I've always been skeptical of architecture rooted in formalism. Architects who use generative formal systems to create things that look good on the exterior, while not necessarily being socially meaningful, strike me as trite. People like Greg Lynn, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, even Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry. (Morphosis has actually moved from formalism to an interesting kind of social and ecological engagement.)
Their work seems to deny the presence of human users. What they create seems to be megalomaniac, in the sense that they're like mere sculptors who weren't content to work on a small scale.
Sure, form is a part of architecture. But to me, it's only a part of the equation. Much more meaningful is social space, materiality, quality of construction—all of which refer back to the human subject as a user of architecture. Maybe that's why I appreciate people like Rem Koolhaas (social space and the program), Herzog and De Mueron, Zumthor, and other European architects. Steven Holl seems to be one of the few Americans who really engages with these issues.
I would be very, very cautious about lumping Lynn and Hadid into one sentence! Lynn has been a one liner from day one, but Hadid has always had depth (although I dislike much of her blobbier work).
I love formal architecture, but there has to be a reason and logic (no, a formula and script doesn't count in my mind) for the moves.
Your list is just a different type of architecture. Both can be exceptional, if done well.
One must acknowledge that architecture is also about "vision". A vision may or may not be supported by logic and reason. One can attempt to derive from it. Above all we can not judge it when we are too close to it, give them a few decades to pass the test of time. Also remember that many of the great artists were not appreciated in their own times...simply because they were much ahead.
But my point is that architecture is about so much more than just "salad making" (as Steven Holl used to call some of Gehry's work.)
When all of our most famous models are based on nothing more than flamboyant gestures, what does that say about the vitality of architecture? How can a person be considered a "great artist" if they don't deal with the most fundamental parts of architecture—which are its human users—and instead just make overscaled sculptures?
Calatrava's useless wings in Milwaukee that fold in and out with showy pointlessness, Gehry's multicolored blobs in Seattle that are nothing more than a warehouse inside, Libeskind's shardlike museum in Denver that can't even hold art because the walls are angled?
Can we please stop making architecture that serves no purpose except to shimmer?
I try to take the approach of really understanding a body of work before i dismiss it as trite or a one-liner, because i think once you do so, you limit what you can learn from these architects, and whether you like them or not, they are where they are because they contributed something significant to the profession, and they will continue to do what they do whether you like them or not, so i think 'resisting' a particular classification that you have made up yourself, i would really try to understand their work, and then you can dismiss it all you want.
for me, i never really liked greg lynn's work, and after ingesting a lot of his influence in school, i still don't like his work so much, but at least i have a better understanding and can appreciate his contributions.
also, the architects you listed as 'formalist' represent hundreds if not thousands of projects. is it fair to say every single one of them are only concerned with generative form? and they all come from very different influences...i would say zaha is closer to rem than to gehry or lebiskind since they both came from the AA around the same time and both their early works were both deeply rooted in their reading of the russian constructivist. so i think maybe your classifications are too broad.
something i learned from a respected teacher is that it's lazy criticism to just say whether you like or dislike something, sure everyone has an opinion, but a student can't go back to his desk after the teacher has just told them that they like or dislike their work because there is no idea to build from, there has to be something more than that in the criticism, and it has to be free of ideology or taste. i think the same is true in reverse when you criticize architects work.
ok, i just re-read this and it sounds kinda preachy, but oh well.
farwest, while I agree with most of what you say, I have to take dot's side on this..
I agree that some of these architects are starting to repeatedly produce identical one-liners (liebskind? Gehry?) But one has to respect what they have introduced to the profession.
Gehry has (perhaps single handedly?) revolutionized the techniques we use to produce architecture in the here and now.
Liebeskind's ouevre (while I find extremely superficial) is impressive, especially if one looks at his early works and writings, and disregards the last 3 or 4 buildings he has made, which look the same, and I hate their aesthetic, they are violent gestures, visually, rather than conceptually, cuz i find violence could be interesting in design (lebbeus?)
one can keep on talkin about each of the architects you mentioned, like dot said, but ill start to repeat myself.. in the end, try to be critical about your opinions, some of zaha's projects are just as spatially and materially engaging as zumthors.
and, I respect Zaha for creating herself multiple times, just as Rem is doing (forget his weaker commercial work). They both understood that they can exploit the new emerging techniques in design today, reworking their ideas in new and interesting ways,,
in the end, all these guys have done something for the profession, and for students.
But i have to say, with most "formalists" it has become all about technique nowadays, and it worries me
In my superficial opinion, steven holl is the man right now.
i have a really relaxed attitude these days. i am happy that many ppl are doing "their thing", good on them.
i might not be the biggest fan of hadid or lynn etc, but all of those architects that often get their fair share of panning here have been working hard for many years and they get my respect for that.
I do actually respect many of these architects for what they have brought to the profession. And I understand that thinking about form is a necessary part of architecture. What I'm arguing against is those practices that make it the ONLY part. Of course, I believe in their right to exist and to practice, and I appreciate what they have contributed.
But I often think the subtler and possibly more difficult parts of architecture get short shrift in our marketplace of ideas—because noisier forms crowd them out.
you might be right farwest, but there are just as many architects out there who are masters of subtle: e.g. ando, zumthor, joy who would be hard pressed to argue that they aren't getting enough attention.
as for my take on technique. there are a lot of people out there who once they see a script automatically think a project is shallow, yet they themselves have not even run or opened a script in their entire lives. i'm not saying scripting is the next best thing by any means (i have my own reservations), but i just don't see why people can be so critical of something that they have had zero exposure to. yes, we are definitely seeing a lot of redundancy, but i think it is the people who have tried and understand generative, formal design, and the organizational logic of such a process, that can unlock the potential of it, and that i think remains to be seen. and these are the people that can spot a good project using this technique from a bad one from a mile away, rather than throwing blanket judgement over the whole process. that's what discourse is all about.
i'm just using scripting as an example since it get harped on so often...i'm just saying try it on before you knock it.
But so much of scripting (not all! I really like what Aranda/Lasch and others are doing) is just intended to generate a "cool" form. Much algorithmic architecture seems to be divorced from human meaning.
And maybe it's that I'm emotionally moved on many levels when I visit a Zumthor building, or an Ando building. Whereas most of the highly-publicized "formalist" projects leave me cold. They run out of steam, out of interest, very quickly.
I like pretty shimmering things, they make me all giddy with excitement. Honestly, I could care less if they serve a function. I recall once when Mayne was telling us about Diamond Ranch and the clients said "what is this for, it'll add cost" and he said "that is architecture".
Last time I visited the gallery here in Denver the art was hanging just fine. Nice Clyfford Still exhibit (love his stuff), can't wait for the museum (looks kinda boring, like most of Allied Works stuff, but still decent and probably appropriate).
If you lump Greg Lynn and Frank Gehry in the same sentence you clearly don't understand the basis of Lynn's design techniques.
It is easy to critique design with the "ambiguous formalism" notion at first glance, but if you divulge a bit deeper you just might find something there.
Greg Lynn and other similar architects drive to develop systems that privilege form and structure. ie Can we learn from natural systems to develop new material techniques, after all we live in a materialist world. By understanding order and systems we can harness the simple algorithms that nature promotes to possible better ourselves and our design strategies.
As a designer I try to look critically at self driven architectural ideas that often begin with analytical social/urban "I wanted to do this..." strategies.
Can we begin to take design a step further and experiment/develop new frameworks for design rather than continuing to work in an existing framework??
But this is exactly my point. most biomimetic architecture is bioformal architecture, not biofunctional. It appropriates the appearance of nature without the substance, without the meaning. But nature and ecology are biofunctional systems. So what if a building looks like a jellyfish. A jellyfish is the result of specific adaptive processes related to its environment, that are necessary for its survival. Most of these processes are not generated formally—sure, they have results that manifest formally, but they occurred because of non-formal necessities.
Greg Lynn's architecture is not yet evolutionary. Maybe one day it will get there. Evolution responds to specific dynamics in a natural system to guarantee an organism's survival. Greg Lynn plugs a program into a computer to generate a blob that looks a little different than the blob he generated yesterday—and doesn't necessarily provide a new understanding or way of being in the world.
I think Lynn (and Gehry) are great examples of complete opposites. Gehry has created his own 'framework' that explores sculptural space, and the experience that lies therein.
Lynn had some good ideas, but has created not much more than ugly architecture (at best).
This, imho, goes back to intuition - either you have it or you don't. All the logic, theory and scripts can't make good anything if you don't have the talent to create it.
something trace is hinting at is kind of interesting, most of lynn's work is aesthetically "ugly", it never sits well with me (blob freaking wall??) or even his korean church,, his Alessi stuff,, his products are always somehow vulgar, but the way he gets there is extremely engaging, i mean even the blob wall,, its amazing in many ways, but it just looks bad in my opinion.
its as though there are some ppl that need to take things to the extreme, with no regard to a complete, synthesized architecture, so that others (us?) can learn from it, and understand how we can utilize some of their processes...
the thng with "formalism" is that in the end its very subjective, Farwest, if you adopt lynn's techniques, you will come up with something entirely different, and probably more holisitic, as you are not only occupied with technique... you understand that there is more to design
and scripting is not only formal, an example of what it can do is design optimization,, another is the production of variations of the same,, allowing the architect to choose and develop one,,
for example, Zumthor had a project open in germany last year with an interestin facade pattern,, many small openings is a solid wall? imagine how much more intereting it would have been if he was able to choose from a 100 different variations
You miss the point. The building doesn't look like a jellyfish and it shouldn't. By studying nature you aren't implementing formal qualities for design but rules for design, establishing a framework to design within. Biomimetic architecture looks at nature as systems for design, not formal relationships, establishing rules, that apply in nature and can applied in architecture.
So absolutely, it is biofunctional architecture if that is what you want to call it. Nature as structural inspiration for the construction process. Etc.
Doesn't this come full circle? I think the problem with blobbers is there was no investigation about space, about experience, about the user/occupant. It is/was all about vague intellectual investigations, but really had little to do with 'architecture'.
Don't get me wrong, cool and fun shit, but not much more than sculptural experiments (which I love, but you gotta bring it back to reality to test it for it to be architecture).
That's my big point - you can design with anything, theory, splatting paint on the floor, scripts or whatever. It doesn't matter. One method or process has no more validity than the other. It all comes down to the test against reality.
I think the problem with blobbers is there was no investigation about space, about experience, about the user/occupant. It is/was all about vague intellectual investigations, but really had little to do with 'architecture'.
Exactly. I guess this i my point. You can design with anything, and many people do. And many of the results are beautiful.
But the question is: what is the test against reality? At what point do these investigations become architecture? Because certainly every material gesture at a huge scale is not architecture. Or is it?
It is hardly the same to say that you can design with paint splatter, as paint splatter is a pure artistic event and has no validity in terms of systemacy. Yet, to understand an emergent process that follows simple rules of organization is an entirely different story.
We as designers continue to pursue top down design techniques, that focus on pure analytical systems that are often derived by some trite attempt to create tangible techniques for design. Yet, as humans, we organize ourselves on a social level that is based on the intensification of flow and energy optimizing efficiency.
Yet, when it comes to design, the human decision making process reduces these variable forms to simple grids (read urban grid), but does this maintain the flow of energy and matter society exists to maintain. I would say, no, so it is possible then to flip the way we attempt to understand movement and perhaps look at a proven natural system that feeds off energy/matter optimization privileging a bottom up emergent process of design?
of course, lets get rid of the human being; i won't be missing it. lets give the world over to intelligently swarming cups'n'saucers like the ones in that beauty and the beast cartoon. it'll be tea time all the time.
"Doesn't this come full circle? I think the problem with blobbers is there was no investigation about space, about experience, about the user/occupant. It is/was all about vague intellectual investigations, but really had little to do with 'architecture'."
The problem about blobbers are that it is blob for the blobs sake, ehat is wrong with tinhats are that they are just an image of what we would expect , and no one dare look behind the thin surface to see, if what it shuld be all about, realy is there -- or if what is there is a fiddled steel latrice asking just skilled metal workers working on the fly with forms, they anyway newer could unfold onto the sheets.
What blob shuld provide , shuld be to use the same means to build a box. That with a digital magic stick the measures will fit by millimeter. But do you Romans realy want that, or will you continue replace social ballance with relevant use of presant digital options ?
It would newer be the blobb that would be the interesting issue, but the methods that make it possible to build so difficult a form , at the same cost as a box.
Bloobs are interesting for no one, except if it is possible on a computer to route manufactor volumes that build square, would cost the double.
If you can project a bloob 100 pct. with a CAD program, and not just has a fancy image that it would cost a farm to translate to commen building technikes and then have build -- but instead , is able freely to model a round or a square form in a new way, and then have that build with the real methods that will bring the fancy image out into reality -- then bloobs are interesting, no one would live in them. And no matter how recursive and fancy patterns what it is about, is if this is anything but digital sketches with no handle to push, so there would be an idea in designing them.
The only idea I can see, would be experimental and to have a testbench, to develob new building methods becaurse, as everyone know , bloobs are difficult to build with convensional methods.
I have a problem with buildings that superficially set out to look like jellyfish as if this is somehow more meaningful and more functional than non-jellyfish buildings. They key with biological organisms is their ability to adapt to their environment- buildings can also do this, but looking like they can adapt is different from the ability to adapt.
I also have a problem with who seem to want to stamp out experimentation in architecture. Most of the architects mentioned above contribute enormously to the field. They have a body of work that they have created and which they continually refine [witness Richard Meier and Norman Foster]. Whether someone agrees on the value or appropriateness of this is irrelevant.
At the end of the day, architecture is fundamentally about form - it is material and it has material and immaterial effects that can be judged. I think this thread is an argument about aesthetics, which will never be resolved.
Most of the ex-blobs are attempting to understand the forms they created on a construction level. How can we make this fancy building without costing millions of dollars? And in many ways I feel this is the most beneficial technique for viewing "formalism."
I enjoy reading about studying architects who use biology and nature to inform form and structure. I believe that is where the meat is in the pure formal question.
I agree, diabase. No one is for stamping out experimentation. In fact, I think what I'm calling for is a more radical form of experimentation that deals not with formal mimicry of nature, but a thoroughgoing evolutionary system—one that adapts to human living habits. I find most biomimicry just empty quasi-radicalism. It's really hardly radical at all. It asks nothing of its users, it provides nothing to them except spectacle. "Look at the tentacled thing I made!"
When architecture changes how we live, that is when it becomes radical to me. And I don't think Gehry, Libeskind, Eisenman have changed how we live (at least, not yet.) Mies, however, did change how we live. Le Corbusier did. Myriad others have.
Do you know the firm "The Living" in NY? Their experiments are very interesting.
Architecture is about form, but it is ALWAYS about other things too: shelter, material, space, etc etc. My gripe is with those architects who make it ONLY about form.
You raise a very good point. I think one of the biggest problems with bloob architecture is the lack of "architectural-izing" the projects in the end. This is why many of the bloob-itechts hardly have anything built. It is such an important step that is often overlooked, you can dwell on the geometry all day long, but in the end the project must confront an architectural problem.
Architecture is about form, but it is ALWAYS about other things too: shelter, material, space, etc etc. My gripe is with those architects who make it ONLY about form.
isn't this what eisenman was talking about in this excerpt from diagram diaries? - 'architecture is traditionally concerned with external phenomena: politics, social conditions, cultural values, and the like. Rarely has it theoretically examined it's own discourse...'
a study of architecture un-contaminated by other disciplines. a study of architecture having it's own unique lexicon of forms like a writer's grammar/composition book.
program and the use of a building change. ideas, anyone can come up with one. anyone can move walls on paper (ie. clients). a builder can make spaces. a rich client can fund an expensive building. expediters can deal with the city. an interior designer can chose colors. any drafter can draw cd's.any artist can render. etc.
i like the idea of pure, distilled architecture...
But I would argue that Eisenman has only examined architecture's own discourse in the formal/historical terms of early Derridean deconstructivism.
People like Tafuri or even Frampton have engaged with the larger social and programmatic dimension of architecture—though from a now slightly-dusty marxian perspective. Koolhaas approaches it from the perspective of global capitalism, which in some ways is the most pertinent argument.
But I keep finding myself wanting a new methodology for examining architecture's assumptions and strategies. The ones we have seem pretty outmoded to me. (And maybe that's true of the world-system in general: it has no prevailing theory now. Or we've come to end of theories, and the grand narratives have died of.
"We were making sandcastles; Now we swim in the sea that swept them away." Koolhaas.
i find it more fitting to see le corbusier's work as compositional rather than 'formal' (formal, i mean, in the sense that an iconographic gestalt was intended to give unity to the project).
a composition between not only forms but also orders; the domino order on one extreme and the painterly miro-esque (i consider miro to be the the archeype blobber, beautiful blobs). there leads to quite an idiosynchratic combination between the universally expansive and the specifically quirky. well, spotting parts of fat women in some of his plans is not too far from spotting some of his plans in drawings of fat women (and, according to colomina, dwgs of fat women would literally deface an other's architecture (eileen gray)).
i also think that a blob is very in- (or un-)-formal. it is (or as a blob, it should be) in that amoeboid stage that precede the 'memory of a form' and certainly any unambiguous gestaltic specificity. it is a visual 'onomatopoeia' that does not signify allusion and simply refers to its in-formal blobby presence. also a blob can easilly be stretched around a programmatic exentricity/protrusion to formally include it without looking formally exentric. in that way, as well, by swallowing what could have been "form: and turning it into an undifferentiated part of the volume, it is un/in- (if not anti-) formulaic. so i'm not sure i follow why people think a blob like peter cook's in brirmingham or the kunsthaus (with fournier) is 'formal' and that it lacks rational methodology. it sounds more like a dogma than a fact. and if someone chooses to clad an egg shaped building in a acrylic glass scales or pepper it with spore-like windows...that isnt an indication of a lack of something else (again, so many architects who think they think rationally and consistently are victims of logical fallacy when it comes to being .....critical).
to top it, i do not understand, either, why someone would put h & de m on a higher plateau than zaha hadid. If some are going to accuse Hadid of fetishizing formal allusion then it is also very easy for others to accuse h& de m of fetishizing material allusions (and not, as some would say, materiality (which is more the domain of material technologists and engineers). in fact, personally, i find some of h & de m's work claustrophobically enclosed within its allusionary-encryptive skin.
and...slightly edited ( i think i was thinking of exocentric as well):
i find it more fitting to see le corbusier's work as compositional rather than 'formal' (formal, i mean, in the sense that an iconographic gestalt was intended to give unity to the project).
a composition of not only forms but also orders; the domino order being one extreme and the painterly miro-esque (i consider miro to be the the archeype blobber, beautiful blobs) being the other. that leads to quite an idiosyncratic combination of the universally expansive and the specifically quirky. well, spotting parts of fat women in some of his plans is not too far from spotting some of his plans in drawings of fat women (and, according to colomina, dwgs of fat women would literally deface an other's architecture (eileen gray)).
i also think that a blob is very in- (or un-)-formal. it is (or as a blob, it should be) in that amoeboid stage that precedes the 'memory of a form' and certainly any unambiguous gestaltic specificity. it is a visual 'onomatopoeia' that does not signify allusion and simply refers to its in-formal blobby presence. also a blob can easily be stretched around a programmatic eccentricity/protrusion to formally include it without looking formally eccentric. in that way, as well, by swallowing what could have been "form: and turning it into an undifferentiated part of the volume, it is un/in- (if not anti-) formulaic. so i'm not sure i follow why people think a blob like peter cook's in brirmingham or the kunsthaus (with fournier) is 'formal' and that it lacks rational methodology. it sounds more like a dogma than a fact. and if someone chooses to clad an egg shaped building in a acrylic glass scales or pepper it with spore-like windows...that isnt an indication of a lack of something else (again, so many architects who think they think rationally and consistently are victims of logical fallacy when it comes to being .....critical).
to top it, i do not understand, either, why someone would put h & de m on a higher plateau than zaha hadid. if some are going to accuse hadid of fetishizing formal allusion then it is also very easy for others to accuse h& de m of fetishizing material allusions (and not, as some would say, materiality (which is more the domain of material technologists and engineers). in fact, personally, i find some of h & de m's work claustrophobically enclosed within its allusionary-encryptive skin.
Resisting Formalism
I've always been skeptical of architecture rooted in formalism. Architects who use generative formal systems to create things that look good on the exterior, while not necessarily being socially meaningful, strike me as trite. People like Greg Lynn, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, even Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry. (Morphosis has actually moved from formalism to an interesting kind of social and ecological engagement.)
Their work seems to deny the presence of human users. What they create seems to be megalomaniac, in the sense that they're like mere sculptors who weren't content to work on a small scale.
Sure, form is a part of architecture. But to me, it's only a part of the equation. Much more meaningful is social space, materiality, quality of construction—all of which refer back to the human subject as a user of architecture. Maybe that's why I appreciate people like Rem Koolhaas (social space and the program), Herzog and De Mueron, Zumthor, and other European architects. Steven Holl seems to be one of the few Americans who really engages with these issues.
Thoughts?
I agree. I don't buildings that are one-liners, things that work on one level, but not another, don't sit well with me.
for sure break with convention, formalities are mere obstacles, think of them as like the GOP
I would be very, very cautious about lumping Lynn and Hadid into one sentence! Lynn has been a one liner from day one, but Hadid has always had depth (although I dislike much of her blobbier work).
I love formal architecture, but there has to be a reason and logic (no, a formula and script doesn't count in my mind) for the moves.
Your list is just a different type of architecture. Both can be exceptional, if done well.
One must acknowledge that architecture is also about "vision". A vision may or may not be supported by logic and reason. One can attempt to derive from it. Above all we can not judge it when we are too close to it, give them a few decades to pass the test of time. Also remember that many of the great artists were not appreciated in their own times...simply because they were much ahead.
But my point is that architecture is about so much more than just "salad making" (as Steven Holl used to call some of Gehry's work.)
When all of our most famous models are based on nothing more than flamboyant gestures, what does that say about the vitality of architecture? How can a person be considered a "great artist" if they don't deal with the most fundamental parts of architecture—which are its human users—and instead just make overscaled sculptures?
Calatrava's useless wings in Milwaukee that fold in and out with showy pointlessness, Gehry's multicolored blobs in Seattle that are nothing more than a warehouse inside, Libeskind's shardlike museum in Denver that can't even hold art because the walls are angled?
Can we please stop making architecture that serves no purpose except to shimmer?
I try to take the approach of really understanding a body of work before i dismiss it as trite or a one-liner, because i think once you do so, you limit what you can learn from these architects, and whether you like them or not, they are where they are because they contributed something significant to the profession, and they will continue to do what they do whether you like them or not, so i think 'resisting' a particular classification that you have made up yourself, i would really try to understand their work, and then you can dismiss it all you want.
for me, i never really liked greg lynn's work, and after ingesting a lot of his influence in school, i still don't like his work so much, but at least i have a better understanding and can appreciate his contributions.
also, the architects you listed as 'formalist' represent hundreds if not thousands of projects. is it fair to say every single one of them are only concerned with generative form? and they all come from very different influences...i would say zaha is closer to rem than to gehry or lebiskind since they both came from the AA around the same time and both their early works were both deeply rooted in their reading of the russian constructivist. so i think maybe your classifications are too broad.
something i learned from a respected teacher is that it's lazy criticism to just say whether you like or dislike something, sure everyone has an opinion, but a student can't go back to his desk after the teacher has just told them that they like or dislike their work because there is no idea to build from, there has to be something more than that in the criticism, and it has to be free of ideology or taste. i think the same is true in reverse when you criticize architects work.
ok, i just re-read this and it sounds kinda preachy, but oh well.
the formal is always there.
farwest, while I agree with most of what you say, I have to take dot's side on this..
I agree that some of these architects are starting to repeatedly produce identical one-liners (liebskind? Gehry?) But one has to respect what they have introduced to the profession.
Gehry has (perhaps single handedly?) revolutionized the techniques we use to produce architecture in the here and now.
Liebeskind's ouevre (while I find extremely superficial) is impressive, especially if one looks at his early works and writings, and disregards the last 3 or 4 buildings he has made, which look the same, and I hate their aesthetic, they are violent gestures, visually, rather than conceptually, cuz i find violence could be interesting in design (lebbeus?)
one can keep on talkin about each of the architects you mentioned, like dot said, but ill start to repeat myself.. in the end, try to be critical about your opinions, some of zaha's projects are just as spatially and materially engaging as zumthors.
and, I respect Zaha for creating herself multiple times, just as Rem is doing (forget his weaker commercial work). They both understood that they can exploit the new emerging techniques in design today, reworking their ideas in new and interesting ways,,
in the end, all these guys have done something for the profession, and for students.
But i have to say, with most "formalists" it has become all about technique nowadays, and it worries me
In my superficial opinion, steven holl is the man right now.
p.s. dot, what happened to the .tim?
i have a really relaxed attitude these days. i am happy that many ppl are doing "their thing", good on them.
i might not be the biggest fan of hadid or lynn etc, but all of those architects that often get their fair share of panning here have been working hard for many years and they get my respect for that.
I do actually respect many of these architects for what they have brought to the profession. And I understand that thinking about form is a necessary part of architecture. What I'm arguing against is those practices that make it the ONLY part. Of course, I believe in their right to exist and to practice, and I appreciate what they have contributed.
But I often think the subtler and possibly more difficult parts of architecture get short shrift in our marketplace of ideas—because noisier forms crowd them out.
you might be right farwest, but there are just as many architects out there who are masters of subtle: e.g. ando, zumthor, joy who would be hard pressed to argue that they aren't getting enough attention.
as for my take on technique. there are a lot of people out there who once they see a script automatically think a project is shallow, yet they themselves have not even run or opened a script in their entire lives. i'm not saying scripting is the next best thing by any means (i have my own reservations), but i just don't see why people can be so critical of something that they have had zero exposure to. yes, we are definitely seeing a lot of redundancy, but i think it is the people who have tried and understand generative, formal design, and the organizational logic of such a process, that can unlock the potential of it, and that i think remains to be seen. and these are the people that can spot a good project using this technique from a bad one from a mile away, rather than throwing blanket judgement over the whole process. that's what discourse is all about.
i'm just using scripting as an example since it get harped on so often...i'm just saying try it on before you knock it.
But so much of scripting (not all! I really like what Aranda/Lasch and others are doing) is just intended to generate a "cool" form. Much algorithmic architecture seems to be divorced from human meaning.
And maybe it's that I'm emotionally moved on many levels when I visit a Zumthor building, or an Ando building. Whereas most of the highly-publicized "formalist" projects leave me cold. They run out of steam, out of interest, very quickly.
I like pretty shimmering things, they make me all giddy with excitement. Honestly, I could care less if they serve a function. I recall once when Mayne was telling us about Diamond Ranch and the clients said "what is this for, it'll add cost" and he said "that is architecture".
Last time I visited the gallery here in Denver the art was hanging just fine. Nice Clyfford Still exhibit (love his stuff), can't wait for the museum (looks kinda boring, like most of Allied Works stuff, but still decent and probably appropriate).
i disagree meta, but will have to wait until later to explain.
kahn and corb certainly had their formal predilections. nothing wrong with it.
everything in moderation.
If you lump Greg Lynn and Frank Gehry in the same sentence you clearly don't understand the basis of Lynn's design techniques.
It is easy to critique design with the "ambiguous formalism" notion at first glance, but if you divulge a bit deeper you just might find something there.
Greg Lynn and other similar architects drive to develop systems that privilege form and structure. ie Can we learn from natural systems to develop new material techniques, after all we live in a materialist world. By understanding order and systems we can harness the simple algorithms that nature promotes to possible better ourselves and our design strategies.
As a designer I try to look critically at self driven architectural ideas that often begin with analytical social/urban "I wanted to do this..." strategies.
Can we begin to take design a step further and experiment/develop new frameworks for design rather than continuing to work in an existing framework??
But this is exactly my point. most biomimetic architecture is bioformal architecture, not biofunctional. It appropriates the appearance of nature without the substance, without the meaning. But nature and ecology are biofunctional systems. So what if a building looks like a jellyfish. A jellyfish is the result of specific adaptive processes related to its environment, that are necessary for its survival. Most of these processes are not generated formally—sure, they have results that manifest formally, but they occurred because of non-formal necessities.
Greg Lynn's architecture is not yet evolutionary. Maybe one day it will get there. Evolution responds to specific dynamics in a natural system to guarantee an organism's survival. Greg Lynn plugs a program into a computer to generate a blob that looks a little different than the blob he generated yesterday—and doesn't necessarily provide a new understanding or way of being in the world.
I think Lynn (and Gehry) are great examples of complete opposites. Gehry has created his own 'framework' that explores sculptural space, and the experience that lies therein.
Lynn had some good ideas, but has created not much more than ugly architecture (at best).
This, imho, goes back to intuition - either you have it or you don't. All the logic, theory and scripts can't make good anything if you don't have the talent to create it.
Form is good, if it is good form.
something trace is hinting at is kind of interesting, most of lynn's work is aesthetically "ugly", it never sits well with me (blob freaking wall??) or even his korean church,, his Alessi stuff,, his products are always somehow vulgar, but the way he gets there is extremely engaging, i mean even the blob wall,, its amazing in many ways, but it just looks bad in my opinion.
its as though there are some ppl that need to take things to the extreme, with no regard to a complete, synthesized architecture, so that others (us?) can learn from it, and understand how we can utilize some of their processes...
the thng with "formalism" is that in the end its very subjective, Farwest, if you adopt lynn's techniques, you will come up with something entirely different, and probably more holisitic, as you are not only occupied with technique... you understand that there is more to design
and scripting is not only formal, an example of what it can do is design optimization,, another is the production of variations of the same,, allowing the architect to choose and develop one,,
for example, Zumthor had a project open in germany last year with an interestin facade pattern,, many small openings is a solid wall? imagine how much more intereting it would have been if he was able to choose from a 100 different variations
Farwest,
You miss the point. The building doesn't look like a jellyfish and it shouldn't. By studying nature you aren't implementing formal qualities for design but rules for design, establishing a framework to design within. Biomimetic architecture looks at nature as systems for design, not formal relationships, establishing rules, that apply in nature and can applied in architecture.
So absolutely, it is biofunctional architecture if that is what you want to call it. Nature as structural inspiration for the construction process. Etc.
Doesn't this come full circle? I think the problem with blobbers is there was no investigation about space, about experience, about the user/occupant. It is/was all about vague intellectual investigations, but really had little to do with 'architecture'.
Don't get me wrong, cool and fun shit, but not much more than sculptural experiments (which I love, but you gotta bring it back to reality to test it for it to be architecture).
That's my big point - you can design with anything, theory, splatting paint on the floor, scripts or whatever. It doesn't matter. One method or process has no more validity than the other. It all comes down to the test against reality.
Show me the beef, as they once said.
Exactly. I guess this i my point. You can design with anything, and many people do. And many of the results are beautiful.
But the question is: what is the test against reality? At what point do these investigations become architecture? Because certainly every material gesture at a huge scale is not architecture. Or is it?
It is hardly the same to say that you can design with paint splatter, as paint splatter is a pure artistic event and has no validity in terms of systemacy. Yet, to understand an emergent process that follows simple rules of organization is an entirely different story.
We as designers continue to pursue top down design techniques, that focus on pure analytical systems that are often derived by some trite attempt to create tangible techniques for design. Yet, as humans, we organize ourselves on a social level that is based on the intensification of flow and energy optimizing efficiency.
Yet, when it comes to design, the human decision making process reduces these variable forms to simple grids (read urban grid), but does this maintain the flow of energy and matter society exists to maintain. I would say, no, so it is possible then to flip the way we attempt to understand movement and perhaps look at a proven natural system that feeds off energy/matter optimization privileging a bottom up emergent process of design?
of course, lets get rid of the human being; i won't be missing it. lets give the world over to intelligently swarming cups'n'saucers like the ones in that beauty and the beast cartoon. it'll be tea time all the time.
energy, matter and litte red riding architects
I didn't say you had to rid the human. Thought we had a good discussion here, but apparently it was too much for you.
I guess I'll stick with designing buildings that "make the human feel good."
Who else are you going to make feel good? The machines?
Buildings can be both inviting and challenging. They don't only have to be challenging.
yes, so much so please open your mouth and accept my gift of a dark scabrous creature i'm going to regurgitatingly birth.
the cockatiel as phoenix, what a fortunate tanglement of genes.
What's to say they aren't inviting? Just because they seem formal makes them un-inviting?
noct,
Thanks for the offer, I accept with open arms.
"Doesn't this come full circle? I think the problem with blobbers is there was no investigation about space, about experience, about the user/occupant. It is/was all about vague intellectual investigations, but really had little to do with 'architecture'."
The problem about blobbers are that it is blob for the blobs sake, ehat is wrong with tinhats are that they are just an image of what we would expect , and no one dare look behind the thin surface to see, if what it shuld be all about, realy is there -- or if what is there is a fiddled steel latrice asking just skilled metal workers working on the fly with forms, they anyway newer could unfold onto the sheets.
What blob shuld provide , shuld be to use the same means to build a box. That with a digital magic stick the measures will fit by millimeter. But do you Romans realy want that, or will you continue replace social ballance with relevant use of presant digital options ?
It would newer be the blobb that would be the interesting issue, but the methods that make it possible to build so difficult a form , at the same cost as a box.
Allow me to refrase ;
Bloobs are interesting for no one, except if it is possible on a computer to route manufactor volumes that build square, would cost the double.
If you can project a bloob 100 pct. with a CAD program, and not just has a fancy image that it would cost a farm to translate to commen building technikes and then have build -- but instead , is able freely to model a round or a square form in a new way, and then have that build with the real methods that will bring the fancy image out into reality -- then bloobs are interesting, no one would live in them. And no matter how recursive and fancy patterns what it is about, is if this is anything but digital sketches with no handle to push, so there would be an idea in designing them.
The only idea I can see, would be experimental and to have a testbench, to develob new building methods becaurse, as everyone know , bloobs are difficult to build with convensional methods.
I have a problem with buildings that superficially set out to look like jellyfish as if this is somehow more meaningful and more functional than non-jellyfish buildings. They key with biological organisms is their ability to adapt to their environment- buildings can also do this, but looking like they can adapt is different from the ability to adapt.
I also have a problem with who seem to want to stamp out experimentation in architecture. Most of the architects mentioned above contribute enormously to the field. They have a body of work that they have created and which they continually refine [witness Richard Meier and Norman Foster]. Whether someone agrees on the value or appropriateness of this is irrelevant.
At the end of the day, architecture is fundamentally about form - it is material and it has material and immaterial effects that can be judged. I think this thread is an argument about aesthetics, which will never be resolved.
Most of the ex-blobs are attempting to understand the forms they created on a construction level. How can we make this fancy building without costing millions of dollars? And in many ways I feel this is the most beneficial technique for viewing "formalism."
I enjoy reading about studying architects who use biology and nature to inform form and structure. I believe that is where the meat is in the pure formal question.
I agree, diabase. No one is for stamping out experimentation. In fact, I think what I'm calling for is a more radical form of experimentation that deals not with formal mimicry of nature, but a thoroughgoing evolutionary system—one that adapts to human living habits. I find most biomimicry just empty quasi-radicalism. It's really hardly radical at all. It asks nothing of its users, it provides nothing to them except spectacle. "Look at the tentacled thing I made!"
When architecture changes how we live, that is when it becomes radical to me. And I don't think Gehry, Libeskind, Eisenman have changed how we live (at least, not yet.) Mies, however, did change how we live. Le Corbusier did. Myriad others have.
Do you know the firm "The Living" in NY? Their experiments are very interesting.
Architecture is about form, but it is ALWAYS about other things too: shelter, material, space, etc etc. My gripe is with those architects who make it ONLY about form.
I am with you on that. Rigour in architecture should be a fundamental minimum.
The Living look quite interesting - and not a jellyfish, amoeba or flock of birds to be found...
bloobs. I like that. I think I like bloobs.
I think we can all like bloobs.
metamehanic,
You raise a very good point. I think one of the biggest problems with bloob architecture is the lack of "architectural-izing" the projects in the end. This is why many of the bloob-itechts hardly have anything built. It is such an important step that is often overlooked, you can dwell on the geometry all day long, but in the end the project must confront an architectural problem.
having it all: mat, box and blob a la 1963-64
isn't this what eisenman was talking about in this excerpt from diagram diaries? - 'architecture is traditionally concerned with external phenomena: politics, social conditions, cultural values, and the like. Rarely has it theoretically examined it's own discourse...'
a study of architecture un-contaminated by other disciplines. a study of architecture having it's own unique lexicon of forms like a writer's grammar/composition book.
program and the use of a building change. ideas, anyone can come up with one. anyone can move walls on paper (ie. clients). a builder can make spaces. a rich client can fund an expensive building. expediters can deal with the city. an interior designer can chose colors. any drafter can draw cd's.any artist can render. etc.
i like the idea of pure, distilled architecture...
dammson, totally agree, which is why I have proclaimed on another thread that Eisenman is the most important American Architect of the 20th century.
ps. Peter, if you're listening, I am looking for a job ;)
Lauf, that is a beautiful drawing.
765, just 'reenacting' Le Corbusier. See Le Corbusier 1957-65 pages 116-129 for the 'origin'.
Yeah, I figured. All the better with the pixels and your colors, though.
What's the name of the project? I don't have my Corbu reference at hand, unfortunately.
The colors actually also 'reenact' Le Corbusier's.
lots of links
a rather crude re-anctment for LACMA, 1980
And ten years before Orhan's reenactment, there is Stirling's.
Stirling, Wilford, Olivetti Headquarters Milton Keynes, 1971.
more Corbu:
But I would argue that Eisenman has only examined architecture's own discourse in the formal/historical terms of early Derridean deconstructivism.
People like Tafuri or even Frampton have engaged with the larger social and programmatic dimension of architecture—though from a now slightly-dusty marxian perspective. Koolhaas approaches it from the perspective of global capitalism, which in some ways is the most pertinent argument.
But I keep finding myself wanting a new methodology for examining architecture's assumptions and strategies. The ones we have seem pretty outmoded to me. (And maybe that's true of the world-system in general: it has no prevailing theory now. Or we've come to end of theories, and the grand narratives have died of.
"We were making sandcastles; Now we swim in the sea that swept them away." Koolhaas.
i find it more fitting to see le corbusier's work as compositional rather than 'formal' (formal, i mean, in the sense that an iconographic gestalt was intended to give unity to the project).
a composition between not only forms but also orders; the domino order on one extreme and the painterly miro-esque (i consider miro to be the the archeype blobber, beautiful blobs). there leads to quite an idiosynchratic combination between the universally expansive and the specifically quirky. well, spotting parts of fat women in some of his plans is not too far from spotting some of his plans in drawings of fat women (and, according to colomina, dwgs of fat women would literally deface an other's architecture (eileen gray)).
i also think that a blob is very in- (or un-)-formal. it is (or as a blob, it should be) in that amoeboid stage that precede the 'memory of a form' and certainly any unambiguous gestaltic specificity. it is a visual 'onomatopoeia' that does not signify allusion and simply refers to its in-formal blobby presence. also a blob can easilly be stretched around a programmatic exentricity/protrusion to formally include it without looking formally exentric. in that way, as well, by swallowing what could have been "form: and turning it into an undifferentiated part of the volume, it is un/in- (if not anti-) formulaic. so i'm not sure i follow why people think a blob like peter cook's in brirmingham or the kunsthaus (with fournier) is 'formal' and that it lacks rational methodology. it sounds more like a dogma than a fact. and if someone chooses to clad an egg shaped building in a acrylic glass scales or pepper it with spore-like windows...that isnt an indication of a lack of something else (again, so many architects who think they think rationally and consistently are victims of logical fallacy when it comes to being .....critical).
to top it, i do not understand, either, why someone would put h & de m on a higher plateau than zaha hadid. If some are going to accuse Hadid of fetishizing formal allusion then it is also very easy for others to accuse h& de m of fetishizing material allusions (and not, as some would say, materiality (which is more the domain of material technologists and engineers). in fact, personally, i find some of h & de m's work claustrophobically enclosed within its allusionary-encryptive skin.
and...slightly edited ( i think i was thinking of exocentric as well):
i find it more fitting to see le corbusier's work as compositional rather than 'formal' (formal, i mean, in the sense that an iconographic gestalt was intended to give unity to the project).
a composition of not only forms but also orders; the domino order being one extreme and the painterly miro-esque (i consider miro to be the the archeype blobber, beautiful blobs) being the other. that leads to quite an idiosyncratic combination of the universally expansive and the specifically quirky. well, spotting parts of fat women in some of his plans is not too far from spotting some of his plans in drawings of fat women (and, according to colomina, dwgs of fat women would literally deface an other's architecture (eileen gray)).
i also think that a blob is very in- (or un-)-formal. it is (or as a blob, it should be) in that amoeboid stage that precedes the 'memory of a form' and certainly any unambiguous gestaltic specificity. it is a visual 'onomatopoeia' that does not signify allusion and simply refers to its in-formal blobby presence. also a blob can easily be stretched around a programmatic eccentricity/protrusion to formally include it without looking formally eccentric. in that way, as well, by swallowing what could have been "form: and turning it into an undifferentiated part of the volume, it is un/in- (if not anti-) formulaic. so i'm not sure i follow why people think a blob like peter cook's in brirmingham or the kunsthaus (with fournier) is 'formal' and that it lacks rational methodology. it sounds more like a dogma than a fact. and if someone chooses to clad an egg shaped building in a acrylic glass scales or pepper it with spore-like windows...that isnt an indication of a lack of something else (again, so many architects who think they think rationally and consistently are victims of logical fallacy when it comes to being .....critical).
to top it, i do not understand, either, why someone would put h & de m on a higher plateau than zaha hadid. if some are going to accuse hadid of fetishizing formal allusion then it is also very easy for others to accuse h& de m of fetishizing material allusions (and not, as some would say, materiality (which is more the domain of material technologists and engineers). in fact, personally, i find some of h & de m's work claustrophobically enclosed within its allusionary-encryptive skin.
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