Abstract
Preamble: The Contemporary Question of Form, Structure and Space. At a time when the production of architectural form is accorded free rein by the powers of computational techniques, no question is more urgent than the relationship between form and space. It is imperative since this relationship represents much more than form merely enveloping space, and because latter-day computer generated architecture has given rise to sensuous shapes at the expense of content.
The starting point for this text is based on my collaboration with Anton M. Savov and Lars Nixdorff. Anton M. Savov, is a research fellow at the Städelschule Architecture Class and is currently working on his doctoral thesis on computational strategies for architectural design. In the recent project “Keep Something For a Rainy Day” with artist Att Poomtangon at the Venice Art Biennale 2009, Savov was able to fuse his interests in order to offer new, unique and imaginative micro-environments for the experience and exhilaration of the participating visitors. Lars Nixdorff is currently a Guest Professor at the Städelschule Architecture Class. He graduated from the University of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt, with a diploma in Architecture and obtained a Post-Graduate Diploma in Advanced Architectural Design from Städelschule Architecture Class. He worked for UNStudio on several projects in The Netherlands before establishing his architecture practice, RNA, in 2009.
The use of software modules that employed the mathematics of the Voronoi diagram started this situation. More recent techniques, including associative modeling and scripting, contribute to the same.
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References
In their book, Atlas of Novel Tectonics, Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto address this and offer examples of the pitfalls that follow a too expedient and uninformed use of diagrammatic techniques to produce shallow architectural results. J. Reiser, N. Umemoto, Atlas of Novel Tectonics. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.
His reasoning and polemics are well known. For instance, in the introduction to The Decorative Art of Today, he argued: “Gilding is fading out and the slums will not be with us for long before they are abolished. Certainly, we appear to be working towards the establishment of a simple and economical scale. [...] To search for human scale, for human function, is to define human needs. These needs are ‘type’. We all need means of supplementing our natural capabilities.” Later in the same volume, he presented his “Law of Ripolin”: “Every citizen is required to replace his hangings, his damasks, his wallpapers, his stencils, with a plain coat of white ripolin.” Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today. trans. JI Dunnett, London: The Architectural Press, 1987, pp. xxii and 188.
Le Corbusier, Toward a New Architecture. trans. F Etchells, New York: Dover Publications, 1986, p. 2.
M. Schwarzer, “Tectonics Unbound”, in: ANY Magazine vol. 1,14 (1996), p. 13.
K. Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995, p. 4.
Semper championed classical Greek forms as ideal for architecture but felt that they were not to be used imitatively. The focus was on Greek decorative parts whose roles were closely connected to construction and “to express symbolically the mechanical functions of the structural parts — giving support, carrying load, countering pressure”. W. Herrmann, Gottfried Semper: In Search of Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1984, p.144.
The best recent collection of essays on tectonic theory in historical and contemporary terms can be found in: M. Schwarzer, et.al., “Tectonics Unbound”, in: ANY Magazine vol. 1 (14), no. 14 (1996).
Fibers and textiles have perhaps simply been too complex for architects to be concerned about. Meanwhile, “composites” refers to the enormous material category where two or more material elements are embedded to make a new material system with new characteristics and properties but where the elements retain their individual characteristics in the mix. Wood, concrete and steel reinforced concrete are all composites. Modern and advanced textile reinforced composites with a polymer body have problematically been referred to as “reinforced plastics”. Although they are plastics, the problem arises due to the fact that “plastics” is as large and diverse a material group as textiles but is often perceived in negative terms. For more on plastics, see S. Lavin, “Plasticity at Work”; in: A Bremner, R Shafer, eds., Mood River. exhibition catalogue, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus: Ohio State University, 2002, pp. 74–81; or J. L. Meikle, American Plastic: A Cultural History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
Sekler defined tectonics as the expression of “the visual results [that]affect us through certain expressive qualities which clearly have something to do with the play of forces [‘structural concept’]and corresponding arrangement of parts in the building [construction], yet cannot be described in terms of construction and structure alone.” He argued that “structure, the intangible concept, is realized through construction and given visual expression through tectonics”. E. F. Sekler, “Structure, Construction, Tectonics”; in: G. Kepes, ed., Structure in Art and in Science. New York: George Brazziller, 1965, pp. 89 and 92. Frampton, heir to Sekler’s ideas, sees traditional tectonic theory lying “suspended between a series of opposites, above all between the ontological and the representational.” To him, tectonics is about craft and a critical counterbalance to the mass media dominance of contemporary architectural production. K. Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, pp. 375–376.
The former is exemplified by the notion of “digital tectonics”, presented in: Digital Tectonics, ed. by N. Leach, D. Turnbull, C. Williams, Chichester: Wiley Academy, 2004. The book included a series of important essays and projects by architects like Greg Lynn, and engineers like Cecil Balmond. The problem is that the “digital” cannot have any tectonics; it presents a tool for mathematical-electronic calculus to instrumentalize human (and non-human) efforts. Furthermore, insofar as the digital has contributed to a new tectonics, it must be understood through the material and architectural realm that it has engendered.
Some of Lars Spuybroek’s work fall into this category. Spuybroek’s work, from the realized Son-O-House (Son en Breugel, the Netherlands, 2000–2004) to unrealized designs like the Jalisco Library (Guadalajara, Mexico, 2005), employ weaving or braiding metaphorically in the manner described above. However, in contrast to the work of Arup’s AGU, the design articulation takes no account of the scalar and structural transitions in going from textile model to architectural proposal. In Spuybroeks’s work, a pattern is a pattern. Spuybroek calls for considering “whether the microtectonics of the textile surface can become the macrotectonics of the edifice” and claims that “a real textile technology can become a technique within another, digital technology, which then inhabits a building technology of steel and concrete and other materials”. In these transitions he sees Semper’s Stoffwechsel at work, which amounts to understanding this Semperian idea not in terms of its transformative potential but as a literal transposition of the mesh organization from the macro-scale of the textile to the global scale of the building. M. L. Tramontin, L. Spuybroek, “Textile Tectonics: An Interview with Lars Spuybroek”, in; M. Garcia, ed., Architextiles. London: John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 54 and 55, respectively.
L. P. Kollár, G. S. Springer, Mechanics of Composite Structures. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
R. Evans, The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995.
A. G. H. Dietz, Plastics for Architects and Builders. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1969. p. 5.
The exhibition “The Pavilion: Pleasure and Polemics in Architecture” ran from 11 July till 20 September, 2009. See B. Bergdoll, P. C. Schmal, B. Colomina, J. Bettum, et al., The Pavilion: Pleasure and Polemics in Architecture. ed. by P. C. Schmal, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz and Deutsches Architektur Museum, 2009.
The word can also be translated as metabolism but this seems foreign to Semper’s other terms and general discussion, which have, despite his references to nature and natural forms, little in common with the processes of living organisms. On the other hand, the question of nature and the model of natural forms in Semper work requires more research. Quitzsch writes: “Die Kunstformen der technischen Künste blieben für Semper immer an Naturgesetze gebunden, und die Kunst kann diesen Rahmen nicht verlassen, ohne auf eine willkürliche Gestaltung herabzusinken. [...]Die Wirksamkeit der Naturgesetze [...]stehen sogar [...] in einem engen Verhältnis zum Entwicklungsprinzip in der Kunst, in dem die Stilentwicklung der technischen Künste die Entwicklung der Natur analog weiterführt und dort gleichen Gesetzen unterliegt. Die Kunst richtet sich nach den in der Natur vorgefundenen Gesetzen und baut auf ihnen auf. Die Naturgesetzlichkeit wird zur Grundlage der Formgesetze und auch zur Grundlage aller ästhetischen Prinzipien.” Heinz Quitzsch, Gottfried Semper — Praktische Ästhetik und politischer Kampf, p. 63. Quitzsch offers further reference to Goethe and Herder. Nature is, then, partly understood by Semper as a direct expression in aesthetic, physical form that also corresponds to classical doctrines, such as Vitruvius’ eurhythmy, symmetry and proportionality. However, for Semper, in accordance with the understanding of biology in his time, proportionality is, for instance, an expression of molecular attraction. Quitzsch writes: “Und so wird die Symmetrie Ausdruck des ‘Gesetzes der Molekularattraktion’.” According to Quitzsch, Semper arrives at a view of nature with a limited scope and a single, didactic model for architecture and the arts.
A. von Buttlar, “Gottfried Semper als Theoretiker” in: ibid., ed., Der Stil 1: Die Textile Kunst. Vol. 1, Mittenwald: Mäander Kunstverlag, 1977, p. 10. According to Buttlar, Semper also agues the reverse, that behind every naive, material form there is a higher, symbolic one.
See, for instance, S. Hartwig, K. Trotier, “Leipziger Demonstranten: Helden wie wir”, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Oktober 13, 2009.
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The use of software modules that employed the mathematics of the Voronoi diagram started this situation. More recent techniques, including associative modeling and scripting, contribute to the same.
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Bettum, J. (2010). Architectural form and saturated space. In: GAM Architecture Magazine 06. Graz Architektur Magazin Graz Architecture Magazine, vol 6. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-99210-4_7
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