Æsthe/tech:Tonik
Building | Beauty | Consuming | ImageArchive for Architecture General
Spec Office v.01
On the tail of the Republic Square competition, another *small* project competition emerged in the heart of Almaty’s financial district that was simple in the challenge it set forth; a speculative office complex 160,000 sm, consisting of four buildings, 2 large (flanking the site), and 2 smaller (in the middle). Our team, since having won the competition, is finding in the midst of its development, that the project has grown considerably in size, scope, and complexity. I will try to document this ongoing effort, to bring to light design issues put on the table, challenges faced, and what it might mean for the client, city, and occupants…
Concept.
The client’s interest for the project is one which predicates a desire to create a formidable presence in a burgeoning financial district at the southeast corner of the city. The Kazak culture as a whole has strong ties to the landscape, which for centuries was the enabler of their nomadic lifestyle. They were a people who farmed the steppe between the lowlands, and the southern mountain ranges. It is this affinity for their environs, coupled with a desire to participate in a dialogue with western society that led them to the development of this project.At its rudiments, the buildings of the Al Farabi Business Center have the advantage of being the third project in an on-going collaborative between NBBJ, E/Ye Design, and TS Engineering (TSE). TSE is the client, developer, and shared user of the complex. As stated above, the formal nature of these investigations resonated highest with the client because of their simultaneous addressing of both the desire to create buildings which become part of, and speak to, a larger landscape, as well as situating themselves in a contemporary discussion with the richness and technology of western architecture. The goal of the project is synergistic with this ideal; to create place beyond the realm of speculative office (the parameters of which were dictated by the client to be four buildings of a specific size and location), which amplifies this discussion. Thusly, an attitude held by the project at its inception was to accommodate the programmatic, ecological and metric requirements of the speculative typology by pushing the Architecture to both the perimeter and interstitial space between the buildings, leaving the interior potential to be a flexible as possible for the future tenants.
Differentiation of these spaces is evoked through a shared formal relationship with the building and ground-plane through manipulated splines, to create an abstracted relationship to the life of the landscape and landforms of the steppe in opposition to the imposed gridded geometry of the city and its gardens (as residual from Soviet occupation). These geometries are subverted, however, described only by rigorous deployment of linear construction methodologies, speaking to a degree of machined western refinement, and adapt to certain situations afforded by the site.
All images Copyright NBBJ, LLC 2007
Hiatus
Despite popular belief, this blog still lives, but has been temporarily neglected due to a project which will no doubt be seen here soon. Stay tuned…
In the mean time check out 40Bond, by H&deM that is nearing completion.
Scriptographer 2.0
Came across a nifty little plug-in for the Adobe Illustrator creative suites, which actually allows you to run some pretty interesting scripts within Illustrator for generating 2 dimensional graphics based on both raster and vector inputs…check it out…
MS
Magic Bullet
In an effort to create a more well-rounded dialogue, this blog has been opened up to other contributors to comment as they see fit, which will undoubtedly account for changes in tone, attitude, and flavors of posts. With that said, I would say that relative to “Skepticism”, the funny part is I agree with 95% of what was said, but I’d also like to address some aspects which I think can be built upon relative to the aesthetic domain.
Rarely do we set out to create something ugly. It is not in our nature. Even when we do, we end up making it so ugly, it becomes endearing, and has the opposite effect. Relative to the topic of scripting as addressed in the previous post, we have to look at some potential misconceptions. The first is that it is exclusive to creating Form from metric data. While it has been used in that sense from a performance standpoint, that is not it’s only value. I think its real value comes in creating organizational rigors which go beyond predictability. We are interested in scripting for a number of reasons, whether to give ourselves a built-in medium to ensure a specific organization in response to hard parameters, or to positively affect the construction process by providing a road map to understanding the complex architectures that we are capable of creating digitally, but are trying hard to resolve realistically.
Using scripting successfully is grounded in two things: anticipation and evaluation. So simply “tweaking wind data to make something hot” is both right and wrong. To be able write one in the first place, you have to have a general understanding of what the outcome is going to be when setting up rules and variables. Furthermore you have to be able to evaluate what is produced from the inputs/variables to make decisions on what works and what doesn’t. Enter: Subjectivity. What we fail to realize is that although we can readily employ metrics as variables/rules, so can we employ aesthetic seeds, such as composition, scale and relativity, which are also well documented (think Golden Section). Scripting is only a method for automating and maintaining control, and ensuring rigor, as we can (and have done) since architecture was a profession.
So if we can understand that “scripting” as a method is only another tool in the toolbox, and not a one-button problem solver, we can take the analogy a step further. Think of scripting as a paintbrush. There are people who make paintbrushes and there are people who use paintbrushes. We can also agree that some paintbrushes are made better than others, and that in some circles, paintbrush-making is an art in itself. Furthermore, paintbrushes require but a minimal understanding, if any, of how they are made to use them successfully. Knowing their limits and being able to tweak them slightly, is incredibly enabling. Jackson Pollock lifted the brush off of the canvas, effectively finding a new “technique” for applying the brush. I think it is fairly easy to see the potential implications if we draw the parallel to scripts. We need not be programmers to be architects (although it would allow more control), but we do need to understand capabilities and limitations of the tool to be able to move forward and embrace new technologies. We will find that we will exploit these potentials as we are becoming more adept at using them.
This still does not address the topic of individuality as brought up previously, which we can get to, yet.
MS
The Skeptic Emerges
Could it be that we actually want the answer to “Why does it look that way?” to be, “Because I wanted it to.”?
In some ways, that’s an easier thing to grasp than understanding the complexities of scripting, etc…Because, you know what? Despite all of the explanations and the sine curve this and wind data that, I still think it’s mostly aesthetic–you rig the experiment to come up with what you want and tweak it to make it hot. If someone just said, “I want it to look like this,” then at least they’d be speaking the truth.
One of the problems in all of this is that of the singular “taste”-maker. What happens when an architecture needs to be produced by a group of people? A network of people? At that point, you move away from correct taste and into group taste–a place where the results are far from certain and to me, much more interesting. Do you create a model where anyone can change the variables? A place where control is not centralized but distributed?
Beware, it might not end up sexy. As evidenced by the painting above, public taste cannot necessarily be trusted. But I like the idea of a place where taste is allowed and encouraged but it must fight the democratic fight. Too often, a designer gets their way through force of personality (being louder, being meaner). In a no-holds-barred battle to the death, “taste” would become just another ”idea” jockeying for position. Actually, I think the better metaphor is gambling. Gambling is cooler, leaner, more flexible. Could we place bets on certain aesthetic determinants and see what wins? It’s not a new idea–the faux Hollywood Stock Exchange has been operating for years–betting on buzz. And that’s what taste is, really. Buzz. Who’s got it? Who’s lost it?
Æsthe/tech:Tonik : DEFINED
Aesthetic: (also esthetic) From the Greek word aisthetikos, meaning of sense perception. Also spelled “esthetic.” Having to do with beauty in both form and appearance. An esthetic procedure is one in which the principal purpose is to improve the appearance.
Technology: Human innovation in action that involves the generation of knowledge and processes to develop systems that solve problems and extend human capabilities
Tonic: A substance that invigorates or strengthens the system
Return of the Aesthete
Content. Make sure you have it.
If it looks good, well, that’s just a bonus – fine and dandy. Socially, institutionally, and academically, we have sabotaged the aesthetic through our actions and desires. It has now become an empty casing, the epitome of superficiality that we see plastered in fashion magazines, newspaper blips and television sets dialed into American Idol. Visual junk food. Perhaps it is the sheer quantity of images that we are bombarded with everyday. Maybe it’s the underlying visceral Pavlovian response that we hate to admit aesthetics evoke within us. For whatever reason, aesthetics have been villanized and subsequently stripped of any value relative to arts disciplines. What we sometimes fail to realize is that we are a predominantly visual culture, and failure to admittedly engage such a large portion of what we value tends to give the aesthete a bad name, when actually we can trace the majority of artistic/design movements to a conscious embrasure of aesthetics, or a conscious denouncement of aesthetics which, in turn, created a new aesthetic ( i.e., cubism, impressionism, modernism).
This blog will most likely fall all over the map in relation to what it promotes or denounces. It may devolve into generalities on what contributors simply find interesting. It is hard to categorize what it will or will not address, given the evolutionary nature of the media. What it does aim to do is recognize the inherent nature of design disciplines, more specifically architecture to pass off the way something looks as completely subjective, and instead will look for undercurrents which reproduce a positive project while still maintaining experiential and spatial value. In addition, this blog will also highlight specific techniques, be it digital, manual, or 3-dimensional, and the impact that those may have in relation to the work produced. The purpose being, that as designers become more adept (and less impressed) with simply the capacity of new tools and methods to create “something new”, we instead use them to create something better.
Qualifier: This is not meant to be a proponent of image for image sake. I don’t think anyone would argue that as designers, we want to be empty, soulless vehicles for prettiness. It does, however, make the assumption that no image or aesthetic is completely empty, and that we can find value if we look close enough.
I hope this site can serve as an inspiration or at least a forum of discussion.
