DEMATERIALIZED ARCHITECTURE

IMMERSION
CYBERSPACE
LIQUID ARCHITECTURE

EVERSION

MARCOS NOVAK
HYBRID INTELLIGENT ENVIRONMENT
TRANS ARCHITECTURE
ROBOTICS

CONTENT
MARCOS NOVAK - WHO IS HE?
HIS APPROACHES
EMERGENCE OF VIRTUAL SPACE
CYPERSPACE
TRANS ARCHITECTURE
LIQUID ARCHITECTURE
AS HE SAYS LIQUID ARCHITECTURE
VARIABLE DATA FORMS
PARACUBE
DATA DRIVEN FORMS
HOW NOVAKS LIQUID ARCHITECTURES ARE GENERATED.
EXAMPLES

WHO IS HE?
Marcos Novak is an architect, artist, composer, and theorist who employs algorithmic techniques to
design actual, virtual and hybrid intelligent environments. The self-described trans- architect is
seeking to expand the definition of architecture by including electronic space, and originated the
concept of liquid architectures in cyberspace and the study of a dematerialized architecture for the
new, virtual public domain, the immersive virtual worlds.

WRITINGS:
Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace (1991)
TransArchitecture: Against the Collapsing
Radius of Fiction
Transmitting Architecture: The
transPhysical City (1996)

His approach:
we conceive algorithmically (morphogenesis);
we model numerically (rapid prototyping);
we build robotically (new tectonics);
we inhabit interactively (intelligent space);

we telecommunicate instantly (pantopicon);

we are informed immersively (liquid architectures);
we socialise nonlocally (non- local public domain);

we evert virtuality (transarchitectures)."

Transvergence

EMERGENCE OF VIRTUAL SPACES:

Transarchitectures

Once predicated on qualities such as enclosure, form, and , architectural

Transmodernity

space is finally getting rid of its physicality and is now giving way to virtual

Liquid architecture

spaces, where digital technology emerges in the form of data and

Navigable music

information. Digital media are responsible for creating a new territory

Habitable cinema

where stability and actuality are tempered by this indescribable reality: a

Archimusic

reality where variations of visual qualities, internal contents, and social

Eversion

expressions are influencing the creation of new spaces. However, this is

Allogenesis

not an imperious assumption. The emergence of new virtual spaces does

not always mean the end of physical space.
By, "...placing the human within the information space, it is an architectural
problem; but beyond this, cyberspace has an architecture of its own and,
furthermore, can contain architecture

cyberspace is architecture, cyberspace has an architecture, and cyberspace contains architecture"

CYBERSPACE:
But what does it mean literally?
Cyber connotes automation, artificial control, and computerisation. In the context of artificially
generated imaginable environments,
space, of course, means a multidimensional place, most often used in relation with Electronic spaces
created by computer-based media.
Cyberspace relate to virtual reality (VR), data visualisation, graphic user interfaces (GUIs), networks,
multimedia, hyper-graphics.

TRANS ARCHITECTURE:
A new domain extended to include intelligent local, remote, and virtual space as a new
continuum; the techniques for designing in this new continuum involve conceiving
architecture algorithmically, modeling it directly from data via new techniques such as rapid
prototyping, building it robotically, inhabiting it interactively, occupying it telepresently, and
connecting it seamlessly to virtual space, where a parallel conceptual and poetic structure
applies

In short, transarchitecture is
The intersection of information, in the form of
algorithms, and the material world, as robotic
prototypes.
It is the intermingling of architecture and
media, the combination of design and
machine/computer.

LIQUID ARCHITECTURE
Cyberspace is liquid. Liquid cyberspace, liquid architecture, liquid cities. Liquid architecture is
more than kinetic architecture, robotic architecture, and architecture of fixed parts and
variable links.
Liquid architecture is an architecture that breathes, pulses, leaps as one form and lands as
another.
Liquid architecture is an architecture whose form is contingent on the interests of the beholder;
It is an architecture that opens to welcome me and closes to defend me;
It is an architecture without doors and hallways, the next room is always where I need it to be
and what I need it to be.
Liquid architecture makes liquid cities, cities that change at the shift of a value, where visitors
with different backgrounds see different landmarks, where neighborhoods vary with ideas held
in common, and evolve as ideas mature or dissolve.
Marcos Novak, Cyberspace: First Steps.

AS HE SAYS LIQUID ARCHITECTURE

Space is no longer innocent. Under the impact of science and technology, ordinary space has
become just a subset of a composite "newspace" that interweaves local, remote, telepresent,
interactivated, and virtual spacetime into the new spatial continuum that is the focus of emerging
transarchitectures.

Physically, this installation consists of four interrelated parts :

a)a large scale video projection of liquid forms derived from mathematical explorations of virtuality ;
b) a physical model captured from the fluctuating projected virtual forms ;
c) a sensor-created, invisible, interactive sculptural form, and ;
d) a generative, interactive soundscape that weaves the previous three together

The video projection consists entirely of liquid, animated mathematical forms

derived from the manipulation of mathematical fields.
Various kinds are shown in rapid succession.
An interactive, generative musical algorithm drives the video, intercutting among
various sources at a high rate, producing a large number of new variants by
multiplexing the sources in time.
Each strand of video is thought of as a separate reality, and the rapid intercutting
suggests the coexistence of multiple superimposed realities in the same instance.

VARIABLE DATA FORMS (1999)

This investigation seeked to create architectonic propositions

that are liquid, algorithmic, transmissible and derived
from the geometries of higher dimensionality.
By "liquid", Novak intends a total but rigorous variability driven
by data shifts in cyberspace that can be transformed into
physical world.
By "algorithm" Novak means that the forms are never
manipulated through manual corrections : rather, the
mathematical formula that generate them are adjusted to
produce different results.
By "transmissible" Novak means that his data-forms can be
compressed into algorithmic codes for transmission to
fabrication sites, machines or to virtual environments.

PARA CUBE (1997 1998)

For this project, a cuboid was defined by six

parametric surfaces, each with its own coordinate
system.
The parametric equations governing each surface
were arranged so that a variation on a particular
surface would cause reactions or permutations on
adjoining surfaces, effectively creating a topological
cube.
The parametric cuboid was manipulated to create
two forms : a skeletal frame and a smooth skin.
Parametrization allowed the smoothness of each
element to be defined and manipulated through
computational formulas
the frame was derived from the same process,
where the skin was computed at high smoothness and
the skeleton at low smoothness.

PARA CUBE (1997 1998)

The skeleton was then mathematically extruded into the
fourth dimension by adding a fourth coordinate to every
three-dimensional point.
Thus, points became lines, lines became polygons,
polygons became cubes and cubes became hypercubes.
The resulting four-dimensional object was rotated about
a plane in four-dimensional space according to the
appropriate matrix transformations.
The transformed object, projected back into threedimension space, became a space-frame of variant
dimensions.
The skin was not extruded into the fourth dimension but
instead remapped to create a rippling, non-homogeneous
surface.

DATA-DRIVEN FORMS (1997 -1998)

These images are the result of deriving forms from fields of found
data. As spatial models, the forms explore two concepts : the
delamination of passage from one data set to another and arbitrary
cross-fade (between data sets).
In the examples shown here, an algorithmic function extracted from
linked Web pages as two sets of points in the three dimensional
matrix.
Using spline-based interpolation, two sets of curves were generated.
From further functions, the two sets of intertwined surfaces, or
"lamina", were formed.
A series of crossing links (cross-fades) were then enframed between
the conjoined surface-forms, producing a rich enmeshing of distorded
frames and surface modulations.

HOW NOVAKS LIQUID ARCHITECTURES ARE GENERATED

Composition created by a genetic algorithm. This

image forms the basis of the following
investigation of the spatialization of information

New composition derived from previous one by

processes of superimposition, masking, and
filtering, Information implicit in the original
composition is now visible as color variation.

Merging of algorithmic composition with scanned

data, Image processing reveals hidden patterns
implicit in the structures of the component images.

Variation of the image in previous stage produced by

further image processing. Although it is simply a
transformation of the previous image, for the viewer
this image constitutes, in effect, new information.

Three dimensional algorithmic composition, with

the composition shown in image 1 mapped onto
the environment of a cyberspace chamber.

Two algorithmically composed objects in a

cyberspace chamber. Dynamically varying
algorithmically composed textures combining
computed and scanned information are displayed
on
both
objects
and
environment.

Dynamically
varying
three-dimenional
composition comprising a liquid architecture.
The number and dind of its component parts vary
according to factors such as position, size, and
proximity to other component parts.

Visualization of a liquid architecture in cyberspace.

Mapping information onto object and

environment, varying it in place, time, and
attribute, focusing attention through filters and
masks, and inhabiting it allows hidden patterns
to become visible, and therefore knowable.

The information content of computed and

digitized data is used to create the perceptual
character of this space, the "place" of
cyberspace.

A MULTIMEDIA CYPERSPACE PROJECT AT BANFF CENTER FOR ARTS IN 1991 the first
example of a new virtual space created through the themes of liquid architecture.
The project was to join inner and outer worlds, moving into and out of virtual space.

in shell VIEW OF THE MODEL

CLOSE UP in shell VIEW OF THE

MODEL

ex shell VIEW OF THE MODEL

ZEICHENBAU 2000

It originally consisted of five elements: a video projection

of forms generated by mathematical algorithms, a
physical model, fixing the fluctuating projected virtual
forms, a sculptural form created by an infrared sensor,
an interactive and generative soundscapes weaving the
three elements, and finally the visitor himself.
The space is constantly reformulated evanescent
environment according to the information exchange
between the elements.The sculptural form that remains
one of this facility symbolizes Marcos Novak phenomenon
eversion, the transition from virtual to reality, that of a
digital architecture with built architecture.
It was conducted through a manufacturing process called
"rapid prototyping" called LOM (Laminated Object
Manufacturing), laser cutting and overlapping layers of
material.