The Third Skin: A Medium or a Mess(age)?

Symposium:


Session Title:
  • The Media Space: Evolving Media Architecture and Its Legend

Presentation Title:
  • The Third Skin: A Medium or a Mess(age)?

Presenter(s):


Venue(s):


Abstract:

  • Panel: The Media Space: Evolving Media Architecture and Its Legend

    Start­ing with sam­ples de­rived from the his­tory of ar­chi­tec­ture il­lus­trat­ing the key top­ics of build­ings as ‘the third skin’ of mankind the pre­sen­ta­tion then jumps into main sev­eral ques­tions for build­ing en­velopes such as pro­tec­tion, func­tion, en­ergy and mean­ing, fac­ing sev­eral dif­fer­ent con­texts of today. Open­ing a sec­ond stream of ar­gu­ments, the state­ment dives into the wide field of ‘ar­chi­tec­ture par­lante’ elab­o­rat­ing on sense or non-sense  of nar­ra­tive el­e­ments  in ar­chi­tec­ture by bal­anc­ing out their pros and cons. Ever since build­ings have been ex­pe­ri­enced by passers-by through their façades  which are phys­i­cally defin­ing pub­lic space , their gen­uine ex­pres­sion has been an im­por­tant issue, though it has not al­ways been treated care­fully enough. After bare Mod­ernism and ex­u­ber­ant Post­mod­ernism new tools and ma­te­ri­als were en­ter­ing the do­main of build­ing ex­pres­sion.

    Leav­ing aside the glit­ter­ing world of com­mer­cial ad­ver­tise­ment as well as the ‘night-beau­ties’  il­lu­mi­nated by ar­ti­fi­cial light when elec­tric­ity en­tered the cities in the last cen­tury new forms of build­ing-re­lated, adop­tive media com­mu­ni­ca­tion get il­lus­trated. Look­ing at the ex­cit­ing al­lures of pre­sent me­dia-façades the in­evitable ques­tion of con­tent is in­tro­duced and ex­ploited. Are we able yet to talk about new and re­li­able mod­els of so­cial in­ter­ac­tion defin­ing a media space or do we only face a va­ri­ety of elec­tronic at­trac­tions blur­ring the mean­ing of pub­lic space? Point­ing out dura­bil­ity and beauty as key is­sues for the longevity and life-span of build­ing so­lu­tions the glit­ter­ing media ap­pear­ance in ar­chi­tec­ture is re­flected upon crit­i­cally. In this con­text the wide range of move­able func­tional parts in build­ing en­velopes re­searched on and gath­ered into the ‘Move’-book at Prof. Michael Schu­macher’s de­part­ment at the Leib­niz Uni­ver­sity  in Han­nover (D) is il­lus­trated as gen­uine means of today’s ar­chi­tec­ture.

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