EDITORIAL

摘要

Nothing works in isolation: the virtual world has an integral connection and special rapport with the palpable, physical world of people and places. Social media feeds off the corporal world. It also demands more of us through perpetual engagement: as individuals the pressure is on to experience more and to attend and consume more of the right things - whether food, culture or entertainment. For architecture, it often requires being more novel and eye-catching; being a mini-spectacle or event in itself, the more ephemeral or transient the better. No kind of structure is better suited to this phenomenon than pavilions, pop-ups and parasols. Built with the intention of being fleeting fly-by-nights, contemporary follies are here to demand our momentary attention. This is not, however, to cast them aside as facile objects. For architects, small-scale temporary structures offer essential opportunities for research and experimentation - for testing and prototyping - and to get their work built and known by a wider public. Though impermanent, the majority of structures are still realised with a function or purpose, whether cultural, commercial or social. These can even go so far as to be catalysts for positive change, as described by Dan Hill ('A Sketchbook for the City to Come: The Pop-Up as R&D', pp 32-9) and Andrea Kahn ('Building Community', pp 72- 9) at a local level, and Martyn Hook ('The Affirmative Qualities of a Temporal Architecture', pp 118-23) at the international scale. Interceding even with a provisional structure with social purpose offers the opportunity to provide and to act where it may not be possible or relevant to do so permanently.