Architecture: Towards the Intermittent Frequency of Dissemination

Architecture takes on many different forms. A structure is a physical manifestation in the built environment. Architecture is only a small portion of that physical construct. Architecture is a form of media and communication that is conveyed through language, imagery, specialized codes, standards, policies, arts, and craft.

That communicative aspect resides in the conscious and subconscious worlds. A good architect can deliver a project that controls you knowingly, such as dictating the flows of pedestrian circulations through the combination of volumetric forms, function, and visual indicators. When presented with two doors along a path, the design will lead to the entry, or in the way that I want you to travel. The path to the destination can be long to encapsulate the full breadth of the work in its entirety, or the destination can be direct. Maybe there is a special feature in the project interior so we establish conditions to pull you inside.

There are techniques to place one in a transition of motion through space, a sort of transit encompassed in the interstitial with terminations at an arrival. All of these things really depend on the level of command that is imbued within the work; the connection of design that flows between the mind, to the hand, and into reality which would be the physical realm.

Even the simplest project of the most minimalist modernism has extreme layers of complexity captured within the clean lines and organizations. A concrete post and beam structure with infill glass panels is still a complicated convergence of elements. The formal language speaks of simplicity and elegance, however, the architecture is rich with invisible, and sometimes disguised, meanings. If those reasons were represented as literal representations of the architect’s hand, the project would be littered with a code-like graffiti delineating the strategies and reasons.

The conveyance of that design intelligence occurs in what I call the “Intermittent Frequency of Dissemination.” Quite simply, the architect broadcasting through the medium of design, how much, at what intensity, where, when, and why. In some cases, these schemes can be a transmission at a specific who, or whom. This ability for an architecture to become the embodiment of multiplicative constructs requires additional layers of substance to achieve the type of schematic modulations that induce the intermittency required to activate the design.

The architectural dissemination is a binary function. These complex functions which can be delivered through volumetric space, design strategy, or elemental congruencies, ultimately attain simplicity resulting in the basic notions of transmit and receive. These functions are then programmed as operators which are singular fragments or multifaceted arrays. In some cases, simple functions can address and solve multiple design challenges.