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Greg Lynn FORM,
Michael McInturf Architects,
Martin Treberspurg,
H2 House, Schwechat, Austria
The choice of architecture to discuss the issue of space in physical and virtual realities might seem at first glance an obvious one. After all architecture is synonymous with space. However, we should not forget that architectural practice is first and foremost about the representation of space. Architecture produces space not necessarily through building, but rather through plans for building. In this way, architecture presents space as a virtuality before physicality. Because the production of space in architectural practice involves virtual descriptions and processes of modeling, the means of representation is necessarily limited, constrained by conventional models of Euclidean geometry, Cartesian philosophy, or Albertian perspective, for example.
A change in visualization techniques and processes suggests a change in representational and architectural forms. Therefore, the introduction of computer-aided design hardware, software and modeling techniques requires us to ask what effect this has on the theory and practice of architecture. Architect Greg Lynn suggests: "It is always more interesting to begin with an inventory of what machines want to do to us before we start asking what we desire from the machines."
For Lynn this means no less than a paradigm shift in architectural thinking, because, as he puts it: "to develop a critical, experimental practice aided by contemporary design software architects must first rethink their approach to design based on time, topology, and parameters." Part of such a challenge is conceiving of an architecture in the process of becoming, where structures are less static totalities resisting the force of gravity and more dynamic multiplicities formed in the context of fluid, mutable media: an architecture formed in reaction to forces not simply built to resist them.
Greg Lynn of FORM, Michael McInturf Architects, and Martin Treberspurg, in a recent design of a roadside structure in Austria utilized vector-based animation software to develop its architecture. The architects began with the commissionerÕs logo - a triangular symbol - which they made dimensional by projecting its "depth." Already the choice to begin with a two-dimensional representation of corporate embodiment inverts the conventional trajectory of identity architecture where the building becomes a corporate symbol (e.g., the Transamerica building in San Francisco). Another phase of the process projects these forms as a skeletal system anticipating its siting along a highway. Here, the motion of the passing automobile becomes a force in the development of the structureÕs rhythmic sequential intervals. These structures are then wrapped with surfaces and subjected to a de-formation process. In this project, multiple segments of like but differentiated shape are held within the continuity of an unfolding, animated sequence. Architectural form is derived within a fluid and temporal digital medium and anticipates its animated and dynamic life in physical form.
"Space"by Andrew Blauvelt,Design Director,
Walker Art Center