A Note on Architecture – Immersive Umwelt vs Staging

This paper is introducing the holistic design approach called Immersive Umwelt. This approach is focused on immersion as an activity (deep involvement) rather than technologically pre-determined, predesigned and/or a prefabricated experience as illustrated in The Matrix[1].

We suggest that a society-wide process of design called Immersive Umwelt is the key to success of artificial habitats to be built soon.

As a reference of involvement of wider parts of a society in a process of design, we take the process of completing art works developed by Christo & Jeanne-Claude in the 70ties.

This is to introduce a template, which is providing the necessary level of complexity we need to program our journey. Alternatively, the ‘7000 Eichen’ project by Joseph Beuys and his idea of ‘Soziale Plastik’[2] could be taken in consideration, too.

Those and similar art projects have a very revealing approach in pioneering strategies on how to activate a wider society to take part in a creative process. We see this as an important experience and a very useful knowledge supporting our entrance to the new levels of complexity of collaboration, essential for running processes in AEC in relation to Industry 4.0.

Notions

A)     Definition of immersive: ‘providing, involving, or characterized by deep absorption or immersion in something (such as an activity or a real or artificial environment)’[3]

B)    Definition of Umwelt: ‘the environmental factors, collectively, that are capable of affecting the behaviour of an animal or individual’[4]

C)    Architectural Capriccio with Classical Ruins, painting by Canaletto: ‘Before he painted for counts and kings, Canaletto devoted himself to the stage. The artist began his career as an opera set designer, traveling the country and learning from the great Italian painters of his time while honing the mastery of perspective that would make his view paintings so remarkable.’[5]

D)    Approach to Concept Art: Christo & Jeanne-Claude, art project Running Fence[6] ‘The art project is right now here. Everybody is part of my work. If they want or wont, they are part of my work. I strongly believe, that art in the 20th century is not an individual experience …’

About Staging

The thesis in this paper is developed starting from the assumption that architectural design commonly is still based on the abstract idea of staging human life based on a screenplay called design brief or functional program. 

Basing on mentioned painting by Canaletto we could recall a common (historic) design process. The familiar sequence of such process is: generate geometry, add landscape, plants and trees to get local, and continue with implementing people for scale. In that way space is defined and can be further worked out by adding light and materials for ambient and experience.

This process is taught in architectural education based on Palladio’s and Brunelleschi’s understanding of geometry and perspective, illustrated and further developed in ensembles such as Versailles, La Defence or Parc de la Villette. Nowadays geometry is surviving in forms of parametric design as in The Grand Macau Hotel or, to simulate ‘flexible space’, as in New York’s Hudson Yards. The fact that common architecture is still a geometry-driven process grows even more important when diving into actual ‘immersive’ design environments called 3D, VR, AR, XR and parametric design … while the most executed task in BIM is still Clash Detection (of geometry). In that way, most generated Architectural Realities are still having the design approach of a ‘stage (for life)’ rather than initiating a collaborative design process to be introduced as Immersive Umwelt.

Immersive Umwelt

Since the days of Canaletto, a driving aspect to provide ‘immersion’ was high tech. Back in the days such technology was the mastering of perspective and the enormous size of the painting to get the visitor immersed. This was followed up by 3D computer design as used in movies, video games or architectural design later in history and is further taken to VR, AR and XR currently. To be very precise here, we discuss a technology to provide immersion by providing a specific experience of space.

At this point we want to draw attention back to our assumption and recall: ‘immersive: … providing, involving, or characterized by deep absorption or immersion in something (such as an activity or a real or artificial environment)’.

Our proposal for a contemporary design process called Immersive Umwelt is adapted as follows: Immersion is defined as an activity (both) in real and artificial Umwelt in the same way. The term Umwelt is used as defined: ‘the environmental factors, collectively, that are capable of affecting the behavior of an animal or individual’.

This approach allows us to avoid a singular view (human centric) on a design challenge and its mirroring impact on its Umwelt. We recognize that in such way of thinking similarities to Niklas Luhmann’s Systemtheorie are shining through, but for now this thought isn’t further worked out. 

Going further, we want to underline that the ‘Immersive Umwelt’ approach is targeting neither staged immersive setups nor its technological benefits, but we acknowledge the encouraging benefits of such setups for design collaboration. Further technological support will be provided by developments towards XR (Extended Reality) and rapidly emerging Gaming technology. Please read for reference: ‘A Note on Architecture - TikTok, Roblox, Minecraft Earth …’[7]

As a takeaway we are modifying aforementioned statement by Christo in the following way: ‘The architectural project is right now and here (experienced as a site, XR, court case, studio, permitting process, AR model, stakeholder, report and study, discussion, AI calculation…). Everybody is part of the project. If they want or wont, they are part of the project. We strongly believe, that architecture can’t be neither a human centric nor an individual experience anymore …’

To summarize, a society-wide design process introduced as Immersive Umwelt is the key for success for future built artificial habitats rather than the immersive aspects of so far developed technologies. This Immersion, thought as Immersive Umwelt, isn’t limited by human senses or technological sensors. Immersion, as defined in Immersive Umwelt, is an open approach to involve all possible stakeholders, directly or indirectly exposed to artificial habitats established by humans. This includes of course a wider range of aspects such as Circular Economy, data-driven processes, changing society, environment, human presence on other planets or evolving machine learning; just to name few possible relevant aspects. Those aspects vary depending on society, site location and project objectives.

Summary

To connect spheres of socio-cultural influx, fully data-driven production (Industry 4.0) and AI-driven building parts we propose Immersive Umwelt as a contemporary, art-infused strategy to establish creative collaboration. We assume, this will reinvent the role of an architect as a curator to coordinate such processes.[8]

Immersive Umwelt is a concept intended for setting up such curated communication and it is meant as a creative and innovative opportunity to harmonize relation between humans, environment and technology in The-World-Around-Us.[9]

Michael Beckert

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_sculpture

[3] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immersive

[4] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/umwelt

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGK3rwZlZK8

[6] https://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/running-fence

[7] https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/note-architecture-tiktok-roblox-minecraft-earth-michael-beckert/

[8] https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/why-curating-can-save-architects-profession-michael-beckert/

[9] https://www.userinterfacemodel.com/