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Simplicity in Space in the Age of Complexity
'Gary Chang
Gary Chang
Immerse in the age of technology, where entities, phenomena, technologies, concepts and ideologies inevitably abound in your life on an unprecedented scale. This is a time where your senses are scrupulously calculated and maneuvered to shape the life and experiences you are familiar with today. This manifestation of technology comes in both physical and virtual form, whether it be daily commodities, or in a form that contrivances in their essentials assume.
It is this rapid technological advancement where the awareness of Simplicity has its significance. This has burgeoned into a discussion regarding the logic behind this inescapable complexity brought by the immense presence of events: to cope with technology that has started haunting us in our everyday life. We would like to illustrate here the significance that simplicity could have on architectural design through 2 of our projects, the Suitcase House and the Domestic Express. This would, as we intend, provide clues to solutions that have arisen from this increasingly complicated context.
Simplicity
Simplicity is more than the pursuit of the minimalist’s manifestation. It is a reciprocal to the complexity of the system. Complexity exists in the relationships between events. Today, in the digital age that we inhabit, the existence of complexity is almost inescapable through the massive creation of events in all forms. To seek simplicity one proposes a thorough understanding of what is disguised as complexity. Simplicity is thus an organized complexity, established by stressing the similarities between events instead of their differences. Through such categorization, events could be related to each other understandably, a matrix that explains the state we confront.
Space
Space is the stage, and the relationship matrix the protagonist, together playing an intertwining two-folded interpretation. On the one hand, it signifies the boundary where one could experience the possibility of simplicity under the circumscription of resources. It is the sensible use of resources through making sense of the relationships. On the other hand, space exists through the constitution of the relationship matrix, where the array of relationships forms a system that defines space. Space is thus more than a physical boundary, but fluid in nature, made to work as a machine that confines the relationship matrix within its containment.
Sensible Use of Resources—The 4Cs
Change
Change is the universal law: in all things created through such a process. One beholds its progression along the trajectory of time. Confined within the boundaries and structures of space, where we witness the intermediate products in the process of transformation with no final form. This system signifies the composition and relationships of things, and eventually reveals the possibility of events.
To recognize change is to understand the framework in which conditioned flexibilities could be indulged, allowing users’ customization under different circumstances. In such a framework, all combinations of all events could be possible, depending solely on the desire of the individual who initiates the change. Therefore, the focus of facilitating change is about establishing the rules of relationship through providing the logic of change, which itself could provide limitless possibilities.
Choice
Choice is the multiple answer to desire, whether it be individual or collective. The extent of choice is to recognize the limitation of resources within the system, and to provide as many solutions for one’s priority as possible. Thus, within this limited realm of resources, the choice of individuals is regulated, whilst the priority one has could never be controlled. To design and regulate choice, one takes into account the context and conditions, where the constraints and limitations are illustrated and reorganized to provide a maximum number of solutions. This flexibility created within definite circumstances in a resources-conscious fashion is the deliverance to one’s ceaseless desire.
Choice signifies flexibility and adaptability. The deviser, in the delivery of the system, polishes and pours in additional value without complicating the relationship matrix. It is therefore crucial to understand the relationships and limitations of the context, and to derive a simple but sophisticated system that users could decipher and manipulate.
Coexistence
Coexistence is realized by recognizing and establishing relationships between scattered events, and by organizing them in a single symbiotic manner. This is achieved through stressing their similarities and overcoming differences, without negating the idiosyncrasy of each individual event, so that they flourish and still interlace events into a practical whole. Coexistence thus encourages diversity of events within one system. This is particularly important nowadays when products of all sorts inundate your life, and there’s no way to sort out the particular.
The co-existing approach favors diversity instead of homogeneity, while providing more choices allows greater flexibility within the system. It makes possible the accomplishment of the same task using a multitude of approaches. It also encourages adaptation and reuse, instead of imposition and erasure. Under the parameters of limited resources and tight spaces, events are allowed to self-develop throughout their varied life spans, creating a possibility of generating a systemic value that is collective and efficient, which has definite advantages over the summation of values from individual events.
Connectivity
Connectivity is the act of constructing relationship between systems to form a super-system. A super-system embeds a number of systems varied in scales and nature. The relationships between systems are totally volatile, where there is no framed order, but it would comprise mobile systems submitting to one another and in constant motion. This dynamic organization, with the simultaneous presence of inter-related systems, perpetuates the underlying complexities into a singular and complete whole.
Connectivity evokes a matrix of relationship and a platform for interaction. It results in a separate super-system that contains numerous existing systems, makes possible the functioning of different systems as components that complement each other, making better use of resources while working together as an efficient ensemble. In short, connectivity opts for a strategic construction that stretches complexity to its full potential.
Case studies: a manifesto to the 4Cs towards simplicity
Suitcase House
Questioning the preconception of the ‘house’, Suitcase House Hotel attempts to rethink the nature of intimacy, privacy, spontaneity and flexibility. It is a simple demonstration of the desire for ultimate adaptability, in pursuit of a proscenium of infinite scenarios.
The dwelling represents a stacking of strata. The middle stratum embodies a reincarnated piano nobile par excellence for habitation, activity and flow. Adapting a non-hierarchical layout with the help of mobile elements provided by the envelope, it transforms itself readily according to the nature of the activities, number of inhabitants, and personal preferences for degrees of enclosure and privacy. A metamorphic volume, it slides effortlessly from an open space to a sequence of rooms, depending on the inhabitants’ specific requirements. Each room is then differentiated by the provision of a unique amenity.
The bottom stratum acts as a container for dedicated spaces. Compartments are concealed by a landscape of pneumatically assisted floor panels. At any point in time only the essential elements required will have a spatial presence. The chambers are of specific assignation in terms of use and mode.
To blur the boundaries between House, Interior and Furniture, the entire structure and elements are clad with monotonous timber, with the steel structure supported by and cantilevered from the concrete base, housing all necessary facilities.
The Domestic Express
Exemplifying the contextual composition of compactness, the Domestic Express suggests a series of gestures in response to connectivity, privacy, spontaneity and flexibility. It suggests an adaptation of space in continuous transformation depending upon desire and constraints.
The cottage has been suggested to serve as a transition between the land and water. Taking the design rationale of a cottage together with a platform as a pier, we have decided, instead, to unite the two, creating a cottage that could be as small as a 5 x 8 meters room, but as big as the room and pier together. A set of mobile furniture runs on sliding tracks through the house onto the platform, abbreviates the differentiation between interior and exterior. An abstract bulk when juxtaposed, the furniture units can be (re)arranged to accommodate all desires and needs of its inhabitants for enclosure and activity.
The movable furniture units assembled incipiently in a box resting on a set of tracks, where table, sofa and bench are juxtaposed with and incorporated into one another. Freely adjusting the internal environment by extracting furniture along the tracks, users are given activity spaces adaptable to suit anyone’s desires.
The Express does not merely occupy the internal, but could well be extended onto the pier deck. Making use of the horizontality of the whole length of pier, furniture guided outside the cottage assembles external ‘rooms’ allowing multiple outdoor activities in response to all possible uses, including outdoor sleeping, dining and outdoor bathing.
Re: Simplicity
The concept of Simplicity makes significant contributions to the way we understand and deal with the complexities with which we are confronted in the age of massive and intensive creation of events. We recognize the inescapability of these complexities, and by reorganizing the relationship between system and space, as in the Suitcase House and the Domestic Express, we have sought to provide solutions for an alternative and simplified way of living.
The importance of Simplicity as a strategy is thus recognized. Simplicity is a “solution that is not a real solution to a specific problem in a way of relieving intellectual uneasiness and even existential anxiety” (Claude Lévi-Strauss)—a state of mind that enables us to deal with the overwhelming complexities that exist and which are inescapable in the world in which we live. These could all be achieved through the sensible use of limited resources, and consciously assembling systems through sorting out relevance and similarities.
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