Form follows fantasy

Once again, Paris's Centre Pompidou turns architecture inside out

Ian Phillips -- Interior Design, 3/1/2004 12:00:00 AM

"Elimination of all concept of form in the sense of a fixed type is essential to the healthy development of architecture and art as a whole. Instead of using earlier styles as models and imitating them, the problem of architecture must be posed entirely afresh." So wrote De Stijl cofounder Theo van Doesburg in his 1924 manifesto, Toward a Plastic Architecture.

If Van Doesburg were still around, he'd no doubt have been delighted by the recent "Architectures Non-Standard" at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The exhibition presented weird and wacky models by 12 of the world's most avant-garde architectural practices, among them R&Sie from France, Asymptote and Greg Lynn Form from the U.S., Kovac Architecture from Australia, and Nox, Oosterhuis.nl, and UN Studio from the Netherlands. Participants may change if the show travels to the Yale School of Architecture Gallery in New Haven and the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles—what won't change is the design philosophy, defying both the imagination and all comparison to anything seen before.

For curator Frédéric Migayrou, the challenge was to ascertain what all the architects had in common. "There's no manifest discourse, as there was in the 1930's or 1960's," he says. Aesthetics also seem rather disparate. One major link turned out to be process rather than product: the use of software in ways unthinkable just 10 years ago. "We're all sketching with computers and using calculus," says Greg Lynn, touching on a theme that the exhibition examined in depth.

Take Servo. Based in four different cities—L.A., New York, Zurich, and Stockholm—the group's four collaborators exchange material digitally through FTP sites. Designing on a computer, says R&Sie principal François Roche, allows him to "lose control. It helps me detach myself from historical preconditions and styles of the past."

Migayrou believes that the computer revolution will eventually give rise to buildings that move biomorphically rather than mechanically. "It will be possible to distort spaces," he predicts. Already, Servo's installation integrated responsive light and sound technology into clusters of vacuum-cast polyethylene. The group's Zurich member, Marcelyn Gow, says that the next step could well be the introduction of pneumatic systems to move cluster elements in relation to one another. In fact, an Oosterhuis.nl prototype at the Pompidou featured 94 pneumatic "muscles" that can be distorted in all directions.

"The projects we chose clearly show a renewed interest in the organic, the dynamic, and the animated," says associate curator Zeynep Mennan. Kovac Architecture's proposal for a new World Trade Center in New York is another perfect example. Its tortuously twisted forms represent a high-tech assimilation of two sets of data: the shape of Manhattan Island and circulation patterns from the destroyed twin towers. Designing an extension for a Connecticut house, New York's KOL/MAC Studio entered data pertaining to the traditional saltbox into a computer, then did a little bit of stretching. "Like chewing gum," says Migayrou.

In addition, there was Roche's glacier museum for the Swiss village of Evolène. At first sight, the model might look like a complex for troglodytes or the intestines of an unidentified animal. Roche's starting point, however, turns out to be an Alpine chalet.

A number of projects in the show took their forms directly from mathematics. The Klein bottle, a doughnutlike construct obtained by twisting and joining the opposite ends of a cylinder, became the starting point of UN Studio's railway station for Arnhem in the Netherlands. Oosterhuis.nl's pavilion for the Dutch horticultural festival Floriade resembled the carbon C60 molecule, flattened and stretched.

The nonstandard forms of the assembled prototypes were echoed in the design of the exhibition as a whole. Each participant's display was delimited by lines digitally printed on the floor—their whirls and curves calculated with a differential equation. And flowing through the space at eye level was a thermoformed "ribbon" offering a historical perspective on today's nonstandard architecture.

Migayrou sees its roots in the movement studies of photographers Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Etienne-Jules Marey as well as in the mathematical theories of Abraham Robinson, whose use of infinitesimal numbers in equations opened up the way to artificial intelligence, fractal theory, catastrophe theory, and morphogenesis. Sound esoteric? It may be. But you know it's also infiltrating popular culture when Steven Spielberg expresses admiration for the work of Nox principal Lars Spuybroek. Sound far-fetched? Greg Lynn swears it's true—and he consulted on sets for the blockbuster king's Minority Report.

At the Centre Pompidou's recent "Architectures Non-Standard," R&Sie showed a model for an unbuilt glacier museum in Evolène, Switzerland. The MDF form derived from the computer manipulation of an Alpine chalet. When complete, the building is to house a conference room, a library, and a restaurant as well as a permanent-exhibition gallery and a refrigerated temporary-exhibition gallery for installations involving ice.

Top: Kovac Architecture's 2002 proposal for a new World Trade Center in New York resulted from combining two sets of data, namely the shape of Manhattan Island and the twin towers' circulation patterns. The form is meant to look as if it were in a state of collapse. Bottom: R&Sie's model in painted plaster and plywood, built for a contemporary-art museum in Bangkok, shows spikes intended to support a layer of electrostatic canvas, which attracts soot. The surface will evolve as the crust thickens.

Above: In Greg Lynn Form's proposal for the Eyebeam Atelier Museum of Art & Technology, New York, the curtain wall took its shape from software, primarily Maya and Microstation. The model is styrene and acrylic.

Above: Greg Lynn Form's model for the Ark of the World Museum in San Jose, Costa Rica, combines a painted MDF platform topped by a starch-based volume sealed with shellac and airbrushed with paint. The museum is intended to celebrate ecological diversity. Below: Oosterhuis.nl's pavilion for the horticultural festival Floriade resembles a distorted carbon C60 molecule. Motion sensors allowed each Floriade visitor to set off light and sounds effects. The model is PVC.

Nox constructed an initial paper model for a public pavilion in Son en Breugel, the Netherlands. When built, the interactive structure will respond to visitor movement with sound.

Above: DR_D's plastic model for a theoretical residential development reflects the numerical integration of new criteria into a 1915 design by Le Corbusier. Thus, Dom-ino House becomes Dom-In(f)O House. Below: Hikers in the Dordogne region of France will soon be able to avail themselves of running water and picnic tables housed in dECOi Architects's updated take on the neoclassical folly.

Above: Nox built this model for the proposed Centre Régional des Musiques Actuelles in Nancy, France. The roof comprises nine bands, each stretched in a different way to form openings. Below: Objectile's display featured customizable plywood tabletops and a sculpture shaped according to mathematical calculations. Behind hang a screen made for the Batimat trade show in Paris and a decorative panel, both in MDF.

Thanks to four integrated motion sensors, visitors were greeted by flashing LEDs while wandering through Servo's clusters of vacuum-cast polyethylene.

Top: UN Studio contributed a plastic model of a new Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany. The building is due for completion in 2006. Bottom: Lines digitally printed on the floor delimited the zones devoted to each firm. To unify these disparate elements, curator Frédéric Migayrou installed a thermoformed "ribbon" tracing the history of the "nonstandard." Examples included a Barbara Hepworth sculpture, a Charles Eames study, sculptures by Constantin Brancusi, a Lucio Fontana installation, a photograph of Loïe Fuller dancing, and photos by Etienne-Jules Marey.

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER (OOSTERHUIS.NL): D3BN CIVIL ENGINEERS. FABRICATION: MEIJERS STAALBOUW. STRUCTURAL ENGINEER (UN STUDIO): WERNER SOBEK INGENIEURE.