“Architecture” hereafter refers to the cultural discourse of creating worlds, interiorities mediated through physicality, and virtuality. What is interiority then? Not bound to physical interiors per se or enclosed places, it is an emergent characteristic that supports a sense of being consciously present within a space.
In that complex ecosystem, the virtual comes in and picks up real fast. The distinction becomes increasingly difficult, not only between the physical and the virtual but also between the difference in terms of the territories where this variance matters. The effects of projecting through each of the media, and the impossibility of achieving certain affects using solely one or the other, make it progressively essential to work with both.
Architectural volume, contrary in significance to space, is “unlimitless” – in other words, finite, with a secret desire of being geometrical. It is an independent entity that is bound, produced by sets of tricks played on the space-time continuum. Hence, interiority as volumetricizing space. That is to say, volume is still space, but a designed one.
This is history, and not far away, popping up from within the dominant physical-virtual duality, a universe built on an abundant set of distinct worlds. A model in a computer, an animated filter on an iPhone screen, an immersive virtual reality experience, etc., these are all stand-alone happenings. Not so much stand-alone though. But that is what our medium of consumption suggests. Through the screen of a mobile phone, what we see and interact with makes the whole story of that footprint vanish. It becomes uncertain whether that footprint is even real, seeable, or even existent.
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