ABSTRACT
The raison d’être of architecture is the design and creation of comfortable environments—forms, envelopes and buildings—to accommodate living. However, particular typologies of architecture, such as the corporate office building or the high-rise residential tower, disengage inhabitants from “the living.”1 In this phrase, I identify two modes of existence. First, “the living” is lifestyle or way of life, which includes people’s habits and routines. Second, “the living” is that which transforms. This sense of the phrase involves materials that grow and decay, forms that evolve over time, and non-static situations and phenomena. Together, lifestyle and durational process interact in order to enhance or violate biological matter. Thus, “the living” also connotes vulnerability. Architecture’s current disconnection from the living abounds. One experiences it every day in spaces and situations such as an office without windows, an upper-floor apartment without a courtyard, balcony, or any access to fresh air, rooms away from street life or public space, walls, ceilings and floors that are badly constructed or covered with unsuitable materials, and spaces with homogeneous light. Such poor design contributes to the potential monotony of the nine-to-five workweek, exacerbating the need to get away from work, and a number of psychological and biological disorders, including depression and irregular bio-rhythms. This chapter critiques the bland, profit-driven corporate building, arguing that its sealed structures and controlled environments are deleterious to users. In opposition, I propose that a “metabolic architecture” provides an alternative design strategy. Metabolic architecture literally and metaphorically lives, registering its existence in four transformative states: birth and growth; digestion and nutrition; motion and action; and finally, decay and recycling.
