[EN] - Utopias Return ?

In my researches about Metamodernism, and investigations on metamodern architecture, I come ask myself about utopia, as the dutch theorists Van Der Akker and Vermeulen claim, utopia could be on it's way back, as we have kept a post-modern attitude but with the return of Modern positions. Antoine Picon has written about this in architecture, and in 2013 Ursprung held a workshop at D-Arch in Zurich, let's see what they have to say. 

Utopia may well be back, but what we must question is how it is manifesting itself? and also, why has it returned? 

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A few years ago, the subject of utopia and its relation to architecture was solely of historical interest. The utopian character of modern architecture has often been denounced, and is held responsible for the mistakes of modern urbanism. Modern architects, it was said, had jeopardized the quality of life in their attempts to change society. In his 1973 essay, Architecture and Utopia, the Italian historian Manfredo Tafuri was even more severe.

He believed the utopian streak of modern architecture was based on the fundamental delusion that Capitalism needed architectural and urban order to function in an efficient manner. In order to counter this, Rem Koolhaas and his followers tried to connect architecture with the real trends of the times, beginning with the accelerated circulation of people, goods and money, as well as sprawling urbanization. In order to cope with the prevailing conditions of the "generic city", architecture had to abandon its pretensions to change the world in a demiurgic manner.

It had to become realistic, in tune with what was really happening in the world, rather than pursuing the old pipe dreams of modernity.

For Koolhaas, this meant the study of urban areas such as Lagos, which present great problems for mainstream modern architecture and urban planning.However, there have recently been some changes. Utopia is returning to favor, such that it is being mentioned again at architectural exhibitions, and in books and lectures.

Considerable interest has developed in post-war utopian and counter-utopian movements. The megastructural projects of the 1950s, the Archigram legacy and the provocations of early 1970 Radical architecture movements, are being scrutinized in detail, not only by theorists and historians, but also by a growing number of practitioners.

These movements have created an agenda that we still share today. The early megastructures and other radical provocations offered the possibility of redefining design objectives and methods, by taking intoaccount new technologies emerging at the time; electronics, computers and new media were playing a more prominent role.

And because architectural discourse and practice are usually about endorsing the present state of things instead of proposing alternative futures, there is a growing dissatisfaction with the estrangement of architecture from political and social concerns. Megastructural and radical architecture interest us today for their capacity to imagine a different future. Conversely, the influence radical architecture has exerted on designers such as Koolhaas or Tschumi tend to demonstrate that utopia is not necessarily a sterile concept, that it can steer architecture and provoke its renewal.

Thus we clearly have something to learn from the utopian tradition, but we must avoid the temptation to idealize it, after having discarded it for so long. Despite its ambition to

transcend the flow of historical conditions, utopia is actually deeply historical; its status and content have changed throughout history, and its connection to architecture is thus more complex and ambiguous than usually assumed.

Let me be clear that I am notagainst the architectural star-system, globalization, and

digital culture, nor the transformation into icons of projects like the Guggenheim

Museum or the Seattle Library. But do we need perhaps to replace them in the perspective of a different future? How can we otherwise restore hope? In the past year, we have forgotten that architecture is also about the hope of a different and better future, and this is its real political and social function. This hope cannot be found in traditional formulas; the issue is no longer to design ideal cities or plans. The first lesson of history is to try not to repeat itself; a new kind of utopian perspective is needed today. Its starting point must be present day conditions, one of which is the blurring between nature and technology. Sustainable development also has to start from this point; for instance, in projects like the Fresh Kills Park, in New York, created on one of the world's largest dumps, the designers have had to put vents for the gases still produced in the underground as well as all kind of monitors.

Indeed, the true importance of the individual in a world that is unfolding before our eyes

remains unclear. Our age of paroxysmal individual expression, from iPod playlists to

blogs, is also one of increased anonymity, because of the sheer number of potential authors. Should architecture participate in the individual screening that is going on from consumer markets to security administrations, or should it rather play on the new conditions created by modern communication media? The answer is far from clear. Speaking of the individual, one cannot but be struck by the importance of faculties such as sensory experience. Architecture has recently preferred abstract schemes; a return to experiential dimensions may bring back richer sensory experiences. However, the advent of the digital age implies that these sensory experiences differ greatly from traditional ones.

Ultimately, a new utopian concept may necessitate a different sort of relationship

between image and practice, which will determine architecture’s social impact. The hope it inspires is linked to the perception of how images and projects relate to reality, and how they can be realized. This in turn raises the question of mediation and media. Key moments in the history of the interaction between architecture and utopia often correspond with a redefinition of the relationship between image and practice. One such instance came at the end of the eighteenth century,

Boullée produced spectacular, innovative drawings at a timewhen architecture was being regarded as an integral part of the public sphere, and was widely discussed. The press became the dominant medium during the nineteenth-century. New journals, e.g. the Saint-Simonian Le Globe and the Fourierist La Phalange appeared, and many former members of the Saint-Simonian and Fourierist movement became founders of, or contributors to, such journals. Similarly, one could argue that Archigram and Radical architecture reflected the reorganization ofthe relations between image and practice implied by the media of their time, from television to the first computers. Like Pop Art, they participated in this reorganization. The utopian dimension of architecture is inseparable from the question of how we communicate architectural concepts to the public; digital media present the obvious route, although this is more problematic than usually assumed. Take Toyo Ito's Sendai Mediatheque, or Foreign Office Architect’s Yokohama Terminal; not withstanding the continuous chain of computer documents linking the initial concept to the finished structure, the eventual realization differs markedly from the initial idea. Reinventing utopia today might ultimately not only be about sustainability or contemporary emergencies, as considered by Shigeru Ban;these issues are of course absolutely imperative, but we need also improve the linking of digital imagery to reality.

What radically different future lies in such links? This may prove to be one of the questions

architecture has to address today. 

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Discussion between Ute Meta Bauer (middle) and Pedro Gadanho (right), moderator Mechtild Widrich (left). First AAHA meeting at ETH Zurich, May 2, 2013

 

Utopian thinking in art and architecture today demands crossing the line between freeform planning and precise observation. Therefore, limits will occupy us both in the form of borders (real or imagined) between the disciplines of art and architecture as well as theory and practice and as literal political demarcations of great urgency within contemporary art and architecture. The three sections of the conference are organized around the themes of geographic boundaries (Tensions), utopian worldmaking (Visions), and production of social effects (Agency). The participants come from theory as well as from artistic and curatorial practice.

This public workshop is the first meeting of the international network Art and Architecture History Assembly, which was founded by scholars at ETH Zurich, MIT, and the University of Western Australia. The AAHA approaches the porous boundaries between art and architecture and the less steady academic dialogue between these disciplines from a global perspective, concentrating on themes of interchange between countries, regions, and cultures.

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http://www.gta.arch.ethz.ch/events/utopias-return

http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/10579145/Picon_LearningFrom.pdf?sequence=1

[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..

[EN] - Taking Shape, Susannah Hagan (2007)

Peter Doig, Concrete Cabin,1994

Oil on Canvas - 198 x 275cm

 

Peter Doig’s paintings of Le Corbusier’s classic modernist apartment block offer a mysterious Utopia: cosmopolitan dream architecture nestled in (or imprisoned by) tangling wilderness. In Concrete Cabin, it’s the nowhereness of the scene which is strangely uncanny: the bright minimalist grid of the building beaconing through the dark shadows of the trees; an everyday glimpse from a suburban sidewalk twisted into something magical; a set from a contemporary fable. Peter Doig paints this scene with chimerical effect; cropping the image to exclude ground or sky, it has no physical orientation or weight, only the intangible presence of a fleeting moment.

 A week ago I was at the Beyeler Foundation to see an exhibition on Peter Doig, as a painter Robbin Van Den Akker and Thomas Vermeulen talked about in their publication about a new-romanticism, it was an exhibition I could not miss, furthermore one painting particularly striked me, "Concrete Cabin", as it shows the negociation between culture and nature, The romantic sensibility and oscillation the philosophers talk about. 

Furthermore the relation between Nature and Culture in contemporary architecture is interesting to note, I recently made a post about Herzog&DeMeuron and the Signalbox, and recently I've discovered a book called called "Taking Shape" by Susannah Hagan, during my researches on "Landform Building"

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Overview

In recent times, the architecture/nature discussion has encouraged a dual response: architects have built in the image of nature - a token environmentalism while environmentalists have focused too narrowly on the technologies of ecology and sustainability, invariably without paying sufficient attention to spatial and visual issues.

In this book, Hagan argues for a new relationship between architecture and nature: a contract that renegotiates the tension between environmental processes and their formal consequences. Taking Shape makes a major and provocative contribution to the debates concerning the ethics and aesthetics of environmentalism within architecture and urban design. Mohsen Mostafavi, Chairman, The Architectural Association

Review : Booknews

Arguing for the idea that environmental architecture should be as innovative intellectually and aesthetically as it is technically, Hagan (architecture, U. of East London, UK) begins by placing environmental architecture in historical and theoretical perspective. She discusses a number of general historical and theoretical issues, including the environmental challenge to assumptions about the value of the new to architecture, modernism, and consumerism. She then suggests criteria by which to identify and produce environmental architecture. The final chapter evaluates how new models of nature might influence not only contemporary architectural theory and practice but also sustainable urban development

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http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/taking-shape-susannah-hagan/1112333702?ean=9780750649483 

[EN] - Materials : Boris Bouchet (2015)

Left : Mixed use building in Marsac // Top Right : Arlanc // Bottom Right : Ecohameau

 As I continue my study on the emergence of a possible Metamodern architecture, I attended a conference by Boris Bouchet, not a starchitect, from the sleepy villages of Auvergne, far away from the glitsy architecture cities like Lyon, Paris, Strasbourg and Bordeaux may propose.. Boris Bouchet was certainly a lovely discovery, and one that was very optimistic and enthused me.

I had previously looked at the “Whisperers” in Britain, those that opposed High-Tech architecture, those whisperers who were Fretton, Caruso&St-John and 6A who I spoke of in an article devoted to the book “Never Modern”. I wondered if in France there was some kind of similar position? One that incorporated modesty, but also great respect to the context and a search of authenticity in the materials they used.

Boris Bouchet, won the Europan contest, and studied in Lyon and Clermont-Ferrand, he was awarded a “young architect” prize this year, the AJAP, which honors the young hopes of french architecture, a world away from the likes of Perrault, Nouvel, Willmote we find a emerging french scene with different values and a very positive “yes we can” attitude as Boris showed in the conference.

His projects are simple, economic smooth and modest. He explained us that in Auvergne, money doesn't flow and we had to do a lot with little, close enough to words spoken by Tom Dyckhoff in 2009 when he was talking about the Nottingham Contemporary, saying « As the recession forces an end to the age of architecture built on excess, we should celebrate the austerity of Nottingham Contemporary » and in the same way, he does a lot with little.

Bouchet's Austerity and « New Seriousness » is parraleled by a strong logic of the materials he uses, the concrete cast wall we know, is a contemporary version of the Pisé wall, a technic he uses in one of his projects. 

A project in Arlanc, France (Top Right) The Massif Central region is famous for it's volcanoes and it's forest, the wood is sourced and cut locally, before being used in the project, normally in France this project would not use there techniques but this agency took a stand and justified the use of wood, not only architecturally, but also economically. The base of the building is in concrete making the base solid visually.

In a housing project called "Ecohameau" (Bottom Right) Bouchet recycled stones from a near existing ruin, before recycling them in a home. In his works, the materials are traditional, very rustic, but elegant, authentic and timeless..

 

[EN] - Unholy Negociations : The Signalbox (1999)

The signalbox 2 in Basel is one of the buildings that the Pritzker jury selected before giving the prize in 2001 to the Swiss Agency, it is one of the most functionnal programs you could do, but it was done subtlety, the interest of the building is not inside, but outside.. It protects equipement and technology to keep the rail line working, at the same time, it is also able to express vividly these physical qualities 

 

Building in 1999 and in 2015

Built in 1999 it is probably an excellent example of a “decorated shed” because this building is perfectly understood without really knowing what is inside, but it's a decorated shed unlike others, it's exterior is sleek, extremely well built, tthis decorated shed is the son, of another decorated shed built in 1996, the signalbox1 it follows the same principle, but where the signalbox1 is a bloc, the Signalbox 2 is a generated building. In the book “Composition, Non-Composition” Jacques Lucan explains that the building was generated by it's plot and the existing context it seems as it was supposed to be the same as the first on, but it was distorted by the rail lines. 

 

Continuing with composition, the windows are evidently composed the operator sees the train lines and can do his job. But to the pedestrian, not much is revealed, the entrance is a door seemingly disguised with the facade. Except a few windows, the rest is hard to discern, where the floors are, in general what may well be happening inside is a bit of a mystery. The building remains standing, it is monolithic, like a stone, like if it was there forever. I've seen this building on sunny summer afternoons where only mad dogs and Englishmen go out, in chilling winter days with snow etc.. it seems unaffected by weather whatever the condition is it stays, and it's perception will not change. 

A Scholars Stone

 

A stone may last much longer than futile humans, but stones aren't eternal they are subject to erosion, oscillation between nature and culture.. Culture built this monolith of shiny copper in 1999, commissioned by the SBB, but eventually it will be tarnished by nature, in an unholy longstanding negotiation. Stones are a recurrent theme in the work of Herzog&DeMeuron, in “Natural Histories” a whole section is devoted to Scholar Stones, these mysterious stones in China, to whom “something” has happened and are valuable because of this “event”

If we understand the monolithic building as a stone, and the rail line as water, flowing with trains instead of water, the metaphor stays, following this logic, the flow will in the end erode the building so much that it will shatter in two, ending in a inevitable destiny of one days being destroying, as is the fate of most buildings.. 

 

The effects of this dialogue are visible to whom wants to dialogue with this building, take the time to assess it's evolution as the flow of trains continues. The materials of this monolith reveal it's strength and it's weaknesses, it's facades almost fully made of copper oxidizes with time, the building we saw in 1999 is not the same as the one we see in 2015, it is already much darker, and green/blue marks of oxidation appear where it rains on it.

                                    We are left to think what will the signalbox look like in ten years time? 

 A little Photoshop for the imagination..