Paradigm Map: Conditioned Air + α

Paradigm Map: Conditioned Air + α (with Sang Hoon Lee)

All inhabitable artificial environment must haveprovided a space with conditioned airregardless of its physical constraints and its scale. Especially, since the emergence of mechanically generated or conditioned air, many different kinds of architectural intervention have tried to create a dialogue with the technological innovation in air. We recognize primary air conditioning technological inventions chronologically, and how each architecturalintervention or artificial environment is positioned and related itselfalong with these technologies.

This mapisaboutthe modern history of air and underground architecture from the 1800s to present.This modernhistory along with the technological advancement tells usabout what has enabled us to extend our physical territoriesto unexplored areasin architecture. Wehavestarted to trace the historical events in technology and set up the ground (plane) on which the precedents we have researchedwouldbe located.One row of the major events in the air-conditioning, heating and lighting technologies is placed in the center as we both share them as the important historical moments, and those unique to our separate interestsareputon the top or at the bottom row. The two horizontal strips (the light gray as air and the black as underground) can be read separately, while those two together are meant to be understoodas the one mirrored image of theair and undergroundsection. As the technology advances, the attempts to occupy the unexplored territories have become more frequent at the various scales frompersonal spacesto urban mega-structures, you may see the denserpopulationsat a certain moment of the history or the emerging types of architecture in the different social and cultural contexts.At the end, we hope to locate and connect our thesis within these discourses, and our architectural interventionsmayoperate within the dominant paradigms on the maporsuggesta paradigm shift.