This set of readings offered an interesting insight on structure and program. Banham’s research of the history of structure relative to environment produces results that cannot satisfy a mechanical system. We are looking at architecture that only provides a framework that models in a mechanical world. We have to look at new ways for architects to invent programs found from the results produced by shelling architecture for a mechanical world.

It should be noted that, the systems for an enclosure should be integrated with the structure. There should be a cohesive balance between Architecture and Engineering. The aesthetics should not be affected by a system in a negative way, rather rely on this system to create a new architectural space relative for the inhabitant.

I think looking closely at Banham sketches and drawings can help interpret how space should integrate itself with systems and nature. The programs that fill itself inside a space should have a specific part that plays in the aesthetics of creating useful architecture.

In the article, ‘A Home is not a House,’ Banham looks at the history of building in the United States as primarily concerned with the shell structure, which does little to protect the user of that interior space from the environment and as a result requires constant energy, service and upkeep. Hence in his opinion, architecture is just providing a shell – a shell that houses all those mechanical utility equipment. He proposes a new way of living on the American frontier instead. The intention involved is to create a new paradigm for how architects in the twenty-first century think about program by looking at various shortcomings in function and aesthetics resultant from the variety of modernist and post-modernist manifestos.

‘A Home is not a House,’ does a good job of diagnosing the general problem in America (poor quality, lots of upkeep, iterations) by looking at the history of housing in the states. Banham states that the home in America has been a shell to conceal and monumentalize the environmental controllers and technologies. Because of this lack of appreciation for interior space, he makes the case that America’s true space of monumentality has always been its exterior and its frontiers. Banham proceeds with a step by step account of how to wean Americans off of shell homes and into frontier homes which become flexible monuments to the natural living where minimal environmental adjusters are used in conjunction with an ever movable power source (the automobile) in order to bring families closer to the natural. The most powerful aspect of the argument for the exterior living condition is that of the variable camp fire where a spectrum of complex conditions are produced by the interactions of the wind, fire and light. Because of its simplicity and ubiquity of the campfire, Banham believes is the next move in American living, while relying heavily on new technologies of control.

In the essay ‘A home is not a house’, Banham puts forth the idea of living closer to the environment with less complex and rudimentary housing structures, devoid of multifaceted mechanical services enclosed in shell structures. I agree with the fact that a house can be an open source living rather than being the structured and materialized format. The idea of mobile housing is fascinating as to it being portable although it hinders at the same time the layout of permanent relationship to the infrastructure of civilization. He discusses about the inflatable environmental bubble having the potential to create a space which can enable living area but the question so arises is that of whether the space really could ensembles all the architectural environments.

Antfarm, influenced by Buckminster Fuller and Archigram’s work about the utopian structures and inflatables, worked on the relationships between mass industry and environment degradation. They intrigued the roles of mass media and consumerism and the use of advanced technologies. Felicity Scott illustrates Ant Farm’s work of the 50’x50’ inflatable pillow as to the rigorous engagement with the environment away from the ethos of life. The architecture and art displayed through it was visionary and definitive source of many ideas leading to comprehension of certain inflatables and environments.

In the essay “A Home Is Not A House”, Reyner Banham states that there are two reasons why mechanical systems have not been fully integrated into architecture. One being that “mechanical services are too new to be absorbed into the profession”. The second, he states, is that “the mechanical invasion is a fact, the architects-especially American architects-sense that it is a cultural threat to their position in the world”. I disagree with this statement. I believe the real reason why mechanical systems have not been fully integrated into architecture is because of the fact that there is such a variety of different systems. With variety comes the ability for change. Say for instance an architect or engineer integrates a system within in a structure and then the client determines that the system is too costly and wants to change it. The whole system would then have to be redesigned. Banham also discusses how the inflatable dome has potential to be a livable space with systems as small as those in a mobile home.

In the article “Ant Farm”, Scott provides a view from inside 100-by-100 foot inflatable by And Farm. This installation was designed as a game in which players remain in the inflated pillow for a week without eating. This was staged in a way for the mass media to shed light on Media Theater. However, it relates back to Banham’s essay in which he discusses the inflatable dome as a space to live in. The systems for living were integrated into the structure and proved that a person could live in the space for a short period of time, albeit a week.

I found this weeks reading have probably have the strongest relationship to contemporary architecture than any previous discussion.  I am not saying the previous discussion points do not apply to architecture, rather they affected architecture more overtly.  That being said, I found the interest of these articles with bubbles as a primary architecture material in design to be to much fiction.  I fail to see how these structures that are described in Antfarm or Banham’s environmental bubble could become a pragmatic structure in today’s settled culture.  Perhaps this is because I can’t envision living in them during the middle of a Buffalo winter. One quality of the bubbles that I found interesting was flexibility of the structure.

Using our previous course discussions about how the perception of time and space have changed, it is interesting to think about how the house can be affected by this.  One of the underlining themes that all of the proposed homes have is the ability to move. Through advancement of technology the theoretical foundations, such as the importance of a location to a house, may no longer exist.  If we apply the ideas of previous lectures like cybernetics and speed, I could imagine a home to be anywhere and still be able to perform the capabilities of a house.  So after thousands of years being a settled culture, due to these changes we could once again become a nomadic culture.

Alive inflatable structures, inspired by bubbles, allowed rethinking architecture at a new angle. Through the prism of science fiction Hadas Stainer describes “a search for radical valid images of cities”. An emergence of a comic book as a new mode of representation opened a reader a new dynamic travel through “time that unfolded in space”. So, creative thinkers of that time imagined a future habitat with a new possibilities and structures.  From a fantasy were born new modes of shelter such as capsules and pneumatic structures, or “bubbles”. Such inclination towards floating forms is not only a “conquest of gravity” but also an intention to create an alternative architecture of the future for the future.

Inflatables represent a new architectural skin free of constraints. It is extremely flexible and compact structures which are clear representation of contemporary dynamic way of life. As Stainer writes: “Young architects aspired to an architecture as portable as a suitcase, or even a suit”. So, inflatables provide such a freedom of space and movement as soon as they are adaptable, portable, light and compact. We can consider such structures as a second artificial skin in which our body can be enclosed. Mike Webb’s design of Suitaloon is a quintessence of a body extension in an intermediate form between cloths and house. Thus an inflatable home is no longer fixed or rigid structure; it is mobile and transparent ambience that you can reach at any time. It is architecture “to go”.

In the article “A Home is Not a House” Banham writes that “a house is nothing but a hollow shell…in which human being live and work”. He talks about “mobile home” as if it could be disconnected from the fixed urban place in sake of freedom and variability. He states that a portable standard-of-living package could bring a man “nearer to a natural state in spite of his complex culture”.

Within Felicity Scott’s text, Blow-Up, it discusses the concept and idea of pneumatic structures and how they were inspirational and constantly inventing itself. It would be attempted to be utilized in various ways, some would embody a single human being, while some would be big enough to fit a group or a crowd. Their (Ant Farm) main concern was the research and how others can contribute to the findings. It has also provided insight into how to overcome the exclusivity of interior and exterior space. In the cluster of bubbles, each bubble adapts to the conditions of the neighborhood. They each automatically adjust each time a new bubble was joined to the collection. The development of these pneumatic structures has been very inventive and new. It has allowed designers and researchers to build a new structure and space that can somewhat behave like a bubble would. It was architecture that was free of constraints, compact, and portable, which reflects back on to their progressive lifestyle. In Banham’s text, A Home is not a House, they discuss about whether or not “it was worth the trouble of giving them an independent supporting device.” A house is partly all mechanical system, and it is merely just a shell that humans occupy.

Inhabiting the network. This week’s texts step up in scale to the conception of the role that the house occupies in a modern society. The (im)materiality of this conception is of particular interest, where Fuller saw the mass-produced unit, Antfarm saw the amorphous bubble, to Banham conceiving on the literal environment as a means of ordering the inhabitations of society. What I find fascinating of this proliferation of a house from a tied down (overly) materialized object is the possibility of an open source housing. One whose means of production and constraints allow not only for a person to decorate their living space, but to spatially define it. The possibilities of a similar process exponentially grows when these configural methods can become articulated quickly to instantaneously. Where a bubbles is dependent on its physical location on spaceship earth, I dream of an environment proliferated from time.

In the text “A Home is not a House” by Reyner Banham he explores the understanding of the average American home and the supporting infrastructure which is often seen as permanent in space and time. However through a series of illustrations and architectural analysis he states that the infrastructure of the home is operative independently of housing envelope. This “shell” encloses the space for superficially and he argues that the multiplicity of hardware for conditioning can serve as a shelter and become more about a series of every changing parts rather than a fixed object. While Banham does not criticize American housing architecture aesthetically, he writes about its inefficiencies due to spatial conditions and design elements. For example, he openly critiques the american open plan versus the European “cubicular” design which he believe is more thermal stable. In another comparison Banham explains that during the period of the 20 path century there was a large focus on cleanliness in America and order to satisfy that desire there was more dedicated mechanical systems compared to Europe. He concludes with design dealing with environment in one of two ways, hide from it (architecture) or react against it (mechanical systems) and with his idea of the un-house or the reduction of monumental architecture and complex forms, he believed there were new forms that serve as function.

In the text “Blow Up” by Felicity Scott, she creates a distinctive, yet compliment arrive narrative of the work of Ant Farm in relation to the text of Reyner Banham. Ant farm was a collection of environmentalist, artists, designers, builders, actors, cooks, and self-proclaimed hipped that were interested in balancing the environment through a reexamination of societal and economic practices and functions. Describing this in the text Scott states, “Environment is not only finite, it’s short. So is time”. To be able to portray this to the public and to begin a wide ranging conversation about the environment and human in habitation, Ant Farm used mass theatrics and spectacle of occupying inflatables in front of mass media to gain attention and highlight and rethink environmental concerns. Inflatables such as “The Magic Pillow” or the Alamomt Speedway project we considered instant, temporary, inexpensive and portable. Also events including “Media Theatre”, “Pollution Art” and “Air Emergency” suggested that the dwelling and the collection of housing in a urban environment could be considered a instant urbanism that is dynamic and adapts to new environmental and societal flux.

Additionally as agreed upon in the text Beyond Archigram, bubbles, Hadas Steiner explains “The greatest weakness of our immediate urban architecture: the inability to contain the fast-moving object as part of the total aesthetic”. Using examples and knowledge gains from comic pop art which references science fiction, there was a convergence of different areas of study to explore different cultural attitudes towards new space and context relationships. A pop art example includes text bubbles in comic books which were supported by a invisible air system. These can be imagined as dynamic plastic skin spaces and use pneumatics or constant low-pressure to inflate structures and architecture always at a state of adaptation and flux.

In the final text of Buckminster Fuller in “Nine Chains to the Moon”, he stated that there were four implications and issues of mass produced housing, need for master planning, evolved designs and skimming out quality over economics, display home would be massed produced with idea of “knock-down” and small lifespan due to poor materials, and unfortunate arbitrarily predetermined aesthetics instead of context and environment specific designs. Shelter service instead of housing, focuses on specificity through production, services, and replacement means research and implementation. This gives a high standard of living with mobility and transiency. Lastly he transitions into how this theory moves into fruition using the example of the first mass produced housing of the Dymaxion Model. This model uses the ideas formulated by Fuller by attempted to create a architecture that does the most in terms of shelter and conditioning with the least amount of resources and most amount of mobility possible. This creates a architecture that is dynamic and mobile, designed for the 21st century need for environmental consideration in a every growing and evolving society.