within their local contexts. This embedded understanding of knowledge emphasizes the importance of our physical, corporal presence.
It is a common perception that a new complexity seems to emerge which is consequently paralleled by a new lack of clarity. What I learned through this long-term project was that the world always inhered this complexity. We just weren’t able to trace and process it with the historically available technological means and therefore had to neglect it, reduce it. My project was the attempt to develop a design approach that is based on the idea that we don’t have to compress the world into our limited conceptions but to rather open ourselves up to them – to affirmatively embrace complexity and differences. I think that this epistemic door was opened by our contemporary digital tools (amongst other things) which enable a broader and more in-depth interaction with what is around us. Digital technologies push to create communicative connections and thus create the possibility for networked, relational systems. Not only can they asymptotically approximate the real complex relations, but also generate interaction and thus collaboration due to their tendency to openness.
The Ideathek seamlessly spans over not only the physical building but also its virtual extensions. This blending between real and virtual becomes even more apparent if we consider just a few possible functions for an augmented-reality app. Suppose the building and all items was equipped with a RFID-system the app could then be used to locate books and equipment quickly and easily with the help of electromagnetic waves. For the book racks, this would have an important implication: it would no longer be necessary to arrange books in any order at all. Through the app, one could find a book and then put it back on any shelf. It would still be found again. The collection could in this way be curated by the community itself. There could be other gimmicks in this app, such as a heat map to easily find available and suitable workspaces . Or a function to embed community generated virtual contents as augmentation into the building to exhibit art works or diagrams publicly.
4 Conclusion
Architecture can provide the suitable spaces for epistemological subjectivations/encounters with knowledge as libraries did in the past, but only if architectural design manages to expand into the depths of space opened by digital technologies. The boundaries between reality and simulation are blurring and architecture cannot limit itself exclusively to the “physical” but must include all spatial levels between virtual and physical. It must open itself up and create coalitions with other design disciplines, ranging from interface design to even supposedly unfamiliar fields like software engineering.
Some might wonder why there is still a need for physical places at all, why shouldn’t everything happen fully virtually? I think that this point of view reproduces a binary logic again and denies the full range of human experience. To produce something like knowledge we are very much dependent on our perception, affect and bodies within their local contexts. This embedded understanding of knowledge emphasizes the importance of our physical, corporal presence.
It is a common perception that a new complexity seems to emerge which is consequently paralleled by a new lack of clarity. What I learned through this long-term project was that the world always inhered this complexity. We just weren’t able to trace and process it with the historically available technological means and therefore had to neglect it, reduce it. My project was the attempt to develop a design approach that is based on the idea that we don’t have to compress the world into our limited conceptions but to rather open ourselves up to them – to affirmatively embrace complexity and differences. I think that this epistemic door was opened by our contemporary digital tools (amongst other things) which enable a broader and more in-depth interaction with what is around us. Digital technologies push to create communicative connections and thus create the possibility for networked, relational systems. Not only can they asymptotically approximate the real complex relations, but also generate interaction and thus collaboration due to their tendency to openness.