[EN] - Evolving Ornaments - Semper Reloaded

« The relationship between abstract art and Modernist architecture was particularly strong in the early twentieth century. Many painters paid homage to architectural principles in their abstract compositions. Some, such as Kazimir Malevich in works he called architectonics, went so far as to experiment with three-dimensional extrapolations of ideas first explored in paintings.

A number of artistic groups and movements evolved around the formation of polytechnic schools, which taught the integration of art, architecture, and design. The most famous of these was the Bauhaus, founded in Weimar, Germany in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius. His design for the school s buildings in Dessau (constructed in 1926), a series of interlocking geometric forms around a central matrix, embodies the transformation of an abstract, planar composition into a functioning, three-dimensional form. One of the great landmarks of the twentieth century, Gropius' Bauhaus buildings exemplify the primary tenets of Modernist architecture: the celebration of industrial materials and construction techniques, and the banishing of ornament and handcrafted elements in favor of a sleek, machinelike aesthetic. »

http://artnetweb.com/abstraction/architec.html

With Mondrian, gone were the references to nature, the city was to inspire us, this inserts itself in an intellectual evolution towards abstraction, Mondrian himself experienced too

Following this postmodernist architecture in America tried insertion of ornaments with the likes of Venturi and the New York V, Postmodernity in architecture is said to be heralded by the return of "wit, ornament and reference" (to recall Dennise Scott-Brown) to architecture in response to the formalism of the International Style of modernism. As with many cultural movements, some of Postmodernism's most pronounced and visible ideas can be seen in architecture. The functional and formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist style are replaced by diverse aesthetics: styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound. Perhaps most obviously, architects rediscovered the expressive and symbolic value of architectural elements and forms that had evolved through centuries of building which had been abandoned by the modern style. 

 Since the 1990's certain architects have been demonstrating a position inbetween these, the ornament exists, and it's signification aswell, as I said in a previous post, the ornament has went from a conversion to a conversation. We can also note that the modern concept of abstraction has interested these architects.

So from here on we can ask ourselves, how does this abstraction manifest itself ? And what may have caused it ?

A possible answer, is Gottfried Semper, conteporary architects seem to have re-started where Semper left. For Semper adorning to « impose a natural order to the object » and the buildings become an extension of the natural order. Adornment, or « bekleidung » in german was first introduced in his four elements, the adorned wall is the « Gewänd » . In Semper's theoretical work the

Indeed, during an era increasingly suffused by the mechanical replication of historicist ornament, Semper’s theoretical valuation of functional form is prophetic of developments that emerge in the next fifty years. It is no accident that in the first decades of the twentieth century, August Schmarsow would still invoke Semper when describing the formal principles (Gestaltungsprinzipien) of ornament in terms of proportionality, symmetry, and direction. Perhaps Semper’s greatest contribution was the transformation of the ornamental artifact into an experimental model by which the architect, theorist, or historian can test a number of alternative.

Ricola Center - Photographed by Thomas Ruff

Ricola Europe's new factory building is located at an idyllic wooded site between the Rhine-Rhone Canal and the river Ill on the southern edge of the city of Mulhouse. The building is to be used simultaneously as a factory and for storage. Its simple hall with flexible floor plan divisions offers the perfect solution.

The building’s form recalls a cardboard box lying on the floor with open flaps. The cantilevered extending roofs on the two long sides open up both to the landscape and to the entrance and loading areas for fork lifts and transport vehicles, as well they create shade and weather protection. The short sides of the factory building are each closed by a black concrete wall. Water from the roof runs down over these black concrete walls and trickles into a deep bed of Alsatian gravel. The water running down the walls forms a fine film of plant life; a natural drawing ensues.

Both long walls are light walls providing the work area with constant, pleasantly filtered daylight. Light filtering occurs through printed translucent polycarbonate façade panels, a common industrial building material. Using silkscreen, these panels are printed with a repetitive plant motif based on photographs by Karl Blossfeldt. The effect the panels have on the interior can be compared to that of a curtain – textile-like – that creates a relationship to the sites trees and shrubs. Viewed from outside, the translucent printed panels on the façade and the extended roof again recall textiles – the lining of a dress or the inner padding of a box. If daylight diminishes, the printing is barely visible from outside and the material of the façade panels becomes much stronger. Their surfaces then seem rather closed and smooth, and their expression becomes more like that of the buildings concrete side walls.

Semper's theory is at work here, in two ways. First of all the main facade, the leaves, taken from Blossfeldts photographs. The photographs from Blossfeldt have a common interest with Sempers search with the origins of forms, where Semper demonstrates mathematically an Almond, Blossfledt question the origins of the shapes of nature, noting that those are never regular. The leaf facade is in Semperian terms a « Gewand » it erases the arbitrary divisions between nature and art, between nature and art, between the « Mauer » as an opaque element, and a « Mauer » as a « Gewand », a thick transparent Gewand. The second element on the building to recieve these neo-romantic distinctions between nature and culture is the side concrete wall that leave the rain fall down, letting the action of water « draw » this facade.

The ornament is also technical, indeed buildings like the Ricola Building, or the concrete Sgraffiti technique we talked about in the Eberswalde library demostrates exactly this, in Nottingham Caruso St John were selected to design Nottingham’s new Centre for Contemporary Art through an international competition in 2004. The artistic ambition of the project, encompassing object based visual art and time based performance art, has its origins in the artist run spaces of down town New York in the late 1960s, and in the work of artists like Gordon Matta Clark and Trisha Brown, whose work was directly engaged with the spaces of the city. The site for the new building is in a part of central Nottingham called the Lace Market, whose history and built form has parallels with the cast iron district of New York, giving the Centre a loose cultural connection to its site. In our design, we set out to offer a wide range of interiors that will have the variety and specificity of the found spaces of a factory or warehouse, within a new building: rooms that will challenge the installation and production of contemporary art and offer new ways for performers and audiences to interact.

The exterior of the Centre takes its inspiration from the amazing 19th century buildings of Nottingham, and in particular, from the impressive façades of the Lace Market. Once the heart of the world's lace industry during the days of the British Empire, it is full of impressive examples of 19th century industrial architecture and thus is a protected heritage area. It was never a market in the sense of having stalls, but there were salesrooms and warehouses for storing, displaying and selling the lace. 

Caruso&St-John's strategy was an austere, almost industrial building, that dared kitsch, not wit. In EL-CROQUIS, Adam Caruso claims that he is never scared of doing a kitsch building, and with it's golden elements, the architects demonstrate a certain stance and courage. But what is also interesting is in-between these golden elements, the « lace face », it typically is an abstraction of Nottingham's context, the ornament here has phenomenological aspect, from close we see it differently than from far away, again, like in previous posts, the adornment is extremely modest. To finish on the Nottingham contemporary, the architects, in many projects want to affirm the facade, the strength of the wall.

With such technical feats, one last question has yet to be answered, are we ornamenting buildings, or building ornaments? 

In my next post, I will dive into historical reasons that could have caused this evolution of ornaments.

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www.artnetweb.com/abstraction/architec.html

www.carusostjohn.com/

www.herzogdemeuron.com/

Carrie Asmann : Ornament and Motion 

Valery Didelon : Learning from Las Vegas - La controverse

 

 

[EN] - Advanced Huts - Form follows Form (..and Finance)

Parametric architecture, and large budgets on certain projects, have allowed a total freedom for architects when it comes to designing roofs, we are not anymore subject to the « original roof » like the one Laugier describes, or the terasse roof modernists widespread the use of. The complex structure resonate with the primitive hut, begging to ask the question, can we even talk of a roof ? 

Laugier's hut has been squished by the Advanced hut..

In 2010 Jean Nouvel presents the Qatar Museum, the metaphor of stones that can be found in the desert, is of course clear. However as much as the metaphor is clear, the structure is much less, the roof and wall are a common entity, the openings result from the intersection of these elements, and the structure emerges from the ground.

This is a prime example of an « advanced hut ». The four elements Alberti, Semper established seem to have all disappeared in what may well be a formal strategy. Structurally the bubirilding is also hard to grasp, we can't really understand it, as in the stone, the placing of architectonic elements seems hazardous, and do note denote the structural reality a construction site photo shows us, in a caveat the building will not behave like the stone, because of redundancy. 

Qatar National Museum - Jean Nouvel

Another advanced hut we'll take into consideration is the Beijing's Bird Nest. The metaphor is as powerful as the one Nouvel uses. But can we say the same thing as for Nouvel ? The answer is yes, but in a different manner.

Birds are the ultimate nest-builders. Each different species has its own unique nest-building techniques and constructs these structures without ever getting confused. For every type of nest, finding the right building materials is essential. Birds can spend a whole day in their quest for the building materials their structure needs. Their beaks and talons are designed for carrying and arranging the materials they gather. The male bird chooses the location of the nest, and the female builds it.

They are formed by accumulation, these are extremly vernacular structures, most of the nest is not structural, but parts serve for protection of the nest in itself. Such a form has evolved, it is not an element of the nature, that people like Blossfeldt photographed, but posses an evolution as strong and interesting as the plants he photographed.

As for the building in Beijing it respects these principles, There are 3 parts, primary structural parts, secondary and tertiary more formal parts, parts that are here as the « protection » of this nest. The building as a whole has two structures, one that is the « nest » in itself, an homogenous structure functionning like a real nest where the wall becomes the roof inside and outside, and the other one, the stadium it protects, and cherishes. 

These two buildings show two positions Advanced huts have, what makes them advanced, is also what makes them extremely complicated to grasp at a glance.

If we put aside the purely formal aspect of these huts, what else could they offer us ? If I chose these two buildings it is specially because of the metaphors they have with natural elements, in the sense that they don't reference on elements by humans.

A third building will enter the ring. The Oslo Opera, not so much form follows form, but more form follows context, a building we may well call la « landform building » it epitomizes the metaphor of the iceberg, docked in the Oslo bay, that may or may not melt (See Eliassen « Icewatch »), it is indeed less complex structurally than Nouvel or H&DM, the roof becomes the 5th facade. A space to see and be seen, a facade you can climb up for rewarding views. 

To end this first reflection on advanced huts, yes technology has given extreme freedom, but we surely ought to use this freedom to create truly three-dimensionnal buildings that offer much more than their daring forms.

And are these buildings given our current economical era, and urge for sustainability truly what we neeed, in a Darwinian manner, will they survive ? Yes they will

Oslo Operahuset - Snohetta (2008)

emerging from the Oslofjord like a mighty iceberg

The Oslo opera stands as an iceberg docked in Oslo harbour, this Landform Building integrates in it's surrounding, and is close to Norwegian Traditions, for years Snohetta have been perfecting their project approach as a synergy of architecture and landscape, in a powerful Néo-Romantic manner

Opened in 2008 the Operahuset is more than a simple opera, it is the focal point of the Fjord City development, the building can be climbed on, and it is not given, it's a hike, the arrival at the top grants you with the reward of a unique view on the Oslo bay.

We could call this a « landform building », indeed it's Iceberg metaphore is more than a simple formal strategy, it is, in Snohetta's word, a « fifth facade », there is a discourse on nature and culture here, that goes as far as the materials used, Italian Marble that doesn't change color with rain, like Ice. The wood inside is locally sourced from Norway.

The relation the building has with it's context, nature, and Norwegian culture is strong, it is a building that only makes sense in Oslo.

If the building could be considered Metamodern, so could the agency strategies. Snohetta are one of these agencies of the 90's trying to overcome Post-Modern strategies, for example this hike on the building is close to a modernist position that Corbusier developed in the past already.

Snohetta are considered an international agency, but like Herzog&DeMeuron in Basel, they still do smaller project in Norway, and seem to be of these agencies that can make things in the international scene move forward..