City-Tech-Space

Technology Infused Spaces

Cities of today rest on technological foundations that drive entire

economies and socio-cultural systems. The traditional meanings of
space have tremendously changed since the advent of technology.
This change is a product of technology. We argue for the need of a
technological perspective to the designer in orger to find their relevence in a world riddled with Globalization and Digitalization.
BHASWATI MUKHERJEE | JITHIN SHAMSU | PULKIT MOGHA | SHIJO JOSE
SANDIP KUMAR | FIFTH YEAR | TECHNOLOGY

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CITY-TECH-SPACE | 3

SPACE The third section delves into the realm of technology-infused spaces beginning with its definition and scope. The paper
understands these spaces as varying shades of grey, and instead of
classifying, builds a conceptual framework to arrive at a narrative to
look at the ways in which technology-infused spaces are experienced
within the city. Hence it explore spaces in their attributes of performance, interactivity, transience, code, virtual, etc in the context of
Delhi.

his paper hopes to bring forth the ways in which technology

is infused/embedded within the city and space. Technologically
infused space, simply put, is one where machine or code is embedded within the built in ways that modify its nature spatially. The
spaces themselves cannot be studied in isolation from the socio-economic context around which they are built. Therefore our pursuit
towards understanding spaces of this nature concurs with the social
construction of the spaces.
Technology has changed the way we go about our lives and the way
we negotiate with space. This transformation is not just about spatial
perception, but intersects with notions of city and user.
CITY The spaces and rhythms of contemporary cities are radically different to those described in classic theories of urbanism
(Buck-Morss 1989). This section begins by talking about the contemporary city, and the experiential qualities that come associated
with it, building on the argument that the uniqueness to this urban
experience can largely be attributed to its technological bearings.
Using Marxs historical materialism to establish the significance of
material productive forces i.e. Technology in its capability to influence society and cities, presents code and machine not just as neutral but political tools. The first section deals with the city and its
users, and the economy central to its sustenance. It encapsulates the
urban experience and the economic reasons of it being the way it is.
The urban experience is subtly seen as blended with technological
references.
TECH The second section directly deals with these technological
bearings, as a foreground to the urban experience. It is here that
Delhi is tested in the mould of the contemporary city. Technology
and its parameters are defined, limiting our scope to direct engagement with spaces. The resultant is a larger picture, linking an economic process to its technological means.
The spatial experience is enabled and dictated by technological interventions and solutions. The aim of the City-Tech section is in encapsulating the experience of the contemporary city and establishing the innate technological roots of this experience. A zoomed-in
spatial experience which is of relevance to the practitioners of space
is the focus of the third section.

Any discussions about Cities today are incomplete without including ideas of surveillance and privatization, Globalization and digitalization, cybernetics and biometrics, power and authority. The end
is a full circle coming back to the city, and connect the dots between
a globalizing world and technology. This section brushes on these
ideas to put them together under the aegis of a technological perspective.
A section for Architects argues the need for practitioners of space
to incorporate ideas of technology within the spatial discourse, and
understand space from a technological lens rather than sleepwalk
into technological initiation.
While the premise of this paper is to shed light on the spatial possibilities enabled by technology, it also establishes through the experience of the city, the irrevocable significance of technology in the
world today. A systematic approach of looking at spaces through the
possibilities of that space does justice to the subject of study, technology infused spaces, while condensing simultaneous connections
to theoretical discourse (surveillance, privatization, globalization,
cybernetics, etc), types of technologies (virtual, digital, assemblage),
and spatial commentaries (phantasm, ethereal, transience) thus covering spaces alongside their politics.

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City is experiential. The city is sensorium. The city is modern and

chaos. Always envisioned as constantly moving forward, the contemporary city is now a dynamic entity, ever-changing, uncontained. To
comprehend it, the city needs to be realized in psychological and
spatial terms. The psyche of the city user is a response to the material
forces at play around him. While the psychological can be explained
by the socio-economic on all levels i.e. the city and the individual;
the spatial aspect of the city becomes the crux of our study. Neither
can be studied in isolation from the other. Before technology comes
into the picture, what makes the city?

City and the Dweller- Psychological, spatial experience

Building from Marxs historical materialism, which perhaps seems
to make more sense now than ever, society functions on the material
productive forces that provide them with indispensable relations of
production, which is the economic foundation of the city and society.
The socio-cultural, political and legal substructure of society rests
on this very foundation. And the ideas and collective consciousness
of society depend on these very material conditions (Marx 1859).
Simply put, the way man/woman is and thinks is determined by the
way they produce for subsistence. The objective, economic-sociological factor is the determinant of the human condition of the time.
City is the center of commercial activity. Cities crumble when their
economies do. Everything here is attached to a money-value and can
be quantified. The city is supplied almost exclusively by production
for the market where the producer and purchaser never interact directly (Simmel 1980). The economic exchange, an important social
function becomes a rational impersonal exchange. Nothing is left
ambiguous. Innovations like watches bring notions of precision and
punctuality. Time is paced. Everything is quantified. The city dwellers mind as a result becomes a calculating rational tool. While emotional response is reserved for those close to us, most of our social
exchanges employ a rational, calculating, quantifying mind.
There is heightened social plasticity within an atomized society.
Lost amidst the crowd, the city dweller is in a constant struggle for
individuality. Conflictingly, distances have reduced, time has shortened and means have emerged that allows the city-dweller to foster
a complex network of social relationships of far bigger magnitudes
than was possible before. Mobility is a universal application, and
not associated to distances alone. Communication can now happen
digitally over screens. Anonymity and pseudonymity engage with
the virtually isolated, new kinds of social networks have emerged.
Users of technologies are connected in real-time with users all over
the world. A lot is happening within the city for the user.
The psychological foundation, upon which the metropolitan individuality is erected, is the intensification of emotional life due to the
swift and continuous shift of external and internal stimuli. (Simmel
1980). The urban experience is one of shocks and constantly chang-

ing images. The human sensorium has built resistance through impersonality to parry these shocks (R Subramaniam 2002). Attention
spans have shortened; and distracted, fleeting responses to external
and internal stimuli are pavlovian. The intensified emotional incidence of rapid stimuli of the city ran in tandem with technological
means.

Digital media has informed spatial perception and usage

(Verstegen 2001).
New electronic media has brought sensing and experiencing to the
foreground of spatial experience (McLuhan M 1964).
Advertising and displays, global malls and arcades have brought the
commercial center to profitable ends.
Virtual social media and mobiles have enabled social plasticity, and
multiplicity in social relations.
Large transport infrastructures: metro, underground subway,
monorail and airports have reduced a sense of distances and time.

CITY-TECH-SPACE | 5

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For the purpose of this seminar, technology is to be understood as

the drive for efficiency (as with machines), its active verb technique
as an ensemble of means (Ellul 1964). However the technological
process does not work in isolation from socio-political processes. And more often than not, technology can be used as a political tool. When entering the spatial realm, technology takes form
in machines, code, networks and assemblage (Kitchin, Dodge 2011)
that together with the built modify and create new spaces. These
spaces possess characteristics that are possible only because of the
presence of these technologies. These characteristics of space, are
referred to as the attributes of technological spaces.

This City, a Product of Technology.

The economic system of the city was facilitating and simultaneously
facilitated by a technological drive. In the Indian context, the economic reform of 1991 enabled a neo liberal capitalism in its cities.
Foreign exchange and investment steadily stabilized the nation salvaging its economic state. A steadily growing tertiary sector of information workers became the citys majority dwellers. The Indian
city was a land of opportunity, and witnessed unprecedented migration and an exponential growth in urban population. For a capitalist
free market, the city dweller was a consuming mass. The market
became the center-stage of city economy. So much so, that the market and consumer culture gradually consumed the public realm. Entire professional industries emerged, catering to strategize, manage,
advertize and aid consumption. Multi-national giants established
stakes within markets which became global in themselves. A strong
unplanned response to all this presented itself in interstices within
the formal hegemony of policy and planning. Slums emerged, so did
pirate markets (Sundaram), resettlement colonies and urban villages.
> English is the principal language for the business transactions in
India.
> India has the second largest and the fastest growing pool of technical manpower.
> High availability of Computer literate, English speaking and educated customer care professionals.
> India has the lowest manpower cost. Manpower cost is approximately one-tenth of what it is overseas. The annual cost per agent in
USA is approximately $40,000 while in India it is around $5000.
The India Advantage
Source: Call Centre Calling : Technology, network and location -Raqs
Media Collective
Original: http://www.delhicall.com/why-india.html

CITY-TECH-SPACE | 7

India today is an important global player, with immense economic potential. Its cities are
teeming with information workers, dealing with abstraction, making for the majority of its
middle class (a 70.95% GDP contribution by the tertiary sector (Economic survey of Delhi,
2005-06) makes their voices heard over the urban poor). There are imprints of globalization,
and efforts of the nation state to project a global image in a globalizing economy (like the
Commonwealth Games). Large scale projects and events of global scales are also an effort to
present Delhi (and India, as in the case of smart cities) as a node of investment, as the collective vision and future aspirations of all parties involved. Major Indian Cities have becomes
centers of services and business through which capital and other resources flow in and out
of their economies.
The neo-liberal capitalist Delhi demonstrates the urban experience of the contemporary
city.

We,
live in gated communities.
consume and window-shop in technology enabled glass megamalls.
engage with each other through virtual means. Are used to being under constant surveillance by third parties in our public spaces.
upgrade accessories and lifestyles.
walk through bright neon displays and hoardings selling anything under the sun.
casually shrug when we hear Do not touch any unidentified object, it may be a bomb in
the metro.
attend the Delhi International Jazz festival every year in Nehru Park.

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the common, everyday objects of industrial culture have as much

of value to teach us as that canon of cultural "treasures" which we
have for so long been taught to revere.
Buck-Morss, Dielectics of Seeing

Fig: (top) attributes/

possibilities of technology-infusd space

Technology-infused spaces

Source: Author

Technologically infused architecture is one where machine or code

is embedded within the built in ways that modify its nature spatially.
Technology-infused spaces are hence spaces owing their attributes
to technologies, assemblage, technological artefacts, software and
codes. The placement of a telephone within a booth gives that space
its function. The projection onto a screen is what facilitates the purpose of a cinema hall. It is these embedded technologies that allow
spaces to perform in a certain way.
The notion of performance of space can stretch further from the traditional notions of neutrality, staticity and specificity of space. Space
moves. Spaces changes temporally, transforms, flows into. How does
technology enable these attributes of space?
On closer inspection one finds that some technologies function in
deterministic ways in spaces. Most studies on software and technologies focus largely on how it affects social systems and how they
are formed, organized and regulated only with relation to time and
place with the space in which they exist being a mere coincidence.
Hence, these accounts of the relationship of society and software
are independent of the spatial component. However, society does not
function aspatially, but rather forms an important component shaping social relations with the intricate formation of layers of context
that hold people and things together. Kitchin and Dodges Code/
Space (2011) talks about the kind of space whose very spatiality depends on the existence of code to make that space function in a certain way, some of which we discuss in our framework. These spaces
can simultaneously be both global and local where it is grounded in
spatiality in the local context while can be accessed and controlled
via network from anywhere in the world. One of the opportunities
when designing spaces that have code infused in them is how a
space can be made intelligent and how the sensors can be used by
the user to match their own preferences. It is ultimately upto the
designer to provide for these as code steadily become a part of the
designed space.
There is a multitude of ways and degrees in which technology has
manifested in all disciplines, including space. Any attempt to classify these spaces is but impossible because the technological process
is constantly updating, moving forward, at the same time expanding
epistemologically; with a plethora of interconnected manifestations
that seem to overlap in a dense network of their material histories
and social construction. So rather than attempt to divide on the
basis of types of technologies, we chose to look at their spatial possibilities.

Surface| Perform| Interact Stretch| Morph| Extend

Network| Connect| Flow

Imagining space to be a contained entity, a bubble, defined in its

edges (as has been the purpose of walls in design); one can begin
to observe this these edges are not as definite and that the space
undergoes transformation. This transformation has broadly been
structured into three kinds of transformation.
The first kind, Interact, is spaces that exist within their spatial extents, but within that boundary find ways to facilitate function or
allow new spatial possibilies within that space.
The second, Morph looks at spaces that stretch these spatial extents beyond four walls in their user experience into phantasmatic/
virtual/simulated/cyber/digital space.
Network covers this extension to the next level where space becomes capable of connecting to another allowing mutual exchange,
becoming transient or part of a network.
This isnt an attempt to classify but explore the ways through which
spaces transform, and build a narrative from there. (The image
above is only but a conceptual marker for thinking about how spaces
are experienced today, and not an attempt towards their classification.) More important than the narrative is the arrival to a collective
realisation of innateness of a technological facet to spaces.

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Designers understand the effectiveness of these strategies in enabling consumption. The shopping mall, cultural centers like Dilli
Haat, open avenues of Connaught place, or much simply even provisions of selling vertical surfaces as advertising space is a careful deliberation of how spaces can be used to promote and sell consumer
lifestyles. Needless to say this is a heavily debated issue that revolves
around the loss of publicness, privatization, corporatization and
the ethics of people friendly-design, to the inevitability of capital
systems.

Fig: (clockwise from topright) Paharganj at night,

Connaught Place arcades,
Ghantaghar electronic
market, Palika underground market
Source:
http://goo.gl/VShXhA,
http://goo.gl/1OpJFx,
http://goo.gl/GArQZs,
http://goo.gl/gur1JH,

Interact
There are ways in which spaces perform in immediacy to their surroundings and interact with their users. Surfaces are, with much
success, used in the contemporary city to disperse ideas of consumption and popular culture. There are visual stimuli of rapidly
changing imagery on streets, in public spaces, the metro, in malls
and shops, as far as the eye can see. The eyes are attuned to Neon
Displays and signboards, signage and graffiti; hybrid spatial ensembles that users interact with on a daily basis. The city experience is
these sensations.
The Global typology of Shopping Mall is carefully designed to uses
techniques and spatial planning to entice and immerse the consumer (Koolhas 1998). Much thought and investment goes into strategizing and designing spaces that promote consumption. Klein (2010)
talks about how culture has been surrendered to forces of marketing in which the media plays a big role. Successful corporations are
highly focused on producing images which is a part of marketing for
creating wealth and cultural influence. Commodity as social evaluation is a stereotype that exists now more than ever. To add it this,
Consumer credit allows the shopper to make purchases beyond the
extents of what physical cash used to provide before, has consumerism spawning more dangerously than ever. Advertising and window
shopping exist on the premise of using every inch of vertical surface
to showcase material culture. McQuire(2008) looked at this very aspect of technology on the built calling it media architecture. Media
has pervaded the world in all forms and shapes and contemporary
architecture has incorporated it significantly. The spaces of our daily life are invaded by economic space which is highly subjected to
the insistent market, communication, advertisements and building
meaning. (Carmona et al. 2003)

Spaces transform. The use of a Wi-Fi router

allows the consumer in a caf to temporarily transform the cafe into their workspace.
A person engrossed in their phone or tablet
in the subway changes the space around him
from public into a private one. These transformations happen within the presence of
technologies in that space, when some conditions are met. The cafe is a open to this
transformation for the timings that it is running, and till the customer is consuming coffee while they work.
Spaces performing/interacting is best illustrated in Delhi by looking
at the 100-acre cultural complex of Swaminarayan Akshardham,
situated near the bank of the river Yamuna. A cultural-political-economic icon, today, it showcases Indias traditions of art, architecture, wisdom and spirituality. Technologically powerful machinery
and computer systems are put to use to keep the attractions running. Life size mannequins utilise a combination of robotics, fiber
optics, light and sound to portray scenes from the life of the young
Swaminarayan in the Hall of Values, an audio animatrix show. An
IMAX theatre show called Neelkanth Darshan that charts his life
from childhood to adulthood includes extensive use of aerial photography and even a computer generated shot of the Mansarovar
Lake. The final attraction of the series is the Sanskruti Vihar boat
ride. Long boats, with the fore and aft designed to make them look
like swans, run on tracks that are concealed under water. The Yagnapurush Kund - musical fountains within a large step well echoes
Vedic prayers with a light and sound show.
4D cinema halls, assembly lines, factories, recording studios, amusement parks, light and sound shows. Spaces amalgamated with high
end technologies are designed with an expertise on the technology
running that space. To the creation of these new infused spaces,
the built becomes part of the machine. With dominant tech-spaces
slowly becoming prevalent, the designer finds relevance by updating
their knowledge to include these technologies.

Fig: (top) privately engaging spheres in metro compartment, (left)

transforming workplace
in a cafe.
Source: (original)
http://img839.imageshack.
us/img839/9921/63184872.
png ,
https://s-media-cacheak0.pinimg.com/736x
/80/2f/61/802f616e-

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Fig: technological assemblage and informing

screens
Source:ViewSonic brochure.

The stimuli are not just visual but slowly responding to more than
the one sense. Buildings and spaces are becoming more and more
interactive to their users courtesy new technologies. Body scanners,
heat detectors, automated systems that respond to occupancy, smart
cards, biometrics, turnstiles are only but a few of the many implements that have changed the way we experience and negotiate with
space. Sometimes a number of these technological objects work in
tandem to facilitate a process. As users experiencing space we have
become used to standard procedures of navigating through the city
on a regular basis. The city experience is these procedures.
Getting into a bus from the back door, securing a ticket from the conductor, getting out from the front door. Getting in through a security check in,
entering the metro at the platform. Listening to music or engaging in phone
screens, exiting the metro, using the token to check out. Procuring Identity
card at the front desk of the American Center, going through a security
check, using the library, exit. What comes as second nature to us now,
these procedures are taught over time, conditioned as a result of living in
Delhi.

These procedures are systemic, assemblage of machines and code

that create order to spatial usage. A simple example would be, the
procedure to check into important public nodes within the city of
Delhi, the Delhi metro, Dilli haat, Select City Mall (or any other
mall for that instance), embassies, corporate offices, Palika market is
a sequence of actions on the users part, and technologies that make
this procedure possible.
Queue >
All belongings through an X-ray machine >
Pass through a scanner >
Frisking with a metal detector >
Secure Belongings >
Use integrated circuit cards >
Carry through...
Interactive technologies create impersonal systems with minimal
manual intervention. While they ease the labor involved and make
certain processes efficient, they are also responsible for creating
hostile public environments, subject people to compromise with
rights to their own bodies, choice and freedom. Users of space need
to question the relevance of these systems challenge their relevance

and dehumanized stature, as should practitioners of space. While

the politics of these systems, biometrics, scanners are subject of academic discourse, their position in design practice is rarely questioned.
Among technology enabled surfaces, one innovation steals the show.
The television screen is slowly slimming and growing as architectural surface, creeping in a big way into contemporary urbanism.
These together with satellite networks and fibre optics that transcend regional or national boundaries have had a profound impact
on the relation between media and public spaces. The integration
of media in public spaces have served to revitalize these places as
they had been on the decline when the society had withdrawn into
the private sphere(Harvey, 2003). In the larger sense globalization
is said to manifest when the notion of the world as an entity is performed by technology.
Vertical surfaces of wall and screens. Posters, billboards, digital
signboards, advertisements, information displays and signage are
ways in which vertical surfaces are carefully designed and invested in to disperse information among users within a space. These
surfaces inform and direct popular culture as well as wayfinding in
space, largely public. They mostly benefit commerce within the city.
At the same time they also speeden up processes that would take
much longer if they were manual, one cant imagine getting into
the metro without these systems that supposedly makes it all less
hassle-free. Systems like biometrics create failsafe efficient solutions
to make tracking people and information easy, but this information
isnt safe from misuse either.
Within the defined space, functions change temporally when technology intervenes. Space performs because technologies enable
their function. Surfaces and screens inform spaces and what they
are intended for. Automated systems respond to users of space.
These changes that occur within spaces are insufficiently accounted
for within the realm of design because of our ignorance towards
these changes and their underlying politics.

Fig: Surfaces for advertisement in GIP mall,

Noida.
Source: (original) http://
www.unitechgroup.com/images/gip-noida-pic1.jpg

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Morph
Some spaces are, because of machine or code, able to transform/
change/expand their spatial and functional possibilities. This extension is unique to these spaces in lieu of the ways in which space is
extended. Unlike the third type, these kinds of spaces are still rooted
to one physical space. The extension is dependent on that physical
space, and there is no channelling or exchange between spaces (like
in the case of the third type). Security/spy cameras coupled with
screen are allowing a convenient way to keep an eye over spaces, at
the same time dictating human behaviour and creating power over.
Digital screen are phantasmatic projections of real spaces. Spaces
are merging with virtual. There is cyberspace.
When we look at spaces whose boundaries are pushed by the use of
technologies, rarely do we comprehend the power of everyday objects of technological nature in transforming or stretching spatial
possibilities. A central computer database allows us to access books
within a library much like a cashiers counter in a supermarket, without which the functions of both spaces get reduced to a large storage
hall. A projector grants an auditorium function. Screens of laptops
and mobiles transform the space around the user into a private one.
Performative screens are transcending the boundaries of the public realm and are creeping into the private homes. The television
screen that acts as a portal to spaces far and beyond (Virilio, 1991)
also pushes the extents of physical space into the screen. Imagine
a possibility when the screen becomes so convincingly capable of
augmenting an idea of spaciousness, where sitting in a small room
one can forget the spatial limitations of the physical space, and experience it as a spacious combination of virtual and real space. Practitioners of space are experimenting with these possibilities where
the screen becomes an extension of physical space. The premise of
a cinema hall is in its ability to transport the viewer from the confinement of the hall into an immersive (and momentarily spatial)
experience. One sees an extension of space through the projected
surface much like the television screen. Different from the visual
informative screens and displays of the first type which dont immerse but inform, these ones are able to transport the viewer into
simulated space often by means of imitating or replicating physical
spaces and storytelling.
Virtual spaces are spaces of computer programming, a condition
possible because of technology. Unlike physical space that we are familiar with, virtual is unfinished, non-linear and non-dialectical. It
is a dynamic collection of lists, interactive three dimensional worlds,
databases, online archives and search engines.
The virtual space performs an escapist role. The virtual is seen in
contrast to the real, offering a way out of the drab of everyday life.
Users within the city spend a considerable amount of time engaging
virtually. Lovink (2002) brings forward the constant comparison being made between the structuring of information and that of space
using architectural principles, in an attempt to better understand
the virtual environments that are in the process of being created.
Despite their differences, one should not think of real and virtual

Fig: (top) Extension of

space into projection
screen, experience of
a cinema hall, (below)
CCTV surveillance allowing extended control
over public space from
the control room
Source: (original) NEUFERT,
E. (2000). Neufert Architects data. Oxford, Blackwell Science, http://www.
mdpi.com/sensors/sensors-15-23341/article_deploy/html/images/sensors15-23341-g001-1024.png

as opposites to one another. They both have an open and multidisciplinary character. In fact, instead of attempting to make the virtual
like the reality, there should be an effort to infuse the strengths of
the virtual world into the physical reality. This is already happening
in small ways in how architects, theorists and urban planners work
in todays age by the use of computers and software.
Designers need to take into account this phenomenon of augmentation of physical space into digital, virtual and cyberspace, a possibility which at the moment remains mostly untapped.
Any spatial discourse on technology is incomplete without mentioning surveillance. CCTV systems are technologies that allow an authority to monitor multiple spaces from one space. These systems
have infiltrated not just in private residences and businesses but
engulfed the public realm. As a result, spaces in the public realm
observe surveillance networks that control behaviour and can take
away the publicness of a space when people are constantly monitored. In Delhi, one would usually not expect to feel that they are
constantly being monitored via surveillance systems. It would be as-

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CITY-TECH-SPACE | 17

sumed to be confined to certain areas of high security. However, the

high tech surveillance industry actually sees a very lucrative market
in India with estimated growth of 25% which already has a turnover of 120 million dollars per annum (Sengupta, 2002). Surveillance
cameras have already made their way in most major traffic intersections in Delhi as well as in most apartments, offices, industries and
shopping areas. This could have serious implications in how people
perceive and behave in these spaces.
Most designers leave solving issues of safety and security to these
surveillance systems without thinking of these implications. At the
same time, more community engaging spaces and ideas of eyes on
the street are employed in some spaces to provide sensible alternative solutions to these problems.
In these spaces, the space challenges its notion of association to a
physical space, and pushes out of it. This nature in spaces challenges
the practice of designers to contain spaces within walls. It spreads
out into adjacencies, into cyberspace, into ephemeral simulated
spaces. New territories of space and new experiences of traversing
through these uncontained spaces calls for a new approach to designing such spaces.

Network
Spaces and more so infrastructures are now finding themselves in a
network of exchange and interactivity to another spaces and infrastructures via technology. Spaces of transience, of connectivity, of
exchange, networked spaces are seen in cities and spaces.
These spaces are not understood independently and function in a
technology enabled network. These include spaces that have grown
and in turn accelerated globalization, or because of advanced systems (like mass transit, rapid rail, online banking, cybernetics, etc).
Global types that emerge as a response to globalization are infact
spaces that respond to a wider urban fabric enabled by technology
like a unified global organism. Examples of such spaces are large
scale transit infrastructures, offshore banks, Multinational corporations, Airports. Zooming in, Bank branches, ATM, Call-centers,
cyber-cafes, phone booths, platforms are part of this picture just
as well. These network-infrastructures are responsible for creating
channels of exchange where physical distances between spaces seem
to become redundant. Direct manifestation of technology in this
process is seen through the role of cyber channels and network signals. But that doesnt mean some very physical channels of shortened distance and time are not a result of technology. In both cases,
our understanding of spatial distances and exchange has changed
considerably. Both are a consequence of technology in direct and
indirect ways.
The advent of information technology with telecommunications and
the internet has led to a restructuring of the cities with a completely
new system of network and nodes due to simultaneous spatial concentration and decentralization that transcends the urban into national and international/global levels (Wheeler, 2000). The future
implications of digital communication technology on spaces is pro-

Fig: spaces of transience

between long distances
(top) 9h 40m buffer space
between Delhi-London
(below) 40m buffer space
between two nodes in
Delhi.
Sources:
(original)
https://img0.etsystatic.com/000/0/6175406/
il_570xN.319351488.jpg ,
author

found where these are getting more and more integrated into the
built, their disappearance (since systems now are virtual and networks wireless) proves to be a threat to the architects usual design
approach (Mitchell, 2002).
Earlier, there was a stronger link between activities that were in
close proximity to each other while distant activities had weaker
links. Even with vast networks of transportation systems, the distance remained a major separating factor. However electronic connection networks have finally managed to bridge the gap, there is a
warp in space and time at the global scale because of increasingly
stronger interconnectedness of various distant nodes. (Graham and
Marvin, 2001)
Although the dependence on space and time has been reduced, it
does not necessarily imply that one can locate anything anywhere as
long as there is internet connectivity. This means that the dependence has only been selectively loosened (Mitchell, 2002). Spaces still
continue to be relevant, but in new ways. For instance one can buy
music simply by downloading online, yet will have to still be physically present at a barbers to get a haircut. The demand for quality
space is addressed in a manner where one need not live near (or
commute to) a central workspace anymore. A consequence would be
seen in the suburbanization and growing sizes of dwellings.
Some building types have been reconfigured and fragmented in
parts and divisions. A prominent example used to illustrate this is
the reduction in the importance of branch banks due to the presence of ATMs and internet transactions. Money has liquefied. This
has given way to large scale back offices and call centres. Same can
be said about book stores and other such retail which can be bought
online and one only needs several centralized warehouses. This will
not only change the demand for built types will also affect the transportation networks (Mitchell, 2002).
With these spaces, the idea of physical distance and adjacencies between spaces gets questioned. The ATM can be scattered around
the city. The airport bridges the gap between point of travel and
destination and the plane becomes the buffer space between the

18 | TECHNOLOGY

two. Spaces become channels; time and distance reduce to parameters. Designers are faced with transient spaces, buffer spaces, spaces
linked across cities. Within the City certain spaces find themselves
slowly becoming redundant while new spaces emerge as consequence. Some spaces simply find themselves in new roles to stay
relevant.

Technology isnt inherently masculine or phallocentric or ethnocentric, although certainly its modes of production and circulation are
closely invested in power relations. But in spite of this, it holds a certain promise: it can be used in all sorts of ways with all sorts of aims
or goals in mind. It is both the condition of power and a possibility
for its subversion, depending on how it is used, by whom, and with
what effects.
- Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the Outside
The urban experience within the city can be encapsulated as that
of shock and hypermobility and phantasm; the virtual is an extension of physical space. The spatial implications of technology are,
although not explicitly mentioned, not hard to miss in our cities.
Technologies (code and assemblage) have worked in tandem with
larger realities of cities today to modify/mutilate/morph new spaces
and spatial experiences. The fact that technology has come to negotiate with the spatial experience of a user is evident.

Spaces/Technologies are visual

interactive
systemic
Technologies/Spaces are screens
virtual
code-dependent
code-infused
Cities/Spaces are global
fragmented
networked

Technology was aimed at making processes efficient, providing

solutions. Today it has come to a point where it is looked up to as the
premier means to solve issues of the individual, institution, economies, ecology, urban and so on. We jump and see surveillance as the
solution to safety and security when we should be seeking socially
viable solutions. Biometrics are used to control and limit access to
facilities and spaces as much as to provide them. Notions of what is
public have changed drastically to a point where we are used to see
massive privatization in our public realm. This dependence can be
both liberating and dangerous. Cities of today are intensely technology based, and if technology extends to wider audiences, so does all
attached politics. The politics of community and politics of technology are interwoven. Unarguably, certain technologies are changing
social patterns and molding society.

CITY-TECH-SPACE | 19

20 | TECHNOLOGY

CITY-TECH-SPACE | 21

Epilogue, for Architects

The meanings and roles of architecture and urban design centered
in older traditions of permanence are irrevocably destabilised in
complex citiesthat is, cities marked by digital networks, acceleration, massive infrastructures for connectivity, and growing estrangement. Those older meanings do not disappear, they remain
crucial. But they cannot comfortably address these newer meanings,
which include the growing importance of such networks, interconnections, energy flows, subjective cartographies. Architects need to
confront the enormity of the urban experience, the overwhelming
presence of massive architectures and dense infrastructures in todays cities, and the irresistible logic of utility that organises much
of the investments in cities.
-Saskia Sassen
< http://artefact.mi2.hr/_a04/lang_en/theory_sassen_text.htm>
In recent times, architectural practice has increasingly become technocratic. Although the top professionals are associated with terms
such as visionaries and artists, most mainstream architects spend
more time analyzing the flow of information which determines the
entire array of complex technological built forms. In fact, in this
area, an early 19th century architect would be much more similar to
an architect of the Roman times than one belonging to the 20th or
21th century (Braham, 2007).
As practitioners of space, ours is the only discipline that will explore the relationship between technology and space. Technologies
of code and artifacts have enabled new dimensions and possibilities
when integrated to the built. All urban malaise finds instantly gratifying solutions in technology. Spaces as we knew before have transformed in their very nature. Some have become redundant; while
some have found new ways to exist in the urban realm. Some new
kinds of spaces have emerged altogether.
Most people and architects still associate the word technology with
the means and methods in which one can build physical spaces, yet,
over the past few decades the term has gained added meanings at
par with processes of Globalization and Digitalization. With this
change in meaning, the need of the hour is to study the relation between space and technology.
Technology -infused spaces are a reality of living in Cities everywhere. They are extremely experiential and surround our everyday
living experience. In a consumerist era where technology is inevitable, architecture is on the brink of losing its cultural significance.
Spaces are no seen as stable, static, rather are fluid and mobile.
What does it mean to occupy space today when users can simultaneously manifest in multiple spaces via the internet? What is the point
of adjacencies when rooms that were next to each other can now be
worlds apart?
As architects it becomes relevant to engage with new technological spaces and to build a vocabulary to include ideas of the virtual,
coded, ephemeral, dynamic in the design discourse. These spaces
offer immense spatial possibilities and solutions, and make spaces

dynamic at the same time as they become dependent on technologies to function. We live in hyper-real cities, richer in their spatial complexity and variety that traditional notions of space can no
longer address. A standard notion about built is that the building
is talked about as a static, fixed entity. Architecture has moved past
simply occupying space by means of its enclosure. Architects need
to begin dealing with space directly than around it. A technological
perspective enables the architect to talk of the built as an experience
of spaces within it that move and change, even if the walls remain
fixed. One needs to build this technological perspective to find relevance in a rapidly Globalizing and Digitalizing city. For architects,
this means breaking away from the traditional notions of space and
embracing a vocabulary that embraces these new technological attributes of space, so that the architect becomes a relevant arbiter in
a world where his relevance is questionable.

22 | TECHNOLOGY

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