INCHIOSTRO
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OMA (Shoei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas) Expansion of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) |
Marco Atzori - Originally published in C3 n°309 1005
The period between the last decade of the 20th century and the first years of the third millennium has been a temporal interval in which the architectural language had undergone a deep and contradictory change which repercussions and main critical effects should be evaluated carefully in the years to come. In the course of these two decades, deep paradigm changes are evident which, through interpreting philosophical and scientific theories, constructed a new structure of reference in architectural research.
The fascination resulting from the new sciences of complexity, especially the physical mathematical ones among which are the study of non-linear systems in relation to chaos theories, quantum mechanics or studies on fractal geometries conducted by Mandelbrot, as well as the attempt to codify the philosophical thoughts of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari produced an acceleration that, in very little time, buried the last recalls to postmodernism and drew itself in continuity with the de-constructivist experience in the construction of a new avant-garde of universal architecture.
In this context some of the philosophical theories of Deleuze became an integral part of the architectural thinking, terms such as rhizome, smooth space or striated space, or “diagram” and “fold” in particular were transformed into conceptual instruments that address formal experimentations and architectural processes in which the surface became the main element in spatial construction.
Similarly, the massive application of digital technologies produced an additional step in technological possibilities and lead to the passage from an industrial society to a new socio-economical model profoundly structured on information technologies. The possibilities offered by hard and software to producing new forms that are based on complex algorithms transformed and amplified significantly possible approaches to the project, producing new dynamics in design processes.
Rereading carefully the surrounding conditions that determined the architectural development generated from complex geometries, very interesting aspects could be found once formal research is linked to the will to reinterpret some traditional categories of architecture where surface manipulation is aimed at the creation of new techniques capable of transforming the site grounds into an active element that goes beyond the opposition between the ground and the architectural figure, where in the past its role was exclusively limited to being the base onto which the edifice is erected. “The reformulation of the ground,” as Alejandro Zaera Polo defines this process, investigates the possible existing indetermination between the site and the building in which architecture does not present itself as a vertical and active entity constructed on top of the ground’s horizontal and passive flat surface. The ground is transformed into a platform, a manipulative plane from where the building emerges as an undefined and fluctuant figure. Some projects designed by Foreign Office Architects, such as the terminal in Yokohoma, had definitely clarified this operational proceeding and had reinforced a direction that was already readable in some initial projects of OMA among which are the Congress Center of Agadir in Morocco, the Urban Design Forum in Yokohama and the Library of the Jussieu Campus in Paris and Koolhas himself who accentuated on architectural scale in the Educatorium in Utrecht in the following years.
The Folded House design by Xarchitecten and the Huanacu Warehouse & Office designed by tFPS architects, could be totally inserted in such research, highlighting some within the main themes. In the Folded House it is evident how the building space is generated without a solution of continuity with the site ground to become an ambiguous continuation. As confirmed by Zaera Polo, the distinction between the building and the ground is nullified and at the same time the relationship between figure and figure ground, object and its background, takes a undefined contour, and hence the architectural building cedes to be a defined and concluded element that manifests in itself its objectified nature to dissolve itself in the landscape that it produces. In the Huancacu Warehouse & Office the intention to produce continuity between building and ground is not revealed clearly as in the previous examples; however the fold of the building skin is used to construct a continuous spatiality that materializes the functional program. In line with the Deleuze thinking that “a flexible or elastic body has cohesive parts that form a fold, and that cannot be separated in parts and sub-parts but is rather infinitely divided in smaller folds that maintain a certain cohesion,” in both projects it is the building section that materializes spatial continuity, and determines, evidently revealed directly to the building outside, the facades that define the plans at different levels, in reference to local topographies rather than horizontal sections of artificial elements. In this manner the modern architecture concept where the section is derived from the development of the plan is revolutionized; in this regard, we can talk about the free and continuous section of Rem Koolhaas that illustrates modifications to the ground line.
Furthermore, we need to observe with extreme care the criteria adopted, in both projects, to control surface geometries as they demarcate a more mature phase of controlling the passage from the project to its physical implementation. In effect, it is noteworthy how the project study model is physical and not virtual and that this model is built in a very simple manner by folding a piece of paper. Possibilities to generate highly complex surface nurbs offered by software such as Rhinoceros are not always translated into constructible objects. Moreover, the relative easiness to learn using such software could lead to forgetting the consequences of the non-control or randomness of complex surfaces that are virtually produced. With a more mature and pragmatic approach the second generation of architects of digital practice uses conceptual processes and operational instruments more carefully and brilliantly, repositioning the role of the virtual model to correspond better to the project execution. In conclusion, the digitalization of the physical model will help rendering the surfaces more geometrical so that they are controlled in the construction phase. As confirmed more repetitively by Alejandro Zaera Polo, whatever is not transferable to software such as Autocad is not constructible.
The operational simplifications determined by the execution control of the project does not separate the relation that the folded surfaces maintain with the topological geometry. This interest is determined by their capability to express the fundamental properties of space beyond the limits of a formal definition: attention is moved from the object to space from which the object is generated. It is an informal logic that obtains its value from the positional and dynamic logic of elements rather than from the character of their composition where nothing could be subtracted or added; a rationale that privileges the generative and dynamic aspects of elements rather than their measures and proportions, and therefore its quality is embedded within its structure.
In these terms the project qualities of the Moncao House by Robert McBride and Debbie-Lyn Ryan, the Basque Health Department Headquarters in Bilbao by Coll-Barreu Arquitectos and the Vodafone headquarters in Oporto by Barbosa & Guimaraes Arquitectos could be identified, although they are limited to the external skin.
It is evident how, in the three buildings, the skin is put under a process of continuous variation of its forms and the adopted final configuration in each case is imaginable as a stadium, that is paused at a given moment in time, during a continuous transformation of the surface. The dynamic nature, in terms of evolution and process of the topological surface consequently produces a space that is linked to a perceptive and sensitive experience that describes the phenomena of the real in a different manner from what would occur in the case of Euclidean geometries. Each form is the product of a fixed and unchangeable mathematical figure, measurable exclusively through metric, area, volume and angular properties. On the contrary, the phenomenological character of the topological geometry, that identifies itself with an experience of almost an intuitive and empirical character, allows us to understand how forms that seem to be haphazardly produced from disorder has their own internal order where laws cannot be interpreted according to the linear dynamics of the Euclidian geometries.
Once the plastic forms of the curvature, of torsion and fold are referred to the topological surface, they are capable of producing a continuous variation of material and since in the topological definition also the angle cannot be conceived anymore as the meeting of two distinct planes but as a change in direction of a continuous element, as it occurs in the projects of McBride and Ryan by Coll-Barreu Arquitectos and Barbosa & Guimares.
The consequences of the manipulation of surfaces determine deep changes in the relation among building constructive elements, in the relation between solids and voids and in the confronted and settled structural conception within the surface itself. In particular, the structure does not materialize elements that are independent from the surface, leading to a dangerous dualism between studs and surfaces, but disappear within the skin thickness, reemerging as an isolated column only in sporadic and secondary cases. In these projects, the occupation of the project site through an edge membrane determines the construction of a structural skin that responds to informal logics which, as affirmed by Cecil Balmond, Ove Arup, means to consider complexity as the overlap of different orders without overstepping in the aleatory or arbitrary. In this kind of structural experimentations the structure also contributes to a series of structural experiments conducted by Cecil Balmond, detaching itself from Euclidean logics that construct absolute order and limit any coherence possibility among surfaces topological geometries and structural configurations.
The five buildings clearly indicate the directions in which the architectural experimentations, conducted till the early 1990s by a small group of architects, star architects by now, is being developed, specifying which is the diffusion and metabolism of the various languages of complex architecture. Apart from excessive formal dangers or the decidedly object-like dimension of similar buildings, valid fields of research which could be debated in search of an interpretation of contemporariness lie in the new conception of space, in the materialization of a continuous fluidity between outside and inside, in the dissolution of the building in the landscape and in change of scale between the former and the latter.
The deep rethinking of the relationship between ground and building is one of the major themes that ruptures between contemporary architecture and the modern and post-modern experiences. The transformation of the concept of “all is architecture” into “all is landscape” addressed profoundly the design approach, changing radically these approaches in which common elements among different and, apparently distant, languages, could be confronted, such as research on concepts of densification and vertical stratification of programs and spaces, prevalently done in urban environments. This occurs to the extent that when there are two different approaches to the architectural object, continuous spatiality versus striated space, two distinct approaches to urbanism can be identified.
Where the fold physically materializes the relations between architecturally programmatic components within a continuous and fluid space, in which the spatial generators move diagonally and constructions privilege horizontality, the densification and stratification leads to a vertical development of programs in which the overlap of spaces generates unexpected conditions among different functions.
On the larger scale, the two languages are the extension of two different conceptions of land use: the first is extensive that invades land at ground zero and the second is concentrated and maximizes land value.
From this point of view, vertical densification does not assume a return toward modern references, neutral buildings in a compositional equilibrium among their parts, and abstract forms laid on an indifferent ground.
In projects that exemplify this tendency, tension that explodes volumes in space through rotations and slipping of pure three-dimensional elements is evident. There is a propulsive drive that springs from the inside and physically seeks the external context. The slipping of the parts materially opens the buildings enclosing void into their inner parts and acquiring a public dimension. The presence of spaces of relation among private programs, created complexity and mix of functions, identify within these buildings real three-dimensional urban systems which architects such as MVRDV has been investigating for some time. In a place where urbanism is two-dimensionally constructed another three-dimensionality is constructed as well and is highly concentrated. Since their very early projects, among which is Berlin Voids, MVRDV had always sought complex and stratified systems that are able to internally concentrate the urban structure that normally is developed in plan. A similar approach is noted in the Modern Art Museum in Medellin of 51-1 Arquitectos, the Saint Mary psychiatric clinicby Lacombe De Florinier Architectes, the residential building “Chips” by Aslop Architects and the Bumps skyscraper in Beijing by SAKO Architects. In these projects the characteristics that MVRDV gives to three-dimensional urban systems in the volume KM3: “assemblage of density, public access, diversity in space and program, and a mixing of program” could be observed.
The research done by the Dutch group, as we know were by then derived from the OMA Studio (crossing architectural and contemporary urbanistic tendencies), undertook, since the beginning of its foundation, themes of bigness that are explicitly shown in the project of the expansion of the National Museum for Fine Arts in Quebec (MNBAQ), in which Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu designs a building that, through the slipping of its elements builds a continuity with its ground, striated space explodes in space the stratified program and creates an oblique relation among all its parts. The work of Koolhaas is in continuous exploration and superimposition between horizontality and verticality of complex and large-scale structures.
The formal language derived from the piling-up of functional levels, in the course of years reached levels of complexity that are evidently represented by the Ironbank RTA Studio, in which the architectural system adds up slipping and rotation elements that constructs vertical and differentiated sequences producing an artificial landscape where openings on all facades fuse the external with the internal landscape according to the activities that take place inside. The same concept, influenced by the choices adopted by MVRDV for Wozoco, could be read in the Crystal Court of Tangram Architekten, a housing complex that becomes a diaphragm between the urban park of Amsterdamse Bos and the Flevo Park.
The conception of three-dimensional urban systems through the application of the above exposed parameters determines the building’s passage from the condition of being an object to a system, and the creation of an artificial urban landscape that leads us to subsequently ask ourselves how could contemporary architectural monumentality be conceived. This is a path that moves further away from any possible nostalgia to modernity since the theme of scale in each of these buildings is resolved through the realization of iconic objects that, as affirmed by Silvio Carta, are deeply innate to the central condition adopted by the image of the contemporary society. In an interview conducted by El Croquis, MVRDV affirms that, “icons help us to fix public tendencies and desires that remain hidden to society itself,” but the production of iconic buildings can, on the contrary - according to Silvio Carta - functions as a painkiller, reassuring the user and limiting his/her interpretative experience to a superficial level. It is a fascination that lies at the very origins of the early 1990s that demonstrates itself once again as a crucial crossroad for understanding the actual directions of architecture.
Similar to what was observed in projects into which the concept of the fold is interpreted, the analysis of the role that the building skins are having in contemporary architecture cannot be disregarded. The role of the image moves the attention to the acknowledgement, to the search for originality, rather than to the manifestation of linguistic coherency among the various building components. The skin, in this sense, becomes the main support on which a system of signs could be constructed that highlights unity. Similarly research on material, colors and iconography that relocates ornaments under the spotlight could be interpreted. The bearing structure itself, away from expressing its role, is brought within the building communication system. The structural solution expresses messages that go beyond technique, reappearing at the surface, is shown but without wanting to allude to the building stability. This also could be considered ornamentation rather than highlighting the system of forces under which the building is set, similar to what occurs in Renzo Piano’s Beaubourg.
The Axis Viana Hotel by VHM, the villa and Petit Hotel in Shizuoka, designed by Mount Fuji Architects Studio or the Wilson House by Denton Corker Marshall are projects with similar considerations, in which even if there are references to the modern architectural language, the spectacularization of cantilevers, the relationship with the landscape sought through the slipping of construction components express an advancement in relation to the compositional criteria of rationalistic architecture; these are also landscaping micro systems rather than self-referential objects. A final observation is the role of building openings: in modern architecture transparency was conceived as an expression of truth, unveiling the building identity to the outside, where the relation between the inside and the outside is interchanging. Transparency is a the search to connect with the landscape, that does not intend to bring the inside toward the outside but, on the contrary, seeks to enclave the landscape inside the building, nullifying the scale between the former and the latter. Even if the building is expressed through an abstract language, detached from the natural context, a deep relationship is developed among the different components of the landscape in which the natural and artificial meanings are rethought and reconfigured according to other meanings that interpret better the actual conditions of our surrounding.
The rupture of a language that unify architecture, the superimposition of lines and the different tendencies is today a fundamental aspect that highlight the implications that the actual contemporary society, similar to other forms of human thinking, cannot refer anymore to ideologies or unifying theories but need to be capable of maintaining critical positions rather than fideistic adhesions.
Complexity and contradiction, as Robert Venturi asks himself: what value today should we give to this achievement?
Marco Atzori
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