Page 6 - META

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Meta
Maria Vogiatzaki
The call of this issue, authored by Professor Polyxeni Mantzou, from the Department of Architectural Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece addressed “the no- tion of ‘meta’, a term typically used to denote something of a higher or second-order; or a change of position or condition; or a position behind, after or beyond. ‘Meta’ in Greek is an extremely wide-ranging word, used to denote, among others, the way in which, in accor- dance to, after, in-between, with. We use the term “meta” to define our current condition, of a higher or second-order, one that comes after and goes beyond but also with the one that came before and more importantly, describe the intermediate, betwixt, in-between nature of our times.
Our Meta- age is difficult to define as many separate conditions of the past coexist and are blended and merged together in a new, hybrid and fused reality. The pre-modern, pre-industrial, pre-alphabetic world, reigned by handicraft, orality, immersion, random- ness, aggregation, nowness and emotion and the modern, industrial, alphabetic world, ruled by machine-made, text, theory, regulation, analysis, perspective and rationality; are now merged in this meta- condition, where new hybrids are conceived and engendered and a new and programmed wilderness emerges.
Relation and mediation characterise this meta- age and architecture as a formerly prin- cipal mediator is challenged. The Meta- issue aims to examine this challenge in different aspects of architecture. Design as a detached and separate process from construction is reconsidered; typologies and customization are re-examined; representations no more aim to describe buildings or objects but rather to relate the experiences of subjects in or with them; unbuilt simulations become autonomous and even more seductive than the experience of physical space; materials are no longer classified as natural, artificial or industrial as they are all calculable or even programmed; description of forms surrenders to the survey of in-formation through abstract modeling conceptions; subject and object opposition becomes irrelevant as interconnected subjects and re-contextualized things that form part of an almost animated standing reserve, define new possibilities for novel interrelations and configure dynamic atmospheres.”
The good practice example, authored by Professor Constantin-Viktor Spyridonidis from the School of Architecture, Canadian University of Dubai, and by Professor Maria Vogiatza- ki from the School of Architecture of Anglia Ruskin University, is entitled “Architectural Interregnums”. The authors argue that architectural design has always been the labora- tory where experimentation with ideas about the newness, and elaboration of forms and spatial arrangements take place towards architectural creations. Prefixes such as post-, de-, re-, neo-, appear as typical signifiers of the spirit of novelty representing the different shifts that shape the history of architecture and could be broadly summarized by the term ‘meta’. Even if ‘meta’ is a kind of ontological reference to newness, implying its definition with what preceded, it always remains polysemic and, for this reason, ambivalent. Design
ISSN 2309-0103 www.archidoct.net
Vol. 7 (2) / February 2020
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Editorial