Animate Form: March 2011

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Animate Form need not be buildings

Here is a short video that on one level is maybe just a slick marketing gimmick.. but seen through the eyes of an architect, it is a transformation of a public space (this happens to be michigan avenue in chicago), not by fancy moving architecture, but people itself animating the existing form. Click through the link to get a better video or a different angle of view - they are plenty of this event on youtube

Spatial transformation is not always about a built intervention that adapts to or obeys human command, but can also be a dramatic human intervention - a special event that makes us look at form in a way that we didn't think was possible.

It would be nice to see lots of more interesting examples of spatial transformation.

Check out the official video of the song to get better quality audio.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Anish Kapoor creates New Form

For those of you who missed the show in Delhi, this film looks at Anish Kapoor's work quite well. Follow the rest of the videos on youtube

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Juvet Landscape Hotel

Infusing something less... fantastic (???) for now.

Juvet Landscape Hotel is in Norway and is basically a series of wooden boxes with a glass facade oriented for views. The architects are JSA of Norway. I think this is a facade that excites equally well. But then again, its me and my box-fixation.

More images can be found here.

Should it be doing that?

http://weburbanist.com/2009/10/20/13-more-buildings-in-motion/

12 Videos to Watch

http://www.oobject.com/category/12-moving-building-facades-videos/

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Video: Reuben Margolin\

Check out this video of Reuben Margolin, a Bay Area visionary and longtime maker, creates totally singular techno-kinetic wave sculptures. Using everything from wood to cardboard to found and salvaged objects, Reubens artwork is diverse, with sculptures ranging from tiny to looming, motorized to hand-cranked. Focusing on natural elements like a discrete water droplet or a powerful ocean eddy, his work is elegant and hypnotic. Also, learn how ocean waves can power our future. Learn more about Reuben at http://www.reubenmargolin.com/

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Jeff Kipnis Talks Windows

Jeff Kipnis at Knowlton Hall

While this lecture talks only about windows, what i would like you to see is how he correlates (sometimes stretching it) different architectural objects, weaves a historical narrative into it - and only ever discusses ONE aspect of the facade, i.e., windows. This is the kind of intellectual framework we should be looking at.

Reading list coming soon - you may also suggest

Saturday, March 5, 2011

zenthrum paul klee - piano

i do not know if this example would go with what we are doing in the seminar
but nevertheless :)

(search for images and links yourself... limited net access)

Wave by Calatrava

This is in front of the Meadows Museum at SMU in Dallas

Milwaukee Museum of Art

Dynamic Architecture

Tom Shannon's anti-gravity sculpture | Video on TED.com

Theo Jansen creates new creatures | Video on TED.com

Arthur Ganson makes moving sculpture | Video on TED.com

Greg Lynn on calculus in architecture | Video on TED.com

Why Beauty Matters

Philosopher Roger Scruton examines the loss of beauty in the modern culture. Part 1 of 5 - Follow the rest on youtube

Michael Pawlyn: Using nature's genius in architecture | Video on TED.com

“Frankly, I cannot believe that in the short span of our history we have experimented with and exhausted the possibilities of form.”

Jeffrey Kipnis

The appearance of buildings informs our understanding of them. We can look at a building and attempt to comprehend it without inhabiting it. We draw upon fragments of our memory to correlate certain specific symbols and aspects of its exterior and establish relationships – The cross on the church, the display window at a shop, etc. This helps us navigate our worlds as most buildings seek to conform to the visual nature of the category they belong to. Nikolaus Pevsner has written a rather large book, ‘A History of Building types’, which re-emphasizes the same point – that a façade must communicate the internal function of the building within established norms

However, as architects, we all love crazy buildings. Buildings that swoop and swerve, that arrest the eye – that try and be more than just containers of space. Buildings that have fantastic forms. Certain buildings don’t even have to swoop and swerve to be crazy – they are just so far removed our original understanding that we look at them and say – surely that can’t be a hotel – wow, how did they do that? The Mountain, by BIG, is a prime example of a façade being generated by an absolutely new way of looking at a building typology.

Unfortunately, human intelligence and stupidity are somewhat evenly distributed. It would be wonderful if all architects were gifted geniuses who could create fantastically original forms, but the reality means that a mass of followers inanely copy forms created by the few gifted ones. There are millions who aspire to be Hadid or Gehry, and incorporate the visual medium in their architecture. Hence the ugliness of the modern world

The Challenge of the New Façade
Of course, the counterpoint to this is the sheer wastefulness of facades that are simply pretending to be something or convey something that they really do not represent. Is that really what architecture should be looking to do with itself? Have architects become so self-serving and neurotic that their only concern is how to make their buildings somehow ‘look different’?

The façade of a building has to do more these days. Free from supporting the load for over a century, it now has to be almost alive with responsiveness to the environment. It needs to react to occupancy, weather, erosion, pollution and even generate the energy required to run the building it covers.

Are we prepared to give the façade of the building greater responsibilities than just prettiness? Can we look forward to buildings that not only look good, but do a lot of things that transform buildings from simple containers of space to meaningful contributors to human life?

Meanwhile, don’t forget that we still like crazy buildings. We want to push the envelope (literally) and create new patterns with our creativity. Let us examine how architecture can continue to be the subject matter for art.