Media Babies on CHANEL no.5 @ Items #6 1993

Media Babies on CHANNEL no.5 @ Items #6, Magazine for Design, Visual Communication and Architecture, 1 September 1993

Media Babies have nothing to do with the Internet, but with a totally different view of data networks.

This is a project by Frans Vogelaar and Elizabeth Sikiaridi with their firm Hybrid Space Lab. They strive for a much greater connection between a city’s public space and the promises of modern telecommunications. That is why they want to enrich the city of London, which lends itself as a prime example because of its floor plan and demographic structure, with a digital infrastructure that is accessible to everyone and that is recognizable in its entirety, from plug to programming station.

Inevitably, their plan covers all dimensions of design, urban planning and architecture, as well as interiors, equipment design and software development.

Challenges

The nice thing about this new conception of telecommunications networks is that – paradoxical as it may sound – it has limitations. To name just a few: you have to go specifically to a building, transmission time is limited, and the direction of transmission is fixed in principle.
The great advantage of what I call the lack of endlessness is that it is easier for citizens to identify with it. The “Media Baby” belongs to your neighborhood.
“Network Architecture” is what Hybrid Space Lab calls its idea. And the challenge is extremely interesting because it forces a different way of looking at the use, and therefore the design, of communication tools and buildings.

Vogelaar and Sikiaridi have equipped the concept of their Media Babies with numerous new functions. It is going too far to list everything, but just design a studio where amateurs can host broadcasts. For the fledgling novice, the architects are thinking of “Debutants Booth” that will show him his way around the network. By actually developing such a facility, you can gain a wealth of information about ways to design equipment and the space it sits in such a way that the greatest layman can get along with it.
In every “Bridge Club” there is a “Selector Platform.” There ritual selection takes place (partly automatic and partly based on serious or playful decision procedures) of transmissions that are deemed suitable for the entire city.
In addition, a “Bridge Club” can be the link between the network and neighborhood events. By developing the idea of a “Bridge Club” further, and delving into the new function of such a building, you can learn all kinds of things about the interaction between architecture and social processes.

The resulting experience might be used to develop a station, or a conference room. Or perhaps a party room, as Vogelaar envisions for the “Bridge Club” at Hungerford Bridge near Waterloo Station-where the TGV will arrive in the future-a “Debutants Ball” for prospective travelers who need to get to know the city and its people.
If the function of the project is to gain new knowledge and experience with a fresh perspective on telecommunications, then it is not a bad thing that the “Media Babie3s on Channel no. 5″ project assumes a need that may not exist at all.

Vogelaar: ” Someone asked: what do you do with the elderly lady who wants to know why her geranium is doing so badly. And I don’t have an answer to that.