Your work focuses on activating the body, on transferring movement from architecture. This movement is not goaloriented - you don't prescribe an order to the actions - but rather it seems to aim at a network of actions wherein the human body has to find its bearings. How do you construct such a network?

The easiest way for me to explain this is by telling about one of my projects. I recently built an installation in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes for Vision Machine, an exhibition curated by Arielle Pélenc of some 250 artworks. These works were subdivided into four groups: Les Modes Invisibles, Les Mondes Emergents, Vision Machine and Les Mondes Connectées. There are works by the first surrealists like Tanguy and Ernst, 'thought' photographs from around 1890, 'mescaline' drawings by Michaux, the early cosmic abstractionists like Kupka and Witkacy, but Klee and Pollock as well. Then there were a lot of works by architects, plus works by contemporary artists like Sigmar Polke, Seiko Mikami, Joep van Lieshout and Judith Barry. I was asked, in designing the installation, to keep in mind the ideas of Friedrich Kiesler, as the exhibition was inspired by Kiesler's Vision Machine from 1938-1942. His 'vision machine' was an installation for looking at art. It positioned the spectator's body in such a way that his or her vision was distributed over the image and the architecture, making the act of looking influence the position of the body and vice versa.
Roughly speaking there are two concepts of perception as a machine. One is that there is an objective world on which light falls that reaches the cortex via the optic nerve and neurons and is then processed as information. The other concept is the subjective one where we project our own vision onto the world. Now, the idea underlying the Nantes exhibition is that perception is neither objective nor subjective but that the one influences the other structurally. So for me the main question was: can I make the content of the paintings, the perception of them, be the architecture itself? In this way I tried to make a continuous feedback loop between percept and concept. Is it possible to abstract a perception that is so specific to one particular medium (painting) in such a way that it becomes detached from this medium and can be applied to another medium (architecture) in which the paintings themselves then are perceived again? This implies first and foremost a conception of the image as a diagram, as a scheme of a 'function' - a function that is by definition technological and machine-like. I wanted the space to no longer be a neutral field that contained the images; no, the space itself would have to be the scheme of the images.
This scheme would have to contain both these visions. In 'objective' perception there is a horizontal plane with a body standing vertically on it, subjected to gravity and observing according to the laws of perspective. The body takes its orientation from the horizon. This always involves intentionality: all consciousness a priori takes it orientation from things outside the body. The eye grabs an object and the body then moves towards it. This is one 'half' of the analysis. The other half is that of vertigo. Vertigo rotates around a vertical axis, a vertical horizon - the vertigo itself - that according to Aldous Huxley is divided into two spirals, one upwards and one downwards. One is called heaven and the other is called hell and both are within the realm of hallucination. So now we are talking about inner orientation, about falling and rising, about a trip that's either going to be a bad one or a good one. What I wanted was to capture both these orientational forms within one system.

How do you convert such an idea into architecture?

I don't use the vertigos as a 'deconstruction' of classical orientation (of horizontal perception and vertical force). I start by connecting two extremes and bringing them closer by applying a series of machine-like manipulations. I literally build within the computer a machine in which a set of eight lines (related to the structure of the physical Musée des Beaux-Arts) is processed by four 'vertigos', spiraling forces. These vortexes, as they are called in the software I use, are abstractions of the four groups of art works within the exhibition, of their relationship to perception. This relationship, and therefore the vortex, can be quantified, can be assigned a certain number.
Take for instance the vortex of Les Mondes Emergentes, containing the surrealists. These are not only quite sizable paintings. They are also the type of images you look at from a 'critical distance': you can become involved but even so the image is still being translated into the subconscious archetypes in the back of your mind. Another vortex, that of Les Mondes Invisibles, is associated with the drawings Henri Michaux made under the influence of mescaline. These drawings literally look like a migraine attack. They are not 'images'. There is no critical distance here. Experiencing them cannot be called looking anymore, but rather being fascinated with, or falling. Because of the direct link between image and perception the force of the vortex associated with these drawings is much weaker than the first one. The spatial arrangement here is very different from that of the surrealists - which is sort of dome-like - while here the image is much more in your face, very much like a helmet.
Now, in the computer I materialize the eight horizontal lines into a kind of meta rubber, with the seven planes in between. The data I then feed into this diagram consist of the four quantified vortex forces. This is done by animation software that lends the drawn line the qualities of rubber based on roughly six parameters. This meta rubber is an abstract material, rather like the state of real material if it were capable of thought and feeling. This means I reject the classic model where only the information is active, imposing itself in a top down manner onto matter in order to become form. Form and information are never separate. Form defines information and information defines form, but in doing so they adapt themselves structurally and refine themselves. By means of the meta rubber I make matter itself become thinking and active and it takes form in a series of interactions and adaptations.
This machine I have built in the computer is not only capable of reading the vortex forces, it can also make them interact. Think of it as having four dancers separately learn a number of steps for months on end. Then you put them on a stage, tie them to each other with rubber bands and ask them to repeat the steps. If one of them moves an arm, another one's leg will move even though this leg would be inclined to execute the step it was originally trained to make. The movement as a whole, the dance, the 'choreography' resulting from this is emergent behavior. In the system I built the vortex forces are processed in very much the same way. The vertical rotating forces are not rigid and exact but influence each other directly. So the result is not a series of 'helmets' and 'domes', but all sorts of contortions and curvatures that are in-between and that strengthen each other.
All this has rather important consequences. In actual fact we start with a longitudinally directed system that gradually becomes a system that can also absorb cross direction. It evolves from a homogeneous system to a higher form of organization: that of a heterogeneous system of nodes and contractions on the one hand and vastness on the other. The extra quality in this is that the eight separate lines will start to stick together under the influence of the vortex forces, after having gone through several bifurcations and contortions: now we have cross links. However, in order to make these links structural, you have to go one step further.

So, to go from abstract meta-rubber to concrete building material, you have to leave the realm of the computer?

In a way, yes. Where the process of materialization first went from ink to rubber, now it goes from meta rubber to paper. The result of this transition looks deceivingly like a scale model but is in fact another computer. It is in a sense like Gaudí's studies, when he was calculating the exact curves of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona by hanging small sandbags from chains. In his studies, the floor plan of that church was on the ceiling of his studio. By suspending chains from that floor plan and interconnecting them he was not just calculating the form of their curves, but also a form that could be implemented in masonry. This makes Gaudí the first computer architect. He was much more familiar with algorithms than Borromini or Horta, both of whom knew their way around a curve. Their curves, however, were always the result of a mold or a mathematical formula, while Gaudí's curves were calculated ones. Something similar happens in the paper computer we built. The paper is not just an upgrade from the rubber, it is also a primitive version of wood, the wood from which the project was finally built. At this stage the paper served as 'meta' wood. Now we add to the paper line an 'algorithm', literally shaped like a paper clip. The algorithm is as follows: if the lines bend towards each other more than a certain percentage, this is a reason to split them up and connect them in the air. This is where we put the paper clip. In this we are following a Gothic architectural principle: you start with a column, split it, make a vault and bend it back again. In this way a line will form a plane thanks to a cross link and this leads to a system of condensations and openings. This system was, again, an emergent quality.
To convert the paper computer into a constructed installation its geometry had to be put back again into a regular computer. We cut the doubly curved surface that resulted from that into slices in a gravitational direction, meaning from the top down. These slices were the skeleton of the installation: two of these flat, yet curved cut out pieces can hold each other up. The original diagram of lines and vortex forces has now become a self-supporting, stable system with an incredibly complex form that could be easily executed in wood. The procedure that prints out the elements of the construction in black ink on paper is basically the same as the procedure of cutting them from sheets of wood by using a computer controlled milling machine. These pieces were glued together in the museum and installed, and then they were covered in cotton.

And so you built your own vision machine. What things did you put into the installation that would have been impossible to do by conventional means?

Architecture is the materialization of abstractions. This is nothing new. Architecture fixates movements in structural forms. A body does the same thing. When you see a chair, you tend to want to sit down. If you want to sit down and there is no chair but only a table you will sit on the table. All tendencies allow both familiar and emergent behavior. In order to be able to do both the body has to be flexible, and if architecture wants to allow both familiar and emergent behavior, it will have to start thinking much more in in-between actions, do much more than just prescribe specific actions. Now that is something new and it can only be done by working with a computer. You can never reach that level of integration by drawing. You can only draw with one hand while with a computer you can work with tens of coordinated hands simultaneously.
Besides a transparent intentionality - behavior resulting from habit - something emerged in my installation which is opaque, something that could come out of nowhere. This is very important, as in architecture usually only 'transparent' behavior is being materialized, behavior which is expected and foreseen and this behavior is expressed only in forms that have a name: floor, wall, column. I materialize many undefined things: things that are in between a floor and a column. This can only be done by not working in an empty space (or on white paper) but by working in a medium such as meta rubber, in the abstract machine of the computer. There you can add 'curvishness', e.g. the paper clip, or 'wallishness', being perception, and 'floorishness', namely action. Perception, action and construction are all processed equally by my system and this results in all sort of things that are in between. A particular point can be not just construction but can be a floor as well. This is a very medium-like concept: what happens at one point will travel through the whole system and will interact with something happening at another point, and the whole will process this by means of a self-organizing principle (the forming of nodes, sticking together) and on this higher organizational level it can then process yet other information.

Did you succeed in making the perception of paintings be the architecture itself?

In a regular museum there is only seeing and not-seeing: you either stand by a wall or you walk about. This installation has simultaneously 'walking that creates seeing' and 'seeing that creates walking'; seeing is blacked out and suffused with the unseen, walking is accelerated by the unforeseen. This seeing and not-seeing is present everywhere but in ever changing relationships. Even when walking somewhere where there are no paintings I am already part of the content of the paintings. At this point my knees are already at one painting and my neck already partly with another one. This virtual movement that is part of the architecture of the installation does not accommodate the body's movement as happens in the classic archiving system of stairs-hallways-rooms. Instead, the installation lends it a continuous actual charge, a charge that links itself to the virtual movement within the body. All intentionality here is evoked within a landscape of numerous previous movements that are multiplied by each other, that merge with each other and split off from each other and leave deep grooves behind. The coherence of an action, its graciousness is not a given but emerges at the instant itself.
That is my theme, as it always has been. Body and architecture both become abstract landscapes of interlinked movements rubbing on each other within the actual situation. The one surface effect is transferred to the other. In my architecture the actual seeing is not pre-programmed; the experience in time is in fact its only true materialization. In short, my architecture lies not in the space where a body then moves through to 'read' its esthetics. Of course we can read the extensive, Cartesian co-ordinates of an object, but then this measurement only happens, afterwards, outside of time. In time on the contrary, we only live by the intensive, the abstract space of the body. This constitutes a complete reversal of perspective: instead of being a body in a space, the body is so charged with abstract movements that the way in which this is expressed in actions is the spatial experience. We are the extension of space, not the other way around.

GEPUBLICEERD IN NRC HANDELSBLAD, Cultureel Supplement 10 december 1999.

Ooit zag de architect zichzelf als vormgever van de wereld. Hij zwaaide met zijn passer over het ruige veld en zie, daar waren gebouwen en pleinen, vorm en orde. Geen, wonder dat de architect vaak een aan grootheidswaan lijdende man was.
Hoe ziet de architect zichzelf nu? Wat is zijn visie op een wereld waarin orde steeds meer een kwestie van toeval lijkt te zijn?

Ik leg die vragen voor aan Lars Spuybroek, geboren in 1959, bevlogen, joviaal, hoofd van het vier man tellende Rotterdamse architectenbureau NOX. We zitten aan een veertien meter lange werktafel die gedomineerd wordt door computers. De tafel staat op een verhoging zodat je tegen de architect opkijkt als hij achter zijn bureau staat. Maar de stoelen ervoor hebben uitgerekte poten, en zo kunnen we zittend elkaar toch recht in de ogen kijken.
Spuybroek: ,,De wereld geeft vorm aan de architecten zelf, zeker in deze tijd. De enorme omwentelingen die zich nu voordoen, hebben invloed op onze opvattingen. Eigenlijk houdt ons beroep in gebeurtenissen te organiseren en wel op zo'n manier dat deze een politieke werkelijkheid krijgen, of in ieder geval een sociaal-politieke lading. Wij houden ons bezig met het scheiden van privé en publiek of om het wat plechtig te zeggen, het structureren van menselijke handelingen.
De architectuur van Spuybroek is een antwoord op, of beter een meebewegen met de technologische ontwikkeling die de wereld nu doet schudden. Het zoetwater gedeelte van het Waterpaviljoen op de waterkering de Neeltje Jans in Zeeland werd door hem volledig op de computer ontworpen en is een spectaculaire technologische gebeurtenis. Wie er door de sleufvormige opening naar binnen gaat, belandt in het inwendige van een walvis. Wanden, vloeren en plafonds lopen glooiend of bultig in elkaar over, verlicht door een blauwachtig schijnsel en door projecties van rasterpatronen en cellulaire structuren. Overal zoemt, fluistert en dondert elektronische muziek. Licht, projecties en klanken reageren op de bewegingen en handelingen van de bezoekers, net als de dartelende waterstralen, de schommelende waterbassins en de zich voor je voeten ontladende golven. Dit zilverkleurige bouwwerk, sliertig en rond als een hersenkronkel en gevoelig als een hyperbewust lichaam, bezorgde hem in 1997 in één klap de aandacht van de internationale vakbladen.

Op dit moment zijn plannen voor woningen langs de A58 bij Eindhoven in een vergevorderd stadium.
Spuybroek: ,,Als je de huizen ziet zeg je: het zijn pompoenen, zeekomkommers, glimwormen. Van binnen zijn ze hol als een soort slurf met een enorm volume. Die holte is niet zo maar hol, hij is geladen, dat wil zeggen dat er rekening is gehouden met de verschillen die in het woongedrag van mensen kunnen optreden. Die verschillen nemen tegenwoordig zo enorm toe dat de tientallen types Vinexwoningen bij lange na niet genoeg zijn. Dus zeg ik: bied die verschillen aan, maak verlangens los. Dat kan nu, want we hebben de computer."
Het worden meer dan duizend woningen en geen enkele is gelijk. Ook van binnen niet, omdat de mensen zelf de indeling en functies kunnen bepalen.
Spuybroek: ,,Die eindeloze verscheidenheid vind ik belangrijk. Die is kenmerkend voor de wereld van nu. Als je producten bekijkt als horloges, sportschoenen en auto's als de Smart, dan zie je een tendens om alles aan te passen aan ieders persoonlijke verlangen. Swatch heeft zich, net als Nike, gerealiseerd dat de wereld totaal versplintert en differentieert en dat daar geen standaardproducten bijhoren, producten dus die top-down, van bovenaf standaard aan de consument worden opgelegd. Wat nodig is, is een bottom-up beweging, een productiemechanisme dat aan ieders persoonlijke verlangen aangepast kan worden. Die bedrijven hebben begrepen dat zoiets ongelofelijk veel verlangens los kan maken en daar zijn inderdaad miljoenen verschillende horloges uit voortgekomen."

Een hyperkapitalistisch idee.
,,Nou en of. En de computertechnologie is daar uitermate behulpzaam bij. Die maakt het mogelijk om die verschillen tussen consumenten onderling te registreren en om zo te produceren dat de prijs niet omhoog gaat.'

Dat verlangen van de consument voeden is een hele industrie op zichzelf.
,,Ja, en daarmee raken we aan een voor mij essentiële vraagstelling rond technologie, namelijk hoe ver ga je in het verwennen van de gebruiker. Moet de technologie functioneren als de perfecte butler, zoals Bill Gates van Microsoft voorstaat? De perfecte butlermachine voelt bijvoorbaat aan wat de wensen van de meester zijn. Het hele idee van HAS, ofwel House Automation System, is daarop gebaseerd. Het komt erop neer dat de woning smart is, dat wil zeggen dat hij functioneert als een complex van machines die gedrag kunnen lezen en daar naar handelen. Deze technologische butler weet hoe laat de meester gewekt moet worden, wat de temperatuur van zijn badwater moet zijn en hoe laat de gordijnen dicht moeten."

Het huis als woonmachine: Le Corbusier zou opkijken als hij wist hoe zijn droom er in de komende eeuw uit gaat zien.
,,Ik vraag me af of hij er blij mee zou zijn geweest. In ieder geval vind ik het een vulgaire uitwerking van zijn idee. Wat je namelijk krijgt is een huis dat zo intelligent is dat Bill helemaal geen handelingen meer hoeft te verrichten. Bill wordt dan een soort Walter Hudson, de man die alles vanuit zijn bed met de afstandsbediening deed en uitgroeide tot een baby van vijfhonderd pond. Toen hij dood ging hebben ze hem in stukjes moeten snijden om hem het huis uit te krijgen. En het huis leefde nog lang en gelukkig."
En jij bent de tegenhanger van Bill Gates.
,,Het is een ongelijke strijd, dat geef ik toe, maar ik zie niets in een technologie die functioneert als een parallelle wereld die de reële wereld kopieert, aanvult en vervolmaakt. Voor mij moet technologie de wereld niet simuleren, maar stimuleren, in de zin van wat de filosoof Henri Bergson aan het eind van de vorige eeuw schreef. Hij zag het virtuele niet als een algemeen geldend platonisch ideaal dat in de werkelijkheid verstopt zit en waar je alles naar kunt herleiden, maar hij beschouwde het als een organisatorisch principe. Iets wat altijd in beweging is en voortdurend creëert en differentieert. Ik vind dat een veel interessantere gedachte, want het betekent dat het virtuele de werkelijkheid oplaadt, elektriseert en motoriseert. Dat alles niet langer om het algemene, of zoals wij architecten zeg het generieke, draait, maar om het specifieke, het verschil, de afwijking."
Ik moet denken aan het modernistische ideaal van een universele vormentaal en hoe dat, samen met een standaardisering van vrijwel alles, tot een bijna militaristische blokkenbouw heeft geleid. Nooit meer Bijlmermeer?
Spuybroek: ,,Het modernisme was gebaseerd op een Renaissancistisch idee over ruimte dat is achterhaald door de netwerktechnologie, zeg maar de elektronische media. Volgens dat idee beweegt een subject zich in de ruimte van hier naar daar, in een rechte lijn, alsof de ruimte uitgestrekt is. Die ruimte kon je met vlakken en lijnen aangeven en met geometrische figuren als kubussen en bollen. De elektronische media hebben een totaal ander idee van ruimte geschapen. Als je op de televisie beelden uit Kosovo ziet, ben je tegelijk in Kosovo en in je eigen huis. Er is geen hier en daar meer, maar alles vindt tegelijkertijd hier plaats. Daardoor komt de ruimte nu op ons over als gekromd. En daar hoort een heel ander soort architectuur bij dan die wij nu kennen."

Dan lopen de meest grote architecten totaal achter, ook de jongere, zoals Rem Koolhaas.
,,Koolhaas doet heel precies onderzoek naar nieuwe ideeën over ruimte die nu ontstaan, maar hij is gebiologeerd door homogenisering."

Wat bedoel je daarmee?
,,Voor hem schakelen de netwerktechnologie en de globalisering alles gelijk en wordt alles overal hetzelfde. Dat is de nieuwe technologie bekijken met de ogen van de oude modernist. Ik denk dat de netwerktechnologie en de technologie in het algemeen maar één grote tendens kennen en dat is heterogenisering. Dingen krijgen een heel precieze identiteit en er zijn geen generaliseringen. Alles wordt specifiek."

Het duizelt me als ik me zo'n wereld probeer voor te stellen. Iedere samenleving heeft een minimaal gevoel van coherentie nodig. Als iedereen erop uit is om maximaal van de ander te verschillen, zie ik een krioelende brei voor me van allemaal triomfantelijke egootjes.
,,De samenleving waar ik het over heb, heeft samenhang door de netwerktechnologie, de machines. Het is een hybride van machines, verlangens en vlees die constant dingen produceert, maar in gemeenschap! Er is een voortdurende interactie doordat mensen en machines aan elkaar zijn gekoppeld, ook onderling. We zijn met machines verbonden op dezelfde manier als wanneer je in je auto stapt: dan word je die auto."
De machine als verlengstuk van het lichaam, zoals Marshal McLuhan zei.
,,Ja, maar niet alléén als verlengstuk, het lichaam wordt er ook door geïntensiveerd doordat je jezelf en de ruimte waarin je bent anders gaat zien en beleven. De technologie is ons niet wezensvreemd. Het is geen middel dat tussen jou en de wereld in staat, maar het komt uit ons voort en het maakt een vanzelfsprekend deel van ons uit. De technologie dat zijn we zelf! Ik kan wel zeggen dat ik naar Parijs rij, maar daarmee bedoel ik wel ik én mijn auto, een hybride samenstelling van machine en vlees."

We zijn al cyborgs.
'Ja.'

Het was volkomen logisch dat Spuybroek de architect zou zijn die het nieuwe medialab van V2_Organisatie, het Rotterdamse centrum voor kunst en elektronische media, vorm zou geven. V2_Organisatie richt zich op het ontwikkelen van denkbeelden over de technologische wereld die onder onze voeten aangroeit en in het medialab wordt door kunstenaars druk met computerprogramma's geëxperimenteerd. Vragen en ideeën over de interactie tussen mens en machine zijn daar dagelijkse kost.
Net als in het Waterpaviljoen vind je in het medialab nauwelijks rechte lijnen. Alles golft. Plafond, wanden en vloer lopen in elkaar over en op één plek, daar waar organisatorisch en financiële beslissingen worden genomen, loop je zelfs van de vloer direct het bureau op.

Je gaat net als in het Waterpaviljoen wel ergens naar toe, maar zonder het gevoel in een rechte lijn te lopen. Ik moest denken aan wandelen in de duinen.
Spuybroek: ,,Jaaa! De duinen strekken zich weliswaar naar alle kanten uit, maar ze kennen tegelijk een hele hoge organisatievorm: de duinruggen. Die rijzen uit het oppervlak op onder invloed van de krachten die de wind erop uitoefent. De duinruggen vormen scherpe lijnen in dat hele veld van zachtheid en vaagheid. Zo is het ook in het V2_lab. Daar kunnen onverwachte plekken uit de grond oprijzen die niet waren opgenomen in het programma van eisen, maar die wel worden ingevuld door de gebruikers. Dat kan alleen als je iets onbestemds materialiseert, maar niet benoemt."
Toch heeft Spuybroek wel een naam voor dat onbestemde en hij schuift die zelfs naar voren als een kernbegrip voor zijn architectuur: het Tussen.

Het tussen zit altijd ergens tussenin, het is niet zelf iets.
Spuybroek: ,,Althans niet in de gangbare architectuur. Daar wordt het gezien als een open ruimte tussen a en b, een leegte die als een vorm van vrijheid wordt beschouwd.
Het houdt in dat je kunt zeggen: dit is de vloer, dat zijn de wanden en ik loop daar tussen die richting op. Dat is in die architectuur allemaal voor je vastgelegd. In mijn ogen weerspiegelt dat een totaal mechanistisch idee over het menselijk lichaam. Het stelt het lichaam voor als iets dat alleen maar weet dat het als het a verlaat bij b uit moet komen. Voor mij is dat het stompzinnigste idee dat je over menselijk gedrag kunt hebben."

Maar je kunt als architect toch niet om richting heen? Ik moet er niet aan denken dat ik nog erger zou verdwalen dan ik nu al voortdurend doe.
,,Nee, de hoofdlijn is ook bij mij van a naar b, maar door de beweging in de architectuur wordt de beweging in het lichaam van de bezoeker geanimeerd. Dat lichaam wordt helemaal aangesproken. Ik heb in het Waterpaviljoen wel bejaarden gezien die een helling van 45 graden beklommen die helemaal niet bedoeld was om op te lopen en mensen die als skaters extra curven maakten. Dat kan omdat nergens een naad tussen zit, het een loopt in het ander over, niets ligt vast. Dat geeft vrijheid, beweging. Dat is Tussen."
De architectuur van deze eeuw heeft veel gedaan om beweging en dynamiek te suggereren. Ik breng een artikel naar voren dat enige tijd terug in het maandblad Archis stond en waarin de nieuwste modellen auto's met architectuur werden vergeleken.
Spuybroek: ,,Dat is een oude high tech-droom . Als je Norman Foster vraagt wat hij het mooiste gebouw vindt, zegt hij een Boeing 747."

'Wat zeg jij?
,,Ik ben een groot bewonderaar van Frei Otto die in de jaren vijftig fantastische tentstructuren maakte. Een van zijn bekendste bouwwerken is het Olympisch Stadion in München. ,,Hij haalt een boek tevoorschijn met ontwerpen en gebouwen van Frei Otto. Ik zie structuren als oude spinnenwebben en uitgetrokken klapkauwgom, ondoorgrondelijk en fascinerend. Spuybroek die mijn verbazing tevreden gadeslaat: 'Weet je waar hij mee werkte? Met zeep! Hij doopte zeep in water en tekende met het schuim zijn modellen. Alle holle curves en dubbelzijdig gekromde curves: allemaal zeepschuim! Schuim in al zijn bewegelijkheid zo geordend. Het is een continuüm waarbij zich voortdurend tussen groot en klein in beweegt."
Als ik over die ordening doorvraag, legt Spuybroek, mij uit dat je beter van spontane organisatie kunt spreken dan van toeval.

Zoals cellen zich vermenigvuldigen en organiseren.
,,Exact. Al die wetenschappers die zich bezighouden met de vraag: wat is groei? denken niet meer in vormen, maar in patronen. Zij bestuderen hoe een levend ding voortdurend transformeert tot iets anders en zij weten allang dat dat niet gebeurt doordat er van buitenaf, top/down, een systeem op wordt gedrukt, maar door interactie, onderlinge communicatie, bottom/up. Voor mij is dat hetzelfde als het mediadenken, het denken in netwerken. Ik zie de hele technologische ontwikkeling van de samenleving in dat wetenschappelijke perspectief."

We zijn helemaal niet gewend om zo over onszelf te denken. We denken of in individuen of in collectiviteiten, maar dat er tussen die twee een interne samenhang zou zijn die spontaan patronen vormt, dat is een ongewoon gezichtspunt. Een heel sociaal gezichtspunt ook.
Spuybroek: ,,Als ik al die mensen met die gsm's zie lopen dan zie ik een diep verlangen om te netwerken, om zo direct en zoveel mogelijk te koppelen. Het is een technologische passie die er ongetwijfeld toe zal leiden dat al die dingen die nu nog losse elementen zijn, zoals de tv, de computer, de auto, de telefoon, onderling aaneengeschakeld zullen worden. De architectuur die ik nastreef, maakt er in die zin deel vanuit, dat ze mensen met elkaar in verband wil brengen en de dimensies van hun handelingen zoveel mogelijk wil vergroten."

Intelligente architectuur
,,Ja. Architectuur om de intelligentie van mensen te stimuleren."

1. Your way of approaching architecture seems to contain a deep critique of the architectural program; the mechanistic layout of all human behavior within a built system viewed purely as tasks, routines, and habits. Instead, the programs in your projects come in-between, as the materialization of the undecided, as a 'space of accidents'. How do you, then, deal with a preconditioned program?

Well, I'm not so much against the architectural program (at least I try not to be), but I'm against what is implied with it. First of all, the program is a list, a series, which to me is quite a passive way of ordering. Then often with the program comes a relational diagram (bubble diagram, organogram, etc.), a precise ordering of the elements from the list in a more dimensional network of relationships, not as passive as the list, but mechanical nonetheless. I think there is a deep desire in humans to be mechanical, machinelike - we all long to be reliable, even more so to ourselves than to others: somehow we have to be able to count on ourselves, to be predictable in our behavior. We tend towards repetition, it makes sense, because it takes less energy. On the other hand, I think, we should be careful of materializing this desire too much, because architecture is notorious for its ruthless reflection: "we don't make our architecture, our architecture makes us", as the aledged quote of Churchill goes.
The human body is not an archive, it is not a cabinet with millions of drawers where we just pick the willed action out of the drawer when we need it. No, memory interacts with the present, and, as modern neurologists tell us, memory is not a fixed archive, it's a plastic, flexible system of interconnections, where often repeated movements (putting on coat, getting knife out of drawer, etc., etc) share the same space with new and unknown actions. There are tendencies, inclinations, next to pure habits and routines, next to desires, hesitations, mistakes, forgettings, etc. - many movements interact, group and overlap with others. This tension within the body is given, there is always the tension between that what we think we should do and what we actually do.
This means, in my architecture, I don't want to move away from program towards non-program: undefined areas of pure leisure and play. That would be the 'classic' utopian vision from the 1960's. I'm far more interested in finding play within work, in finding the undetermined within the determined. The 'space of accidents', the notion comes from Bernard Tschumi, is to me far too much related to this oppositional thinking that sets the necessary against the accidental. I think I want to connect more to a certain 'openness' of mind, an awareness of consciousness, where we count both on things we know are going to happen, and things we don't know.
So, I wouldn't mind preconditioned program at all, I would mind preconditioned architecture. And though I know there is a lot of tectonics and articulation in any program, we as architects should always try to find a moment of life and resistance.

2. In the last 10 or 15 years, there has been an important shift away from all kinds of preliminary techniques like sketching and modeling toward diagramming-developing non-visual drawing techniques that are based not on optical abstractions of later-to-be-realized forms but on informational visualization techniques that place themselves at the interior of a process instead of the exterior of a sensed form. Can you explain a bit more about the technique itself?

Diagramming is indeed the most important innovation in architecture of the last 10 to 15 years. And it is not clear yet what it means, not at all. I think, on a techno-cultural level, diagramming means a move toward metadesign. Metadesign already happens a lot in graphic design and industrial design, and it basically means designing with 'templates': others can use the template to design an actual product. Designing the way of designing itself. There is a metadesign for a Nike shoe, for a Swatch watch, for a Renault Megane, etc. It is a network of relations that make the thing the thing without actually designing it. It is an informational system. It is a networked system of decisions. Basically it means a whole opening up of designing One Thing to a whole family or Range of Things. Later, in the close future, we can design our own shoes, our clothes, our cars, our own chairs (like we now can design our own websites) - and the question of 'How?' is answered by diagramming and metadesign. You would buy the template of a certain design family, a style, of let's say BMW, and then design your 'own' thing - don't forget this design family can be as complex as is suggested by branding and lifestyling, you could have a BMW template for a chair or a watch or a car, etc.… Probably most of these interactions will happen on the internet. You would make your own variations, and of course these variations would happen within this digitized continuum, meaning that the information of your own design would immediately be transmittable to a production machine that assembles all the parts, and sends it over to your house…

In my diagramming techniques I use flexible interactive systems, I have different names for them, none of which has really satisfied me: flexigrams, haptograms, kinetograms, even awarograms, but I also like Brian Massumi's 'biogram'. 'Flexible' because they are not rigid, they don't know just one solution, 'interactive' because all are connected into one system: one parameter changes everything. I'm trying to move architecture in the direction of systems theory. The old sketch method would go like this: first you look at the parts (rooms, stairs, entrance, etc., etc.) then you try to take a look at the whole, this is most often done by very old tools like the grid, the box, or the axis. Then the designwork is the difficult 'shaking up' of these two viewpoints (concentrating on a part/trying to see the overview): bringing them as close as possible, trying to close the gap between the whole and its parts - a very old philosophical problem... That is how we learned it at school.
What I do is building a machine, almost always in the computer, what one should call a 'virtual whole', a matrix, a geometric system where all relations are set but not fixed, and then all the information is processed over time. Sometimes in an animation, sometimes in a machinelike procedure of interlocking steps, like a series of algorithms. The whole is like a matrix, it's a system of relations and if one changes one thing, the rest changes too. In the sketching technique one would be working at one part, and the rest doesn't change with it, if I start sketching a certain room, or the staircase, the rest doesn't change with it, right? In my machines it does, all drawing pencils are interactively bound together. First in a abstract system of lines, then later during the process it becomes more and more clear what these lines can be.

3. How then do your diagrams (so-called "springs and strings" model), respond to these 'undetermined' movements of a body in architecture, the movements that weren't in the program?

Basically what I do with the diagrams is relate flexibility to movement. Flexibility is translated into movement and movement into flexibility. Philosophically that is very tricky: qualitative changes of kind become related to quantitative changes of degree. So, the presupposed movement of people, their potential movement is abstracted into the language of architecture, and that abstract movement loops back and relates again to people's movement. Of course I use the lines (the "strings") to read the program, the crystals of behaviour, but I also use them to read through the program, to make new connections where possible. So, what I do is read the tendency of human bodies to change their mind, to be aware of more then just their momentary intentions, I read their tendency to be flexible directly into architecture. Let's give an example.
I used a 'strings and springs' model for the V2_Lab here in Rotterdam. It is a simple model of five parallel lines. These lines are a reading of the existing building and also of the main orientation of the program. Now, all the movements in the building are 'put in' that machine: around the table, around the doors, coming in, leaving, etc. All these movements act upon the lines as forces, and because the lines have material properties in the computer (like rubber), they start twisting, vibrating, and all movemens interact with each other. In a longitudinally oriented system (five lines) we get lateral bending, sideways orientations (waveform curvature of the five lines). Then the lines are 'read through' the program as given by the client: table, corridor, wall, room, etc. So, all the lines give a bit of profile to each of these elements. And because they were connected in the 'rubber' model they also end up connected in the end product made of wood: the table merges with the corridor, one edge gives a clear 'table' definition, the other edge a clear 'corridor' definition, but in between we get a form that is neither or both… It is a movement that is now abstract, an architectural movement, a qualitative change, a morphing of table into corridor, and vice versa. You see? - the implied movement of people, the working, the walking, is mapped onto the architectural elements themselves, through a flexible set of lines where it creates a language of movement first, a flexibility of use and form between given architectural element (table, corridor), that is then actualized by different possible movements of people. In the real it means people walk up the table, or they drink their tea there, it's informal behavior, connected to formal behavior, more loose, more free. It's an architecture that not only articulates planned and foreseen behavior (working at table, walking through corridor), it also stimulates unforeseen behavior. Unforeseen in the sense that it is still related to 'work', it's not 'accidental behavior' like murder, as Tschumi's famous example goes…

4. How do using diagrams at the start of the process differ in the result, comparing with the conventional means of process?

Normally we architects put the lines where the walls are, no? When we sketch we sketch the positioning of material elements, not where the movement is, because we presuppose the movement between the walls, not in them. Trying to be a bit more clear, I'd say that I'm not using the movement of people to design my walls, that would be the old "streamlining" technique of the 1930's… I'm not "rounding off", no, I'm looking for the structural capacities of movement, the ordering capacities. Now, in my technique that means the movement doesn't go into the continuous black lines of the walls, but into the dotted lines of the ordering system, the black lines are - later in the process - derived from these. Movement is related to order first, and then to structure.

Something else. I think the diagram is the best way of instrumentalising 'inspiration', while it is completely opposed to inspiration. Inspiration is vague, subjective, it often happens through visual methods, like clippings from magazines, recollection of a memory, seeing a vision, etc. I think it is completely 'legitimate' to use that visual information, I'm not trying to have everybody use only rational and transparent tools. What I'm against is being unprecise with that information, one should have a conceptualised approach for the whole of the process, not do something subjective here, and something objective there. A systems appoach is much more coherent, it recognizes the design process as a series of actions upon visual means.
When does something become architecture? When does architecture enter the design process? That is the most important question in any design process. Can you start with an image, the image of a face, of a crowd, or a dog or a group of trees in the mist, and end up with a building? Of course you can (although I wouldn't recommend such an impressionist method). But only by contraction, by contracting information out of it that has the potential of becoming something else, not the picture of something, but the internal, organisational structure of something else. Finding this vector, constructing this vector-toward-something-else, can only be done by diagramming, by seeing structure and architecture beyond image and before one 'sees' actual buildings. It is a professional way of dealing with this moment of 'blindness': being in between ones contraction of the world, and ones expression of something new. Basically you go from image (memory) to image (new building) through abstraction, and this abstraction should never be completely lost. Now, there are very simple forms of diagramming, like using visual imagery, toward more complex ones like gathering data and graphing techniques, toward very complex algorithmic techniques, in the end, what counts is "what can the diagram do for you".

5. Okay… what can the diagram do for you?

Mostly diagrams are 'read'. That means mostly, often, their abstract capacities are left in the building as traces in language. This seems logical as the abstract capacities of architecture are typical food for the mind. Walking through a Palladio villa doesn't make any sense if you don't know music and early harmonic systems. The two most important diagrammatic architects today, Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman, still see the diagrammatic capacity of architecture too much as something of language. The architecture of architecture - as I tried to explain in the notion of metadesign - is in their case still a property of language. A concept to them is a sentence, an explanation. Cultural criticism in the case of Koolhaas, criticality in the case of Eisenman. My diagrams are more 'sensed', they are more 'felt' than 'read', they are felt in the day-to-day decisions and hesitations we experience, basically my architecture deals with consciousness and awareness, of how the experience of being there, in this uninterrupted stream of presence is constructed. I'm extremely interested in this continuous 'thickening' of the now, of the present. With Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman the real has already happened, the architecture understands it, deals with it, through language, and serves this view to the inhabitant, user, whatever its name is; it is always consumed afterward… He or she just re-experiences the real as it was already foreseen in the diagram. However I think the diagram is something that should exactly be placed in between the world-as-imagined and the world-as-experienced and therefore stop before it becomes language. I know this makes my work also very vulnerable, because it can only be sensed, but hardly discussed.
If you would have seen the exhibition installation in Nantes, France, for instance you would have been amazed by the difference between the two. All the forces that were integrated in the design machine were so-called vortex forces, rotating forces of vertigo, deeply connected to the program of the hallucinatory works in the exhibition. Easy to talk about before or afterward, but when experienced it becomes silly even to mention it. The fatigue in your legs, especially in your calves and knees, this "consciousness that rises up from the feet", as Kodwo Eshun said when he was there, becomes very important. The alternating between walking and seeing as in any normal museum becomes something different, a telescoping of action and perception, of memory and seeing, of diagram and image - hardly explanable. Then there was a constant sense of disbelief: the precision of geometry coinciding with the vagueness of language. One could see all the twists and turns of the vertigo forces, one could see all the subtle changes of light, the multiple orientations of the surface, reinforced by the different angles of each painting and etching, but one could hardly 'read' it. There was hardly any time for reflection, as the architecture is one of engagement and experience. From higher up, from the first level gallery looking downward on the structure it was easier, but then you were deprived of 'experience'. What I'm saying is that in my architecture, life runs parallel with the diagram, they move in the same direction, they intertwine, they couple, but never oppose: one never meets the diagram, like in an Eisenman, one lives with it. When you turn your head, start running, look back, sit on the floor, twist your head to see the Max Ernst: the forces of flexibility (rubber lines) become the forces of movement (rotating your head).

6. It is understood that the computer is used in your conceptual process, leading a complete shift from Euclidean geometry to topology, from tectonics to textile, from object to process, from crystalline space tothe undulating field or medium. You have mentioned even, the necessity of computer-aided-conceptualization and computer-aided manufacturing. What do you think is the future potential of this tool?

It is the future per se, there is no other future. But architects have to learn to deal with it conceptually. They always thought is was "just a tool", a means to something else: architecture. This is a complete misunderstanding of a. what computing is, and b. what technology is. There are no innocent tools, there is no tool that is separated from its purpose. Tools make us think differently, and, even more important, feel and wish for differently. Machines are social fields, technologies are countries we live in. You cannot 'do' computer and not 'think' computer. Every master/slave relationship is always reversable. Let's not forget that a lot of the design tools we use in architecture without the computer, like copying, rotating, aligning, etc. are basically early, primitive computer tools. Bernard Cache said: "the compass and the ruler are very simple computers", which means we have always used computers. Computers, we should always realize that, are steering devices, they are vehicles in a sense. They can only enter the world as a world of processes, of interactions, where dynamics and structuring are not understood as opposites. In a time and world where we can truly think complexity we shouldn't deny ourselves an architecture of the complex. We don't have to constantly run back into the arms of Mamma Reduction anymore, because we cannot cope with the troubles of life. Minimalism is fatal. Since the fifties we have had new views in mathematics, physics and biology, in cybernetics and information theory, all based on calculation. Turing machines, genetic algorithms, chaos, fractalisation, fuzzy logic, etc. etc. where is architecture in all this? To me - to sum it all up - it is absolutely unresponsable to keep on throwing cubes into the world (a geometrical language of 3000 years ago!) in a time where we have mathematics and physics dealing with processes, time and complexity.

7. Realizing or materializing the image of freedom can't be an image on the wall or a hole in the floor. Then, how can we be connected to the unseen? How can the unforeseen happen?

You maybe know there is this beautiful concept of potentiality, which is the old word for virtuality, that states that nothing happens if there wasn't first the potential for it to happen. It's a concept from Aristotle, differentiating between mathematical possibilties ("mere possibilities") and real or physical possibilities. Somehow we have to connect - as architects - the abstraction of space, this memorizing of events that have already happened, to the reality of time, to the continuous flow of events. Strangely enough this continuity is given (there are no "bad times" for events) but not the actual content of the events. We know things will happen, even at a certain pace, but not always what. So, space has to become a tool in this whole production of the 'what'. I'm very interested how architecture can help in increasing this dimension of tension and potentiality. You know, that is my whole problem of seeing consciousness as intentionality, it thinks that consciousness is something like seeing, that locking onto an object in space with your eyes is the same as thinking, as being mentally engaged with the now and the near future, of being alive, of being open to what happens or could happen. Being conscious, being aware, being fully engaged in the now, doesn't mean you lock onto the future as an object. Architecture can only help this openness of mind with an architecture of connectivity, of topology, of the continuous. For too long architecture was a tool to control life by seeing events as the repetition of older events, and every new event was an' accident', something acting against the 'substans' of architecture. The new doesn't come from the future, it comes from the past, that is what potentiality is, it is a mating of old existing events patterning into tendencies, an unfolding of events.

8. Because an important aspect of architecture is its materiality, and most matter usually resists rapid transformation, how does liquid architecture go beyond the 'moment of freeze'?

What is of course very important in my work is the difference between architecture and building, between the organisation of something and it's material structure. I've tried to allude to that with my reference to the "continuous black lines" and the "dotted lines". That I'm interested in movement doesn't mean I'd like to have buildings to move around… That means there are architectures that go far beyond buildings, the architecture of a text, of a political plan, but also the architecture of a book. And of course diagrams exactly do that, they make all these architectures communicate, and with computers that can even be done much better. Because I'm interested in movement and change I'm interested in systems that are created and structured by change, for instance, liquid fluid systems. Now, "liquid architecture" is a paradox, because the architecture can be liquid but the building is solid, or as I said before: The building should be static, but the architecture should never be at rest. But it doesn't mean that one can use every movement (of water, or whatever), freeze it in an instant, like a photograph, and then build it, that would be the craziest distinction between concept and structure, no? That's why I'm moving more and more in the direction of 'material diagramming'. Movement has to become structural, movement has to be structurally absorbed into a system. In all these diagramming techniques I use you see that the more flexibility is leaving the system the more structure is gained. That is why I'm resisting both the concept of 'datascape' and pure 'animate form', though both Winy Maas and Greg Lynn are good friends. With the first information enters a preset form (often a cube), with the second, all information is directly materialised as a form. I work much more with interaction between information and form, basically I'm only interested in the structuring, the patterning effect in between the two. That's why I tend toward iterative processes, stepwise methodologies, because every time the form is changed it absorbes the information differently. It's a slow process of hardening, from architecture to building... In the end all the movement that was in the first diagram is separated in abstract movement in the architecture and real movement of bodies and minds.

9. Your architecture seeks to go beyond the dichotomy between floors and walls, esthetics and program, elevation and plan, perception and action. In the process of materialization, what would be the limit, in reality, of such synchronization?

First I should stress this language of abstract movement in the architecture. It's not a wall with the word 'movement' painted on it. It's about stretching, twisting, bending, shifting, delaminating, curling, bulging, rotating, merging, splitting. Or more complex: twisted splittings, stretched twistings, rotational mergings, etc. Normally it would be insane to describe a form with these words, they are verbs, no? - signifying actions not forms. But here we have a certain interference of form and action, perfectly described by these type of words. All my work, and the more recent the more complex, are networks of these movements, one movement multiplied by another, all these verbs co-exist, related in complex relations, many multiple vectors, many multiple orientations, in many different hierarchies. If you study the geometries of wetGRID or of D-tower or Son-O-house, you'll notice, that the 'movement' is not just some unspecified force, no, it has structural properties, all these verbs relate to another into an emerging whole, where you have gothic splittings of lines into surfaces for instance.

Second, you are right implying there is a limit. Why? Because still, the physical forces of gravity are (mostly) vertical, and the movement of bodies is (mostly) horizontal, and if you start putting these forces into one continuum as I do, it doesn't mean that you should end up with buildings that can only exist under water or in the air, though there are amazing architectures in both, like corals, wasps nests, spiders nests, termite cities. I realize this very well, I'm just against splitting them up, I'm not in favor of a full merging. And: I'm not against simple stacking of floors, I'm not against the generic, I'm only against them as the sole driving force behind the materialization of architecture into buildings. And: I'd love to do larger structures, I did skyscrapers with my students in New York and Germany, I did housing, but it is the nature of my research that the clients I attract are in the beginning more from the art world than from the banking world. Every architecture attracts her own type of building, it's no accident that Forster does banks, Gehry does museums and I do small art related experimental architectures. But I promise you: that will change, and it will change soon.

AR: A mechanistic system of thought like modernism could only deal with the accident by isolating and repressing it as an undesired event interrupting the well-planned course of events. Paul Virilio qualifies the accident however as merely the other face of substance, following the Aristotelian distinction between substans and accidens. If you translate these two constituent elements of the accident to architecture, you get an astounding equivalence: the built mass becomes almost literally the substance (from lat. substans: that which stands from below), whereas people act as the accident (from lat. accidens: that which falls into something). It is a very conventional definition, obviously, in which only the fixed accounts for something substantial while everything which moves is disqualified as accidental. Could you imagine a definition of architecture which inverts this condition, that is an architecture in which stability is accidental and movement substantial?

LS: Here we have two lines of thought and realize they could become interrelated. Firstly, we should observe that our whole conception of form has been inverted. Physical form, biological form, the mathematics of form, how order emerges, how stability emerges, these have now all been structured in time, where form has become part of time. Fractal geometry, order on the edge of chaos, self-organization, catastrophe theory, finally there have emerged concepts of geometry in which time itself has become essential, where the accident has become substantial, where form and order have become pattern, interference, iteration, rhythm, something created in time, and only to be understood in time. Secondly - as you mention Virilio's constant returning to the accident - media as the continuous accident of architecture. Of course, this dichotomy is omnipresent in theory, and I oppose it vigorously. I don't see media as the dark side of architecture at all. Why? Because I'd like to propose an architectural view of media, and vice versa. First of all, media comes in waves, in tides, and it deals with space as a medium, as a field, that is a soft substance through which events are transported by waves, and become interrelated as a result of interference, amplification and decay... Media are a way to inhabit time as it where, a movement connected with our own movements, something far more sensitive and responsive than an architecture of frames, crystals and solids that is only capable of returning always the same answers to an experiential body. I think we should keep in mind that architecture was the first machine, the first medium to connect behavior and action to time, to place it under the revolving light of the sun, but now, on the other hand, we should not mix up the old history of architecture, its Euclidean mathematics with its new potentials. I just cannot see why architecture, because it is old, should stay old.

AR: The French word for real estate is "immobilier", which is the opposite of "mobilier" which means furniture. These two notions seem to indicate architecture's maximum radius of action: from absolute immobility (the building mass defining the invariable envelope) to total mobility (the furniture which could be placed anywhere inside). In other words, architecture actually has a whole set of varieties to choose from in order to "situate" itself in the variable relationship of form and movement. Nevertheless, throughout its (occidental) history architecture has displayed a clear tendency to opt for the immobile element as its definition. The challenging potential of furniture as the imminently destabilizing force of architecture is left aside, if not also embraced by the disciplining regime of order. In the plans of his single family houses, Mies van der Rohe used to place the furniture elements as precisely as the indeed unmovable elements like walls and columns. There is an anecdote about the Tugendhat House: a couple of months after the completion Mies came back to Brno unannounced to check if everything was in order. And Mrs. Tugendhat had indeed dared to arrange the chairs in a slightly different way. So Mies emphatically asked her to put them back in their proper position, pointing to the plan of the house he had discreetly brought along. - What would an architecture be like which goes the opposite way, that is an architecture that would approach real estate with a furniture logic?

LS: We should resist Mies. We should resist this preservation of the old Aristotelian split of matter and time, substance and accident, tectonics and textile. Architecture as tectonics, media as textile. Architecture as a passive and neutral carrier, media as (inter)active image. That is: architecture as urbanism, as tectonics, as (infra)structure, as 'bigness' - as Koolhaas has titled his agenda -, and media as life, the changing, the ephemeral, whatever. Instead of moving architecture into bigness, I would suggest to move it into textile, into furniture, into media... We should never mix up architecture and building. Just because our buildings can't move, it doesn't mean our architecture can't. As our buildings are hard and intransigent, our architecture could be active and liquid. This obviously does not mean the Miesian and Koolhaasian retreat into neutrality, into the hall, the empty envelope. It's an old misunderstanding in architecture that when you create the greatest common denominator of all possible movements, an architecture that gets out of the way, it will induce movement and vitality in the actual building. It is exactly the other way around, one just creates stillness, with that kind of generic neutrality one neutralizes action. That means they don't appreciate that architecture is media, that architecture is an event in itself, an event that, in their case, passes on its tectonics onto the body. I opt for a geometry of the mobile, where the geometry has become part of the furniture, the moveable - nothing neutral, nor passive.

AR: Generally, Siegfried Giedion is seen as the theoretical advocate for a new space conception based on the notion of time. But if he indeed pointed to the new importance of the dynamic user moving freely through the building, he never got beyond the opposition of a static space and a mobile subject. He in fact kept the hierarchical distinction of space as substans and body as accidens, never realizing the transfer of movement from the subject onto the space. Curiously enough this transfer of movement was a major theme in the early experimental cinema and was also poignantly analyzed at the time by various scholars. In a seminal essay, German art historian Erwin Panofsky concluded that "as movable as the spectator is, as movable is, for the same reason, the space presented to him. Not only bodies move in space, but space itself does, approaching, receding, turning, dissolving and recrystallizing as it appears through the controlled locomotion and focusing of the camera and through the cutting and editing of the various shots."

LS: Can I start answering this with a classic study of Held and Hein, mentioned in Francisco Varela's book The Embodied Mind? They did this amazing experiment. They had a number of kittens with a carriage attached to each of them. Each carriage contained a basket with another kitten in it. So there were two groups of kittens sharing the same visual experience, but with one group active, the other stayed entirely passive. After a few weeks they were released and studied again as individual cats. The first group was okay and behaved normally, the second behaved as if they were blind, they bumped into everything.
Obviously our whole idea of perception and action being unrelated bodily functions, the whole Cartesian distinction between eyes and feet is incarnated in architecture in the dichotomy between walls and floors, esthetics and program, elevation and plan. Simple as that. This also means the relation between space, movement and body has always been misunderstood, or at least, been related in the wrong order. There just is no movement apart from image, no image apart from movement. The way we construct images within our bodies is a million times more complicated than the cognitive concept of printing reality on light-sensitive grey matter. The sensory charges the motor, and the other way around, they are intertwined and connected. In this sense we should even resist thinking in terms of 'space' - I never mention space actually - we have to conceptualize the body first, not the proportional Vitruvian body as the architectural center of the constructed world, no, the experiential body, the excited, vital body, where millions of processes go on at the same time. Therefore we should always realize the body is a clock, not the Huygens clock, but a manifold patterning trying to gain stability through action. Bodies try to transgress themselves in time by action, throwing themselves into time, that is: connect to other bodies, other rhythms, other actions. You could speak of space in this sense only, really, after you've considered the experiential body of timing actions, but never as given. There could be space in time, but not the other way around.
Perspective was nothing else then leaving out the movement in experience and have the image as a residue - and it is: the image is what's left over when everything has dried out, like at the bottom of a cup of coffee. Pure recollection, and recollection only.

AR: But even if you refuse to use the word "space", you do seem to have a concept of it: one which is derived from radical constructivism. According to this theory, space does not exist per se, or in other words, where everything around us is only unstructured information which becomes only structured as soon as we interfere and interact with it. This idea implies the dissolution of the inside/outside opposition; conceptually, body and architecture merge to one synthetic action space. But does not this opposition reappear in the real experience of a building?

LS: Well, no, because there is no 'real' experience of the building. You're right to refer to radical constructivism, or even Varela's concept of enaction, which is even more radical. This idea of embodied action goes absolutely against cognitivist representation, where the so-called outer world is only recorded by the brain - and simultaneously absolutely against idealism where this outer world is only a subjective projection of an inner one. He, and Maturana, only refer to 'structural coupling' in which body and world are interrelated and interactively transform each other. The 'true' experience doesn't take place anywhere, neither in the body, nor in the world. Only in the coupling. This is the point where the distinction between inner knowledge and outer world ceases to exist. I'll try to give a better explanation of what a 'real' experience is, especially vis à vis machines and technology.
What we call reality, what we call our sense of reality, is nothing but an effect of synchronization, the synchronization of our own bodily rhythms with processes going on in the world around us. Our sense of reality is created by our sense of timing, trying to be 'in phase' with the world, to live with the rhythm of the light. I don't mean this metaphorically; 'in phase' is a direct and physical connection. That is why seeing-machines like film and television - and now computing - should be seen as a motorization of reality, as a speeding up of reality itself. They speed up our sense of timing. This also explains why we suffer from jet lag. Now, what has been disturbed by the speed of the plane can be undone by (sun)light - remember the sun is our first clock, we're created by it. Light is not only stored in the form of motor-images, but it is also the main indication for setting our own clock, the bio-rhythm. We are made of light. We long for a seamless stream of actions, carried by light, not the derealization and parkinsonian stuttering we experience during a jet lag. Actually, doctors nowadays prescribe melatonine, a neuro-hormone that influences the pigment in the skin, as a cure for jet lags...

AR: All classical definitions of architecture contain the idea of fixing the movement which vibrates in the world outside architecture - in Vitruvius' famous definition it is called "firmitas". Any concern about dynamics and fluidity is avoided like a bad germ. It seems like architecture feels strangely endangered by movement, maybe simply for not knowing how to handle it. To a certain degree this might be caused by "timeless" condition of the drawing systems architecture has traditionally used: plan, section, elevation - all static modes of graphic inscription which can comprise three dimensions at the most, but certainly not time as the dimension of unfolding and change. Architecture has never developed a notation system for movement like choreography developed in dance.

LS: First we have to understand what an experiencing body is. How the body shifts between habit and action. Of course, in architecture, they've very often tried to combine them, but it proved difficult and they mostly came up with either/or concepts. The standard architectural program consists of habits, routines and work. This is viewed as the mechanistic repetition of certain acts - the program only takes into account actions that are considered repeatable. On the other hand, there is the desire for free action, play, experiment, as in Constant's New Babylon. For me, it is not a question of either/or, it is not work-or-play, life is just the complication of these, the one is always hidden in the other. Sure, we habituate, we develop cycles of behavior. Why? Because it is hardly possible for humans to carry the whole act, to - as a Cartesian Machine - steer themselves continuously into intentions. We create our own rhythms, and make them stronger than ourselves, we create an internal music that gets us going. Our rhythms create us, we are an actual product of them. On the other hand we do not program ourselves, human software is much softer than computer software, we do not repeat the same actions over and over again, they change, they differ, they vary from each other, enabling us to change, to renew or to move smoothly into other acts.
That's why I would be in favor of separating work from dance, and after doing so, would try to merge them immediately. The whole set up of 'firmitas', standing upright, habituation and routines, and opposing these with dance, play and experiment relating to the twisting of this posture fixed through gravity should be abandoned as too simple. We should not make the same mistakes as in the sixties. We would be marginalized. We should find a way in architecture to complicate habit, to multiplicate routines in action. It is the 'winding up' of the soft clock of the body with motor geometry. Obviously, this geometry is not a geometry of section, elevation and plan, but one that tries to envisage these three - construction, perception and action - within one conceptual continuum.

AR: Doesn't space get lost somewhere?

LS: The way we act is similar to that of a skateboarder. We have a sense of direction, we have a sense of intentionality. We throw ourselves into time by movement. But then it is not a road or path we walk down. Our roads maybe straight, but our tracks certainly are not. It is a vector with a point of action, and in that sense every act is an act of faith. Once underway we adapt, change our minds, engage other forces, but we do not just see these as resistance, no, they are like the curbs and obstacles for the skater. We use them as push offs, as points of inflection in the curve. That's it: a straight line goes from A to B, but while it leaves A it curves, trying to reach B. Architects have always misunderstood this position of B as something in space, instead of time. We humans complicate movement, we make movement from movement. Our moves are truly labyrinthic, like Nietzsches Dionysian dance, because we are our own alcohol, our own music - to quote Oliver Sacks too. Every act has to be carried by this complication, this tilting of the horizon, where the act is carried by itself, and is orientated on its own need for gaining strength and stability. I must end here by quoting once more, now Baudelaire, who said: "Mentally and bodily I've always had this feeling of falling. The abyss not only of sleep, but also the abyss of acting, of dreaming, memories, desires, sorrow, the many, et cetera... I'm in a permanent state of vertigo".

AR: Do you think that new notation systems provided by computer animation modeling techniques like the ones you use finally account for the body as an active part of architecture?

LS: Yes I do. On all kinds of levels. Both in conceptualization and building. As I've written in 'the motorization of reality' - a Virilio piece without the Virilio hesitations - media should invade all aspects of architecture, both in diagramming and in programming. Let's not forget that all seeing-machines became drawing-machines (in architecture), and went from the static towards the kinetic. From perspective towards films and trains and television and cars (all with there own architectural styles), moving eyes constructing spaces. Now - with computing - this step is not metaphorical anymore, now we not only incorporate and embody the conceptuality of a machine in design, we can now actually step in the screen and create reality from there. The design itself has become motorized, liquid, unstable, charged - the accelerating power of the computer is truly enormous, and is itself like a skateboard. But it is in the motor geometry, the geometry of the liquid that this machine becomes instrumental.
What I try to oppose as much as I can is the dichotomy between floors and walls, action and perception, we have to create one from the other. So, I'm neither animating the floor and later on covering it in a tectonic envelope, nor am I animating the volume and later on stacking it with floors. The well-known cross-eyed view of the ongoing Any-conferences. It might be better though to animate the programmatic fluxes to animate the building. But after some time you would see that this wouldn't lead you anywhere either, except for the smoothing of the already planned movement within the program. The aim is not just replacing program as military or Jesuit disciplinization by free choreographies of movement, and then superimposing them, as if program is dance, which it is clearly not! It is not the fixation of the movement in the program, nor is it is the fixation of motion in the form. Either way, it's not only motion capture. You would end up with the so-called 'stopping problem' - the question where to freeze the animation -, while the real question is how to pass the movement on, from the machine to the architecture, from the architecture to the body, and from the body to the machine.
First of all the movement should be going from floor to wall and vice versa. That is: in the architecture itself. The movement itself creates threedimensionality, what Kiesler would have called the endless, which is always vectorial, as in Zeno's arrow. This would deframe architecture and here the looping of perception and action, the optic and the haptic would never stop. So, it's about creating tension and suspense in the program. This is very important. We deal - on the one hand - with the desire to cool down behavior, to structure and separate actions, in short with the instrumentality of the program - on the other hand, we vitalize action through animation, by replacing fixed points and fixed geometries by moving geometries, going from points to knots to springs, and we vitalize action through suspense, by shifting B from space to time, by multiplication of action.

AR: In dance, space does not exist as a given entity (except the physical space of the stage, but that exists only as a precondition for the performance of the dance). Dance creates space out of movement. The shape of a form only exists in time, you can never grasp it in one moment but you have to commit its forms to memory. In all of these aspects, dance seems to be art form that is furthest removed from architecture. Nevertheless I have the impression that it describes the most exactly what interests you in architecture?!

LS: Architecture and dance are generally but wrongfully separated by this notion of either-time-or-space, and rightfully connected by music. The great thing in architecture though, is that there's no audience and there's no sound. The beauty of dance is the thinking of movement as a movement within itself, a gesture, a closed thing. When one would consider the program in gestures and actions, you would have to organize them both in time and in space, not only sequential as in dance but also simultaneous - in that way one gesture wouldn't be followed by the prescribed next gesture, but one could study them in different relationships and interactions.
Let us consider the notion of tension again. Tension can only be created by elasticity and springs, by lines that can be stretched or lines that are connected by 'flexible points'. In the concept of the spring the point is an inseparable part of the line, a twist in the line that can both expand and shrink. I used a non-abstract machine built out of lines and springs to animate the design for the V2 Lab. It's an office, a matrix of tasks and work. Quite rigid, most of the time. I would like to focus on a detail here. The programmatic set-up was quite clear - the position of the lab, next to the audio room, video room and storage, and in between a corridor, slightly raised from the existing floor. And located at the beginning of the corridor is the table for the leader of the Lab. I did not superimpose this scheme over another animated one. Everything would have stayed as it was. I animated a diagram of springs and snares through the organizational diagram. What happened? At one point, the snares moved up so high we couldn't interpret them as part of the raised corridor anymore but only as part of the table. Suddenly we had a corridor that morphed, that moved into a table... So at one point I'm sure one should call this a corridor, at another spot, three, four meters further on, I'm sure to call it a table, but what is it in between? There is program, there is the rhythm of moving in the corridor, there is also a rhythm of working at the table, and there is the vector in between. This vector is always charging the others, that's the music, the silent music of the snares, so to say, that moves work into action. And back again, of course. Normally one would separate table and corridor by space, now they are connected by movement. And where does the movement go? The tension in the snares goes directly into the muscles and tendons of the body - the motor geometry relates to the 'abstract movement', as Merleau-Ponty has named it, the background tension in the body, enabling an act to release itself from neurological anonymity and take shape. Now people sometimes lie down there as on a beach, or just walk up the table...