PUTTING THE ARCHITECTURE IN INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Christina Wodtke

@cwodtke

www.eleganthack.com

A SHORT HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE

Cave

Hut

Stone Age City

VITRUVIUS

firmitas, utilitas, venustas : : durability, convenience, beauty 

Durability

“Durability will be assured when foundations are carried down to the solid ground and materials wisely and liberally selected” Vitruvius

The hotel had several design features that made up for its foundation:The reflecting pool (visible in the picture above) also provided a source of water for fire-fighting, saving the building from the post-earthquake firestorm;[1]

Cantilevered floors and balconies provided extra support for the floors;A copper roof, which cannot fall on people below the way a tile roof can;Seismic separation joints, located about every 20 m along the building;Tapered walls, thicker on lower floors, increasing their strength;Suspended piping and wiring, instead of being encased in concrete, as well as smooth curves, making them more resistant to fracture.[2]

Technical Earthquakes

I’m searching for “my architect, not

“movies, directors, actors”

Social Earthquakes

If people post jobs in discussion areas, any user can

move them to job board

If people use connection invites to spam/market, they

can be reported.

Convenience

“When the arrangement of the apartments is faultless and presents no hindrance to use, and when each class of building is assigned to its suitable and appropriate exposure” Vitruvius

Sound familiar? We’re talking

usability!

Rackspace headquarters in in a former mall. The building is so usable for moving people around, it's easily repurposed. Robert Venturi calls this a “decorated shed”

Malls online epitomize convenience, and are typically extremely usable. Anthropologie is elegant and functional.This simple model could be repurposed for any side dealing with objects and metadata

Bilbao did not leak. I was so

proud.

The MIT project, they were interviewing me for MIT and they sent their facilities people to Bilbao. I met them in Bilbao. They came for three days.W: This is the computer building.G: They were there for three days and it rained every day. And they kept walking around. I noticed they were looking under things and looking for things, and they wanted to know where the buckets were hidden, people putting buckets out. I was clean. There wasn't a bloody leak in the place. It was just fantastic. But you've got to -- yeah, well, up until then, every building leaked.W: Frank had a sort of -- sort of had a fame -- his -- his fame was built on that in L.A. for a while. You know, Frank, you've all heard the Frank Lloyd Wright story when the guy -- the woman called and said, "Mr. Wright, my -- I'm sitting in the couch and the water's pouring in on my head," and he said, "Madame, move your chair."G: So, some years later I was doing a little house on the beach for Norton Simon, and his secretary was kind of a hell-on-wheels type lady -- called me and said, Mr. Simon's sitting at his desk, and the water's coming in on his head, and I told him the Frank Lloyd Wright story.W: Didn't get a laugh.G: No. Not now either. http://www.ted.com/talks/frank_gehry_asks_then_what.html

I call it the "Then What?" Okay, you solved all the problems, you did all the stuff, you made nice, you loved your clients, you loved the materials, you loved the city, you're a good guy, you're a good person... and then what? What do you bring to it?

See his great TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/frank_gehry_asks_then_what.html

“Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.” Frank Lloyd Wright

Beauty (delight)

“when the appearance of the work is pleasing and in good taste, and when its members are in due proportion according to correct principles of symmetry.” Vitrvius

“Less is more.” ~ Mies

SEAGRAM BUILDING (Philip Johnson did interiors, 1957)

This logical and elegant 38-story skyscraper (525' H) has alternating horizontal bands of bronze plating and bronze-tinted glass and decorative bronze I-beams which emphasize its verticality. Placed to the rear of its site and set back from Park Avenue, it incorporates a large plaza in the front as part of the design--thus avoiding the need for set-backs. It uses granite pillars at the base and has a two-story glass-enclosed lobby.

Seagram Building

New York City

1957

Is this Beautiful?

“Less is a bore.” ~ Venturi

Is this Beautiful?

Do we dictate what is beautiful by constraining

user choice?

Or support passionate use that may not meet our

aesthetic standards?

Beautiful

ConvenientDurable

ARCHITECTUREPush harder, further

‘I do not like ducts; I do not like pipes. I hate them really thoroughly, but because I hate them so thoroughly, I feel they have to be given their place. If I just hated them and took no care, I think they would invade the building and completely destroy it.’

The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn, 1962

Servant and Served Spaces

Services (settings, in this case) are

separated from served)

Services intergraded with served is easier to comprehend and

use

Centre Pompidou was designed with services revealed rather than hidden

Revealing things usually only available to employees, such as statistics can provide interest and beauty inherit to the product.

Views

Hey, it’s the Arc de

Triomphe!

Views into other services

Views into the service before

you sign up

Speed

25mph5 mph 60mph

Medieval architecture designed to be walked by, prairie houses to drive by slowly at suburban speeds, and the strip for freeway speeds

Speed

25mph 5 mph60mph

Consider speed of use in design; do not slow interface with details upon sign up, richer interface for where people linger and socialize

Movement

Why are our compositions so static? How should the eye move through this?

And if you think of Brick, for instance,and you say to Brick,"What do you want Brick?"And Brick says to you"I like an Arch."And if you say to Brick"Look, arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lintel over you. What do you think of that?""Brick?"Brick says:"... I like an Arch"”

And if the material wants to be tall?

Flipboard might be an example of digital architecture. It is beautiful, functional, durable, delightful.

Flipboard understands the medium; it affords movement in a variety of directions

Even if you use the “wrong” gesture, Flipboard reacts correctly.

Many Architects are Artists

Five Principles for a New Architecture:

1. Pilotis elevating the building.2. Free plan3. Free façade4. Long horizontal windows5. Roof garden

Le courbusier

How many digital designers are? Why shouldn’t they try?The courage and commitment to bring new things in the world, even at the price of failure, might invigorate design.

IS IT ARCHITECTURE YET?The question we need to be asking:

“You start with the client’s program,” Mr. Breuer observes. “That’s not architecture, but it’s the groundwork. Architecture grows out of it.”~On Architecture

Good architecture is still the difficult, conscientious, creative, expressive planning for that elusive synthesis that is a near-contradiction in terms:

efficiency and beauty.On Architecture, Ada Louis Huxtable

Information Arcitecture is

Architecture in Information Spaces

“Modern Systems! Yes indeed! To approach everything in a strictly methodical manner and not to waver a hair’s breath from preconceived patterns, until genius has been strangled to death and joie de vivre stifled by the system– that is the sign of our time.” Camillo Sitte