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Channelbeta - Canale d'Informazione sull'Architettura
Contemporanea |
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The challenge of teaching a studio is to combine
culture, economics, and politics and investigate, analyze what impact this can
have on architecture. Ultimately the most important issue in architecture is to
understand, learn and interpret where we are in the world and how architecture
as a concept can be integral to this dynamic set of influences. Having been lucky
enough to be invited to teach paperless studios at the School of architecture
of both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University NYC, it has given
me a chance to investigate these issues with my students.
Heidegger (the end of technology 1937) talked about society
as expressed in art and science. Art was then the spiritual expression of society
and science he described as the 'theory of the real'
.the observation of 'that
which works', The ultimate description of architecture is found in the combination
of art and science here defined as "the spiritual expression
and observation of that which works". The
main premise of these paperless studios as developed over the last few years is
the use of the computer as a generative tool
and not as a re-presentational or technical drawing implement.
During architectural reviews when "dynamic structures" are mentioned,
one particular question often arises: does this move?
The question of movement is in essence an expression of the traditional, still
pervasive mechanistic way of thinking
- - as opposed to the generative, process-oriented organismic
approach. Architecture as an integral part of a
series of subsets of dynamic systems can be seen as an organism, a constantly
adapting reactive, complex set of layers. These organizing phenomena occur on
all levels: in society, in behavioral processes, and in nature. Architecture
is by nature a 'slow' profession. Only within its avant-garde movements
has architecture challenged traditional craftsmanship, proportional system, and
esthetics. These movements took place during periods characterized by incredible
technological innovations that made huge impacts on society. The introduction
of the car in the beginning of the 20th century, for example, became a fascination
for the futurists (Marinetti). In the sixties, the introduction of the television
and threat of the atomic bomb, inspired groups like Archigram in England and Super
Studio in Italy to rethink architecture as a "moving flexible city." Now,
in the late 20th century, the computer has fast-forwarded mass consumption into
digital electronic communication--which, with its specialization and individualization,
has fragmented the mass society into a niche culture (e.g. hackers). Demassified
niches, as discussed by Alvin Toffler, commandeer the space of the Internet.
On a larger scale, increasing globalism is transforming our cities into physical
expressions of global economies with only traces of the local culture left inside.
Within this global network, architecture is challenged, yet it resists _______.
Architecture's
resistance to the 'new' is puzzling -- especially if you consider that architecture,
in its geometricity, is closely related to mathematics. While geometry is
the study of the properties of shapes and spaces, mathematics is the common denominator
that includes geometry, algebra and analysis. There is a crucial difference between
the thing and the mathematical
model of the thing. In geometry one can calculate a certain
surface in absolute values, but in mathematics one has to define the state of
the boundary, which then defines the validity of the calculus applied, and therefore
the definition of the thing. Suddenly the angles of a triangle, when projected
on a curved surface, no longer add up to 180 degrees! Mathematicians will make
assumptions about mathematical behavior, which they will then attempt to prove.
They work with the mathematical theorem. This scientific method is strange
to architects, who prefer to think in absolute values and tend to think in frozen
time. Scientists
like Gauss, Mobius, and Rieman
in Germany worked on the first topological surfaces in mathematics. In 1827
Gauss wrote his "treatise on geometry of curved surfaces." Ferdinand Mobius devised
a similar idea in the same year; in his moebius loop, the "flipping over" of hypothetical
objects in the fourth dimension brings into being the fourth. Rieman wrote in
1854 " the hypotheses which underlie geometry," which constitute the bases
of what we know as the Rieman surfaces. Nearly two centuries ago these mathematicians
looked beyond absolute values to entertain the idea of a pure, free-style space-time.
Yet there are architects who still regard the study of topological deformations
like the moebius loop and Rieman surfaces as "new" -- too extreme, too fashionable.
Could it be that architecture is simply too slow?
It took architects a century-and-a-half to recognize mathematics' relevance to
their practice. Now that mathematics itself has progressed, when is architecture
going to "catch up"? We take on this challenge in the studio and hope to develop
an integral architecture always 'already there'. Winka
Dubbeldam
LINKS: Gipsy
Trial Residence
Weather
Monitoring Station in Iceland Winka
Dubbledam Archi-Tectonics |
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[02-2003] |
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