Multispace

Guest-edited by Owen Hopkins

Multispace exists at the intersection of the physical and digital, and in the blurring of their previously clear dividing lines. Multispace is not a single space, but a hybrid space where, in effect, we occupy multiple spaces simultaneously. We enter it on a Zoom call, when we are in our officeand in a meeting with 20 people; when we are cycling down a country lane whilst racing against thousands of others who also use the Strava app; when we are watching a TV show while live tweeting; or, perhaps most literally, when wandering around the local park looking for creatures that only appear on a smartphone screen.

A fundamental question of thisADis why the phenomena that multispace describes are of concern to architects. The answer is that multispace points to a situation that is at root an architectural one. Offering both a collective and highly personalised experience, static and dynamically customisable, and above all at the same time publicand private, multispace lies at the centre of a set of tensions, concerns and preoccupations at the core of our conception of architecture as theory and practice. It is the messy space between, with rough and uneven edges that are constantly shifting.

Contributors: Aleksandra Belitskaja, Alice Bucknell, Jesse Damiani, Wendy Fok, Andrew Kovacs, Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg, Micaela Mantegna, Holly Nielsen, Giacomo Pala, Paula Strunden, Lucia Tahan, and Francesca Torello and Joshua Bard.

Featured architects and artists: iheartblob, Ibiye Campis, Office Kovacs, Space Popular and Liam Young.

Owen Hopkinsis an architectural writer and curator. He is Director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University. Previously he was Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Education at Sir John Soanes Museum and before that Architecture Programme Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. He is curator of numerous exhibitions including most recentlyLanglands& Bell: Degrees of Truth(2020). A frequent commentator on architecture in the press, on radio and TV, he is author of seven books, includingThe Museum: From its Origins to the 21st Century(2021),Postmodern Architecture: Less is aBore(2020),Lost Futures(2017),Mavericks(2016) andFrom the Shadows(2015), and editor of a further eight books / journal special issues / digital publications. He lectures internationally and is a regular guest critic at architecture schools as well as a judge for several architecture awards.

About the Guest-Editor 5
Owen Hopkins

Introduction Architects in Multispace 6
Owen Hopkins

The Portal Galleries: Researching Portals in Fiction from the 19th Century to the Present 14
Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg

The Home as an Infinite Screen 22
Lucia Tahan

Hidden Infrastructures: From Spy-Hubs to Hollow Buildings that Conceal the New Digital 30
Wendy W Fok

Architecture in Postreality: Emerging Approaches to Space in Hybrid Realities 38
Jesse Damiani

Touching, Licking, Tasting: Performing Multisensory Spatial Perception Through Extended-Reality Models 48
Paula Strunden

Multipurpose Domesticity: Labour, Leisure and Kitchen Tables 56
Holly Nielsen

Conjunctions: Or, Space as Oxymoron 64
Giacomo Pala

Celebrating the Glitch: The Multispatial Work of Ibiye Camp 72
Owen Hopkins

Architecture is Interface: Latent Virtuality from Antiquity to Zoom 78
Joshua Bard and Francesca Torello

Very Big Art: Follies, the Public and Multispace 86
Andrew Kovacs

Ways of Worlding: Building Alternative Futures in Multispace 94
Alice Bucknell

The Anti-Metaverse: Multispace and the Intersections of Reality 104
Micaela Mantegna and Marcelo Rinesi

All At Once From Zoom Fatigue to Immersive Digital Experiences: Why Architecture Must Adapt 112
Sasha Belitskaja

Shifting Contexts: Liam Young's Prototypes of Architectural Futures 122
Owen Hopkins

From Another Perspective The Haçienda Must Be Built 128
Neil Spiller

Contributors 134