An inflatable folly
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The world's first inflatable folly is displayed at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. The installation is a 7 meter inflated black sphere punctured by a half-timbered structure. Inside, a stair leads up to a viewing platform, from where the surrounding void is broken by small pinpricks of light.
The experience offered by In a Lonely Place recalls Étienne-Louis Boullées's Cenotaph to Newton – a 18th century proposal for a structure in which the viewer was presented with a man-made approximation of the universe. I first heard about Boullée in Peter Greenaway's superb movie The Belly of an Architect but i couldn't find much information about the French visonary architect online. In the installation, the transparent windows form what seem to be constellations. But in fact, they mark out a tourist map of Hollywood stars homes. This plan of Los Angeles takes on a planetary scale. "In a Lonely Place" was designed by FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste), a London based practice run by Sean Griffiths, Charles Holland and Sam Jacob and famous for works such as the bathroom furniture for two, the Bicycle Surveillance Hut and the Blue House.
Fat’s exhibition In a Lonely Place is at the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, until May 2, 2006. Preview of the show.
Fat has another show, All You Can Eat, at Stroom Den Haag. It features models of current and recent projects as well as pieces that reflect the studio's interest in expanding the boundaries of architecural practice through an engagement with issues of taste, meaning and the relationships between buildings, users and the city. |
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Thanks for the head's up and the links. For more info on Boullée you may have to consult the old printed codices. I can recommend Anthony Vilder, _The Writing of the Walls_, Emil Kaufmann, "Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu," _Transactions of the American Philosophical Society_, vol. 42 (1952), J. C. Lemagny, _Visionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, Lequeu_ (1968).
Also, here's a paragraph from a research paper I am finishing up on 18th-century French architecture:
"Both the theorist Étienne-Louis Boullée and the architect Claude-Nicholas Ledoux emerged professionally at a time of relatively prosperity for France (1750-1765), and both found early success in architectural practice. Only eight years apart in age, they both had studied under the pre-eminent educator and architectural theoretician Jean-Francois Blondel, and they learned the most up-to-date ideas and techniques of architecture. Boullée experience fleeting success for his building projects, but he was admitted to the Academy in 1762, and then was elected to be a first-class member in 1780. Teaching architecture most of his life, he created visionary images to illustrate his widely respected theory of formal composition; he donated his drawings to the royal library towards the end of his life (1799). In brief, he was an active, influential figure in the Academy throughout his career. Ledoux, on the other hand, spent his career prior to the revolution working as an architect for the Ancien Régime. He designed and built hôtels for aristocrats, barrières around the city under Louis XVI, and assorted structures at a salt factory in Franche-Comté. Rooted in the issues of his day—the rise of large-scale industry, the needs of workers, the layout of communities, while striking a balance between function and style—Ledoux's architectural vision sought principles for organizing a changing world. Using his appointment at the saltworks to consider the harmonious interface of abstract concepts and particular socioeconomic priorities, Ledoux eventually created several plans for an ideal city to be built in an actual location. He offered an abstract idea of his role as practicing architect when he later wrote that "the architect is the rival of nature, and out of it can form nature . . . He can subject the whole world to the desire for newness that stimulates the chance movements of his imagination."
A choice Boullée quote: "The art of moving us by effects of light belongs to architecture, for in all the monuments susceptible of bringing the soul to feel the horror of the darkness ... the artist ... can dare to say to himself: I make light."