Technology, Abstraction and Ideas of Nature Essay Example

and natural analogies woven into his works. Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (1979-85). While Foster made appeals to a “structural rationalist” philosophy, it was obvious that his architecture existed somewhere between commercial fact and technocratic fantasy.

The bank had a complex pedigree which included the Futurist notion of a building as a dynamic mechanism, Constructivist paper projects from the 1920s, rocket launching platforms, Frank Lloyd Wright’s conception of a textured tower as an abstraction of a tree and Le Corbusier’s idea of a louvered skyscraper with upper-level social floors. The building proclaimed high technology and capitalist ingenuity – a building for “The Pacific Century”. Renzo Piano’s museum for the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas (1981-6) might just as easily be described as “high-craft” as well as “high-tech”.

It had a slight tropical delicacy about it as Piano set out to achieve the distillation of the modern and the old in forms that were poetically attuned to climate and light. “ Building is about putting together material elements. I feel that one needs to invent something new but at the same time quite old within our craft; to return to the close association between thinking and doing... ” Both Foster and Piano designed airports terminals by combining technical standardization and the control of an overall formal idea.

Both poetically expressed by interests in the principles of man-made inventions. Economic forces which led to the commercialization of postmodernism, pushed “high-tech” towards seductive visual effects emulating those of product design. Consumerism shifted attention from function and structure towards external styling and associative imaginary. Mechanical analogies might be blended with some organic ones, or else become part of a system of polarities

between the “technological” and “natural”.

Environment architecture… drawing nature into abstraction… and using nature on a massive scale… An ample domain where the found and the made, the natural and the artificial, coexists…” One of the seminal figures in the discovery of a new fragmentation was Frank Gehry who had already been working in that direction since the 1970s. Part from his exchange with painters, sculptors and conceptual artists, part from his direct engagement with ordinary techniques of construction in which he found extraordinary possibilities of expression.

Spiller House in Vernice, California (1979) in which angled planes and tilting volumes introduced visual tension and ambiguities while materials, as found, were handled in a deliberately casual way which exposed the process of assembly. Another route towards fragmentation and abstraction lay through the works of “neo-modernist” such as Richard Meier and Bernard Tschumi. Richard Meier established a signature style that was characterized by layers of wall planes and transparencies, fractured structural grids, interpenetrating ramps and space of vying luminosity.

All these devices were all on display in the Museum fur Kunsthandwerk in Frankfurt (1981-5). The Parc de La Villete (1984-9) by Bernard Tschumi revealed another aspect of the neo-modernist stance. His basic strategy of co-ordinates, sinuous lines and boundaries suggested a latter-day version of Kadinsky’s elements of abstract painting or perhaps the score for an avant-garde film in which the same shot-pieces were repeated in different montages. The site recalled past mechanistic fantasies such as Tchernikov’s sketches of around 1929.

The cubic “follies” were like giant toys scattered across the grass. Rem Koolhass’s proposal for the Grande Bibliotheque re-investigates the syntax of the Corbusian free plan but in terms which made

much of floating volumes of complex curvature, layers of opaque or transparent glazing and dramatic ramps for movement. Koolhaas’s interest in the cinema as a key to modern experience was translated metaphorically into frames, screens and clips, and the facades of his buildings were sometimes designed to receive projections of changing electronic information.

It was fashionable in the late 1980s to group together architects who used fragmented forms as “deconstructivist”. It was obvious that the implied connection between the Soviet Constructivism and the philosophy of deconstruction was a little more than an intellectual sleight of hand, and that there were several contrasting directions and theoretical agendas. Daniel Libeskind who had developed a private calligraphy of interwoven lines in the 1970s gradually evolved an architectural language which made use of tilting volumes and converging planes.

His Jewish Museum (1989-96) wasa zigzag incision in which nothing was quite stable. Like a bolt of lightning bolt cutting through and several routes were overlaid in the complex geometry of both plan and section, each of them referring to different departures and transitions in Jewish history. In effect, Libeskind evolved a complex political metaphor in space, light, matter, and dematerialization to evoke the universality of Jewish civilization, and the void left in Western Culture by the destruction of the Jews in the 2nd World War.

In the late 1980s, fragmentations and layering were sometimes discussed as if they were contemporary inventions, whereas in fact they had stemmed in the long run from Cubism, and had anyway been employed in several sense in the 1970s. In Japan, Toyo Ito for example has suggested that the skin of a building might be thought of as

a screen upon which various lights and shadows are projected. Fumihiko Maki responded to the new Japanese industrial landscape by combining bold structural concepts with the high level of craftmanship in steel, glass, plastic and concrete typically available in his own country.

An expanded modernism combines a search for a more subtle relationship between structure and expression, a search for the power that details within abstract figures seem to possess, a study of dynamic equilibrium between part and whole, the expression of the present that comes about from the simultaneous awareness of pass and future. The Tokyo Institute of Technology Centennial Hall by another Japanese Architect, Kazuo Shinohara slammed together several forms in a dynamic interplay of transparent boxes and hovering curves suspended in mid-air.

It was as if the diverse scales of a confused environment had imploded on the inner surface of a building, or as if an object had exploded to respond to invisible lines of force in the third nature of electronic industrialization. He was committed to the idea of a kind of visual coherence, an “aesthetic of chaos” that was both “dynamic and unified”. Tadao Ando’s response to the artificiality of capitalist, consumerist sprawl was to reassert the connection with nature. In his Church-on-the-Water (1985-8) in Tomamu, he intensified the experience of the surroundings into the field of energy activated by his building.

The minimalist incisions recalled both modern abstract sculpture and traditional ideas. “Architecture delivers a place’s memory to the present, and transmits it to the future… Architecture differentiates nature, and also integrates nature. Through architecture, nature is reduced to its elements and then drawn into unity, Thus nature is architecturealised, and man’s

confrontation with nature is refined. ” Even though post modernism had a relatively slight though sensationalist impact on France, there were plenty of other schism and divisions over the direction that modern architecture should take.

While Henri Ciriani advocated the interpretation of Corbusian, younger architects like Jean Nouvel were drawn to transparency of “high-tech” and to the tradition of steel and glass construction. Jean Nouvel’s Institut Du Monde Arabe responded to a bend in the Seine and to the orthogonal geometry of the existing buildings by uniting a transparent oblong volume with a curved one around an inner court and resembles mechanistic versions of traditional Arab “mashrabiya” screens.

Grande Arche de la Defense designed by Johan Otto von Spreckelsen shows the inner faces of the sides of the building were detailed to detail an abstraction of a micro-chip, while the low transparent clouds were like waves of energy passing through the air. He took the ideal form of a cube to reflect d symbol of Universal Rights of Men by opening it out as a “window to the world”. While the Arche suggested minimalist sculpture of vast scale and pure proportions, its geometrical form was capable of carrying many meanings and allusions simultaneously.

Musee du Centre Archeologique Europeen du Mont Beuvray by Pierre-Louis Faloci used topography and geology abstraction. The building used planar walls, platforms, terraces and soffits to capture the space of the rural setting and to resonate with the surrounding landscape. He abstracted the geometry of the nearby archeology excavations in his plan.

The parentage of this building included Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavillion, Terragni’s works f the 1930s, buildings of the modern form and structure

with a certain classical resonance. He took over basic themes from modern tradition and gave them a fresh significance with respect to the historical and geological strata of the place. The Finnish modern architecture of the 1980s continued to address the diverse functions and industrialized Welfare State while still reacting to the ever present forest landscape, to the Nordic light and climate and to deeply embedded social patterns and ways of using space.

From the start, modernism in Finland has been associated with National identity. Mikko Heikkinen and Markku Komonen combined some features of the “new abstraction” from abroad with topographical erosions which descended in the long run from Aalto. Their Finnish Embassy (1990-4) in Washington DC relied upon cool abstractions to intensify the experience of the woodland site. Juha Leiviska engages with a more universal idea of tradition and did not reply on technological imaginary.

His extending lines and multiple rhythms of his plans recalled the fields of energy in Mondrian’s early paintings, if not the spatial devices of Mies van der Rohe and Wright, but there were also distillations of childhood, countryside memories and of basic patterns of the Finnish vernacular. The Myyrmaki Church near Helenski has a deep feeling for the spiritual power of light, and for the contours of the landscape. Leiviska drew upon a Nordic tradition and also delivering inspiration from several light vessels in the history of architecture and from the polyphony of music. I believe in the permanency of the basic factors of architecture, the so-called eternal values.

I do not therefore believe that there has been anything in recent years which could revolutionize the basic tenets of architecture or its

central task. ” In the 1980s abstraction was often equated with empty formalism, with a retreat into internal puzzles of architectural language, but some of the most probing architects of an emerging generation used it to intensify the significance of their forms, to heighten experience, even to resonate with natural forces or with the invisible spirit of the place.

The essence of a work of architecture is an organic link between concept and form. Pieces cannot be subtracted or added without upsetting fundamental properties… the organizing idea is a hidden thread connecting disparate parts with exact intention… From this position experimental phenomena are the material for a kind of reasoning that joins concept and sensation… Outer perception and inner perception are synthesized in an ordering of space, light and material. ” Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Piere de Meuron also tried to discover a poetic link between a building’s form, structure and idea.

The Ricola Storage building (1986-7) at Laufen shows their direction. It was on the knife edge between a mute objectivity and an abstraction enliven by hermetic images. It was somewhere between the rural, the industrial and even the natural. Herzog wrote : “If you are looking for pantheism or naturalism in our work… you will find it, but only on the structural level which interests us, never on an analogical or figurative level. Every natural object, all organic and inorganic matter such as plants and stones, possess a high complex structure of visible and invisible images.

It was at one time possible for traditional architecture to bring together the various different facets of the construction, the images, the materials and so on, but as this

no longer exists it is necessary to fill the emptiness left between these different aspects with another kind of energy: the energy of thought, of the reflections of architecture, the artist and the scientist; and equally with the perceptual energy of the observer. ” Spanish architecture in d late twentieth century reveals yet another pattern combining the absorption with new ideas from the outside with sublime continuities of indigenous themes.

The pitfalls of instant traditionalism and skin-deep neo-modernism were mostly avoided in a complex and rooted modern architecture culture that was open to conceptual exploration, but which also addressed the public realm and the city. At 1st, their range of works combined a certain abstraction with a close attention to construction and topography. High-tech was a rarity in Spain until the Olympic Games in Barcelona and the World’s Exhibition in Seville, both in 1992.

Catalan Architects built mainly in Mediterranean conditions, dealing with urban, suburban and rural sites in Barcelona and drew almost unconsciously upon the resources of tradition, at the same time opening themselves to vital ideas in the international field. Among the most successful housing schemes in the Villa Olimpica were the three courtyard blocks designed by Carlos Ferrator, which responded to the pre-existing Cerda grid and to the Mediterranean courtyard topologies, while also introducing counter-themes and ingenious manipulations of the stepped section in the interiors.

Ferrater’s solution recalled some of the agendas of GATEPAC in the 1930s. Elias Torres Tur & Jose Antonio Martinez Lapena developed a controlled but poetic Rationalism that was responsive to the marine time environment, to the lush vegetations and to the straight forward techniques of construction in brick and concrete.

The Palma de Mallorca (1983-92) was a delicate intervention making evocative use of palm trees and surreal incidents to intensify the experience of a historical place where here again the hermetic images of organic inspiration were combined with a species of topographical abstractions.

The biomorphic bridges, stations and airports designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava in the late 1980s and early 1990s aimed well beyond technical neutrality, and even beyond the calm balance of means and ends. Calatrava’s style has been heralded as bridging the division between structural engineering and architecture. , his style is very personal and derives from numerous studies he makes of the human body and the natural world. He carried out extensive studies of anatomy of human, birds and animals and truly so his designs reflected his philosophy.

Calatrava’s dynamic designs integrate technology and aesthetics producing structural forms that challenge traditional practice in both architecture and engineering. His Turning Torso (1999-2004) in Sweden shows relations to a human figure where seven cubes are set around a steel support to produce a spiral structure, which resembles a twisting human spine. Back in Spain, Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciencies or also known the City of Arts and Science is an entertainment-based cultural and architectural complex designed by Calatrava as a present to his home city of Valencia, Spain.

The complex is made up of the following buildings, in order of their inauguration. L'Hemisferic, an Imax Cinema, Planetarium and Laserium built in the shape of the eye. El Museu de les Ciencies Principe Felipe an interactive museum of science but resembling the skeleton of a whale. L'Umbracle a landscaped walk with plant species indigenous to

Valencia. El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, an opera house and performing arts center. It is dedicated to music and the scenic arts.

L'Oceanografic is an open-air oceanographic park. It is the largest oceanographic aquarium in built in the shape of a water lily. L'Agora, a covered plaza in which concerts and sporting events are held. Then there are the El Puente de l'Assut de l'Or is a bridge that connects the south side with Minorca Street, whose 125 meters high pillar is the highest point in the city. The Valencia Towers forms part of a project of the construction of three skyscrapers.

Portugist architect Alvaro Siza’s Centro Galego de Arte Contemporaneo (1988-94) reinvoked the topographical sensitivity of his earliest buildings while responding to the civic ambitions of a regional culture. Devices drawn in the long run from Cubist painting and from Aalto were used to enhance the experience of works of arts and feelings. The Igualada Cemetery (1985-92) outside Barcelona by Enric Miralles and Carme Pinos also relied upon dynamic diagonals, erosions and fractures to concentrate a topographical gesture and to heighten a sense of ritual.

The textured paving had scattered wooden railway ties embedded in it, like logs moving in a stream, and conveyed a notion of a river of souls. Meralles ad Pinos’s “building” was in fact somewhere between architecture, landscape and environmental sculpture. It fused together the archaicism and curved profiles of Le Corbusier’s late works. The slicing planes of Richard Serra, and the pantheistic landscape art of Gaudi, while grappling with a spatial expression appropriate to a late twentieth-century culture combining secular structures with religious roots.

Here, avant-garde experimentation and institutional norms achieved

a vital interchange : a mental map containing numerous ideas was translated into a social landscape. Modern architecture in its many manifestations seemed to flourish best in the tension between public and private interest, especially in social democracies struggling to reconcile the forces of technological modernization with the demands of liberal institutions.

The economic infrastructure rested at the level of mere mechanisms and networks of information while critical architectures aspired to the level of poetic forms and enduring symbols. The most probing works in the 1980s and 1990s took on the character of eloquent fragments, condensed worlds, standing out against a rabid technological development, and evoking idealized relationships between people, things and ideas.

Despite vast changes in intention, ideology, function and technology, the invention of forms continued to rely upon the major revolutions that occurred earlier in the century. The most challenging architecture still emerged in the tension between individual intentions and collective myths, between unique ideas and universal aims. One may leave the uncompleted and open sequences of the late twentieth-century architecture which continues to be a challenge, although formulated over a century ago when modern architecture was just an idea for the future.