Considered architecturally, the current program of the Appliance House is simultaneously anachronistic and contemporary.
| Situating the teleology of architecture under the function of information storage and retrieval is undoubtedly archaic. The definitive example is the medieval cathedral, which was designed as an information space to communicate the totality of ecclesiastical truth to a pre-literate congregation.
This seemingly archaic purpose, however, is also entirely contemporary. It is manifest in the concepts and designs of cyberspace, a post-modern information space that is programmed for a post-literate constituency. |
This curious convergence of the medieval cathedral and the virtual information system destabilizes not only the modern conception of architecture but the status of the book--the primary technology of information storage and processing within the modern era.
Appliance House reverses the proclamation of Victor Hugo, subverting the privilege granted literature over the cathedral, and simultaneously displaces the system that is overturned by virtually dissolving its substance. Appliance House escapes (just barely) romanticism and nostalgia as it deploys a deconstruction of the very matter of architecture.
CONSTRUCTION | FUNCTION | SUMMARY