Social Distance_Architecture

Title:
~ Most architectural discourse targets public life and common ground, but there is an undercurrent in architectural writing that has relevance for the spatial implications of ideas like social distancing and shelter-in-place.

“How does the individual relate to wider systems and consensus in mass society?”, “what are the mechanisms of collaboration and communication, and how do these organize the social sphere and the way in which we inhabit the world”

Social distance creates literary the physical separation. Physical separation tends to cause the mental separation in a way individuals feel isolation. To maintain the situation toward what it used to be, the first thing that seems essential is each person’s motivation of “participation”. This should be associated for all the human beings to sustain the mass society. The rest of those who do not have the motivation of participation needs something that can trigger to hook their interests and curiosity. Architecture is a one of the essential element for urbanism, which can be something that is mentioned above. The ideas and roles of architecture should become an environmental art just for individual to become a hook. The mechanism of collaboration and communication is born because of the interaction between visual stimulation and the viewer’s perception. And these fragmented happenings in the city are comprehensively toward the overall organization. In that sense, the social sphere needs to have a series of artistic criteria that creates the sequence of events and let the viewer involved in.

Architecture is a visual communication. And once the isolated situation occurs, the interior seems to become more important than exterior. Because The number of viewers will decrease. However, what If the one single building of metropolitan is servicing only for one individual, how can that building contribute to this person? In fact, the viewers from the interior of the building will increases even if people do not go outside. The role of exterior of the building much more important in a way that the role of exterior no longer needs to take account for the privacy of the building. Instead, it needs to be more see-through to show the moment of interior liveliness.

The initial question is written in the first sentence of the book entitled with “Open Form, space, Interaction, and the Tradition of Oskar Hansen”. Given question is fairly applicable to this our facing situation especially for this social distancing and its related occurrence. The concept of this called “Open Form” was thought in 1950s and later 1970s became considered in public. The concept of “Open Form” was developed by Oscar Hansen who was a member of Team 10 and Polish architect, educator and artist. Here is the fundamental concept of Open Form; 1. The Open Form comprehends the diversity of people as an individual and positions against the idea of standardization and schematization on modernism. 2. The Open Form is flexible and transformable to respond to the human’s evolving needs and preferences. 3. Open Form requires the participation for users to prompt co-authorized of the spatial arrangement. 4. Open Form progresses communication to between individual and spatial composition as a background and as an instrument of visual influence.

Raising the example of this current occurrence, people are not able to go out, to meet, to talk and to act in general. That is undoubtedly difficult in terms of lack of physical environment. All the access with which we all are supposed to be allowed, replaced into digital or imaginary world. Even though everybody understood that this current pandemic will be the temporary stuff, nevertheless no one could tell how long it will last in fact. Human being normally adapted and existed human beings spontaneously maintain to keep living, socializing, talking, working, taking care of others in a different way. All the physical matter will be resolved or stimulated by this happening to accelerate much more quickly than what it is now, to achieve the next level on the earth.

Now information became more open to the public with zoom. Since the tool became universal, the information needs open to share to get more accurate and useful information to share to find the solution. Now every single person in the world started to think about the individual health, way of living, isolation, family, finance, business and industry for the future. It will appear ”emptiness of social occurrence”, because this is the new chance for all for living to think of.

Here is a new question for architects and architectures; how would the role of the architecture be for the society? The common sense of privacy will no longer need. The things surrounding will be more open to see through in certain degree. The building envelop, for instance, will be more and more transparent for the sake of concentration of interiority and emphasis of individuality.

Bibliography

Axel Wieder, Florian Zeyfang, “Open Form, Space, Interaction, and the Tradition of Oskar Hansen”, Sternberg Press, 2014