Cloud Space: An Architecture of the Third Environment

Abstract

While today’s society is becoming increasingly saturated by the technology of digital communication, there are few built traces of these complicated networks. Undetectable to the human eye and yet palpable in the impact of electronic devices on human existence, these overlapping networks of flowing information form a “third” environment, that exists in addition to those realms dominated by natural and human forces. If “nature” can be defined as the uncontrollable external forces of climate, atmosphere, plants and animals, the human environment is humans, the internal forces of mankind. The third environment, then, is composed of the invisible forces of information traveling between electronic devices and infrastructure. This thesis argues that architecture can become an interface between the third environment and physical world, and can facilitate a spatial understanding of these complex networks.