Critical Historical Practices_Assignment 1

BLUR BUILDING

FONDATION CARTIER

Diller Scofidio + Renfro Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, 2002

Jean Nouvel Paris, France, 1994

ARCH 7035 (2020) Critical Historical Practices Samuel Foo / A1709428@student.adelaide.edu.au

CONTENTS Part One

Part Two

Part Three

3

5

7

Introduction Brief description of the projects

4

Keywords Themes, both architectect and introduced

Atmosphere and Ambiguity Discussion of the key themes between the two buildings

6

Mass and Dematerialization

Conclusion Summary of the key points in both projects

8

Discussion of the key themes between the two buildings

References Endnotes

9

References Image Credits

INTRODUCTION

9 In winter, the trees around the Fondation Cartier no longer provide a curtain of concealment, easily exposing the form of the building.

10 The Blur Building in the evening, accentuated by lighting.

The Blur Building was a temporary media pavilion built for the 2002 Swiss Expo, in Yverdon-Les-Bains, Switzerland. Architect Elizabeth Diller and her artist partner Ricardo Scofidio helm the New York based design firm ‘Diller Scofidio + Renfro’, with architect Charles Renfro joining the duo in 2002.

The firm is known for its ability to challenge the “conventional boundaries between architecture and other artistic disciplines”1 One of the firm’s most famous and popular projects, Blur is a culmination of the blend of the various multidisciplinary techniques that was used to conceive the project; such as engineering, architecture, electronic media, art, and environmental management.

A common theme in performative architecture merges both program and event to rethink what architecture could be. Rachel Hann deliberates in her book ‘Blurred Architecture’ that “Modernism is representative of a critical spatial shift within performance”2 , cultivating projects like Blur within the Postmodernism era.

The Fondation Cartier is a contemporary art musem located in Paris, France. Jean Nouvel was comissioned by Alain Dominique Perrin, President of Cartier International at the time, in 2014 to create an expansion of the exisiting property.

The Fondation Cartier welcomes different creative fields and genres of contemporary art, such as photography, painting, fashion and performance art to list a few. “This testifies to the Fondation Cartier’s commitment and skill, to its blend of rigor and eclecticism which opens up contemporary art and renders it more accessible.”3 Well established in the international arts scence and loved by the French, the Fondation Cartier prides itself its constant search for orginality and diversity.

KEYWORDS

Architect Keywords

Blur Building Fondation Cartier

Atmosphere

spectacle interaction

stimulation

immersive

special effects machine

senses

reflection

glimmer

airy transparency lightness acoustic

ATMOSPHERE

natural temperature nature vapour

humidity

mist

fleeting

presence

emotion

continuity

heterogeneity

semi-artificial dialouge

environment

space

Mass

poetics

serene

ephemeral dynamic

climatic

immense

Noun 1: the gaseous envelope of a celestial body 2: the air of a locality 3: a surrounding influence or environment 4a: the overall aesthetic effect of a work of art b: an intriguing or singular tone, effect, or appeal

effect

integrate

interplay flexibility

subtle

DEMATERIALIZE

time omnipresent dimension

transition absence dissipate dissolution

apparition

disorient attenuated elusive deprivation transcendent depth diffuse evanescence abstract obfuscate reflection conceal atomized erase hybrid opacity

body

volume

MASS

density

data

oversaturation

high-definition technology

threshold

parameters

references

dependence

materiality rational

superimposition

unregulated

immaterial

emerge

focus

AMBIGUITY frame

virtual sequence

planes surface borders

platform

orthodoxy

camouflage

low-definition

Noun 1: a large body of matter with no definite shape 2: a large quantity or amount of something 3: the majority of An architecture of atmosphere, the Blur Building obscures the boundaries of typical in situ built structures, revealing aspects of a performative architecture that challenges the conventions of space and skin.

Dematerialize Verb 1: become free of physical substance; to lose or appear to lose materiality

periphery

Ambiguity Noun 1: the quality of being open to more than one interpretation; inexactness The mutiple, layered planes of reflections of plants and sky produced by the glass facade creates ambiguity within the Fondation Cartier by dematerializing structure, through the interplay of light and materiality.

ATMOSPHERE & AMBIGUITY

11 The physical outlines of the visitors are abstracted into the shrouding mass.

12 Guided by the handrails, visitors proceed to the main platform above.

The Blur Building and Fondation Cartier share elements of ambiguity in its physical and symbolic manifestations, through the use natural and manmade elements to create and curate atmosphere.

The Blur Building takes in filtered lake water and expels it as fine mist through a dense configuration of thousands of high pressure nozzles.

The mist slowly shrouds the tensegrity platform, transforming it into a expanding mass, where “visual and acoustical references are slowly erased until only an optical white out and the white noise of pulsing fog”4 This atmospheric effect removes the visitors preconceived notions of an external environment and amplifies their visual dependance in the present moment.

Unlike entering a conventional static building, “entering Blur is like stepping into a habitable medium, one that is formless, featureless, depthless, scaleless, massless, surfaceless, and dimesionless.”5 The water of the lake is simultaneously the architecture and its context.

The Fondation Cartier is essentially a glass cube sandwiched between two parellel screens. The arrangement of “three successive layers of glass that make up the building convey a sense of ambiguity between the real and the virtual. You never know whether the tree is outside or inside or whether it is a reflection.”6 These superimpositions of transient imagery caused by the refractions and reflections of light throughout the day, diffuses the building into the landscape. The visual interplay of the architectural elements “support an urban choreography, providing a scenographic performance of static and dynamic forces”.7

13 & 14 The blue colorization on the image indicates the visual overlapping of the original source of the tree with reflections from other sources.

This obscures the line between ones perception and the perceived image.

MASS & DEMATERIALIZATION

15 A sequence of snapshots that depict the journey into the Blur Building.

Bottom, left to right

16 The main glass facades that surround the central building.

17 A diagram explaining how light is refracted through glass.

Dematerialization is prevalent in the Blur Building and Fondation Cartier, both designed to evoke an emotional response through experience. They share aspects of literal and metaphorical dematerialization. While the Blur Building uses water for its main material, Fondation Cartier uses light.

18 A diagram explaining how light is reflected through glass.

Blur was conceptualized as a response to the overwhelming emergence of high-definition technologies that pervade the 21st century, which contributes to an “insatiable appetite for visual stimulation”.8 The closer the visitors gets to the main platform, the less they are able to see. This brings into dialogue the concepts of Cartesianism and empiricism.

Cartesianism “stating that scientific knowledge can be derived through deductive reasoning,” and empiricism as an “emphasis on sensory experience as the source of all knowledge of the world.”9 Unlike the Blur Building, the steel structure of the Fondation Cartier is revealed in greater definition upon closer proximity. An inverse choreography, but still utilizing the same aspects of dematerialization.

Nouvel states that technological advances will allow us to make materiality more streamlined and efficient, resulting in less material being used. “One of the main ways of controlling material is through light, and so one of the most astonishingly modern materials, in this sense, the most evolved, is glass”.10

Glass Emergent Ray

Both projects use technology to heighten the immediate environmental surroundings through dematerialization. In Fondation Cartier, light is celebrated through the abundant use of glass. In Blur, external references are obscured to reveal visceral sensations.

Air

Air

Reflec

Mirror Plane

ted Ra

Eye

y

Virtu

y

nt Ra

e Incid

al Ra

Object

Incident Ray

Refraction

y

Virtual Image

Reflection

CONCLUSION In conclusion, both the projects use similar techniques to abstract the user in relation to its medium. The information the buildings gives the user is not straightforward, preferencing the quality of experience instead. This allows the user to create their own subjective narrative through the interactions with the space. Both projects pushes the boundaries of what could be constituted as architecture, into the realm of performative arts, suggesting new modes of interaction the built environment.

REFERENCES Endnotes

1. Kazi, Olympia, and Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi. “Architecture as a Dissident Practice: An Interview with Diller Scofidio Renfro.” Architectural Design Archit Design 70 (2009): 57.

2. Pierce, Christopher. “Three’s a Crowd: Drawing, Building and Photography in the Recent Work of Diller Scofidio Renfro.” Arq Architectural Research Quarterly 12 (2008): 233.

3. Fondation Cartier. “History and missions”, 2018, Accessed 10 August, 2020. https:// www.fondationcartier.com/en/history-and-mission/philanthropy 4. Martin, Reinhold. Diller + Scofidio (+Renfro) The Ciliary Function Works and Projects 1979-2009. Italy: (all unidentified iconographic sources), 2007 5. Architectural review, 2002 Sept., v.212, n.1267, p.46-47, photographs, plans, site plans 6. Nouvel, Jean, and Bosoni, Giampiero. Jean Nouvel : Architecture and Design 19761995, a Lecture in Italy / Jean Nouvel; Edited by Giampiero Bosoni. Milan: Skira, 1997.

Print: Pgs 50 - 52 7. Richards, Brent., and Gilbert, Dennis. New Glass Architecture / Brent Richards ; Photographs by Denis Gilbert. London: Laurence King, 2006. Print: Pgs, 56 - 65 8. Diller, Liz. “Liz Diller: Architecture is a special effects machine”, October 2018, Accessed 10 August, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6ZbC53tVc&t=1s 9. Watson, Richard. “Cartesianism”, February 2016, Accessed 10 August, 2020. https:// www.britannica.com/topic/Cartesianism 10. Morgan, Conway Lloyd., and Nouvel, Jean. Jean Nouvel : The Elements of Architecture / Conway Lloyd Morgan. London: Thames & Hudson, 1998. Print: Pgs 146 - 151

REFERENCES Image Credits

1. Widmer, Beat and Dirk Hebel. “Aerial View”, 2002, Accessed 10 August 2020. https://dsrny.com/project/blur-building 2. Boegly, Luc. “View of the Building, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain”, 2013, Accessed 10 August 2020. https://www.fondationcartier.com/en/building 3. Log, 2003 Fall, n.1, p.9-26, photographs, drawings, illustrations 4. Ibid 5. Richards, Brent., and Gilbert, Dennis. New Glass Architecture / Brent Richards ; Photographs by Denis Gilbert. London: Laurence King, 2006. Print: Pg, 56 6. Ibid 7. Ibid., p. 58 8. Ibid., p. 115 9. Ibid., p. 148 10. Martin, Reinhold. Diller + Scofidio (+Renfro) The Ciliary Function Works and Projects 1979-2009. Italy: (all unidentified iconographic sources), 2007 11. Ibid 12. Ibid 13. Boegly, Luc. “View of the Building, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain”, 2013, Accessed 10 August 2020. https://www.fondationcartier.com/en/building

14. Foo, Samuel, edited from Morgan, Conway Lloyd., and Nouvel, Jean. Jean Nouvel : The Elements of Architecture / Conway Lloyd Morgan. London: Thames & Hudson, 1998. Print: Pg, 146 15. Foo, Samuel, redrawn from Martin, Reinhold. Diller + Scofidio (+Renfro) The Ciliary Function Works and Projects 1979-2009. Italy: (all unidentified iconographic sources), 2007 16. Foo, Samuel, redrawn from Richards, Brent., and Gilbert, Dennis. New Glass Architecture / Brent Richards ; Photographs by Denis Gilbert. London: Laurence King, 2006. Print: Pg, 56 17. Foo, Samuel, redrawn from “Refraction of Light through a Glass Block.”, Accessed 10 August 2020. https://www.gcsescience.com/pwav23.htm 18. Foo, Samuel, redrawn from “Reflections in Mirrors”, Accessed 10 August 2020. http://www.nightlase.com.au/education/optics/reflection.htm 19. Foo, Samuel, edited from Log, 2003 Fall, n.1, p.9-26, photographs, drawings, illustrations