Apple is expected to announce more
Expected touch
Tablet screen on Wednesday morning.
Some reporters believe the device could be a rescue for the newspaper industry. Me?
I was wondering how it would affect the skyline. Don't laugh.
Apple's tablet, in whatever form, is expected to slide into a digital screen again ---
Plus a layer of seductive interference. -
Between us and the contemporary urban landscape.
As these layers pile up, they fundamentally change our relationship with architecture: how we view and think about architecture, and how well they are registered in our hearts.
Today, there are digital screens on the walls of almost every airport terminal, restaurant, convenience store, bar and waiting room in the United States.
They showed up at gas stations, taxis, schools and even buses.
They wrap the outside of L. A.
The main commercial complex.
They are more and more stuck in the palm of our hands, in the form of iPhones, Blackberries, and other smartphones that many of us rely on, as Dante follows Vergil, when we walk or ride through the city.
The appearance of all these screens is not a sign of cultural decline.
It doesn't mean the end of the architecture, it doesn't necessarily mean it's cheap.
This means that we are increasingly finding ourselves alienated from the flesh and bricks --and-
Mortar life of buildings-
We not only look at the city landscape with a split eye, but also look at the city landscape with a completely distracting attention.
Even the architectural work of a well-known designer is no longer just the object we face directly or consider the whole: it is usually hidden behind or half of the digital wall
When we focus our attention on the flashing objects in our hands or circles, we catch a glimpse in the background.
Of course, most of these screens are deployed without the help of an architect.
Long after the design process of the office building, casino or shopping center is over, some managers or other non-
Designers usually step in and decide to hang flat.
There is a screen monitor in every corner.
But fundamentally, the effect is architectural: the digital screen is arguably the most powerful form of decoration ever ---
A superornament.
As the sound goes on, the screen plays along the wall--
Or an iPhone that highlights the Lakers. -
Create a whirlpool that can attract almost all of our attention, making the rest of the room design invisible or irrelevant.
Writers and architects have studied generations of logos and screens in various ways that give the city vitality, and this focus has accelerated as auto travel and billboard culture begin to redefine American culture after World War II.
In the past two or three years, what has changed is the number and type of screens that flood our cities, and most importantly, the way they operate.
The collective power of these screens means that each city can accommodate the kind of visual energy we traditionally associate with special city pockets like Las Vegas Boulevard.
Every intersection is becoming Times Square.
For a few architects, these developments are welcome, opening up opportunities for creating buildings covered with digital skin, and more like immersive environments than silent commemorative objects.
Among other things, Los Angeles architect Greg Lynn talked about the prospect in an upbeat tone.
It's not hard to understand why: as the separation between the building and the digital look disappears, the building will be able to reinvent itself endlessly and constantly refresh the face it presents to the city.
Early examples of this approach can be seen in the newly built Art Tower by Eric Owen Moss on National Avenue in Culver City, a 72-foot-high, open-
Air steel structure, each of the five floors has a digital projection screen.
But other architects will respond to the rise of the screen by looking for inspiration in the early stages of the scene.
The past of numbers makes their designs quiet, meditative or unambiguous hands-crafted --
Refuel from the city's digital noise.
Explaining his decision to recruit Peter zumto to make a new plan for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum director Michael Govin described the construction of Swiss architects as a potential antidote, it can alleviate the visual overload of the Street View of Wilshire Avenue.
At the same time, as architects try to understand these changes, tech companies are busy providing us with new ways to look at and interpret architecture.
Taking Google Goggles's introduction last month as an example, it follows Google Earth, Google Maps, and other features of the company that change the way we look at the city.
This feature allows mobile phone users with cameras to search the network using images instead of text.
For example, you see a building and want to know more about it.
All you need to do is pick up your phone and take a picture-
Goggles transmit information on the Internet to your screen.
The arrival of this service means details of the building-
Who designed it, even a description of its cultural importance-
Now hover over the ether around the building and wait to download to the portable screen.
So a new world of architectural literacy may open.
Witness Dallas, but pay for this flow of information, or at least a new way of building --
Found the habit.
Essentially, mobile phones become a set of eyes we use to observe and understand the city, or a second set of eyes.
Even if Google glasses and similar programs bring us closer to the building, they push it away.
The digital screen also allows developers and marketers to rewrite the basic definition of the architecture.
Two important examples can be found in a huge building: the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, just finished its first season of operation.
The luxurious stadium, designed by Dallas construction company HKS, costs $1.
To build 15 billion
Football fans gave it the nickname "Dallas Palace.
"It is most concerned about hanging over the center of the site --
Grab all the elements: a huge four
The side video board showing the playback of the game itself and real-time actions, clear highdefinition. The board --
The two largest sides are 72 feet high and 160 feet wide each. -
It is much larger than the existing stadium screen, and the image is clearer, and it seems to have created a whole new sports Category --world amenity.
Although the stadium can accommodate up to 100,000 fans depending on the seating configuration, including 300 luxury boxes and large-scale, site-
Specific artwork from Olafur Eliasson and Matthew Ritchie, once the world's largest video board is turned on, none of them seem to matter.
Many fans in the stadium simply succumb to its overwhelming presence.
On December, the team distributed special glasses and in 3-D --
The same game was broadcast live below.
Like many new sports.
World facilities Cowboy Stadium also features a slim video screen-so-
Called ribbon screen-
Sounded in the stadium and in the inner hall.
Even the menu boards on the concession booth are digital.
The emergence of all these screens opens up new sources of revenue for cowboys and their marketing --
Jerry Jones, the savvy boss.
Stadium signage is almost all digital and can be re-programmed and shuffled endlessly during the game or season.
Companies can buy ad clips during pre-match warm-up or mid-game breaks, such as when fans leave their seats and move around.
The result is a building that exists not only as an arrangement of steel and glass, but also as a broadcast medium, such as television or radio, that is attractive enough.
Due to the large number and variety of screens in the stadium, starting with the huge video board, it was not space but time that Jones sold to advertisers.
Decoration as content decoration has always been one of the most controversial topics in architecture.
A century ago, architect Adolfo Luce
Was appointed Evangelist of the modern movement, comparing architectural decoration to degradation and crime.
In the 1970 s, architects, including Robert Venturi and Charles Moore, sprinkled ash on the decorations and made it respected again.
In recent years, a new generation of architects proficient in digital technology has begun to weave decorations on the skin of architectural design, blurring the difference between decoration and structural engineering.
But the rise of digital screens has left many architects alone.
Changes in the basic definition of decoration and decoration are slow to respond, and these changes have a profound impact on the city of the future.
At the Ruth Festival, the form of decorations is very different from that of today, meeting different needs.
The neo-classical colonnades and gothic decorations of the 19th-century city bring richness and depth to the front ---
The connection between the new building and the past building.
Los advocates rejecting this decoration in favor of the lean fluency of modernist architecture ---
A building with no extra details, liberated from the weight of history.
In contrast, the digital screen combines both sides of the old fluency --versus-Decorations.
It is both decorative and flatness, which is why it is so powerful.
As the screen begins to cover more buildings, the city will be able to update its architectural content effortlessly.
In the most extreme case, Marshall McLuhanmeets-
The Silver Wing killer has a fever dream, and the skyline may start playing continuous, full-length, like a TV
Including now.
Every building will be a modern building. to-
This means that no building will be a historical building.
Over time, it seems likely that the digital screen will make the buildings of the past more and more blurred. -
It may even make the city forget about itself.
There is still a long way to go for this prospect.
But it shows that as the screen continues to change the way we interact with the building, it's not just that the architect should pay attention.
There are also activists, novelist, developers, politicians and planners. -
Anyone interested in understanding the power of building in the digital age. christopher.
Hawthorne @ latimes.