Manuel Cerdá, researcher at PROS, publishes his book with title “The Ubiquitous Space” where he talks about the influence of ICT on architectural space, proposing a new vision of it, showing the differences and innovations that this model offers in contraposition to modern and postmodern ones.
SUMMARY
This work is aimed to interpret, analyse and know which are the conceptual bases that nowadays define the idea of space in architecture, the contemporary ways of dwelling, through the analysis on a specific pattern, the ubiquitous space. This tries to reveal a new way to understand space, which has arisen from what today is shaped as “the new paradigm”, associated to the Information and Communications Technology era (ICT).
The intention of this work has been born with a proposing vision. Not a historiographic one. The interest lies in getting deeper in the present to reveal known data -although they are not yet assumed or sufficiently applied-, which will lead to propose a working system that develops in practice the essence of dwelling today. Through the definition of this ubiquitous space, an objective pattern of space in harmony with our era will be exposed, as a proposal to develop today a really contemporary architecture.
In order to characterize a way of understanding space by today’s human beings, inputs will be taken out from the stated environments of analysis: Technology, Society, and Architecture. This way, it can be revealed how architectural space and architecture acquire a new real character* from what is virtual, facing a new way of understanding man and his needs applied to the built fact. How the sense of speech is changed, focusing the idea of space in a new holist pattern of human being.
An especially social component follows from this situation. On the one hand, thanks to the new possibilities of individualization that these technologies promote; on the other, thanks to the arrival of a new social environment, a new way of understanding society which becomes a support for multiple and new needs. In their different scopes, it will be analysed how to manage this situation and how to establish bridges of interaction among the people, from the most intimate space to the social space, the network.
This work is born as a personal investigation project, the one of an architect who builds and who, according to his way of facing the materialization of reality, searches to set up a working method arisen from the project, and adding to it the virtual condition under a real and pragmatic vision of it.
For this, a specific project of architecture is chosen as a study case, UBITAT 1.0. Mainly, its analysed parameters will be the ones that gave origin to this project, now extended, modified or renewed according to the needs of investigation required by each moment. They will be a guide to extract a global depiction of the object of study -space-, which will allow its application to other settings with the only aim to answer the key question of this work:
What are the characteristics that define today’s space and, therefore, what does it mean to dwell today?
It will be claimed that the actions of today’s man, who has changed and is bearer of new technologies, are the ones that portray the spaces he dwells in. Through these actions, the new architectonical space proposed here will be defined in order to authenticate the initial hypothesis.
After that, a conceptual data table will compare this and the other two most characteristic space patterns of the 20th century: modern space and existential space. Through this comparative table, the new spatial pattern proposed will be independently clarified and described.
Finally, the work will analyse what types of architecture assume today this new idea of space reality, trying to settle -in a simple way- in which environments does the discipline of today move and which changes, improvements and possibilities does the proposed pattern, ubiquitous space, offer to today’s discipline.