Architecture is a Hyperobject

Buildings are objects. Architecture is a hyperobject.

When architects talk about architecture, many times it’s inspiring. They describe their process of creation, the connections they find are surprising, their definition of humanity is inspiring.

Sometimes, however, it’s annoying.

I’ve heard several architects simply drag out phrases that weren’t going anywhere, many times because they just weren’t prepared for a speech. Other times, they were actually trying to describe some architecture. But it just came across oblique or even pretentious. Architect Rainier de Graaf writes about this in his books, especially in Architect, verb.

Buildings are fairly easy to describe because they are objects: finite, they are tangible, they are physical. Architecture, however, is neither of these things. That makes it difficult to describe.

So what type of thing is architecture? Architecture is a hyperobject.

What is a Hyperobject?

Author and philosopher (I think) Timothy Morton has a book on the matter. In Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, he uses the term hyperobject to describe stuff. Really big stuff like the universe or global warming. Or really small stuff like the climate or rainfall. Hyperobjects are things that are difficult to grasp because people have been used to object oriented observations (what he calls OOO), making it easy to deny the existence of certain things. But that’s a subject for a different post.

Hyperobject characteristics

Architecture is a hyperobject not because of its scale but because of its nature. I’ll use Timothy Morton’s 5 characteristics of hyperobjects and correlate them with architecture so you can see what I mean.

1. Viscosity

Viscosity refers not to the physicality of hyperobjects. It refers to our perception of them. Morton uses The Matrix to describe this trait of hyperobjects. Neo’s reality, the simulation, the one before he takes the red pill, is viscous. Similar to your own reflection in a mirror, that you see but cannot touch, and yet it sticks to you almost like a film of oil, hyperobjects are something you can’t get rid of. Like radioactive waste.

an entirely new mineral formed by the explosion of the first nuclear device — Trinitite, an entirely new mineral formed by the explosion of the Gadget, the first nuclear device. Photograph by Shaddack. fig 4/p.35. Hyperobjects

Architecture is viscous. Once you see, or better yet experience, different types of architecture, you never forget them and they affect the way you move around in space. A church is always going to have a steeple. A school is always going to have a courtyard. Doorways are for going through, stairs are for climbing. Stairs are optimal ways for reaching higher levels because humans are optimal stair climbers.

Once you first learn about architecture elements, they become the way you experience your surrounding space.

2. Nonlocality

Atomic Bomb Trinity, 1945 — Trinity test at 0.016 seconds, July 16, 1945. For some time this picture was banned, since it was considered far more provocative than the habitual mushroom cloud. The tiny shapes on the horizon are trees. Los Alamos National Laboratory. fig 2/p.8, Hyperobjects

Hyperobjects do not occupy a specific position in space, just the way that rain does not only fall on your head. A consequence of OOO is locality – this, however, is an abstraction.
Buildings are local. Architecture, on the other hand, isn’t. A sense of place, place-making, locality, genius loci, all these are included in architecture practice. But, for architecture, locality becomes an abstraction of traits. Any mountain cabin should have sloping roofs. Any beam should stand on pillars.

3. Temporal undulation

In 2011, scientists discovered that Earth is surrounded by a gigantic space-time vortex, confirming Einstein’s theory. “Earth drags space time curvature with it as it spins.” Time is an effect of objects and not an absolute container.

ancient cave paintings of oxen — Replica of the paintings in the Chauvet Cave. It is difficult to project one’s imagination back as far as this earliest known example of human art, as it also is to project one’s imagination forwards to the end of the half-life of plutonium-239 (24,100 years). fig 6/p. 59 Hyperobjects

We use styles to better position architecture in both time and space, but mostly in time. Style, however, is the same as locality – an abstraction. Styles can be an homage (Neoclassicism, Neo Gothic etc.) or reactionary (Postmodernism). In architecture, time (style) is an effect of objects (social and economic factors), not an absolute container.

aerial shot of a neogothic church in azores — A Neo Gothic Church in the Azores, a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

4. Phasing

Morton describes hyperobjects as hosting all possible states of itself, as a system. The example he gives is Earth’s climate. It is a single, unified, massive force with the biggest effect on the planet, yet self-referential, self-influenced, almost impossible to compute.

Lorenz Attractor Pattern — Lorenz Attractor. The first strange attractor was this pattern made by weather events plotted in a suitably high dimensional space. fig 7/p.71 Hyperobjects

Architecture is a hole in the ground. It is also a sky-scraper. It is a tombstone. It is a single family home. Architecture is difficult to describe because it encapsulates all three-dimensional building gestures, initially manmade, eventually overtaken by nature. Newly constructed buildings start being architecture as soon as wooden sticks are placed to mark the contour of the foundation. Unused, decaying buildings never lose their architecture, until they are actively demolished and replaced.

All possible states of a system, shaping the architecture of a building, exist simultaneously. In the case of adaptive reuse, all prior states of a building coexist in the present.

5. Interobjectivity

This is a trickier aspect of hyperobjects. It describes the different ways we can perceive hyperobjects, using interactions of different specific objects. Morton uses the example of how we use fossils to study dinosaurs. The rock, the dinosaur’s print, electromagnetism and the observer all work together. A dinosaur’s reality exists in interobjectivity.

Dinosaur footprints at Dinosaur State Park and Arboretum, Rocky Hill, Connecticut. An interobjective system consisting (at least) of a dinosaur, mud, a human photographer, and electromagnetic waves. Photograph by Daderot. fig 9/p. 86 Hyperobjects

Interobjectivity can be found in architecture as well. Let’s, for example, take an indoor space. It has a volume, some sort of lighting, entries and exits. The length, the width, the height, the proportions and its relationship to mathematics, the way it reflects natural or synthetic lighting, the movement of people inside and around it, they all work together. Architecture exists only in interobjectivity.