sensing the virtual

While preparing the text for a book on IoT I re-read a paper by Brian Massumi: ‘Sensing the virtual, building the insensible‘, published in 1998 in Hypersurface Architecture (AD, profile 133, vol.68). What once again is remarkable is that Massumi, ‘building’ on Deleuze, points to the problematic situation architecture has in relation to the virtual:”The virtual is imperceptible. It is insensible. A building is anything but that. A building is most concrete“. His proposal: “Built form could be designed to make the “accidental” a necessary part of the experience of looking at it or dwelling in it. The building would not be considered an end-form so much as a beginning of a new process.”

In a hyperconnected world, with an IoT this brings new options to life and – more important – to inhabiting new forms of architecture, i.e. creating structure as a basis for further experience and – above all – the accidental.