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Publisher Princeton Architectural Press says: Over the last few decades, a rich and increasingly diverse practice has emerged in the art world that invites the public to touch, enter, and experience the work, whether it is in a gallery, on city streets, or in the landscape. Like architecture, many of these temporary artworks aspire to alter viewers' experience of the environment. An installation is usually the end product for an artist, but for architects it can also be a preliminary step in an ongoing design process. Like paper projects designed in the absence of "real" architecture, installations offer architects another way to engage in issues critical to their practice. Direct experimentation with architecture's material and social dimensions engages the public around issues in the built environment that concern them and expands the ways that architecture can participate in and impact people's everyday lives. The first survey of its kind,Installations by Architects features fifty of the most significant projects from the last twenty-five years by today's most exciting architects (...) Projects are grouped in critical areas of discussion under the themes of tectonics, body, nature, memory, and public space. Each project is supplemented by interviews with the project architects and the discussions of critics and theorists situated within a larger intellectual context.
You probably saw many examples of architects installations if you attended the latest Biennale of Architecture in Venice. They provide new platforms for innovative perspectives, ideas and experiments in the field of architecture. Some of these installations will remain at the experimental stage, others might later be implemented into built work. Installations, especially when temporary, enable architects to work outside the constraints dictated by clients and city regulations. The main purpose of installations is not necessarily to be useful but to generate conversations, to invite viewers to reflect on the role and essence of architecture. Installations are also vehicles for teaching and research as the Bauhaus was one of the first schools to demonstrate. Finally, young studios can find in installations a fantastic opportunity to advertise their talent.
I expected Installations by Architects: Experiments in Building and Design to be one of those fancy volumes you open to find big, glossy photos and little text to comment on them. I was expecting a beautiful book that lingers on the coffee table for your guests to admire. There are loads of images in the book indeed but there are even more essays by critics, by theorists and by the authors (Bonnemaison is an associate professor of architecture at Dalhousie University and Ronit Eisenbach is an associate professor of architecture at the University of Maryland). Architects get to give their own view as well. The book is divided into five chapters that explore a different area of discussion. Each of them is illustrated by 8 to 10 architectural installations (this post picks up one of them for each chapter): 1. Tectonics: by exploring new modes of assembly and materials, this section reminds us that architecture doesn't stop at the facade.
Mette Ramsgard Thomse's Vivisection is a spatial experiment that explores how a techtonic surface can embed a capacity for sensing and actuation. The silk and steel fabric is conductive thereby allowing the architects to pass electronic signals through it. By using antenna based sensor chips the fabric "feels" the presence of the audience. The sensors inform a network of distributed micro-computers, that in turn control the fans, inflating and deflating internal bladders in the structure. 2. Body examines the relationship between human body, spatial experience and design.
Thom Faulders covered with pink Memory Foam (as used in the earplugs that expand to fill the cavity of the ear) the floor of his Mute Room, a temporary listening environment for experimental electronic music. The foam's surface operates as a sound baffle to enhance acoustical clarity. Similar to the way that musical notes 'decay' in the air before dissipating, this surface has a transitory quality - impressions linger until fully erased by the slowly acting foam. 3. Nature might help shape a more responsible attitude towards nature.
The Prairie Ladder was commissioned by the Connemara Conservancy (Texas) to preserve, protect, and honor the prairie landscape. The ladder introduces a veritcal axis, making a departure from the natural horizontal axis of the prairie. The ladder also proclaims human defiance of the horizontal limitations of the earth. 4. Memory engages with the collective memory and its relationship with space.
Since 1960, Detroit has lost half of its population and demolished over 200,000 housing units. Kyong Park's 24620: The Fugitive House (2001-), is an abandoned house from Detroit that has been dismantled and reconstructed in several European cities. 24620 is looking for a new home in a 'kinder and gentler" city than Detroit. Europe, however, is becoming just as neo-liberal and neo-con as in the USA With its pieces misplaced and their incisions permanent, the house, when re-assembled, replicates the condition of a dysfunctional city in the violence of dismembered spaces. Wherever it may go, the house takes the ideals and failures of modernism with it, creating discourses on the cultural state and destiny of each community. 5. Public Space offers citizens new ways to inhabit or relate to the city.
Sky Ear, by Haque Design + Research, contains miniature sensor circuits that respond to electromagnetic fields, particularly those of mobile phones. When activated, the sensor circuits in the clouds co-ordinate to cause ultra-bright coloured LEDs to illuminate thousand glowing helium balloons. Related book reviews: Bright: Architectural Illumination and Light Installations, Spacecraft Fleeting Architecture and Hideouts and Ground-up City. Play as a Design Tool. Image on the homepage: land(e)scape (Savonlinna, Finlandia - 1999) by Marco Casagrande and Sami Rintala. |
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Publisher Princeton Architectural Press says: Architectural pioneers such as Frank Gehry and Greg Lynn introduced the world to the extreme forms made possible by digital fabrication. It is now possible to transfer designs made on a computer to computer-controlled machinery that creates actual building components. This "file to factory" process not only enables architects to realize projects featuring complex or double-curved geometries, but also liberates architects from a dependence on off-the-shelf building components, enabling projects of previously unimaginable complexity. Digital Fabrications (...) celebrates the design ingenuity made possible by digital fabrication techniques. Author Lisa Iwamoto explores the methods architects use to calibrate digital designs with physical forms. The book is organized according to five types of digital fabrication techniques: tessellating, sectioning, folding, contouring, and forming. Projects are shown both in their finished forms and in working drawings, templates, and prototypes, allowing the reader to watch the process of each fantastic construction unfold. Digital Fabrications presents projects designed and built by emerging practices that pioneer techniques and experiment with fabrication processes on a small scale with a do-it-yourself attitude. Views inside the book:
If i had to recommend you one book about the use of digital tools in architecture, it would be this one. Written by an expert who is also a successful practitioner (Lisa Iwamoto, a leader in the field of digital fabrications, is associate professor of architecture at UC Berkeley and a principal of IwamotoScott Architecture), Digital Fabrications is pleasantly approachable. First, there's the visual appeal of the publication. It is a light, compact book shock full of fabulous pictures and concise yet precise descriptions of the many projects covered. The most engaging characteristic of the volume however is its content. The author has chosen to highlight the innovative and DIY attitude that reigns among designers and architects who use digital technologies. Many of the projects are detailed and made comprehensible with graphics and pictures making it a great inspiration for other architects as well as for students. In fact, students projects are also featured in the book. Each type of digital fabrication -sectioning, tessellating (see the example on the cover of the book: Technicolor Bloom by Brennan Buck), folding, contouring and forming- is explained clearly and then illustrated through descriptions of pioneering case studies, driving you smoothly from the working method adopted by the architects to the final result of their experiments. Be warned that the focus is blatantly on US architects (with a preference for the East Coast.) Thom Faulders's screen façade for Airspace Tokyo is an example of tessellating technique. Four different overlapping organic patterns are made of laser-cut aluminium and plastic composite.
Folding technique: 3,500 molecules recycled cardboard molecules arranged in an interpretation of Cartesian space by Chris Bosse and the students at the University of Technology in Sydney.
And now for the forming technique, Andrew Kudless and Matsys' P_Wall investigates the self-organization of both plaster and elastic fabric, to produce evocative visual and acoustic effects.
Related stories: C.STEM 2008: Breeding Objects - Computational Design, from Digital Fabrication to Mass-Customization, Generator x - Beyond the Screen, Encoded art works. Bonus! Greg Lynn talks about the mathematical roots of architecture -- and how calculus and digital tools allow modern designers to move beyond the traditional building forms. Image on the homepage: Chris Bosse, Entry Paradise Pavilion, 2006. |
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Volume number 20 is out! The theme of the quarterly magazine about architecture and urbanism is Storytelling: This past year numerous dramas have competed for our attention: sub-prime mortgages, banking meltdown, bailout, stimulus, pandemic, bankruptcy. The all-consuming effort to follow these events seldom leaves a moment to contemplate the explanations themselves. What is the stated dilemma, context or motive for any one of these problems? And most importantly, how does a problem's formulation determine its proposed solution? Volume 20 is dedicated to the art of storytelling. It presents the storylines of current events and architecture to show that while the truth is important, so is the ability of fiction to elevate fact. Perhaps the best way to understand our era is through narratives that distort, pervert and animate reality?
Volume's moto is To Beyond or Not to Be, its mission is to go beyond architecture's definition of 'making buildings', to reach out for global views on designing environments, advocate broader attitudes to social structures, and reclaim the cultural and political significance of architecture. The content of this issue illustrates this spirit in the most flamboyant way. It goes in many directions you wouldn't have imagined possible, i even met Jean Des Esseintes on page 38, Tokyo people fully dressed and asleep in public place on page 22 to 25 and i discovered the work of Dave McKean further on. Put together, the articles, essays and interviews draw a kaleidoscopic and absorbing picture of the crisis and the directions that could be taken to face it in the most sensible (albeit sometimes unanticipated) way. The design and graphics of the magazine are very seducing, although sometimes a bit over-complicated. A small selection of what's inside Volume, Storytelling: Bjarke Ingles presents a comic strip-like portrait of Welfairytales, BIG's Danish pavilion at EXPO 2010 (video), there's a small feature on La Casa del Carbonero, or the Charcoal burner's hut (1999) by Smiljan Radic, Geoff Manaugh takes as a point of departure Todd Hido's photography's series Foreclosed Homes to suggest how a world falling apart could be made of stained carpets in empty houses rather than big fires and warfare. Meanwhile, an interview of Economist Andrew Oswald explores the dichotomy between homeownership (thus investing in stability) and rentership (favouring thus flexibility).
An article focusing on the Biosphere 2 shows how its own crisis echoes debates over research priorities, ecosystem construction and resource distribution. One of the essays' embarks on an endless vacation with the so-called 'gray wave' and in particular the pioneering urban formulas offered to the new, dynamic and nimble third age. Sun City is at the forefront of experimental retirement communities. Sunny retirement paradise proved to be commercially successful and developers are pushing the model to almost hysterical extremes. Life in The Villages, Florida's Friendliest Retirement Hometown is built as a Disneyworld for active retirees, and designed to replicate the villages and small towns residents had known in their childhood. At the other side of the spectrum, the Huis Ten Bosch retirement community doubles as a theme park. It recreates the Netherlands by displaying real size copies of old Dutch buildings, right in the middle of the Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan.
In a fascinating interview, Environmental Geographer Robert McLeman sums up the tension between today's ease of mobility and the stability of settlement. He compares the forces that came together to stimulate immigration at the time of the Dust Bowl with today's situation of 'market-induced house arrest' and tomorrow's urge to migrate due to the effects of climate change.
A 16-page supplement analyzes how Warren, Michigan get get its American Dream back through pragmatic community-based projects. And because the theme of this issue is Storytelling, C-Lab narrates their own tale, the one of the ostrich that saves the life of the technostrich, a robot made at her image. Volume team also meet with news reporters and experts in journalism to discuss key aspects of story telling: how news stories are told, how the ones we read in prints are different from the ones we watch on tv, how narrativity doesn't naturally go hand in hand with analysis, the use of history in current affairs, etc. Archives of Volume. |
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Publishers Edizioni Corraini and Canadian Centre for Architecture describe the book as follows:From November 7th, 2007 to April 20th, 2008 the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal hosts the exhibition "1973: Sorry, Out of Gas", curated by CCA Director Mirko Zardini and Giovanna Borasi. The exhibition examines the oil crisis of 1973 as a major precedent of contemporary concerns about energy resources and fossil fuel dependency. In fact, the 1973 shortage triggered research and development of renewable energy sources, improved technologies, and social experiments that were to have an enduring impact on the architectural and political fields both in America and Europe. The catalogue of the exhibition is co-published by the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Corraini Edizioni. Book design by Massimo Pitis. An illustrated tale by Harriet Russell, specially conceived on this occasion, introduces the book from a child's point of view. Her amusing drawings create ironic and funny situations in order to make children familiar with energy saving and oil dependency concerns.
I would have miss this brilliant and superbly documented book had i not received it as a present from the lovely people at For your Art during the Postopolis blogathon in Los Angeles last April. Sorry, Out of Gas is the catalog of an exhibition of the same title that ended in April 2008 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. I wish i'll get to visit CCA one day as they seem to regularly set up truly innovative exhibitions. Sorry, Out of Gas explored the architectural innovation spurred by the 1973 oil crisis, when Middle East producers declared a boycott and the value of oil increased exponentially and triggered economic, political, and social upheaval across the world.
Thirty years ago already, industrialized economies realized they might be relying too heavily on crude oil. Researchers, inventors, engineers, activist groups and architects came up with innovations and experiments aimed at preserving, renewing or creating new forms of energy. Today, it seems that much of their work (at the notable exception of Buckminster Fuller) and ideas have sunk into oblivion.
The book and exhibition attempt to remind us that the architects, designers and other 'luminaries' who are currently brandishing the magic word sustainability might want to acknowledge the pioneering work carried out more than 3 decades ago. As CCA Director and exhibition curator Mirko Zardini explained, "By providing insight on the forerunners of many contemporary approaches to sustainable living, the exhibition aims to increase public awareness and encourage contemporary research in the field." The book starts with "An Endangered Species", a lovely illustrated tale that explains to children our dependence on oil, the existence of alternative sources of energy and the little steps families can take to cut back on consumption.
Then comes an essay by Mirko Zardini and a chapter dedicated to oil, from the embargo to the games that were created at the time to educate or even sometimes dedramatize the issue. I was particularly fascinated by a series of discourses pronounced in the 70s by world leaders. They were much bolder and more undisguised than the ones voiced by today's politicians. It feels like our leaders prefer to tread much more carefully and are afraid of causing us any discomfort. The rest of the book is divided in chapters that correspond to alternative sources of energy and their use in architecture: Sun, Earth, Wind and Integrated Systems.
Times called for a new austerity, for a more sensible and DIY aesthetics. A few examples worth mentioning:
The Dover Sun House was the first solar home that was actually inhabited. Entirely heated by solar energy, it had been deliberately designed without back-up heating system. It was made by three women: sculptor Amelia Peabody commissioned its construction, Dr. Maria Telkes, an assistant in MIT's Department of Metallurgy, designed the house heating unit and architect Eleanor Raymond drew up the plans and supervised the construction. John Barnard's Ecology House is the outcome of the architect asking himself the question "How to make a house that resembles a park?" The answer came into the form of a construction sunk underground, with 25 to 40 cm of soil on the roof. Rooms receive natural light through the central open-air atrium shown below:
In 1976, a tenant-owner cooperative installed on the roof of their building at 519 East 11th Street in Manhattan solar collectors and a wind generator with the aim of using the energy for the public space inside the building. The system was connected to the Con Edison network, the company that had the monopoly for supplying power in the area. The energy generated was used in parallel with the supply from Con Ed. Over the first 5 months, the system met 110% of the overall demand.
Images from inside the book:
More photos from the exhibition on arttattler and designboom. Image on the homepage from Washington Post. Related stories: Radical Nature - Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969-2009, The Golden Institute for Energy (follow-up coming soon), Ecological Strategies in Today's Art (part 1). |
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In sensory deprivation experiments of the 1950s, college students lay on a cot in an empty cubicle nearly 24 hours a day, leaving only to eat and use the bathroom. They wore translucent goggles that let in light but prevented them from seeing any shapes or patterns, and they were fitted with cotton gloves and cardboard cuffs to restrict the sense of touch. The hum of an air conditioner and pillows wrapped around their heads blocked out auditory stimulation. The subjects eventually became bored, restless, disoriented, had difficulty concentrating, and their performance on problem-solving tests progressively deteriorated the longer they were isolated in the cubicle. After they left the isolation chamber, the perceptions of many were temporarily distorted, and their brain-wave patterns, which had slowed down during the experiment, took several hours to return to normal. Solitary confinement is not only regarded as a severe form of punishment in prisons but is also a popular form of torture because the way it leaves no visible trace. On the other hand, it has been observed that too much arousal can produce stress and impair a person's mental and physical abilities. Hence, the use and even commercialization of floatation tank for relaxation and therapy.
One of my favourite projects at the Design Interactions Summer show was ExtraRoom by Gunnar Green (in collaboration with Bernhard Hopfengaertner). Directly influenced by the 50s and '60s experiments, ExtraRoom puts the sensory deprivation practice in a near futuristic scenario, when mind reading technologies are in common use and thoughts are not private anymore. What would happen if your thoughts became directly accessible to others? What would happen to your innermost desires and believes? Would you still be you? Military, carceral and therapeutic rooms would be adapted for the civilian realm. These extra rooms would be added to buildings as effective means for its inhabitants to (re-)gain self control, defend their inner thoughts and find a space for mental adjustment to the outside world.
The image above shows the 'food dispenser". The subject would suck nutrients from it: normal meals would indeed be too rich in stimuli (shape, textures, ordering on the plate, smell, etc.). Besides, their elimination would erase any sense of time. The rest of the room would be totally bland and white, with only a toilet. It is soundproof and features no window. The architecture of the room with its surfaces that are never horizontal nor vertical induces mental unrest. It has been observed that deprivation rooms increase the receptivity to propaganda. After 36 hours spent in the room, the mind of its inhabitant would be ready to receive desirable messages through speakers. The input would be repeated several times until the appropriate psychological alteration has been reached. The door will then open. The person can now go back to their normal life. More details in the video: The Royal College of Art Show is open every day from 11amd to 8pm until July 5, 2009. |
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Postopolis Day 5 was the day i realized once more that many people in the audience should have been on the programme too. It was the day i fell in love with stripped trousers and the day i decided all those hours spent on the roof of The Standard had not been that cold after all. Dan Hill has a much wider and smarter coverage of Postopolis than i, Bryan Finocki has started posting bits and pieces of it, archdaily went for a best of, gods know where Geoff found the time and energy to feed such a fascinating twitter coverage, and Jayce Clayton might come up with more.
So, day 5, right? Dan posted an extensive eulogy to Benjamin Bratton's talk. So let's skip to the next speaker: Christian Moeller. He was wearing the most magnificent trousers and kept joking about Germany the way Germans always do (i suspect they are quite proud of the cliches they seemingly make fun of.) He showed some works you have probably already heard about and sparkled them with anecdotes. In particular what he calls "technical fuck-ups."
The day of the opening, people were touching different poles with both arms. That had not been anticipated so the installation didn't react as it should have. To fix the problem on the spot, the staff rushed to the offices and printed a series of rules on how to use the installation and that was it: people had one of their hands busy holding the sheet of paper. Video of the installation. Unlike the previous days, day 5 of Postopolis had very few solo presentations but a series of panels. The first one was a bit of a wild mix-match gathering some 'new media art-y' and very talented people: Sean Dockray, Dan Goods, Daniel Rehn and Jay Yan. Sean Dockray is co-directing the TELIC Arts Exchange in Chinatown. The space used to be a gallery exhibiting mostly new media art installations but Dockray turned it into a series of platforms that, each in its own way, foster social exchange, public participation to produce a critical engagement with new media and culture.
TELIC now takes in The Public School, The Distributed Gallery (a video exhibition project made of televisions and video monitors in various semi-private locations), the Berlin Telic Art Exchange (a gallery that doesn't exist on Brunnenstrasse and is currently showing two spectacular sculptures by Nick Ervinck.)
Dan Goods is an artist with an unusual job at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. He helps researchers communicate their work to the general public. He talked mostly of eCloud, a data driven sculpture he's developing together with Nik Hafermaas and Aaron Koblin for San Jose International Airport.
Hundreds of hanging square panels of electrically switchable laminated plexiglass act as pixels. This material has the ability to graduate opacities with the transmission of an electrical charge: when in neutral, the panel is opaque and when sent an electronic charge the material transitions to visually transparent. The animations that move through eCloud are based on a live feed of weather and wind conditions data. By replaying data through time, abstract imagery moves from one panel to the next, creating visualizations that traverse the concourse space. An additional display signage communicates the current dataset to the viewers. See movie. Daniel Rehn mentioned most of the projects he's involved in from a $10 computer already available in India, China, Brazil, and elsewhere to Rabbitat v1.0, an installation that uses web cameras to capture and illuminate rabbit behavior. Jay Yan went quickly through a series of his works but i'll be even faster and point you to aninterview i made with him last month. What i should add is that he showed us a new installation called Turbulence, video.
One of the most interesting panels for me was the one dedicated to photography. Photographers Catherine Ledner, Misha Gravenor, Dave Lauridsen and Tom Fowlks. The issues raised: do you feel that bloggers steal your pictures when they use them, give credit but do not email you to get permission to publish your images? How do you react if they crop your pictures? Should images be treated as text quotations and as such be free to use? What should be the legal implications of using a photography that has been commissioned and paid by a magazine? The feeling i had from the discussion is that bloggers are not super popular among photographers. Catherine Ledner, had a very open attitude "As long as they give credit, that's free publicity for me." Others really insisted on being warned about the use of their images "I like to know where my images are going," said Dave Lauridsen. Ledner immediately answered "Just get a google alert on your name and you'll know where your photos are." Geoff, who was moderating the discussion, had a few pertinent points to share on the subject.
We didn't really have a closing party that night but the breakfast of the following morning was quite a party. We went to a rather unbelievable place called Clifton's Cafeteria. Everything was faux-forest. From the moose head to the fridge wrapped in fake logs, people drank Lemon Olé or Mango Olé but the food was brilliant. Not particularly sophisticated, rather heart-warming and arteries-clogging. Loved it! Once again a huge thank you to Storefront for Art and Architecture for their brilliant work of production and organization, to Geoff from BLDGBLG for imagining all this and to ForYourArt who made our life in LA so pleasant and exciting. |
