Page 7 - META

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ISSN 2309-0103 www.archidoct.net
Vol. 7 (2) / February 2020
is acting between the existing and the coming, the established and the expected, the familiar and the xenon, the antipathy and the empathy. It is driven by the quest for a ‘meta’, known (or not) that since its appearance, it will lose its newness and will become commonplace. What type of novelty does it put forward through its creations in the con- temporary interregnum? What are the primary formal or material traits that can attribute that identity to the new that can clearly distinguish it from the old? The paradox we are confronted with nowadays is that despite the unprecedentedly fast pace of changes hap- pening in the sphere of the intellect, the sciences, technology, and the geopolitics of the globalized world, there are no apparent signs of novelty in contemporary architectural production.
The 14th issue of ArchiDOCT attracted five different voices from five different institutions around the world, all doctoral students and researchers who submitted essays that exam- ine the notion of “Meta-” and the way this radical but subtle paradigm shift creates novel possibilities but also demanding challenges for architecture.
“Immediate Systems: Exploring the Potential of Human-In-The-Loop Cyber-Physical Sys- tems that Embed Design and Implementation in Situations of Use” is the essay submitted by Christian Friedrich, doctoral student at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands. Aim of this essay is to introduce the notion of Immediate Systems which embed design and implementation in situations of use and thus overcome the limitations of remoteness. This is based on the hypothesis that Design activity, es- pecially in architectural praxis, takes place in spatial and temporal remoteness from the use of its outputs. This remoteness impedes the ability to respond to actual needs that arise in situations of use. Immediate Systems, as defined by the author, are cyber-physical systems comprised of interacting digital, analogue, physical, and human components. As meta-systems they include people and environments in a tight loop between human in- tention and immediate adaptation. Immediacy in this context indicates a state of contin- uously available adaptability at the speed of human intention. Such meta design systems take design methodology to an extreme that paradoxically resembles the situation before design emerged as separate praxis. Three theoretical contributions propose and frame the notion of Immediate Systems, present and discuss a series of examples indicating op- portunities and challenges of such systems, and identify characteristics of and conditions for Immediate Systems derived from the first two contributions.
Adolfo Jordán, doctoral student at the School of Architecture, Engineering and Design, Universidad Europea de Madrid authored “Systemic Considerations: Regarding the Impor- tance of the Pre- in the Post- on the Path Towards the Meta-system”. The first part of the essay is a historiographic trajectory of the system as a notion, in various critical shifts of paradigm. The traces of these shifts have brought about what we currently appreciate as a system, especially in a world mediated by machines. The merging of these various traces, despite the linear thinking yielded, are putting forward the notion of meta-system. More specifically, as meta-system, the author defines as deriving from ongoing processes anchored in the distant past, finally leading to a new paradigm. The essay traces the evo- lutionary nature of systems as these emerge from the broader worldview and the view of architecture, towards gaining a better insight into the present and future: in order to achieve the role of intelligent machines, we must see that, rather than being the origin
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Maria Vogiatzaki
Meta