ABSTRACT
Time-based representation has successfully integrated high-speed dierentiation and responsive production throughout building design and drawing processes. Yet, there is a disconnect typically between the diachronic state of virtual conceptualization and the xed material stasis of the constructed outcome. Could a building, or at least its primary tectonic elements, continue to develop and mature by processes of dynamic material growth, beyond phases of initial construction? And what role could this diachronic materiality – that of occurring or changing along with time – serve in reinforcing a larger conceptual and functional intentionality of architectural realization? Typical project development relies on ecient construction methodologies and turnkey exigencies. As capital for exchange, buildings require a synchronic completion eort – that is, precise and time-specic – in order to deliver a nished product to an intended end user. Cost campaigns and commercial immediacy further demand that buildings are handed over as completed objects for cultural, institutional, or private consumption. Yet, though it is obscured, a building’s material life is never fully arrested. In an ongoing entropic battleground, buildings attempt to continually resist the non-stop wear from repeated occupancy use, degradation from weathering, ultra-violet decay, and an astounding array of other disruptive forces working to smooth, atten, and debase the architectural intention. Seen in this way, architecture’s material presence is never entirely static, complete, or fully synchronic, but is instead an active arena of material-based resistance and survival. In the profession’s collective design eort to insure that this “state of play” remains imperceptible and unobtrusive, architects and clients bargain for time through an elaborate material specication process, hoping to insure their buildings survive unchanged, unaected, and forever new (Figure 29.1). In e Selsh Gene, Richard Dawkins conceptualizes that all living matter – from simple cellular life forms to the human body – can be classied as “survival machines” for colonies of information-bearing genes.2 Whether stationary and designed to take advantage of solar rays via photosynthetic capacities, as in plant life, or mobile and agile for nutrient-seeking animal life, all biotic matter has evolved materially (and selshly) in order to keep the genes replicating healthily and continually. Accordingly, evolutionary innovation for various behaviors, including the ability to quickly act and react in defense for survival, to successfully seek nutrients, or to proactively attract mates, might simply be considered material developments that insure the longevity of a biotic safe haven for these information-rich genes. For example, the visual pattern creating the optical eect of a false mouth on a trigger sh (balistapus undulatus) evolved not as decorative excess, but as an ecient and
innovative means to insure gene-pool longevity. rough deception and masquerading (I have a big mouth and I will eat you), or for mating and securing colony replication (presuming big mouths are seductive to other trigger sh), it could be argued that it is phenotypically and materially easier to evolve a pigment-based false mouth than to genetically reshape a small mouth into an actual large one. is anthropomorphized deceit (patterns don’t technically “lie” of course, they are simply functional patterns) helps to insure the security and ongoing succession of the trigger sh as a genetic project. While these evolutionary survival techniques are specic to plant and animal life, there is perhaps a shared ethos for survival in our own constructed habitat through sheer “phenotypic” inventiveness. For biotic life, this inventiveness insures the ongoing survival of the species; in case of our buildings, to insure the functional relevance and continued advancement of tectonic typologies. For instance, large structural steel bridges are continually exposed to the corrosive processes of oxidation. While in continuous contact with atmospheric moisture and accelerated with the presence of water, this non-stop proliferation of rust (typically red oxides) creates an ongoing state of diachronic degradation. is would seem to fully subvert the idea for our continuing to build bridges with steel, especially those that span bodies of salt water. Yet, in order to address this fact, a rather extreme material bargain emerges: all structural surfaces are forever coated with paint (which also degrades and erodes), or else the structural framework will fail through intrusive corrosion. Each bridge spanning the San Francisco Bay (Bay Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, Carquinez Bridge, etc.) employs a full-time sta of painters and paint-strippers to continually coat, scrub, or touch-up its structure with this pigmented layer of brushed-on and labor-intensive weatherizing protection. Working year round, for every year since initial construction and throughout its projected future life, layers of protection are applied to insure structural integrity and functional survival, and therefore conrming the lasting infrastructural relevance of the typology. In some ways, one could argue that this is an even more heroic eort than the initial construction, as the battle to stay ahead of corrosive failure demands an extensive and time-intensive process, in perpetuity. ese bridge projects can never be “nished,” and their typology for deploying exposed steel frameworks relies on this simple yet extreme reliance for this secondary (and ultimately costly) diachronic building practice. Defensive similarities can also be found in serviceable demands that maintain weather-stripping functionality on curtain wall envelopes on all large-scale buildings. e use of polyurethane and silicone-based sealants and caulks form a nal barrier against the penetration of climate forces, as well as prohibiting the internally regulated interior climate from ineciently leaking outward. Just as important, the inherent pliability of the weather-stripping acts as a exible buer between panels, allowing the overall architecture to ex with lateral wind loads or temperature variations without crumbling its protective envelope. Yet, with the eects
of open exposure and compounded degradation, the so substances of sealant must be serviced and replaced intermittently throughout the building’s life cycle. is so system remains a critical tectonic component for the longevity and survival of the building type. Like steel bridge painting, its replacement process is a part of the overall diachronic agreement of the curtain wall typology. And while this rubberized network is the keystone of protection that allows the curtain wall application to function, its architectural expression remains mostly hidden as an unspoken detail of functional necessity. While all buildings need upkeep and renovation, these two diverse typologies – the exposed steel bridge and the exposed curtain wall systems – exist only by their tectonic functioning reliance on this integrated diachronic stewardship. Furthermore, unlike many other architectural building types that aesthetically evolve through an ongoing engagement with the forces of change, the typical bridge and the high-rise generally resist any aesthetic change or any form of evolutionary architectural transformation or growth. Like the pristine maintenance program for a high-end automobile, they strive to remain synchronic, that is, in the “non-event” state of original perfection.
