Architecture has continuously been evolving with machines. Thus, the dimensions of the living spaces have been influenced. The refrigerator affecting the size of the kitchen and the television for the living room. High-rise buildings were made possible by the elevators. The escalators also allowed people to circulate deep into a box, making possible for departments stores and shopping malls. Vehicles made long-distance travel convenient and have made Mega-cities possible. At the same time, they occupy a large part of the construction with parking lots.

The rapid pace of global development has been accelerating and the pandemic was another opportunity to further propel the progress. With the internet, mobile devices, and cloud servers, it is no longer necessary to work together in one place, and it is an era where everything can be done at home. The combination of mobile device’s applications and artificial intelligence is evolving urban logistics. They lead to a physical changes in architecture and urban environments.

In 1923 almost hundred years ago, Le Corbusier's in his publication ‘Towards a New Architecture’, remarked that "A house is a machine for living in" it is well known. It was the result of mass production and standardization from a new spirit defining the industrial age and observations from machines such as automobiles, airplanes, and passenger ships. From it. Which we all know too well, a new residential space was created. It was said to understand and utilize the meaning and aesthetics of machines. The machines’ functionality, standardization, and logical disposition can contribute to architecture.
Approximately, a century later, wouldn’t we be in a similar situation? Can we discover new architecture from the various phenomena we face today? Is there any construction that responds to the challenges of new machines?
For the 35th space prize for International Student of Architecture Design, we would like to investigate new and diverse situations presented by machines. We would like further to discover numerous possibilities and contemplate how architecture can keenly responds to them.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) in mobile phones and Closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed everywhere converts people's consumption behavior and behavior patterns into big data. They are able to predict not only the business feasibility of local alley stores but also, product to be displayed at big mart stalls. Utilization of headgear gives access to the virtual world where there are no physical restrictions.
Air drones are presenting new possibilities in terms of transportation and other delivery systems. Electric vehicles and autonomous driving requires shift in thinking about gas stations and parking lots.
Self-driving autonomous vehicles do not require a driver’s seat. They are evolving into an independent space that allow activities other than driving (which requires acknowledgement of the space and design). Global automakers are scrambling to introduce city planning based on their respective technologies and automobiles.
As described, many changes are unfolding in our lives from hardware to software. Is there anything that architecture can respond to this phenomenon? Directly or indirectly, it is significantly influenced by spatial configuration and environment. However, it is difficult to find an architectural response or imagination that can correspond to it.

The 35th Space Prize for International Students of Architecture Design, ‘Architecture vs Machine’ is a theme for observing and imagining new possibilities of architecture through machines. Perhaps it was an unfamiliar subject and an unfamiliar relationship of the two keywords. So, a little less submission than previous Prize were received. Nevertheless, most of the submitted works contained various thoughts and unexpected interesting stories. The 11 finalists presented their new architectural interpretations for machines (techniques) that fit the theme. In particular, each project presented architecture as a result of imagining and thinking through dense observation and analysis, and was able to identify various solutions beyond the scope of architecture as we know. In particular, top four works were able to discover the future of young prospective architects through profound research, logical power, high-quality expression, and sharply revealed architectural imagination. I applaud all the students who made great achievements through their hard work, regardless of awards.

GRAVITY CONVERSION SYSTEM

PROBLEM
Currently, housing in Korea has problems with house prices and overcrowding. The reason for this is that the land we can use has a limited area (X and Y axes) due to gravity. In order to overcome the limit of the land area, it is time to think of an architecture that overcomes gravity rather than a method that withstands gravity.

PROPOSAL
If the same force is applied in the opposite direction to the direction of gravity, the object will stop; if a large force is applied in the other direction, the object will move in the direction in between. Based on these assumptions, we propose a pin system that utilizes electromagnetic force to create artificial gravity.

GRAVITY CONVERSION PIN SYSTEM
The gravity-altering pin system generates a magnetic field with electricity, and that force makes artificial gravity possible. Using GCPS, the construction area was expanded to areas that were not possible with conventional gravity, rather than development that creates flat land.

DESIGN
The space arranged on the axis reversed by artificial gravity brings a special experience. On the path from the trail to Oksudong Cliff 1-1, the intensity of artificial gravity changes. This gradually changes the axis of gravity and presents a new landscape. The spaces using the steep slopes of the mountains make the concept of layers disappear and induce a natural flow of movement. In the spatial composition, we focused on maintaining familiarity even with large system changes. The courtyard, skylight, and windows for different views that are only possible on the reversed gravity axis were planned, and the shape of the house viewed from the city (existing gravity elevation – roof surface based on artificial gravity) reminds us of a familiar landscape.

Jury’s comment
It is a project that allows us to imagine things we have never seen before. Through the artificial gravity devices with knowledge from physics and in mechanics, the project proposes a solution to current issues of the urban and architectural environment. In particular, the plan, elevation, and section familiar to us intersect and unfold as a new axis, and the spaces of perspective, observation, and imagination presented in juxtaposition with the everyday environment. Complex calculation formulas and elaborately disassembled mechanical devices was represented in stark contrast to the simple architectural form. The strategy with the ordinary form of architecture was outstanding to make us to understand whole processes and achievements.

Data Monumentality

DATA MONUMENTALITY: Reclaiming Public Data
Our investigation begins from one question: where is contemporary life situated in the epoch of digital transformations? When we sit at our desk and receive a new message on one of our screens, how do we make sense of the processes and physical infrastructures that make this possible? We envision not only the future of this infrastructural system but make further attempts to imagine the possibilities of its physical reality and potential political implications.

As revealed in our initial case study of Equinix, the world’s largest data infrastructure company, the physical reality of the data industry has been disregarded and intentionally concealed from the public eyes, despite their deep penetration into our daily activities. We are no longer able to perform our day-to-day duties without using the internet that travels through one of Equinix’s facilities, although we cannot see their facilities around us. The problem that we challenge here is this disparity between the ubiquitous internet connection and the displacement of physical infrastructures from the urban centers. We believe that this problem is at the risk of centralizing the power to the hands of private monopolies. We call this digital parasitism, and the further studies seek militant strategies to battle against the private monopolization of internet infrastructure – so as to reclaim public data back to the hands of the individual end users from this digital feudalism. As a resolution, we imagine a monumental public data infrastructure located in the middle of Manhattan.

This tower establishes and maintains the exponentially growing urban data network, while serving as a civic device to reveal the system to the public eyes. From conduits to cables and tanks, every process and physical operation that enables distribution and processing of data becomes transparent and habitable in this tower. This tower democratizes and reclaims data back to the public. Architecture of the tower depicts the future that we envision. Infinite data accumulation is no longer limited in the initial boundary of the building. This tower provides a porous structural framework, and the equipment is incrementally installed as the public demand increases. The form of the tower is itself the physical manifestation of the public data usage. The tower grows, and no one has authority to define its final form. Growing inside the James Farley building, the tower introduces new public monumentality by not only expressing civic ideals but also generating common goods for the district. It utilizes excess heat from the machines by distributing it to the district and providing hanging civic spaces within its porous structure to hold various public activities. Data infrastructures no longer crawl in the shades of the city but boasts its presence at the heart of the city. Our commitment is to envision an immediate technological future that is already in the progress.

Jury’s comment
This project is about a proposal as a new method of data center that has penetrated deeply into the urban environment. Contrary to the reality of a huge concrete mass that has been hidden for safety, proposed mechanical devices are actively used as the outer shell and structure of architecture. By revealing and showing them, Data center get safety and security. Furthermore, it discovers possibilities that people can utilize. It was excellent in observing and suggesting the problems of modern cities from a new perspective through a paradoxical method. Also, whole representation in the form of propaganda was very effective and outstanding to strongly asserts this paradoxical content.

Cabinet of Data

Cabinet of Data: on the right to (im)material belongings
We live under a regime of knowledge production in which service users are forced to produce data, and decisions and actions are informed by processing the data through advanced statistics and prediction models. This post-Fordist model of flexible accumulation requires data scientists, a vast amount of data, delirious network infrastructure and most importantly data storage.

This project focuses particularly on domestic space. This is because even though the boundary between home, office, metropolis has already collapsed, domestic space remains as a battlefield of ownership between individual, enterprises, and state.

Brief
- This project tries to redefine data as personal belonging therefore attempts to claim right to data through introducing new storage device and space for both digital and physical belongings within social housing typology.
- Following studies mainly focus on how this new storage room can be interacted and related to other furniture, rooms, infrastructures, housing complexes and cities in various scales.
- Three different types are studied according to different protocols of sharing storage spaces.

Collected objects and belongings play a decisive role in the formation of identity of individuals, families, and communities. And architecture, especially housing projects have an ability to delimitate boundary or to open up space, and material and immaterial disposition can turn people and things observable. This project aims to appropriate this ability of architecture to protect personal and private belongings by exploring the boundaries between cabinet, room, housing and beyond.

Jury’s comment
Based on in-depth research (from the past with beginning of civilization to the present with digital data, a project is delved into the ownership about the virtual data we made everyday. The project identifies the relationship between the material world and the non-material world facing people in terms of actions, behavior, and space in history. It shows that architecture is not irrelevant to technology, society, and politics. It proposes space, architecture, and infrastructure as a role in coordinating these complex relationships. Architectural solutions are compared and verified from individual residential spaces to collective housing and community spaces. All presentations are very delicate, refined and well-readable, like alphabet (a well written thesis).

Parasitic Proliferator

Parasitic Proliferator is a space habitat building upon itself with as little intervention from the Earth possible. Scale and design of space facilities launched from Earth are heavily limited by the payloads of rockets. ISS, for example, architectural qualities are compromised noticeably to meet the limit.
With asteroid mining and space 3d printing, such compromisations are no longer needed. Space facilities are built in space without launching, therefore habitats can be designed with better consideration on space itself.

Parasitic Proliferator builds space habitat out of inflatable membrane. Absence of gravity and a sense of direction in space dissolves the identity of wall, floor, and ceiling - reducing them to a membrane simply dividing interior from exterior. The membrane may softly embrace the vulnerable human movement in a microgravity environment.

Fully automated infrastructures for mining and manufacturing are sent from Earth, and attached to the Node - the structural framework. From these infrastructures, additional facility units and inflatable complex, which is a human habitat, are built. In the complex, wires fix individual habitats and public areas on air. Each habitats divide its internal space by pulling membrane to the core. Furnitures are fixed on the core. Parasitic Proliferator becomes an outpost for space development as the proliferation proceeds.

Jury’s comment
It is a project about architecture in space. Based on various information and technologies known through space stations and travel, which are actively occurring now, it proposes an architectural environment with zero gravity. The proposal are brilliantly explained from A to Z, such as how to create space, what to assemble, where to expand with unit from earth, how people to occupy, and even how to generate and maintain energy. In addition, the architectural form and its representation were excellent.