It is a great privilege to have known Gordon Pask. I was first introduced to Gordon at a seminar that he gave to a group of first year students under the wing of Dale Benedict at the Architectural Association . Gordon proceeded to cover all the available blackboards with interweaving bubbles. At the end, a number of us clamoured around Gordon although I don't think we had any idea what to ask. He of course invited us to luncheon with him over a glass of wine in the civilised surroundings of the AA canteen. This was such an experience, and I remember remarking to him that I had just seen an exhibition of gas globes (a sort of Van der Graph generator in a glass sphere) and that I thought that these could be some sort of model for what he had been describing. Gordon's response was pragmatic: "well let's build one, my dear boy".
A number of years later, and I was beginning to reward his optimism through the Diploma programmes organised by John Frazer, within which Gordon became a major protagonist. An increasing fascination with machine logic, machine intelligence and electronic control was driving all of us into the information age. Architecture could evolve, could sense and respond, could become intelligent and alive, could BE information, and what we were able to do was provide the models and bits of kit (which architects are good at) that could externalise the theories and then be fed back into the discussion, often with added noise for good measure.
I believe it was sometime during 1995 that an event was organised jointly by the A.A. and the Slade to discuss the role of information technology in art and architecture or some such. Gordon was not well, but the moment he hit the stage it was like listening to an angry teenager at a rally. Much later that same day, the only transport on offer to get us back down to South London from the Arts Club (where Gordon, Bruce MacLean and John Frazer had been matching each other glass for glass) was a white, convertable Golf GTi and in order to get the wheelchair in we had to have the roof down....in thick fog, in the middle of the night, in mid-winter. A surreal experience, with Gordon perched in the air like some sort of deity.
I am saddened that he never got to see the chaotic bowstring structure that I described to him over the phone, firstly because he introduced me to the notion of a strange attractor, secondly because he liked machines with which he could communicate (he always greeted them with a polite Hello), and thirdly because the damn thing worked. By the same token, I am saddened that he did not get to see the work of students of the Bartlett Responsive Systems group. Gordon passed away on the day that he was due to come to a crit. He would have loved it.
Fortunately for us, the world wide web, that Gordon so accurately predicted, will in some ways enable us to continue to hold him dear, and to continue to focus our attentions around his life and work.
Pete Silver, February 7th, 1997, 2am.
Pete Silver is an architect working in private practice with the Chartered Practice and teaching at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. He trained at the Architectural Association under John Frazer, with whom he later taught. He currently specialises in interactive and responsive systems and his work is published in Building Design (2000), Architectural Design (Integrating Architecture) and Artifice (current).