Addressable Space investigates the possibility that the built environment can operate as a digital database. The 18th- and 19th-century developments of physically isolated enclosed rooms and floors within buildings which were identifiable by means of room numbers, labels and external signage enabled locations in physical space to be conceptualized as being accessible independently of their adjacent surroundings, and the development of elevators created a similar automated mechanism for accessing and re-arranging physical space to that of accessing digital data on a mechanical hard drive. Now today more and more decisions about how to travel between physical locations are being made by systems for which physical constraints on access time do not inherently matter, as evidenced by the use of “chaotic storage” systems for retrieving objects in automated warehouses regardless of their adjacencies to other objects.

From the perspective of a computer network, rooms and buildings identifiable by numbers and signage are as independent of the constraints of physical geography as websites and internet platforms, with similar associations and promises to those which were granted to the internet itself when it was once theorized to be able to transcend geography. A system for conceptually representing locations in physical space from such a digital perspective would enable destinations separated by physical distance to be interpreted as being interconnected, and even topologically conflated. The development of protocols for identifying and managing the capabilities which the physically-embedded internet has to distort existing perceptions of buildings and cities could help society anticipate and direct the outcomes of that system’s future impacts.

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