Subtraction and Behavior

Vanilla Sky, film directed by Cameron Crowe, 2001. Image from video.

Could anyone have predicted we would live through times like this, when we were subtracted from architecture? Such a strange time to my generation, a generation sold on the concept of “Experience”. Welcome to a not so temporary "Behavioral” mindset.

It is interesting to just sit back for a while and observe what has been going on for the last few months. Back on March I'm assuming that everyone alive was hit by a sense of insecurity and loneliness, because we were told to avoid social contact and therefore, abandon architecture. No restaurants, no movies, no shopping, no schools, no museums, no stadiums... The only safe option was to go outside, for a walk.

I was one adopting the habit of going for a walk every day. Well, it was almost possible to feel a little like David Aames (Tom Cruise) at the iconic scene in Vanilla Sky: claustrophobic in an empty Times Square. I was walking alone for most of the time. As the weeks went by, more and more people started to adopt the habit too, and it was possible to recognize some familiar faces crossing my way.

Things got a little weird around April, when we all learned the concept of Social Distancing. Sidewalks are a shared space by nature, but we all were playing a new game called “Avoiding” in order to use it; people would take detours, leave the sidewalk, or stop at a shaded spot and let you pass through. We started to make concessions and use creativity to get back to the supermarket. Signage indicating the required 6 feet distancing, acrylic displays, masks, and hand sanitizer became the usual. Boring. But it worked. Restaurants adopted the Drive-Thru format, and we all got our food packaged by the car window. Again, boring, but it worked. I remember going to an Ice Cream shop and being asked to wear mask, gloves, and grab little cups prefilled with the toppings (cherry, nuts, and chocolate chips all pre-packaged). Should I repeat “boring”?

The re-adaptation of the space usage is a desirable process. It is always evolving over time and it is a process with an infinite number of possible outcomes. Think about the days you heard about temporary hospitals built overnight in the public space, and all the infrastructure needed to deal with sick people on the streets. It is in extreme times like these that we can actually see how applicable certain utopic theories can be. In an interview published by Archdaily (Belogolovsky, 2020), Yona Friedman explains the principles of his Ville Spatiale projects. He believed that the individual was to decide priorities and the way to inhabit in the city, though the provision of an open structure where people could simply plug in to. “My Ville Spatiale projects were not realized because I was told that people are not capable of planning on their own. This may be true, but that is why this process should be guided by trial and error.”. His motivation for such approach came from the extreme times of the Second World War and from getting the minimal resources to survive: “The winter was brutal. There was no water, no electricity, no heating. Windows had no glass. There were one million inhabitants and people survived. I realized then that our habits and customs are very fragile. So I thought about finding a certain autonomy, and autonomy comes with improvisation. It is only natural to try to adapt.”

As we are all constantly re-adapting to the new normal, I can see a subtle cultural change globally. I don’t believe that architecture can shape behavior – behavior will always shape architecture. The car-oriented American culture is currently in decline, and I can see from here the rise in the number of people walking around my neighborhood – and enjoying the sidewalks, a space usually underutilized. As people are resorting to all sorts of ways to reach out for community to avoid loneliness (private balconies are converted to concert stages in Brazil (https://youtu.be/wo48wxjA6k8. Musica&ArteFelipeSouza, 2020), I keep thinking of our role as designers. We have to observe and absorb the lessons imposed from the invisible barrier that has been put in place. What can we design with Subtraction and Behavior?

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Meanwhile, all we can do is to use as much of virtual space as we can. Hundreds of instant messages, e-mails, and new online collaboration tools are made essential to recreate human connectivity. It has been working, at least for now… According to Grosz (2001): “The virtual reality of computer space is fundamentally no different from the virtual reality of writing, reading, drawing, or even thinking: the virtual is the space of emergence of the new, the unthought, the unrealized, which at every moment loads the presence of the present with supplementarity, redoubling a world through parallel universes, universes that might have been.”.

Reference:

Belogolovsky, Vladimir. 2020. www.archdaily.com. https://www.archdaily.com/781065/interview-with-yona-friedman-imagine-having-improvised-volumes-floating-in-space-like balloons?ad_source=search&ad_medium=search_result_all.

Grosz, Elizabeth. 2001. Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

Musica&ArteFelipeSouza. n.d. "Youtube." Youtube. Accessed 2020. https://youtu.be/wo48wxjA6k8.