Essential Install | Smart Thinking : The Future Is Now
The Technium : The Future Is Ours
Sean Langton , founder of Kineticka , designer and installer of advanced home cinema , home automation and multi-room systems , challenges installers and architects to embrace ‘ The Technium ’.
Homes on the other side of the world could be digitally linked
Farcaster Wall Image © kineticka . co . uk licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Mirror could deliver high levels of convenience and control
Image © kineticka . co . uk licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
What is the Technium ? You are in the Technium now . An ecosystem is a system of inter-dependent organisms and conditions . Ecosystems evolve . The current system can only exist because of past systems , each a stepping stone for new levels of action , each creating new sets of conditions , niches for life in its many forms .
But of course that ’ s what architecture does : it creates new conditions for life and culture , as does science , education , art and technology . Our culture and technology is evolving , enabled and built upon current and past developments . Kevin Kelly , ‘ senior maverick ’ at Wired magazine , who helped launch Wired in 1993 and served as its executive editor until January 1999 , uses the word Technium to describe this complex stratum of evolving interdependencies and capacities . The Technium is evolving and growing fast . Our buildings and approaches to technology must also evolve if they are to nurture our current and future cultures .
Edges Don ’ t Exist
Renowned architect , Sou Fujimoto ’ s work is based upon the integration of oppositions : inside , outside , nature and the city , private and public . His buildings appear as beautiful organic responses to a complex ecosystem . Might this philosophy be applied to the Technium ? An architecture which consciously integrates and negotiates the Technium , allowing some aspects to flow into our buildings and homes , while preserving our freedoms and privacy , both facilitating the Technium and moulding it .
Our architecture is already resonating with the Technium . Every new home is expected to embody the Technium to some extent . Another famous architect , Zaha Hadid , creates amazing fluid structures which both embody and extend it . Zaha ’ s practice , using extensive research and investment in new technologies , tries to push the boundaries of what ’ s possible with architectural materials and forms . They think of designers as hackers , hacking the future .
There is one thing we know about the future , it will be different . Austrian architect , Wolf D Prix , uses computer modelling and algorithms to create new closed architectural systems . Then he breaks those systems . We need to always be breaking out ; invite the Techium in , then rebel against it . We need different viewpoints and ways of living , different spaces for our expression .
Our relationship to space changes with our ability to transverse it . Escalators , lifts , moving walkways and fast moving vehicles allow physically distant spaces to be effectively closer . We expend less energy and trouble to move from a space here , to enter a space there and so we make that journey more often .
A new architecture needs to notice that space has changed dramatically ; spaces now travel to people .
People strive after experience ; 3D displays , 3D soundscapes and virtual reality are common and on the increase . Your friend Facetimes you from the other side of the world , the Internet delivers as much media as you could ever watch to your home displays , computer or phone . Wherever you are , distance can be collapsed . You remotely perceive other spaces . Currently these experiences mainly involve a rectangle of detailed moving images and stereo sound that we carry or place in buildings . Architecture should take on some of these roles ; a wall becoming a display when needed , or a control surface . Any room could allow you to participate in an audio conference with a friend . It would be a kind of liberation if your hands could be free of phones or technology while you were within an advanced building . Architecture would be permeable to other spaces and people not physically present . You could speak or act freely within a larger world and expand beyond your physical constraints .
Farcaster Walls
The dining room in two homes , say London and Tokyo , are joined together by special interactive walls . Each room contains a carefully calibrated audio and video system such that any person in the Tokyo house may talk and interact with the person in the English house ‘ through ’ the wall . The wall acts like a digitally interactive window between distant physical spaces and is always on . You can imagine children playing together ‘ through ’ the wall or chance encounters with guests in another house . A celebration where the party is extended from one room to the other , crossing time zones , people sit next to each other near the wall and chat , or stand and make a toast to all the guests at the party .
32 | November 2016