Programmatic Indeterminacy: Why can't you read in a club?

Many many years ago, when I was very young, I was curious about clubbing. But my friend was reluctant to go with me. So I encouraged her: why don’t you carry a book with you? Of course, I received a mockery look and comment. After many many years, I started to challenge myself with the question: why can’t you read in a club? Imagine a situation where nothing is definitive and everything is malleable. Club space becomes reading space becomes public space becomes office space and club space again. It allows for any shift, modification, replacement or substitution. At its most intense, it can even hold a coexistence of activities. I.e. to read and to club at the same time. Through their mutual interference is a chain reaction of new, unprecedented event. Architecture is no longer about the creation of object but the occurrence of event. The concept of programmatic indeterminacy was elaborated by Rem Koolhaas in his monograph ‘Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large’

Paris France
How programmatic indeterminacy orchestrate in OMA’s Parc de la Villette?
- A master planning of a park
- The site is small and restricted so it has to be malleable to accommodate different desires. It becomes a forest of social instruments.
- The site is organised in band/strip, each band/strip accomodate a program, theme garden, playground,discovery garden. The bands are so permeable so that it allows for maximum interference and programmatic mutation.

Sydney, Australia
How programmatic indeterminacy orchestrate in Silvester Fuller’s Dapto Anglican Church?
- It is a church, a multifunctional space, a flexible event space or an auditorium. It is so malleable so that its typology or program cannot be easily defined or determined. Sometimes activities occur simultaneously. I.e. community gather up and church service happen at once.
- Other times one travel from one territory to another. I.e. From church space to event space to corridor space to ‘bump’ space 

 

 Silver Fuller's Dapto Anglican Church

(Community space becomes church space becomes corridor+bump space) 

 All drawings are © Copyright 2020 Connie Yan. All Rights Reserved. 

 

Koolhaas, Rem.; Mau, Bruce. 1998. Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large.  New York, N.Y. : Monacelli Press