. . . perhaps people are looking for more of a sophisticated way of engaging with space/architecture from a well respected/talented architect? i don't know. . . looks fairly sophisticated in a decorative way. . . . but nothing beyond that, but that's ok. it is what it is. . .
I'm not the biggest defender of Hernan, but have a stake in the discussion. SUR seams to be another experiment in building digital curvatures. Pulling NURBS is one thing, but fabricating it on a budget is another. For this, I give Hernan and the entire team much props. Entirely new scripts and documentation/assembly techniques were created to make this thing happen. My biggest disappoinment at SCI-Arc has been his reluctance to take part in the nitty-gritty of the manual labor and the shop environment (unless I missed something in NY). He is a self-proclaimed "diva". Aside from my feelings about "free student labor", this project is groundbreaking. I can't wait for the video documentary of the project.
Having been involved in many public and private discussions with the man, I trust that he is honing his talent and is deeply committed to his students and the long road of becoming a respectable architect.
My own path, coming straight out of his studio, involves a much greater involvement in the guts of the grotesque, not the image.
most of those 'benches' one couldnt even sit on. The 'bench' is clearly BS, (read afterthought) a justification for making mastabatory shapes.
Who is a classicist? Why would I be talking baout Greg Lynn? Are you even paying attention? I think some of us can just pick out a BS nurbs trick faster than others.
Just because we are critical does not mean we dont dig it WHEN ITS DONE WELL!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE get this.
Just because its done in Maya doesnt mean it has substance.
This guy has a ways to go.
Skeletal?
Try calatrava. Gaudi. These forms are about as skeletal as my left nut. Skeletons have continuity. Red anteaters lined up looking like they are ready to do the 100M dash do not have continuity.
The key people in the project got paid...the others (as any previous PS1 warm-up project, did not).
Hey, seems like a pretty cool way to get a TAN, have fun and learn some construction techniques that as a group are been tried to be figured out.
My props go to people like Drura Parish, Gary Abraham, Bryan Flaig, and Alexis Rochas.
The sublime refers in aesthetics to the quality of transcendent greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual or artistic. The term especially references a greatness with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation or measurement.
in the recent interview with archinect hernan said that his work is about 'the sublime'
well, the sublime justification is very clever because it completely insulates his work from any criticism but also makes irrelevant
i would say that the wrinkles on the canvas are not very awe-inspiring, though
Steve... can you elaborate on the manner of documenation/assembly? I still think it is ugly as shit (though not really ugly enough to be remarkable) but am willing to consider a larger significance for this thing if it offers something that the photos don't show. I admit I don't get much from Hernan's narrative.
As for Sublimity, as an aesthetic category it is traditionally associated with the great or minute. In any case it invokes an awe which draws upon the insignificance or impuissance of the human body. Hernan might want to try another aesthetic category - the Picturesque - which related directly to an objects suitability to 2 dimensional representation. This project has a lot of Gilpin, and very little Burke.
??? Let's see possibly a great installation by Enric Miralles for a play in El Liceu de Barcelona. It was actually referred to me by my mom who went to the play and she loved it.
I would say the art installation at my university where some guy put some chickens in a cage and then juxtaposed them with a custom built popcorn maker that made popcorn right in front of their cage all day long.
In response to FBD and Janosh, this project could not have happened without the input from SCI-Arc (X'er) grad student Chris Artzen who created a Rhino script to evaluate and break apart the NURBS into curved and straight segments. And from my studio, Ben Toam & Mirai Morita really sweated it out in the documentation phase. Though MUCH computer drafting and calculation went into the project, MUCH was learned about automation and assembly that will be carried into academia and our profession's future.
Mason, (and for all of you who asked about the making of SUR.) Here is a photo of the pools in production:
The base pools were made by Spectrum3d and Drura Parrish (a former employee of Hernan's who is now working in the manufacturing and rapid prototyping end of things with Spectrum3D in Orange County, CA.) The pools were carved from stacked white foam, covered with a urethane, shipped to NY in a semi and painted there. Note the large doors and mild climate surrounding their 9000sq.ft.warehouse make it easier to work with foams and resins. The pools were cut and stacked on top of one another for shipping.
is still funny to see that it doesnt matter if we r into modernism, postmodernism, contemporarity, or the age of the "virtual", architecture will never loose one of its typical atributes...the envy of some of our colleagues....
(sorry im just coming back from a fear and loathing weekend at London)
wow, i am rather taken aback by the hostile comments made against this thing...it is rather amusing that this thng, if so irrelevant, can generate this kind of reaction...
the sustainability issue is not an issue in a temporary 'art' installation, such as this is.
i read this project as a more aestheticized version of what Greg Lynn has been on about, ie organicized, skeleticized form. Hernan is just making those ideas visually spectacular, which is precisely why he was chosen for this gig.
it doesn't need to be conventionally beautiful, either. what it needs to do is generate debate, ie be provocative. in that, it is obviously succeeding...
reactions above=mission acomplished
I am more of a richard serra/james turrel kind of person, but there is something "beautiful and the grotesque" about the images. I commend hernan for his visual/spatial explorations...experiments. Visually (cause I have no f'ing clue when it comes to software) there is something "Illbient" about the piece, reminiscent to a drum and bass track by Adam F (Metropolis). I think this kind of exploration is just as important to our profession as trying to find the next green-fucking-material...
do the ant-eaters morph in shape or are they all contiguous. i would have hoped that they would create a series with hernan's interest in the cinematic, but from the images they don't appear to do so. was this just a time issue of creating 20 benches that were the same rather than 20 individual objects in a series? i dont know who i am asking...anyone really.
Funny to think that this trend of the blobs is now centralized in LA. After all, it's a city that's partly built of movie sets, fake facades and duck warehouses, and it seems that there even is a "blob industry" to get these things built, that is related to this architectural style.
It's interesting to realize that there is almost a direct link between the situations of cinema and architecture in the US.
Is that so cyn? If there is a difference between a "shlock box" and a herzog and de meuron building, it's parlty contained in a more poetic and inspiring esthetic, but also in a more sensible and intelligent constructive process. The similarities between the assemblage of the tv set shown in the picture posted by JG and the PS1 project are evident: a structure and the skin that is only conceived to support a form. I'm not as convinced as JG that it's so bad, but I can see the limitations of such an exercise when one think about confronting it with a more mundane situation where architecture is involved, as trace was implying it. It can probably be considered as an artwork but it cannot be compared with say, a museum where a complex and very specific program as to be sheltered and signified by architecture, such as the ones that Herzog and de Meuron concieve.
Its wonderful. not only is it better than i expected, its absolutely lovely. And it also excited people to no end (as seen by the silly anger from peace77 shows that it does what it supposed to. which is excite, anger, confuse, and create emotion in people..
bravo!
also. peace..are you out of your mind?
sustainable? well. thats true. it might be nice if it was, but its not. and thats no criteria for whether its good architecture or not.
function? to make something forpeople to look at and be around and to create excitement in people. and it apparently does that so well that you get pissed off from looking at photos.
french, i think this PS1 DOES have a very interesting and indeed experimental constructive process and in addition there is a critical and possibly poetic dimension to the design, whether or not you agree with it or buy it. if it didn't it would not have generated so much discussion already.
i think it misses the point entirely to compare this with a shlock TV set design meant to appeal to the masses. If you don't believe that, then why do you suppose hernan got the commission from a respected contemporary arts institution? Are you saying PS 1 don't have a clue? It's fine to question whether its architecture or not, but then again, maybe it's not supposed to be.
If you are going to critique the piece, folks, please do it from a credible point of view. The criticisms i am reading in this thread or way too easy to dismiss.
My friend was one of the free laborers for this project. I think this project is exciting mostly for its fabrication scripts and techniques. Hopefully this is paving the way for more efficient mass customization at real building scale. However, given his personal disintrest in construction techniques, a guy like Hernan probably won't be making these buildings. Instead he'll likely do an endless string of installations, pavilions, and commodity projects propped up and subsidized by educational and artistic institutions. But I really don't think this kind of work stops here, its latent potential is huge and I think some of the kids in school now will be the ones to push these projects into the real world. Hating on this stuff is really silly; it's pioneering and that's enough.
ckl - Nice comment re: the sublime. The sublime needs to be in some way overwhelming, as Janosh added, it needs to take you out of your body as it at the same time shows you how minimal and fragile your body is.
My issue from the very first look at the pics was that this installation simply isn't BIG enough! It needs to feel more enclosing, more inhabitable, then I think it would be a pretty amazing spatial experience (but still not quite architecture, as per diabase's comments on the temporary/fun pavilion nature of the piece). I think if it were twice as big it would be four times as successful.
My understanding of the beautiful/grotesque is based on a lecture I once saw about the illustrations of Audubon - these birds rendered in stunning color and composition as they sliced a worm in half with razor-sharp beak - nature as both beautiful and terrifying. I think Sur succeeds as grotesque in that way - it's a little sinister.
also, imo h &dM are not as interested in construction techniques as they are in material and texture. ie that is what drives their construction techniques.
in this ps1 case, i think the form is driving the technique, but also the material effect is somewhat the driver.
the sublime is not always overwhelming and big. or even small. (that is more the 'classical' burkean definition but even he listed many other things that could evoke the sublime. eg many times it is about horror.
in the romantic period the sublime was immanantized, and could be evoked by something as simple as the light falling a certain way across the landscape. the sublime is very subjective, it is anything that evokes the sense of 'otherness' as in transcendence in a person, it is less about the physical character of the object. in this regard, the sublime changes with the cultural conditions. i think this project may fall into the grotesque, which i don't think is the same as the sublime, but may be tangential to it. (I did my thesis on the sublime at Cambridge).
also, i think temporary pavilions and follies are indeed architecture. they simply function on different levels from the standard buildings we use on a daily semi-permanent basis. I think this project is a folly, and also happens to be a temporary pavilion.
i think the project is possibly a crossover from architecture into art.
I posted both images to show the similarities in the both the form, aesthetic, and fabrication technique (wrapped skeleton). If this much we can agree on then what exactly was the intention with the project? Certainly you cannot claim that he is trying to push the edges of fabrication techniques because this is an old technology; even if it was manufactured with CAM methods (ship builders have been doing this for a while now). In any case I'll see it this week and maybe I can be sold on it but from the posted images it looks like a meager prop which doesn't engage the site or the program in any meaningful way.
> 'cyn' One script was written for the bends in the aluminum pipe. The script basically did this; for any whole 3-D b-spline (in the 3-D computer drawing), a script was written that found the midpoint between any 2 single curves (curves only curving in 1 direction (I don't know the lingo) ) and broke the complex curves into a series of single curves that were bent (for the most part) in a shop in CA.
What's cool about the fabrication of these pieces is that in the field (I saw it when the frame was nearly complete) the creation of 'trees' of 3 or 6 of these complex curves was a pretty imprecise process. Pieces could be pulled and pushed and forced into alignment with other pieces. This means that the curves and the weld didn't have to be perfect and trust me, they weren't.
What this means to me is that if these bends can one day be made effiiciently (cheaply) entirely by computer controled bending machines, there's no reason that this type of construction has to be any more difficult than normal steel construction. What I mean is that since any metal building is made of hundreds of individual pieces (beams, columns, mullions, perlins, etc.), there's no reason the fabrication and connection of bent members can't happen at the scale of a big ass building. Personally, this is super exciting and I can't wait to see what happens.
Look guys, nothing like this has been built at PS1 in the past 6 years. The jury at MoMA is keeping this project open for another 2 months and this was the ONLY project to be completed on time and at 100% completion. You can hate all you want, but it is truly amazing. Structurally and aesthetically. The use of software scripts in this project was only to alleviate the construction techniques, not in form realization. Hernan shapes and models these forms in a very intuitive manner.
The project isnt about contextual, enviromental or 'releavant' stigmas. Your grading scales are skewed and the only thing I can say about you people who critique this work is that it is a product of fear [in the jim cunningham sense] - until you understand this work, any critique come across as ignorance. It's beautiful and very close to the proposed scheme. People poured their blood, sweat and beer into this project - I was blown away having seen this thing built in phases.
The technology is evident and the human craft is evident. If this was all milled, vac formed and fuselaged, it wouldnt be as beautiful.
Maya is a tool, not a generator. Rhino was used to aid in fabrication. People were used to build it. What more do you want?
Sustainability? It's aluminum, recyclable. The benches are being sold to museums and the spandex, I guess could be reused to make your speedos and leg warmers you haters.
All you people who dont live in NYC and who wont see SUR in its context will just have to hate on it.
You guys said it wouldnt be done and it is - so go read some Venturi.
John, "People poured their blood, sweat and beer into this project"...so? every day thousands of people are hard at work on buildings that won't get a thousanth of the attention this thing is getting. Certainly this is no reason not to critique the work. Also, I am not "hatin" the work. I am simply questioning the authors intentionality and the execution of whatever that is.
"intentionality" ? Hmm, I think the 'author's' intention was mostly to get this built. So good job.
And for real, eff an author. This project is about the cigar smoker, the kids on their computers making drawings instead of surfing, the folks sweating balls in Queens to weld and re-weld pipe, the black clad arty types who paid for it, and the fabricators in LA with chemically ruined lungs. Take out any of these things and the 'author' means nothing.
from what i've read of hernan's interviews, jg, the intention of the work was to explore an aesthetic, an idea about architectural form, as hernan says, the grotesque. ie this is a formal project. it is also, as stated, experimental. it is not about going over old ground ie the beautiful as we already understand it. it is also not really about fabrication technique. the fabrication technique is driven by the form.
unless you get that, and start your critique from there, the criticism = hollow.
and i also do not think there is anything but the most superficial of similarities between the tv set you posted and this work. that is really reaching...
Well, I'm trying hard to give opinions that are not based on general esthetic statements and I thought starting with the constructive process of the project was a good way to start since there's nothing more relevant that i can speak about this project (no program, no habitability...). Sorry to sound like "I don't like it". This wasn't my intention.
To argue that it's interesting because it has been sponsored by an established institution is not very convincing.
To say that this piece "PS1 DOES have a very interesting and indeed experimental constructive process" is not very helpful.
And to ask others to critique "from a credible point of view" doesn't allow you not to do so in such an unpolite manner CYN.
I understand your enthousiasm, I can believe that it's a niece thing to see but it doesn't mean that we can't question the validity of such a construction. I whish I could see it for real to share this enthousiasm with others, but the photograph I've seen don't make me bounce on my chair, neither the interview of the architect. Sorry.
well, admittedly, i hate this thing. not because it is ugly. because it is dissapointing. but i have some honest questions:
what is so new about this construction technique that will make its way through academia? i can't find anything on the details of its making that is new or innovative. it looks like a scaled up version of graduate student models at columbia and sci-arc: nurbs curves extracted from a willfully complicated form made of bent wire with panty-hose stretched over the top. sound familiar to anyone? you know it does.
on that note, i don't think it deserves all the hate it is getting. many of my friends were/are intimately involved in its design and construction. it generates discussion, it makes people happy, it gives architectural journalists some brightly colored photographs (as opposed to renderings) to put in their stories. and let us not forget that IT GOT BUILT. this guy's stuff is terrible in my opinion but getting off the page is a serious achievement.
what is so disappointing is that it is clearly a formal project. it has no other goals beyond formal play. that is it. From the metropolis piece,
"That’s why I had such a strong emphasis on technique in the project: we had to have the ability to explore the autonomy of the discipline and have it communicate without us."
the autonomy of the discipline? sound familiar?
anyway, if you are going to do a formal project with emphasis on technique, at least do it well with something to give back to the discipline. i think that the aranda/lasch entry did this quite well and would have loved to see it realized.
working with arup's Advanced Geometry Unit they developed a modular system that only used 4 modules and can create many diverse forms and spaces. plus, they claim that they would have done it under budget and been able to pay everyone (unlike Hernan).
this kind of thinking and technique could really advance the discipline of form making unlike (imho) Hernan's work. in that way it is a selfish project. it isn't generous to the architectural community.
french if you personally do not like the look of the thing, that is fine with me. just say you think it is ugly and doesn't interest you and move on. but if you are critiquing this like a regular piece of architecture i think you are way off the mark. it is not that and never was meant to be. it is not about square feet and adjacencies and typical functions for an institutional building such as a library or museum, it is not even about how the thing meets the ground-- none of the ps1 projects have been about those things except in the loosest sense of providing a place to listen to music. the 'meta' program here is about form and experimentation and provocation of debate in the public. the more the chosen architects push the envelope the happier the client (ps1) is. i didn't argue that it is interesting because it was sponsored by ps1 please do not put words in my mouth, nor was i the one that said i was enthused. the fact that it was commissioned by ps1 should, however give you a clue as to the intention behind the project.
in addition, many architectural follies do not have conventional programs or are not meant as habitation per se. that does not mean they are not architecture and not valid.
aranda/lasch entry seems to be very organitec and even more banal than most of the entries.
What all this comes down to is a series of opinions based on aesthetic qualities.
"He could have" "We would have" "Sciarc" ect.
What ever happened to the merit of exporing an intent?
I do think this DOES give back to the architectural community. Sure there are millions of possibilities of what the PS1 Could have been, but this is built and it deserves a valid critique, not some biased views towards the architect and the movement at Sciarc [Columbia doesnt matter since they have no basis for fabrication].
Hernan is exploring his intent and that is his right. These students GAVE him their time and labor because they believe in the cause.
I would argue that this is valueable only to the extent and because it was built. The translation from a 'selfish' formal pursuit to a built structure involved many more people than Hernan. As a rendering, it is selfish. But if the rendering represents an ideal perfection of this form or its most perfect representation, the result is imperfect and I'm arguing un or less selfish.
The construction methods may be crude and not that new, but the process of getting to this point at this moment was valuable to those involved and therefore to the architecture community. Panty hose on wire for models costs almost nothing and requires nothing of anyone but the author, this is clearly beyond that. In that it's a little fucked up, it's really no longer autonomous and I think that's great.
The kids who made it and hated some of its idocies, who hated the lack of attention on Hernan's part to the construction of this, and who hated not being paid will hopefully have learned a lot about what not to do.
I agree that the merits of this thing don't lie in it's contribution to 'form making'. I think it wins because it survived the compromising process of realization without which any form making remains truely autonomous and mostly irrelevant.
Xefirotarch @ P.S. 1
. . . perhaps people are looking for more of a sophisticated way of engaging with space/architecture from a well respected/talented architect? i don't know. . . looks fairly sophisticated in a decorative way. . . . but nothing beyond that, but that's ok. it is what it is. . .
. . . i hate that phrase.
I'm not the biggest defender of Hernan, but have a stake in the discussion. SUR seams to be another experiment in building digital curvatures. Pulling NURBS is one thing, but fabricating it on a budget is another. For this, I give Hernan and the entire team much props. Entirely new scripts and documentation/assembly techniques were created to make this thing happen. My biggest disappoinment at SCI-Arc has been his reluctance to take part in the nitty-gritty of the manual labor and the shop environment (unless I missed something in NY). He is a self-proclaimed "diva". Aside from my feelings about "free student labor", this project is groundbreaking. I can't wait for the video documentary of the project.
Having been involved in many public and private discussions with the man, I trust that he is honing his talent and is deeply committed to his students and the long road of becoming a respectable architect.
My own path, coming straight out of his studio, involves a much greater involvement in the guts of the grotesque, not the image.
This is just the beginning.
most of those 'benches' one couldnt even sit on. The 'bench' is clearly BS, (read afterthought) a justification for making mastabatory shapes.
Who is a classicist? Why would I be talking baout Greg Lynn? Are you even paying attention? I think some of us can just pick out a BS nurbs trick faster than others.
Just because we are critical does not mean we dont dig it WHEN ITS DONE WELL!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE get this.
Just because its done in Maya doesnt mean it has substance.
This guy has a ways to go.
Skeletal?
Try calatrava. Gaudi. These forms are about as skeletal as my left nut. Skeletons have continuity. Red anteaters lined up looking like they are ready to do the 100M dash do not have continuity.
Montross,
talented designers dont become critics?
your credibility is shot, pal.
The key people in the project got paid...the others (as any previous PS1 warm-up project, did not).
Hey, seems like a pretty cool way to get a TAN, have fun and learn some construction techniques that as a group are been tried to be figured out.
My props go to people like Drura Parish, Gary Abraham, Bryan Flaig, and Alexis Rochas.
The sublime refers in aesthetics to the quality of transcendent greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual or artistic. The term especially references a greatness with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation or measurement.
in the recent interview with archinect hernan said that his work is about 'the sublime'
well, the sublime justification is very clever because it completely insulates his work from any criticism but also makes irrelevant
i would say that the wrinkles on the canvas are not very awe-inspiring, though
Steve... can you elaborate on the manner of documenation/assembly? I still think it is ugly as shit (though not really ugly enough to be remarkable) but am willing to consider a larger significance for this thing if it offers something that the photos don't show. I admit I don't get much from Hernan's narrative.
Francisco,
what is the best installation you have ever seen?
As for Sublimity, as an aesthetic category it is traditionally associated with the great or minute. In any case it invokes an awe which draws upon the insignificance or impuissance of the human body. Hernan might want to try another aesthetic category - the Picturesque - which related directly to an objects suitability to 2 dimensional representation. This project has a lot of Gilpin, and very little Burke.
??? Let's see possibly a great installation by Enric Miralles for a play in El Liceu de Barcelona. It was actually referred to me by my mom who went to the play and she loved it.
Fran.
I would say the art installation at my university where some guy put some chickens in a cage and then juxtaposed them with a custom built popcorn maker that made popcorn right in front of their cage all day long.
hmmmmmmmm.
In response to FBD and Janosh, this project could not have happened without the input from SCI-Arc (X'er) grad student Chris Artzen who created a Rhino script to evaluate and break apart the NURBS into curved and straight segments. And from my studio, Ben Toam & Mirai Morita really sweated it out in the documentation phase. Though MUCH computer drafting and calculation went into the project, MUCH was learned about automation and assembly that will be carried into academia and our profession's future.
Janosh: http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=1437
The nitty-gritty drawings are missing here, but curves are rationalized.
peace77 - please understand, i never had any credibility.
eric,
understood.
take care.
Mason, (and for all of you who asked about the making of SUR.) Here is a photo of the pools in production:
The base pools were made by Spectrum3d and Drura Parrish (a former employee of Hernan's who is now working in the manufacturing and rapid prototyping end of things with Spectrum3D in Orange County, CA.) The pools were carved from stacked white foam, covered with a urethane, shipped to NY in a semi and painted there. Note the large doors and mild climate surrounding their 9000sq.ft.warehouse make it easier to work with foams and resins. The pools were cut and stacked on top of one another for shipping.
is still funny to see that it doesnt matter if we r into modernism, postmodernism, contemporarity, or the age of the "virtual", architecture will never loose one of its typical atributes...the envy of some of our colleagues....
(sorry im just coming back from a fear and loathing weekend at London)
i think that is a gross overstatement of the discussion MAD...
yawn
um... how do you pronounce Xefirotarch???
wow, i am rather taken aback by the hostile comments made against this thing...it is rather amusing that this thng, if so irrelevant, can generate this kind of reaction...
the sustainability issue is not an issue in a temporary 'art' installation, such as this is.
i read this project as a more aestheticized version of what Greg Lynn has been on about, ie organicized, skeleticized form. Hernan is just making those ideas visually spectacular, which is precisely why he was chosen for this gig.
it doesn't need to be conventionally beautiful, either. what it needs to do is generate debate, ie be provocative. in that, it is obviously succeeding...
peace.
reactions above=mission acomplished
I am more of a richard serra/james turrel kind of person, but there is something "beautiful and the grotesque" about the images. I commend hernan for his visual/spatial explorations...experiments. Visually (cause I have no f'ing clue when it comes to software) there is something "Illbient" about the piece, reminiscent to a drum and bass track by Adam F (Metropolis). I think this kind of exploration is just as important to our profession as trying to find the next green-fucking-material...
HAHA.....
HA,HA,HA.....its funny to read this post at 5:00am, The haters are on a roll.
do the ant-eaters morph in shape or are they all contiguous. i would have hoped that they would create a series with hernan's interest in the cinematic, but from the images they don't appear to do so. was this just a time issue of creating 20 benches that were the same rather than 20 individual objects in a series? i dont know who i am asking...anyone really.
Funny to think that this trend of the blobs is now centralized in LA. After all, it's a city that's partly built of movie sets, fake facades and duck warehouses, and it seems that there even is a "blob industry" to get these things built, that is related to this architectural style.
It's interesting to realize that there is almost a direct link between the situations of cinema and architecture in the US.
I don't see much difference between this installation and some of the set designs at various televised award shows.
jg--isn't that kind of like saying you don't see much difference between any shlock box building and herzog & de Meron's work?
Is that so cyn? If there is a difference between a "shlock box" and a herzog and de meuron building, it's parlty contained in a more poetic and inspiring esthetic, but also in a more sensible and intelligent constructive process. The similarities between the assemblage of the tv set shown in the picture posted by JG and the PS1 project are evident: a structure and the skin that is only conceived to support a form. I'm not as convinced as JG that it's so bad, but I can see the limitations of such an exercise when one think about confronting it with a more mundane situation where architecture is involved, as trace was implying it. It can probably be considered as an artwork but it cannot be compared with say, a museum where a complex and very specific program as to be sheltered and signified by architecture, such as the ones that Herzog and de Meuron concieve.
Its wonderful. not only is it better than i expected, its absolutely lovely. And it also excited people to no end (as seen by the silly anger from peace77 shows that it does what it supposed to. which is excite, anger, confuse, and create emotion in people..
bravo!
also. peace..are you out of your mind?
sustainable? well. thats true. it might be nice if it was, but its not. and thats no criteria for whether its good architecture or not.
function? to make something forpeople to look at and be around and to create excitement in people. and it apparently does that so well that you get pissed off from looking at photos.
french, i think this PS1 DOES have a very interesting and indeed experimental constructive process and in addition there is a critical and possibly poetic dimension to the design, whether or not you agree with it or buy it. if it didn't it would not have generated so much discussion already.
i think it misses the point entirely to compare this with a shlock TV set design meant to appeal to the masses. If you don't believe that, then why do you suppose hernan got the commission from a respected contemporary arts institution? Are you saying PS 1 don't have a clue? It's fine to question whether its architecture or not, but then again, maybe it's not supposed to be.
If you are going to critique the piece, folks, please do it from a credible point of view. The criticisms i am reading in this thread or way too easy to dismiss.
My friend was one of the free laborers for this project. I think this project is exciting mostly for its fabrication scripts and techniques. Hopefully this is paving the way for more efficient mass customization at real building scale. However, given his personal disintrest in construction techniques, a guy like Hernan probably won't be making these buildings. Instead he'll likely do an endless string of installations, pavilions, and commodity projects propped up and subsidized by educational and artistic institutions. But I really don't think this kind of work stops here, its latent potential is huge and I think some of the kids in school now will be the ones to push these projects into the real world. Hating on this stuff is really silly; it's pioneering and that's enough.
thenewold--can you tell us more about the scripts and techniques? and why did hernan use rhino instead of maya?
ckl - Nice comment re: the sublime. The sublime needs to be in some way overwhelming, as Janosh added, it needs to take you out of your body as it at the same time shows you how minimal and fragile your body is.
My issue from the very first look at the pics was that this installation simply isn't BIG enough! It needs to feel more enclosing, more inhabitable, then I think it would be a pretty amazing spatial experience (but still not quite architecture, as per diabase's comments on the temporary/fun pavilion nature of the piece). I think if it were twice as big it would be four times as successful.
My understanding of the beautiful/grotesque is based on a lecture I once saw about the illustrations of Audubon - these birds rendered in stunning color and composition as they sliced a worm in half with razor-sharp beak - nature as both beautiful and terrifying. I think Sur succeeds as grotesque in that way - it's a little sinister.
also, imo h &dM are not as interested in construction techniques as they are in material and texture. ie that is what drives their construction techniques.
in this ps1 case, i think the form is driving the technique, but also the material effect is somewhat the driver.
the sublime is not always overwhelming and big. or even small. (that is more the 'classical' burkean definition but even he listed many other things that could evoke the sublime. eg many times it is about horror.
in the romantic period the sublime was immanantized, and could be evoked by something as simple as the light falling a certain way across the landscape. the sublime is very subjective, it is anything that evokes the sense of 'otherness' as in transcendence in a person, it is less about the physical character of the object. in this regard, the sublime changes with the cultural conditions. i think this project may fall into the grotesque, which i don't think is the same as the sublime, but may be tangential to it. (I did my thesis on the sublime at Cambridge).
also, i think temporary pavilions and follies are indeed architecture. they simply function on different levels from the standard buildings we use on a daily semi-permanent basis. I think this project is a folly, and also happens to be a temporary pavilion.
i think the project is possibly a crossover from architecture into art.
and for my next trick
i will stretch out a diaper over a twisted bike frame and place a few slices of watermlon around it.
I posted both images to show the similarities in the both the form, aesthetic, and fabrication technique (wrapped skeleton). If this much we can agree on then what exactly was the intention with the project? Certainly you cannot claim that he is trying to push the edges of fabrication techniques because this is an old technology; even if it was manufactured with CAM methods (ship builders have been doing this for a while now). In any case I'll see it this week and maybe I can be sold on it but from the posted images it looks like a meager prop which doesn't engage the site or the program in any meaningful way.
> 'cyn' One script was written for the bends in the aluminum pipe. The script basically did this; for any whole 3-D b-spline (in the 3-D computer drawing), a script was written that found the midpoint between any 2 single curves (curves only curving in 1 direction (I don't know the lingo) ) and broke the complex curves into a series of single curves that were bent (for the most part) in a shop in CA.
What's cool about the fabrication of these pieces is that in the field (I saw it when the frame was nearly complete) the creation of 'trees' of 3 or 6 of these complex curves was a pretty imprecise process. Pieces could be pulled and pushed and forced into alignment with other pieces. This means that the curves and the weld didn't have to be perfect and trust me, they weren't.
What this means to me is that if these bends can one day be made effiiciently (cheaply) entirely by computer controled bending machines, there's no reason that this type of construction has to be any more difficult than normal steel construction. What I mean is that since any metal building is made of hundreds of individual pieces (beams, columns, mullions, perlins, etc.), there's no reason the fabrication and connection of bent members can't happen at the scale of a big ass building. Personally, this is super exciting and I can't wait to see what happens.
Look guys, nothing like this has been built at PS1 in the past 6 years. The jury at MoMA is keeping this project open for another 2 months and this was the ONLY project to be completed on time and at 100% completion. You can hate all you want, but it is truly amazing. Structurally and aesthetically. The use of software scripts in this project was only to alleviate the construction techniques, not in form realization. Hernan shapes and models these forms in a very intuitive manner.
The project isnt about contextual, enviromental or 'releavant' stigmas. Your grading scales are skewed and the only thing I can say about you people who critique this work is that it is a product of fear [in the jim cunningham sense] - until you understand this work, any critique come across as ignorance. It's beautiful and very close to the proposed scheme. People poured their blood, sweat and beer into this project - I was blown away having seen this thing built in phases.
The technology is evident and the human craft is evident. If this was all milled, vac formed and fuselaged, it wouldnt be as beautiful.
Maya is a tool, not a generator. Rhino was used to aid in fabrication. People were used to build it. What more do you want?
Sustainability? It's aluminum, recyclable. The benches are being sold to museums and the spandex, I guess could be reused to make your speedos and leg warmers you haters.
All you people who dont live in NYC and who wont see SUR in its context will just have to hate on it.
You guys said it wouldnt be done and it is - so go read some Venturi.
John, "People poured their blood, sweat and beer into this project"...so? every day thousands of people are hard at work on buildings that won't get a thousanth of the attention this thing is getting. Certainly this is no reason not to critique the work. Also, I am not "hatin" the work. I am simply questioning the authors intentionality and the execution of whatever that is.
Damnit... I mistakenly named Chris Arntzen as the rhino script creator, when it should have been Nick who's last name escapes me.
"intentionality" ? Hmm, I think the 'author's' intention was mostly to get this built. So good job.
And for real, eff an author. This project is about the cigar smoker, the kids on their computers making drawings instead of surfing, the folks sweating balls in Queens to weld and re-weld pipe, the black clad arty types who paid for it, and the fabricators in LA with chemically ruined lungs. Take out any of these things and the 'author' means nothing.
from what i've read of hernan's interviews, jg, the intention of the work was to explore an aesthetic, an idea about architectural form, as hernan says, the grotesque. ie this is a formal project. it is also, as stated, experimental. it is not about going over old ground ie the beautiful as we already understand it. it is also not really about fabrication technique. the fabrication technique is driven by the form.
unless you get that, and start your critique from there, the criticism = hollow.
and i also do not think there is anything but the most superficial of similarities between the tv set you posted and this work. that is really reaching...
Well, I'm trying hard to give opinions that are not based on general esthetic statements and I thought starting with the constructive process of the project was a good way to start since there's nothing more relevant that i can speak about this project (no program, no habitability...). Sorry to sound like "I don't like it". This wasn't my intention.
To argue that it's interesting because it has been sponsored by an established institution is not very convincing.
To say that this piece "PS1 DOES have a very interesting and indeed experimental constructive process" is not very helpful.
And to ask others to critique "from a credible point of view" doesn't allow you not to do so in such an unpolite manner CYN.
I understand your enthousiasm, I can believe that it's a niece thing to see but it doesn't mean that we can't question the validity of such a construction. I whish I could see it for real to share this enthousiasm with others, but the photograph I've seen don't make me bounce on my chair, neither the interview of the architect. Sorry.
well, admittedly, i hate this thing. not because it is ugly. because it is dissapointing. but i have some honest questions:
what is so new about this construction technique that will make its way through academia? i can't find anything on the details of its making that is new or innovative. it looks like a scaled up version of graduate student models at columbia and sci-arc: nurbs curves extracted from a willfully complicated form made of bent wire with panty-hose stretched over the top. sound familiar to anyone? you know it does.
on that note, i don't think it deserves all the hate it is getting. many of my friends were/are intimately involved in its design and construction. it generates discussion, it makes people happy, it gives architectural journalists some brightly colored photographs (as opposed to renderings) to put in their stories. and let us not forget that IT GOT BUILT. this guy's stuff is terrible in my opinion but getting off the page is a serious achievement.
what is so disappointing is that it is clearly a formal project. it has no other goals beyond formal play. that is it. From the metropolis piece,
"That’s why I had such a strong emphasis on technique in the project: we had to have the ability to explore the autonomy of the discipline and have it communicate without us."
the autonomy of the discipline? sound familiar?
anyway, if you are going to do a formal project with emphasis on technique, at least do it well with something to give back to the discipline. i think that the aranda/lasch entry did this quite well and would have loved to see it realized.
aranda/lasch entry
working with arup's Advanced Geometry Unit they developed a modular system that only used 4 modules and can create many diverse forms and spaces. plus, they claim that they would have done it under budget and been able to pay everyone (unlike Hernan).
this kind of thinking and technique could really advance the discipline of form making unlike (imho) Hernan's work. in that way it is a selfish project. it isn't generous to the architectural community.
french if you personally do not like the look of the thing, that is fine with me. just say you think it is ugly and doesn't interest you and move on. but if you are critiquing this like a regular piece of architecture i think you are way off the mark. it is not that and never was meant to be. it is not about square feet and adjacencies and typical functions for an institutional building such as a library or museum, it is not even about how the thing meets the ground-- none of the ps1 projects have been about those things except in the loosest sense of providing a place to listen to music. the 'meta' program here is about form and experimentation and provocation of debate in the public. the more the chosen architects push the envelope the happier the client (ps1) is. i didn't argue that it is interesting because it was sponsored by ps1 please do not put words in my mouth, nor was i the one that said i was enthused. the fact that it was commissioned by ps1 should, however give you a clue as to the intention behind the project.
in addition, many architectural follies do not have conventional programs or are not meant as habitation per se. that does not mean they are not architecture and not valid.
aranda/lasch entry seems to be very organitec and even more banal than most of the entries.
What all this comes down to is a series of opinions based on aesthetic qualities.
"He could have" "We would have" "Sciarc" ect.
What ever happened to the merit of exporing an intent?
I do think this DOES give back to the architectural community. Sure there are millions of possibilities of what the PS1 Could have been, but this is built and it deserves a valid critique, not some biased views towards the architect and the movement at Sciarc [Columbia doesnt matter since they have no basis for fabrication].
Hernan is exploring his intent and that is his right. These students GAVE him their time and labor because they believe in the cause.
this thing is mainly about form. why is that a problem? discuss.
I would argue that this is valueable only to the extent and because it was built. The translation from a 'selfish' formal pursuit to a built structure involved many more people than Hernan. As a rendering, it is selfish. But if the rendering represents an ideal perfection of this form or its most perfect representation, the result is imperfect and I'm arguing un or less selfish.
The construction methods may be crude and not that new, but the process of getting to this point at this moment was valuable to those involved and therefore to the architecture community. Panty hose on wire for models costs almost nothing and requires nothing of anyone but the author, this is clearly beyond that. In that it's a little fucked up, it's really no longer autonomous and I think that's great.
The kids who made it and hated some of its idocies, who hated the lack of attention on Hernan's part to the construction of this, and who hated not being paid will hopefully have learned a lot about what not to do.
I agree that the merits of this thing don't lie in it's contribution to 'form making'. I think it wins because it survived the compromising process of realization without which any form making remains truely autonomous and mostly irrelevant.
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