LIGA 08: Plan:b (Col). Permeability
Photography: Ramiro Chaves
Some say that Joseph Priestley “invented” air during the spring and summer of 1771.[1]
It’s difficult to know to what extent the clergyman and amateur scientist was aware of the consequences of placing a mint plant in an inverted bell jar, an experiment he carried out in the Wunderkammer in his house on Basinghall Street. The result of this experiment is well known: the plant, confined in an airless environment inside a pneumatic cask[2] was able to survive and continue to grow. Priestley confirmed that the vegetable fragment neutralized something that, in similar experiences, had caused mice to die from asphyxia or had extinguished the flame of a candle. In the autumn of 1771, he was confident enough to share the results of his investigations related to the “restitution of air that had been poisoned or corrupted by animals or breathing”[3] with The Club of Honest Whigs.[4] He caused astonishment upon announcing that air had ceased to be invisible, since it could no longer be thought of as the empty space between objects.
The scientific finding that Priestley shared with this community was even greater than the discovery of a molecule (dioxide or O2) or of an immutable and stable law (similar to the law of gravity). Actually, these few cubic inches of air generated by a mint stem contained the principles of a metabolic strategy that would change the understanding of life on our planet. It unveiled a vast, intertwined system connecting animals, plants and invisible gases in a political ecology articulated through energy flow and molecular exchange. Whether he knew it or not, Priestley set in motion an ecosystemic conception of the environment, suggesting that the historical and political subject is no longer activated by an individual (human–anthropocentric–or biological–biocentric), but by an ecosystem5, or exchange network.
And what about architecture?
From an ecosystemic perspective, architecture cannot be anything other than a junction within this entanglement, a filter through which interactions are arranged. This is why permeability is one of its fundamental characteristics. Arquitectura permeable (Permeable Architecture), an exhibition conceived by the architectural team plan:b, opens in LIGA 08 in Mexico City in February 2013. According to the organizers, this exhibition will be one that “allows interchanges, the transference of any kind of fluid from one place to another, as well as its gradation.” Both the exhibition and the book that complement the show propose an almanac of permeable architectures featuring key concepts related to permeability (such as “absorbency,” “penetrability,” “flexibility,” “availability,” “interchange,” “circularity” and “convergence”) known as Permeability Angles. At the same time, it is also a catalogue of Permeability Phenomena, a group of small case studies to understand the phenomenon in different formats. Finally, it comprises a set of Permeable Projects designed by plan:b, which exemplify an architecture that acknowledges its ecosystemic condition. Permeability, that elemental characteristic Priestley described more than two centuries ago, and which makes biotic communities and social groups function, guarantees the continuity of scales (in a spatial as well as temporal scale, ranging from the micro to the macro level) of a porous system that can be affected, but can simultaneously cause affects and effects, through a relational architecture.
The methodology of plan:b resembles Joseph Priestley’s, not only in the laboratorial, experimental and interdisciplinary condition of production, but also in their immense intellectual generosity. Like the British scientist, this national team has tried to make its discoveries available to the general public using all available means of communication (books,[6] conferences, prestigious associations, sketchbooks, social networks, etc.), in order to permeate communities. plan:b is aware that architecture is inscribed within a political ecology and that it cannot be isolated. For them, architecture needs to make agreements with the other interested parties that participate in the ecosystem. Architecture is a permeable object and, as such, is permeable to controversy, which implies discussion. Architecture is, undoubtedly, the “art of permeability.”
[1] Johnson, Steven, The Invention of Air. A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America, Riverhead Books, Penguin Books, 2008.
[2] An artifact adapted to capture and manipulate gases of different natures.
[3] The text where he would later explain the global implications of his findings is titled Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air and other Branches of Natural Philosophy,Connected with the Subjects… Being the Former Six Volumes Abridged and Methodized, with Many Additions, Birmingham, Thomas Pearson, 1790.
[4] Priestley stayed in close contact with two communities of knowledge: The Club of Honest Whigs (during his stay in Britain) and the Lunar Society (after he moved to the USA).
[5] The term “ecosystem” would not be coined until the 1930s by the botanist Arthur Roy Capham, as an answer to Arthur Tansley, an Oxford colleague. He proposed this term to define the complex interactions between organisms and their physical surroundings. See: Willis, A. J. “The ecosystem: an evolving concept viewed historically”, Functional Ecology 11:2, 1997, pp. 268-271.
[6] To date plan:b has published: Acuerdos parciales, Medellin, Colombia, Mesa editores. 2006; plan:b. Arquitectura en espera, Medellin, Colombia, Mesa editores, 2009; AAVV, Archipiélago de arquitectura, Medellin, Colombia, Mesa editores, 2010 and plan:b, Mazzanti. Escenarios deportivos, Medellin, Colombia, Mesa editores, 2011.The Art of Permeability. By Uriel Fogué
