1. CYBERDEFINITIONS

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Architecture welcomed the emergence of new electronic spaces with great enthusiasm. Although architecture is a seemingly sedate (stable) discipline, it easily came under the influence of the dynamic characteristic of cyberspaces.

Architectural boundaries are not rigidly defined, which allows external ideas to penetrate the territory of architectural discipline. Because of this, architecture easily adapts philosophical, mathematical, and physical concepts and translates them (or their parts) into its own language, including it in the canon of architectural aesthetics. The openness of borders, according to Elizabeth Grosz, is a result of the eternal search for the architecture of its own identity:

What is interesting about architecture is that is has always been unsure as to where to position itself and its own identity as a discipline: it is itself internally divided about whether it is a science, a technological discipline or a mode of art or aesthetic production. [1]

The question of architectural identity has been asked not only by architects. According to Grosz, ‘architecture is not simply the colonization or territorialization of space, though it has commonly functioned in this way, (…); it is also, at its best, the anticipation and welcoming of a future in which the present can no longer recognize itself’. [2]

Building on the achievements of science, architecture absorbs the rules made by it while acting as an art form, wherein the validity of these rules is constantly challenged. Thus, it becomes a bridge between science and art, the filter through which the ideas of science penetrate the ground of art.


1.1. Architectural (r) evolution

Rejection of the concept of durability in architecture is part of ‘dematerialization of the world trend,’ the process that has been present in the culture for centuries; it derives from the virtual abstractness of the human mind. In the twentieth century, thanks to the emergence of electronic bitsphere and virtual worlds, this process began to intensify and become a permanent part of the existential space.

Designing immaterial, 'not buildable' buildings is as old as the practice of architecture itself. When we refer to the philosophical concepts, attempting to understand the essence of architecture itself, we will see that over thousands of years of an architectural existence, many breathtaking works of visionary architecture were conceived but not built.


1.1.1. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

The first (documented) milestone on the way to the perception of architecture as an integral part of a virtual experience was the 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili', a work attributed to the Dominican monk Francesco Colona, published in 1499 in Venice. [3]

It is a story full of mystery of a young man, Poliphila’s, travel to Arcadia. [4]  Buildings, whose descriptions and illustrations can be found in the Hypnerotomachia, are like objects from a dream. The design is based on an architectural knowledge taken from the works of Vitruvius and Alberti, while the way of thinking shown in the Hypnerotomachia is very similar to the way of thinking presented by architectural visionaries, for example, dealing with "nowhere," as if it was "somewhere,", which is a common feature of the discourse of visionary architecture; the idea of abandonment of concerns about the weather conditions and limitations of the physical architecture; the idea of short-term objectives, predicting, and architecture of events (which had a huge influence on such artists as Cedric Price, Archigram, and Bernard Tschumi); descriptions of machines and a discourse of the old dichotomy between biological and mechanical life. It all can be found in 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.' Landscapes of the Hypnerotomachia are somewhat similar to the metaphysical desert landscapes of Chirico and certainly could have been inspiration for the Surrealists. Machines in the Hypnerotomachia are bizarre hybrids of ornament, mechanism, and desire. They are, according to Neil Spiller, an announcement of Duchamp’s "The Large Glass" and other mainstream Dada ideas.

Another project, ‘Instant City,’ was developed by Cook and Herron simultaneously. Herron developed his scheme under the influence of San Francisco’s architecture and Cook constructed his version based on the English Smalltown model - a bizarre and 'tubular' structure.

‘Instant City’ consisted of a set of lightweight mobile structures, television screens, and inflatable service facilities, including a whole set of mobile toys developed in the previous decade. [6]