![]() The earliest known semipermanent homes, such as those discovered at Ohalo (21,000 BCE), on the southern bank of the Sea of Galilee, contain early evidence of the platform. With the gradual passage to semisedentary and sedentary life, permanence became more an issue of domesticating land as a “surface.” 4 If the rise of domestic space predates the rise of agriculture, then leveling the ground for the sake of inhabitation can be seen as the earliest form of permanent living. The anthropologist Tim Ingold wrote that hunter-gatherers perceived the land not as a surface, but as a constellation of permanent “landmarks,” such as mountains and lakes. 3 Arguably, the act of raising and leveling the ground is connected with human domestication and the gradual rise of sedentary domestic space. The term “platform” comes from the Middle French plateform or platte fourme, which means “flat form.” The word refers to a specific physical artifact: a raised level surface. ![]() Since it is an apparatus of social order whose function is based on the stability of recurring patterns of behavior, the platform therefore embodies the quintessential meaning of institutional power. Like their physical counterparts, both the political and the digital platform refers to space that at once facilitates and conditions use. It is not by chance that since the nineteenth century, the term has been used outside of architecture: first within parliamentary politics-to refer to party policies and institutions-and, more recently, in the digital world, in order to address giant internet corporations that mediate interaction between groups of users. 2 They are alterations of the ground that can be read as tangible indexes of power relationships. Platforms are not just pedestals that function to single something out of their immediate context. Utzon’s interest in the platform can be developed further, toward a more critical genealogy of this architectural form. Yet it is precisely the subtleness of the platform as a space that manipulates the most essential datum of existence-the ground-that makes this type of architecture an ambivalent form that both enables and restricts what happens upon it. By highlighting the platform, Utzon put forward an idea of an architecture that defines space without enclosing it. It also includes drawings and images of "Primary', a prototype for a public gathering space designed and built in a marginal urban location in Sharjah as part of Right of Future Generations, the Sharjah Architecture Triennial curated by Adrian Lahoud in 2019.In 1962, Jørn Utzon, the architect of the Sydney Opera House, published a short yet seminal essay titled “Platforms and Plateaus.” 1 The text is an account of his fascination with the architecture of the platform, of which Utzon mentions a few examples, including the giant platforms in the Yucatán, the plinth upon which Old Delhi’s Jama Masjid sits, the floor of a traditional Chinese or Japanese house, and the mysterious architecture of Monte Albán in Mexico. ![]() The book 'Platforms' consists of an introductory essay and 30 case-studies of platform architecture through images, axonometric drawings and short texts. Expanding and problematizing Utzon's appraisal of the platform as an architectural idea, our research aims at building a more systematic and critical enquiry into this archetype. One of the few texts on the architecture of the platform is the 1959 essay "Platforms and Plateaus' by Jørn Utzon, which is republished at the end of this book. Its use as an architectural archetype is common to many cultures and different ages, and yet very little has been written about it. While often seen as a symbol of power, the platform has also served as a gathering place: a point of orientation and exchange among communities. The platform is not only a way of raising buildings or people from the ground, but also an architectural form that redefines and negotiates the way in which the ground itself is made inhabitable.
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