GOD'S ARCHITECTS trailer from Zack Godshall on Vimeo.
THIS IS REAL ARCHITECTURE
Wednesday 28 August 2013
Wednesday 21 August 2013
Lina Bo Bardi – With People at the Heart
Lina Bo Bardi saw
Architecture as spaces created by our occupation rather than inert spaces that
we occupy. She understood the complex reciprocal relationship between people
and space, culture and architecture. Through her work, architecture can be
understood as a time based art that is inseparable from the way people perceive
and use it. Bo Bardi’s architecture works like a conversation.
Bo Bardi’s
architecture achieves this by placing human activity at its centre, with an
awareness of the cyclic relationship between the two. We can see this
philosophy embodied in projects such as SECS Pompeia, which transformed an
industrial drum factory into a recreational and social leisure centre through
utilising the street as a vessel for public life placed at its heart.
Bo Bardi’s
Architecture is not static; it reveals to us architecture as a dynamic process
of interactions and relationships. Bo Bardi shows us that architecture is
conversational – it is in constant dialogue with its users, inhabitants and
surroundings. To Bo Bardi architecture relies on our participation and the
unique way we construct our experience by giving meaning as an observer -
“Until man enters a building, climbs steps, and takes possession of the space
in a ‘human adventure’, which develops over time, architecture does not exist.”
This illustrates
the architecture as a unique creative act that not only happens as the result
of the architect’s design but also as cognitive acts fundamental to our
perception and subjective experience of space. In this ‘human adventure’ as Bo
Bardi calls it, architecture can be seen as an event or series of events,
existing in space like a continual piece of music or perpetual performance,
reliant upon performers and protagonists.
Fundamental to our
perception of the world, are these cognitive acts which ‘re’-present our
sensory information into our subjective experience of architecture. These acts
are iterative and recursive, allowing us to build a continuous picture of the
world. It is like the process of design itself, I its looping, repetitive and
iterative nature; it is a cyclic process with new iterations being informed
from lessons learnt from the last.
When we experience
a building the recursive processes that created it through design continue in
our individual acts of perception and interactions, from which we create our
subjective experience. Designing no longer resides solely with the architect,
but is something that we all do continually in our conscious awareness. Our
cognitive and perceptive faculties perpetually construct our reality moment to
moment. Each new experience is informed from past experience as we imbue
meaning from memory into the present, thus ‘designing’ our reality to fit with
our belief systems, cultural background, preferences and psychological makeup.
Cyberneticians in the 1960s, notably Gordon Pask, likened our construction of
reality to a conversation between two people.
This conversation can be seen at the heart of all Bo Bardi’s work. Her
buildings are designed with the understanding that they are reliant upon the
animation and activation of human participation and interaction. As such they
provoke the imagination and encourage social interaction.
'Linear time is a Western invention; time is not linear, it is a marvellous tangle where at any moment, points can be selected and solutions invented without beginning or end.’ Lina Bo Bardi
Bo Bardi’s buildings conversational abilities stem from her philosophical approach to time and space. Her philosophy removes organisational hierarchy ‘such that routes, transitional spaces, juxtapositions of scale, materials and found objects, and a fusion of plant life with built form, all become very important - drawing people around a building as if in a sensual dance, engaging the whole body and all its senses.’ De Oliveira (2006).
Bo Bardi’s people centric work emerges in contrast to the ‘utopian optimism’ of the time, embodied in the work of Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer who used flamboyant and evocative forms to proclaim a better future. Her buildings offered spaces that listened before they spoke, incorporating the vernacular and the local, seeking to use and celebrate what already exists and is available. Rather than purely seeking form, Bo Bardi’s work utilises human activity as a dynamic building material that can transform the sensation and experience of the space. The physical materials she employs are shaped by the local human activity; such as the wooden stair at Solar do Unhão, which was built using techniques adapted from the making of ox carts (Moore 2012). Physically her buildings are a wealth of tactile experiences and interactions.
As well as conversational elements, Bardi creates dialogues with the natural elements; The Bardi home for example was designed to allow the natural environment to flourish in and around the home over time. The SESC Pompéia celebrates the tropical rainfall like a jubilant waterpark with its playful pebble dashed water channels.
From the liberating span of the MASP, to the open and convivial streets of SESC Pompeia, these buildings act as catalysts for culture in Brazil. They create environments, which intensify the already existing social activities and communication of the city. By treating her buildings as time based, not static spaces, she creates spaces for interpretation, indeterminacy, and the unexpected – she creates places of improvisation.
It is no coincidence that Bardi’s work evokes such a reaction, as it reflects the rich improvising culture that exists within Brasil. Improvising arts flourish in Brasil, largely in part as a result of Brasil’s dark history of slavery and colonialism. Now popular art forms such as Capoeira (a martial art disguised as a dance) and Samba (a popular musical form) were born from the traditions carried over from the West African slaves. These traditions rely on improvisation at their heart, when an individual places his own value or interpretation on a common rhythm in music or in dance that expression contributes to unify a whole. This experience is fundamental to building communities as well as an important means to transmute suffering. Improvising arts are forms of creative communication and are conversational systems in the same way as Bo Bardi’s buildings.
'Linear time is a Western invention; time is not linear, it is a marvellous tangle where at any moment, points can be selected and solutions invented without beginning or end.’
Lina Bo Bardi
Friday 28 June 2013
A Tribute to a pioneer of Time Based Architecture - Mark Fisher
It
was with great sadness to hear of the death of Mark Fisher on the 25th
June. He was an architect and stage designer who transformed the world of rock
concert and large scale live event design. Famed for his work with U2, The
Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd Fisher, Cirque Du Soleil and Olympic opening
ceremonies, Fisher was an innovator from his early days at the AA, where he
studied during a time of radical experimentation.
His
early work involved experiments with inflatable structures and pneumatic
architecture, influenced by the work of Archigram. This led Fisher to develop
his own language of temporary deployable architectural systems. This language quickly
found home in the temporary festivals and live shows of the emerging youth
culture.
Fisher’s
work reflected his relationship with the youthful counter cultures of the time.
His drawings and speculative projects embraced a spirit of hedonism and playful
freedom. Soon he was to find himself designing stage structures at the Isle of
Wight festivals with engineer Antony Hunt, eventually leading to his phenomenal
career as a pioneer in entertainment architecture and stage design.
Wednesday 19 June 2013
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