The Battle for Territory

Reyner Banham - The Anatomy of a Dwelling: 'With very little exaggeration, the baroque ensemble of domestic gadgetry epitomises the intestinal complexity of gracious living. In other words, this is the junk that keep the pad swinging. The house itself has been omitted from the drawing. But if mechanical services continue to accumulate at this rate it may be possible to omit the house in fact.'


House III - Peter Eisenman. Historically defined architecture as a stand alone autonomous building art. A total rejection of an environmentally-entangled notion of architecture.

Territory here suggest the predominant concepts and true relationships between external environment and the distinct autonomous building. It is the 'physical autonomy' versus the 'environmentally entangled'. Territory as the architectural strategy of one accommodation with or refusal of, an external techno-natural environment. It epitomise a series of shift in an stand-alone building art to a vacuous and statistical 'environmentalist' conception of architecture.

The physical autonomous architecture is work that stands as a distinct counterpoint to what is given in its natural setting, while the environmentally-entangled architecture can be typified by a building that is sublimated into its mechanics that respond dutifully to every single natural factor of its setting. The post-war situation see the fast development of the later made possible for us to discard our floor-wall-roof from our house as the mechanics alone is enough to support living.


A culmination of the blasting engineering gadgetry. Living is possible without architecture!

The human-made mechanics that produce new living environment is eating up and challenging the significance of the autonomous architectural objects of bricks and concrete. Our pursuit of an idealised internal environment and the endless answering to the ever changing external natural condition push engineers further in creating more mechanical gadgets that is crucial for our survival. These gadgets are occupying our space, winning the battle of territory. This is an age of techno nature, architecture has became a product of multiple formulae of statistical calculation, everything interact with everything, the distinction between human and non-human, natural and artificial entities are blurred.

Those gadgets are the virus that mutate the red blood cells of our historically-defined architecture. End of architecture history start with the degenerated importance of our building, giving way to the new army of mechanical environmental gadgets in the battle of territory...


Reyner Banham - Un-house