i guess the lack of comments (now that is finished) of this year's serpentine pavilion in London by Frank Gehry shows the pointless it is sometimes to "discuss" about designs that add not much to the professional practice of architecture... i guess the AA summer pavilion (designed and built by 2nd and 3rd year students) is way more interesting this summer at London.
the one thing i find interesting is the criticism of this work because it isn't structurally honest...even by professionals in the arch-crit game (guardian or similar was moo-ng to this effect recently).
i didn't think anyone outside of 2nd year undergrad could ever make a remark like that and think it was intelligent...
but for what it is worth, it is quite nice. not as good as previous years, but good just the same.
All looks pretty boring to me. Those pavilions look like cnc tests done 10+ years ago. Gehry's thing, and I typically am a fan, looks like a 1-2 year mediocre student project.
"Those pavilions look like cnc tests done 10+ years ago." You mean the AA Pavillion? I thought that too when I first saw it, but then I read those guy's blog and followed all the challenges and problems they had to solve.
Milled plywood is _not_ the same as lasercut chipboard. you've got different sheet sizes and material properties ... a simple eggcrate joint you can just mash together when it's chipboard, these guys had to custom design a flexible gasket to make their angled joints hold together under different conditions.
Even all that's before you think about phasing: you can't put this piece in until that goes in, but then the other holds this up ... and how many people do you need to lift a chunk into position and align it accurately ...
Working at that scale is totally different from a little model.
Which makes the Gehry thing all the funnier, to me, and it's why I like it, too. It (like a lot of his office's work) is literally just an enlarged model.
People were making things that were very similar 10+ years ago - laser cut, cnc'd, milled, whatever the technique, they are/were very similar, if not almost identical.
I am not dismissing it as being 'easy', but I also think it isn't much more than a sculptural form, not really architecture. So, in that light, I think it looks boring.
The success of Gehry, via Bilbao, was that he created beautiful sculptural forms with amazing materials. Not structurally 'true' perhaps, but the technology he used to create the shapes (slump glass before it was 'cool', cnc'd foam forms without bragging about it being cnc'd, etc.) was very interesting. This was over 10 years ago.
I guess I am just very bored with things that are milled/cnc'd/laser'd/water jett'd/etc., etc. At least ones that talk about it as something that is ground breaking or pioneering.
Well, yeah, I kind of agree. But the next step with that stuff is the actualization: panels, joints, sheet sizes, etc. That's where the innovation is happening.
... I can't think of a full scale abstract/pavillion/thing in cnc eggcrate executed over ten years ago - what project do you have in mind?
Looks for me like someone looking for the easy way out, -- please remember I check from my boatsbuilder background, and it seem they realy looked where a 90 deg overlap would caurse no disturbance but then where angle change a deep "V" is hastly cut to produce atleast some overlap --- not that it please my expertatins about knowing the crafts before you start playing with the forms, but I has to agrea a sum of boring. Also ehat's the whole idea with it -- to router compared laser cutting don't make that much of a difference , offset are easily computed by standard software with an N.C. router .
But I want to give you guy's something to think about -- see I once borrowed a small 3 axis router for one of my projects, But as this was in the beginning, I could only borrow the mashin , the software issues was dull and as the driver had the same cost as the mashin, and the mashin had a simple Paralell interface and the functions was documented in the mashin manual , then it was not that much a problem, to write a smal Lisp application, that could translate the entities I pointed out, and piece them up into feed commands for the small N.C. router. --- And I learned a lot, I learned what I know so to say, by having to write the driver for the N.C. router myself and yhat way, know the solution to other issues, knowning the set of commands, how the paralell interface worked within AutoCAD , and learning all those things , realising how this C.C mashin worked also I guess was one of the resons I realised 3dh.
Now --- how do it happen for those great architects -- do they has to overcome the lack of drivers, do they even know the limits the expansions of the N.C. workspace , how offsets are calculated, how to program for the right rounds of the cutter with this particular feed, do they even know the tools that is supposed to inspire in the mighty creative process --- or do they has people to do that for them ?
--- If they has I don't value the innovative yield very high -- if you don't has your fingers and your mind into this thing, if you has no challances to overcome, then the results will be thin. And realy if it work like that, then I don't wonder about particular issues of intelectural property -- as if you has not been there, how can you realise, and without realising how can a vision occour.
The pavilion that comes to mind was one Gehry did at Meier's Beverly Hills gallery (not the Radio Museum building, but around the corner).
It was pretty cool. Just a little horse's head thing, about the size of a room, really similar to that conference room he did (can't recall the name of the building - big metal thing in the middle of a courtyard). Almost a miniature version, without the scales.
There were also fellow students and faculty making things. Not full scale, but large enough and out of various materials, including metal, plexi, etc. No chipboard to my knowledge.
FYI - the "10 year example" is because I was in school then, just at the turn of the Lynn mania, Maya craziness and cnc'ing promising a world revolution.
I am still waiting.
re: the AA pavilion, i was in 2nd year studio nearly 10 years ago, and i must say there was nothing like that being done while i was in school. access to this technology has become the norm only within the last 5 years or so, and i see constant refinements in techniques, although subtle.
the forms are not innovative but the pavillion is amazing as a step towards the realization of the promise of the technology. it may be a dead end, considering that it required steel dummy structure inserted to make it work (that is not a criticism, btw), as well as all of the very special efforts necessary to make the form work. that logic seems a bit backwards to me. it should be easier to build this way, not harder. it isn't yet, but it may become so.
i am aware of the work by gehry, but didn't know it was made using this technique. i thought it was all computer-controlled bent steel, like steven holl used in stretto house, and so on...
still, i think this is a major step towards something. not sure what, but that is what makes it interesting.
i don't think a 1st yr student could have built the serpentine pavillion.
Question: What't the deal with Samuel Gehry, who is credited along with Frank O.?
Why do the stairs look like they came from IKEA (with non-compliant railings) and were bolted on?
As an exploration of possibilities, the hidden steel frame and the roof structures are nice, but with respect to any of the previous serpentine pavilions, Gehry's is not in the same league. Even Koolhaas's was spectacular (from a distance, at night) in its own way.
Who do we want to see design next year's pavilion (must have no permanent buildings in England to date)?
i think the serpentine is way more interesting in spatial terms as well as the method of construction than the AA pavilion. The AA one is interesting, but still the same egg-crate volume that students from the AA, columbia, Sciarc et al have been churning out for about 8 years now.
The Gehry structure IMHO does play on 'putting a built form together' in a very fun way.
we can (sort of?) imagine what holl might do. i'd vote for someone that doesn't typically do folly-ish work. someone minimal, even, like pawson, chipperfield, or adjaye. who knows what they might do?
, and this is something we always make emphasis at LaN and our activities, we do believe in what we call the teaching loop, thinking = doing and doing = thinking, which means basically that with digital tools and fabrication you always learn from modeling to translating it to CNC to doing it and is a process of continuous feedback in between the different aspects, and yes, every time that you fabricate something u have to be pretty aware of the possibilities of the machine and how to "overcome" the limitations of the machine, in other words you have to know and understand your techniques and technologies as much as you can, and that is only given by practice, the same way building in traditional ways gives you more "tools" that someone fresh out of school.
someone also mentioned that he's being seeing this stuff for the last 10 years, and someone commented he was 10 years ago at the AA and there was nothing like this, right, this had came into the AA the last 5 years max 7 into the AA with the come of also young teachers like Michael Hensel and Yosuke, feels like 10 years ago cause maybe you been seeing too much of it, but it hvent been that much, also, as someone else wisely commented (sorry to not mention ur names guys, but im guessing everyone is reading the comments), is not the same a model to a large scale installation. and this pavilions of the AA are a great boost for this students to be able to come out and apply faster what they had been thought. i wish i was building this things when i was in 2nd year of undergrad and not until i was in my second year of graduate school!!!....
anyways im glad to see such an innocent comment became a nice interesting thread
still i think gehry serpentine pavilion is dull crap (specially because im sure some 20-something guy at his office developed it, and i can't believe he thinks this is the best he can do for a project!!!)
I was at the pavillion today and I was pleasantly surprised. The first thing that hit's you is the scale. It demands that you walk all the way around it, looking at it from all angles - this may be a by-product of the model-building process. To compare it to Koolhaas' pavillion, this one is built significantly better, although its purpose is much less defined. The event's that Koolhaas hosted were a unique and thoroughly interesting experience , whereas Gehry's is a folly. It was interesting seeing the joggers go past, their necks craned to the side before stopping to ponder it.
Gehry credits his son with a lot of the design work and appeared rather grumpy and dismissive in interviews about it. Apparently the striped glass is supposed to resemble the british gazebos / summer tents...
Steven, all those architects you mentioned have built in England before (and in fact are all english...) so are a no go for the Pavilion. I'd quite like to see a Zumthor pavillion, but that's just fan-boy'ism... Or maybe they could build the mvrdv design that never was...
To sum up upon thinking about it a bit more (apologies for the double post); it is heroic - dumb, brash and thoughtless, but heroic. Maybe that's what is so surprisingly appealing.
I think the budget (including pro bono) on the Gehry pavilion outstrips all previous entries considerably, and without adding any extra value. there is, as some poppy band suggested in their eponymous album:
No Wow.
Or rather, there is some wow, but it is massively outweighed by the slab-sided stairs. It is the girl with the great hair, compromised by poor social skills and fat ankles.
I'm still ready to be converted: If the oppositional bench seating was the site for a mock-parliament, that might be fun.
I'm still none the wiser as to why Samuel G. is so eminently qualified as to come over and poop timber, glass and steel on our green and pleasant lawn.
I'd like to see Atelier Bow-Wow do it too, if they haven't built in England before. Their pooperie is welcome.
I'm sure that it is the most expensive pavillion so far, but it also has the greatest resale value I'm sure as well - Gehry has some rich fans - and the pavillions are always sold afterwards.
It looks better in the flesh, but I agree that it is by no means the full architectural/female package.
Atelier Bow-Wow have an exhibit/pavillion in the Haywards 'Psycho Buildings' exhibition at the moment; don't know if that counts... I think that something fun and interactive next year would give something back a bit more - hence my request for them to build MVRDV's old design - or maybe get them to design a new one...
yeah, fine line, i knew that those guys i mentioned were no-gos....but would like to see someone like them. loved the eliasson pavilion. a zumthor could be pretty great, but it might seem like toom much boosterism to him.
Jul 29, 08 9:09 am ·
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Gehry serpentine
i guess the lack of comments (now that is finished) of this year's serpentine pavilion in London by Frank Gehry shows the pointless it is sometimes to "discuss" about designs that add not much to the professional practice of architecture... i guess the AA summer pavilion (designed and built by 2nd and 3rd year students) is way more interesting this summer at London.
very true.
gehry is pretty reglar vanilla now.
the one thing i find interesting is the criticism of this work because it isn't structurally honest...even by professionals in the arch-crit game (guardian or similar was moo-ng to this effect recently).
i didn't think anyone outside of 2nd year undergrad could ever make a remark like that and think it was intelligent...
but for what it is worth, it is quite nice. not as good as previous years, but good just the same.
All looks pretty boring to me. Those pavilions look like cnc tests done 10+ years ago. Gehry's thing, and I typically am a fan, looks like a 1-2 year mediocre student project.
"Those pavilions look like cnc tests done 10+ years ago." You mean the AA Pavillion? I thought that too when I first saw it, but then I read those guy's blog and followed all the challenges and problems they had to solve.
Milled plywood is _not_ the same as lasercut chipboard. you've got different sheet sizes and material properties ... a simple eggcrate joint you can just mash together when it's chipboard, these guys had to custom design a flexible gasket to make their angled joints hold together under different conditions.
Even all that's before you think about phasing: you can't put this piece in until that goes in, but then the other holds this up ... and how many people do you need to lift a chunk into position and align it accurately ...
Working at that scale is totally different from a little model.
Which makes the Gehry thing all the funnier, to me, and it's why I like it, too. It (like a lot of his office's work) is literally just an enlarged model.
People were making things that were very similar 10+ years ago - laser cut, cnc'd, milled, whatever the technique, they are/were very similar, if not almost identical.
I am not dismissing it as being 'easy', but I also think it isn't much more than a sculptural form, not really architecture. So, in that light, I think it looks boring.
The success of Gehry, via Bilbao, was that he created beautiful sculptural forms with amazing materials. Not structurally 'true' perhaps, but the technology he used to create the shapes (slump glass before it was 'cool', cnc'd foam forms without bragging about it being cnc'd, etc.) was very interesting. This was over 10 years ago.
I guess I am just very bored with things that are milled/cnc'd/laser'd/water jett'd/etc., etc. At least ones that talk about it as something that is ground breaking or pioneering.
Well, yeah, I kind of agree. But the next step with that stuff is the actualization: panels, joints, sheet sizes, etc. That's where the innovation is happening.
... I can't think of a full scale abstract/pavillion/thing in cnc eggcrate executed over ten years ago - what project do you have in mind?
Looks for me like someone looking for the easy way out, -- please remember I check from my boatsbuilder background, and it seem they realy looked where a 90 deg overlap would caurse no disturbance but then where angle change a deep "V" is hastly cut to produce atleast some overlap --- not that it please my expertatins about knowing the crafts before you start playing with the forms, but I has to agrea a sum of boring. Also ehat's the whole idea with it -- to router compared laser cutting don't make that much of a difference , offset are easily computed by standard software with an N.C. router .
But I want to give you guy's something to think about -- see I once borrowed a small 3 axis router for one of my projects, But as this was in the beginning, I could only borrow the mashin , the software issues was dull and as the driver had the same cost as the mashin, and the mashin had a simple Paralell interface and the functions was documented in the mashin manual , then it was not that much a problem, to write a smal Lisp application, that could translate the entities I pointed out, and piece them up into feed commands for the small N.C. router. --- And I learned a lot, I learned what I know so to say, by having to write the driver for the N.C. router myself and yhat way, know the solution to other issues, knowning the set of commands, how the paralell interface worked within AutoCAD , and learning all those things , realising how this C.C mashin worked also I guess was one of the resons I realised 3dh.
Now --- how do it happen for those great architects -- do they has to overcome the lack of drivers, do they even know the limits the expansions of the N.C. workspace , how offsets are calculated, how to program for the right rounds of the cutter with this particular feed, do they even know the tools that is supposed to inspire in the mighty creative process --- or do they has people to do that for them ?
--- If they has I don't value the innovative yield very high -- if you don't has your fingers and your mind into this thing, if you has no challances to overcome, then the results will be thin. And realy if it work like that, then I don't wonder about particular issues of intelectural property -- as if you has not been there, how can you realise, and without realising how can a vision occour.
Oh boy.
Haha. Damn, nothing escapes him...
The pavilion that comes to mind was one Gehry did at Meier's Beverly Hills gallery (not the Radio Museum building, but around the corner).
It was pretty cool. Just a little horse's head thing, about the size of a room, really similar to that conference room he did (can't recall the name of the building - big metal thing in the middle of a courtyard). Almost a miniature version, without the scales.
There were also fellow students and faculty making things. Not full scale, but large enough and out of various materials, including metal, plexi, etc. No chipboard to my knowledge.
FYI - the "10 year example" is because I was in school then, just at the turn of the Lynn mania, Maya craziness and cnc'ing promising a world revolution.
I am still waiting.
re: the AA pavilion, i was in 2nd year studio nearly 10 years ago, and i must say there was nothing like that being done while i was in school. access to this technology has become the norm only within the last 5 years or so, and i see constant refinements in techniques, although subtle.
the forms are not innovative but the pavillion is amazing as a step towards the realization of the promise of the technology. it may be a dead end, considering that it required steel dummy structure inserted to make it work (that is not a criticism, btw), as well as all of the very special efforts necessary to make the form work. that logic seems a bit backwards to me. it should be easier to build this way, not harder. it isn't yet, but it may become so.
i am aware of the work by gehry, but didn't know it was made using this technique. i thought it was all computer-controlled bent steel, like steven holl used in stretto house, and so on...
still, i think this is a major step towards something. not sure what, but that is what makes it interesting.
i don't think a 1st yr student could have built the serpentine pavillion.
Question: What't the deal with Samuel Gehry, who is credited along with Frank O.?
Why do the stairs look like they came from IKEA (with non-compliant railings) and were bolted on?
As an exploration of possibilities, the hidden steel frame and the roof structures are nice, but with respect to any of the previous serpentine pavilions, Gehry's is not in the same league. Even Koolhaas's was spectacular (from a distance, at night) in its own way.
Who do we want to see design next year's pavilion (must have no permanent buildings in England to date)?
I vote Steven Holl.
Samuel is his son.
I was listening to the BBC last night and they said that the pavilion leaked when it rained, and got really hot when the sun was out.
How do you get any more Gehry than that? hehe
i think the serpentine is way more interesting in spatial terms as well as the method of construction than the AA pavilion. The AA one is interesting, but still the same egg-crate volume that students from the AA, columbia, Sciarc et al have been churning out for about 8 years now.
The Gehry structure IMHO does play on 'putting a built form together' in a very fun way.
we can (sort of?) imagine what holl might do. i'd vote for someone that doesn't typically do folly-ish work. someone minimal, even, like pawson, chipperfield, or adjaye. who knows what they might do?
, and this is something we always make emphasis at LaN and our activities, we do believe in what we call the teaching loop, thinking = doing and doing = thinking, which means basically that with digital tools and fabrication you always learn from modeling to translating it to CNC to doing it and is a process of continuous feedback in between the different aspects, and yes, every time that you fabricate something u have to be pretty aware of the possibilities of the machine and how to "overcome" the limitations of the machine, in other words you have to know and understand your techniques and technologies as much as you can, and that is only given by practice, the same way building in traditional ways gives you more "tools" that someone fresh out of school.
someone also mentioned that he's being seeing this stuff for the last 10 years, and someone commented he was 10 years ago at the AA and there was nothing like this, right, this had came into the AA the last 5 years max 7 into the AA with the come of also young teachers like Michael Hensel and Yosuke, feels like 10 years ago cause maybe you been seeing too much of it, but it hvent been that much, also, as someone else wisely commented (sorry to not mention ur names guys, but im guessing everyone is reading the comments), is not the same a model to a large scale installation. and this pavilions of the AA are a great boost for this students to be able to come out and apply faster what they had been thought. i wish i was building this things when i was in 2nd year of undergrad and not until i was in my second year of graduate school!!!....
anyways im glad to see such an innocent comment became a nice interesting thread
still i think gehry serpentine pavilion is dull crap (specially because im sure some 20-something guy at his office developed it, and i can't believe he thinks this is the best he can do for a project!!!)
I was at the pavillion today and I was pleasantly surprised. The first thing that hit's you is the scale. It demands that you walk all the way around it, looking at it from all angles - this may be a by-product of the model-building process. To compare it to Koolhaas' pavillion, this one is built significantly better, although its purpose is much less defined. The event's that Koolhaas hosted were a unique and thoroughly interesting experience , whereas Gehry's is a folly. It was interesting seeing the joggers go past, their necks craned to the side before stopping to ponder it.
Gehry credits his son with a lot of the design work and appeared rather grumpy and dismissive in interviews about it. Apparently the striped glass is supposed to resemble the british gazebos / summer tents...
Steven, all those architects you mentioned have built in England before (and in fact are all english...) so are a no go for the Pavilion. I'd quite like to see a Zumthor pavillion, but that's just fan-boy'ism... Or maybe they could build the mvrdv design that never was...
To sum up upon thinking about it a bit more (apologies for the double post); it is heroic - dumb, brash and thoughtless, but heroic. Maybe that's what is so surprisingly appealing.
Heroic in a quixotic sense?
Quixotic in the fighting windmills sense?
I think the budget (including pro bono) on the Gehry pavilion outstrips all previous entries considerably, and without adding any extra value. there is, as some poppy band suggested in their eponymous album:
No Wow.
Or rather, there is some wow, but it is massively outweighed by the slab-sided stairs. It is the girl with the great hair, compromised by poor social skills and fat ankles.
I'm still ready to be converted: If the oppositional bench seating was the site for a mock-parliament, that might be fun.
I'm still none the wiser as to why Samuel G. is so eminently qualified as to come over and poop timber, glass and steel on our green and pleasant lawn.
I'd like to see Atelier Bow-Wow do it too, if they haven't built in England before. Their pooperie is welcome.
Quixotic is the word...Well put.
I'm sure that it is the most expensive pavillion so far, but it also has the greatest resale value I'm sure as well - Gehry has some rich fans - and the pavillions are always sold afterwards.
It looks better in the flesh, but I agree that it is by no means the full architectural/female package.
Atelier Bow-Wow have an exhibit/pavillion in the Haywards 'Psycho Buildings' exhibition at the moment; don't know if that counts... I think that something fun and interactive next year would give something back a bit more - hence my request for them to build MVRDV's old design - or maybe get them to design a new one...
yeah, fine line, i knew that those guys i mentioned were no-gos....but would like to see someone like them. loved the eliasson pavilion. a zumthor could be pretty great, but it might seem like toom much boosterism to him.
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