Scripting Sociological Space
The concept of sociology shaping architecture, has always fascinated me. Rather than basing my thesis explorations on a series of historical case studies, I chose to look at a more contemporary example of how people relate to one another and I am attempting to design a system for translating this into a three-dimensional form. I take a clue from online social networking.
If Sociology is the study of how people inter-relate, then Sociological space is the place where these interactions occur. The big question is: can we script
sociological space?
In an urban setting, the relationship between neighbors is intensified through proximity. Traditional high density housing situations all but ignore the potential factors of proximity, making it a conflictual liability instead of a pleasurable form of human connection. What concerns me is that people, and the way they relate to each other, can often be defined spatially. For example, “my upstairs neighbor” or “the man down the hall.” There often is no real community feeling amongst them. Interestingly, proximity based relationships are increasingly apparent in the organization of online social networks. What I am proposing is that perhaps if you allow established friendship circles to exist within a space, you could create an architecture to house it.
The architectural strategy is to generate a series of tools that translate user input into drivers of a live model. This is the benefit of the digital media of social networking working in conjunction with the technology of parametric design. With a construction system that combines on-site pre-cast structurally integral modules and overlapping construction phases, a digitally conceptualized building can be constructed in a very short time frame.