Bart Lootsma - Electrification takes command
Bart Lootsma
It’s another most interesting public lecture since Kayoko Ota-san on the Metabolism movement in Japan. Bart Lootsma is a historian, theoretician, critic and curator in the fields of architecture, design and the visual arts. He is a Professor for Architectural Theory and Head of the Institute for Architectural Theory, History and Heritage Preservation at the University of Innsbruck. He’s lecture are eye opening that discuss how modern technology has influence our built environment and human behaviour as well. His lecture covered very broad topics ranging from futures of housing, relationships of human, ecology and environments, early attempts of Viennese architects trying to understand the environment in the 1950s, invented tradition and modern nature experiments in ecology by Institute for Architectural Theory.
Spatial Agency : Haus Rucker Co
Haus Rucker Co : Yellow Heart(1968)
During the 1950s when all kind of technology were on a big leap forward, especially in the communication sector. Viennese architects such as Hans Hollein, Haus rucker co, Oswald Weiner and more are interested in how all this technologies on effect of their body with the surrounding. Among all, Haus Rucker co has made those more interesting attempts such as isolation of our senses, functions of inflatable structures, changing tones of environments and even disposable architecture. It’s a very surprising facts that how different people in the old days preceive architecture as we did. They are very optimistic about how these technologies could change their experience of life and all these attempts are often out of the box, in contrast with us, modern movements such as deconstrutivism, modernism and more has become our new convention. Perhaps it’s not the case of political but geographical. Compare Viennese architects on technologies to the Japanese Architects’ in the 1950s, Japanese architects are more interested in solving social housing with more radical attempt such as Metabolism.
Kisho Korukawa: Capsule Tower (1973)
Project Solana (2016) : Montenegrin
Take a step forward to the modern days, Institute of Architecture Theory at University of Innsbruck has trying to expand architects’ capabilities on built environments. Bart discuss projects that he is going to curate for montenegrin Pavillion in Venice biennale 2016 by Alejandro Aravena talking about sustainability. That include Project Solana that revive a saline that affect the ecology of bird migrations. It’s mindblowing that we human are looking for architecture solutions for a damage caused by human development. It is beyond what an conventional architect are trying to do everyday. In this case, architects are not merely a house designer but a built environment solutions seeker. Other 3 projects are “Lost landscape by a dutch design studio Lola, “The long trail of leisure” by London Ecologicstudio, and “Okologie sport stadt” by Marianne lercher and Wolfgang muhlberger.
Skiing Map for Innsbruck olympic 1976
The last part of his lecture interested me the most and that is so called “invented tradition”. The development of technologies are in rocket speed in our days. Technologies such as social media has almost completely control our life. Modern days information technology has made our behaviour become sensitive. As a designer, if we are able to understand what’s the effect and cause by these technologies, we are able to invent phenomena or tradition with only these tools and at the same time the built environment. Take an examples, skiing is a sport that’s makes people get the chances to expose to nature, but the question raised, are skiing a natural activities itself? No it’s not, if people have no food, no protection, no shelter, they wouldn’t even thought of gliding down a breezing snow mountain. Apart from the skiing behaviour, that’s how social media has transform innsbruck from a small village, into a cluster of skiing resorts city. People around the world has understand new activities around the world and come to this place particular to carry our this activities that interested them. It works the same with all places with touristic value such as Publika, Cameron Highlands, Penang, Sekinchan, Sungai Lembing and even Genting Highland. Although I didn’t like the idea to realize that there’s particular people are actually manipulating our behaviour, but we should learn from this phenomena and make full use of it to create positive phenomena.
Overall, Bart Loostma on “Electrification takes command” is a unexpected enjoyable lecture for me. His research on how’s the relationship between human, technology and ecology is some valueble knowledge for us to understand our daily life even further.
