The Indeterminists list a number of projects (e.g. Galeries Des Machines, Eiffel Tower, Crystal Palace) suitable as a framework for social re-evolution that embraces Summerson's rubric where "buildings would be formed by social requirement.”
Joseph Paxton - Crystal Palace (London, 1851) / / Victorian kit-built-architecture.
Source: http://soa.syr.edu/faculty/bcoleman/arc523/lectures/523.crystal.palace.images.html
Ferdinand Dutert & Victor Contamin - Galeries Des Machines (Paris, 1889)
Source: http://www.expo2000.de/expo2000/geschichte/detail.php?wa_id=6&lang=1&s_typ=3
On first sight, the above image immediately reminded me of section illustration of the Kowloon Walled City (Chapter 01_Equivocal Emergent). It shares a similar aesthetic of framework in chaotic order.
The works of Frei Otto are superlative examples of the modern, idealist program of The Indeterminists.
Frei Otto - Ökohäuser (1991, Berlin, Germany) / / simple, revolutionary design. Users purchase a 'space' within the framework which is then built to their needs. Otto retained control to ensure the outcome of the project. To this day it is an extremely successful project, still under a constant evolution of change.
Source: Technische Universität Berlin - LIA Studio
Frei Otto - West Germany Pavilion (1967, Montreal) / / Membrane Architecture was the basis of Otto's design. A layer of skin was 'stretched' across a tensile structure in a literal interpretation as an adaptive outer layer or membrane.
Source: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/AccesstoTools/
Frei Otto - Concept development (??, 1972) / / Concept development of membrane structure. The undulating membrane surface also collects rainwater at the depression points.
Source: "the work of frei otto"- MOMA - Glaeser, Ludwig,1972 - http://www.sculptors.com/~salsbury/agri-towers.html
The architectural equivalent of an social program becomes heavily influenced by technological automation. – see Frei Otto – West German Pavilion. The “...skin of a building as a membrane” perpetuates a "continuous realm of biological-electronic control systems."
Another cybernetic manifested architecture: Archigram's system monitors self-sufficiency, population, plug-in infrastructure where alterations to the physical system are required – i.e. add capsule to module 1: hydration.), birth rate/death rate, food supply, consumption, recreation and power supply.
These words foretell Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House (1927). The program of the house exemplified sustainable recirculation and packaging of liquid and solid waste as part of a mutual complex system integrated into the house that approaches organicism.
The exemplars above question, rather existentially, whether architecture need be nothing more than a framework for program. Banham (1965) of The Indeterminists said - "When it contains so many services that the hardware could stand up by itself without any assistance from the house, why have a house to hold it up?"
I think that while it is impossible to ignore the importance of technology, the dimensions of a framed social program starts to sound bleak, like a decidedly destructive prose from a Philip K. Dick novel. Where is the enthusiasm?
I posit, a technologically biased program which references tried-and-proven architecture, but where people determine FORCES, forms and spaces!
Joseph Paxton - Crystal Palace (London, 1851) / / Victorian kit-built-architecture.
Source: http://soa.syr.edu/faculty/bcoleman/arc523/lectures/523.crystal.palace.images.html
Ferdinand Dutert & Victor Contamin - Galeries Des Machines (Paris, 1889)
Source: http://www.expo2000.de/expo2000/geschichte/detail.php?wa_id=6&lang=1&s_typ=3
On first sight, the above image immediately reminded me of section illustration of the Kowloon Walled City (Chapter 01_Equivocal Emergent). It shares a similar aesthetic of framework in chaotic order.
The works of Frei Otto are superlative examples of the modern, idealist program of The Indeterminists.
Frei Otto - Ökohäuser (1991, Berlin, Germany) / / simple, revolutionary design. Users purchase a 'space' within the framework which is then built to their needs. Otto retained control to ensure the outcome of the project. To this day it is an extremely successful project, still under a constant evolution of change.
Source: Technische Universität Berlin - LIA Studio
Frei Otto - West Germany Pavilion (1967, Montreal) / / Membrane Architecture was the basis of Otto's design. A layer of skin was 'stretched' across a tensile structure in a literal interpretation as an adaptive outer layer or membrane.
Source: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/AccesstoTools/
Frei Otto - Concept development (??, 1972) / / Concept development of membrane structure. The undulating membrane surface also collects rainwater at the depression points.
Source: "the work of frei otto"- MOMA - Glaeser, Ludwig,1972 - http://www.sculptors.com/~salsbury/agri-towers.html
The architectural equivalent of an social program becomes heavily influenced by technological automation. – see Frei Otto – West German Pavilion. The “...skin of a building as a membrane” perpetuates a "continuous realm of biological-electronic control systems."
Another cybernetic manifested architecture: Archigram's system monitors self-sufficiency, population, plug-in infrastructure where alterations to the physical system are required – i.e. add capsule to module 1: hydration.), birth rate/death rate, food supply, consumption, recreation and power supply.
These words foretell Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House (1927). The program of the house exemplified sustainable recirculation and packaging of liquid and solid waste as part of a mutual complex system integrated into the house that approaches organicism.
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| Buckminster Fuller - Dymaxion House (1927) Source: http://seedbankdesign.com/?page_id=33 |
The exemplars above question, rather existentially, whether architecture need be nothing more than a framework for program. Banham (1965) of The Indeterminists said - "When it contains so many services that the hardware could stand up by itself without any assistance from the house, why have a house to hold it up?"
I think that while it is impossible to ignore the importance of technology, the dimensions of a framed social program starts to sound bleak, like a decidedly destructive prose from a Philip K. Dick novel. Where is the enthusiasm?
I posit, a technologically biased program which references tried-and-proven architecture, but where people determine FORCES, forms and spaces!
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