The Instrumental model by Sebastian

SEBASTIÁN ARTURO GARCÍA NÚÑEZ The Instrumental model: Scale changes towards tectonic, spatial and formal experimentation Intensification on Architecture Composition Spring Semester Polytechnic University of Madrid Higher Technical School of Architecture

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Index 1. Historical context 1.1. From Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The consolidation of the prototype as a project instrument 1.2. Antoni Gaudí: A new look into tectonic and composition exploration 1.3. The prototype as the modern movement tool 1.4. The physical model of the abstract idea: Utopia between art and architecture 1.5. The prototype in the virtual environment 2. Case studies 2.1. Los Manantiales Restaurant, (Mexico), Félix Candela, 1958 2.2. Munich Olympic Stadium, (Germany), Frei Otto, 1972 2.3. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, (Spain), Frank O. Gehry, 1997 3. Conclusion

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Abstract The following essay sought to analyze the role scale models or prototypes have played, together with formal and technical experimentation, in the configuration and representation of the architectural space. The prototype is studied as a method that since the Renaissance has been used to transform the idea of the architect crating tangible objects, and that over time - from Gaudí to Frank Gehry - used as a tool to explore spatial possibilities, functional, technical and aesthetics, that with difficulty could have been built or even explored without immersing into an experimental adventure. Starting from this principle, I propose a brief sight on the role of scale models, from Brunelleschi and Michelangelo to the virtual environment model, going through Gaudí, the Modern Movement, Neoplasticism and the imaginative utopias between art and architecture. Finally, three specific cases will be explored where the model and experimentation were the basis for achieving the final result, as follows: Los Manantiales restaurant, by Félix Candela; the Munich Olympic Stadium, by Frei Otto; and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, by Frank Gehry. Key terms: mock-up, model, prototype, experimentation, form, function, technique, space.

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1. Historical context From Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The consolidation of the prototype as a project instrument

1 A first approach to the muck-up idea

The model as a tool for transformation and representation of the architectural environment shares its origins with the very conception of the built space. Although Brunelleschi, Alberti or Michelangelo are recognized as the precursors of the idea of the model as a projecting element, The were not the ones who used it for the first time. Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, and even pre-Columbian cultures in Latin America, used scale models as a guide to build their temples, fortresses, graves, palaces and in general the constructions that required some care to configure the space wanted1 (Figure 1). The mock-ups - usually rough clay or wood models - became an element that allowed them to imagine a specific space and use it as the pattern to follow during

Pre-Columbian temple model. Colima, Mexico 200 BC New York Metropolitan Museum.

construction. These first experiences of model building were the trigger of a working method that has accompanied the development of architecture from its most remote origins.

MUÑOZ Cosme, Alfonso. El proyecto de arquitectura: concepto, proceso y representación. Barcelona: Reverté,

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Although at times history of architecture blurs the role of mockups- giving priority to sketches, schemes, and other orthogonal projection systems - these have always been present and have helped both architects and builders to understand how the spaces they design are, and how they could built them. As for the first reference of the word mockup or model, we observe how the term derives from the Italian word macchietta, which serves to express the diminutive of macchia whose meaning is stain or sketch. This term comes from the latin macula and maculare, whose translation is to stain.2 The definition of the word "model", as well as its etymology, denote the intention of forming a system of representation that capable of taking the ideation of the architectural project beyond it’s fundamental values. The model manages - perhaps unintentionally - to leave a mark, an indelible mark on the conception of architecture, with all the implications that this entails. It becomes the way to visualize the idea that the architect has in his head and the most effective method to transmit his intentions to his clients, colleagues, workers or the general public. The mockup have “a certain universal language. Everyone can understand a mockup; That is the beauty of a mockup.”3

ÚBEDA Blanco, Marta. La maqueta como experiencia del espacio arquitectónico. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid\Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Castilla y León, Demarcación Este, D. L, 2002; page 28.

MOON, Karen. Modeling Messages: the architect and the model. New York: The Monacelli Pres, 2005; page 11.

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The Renaissance’s model: the parts, the set, the volume.

The Renaissance represents the turning point in the construction of models: from this period the mock-up was recognized as an indispensable tool in the design and construction stages of the new buildings. The architect was no longer the master of works that designed and built on site, his role had changed. Now, as the creator of architecture form his workshop, his main task was to transmit his ideas as faithfully as possible so that the workers could execute them without major difficulties, which made it essential to understand the design both in its most detailed parts as well as a whole, as the sum of its parts, the set and the volume. Filippo Brunelleschi was the fist one on revel the leading role of

Brunelleschi’s work 2.

Mock up of the Santa María del Fiore Basilica. Filippo Brunelleschi. Detailed mock up of the Santa María del Fiore Basilica. Filippo Brunelleschi.

the scale model on the development of the architectural project. At the beginning of the 15th century, after winning the competition for the construction of the dome for the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore, Brunelleschi commissioned the construction of a wooden model to a carpenter who lived near to

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his workshop, in order to faithfully communicate the spatial and constructive idea he had in mind (Figures 2-3). According to Brunelleschi: The model must rigorously contain the proportions of the dome and all the most difficult details, such as illuminated and dark stairs, different openings for lighting, doors, chains and even a part of the gallery.4 Brunelleschi was not the only one who understood the versatility and efficiency of the model to transmit the idea of the project. León Baptista Alberti and Michelangelo also used model woth this purpose. The first would write on his book De re aedificatoria (1485) on the use of this tool: In making the models, you will be offered an opportunity to beautifully look and consider the site of the region, and the roundness of space, and the number and order of the parts, and the face of the walls, and the firmness of the ceilings, (...) and here you can without repression, add, decrease, move, innovate, and pervert it from every point until all things agree very well and are checked.5

MUÑOZ Cosme, Alfonso. Op. cit., page 32.

Ibíd., page 33.

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4 Michelangelo: the representation mock-up

Michelangelo, on the other hand, would take the model to its maximum expression as a generator and communicator element. Using his skill for art and especially for sculpture, he was given himself the task of building a scale model of the St. Peter's Basilica dome, in order to exhibit the spatial characteristics of his work (figure 4). The mockup, built with wood, recreates both the outer space of the dome and its interior design. The model, then, for Alberti was ... a mechanism of study and realization of an idea. For Brunelleschi and later for Michelangelo, on the contrary, the model was apparently a representation of the idea already formed to serve as a guide for construction workers.6

Dome model of the Saint Pieter’s Basilica, Rome. Michelangelo, Giacomo della Porta, Luigi Vanvitelli.

Although the models of Brunelleschi and Michelangelo himself constitute magnificent examples of representation of the work that the architect had imagined, it seems that they kept frozen in time like sculptures in a museum. The intention of the mock up

MOON, Karen. Op. cit., page 80.

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is, in these cases, exclusively to represent, communicate and visualize the project, since there is no intention in them to become an explicit mechanism for the creation of the work. However, the lessons and knowledge acquired since the Renaissance led, centuries later, other architects to use the models as a method of exploration, where the architect not only creates forms, but is able to find them through experimentation in volume. Antoni Gaudí: Form and technic, inseparable realities

A new look into technic and form exploration The work developed by the Catalan architect is the evidence of an unprecedented change in the way of approaching the project, both in its conception stage and on its development,

Funicular mock up colonia Güell church, Barcelona, Antoni Gaudí, 1898-1908. Inverted funicular mock up.

presentation and construction. G a

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Gudí is one of the first architects to understand and verify that architecture can never be separated from its structural component; on the contrary, they must be developed jointly if an exceptional result is to be achieved. For Gaudí, the final form of the building should be the result of understanding the material he was worked with, and how it behaved when it passed from the idea to the constructed reality. On the basis of these principles, formal and compositional exploration could be taken as far as one would like, without ever separating them from its inexcusable material reality. What does he see through the model?

The models made by Gaudí were based on an inherent condition - but at times forgotten - of the architecture; What is drawn or imagined must be able to be constructed. For example, the models for the church of the Güell colony - a project from which only the crypt was built - (figures 5-6), or for the Sagrada Familia (figure 7) are technical and formal explorations where the architect decided the form while analyzing the loads to which it would be exposed once it was built.

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Its procedure, although handmade, was ingenious and innovative, and tending to the corporeal by producing through a model that reproduces the loads and efforts, the entire tectonic structure of the building. This handmade device composed of loads and efforts is a new gender model that escapes any representation norm; completely different from those we have seen so far made of wood, plaster or other materials. The function it performs is to control the idea of structure, being the guide of the paths and the proportional loads of the resulting catenaries. The result is a plastic organism that forms an aerial structure in static equilibrium.7 The world-famous inverted models of Gaudí sought for a very ingenious task proposed by him. The loads that deformed the The inverted mock up: the funicular to the service of composition innovation

catenary curve of the resting threads resulted in a funicular shape that responded to a purely technical function. By inverting his models, Gaudí achieved that the forces that deformed the suspended structure - pure traction - became a compressive force that could be constructed with the stone materials available. From then on, he used the resulting forms to explore the multiple possibilities to design the interior and exterior space and propose an architecture that started from the discovery - and not the capricious invention - of new forms and spatial relationships, never forgetting the tectonic implication that these would have.

Model of the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Taller Antoni Gaudí, Barcelona, 1936.

Without the calculations and model checks made by Gaudí, it is quite likely that none of his works had been built. The forms achieved in its architecture can not be typecast in any school or stylistic current, they constitute a new type of spatial and sensory

ÚBEDA Blanco, Marta. Op. Cit., page 140.

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experience, a type of architecture that we could classify as the only utopia successfully built, thanks to its author anticipated the terrifying question: and now how can I build it? The prototype as a Modern Movement tool After Gaudí and until the early twenties there are few examples of architects who used models as elements of formal exploration. Mock ups were used mostly to define the ornaments of buildings, and were made by sculptors architects whose main occupation was to mold these details.8 The twentieth century brought the emergence of the Modern Movement in architecture, and with it a new way of exploring and representing the built space. From the Bauhause and its interest in avant-garde artistic movements, the architecture achieved a qualitative leap by being influenced by the movements that arose around it. One of them was th

20 century: a new opportunity for the scale model

Neoplasticism, which emerged as a new way of understanding and composing the space through its parts, allowing the project to be, although a constructed totality, the result of the sum of its components.

MOON, Karen. Op. cit., page 81.

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Neoplasticism in architecture is also the movement that exemplifies in the best way the use of the model as a design method, achieving in the Schröder house, the work of Gerrit Rietveld, its highest point (figure 8).

The polyvalent space of the Schröder house

The house was designed in order to achieve a flexible space

capable of adapting to any need. The space was conceived as a series of elements that were added, subtracted, turned or moved in all directions of space. The result is a multipurpose space organized eccentrically and asymmetrically, but that gives the possibility of creating multiple spatial configurations. This decomposition implies that the project must be seen from different points of view in order to fully

The model develops and presents the project

capture it. In order to do so, it is necessary to turn around them and be able to observe the resulting volumes; hence the need to present them through threedimensional, actionable models.9 The compositional complexity of the project made it necessary to

Perspective scheme Schröder house. Gerrit Rietveld, 1924.

understand the work and its possible transformations. Although the orthogonal representations used recursively - plants, sections, axonometries, perspectives, etc. - illustrated the building in general terms, it was clear that the project needed a

ÚBEDA Blanco, Marta. Op. Cit., page 162.

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more efficient tool, as malleable as the house itself. The model was able to give the house the voice it needed in order to communicate itself, that did not get through the aridity of the planimetry (figures 9, 10 and 11). The volumetric immediacy of the model allowed us to understand the project from all angles and at all levels, becoming a pentagram that plays a melody of planes, colors and movements, masterfully arranged by an 9.

Volumetric mock up Schröder house. 10. General Axonometric Schröder house. 11. Gerrit Thomas Rietveld with the mock up for the Schröder house, 1924.

orchestra conductor who knows when to play each note.

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The volume as response to the hardness of the orthogonal representation

The model also represented for the Modern Movement a a method to erase its simplicity, at times arid of its architecture, so to be assumed as a set, to get the “effects that this new architecture intended to give” - lightness, flexibility, simplicity, functionality, rationality, etc. - (figures 12 and 13). The British Builder magazine, in an article entitled "Models and their making", enunciated for 1942 the role of the model as a mechanism to imagine and present the forcefulness of this new way of approaching architecture: Models are practically necessary in the current architectural process. The expressive forcefulness and

simplicity of contemporary architecture tend to be

12. Le Corbusier and the model for the de la Villa Savoie, 1935. 13. Frank L. Wright and the model for the Guggenheim Museum of de New York, 1947.

disappointingly rigid, almost arid, and in everyday representations of section, floor, they are even more... the drawings are unable to convince the client that is not used to to them, about effects that modern architecture intends to produce.10

MOON, Karen. Op. cit., page 45.

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The physical model of the abstract idea: Utopia between art and architecture From the Modern Movement arrived the new ideas of Deconstructivism and avant-garde utopias, where the main task is not necessarily to build the physical object, but rather to explore the plastic possibilities offered by figurative exploration. Utopia and formal search without barriers have led the discipline along unexplored paths where the architect's dreams come to life no matter how irrational they may seem. The architect also becomes an artist, a sociologist, and sometimes also a psychologist who travels in a sea of futuristic and visionary ideas of an idealized world not so distant. The prototypes are for this period an indispensable mechanism - Why to built it if imagine it it’s enough for me?

and perhaps the only one - to express their ideas, “while the architects seek to express their internal vision by exaggerating the ideas that lie beneath them, and loading the model with meaning, their models seem every time less buildings”11. (figure 14)

14. Model of the Zollhof Cultural Center 3. Zaha Hadid Architects, 198993.

Ibíd., page 100.

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The universe of possibilities presented to the architect allow him to confront the idea - previously stated in the text - that everything he imagine and creates must be able to be constructed. Here, in this utopian world between art and architecture, the author frees himself from all his bonds and gives himself the license to create constructive metaphors, speculations that are intellectual theories of movements, flows, enclosure, openings, space and structure, interior and exterior. ... where the models are physical evidence of their speculations.12 (figure 15)

15. Model of the Yatsushiro Fire Department Station de. Toyo Ito, 1995.

The architect-artist

The range of possibilities also allows the architect to enter into the field of an architecture that tends to become art. An art understood not in the broad sense of the word, which describes the creative potential of its author, but in terms that what is projected looks more like sculptures to be exhibited in a museum than real habitable buildings. Those who project with their eyes

BUSCH, Akiko. The art of the architectural model. New York: Design Press, 1991; page 118.

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set on this new horizon, are aware that what they project tend more to a sculptural exploration of forms than to a functional development as dictated by tradition. Architects, who initially took references from art, become the architects of that same art; they become painters and sculptors who go out in search of purely plastic forms, colors, compositions and innovations, 16. Project mock up Landscape Formation One. Zaha Hadid Architects, 1999. 17. Mock up House of Nine Squares. Arata Isosaki & Associates, 1980. 18. Projeect scheme Turning Torso. Santiago Calatrava, 2005.

which will have little to do with a particular type of function or

program. The mock up and drawing become themselves a work of art, they do not represent the building, perhaps just its idea; are a sculpture, the art of sculpting ideas. (figures 16-18).

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The prototype on the virtual environment We have already overcome those initial reactions of enthusiasm or concern. The question is not now whether digital technology is good or bad for design; instead, it is about the direction that architecture is taking under its influence.13 This last section of the rapid historical review of the model has been reserved for one of the issues that have aroused the most controversy in recent years: not knowing for sure the potential and limitations of technology in continuous development. The virtual environment mock up is the last stage that has Experimentation with forms, design with new criteria Expe

managed to reach the research for new forms and experimental development in architecture. The tools offered by the computer to mold, fold, superimpose and deform surfaces, curves and volumes, in such a seemingly simple and intuitive way, have aroused in architects an excitement to rediscover the plasticity of space, to find new patterns that adapt to geometries that flow like waves or that cover volumes like huge blankets. The innovation, however, are not the new forms that can be molded on the screen, nor the explosion of genius of architects who create new forms - for centuries man has imagined the unthinkable-; What is truly new is the possibility of rigorously define those forms that only the imagination could create before and that not even the hand was able to draw.

PICON, Antoine. Digital culture in architecture : an introduction for the design professions. Basel : Birkhäuser, 2010; page 8.

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The development of digital architecture has unquestionably been benefited from the seduction of forms that were impossible to obtain using the previous design tools. Until the early 1990s, investigations of sophisticated geometries were generally synonymous of the presence of paraboloids or hyperboloids, such as those used in concrete shells or tensile structures, or the soft and continuous shapes defined by plastic molds and pneumatic structures.14 (figures 19 y 20) Architecture has taken a qualitative jump in search of Virtual reality: the universe of the immediate

compositional exploration framed in a virtual reality universe, where everything is possible and where the restrictions are given by the same designer. Now you can experiment without

19. Project visualization Ágora Bogotá. Zaha Hadid Architects, 2011. 20. Project visualization Palazzo dell’edilizia. Daniel Libeskind, 2015.

incurring on any expense, beyond the time spent, where no modification is very large or very small because it can be designed, calculated and visualized in the blink of an eye.

Ibíd., page 62.

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2. Case of studies Los Manantiales Restaurant, Félix Candela, Mexico City, 1958. Félix Candela, a Spanish architect exiled to Mexico, knew how to bring geometry, space and structure to a level of simplicity and elegance that so many had sought without being lucky enough to find. His work, recognized for its simplicity and forcefulness, is key to understand how architecture draws on material experimentation, the search for new systems and the curiosity of an executor who wants to find new ways to project and build. Candela's work did not come out of nowhere, on the contrary, it Candela over giant’s shoulders: Nervi’s work

was the result of several events that allowed him to be in the right time at the right place, having acquired knowledge from several teachers who preceded him and allowed to, as Isaac Newton one said: "see beyond, just because I am standing on giant's shoulders." As the English physicist had Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo; Candela had Gaudí, Maillart and Nervi from whom he inherited the art of merging space with structure. Pier Luigi Nervi (figures 21 and 22), was perhaps the engineer - architect with the greatest influence in Candela, a person he would once say: «For me, [the] secret lies simply in its beauty, a beauty capable of being appreciated and understood, not only by professionals but also by the people of the common »15. The beauty of which Candela speaks is Nervi's response to a requirement of his time: to ensure that the functional requirement is closely linked to the structural requirement. Nervi manages to turn structural design into art; His works manage to take architecture to a stage where formal

MOREYRA Garlock, Maria E. Félix Candela: engineer, builder, structural artist. Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008; page 36.

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development is accompanied from the beginning with structural development. His works cannot hide their structure, since it is only one with space; it is not worth hiding it, on the contrary, it is necessary to demonstrate its power to configure the architecture as a single body. Candela would see in Nervi the precursor of a design idea that harmoniously integrated the challenges that architects face on their daily work, with an additional reward: they optimized processes and reduced costs.

21. Il Palazzo delle Esposizioni. Pier Luigi Nervi, 1948. 22. Palazzetto Dello Sport. Pier Luigi Nervi, 1957.

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One step closer to Nervi, to the conquest of slenderness

Candela added Nervi's knowledge and the growing evolution of reinforced concrete to carry out his own research, focused on the development of concrete shells - a step beyond Nervi's ribs - with an eagerness to conquer a technique that he was barely in his embryonic stage, purely experimental; a challenge that Candela was willing to take, embarking on an adventure for the conquest of slenderness. The shells seemed to me a very interesting challenge and I dreamed of the possibility of building some in the future. But my lack of experience and youthful faith in the impressive wisdom displayed in technical journals made me believe that the key to shell building resided on complicated mathematical calculations, which I tried - without much success - to understand and master. (...) But my enthusiasm for the mathematical solutions of the problem was such that I managed to get a scholarship to move to Germany, hoping to learn something more from the wise teachers who taught there. The beginning of the Spanish Civil War saved me from such an experience, providing me, on the other hand, much more valuable from the human point of view.16

16 CASSINELLO, Pepa. “Félix Candela (1910-2010) la conquista de la Esbeltez”, 23rd of february to 18th de april,

2010. Madrid, 2010. URL:http://www.madrid.es/UnidadWeb/Contenidos/EspecialInformativo/TemaCulturaYOcio/CultuCu/C entros/CondeDuque/Actividades/CANDELA.Guia.pdf.

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Mexico, a series on fortuned events

His arrival to Mexico would mark a milestone in Candelas’s history. It is there where he would find the right context to develop his work, his experiments and his discoveries. The cheap workforce, a benign climate and the enthusiasm for venturing into the unknown gave him the opportunity to found in 1949 - together with his brothers Antonio and Julia, and with architects Fernando and Raúl Fernández Rangel - the company “Ala Covers”, a laboratory where he was able to experiment with

The real scale model

geometries never tested before, and to maximize a material that he found naturally plastic. From the beginning, the fundamental basis of his adventure was the direct experimentation with the material because he considered that “the simplest and most immediate (…) was to build models on a natural scale, just as the masters of medieval

23. First experimental funicular vault. Félix Candela, Mexico City, 1949. 24. Umbrella. Félix Candela, Mexico City, 1953.

era did, following this same path of learning.17 In that way, he began the construction of what we could consider real scale models (figures 23 and 24), plastic and tectonic experiments that based on the study of the geometry and laws of nature, were able to shape spaces with an elegance and simplicity that would surely stun Nervi or Gaudí himself.

Ibíd., page 10.

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Los Manantiale Restaurant: the conquer of slenderness

Candela's experimental work reached its peak with the construction of the Los Manantiales restaurant in 1958 at Mexico City. After the destruction of an old wooden restaurant due to a fire, the possibility of experimenting with a new geometry came to Ala Covers. This would be the first time Candela would experiment with free-edge hyperbolic paraboloids. He had tried it for the Mexican Stock Exchange project, but the asymmetry of the charges forced him to reinforce the edges, that given the proportions of the project represented a formal and constructive challenge the architect faced for the first time. Candela knew that the hyperbolic paraboloid was stable due to its own geometry, since the double curvature of its surface made the efforts transmitted almost exclusively to compression, which indicated that it could be constructed with a thin sheet of concrete, barely 4cm thick18. The project is on itself space and structure, principles that start from a simple, elegant and

25. Hyperbolic paraboloids ground encounter. Los Manantiales restaurant, 1958. 26. Los Manantiales restaurant. Félix Candela, Ciudad de México, 1958.

efficient geometry, whose curves move continuously through space, joining each of the 8 petals a flower that softly perches on the ground (Figure 25 and 26).

25 18 CUETO Ruiz-Funes, Juan Ignacio del. Guía Candela. México, D.F.: Arquine, 2013.

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The geometry never built before presented some constructive challenges that were solved with the same simplicity with which the project had been plated. The hyperbolic paraboloid, despite being a curved geometry, presents by its very nature a ruled surface that can be resolved following its guidelines and generatrices (figure 27; guideline in red, generatrix in blue)- In practice, that condition would result in the preparation of relatively simple formwork based on straight wooden boards, so to pour the concrete and obtain the complete geometry in a single attempt (figure 28).

Los Manantiales immediately became a world-famous reference Hyperbolic paraboloid, an integral solution

when it managed to solve a complete architectural program within a single geometry, with a single structure and with a single material, used until its latest technical and plastic possibilities. The 43.5 m diameter concrete shell, a span between supports of more than 12 m and built with a 4 cm layer of

27. Guidelines and generatrixes on a Hyperbolic paraboloid 28. Framing of Los Manantiales Restaurant. Félix Candela, Mexico City, 1958.

concrete poured at the same time over the entire structure, make it a landmark capable of reconcile architecture and engineering. Starting from functionality, efficiency, and constructive facilities, it became a resounding aesthetic solution for the coming projects; solution that lies in the beauty and smoothness of the Sebastián Arturo García Núñez, The instrumental model · Page 30 of 50

curves, the expression of lightness of its thin sheets and in the understanding of a geometry that creates a new way of living space (figure 29). All this crystallized by an architect who - although always denied an aesthetic desire on his works - managed to compose a spatial experience by giving a different discourse to an essentially plastic material that had been condemned to an orthogonal nature. The adventure towards the 29. Los Manantiales restaurant interior, Mexico City, 1958. 30. Framing of Los Manantiales restaurant. Félix Candela, Mexico City, 1958. 31. Cast in place concrete, Los Manatiales restaurant, 1958.

conquest of slenderness had found in Candela its most intrepid adventurer, who had no excuses on experiencing at full-scale, taking the risk of catastrophically fail or discover the poetic language of the form as a whole.

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Roofing for the Munich Olympic Stadium. Frei Otto, Munich, 1972. Frei Otto also became a reference in the exploration of geometries and structures whose performance was given by the efficiency that lay on them. The creative process of the German architect, like that of Candela, did not seek the imposition of forms given the capricious criteria; On the contrary, he proposed a system where the form was presented after studies and experiments. Institute of Lightweight Structures: the engine of experimentation

Since the assumption in 1964 of the direction of the Institute of Light Structures (Institut für Leichte Flachentragwerke-IL) based in Stuttgart, Frei Otto began a prolific investigation into the "minimum forms" found after experimentation with various materials, whose behavior involved the creation of stable geometries that required a minimal effort to be achieved. The first exercises performed included models of soap films that started from a wire frame submerged in the liquid in order to create a thin film (figure 32). The resulting membrane has specific geometric and physical properties. The forces acting between the individual membrane molecules always cause the soap sheet to assume a way in which the surface tensions are equal in all points and in all directions [are in balance].19 Making these scale models (figure 33) - which also included mock ups with gauze, textiles, chains, cables and springs, among others— Frei Otto would understand that the formal and compositional consolidation of buildings must be subject to the understanding of the laws of nature that act upon them. The

OTTO, Frei. Frei Otto: complete works, lightweight construction, natural design. Nerdinger, Winfried (edition). Basel: Birkhäuser, 2005; page 19.

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folds, deformations and tensions that the architect found in those experiments constitute the form of a minimal structure, which naturally acquires its form because the maximum principle of efficiency is immersed on it. It adopts its form because it cannot - or should not - be otherwise. The effectiveness of the experiment is that nature itself shapes the 32. Soap film membranes testing. Institute of Lightweight Structures. 33. Double curvature textile surfaces mock up Institute of Lightweight Structures.

building; indispensable actor that cannot be emulated by any other means. In the words of the architect: If this process is carried out by computer and this criteria is eliminated, we then obtein surfaces with different tensions, surfaces with bending moments,

shear forces, etc.20

Otto, Frei. Frei Otto: conversación con Juan María Songel. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2008; page 40.

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Frei Otto set himself the task of studying and numerically evaluating the stability of the shapes themselves, regardless of the material with which they were constructed (...). In general, the form has a greater influence than the material. Structural optimization processes are generally form optimizations.21 The discovery process based on models, trial and error Munich: the peak on the experimental discovery of form

prototypes, provided Frei Otto with extraordinary knowledge to

should have, so that they were the result of the systematic study

project, or better, find the optimal form that their buildings of the geometry and not just casuality. For him, the most stable building is the one that does not exist or the one that has collapsed, because in a certain way each building has a degree of instability in it, and it is the architect's job to determine the degree with which it will be built, what are its limits and what is its behavior.22 The roof for the Munich Olympic Stadium represented for the architect the greatest challenge of his career and also the opportunity to test the discovery processes on a scale that he had never faced before. The competition for the design and construction of the roofing for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, selected as a winner the proposal of the architects Behnish & Partner, in company of Jürgen Joedicke and the Swiss shell builder Heinz Isler, who inspired by the German Pavilion for the Montreal Universal exhibition in 1967, designed a lightweight roof with tensed cables (figure 34). Given the dimensions and constructive challenges of the work, the architects called - following the jury's

OTTO, Frei. Frei Otto: complete works, lightweight construction. Op. cit., page 72.

Otto, Frei. Frei Otto: conversación con Juan María Songel. Op. cit., page 85.

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recommendation - several international experts, including Frei Otto and Fritz Leonhardt to ensure that the project could be built. (figure 35).

34. Winner project mock up, Behnish & Partner. 35. Fritz Leonhardt meeting with architects and engineers involved in the project. From left to right: Leonhardt, Knut Gabriel, Rudolf Bergerman, Jörg Schlaich, Frei Otto, Fritz Auer y Heinz Isler.

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The project to cover the Olympic venues presented immense structural challenges, because at first neither the architects nor the engineers knew what the ideal geometry should be, and did not know how they could calculate it. Frei Otto in collaboration with the Institute of Lightweight Structures developed scale models of the project with a sensitivity such that the necessary measurements could be taken on site to make the calculations and use them to generated forms - a mesh of hyperbolic paraboloids - to build the roof. (figure 36) The most precise model

The 1:10 scale models accurately reproduced the loads and tensions that would support the membrane cables. The models reduced to scale all the elements of the project, including the anchors and posts to emulate the structure that would be built with as much reliability as possible. With the prototype, Frei Otto achieved: geometric similarity - recreating all the elements with the appropriate dimension—, similarity in the elastic-plastic range of the real elements — the characteristics of the materials are equivalent to their real-scale counterparts — and a behavior against deformations that could be quantified.23 (figure 37)

36. Formal verification mock up. Double curvature structure —Hyperbolic paraboloid— suspended 23

OTTO, Frei. Frei Otto: complete works, lightweight construction. Op. cit.

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The measurements made depended on a long exposure photogrammetry system developed by the Klaus Linkwitz Institute, which accurately recorded each of the deformations suffered by the structural mesh (figure 38).

37. Model for deformation measurements. Institute of Lightweight Structures 38. Long exposure photogrammetry. Institute of Lightweight Structures

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From the model to the reality

Based on the calculations and the forms obtained in the model, the working group was able to define the 34,000 m² roof for the stadium and for the other venues of the Olympic program, making what seemed a structural and formal madness, a milestone in engineering and architecture (figure 39). In the case of Munich we measure the actual efforts on each cable; it is probably the first building in which we really knew what was going on inside. We also knew the dangers that could arise from overloads and what happened in the structure when we overloaded it.24 The work manages to merge the detailed study of the behavior of forces with an understanding of natural geometric development on a minimal surface. Frei Otto gets nature to define the geometry of the project; becoming himself an intermediary that based on experimentation recreates the optimal form for his

39. Parallel, scale model and project built.

architecture. It is there where lies the beauty of his legacy, a perfect communion between technique, spatial composition and nature.

Otto, Frei. Frei Otto: conversación con Juan María Songel. Op. cit., page 52.

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Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, Frank O. Gehry, Bilbao, 1997 Frank Gehry, the ingenious and controversial Californian architect, is the creator of the most stirring projects in the world of architecture in recent years. The multiplicity of forms that at times are understood, as formal whims constitute an unmistakable mark of a new type of architecture, immersed between art and spectacle. The curved titanium planes that characterize Gehry's work reconfigure what we understand as spatial plasticity, taking the possibilities of matter to the extreme and pushing the limits of space, technique and function towards new horizons that border on utopia. The making

Frank Gehry - as we have seen in the two previous case studies - also has a masterpiece that gave voice to his formal and technical explorations. In this case, it is the Museum for the Salomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in Bilbao that would grant him worldwide attention. The project for the new museum began as a private contest in which three architects (one American, one European, and one Asian) were invited to present their proposals. The architects would be selected by Thomas Krens, director of the Salomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, who opted for Arata Isosaki as the Asian representative; Frank Owen Gehry as an American and the Austrian team Wolf D. Prix and Helmut Swiczinky (Coop Himmelblau), as European representatives. The organization was looking for “a global vision of the project” where each architect was free to deliver the proposals using the means they considered necessary so that the influence of the new building on the site and its relationship with the immediate environment became evident, as well as its value as an iconic

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object in the middle of Bilbao’s urban context. The jury chose Gehry's proposal as winner, considering that the building had the potential to become a true milestone for the foundation.25 The making process of the project begins for Gehry with sketches of intentions that seek to shape the building “in terms of what The first sketches

will be its real presence from the first moment”26. I just move the pen. I think about what I do, but I don't notice my hands. A parallel can be made with automatic writing, as Barthes defined it: "entrusting to the hand the task of writing as quickly as possible what the head is not aware of".27 (figures 40 y 41)

40. Elevation schemes Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum 41. Sketches of intentions. Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum

B R U G G E N , C o o s j e v a n . Frank O. Gehry: Guggenheim Museum. Nueva York: Publicaciones del Museo Guggenheim, 1998; 211 pages. Versión Española: Frank O. Gehr: Museo Guggenheim Bilbao. Bilbao: Departamento de Publicaciones, Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, 1998.

26 27

ÚBEDA Blanco, Marta. Op. Cit., page 270.

B R U G G E N , C o o s j e v a n . Op. cit., page 40.

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Intention mock up

From the automatic sketches, the project passed almost immediately to the model, where the architect, together with his team, reinterprets the formal intentions of the drawings and transforms them into constantly altered plastic relationships in the model (figure 42). The model allows Gehry to understand the project as a sculpture and see himself as an artist who sculpts a work of art. The model allows him to see the project as a whole, whose forms can control as he loads of meaning the form of the building. The folds, undulations and turns of the sheets of paper and cardboard become the ones in charge of defining the monumental presence of the work - its scale within the context - and of configuring the spaces that will house the function of the

42. First mock up project transformation 43. Mock up presented for the contest. Scale and sculptural presence verification

building. The sheets that open like petals of a flower are nourished by the sketches that the architect generates at each stage of the project, oscillating between ink lines and pieces of material. (Figure 43)

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I make familiar lines that evolve until becoming the

Between the mock up and the sketch: two parallel paths

building that I have tendency to draw ... Sometimes I say to myself "wow, here it is, it is coming". I understand, I am full of excitement and from there I move to the models, and the models absorb all the energy and need information about the scale and the relationships that cannot be fully conceived in the drawings. The drawings are ephemeral. The models are specific; Then they become something similar to sketches in the next phase.28 (figure 44)

The mock up is essentially what defines the project as a whole, being Gehry the first person to recognize that sometimes this 44. Mock up evolution. Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum

tool can be counterproductive, since it takes the exercise of composition to a field of artistic complacency where the functionality blurs and the building becomes a sculpture. Gehry, however, constantly abstracts himself - according to him - from his artistic work to see the space at eye level and imagine what the finished space will be like, what would be like to be there.29

ÚBEDA Blanco, Marta. Op. Cit., page 270.

B R U G G E N , C o o s j e v a n . Op. cit., page 104.

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Gehry's workshop gradually becomes a scenario of experimentation that at times manages to recreate a war field with pieces of wood and curved paper scattered on the tables. An Complexity or whim?

organized disorder - as was the case with Denys Lasdum - where the team finds creative elements in a workshop full of shapes and ideas (figures 45 and 46). The work of the Californian architect is highly plastic; The essence of his works lies in an unquestionable monumental presence that, however, leaves questions about how it can be built or if the building meets the minimum functional requirements. Without CATIA - a software developed for the French aerospace industry - the museum would have remained in mere intentions of wood and cardboard, as had happened to the Walt Disney Concert Hall years before. The effort involved in defining the amalgam of curved titanium, in addition to the costs and execution time, obscure at times the achievement of a dream architecture, which separates the plastic aesthetic from the function and technique. Is it then an ominous work that implies an excessive effort if it does not reconcile inside itself the considerations of geometry, aesthetics and technique that others such as Candela and Frei Otto have achieved? At what point does innovation become a formal whim? The answers to this question

Images on the opposite page: 45. Denys Lasdum’s studio / workshop 46. Frank Gehry’s workshop with working mock ups. 47. Final mock up Guggenheim Bilbao Museum, Frank Gehry. 48. Project built Bilbao, Spain.

has been open to discussion since Gehry put them on the map, forcing the limits of experimentation to the fullest, getting it right when composing new spatial relationships but making mistakes when moving to the field of the capricious sculptor who forgets that architecture is also linked to technique and function, and cannot be restricted solely to the aesthetic satisfaction of seductive forms (figures 47 and 48).

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Conclusion The model and experimentation have proven to be the engines that drive new ways of understanding architecture in all its dimensions, from a formal, technical and compositional point of view. Experimenting with shapes, geometries and materials has given architects the opportunity to transgress the limits of what was considered impossible to achieve and that at times stopped the creative process for the fear of failure. The eagerness to discover new horizons caused a few to risk going out in search of fascinating adventures: some after the conquest of slenderness, others towards the minimal interpreted forms of the natural world and others after the exploration of the spectacular form that integrates art and sculpture. All of them have found admirers and detractors who praise or refute the achievements, which, however, for better or worse, have managed to transform architecture forever. The exploration in search of new methods and answers is catalyzed by means of experimental models that may well be scaled reproductions of the real element or objects that are themselves experimental architecture, which get the luck of remaining as witness of a legacy. There are many ways to approach a problem and many ways to discover new architectural solutions, which can only come to success when exploration does not become a whim or imposition. Experimenting always requires a degree of uncertainty where it is not necessarily known what the final result will be, whether it is a success or a resounding failure. The model - and the architecture itself - reach its highest point when they become means and not ends of new techniques and formal relationships, when they are given the freedom to be by

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themselves following just a few guidelines that the architect has stated since the beginning. The architect should not become an authority that imposes the rules at will, should rather become an interpreter who discovers what form, material, technique and nature hide. There lies the infinite wealth of experimentation, the method to push architecture towards new frontiers. The best mock up, as well as the most successful experiment, is the one in which the architect has managed to link form, technique and aesthetics into a single object. If any of those fails, or is explored individually, the result will not be an integral work, but a sum of parts. Getting such a feat is a goal that very few achieve, but when they do, we can almost hear in unison a voice that shouts "this is architecture!"

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Bibliography: B R U G G E N , C O O S J E V A N . Frank O. Gehry: Guggenheim Museum. Nueva York: Publicaciones del Museo Guggenheim, 1998; 211 pages. Versión Española: Frank O. Gehr: Museo Guggenheim Bilbao. Bilbao: Departamento de Publicaciones, Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, 1998; 211 pages. Localization BETSAM 72GEH BRU FRA (ESP) BUSCH, Akiko. The art of the architectural model. New York: Design Press, 1991; 128 pages. Localization BETSAM: 72.026 BUS ART CANDELA, Félix. Félix Candela. México D.F.: Facultad de Arquitectura de la UNAM, 2011; 79 pages. Localization BETSAM 72CAN CAN FEL CASSINELLO, Pepa. “Félix Candela (1910-2010) la conquista de la Esbeltez”, 23rd of february to 18th of april de 2010. Madrid, 2010. URL:http://www.madrid.es/UnidadWeb/Contenidos/EspecialInformativo/TemaCultura YOcio/CultuCu/Centros/CondeDuque/Actividades/CANDELA.Guia.pdf. Consulted on april the 25th of 2016 CUETO Ruiz-Funes, Juan Ignacio del. Guía Candela. México, D.F.: Arquine, 2013; 189 pages. Localization BETSAM 72CAN CUE GUI GEHRY, Frank O. Gehry draws. Violette, Rappolt; Violette, Robert (edition). Londres: Violette Editions, 2004; 544 pages. Localization BETSAM: 72GEH BRE GEH HOLGATE, Alan. The art of structural engineering: the work of Jörg Schlaich and his team. Stuttgart: Axel Menges, 1997; 294 pages. Localization BETSAM: 62 SCH HOL MEISSNER, Irene. Frei Otto: forschen, bauen, inspirieren = a life of research, construcion and inspiration. Múnich: Detail - Institut für internationale Architektur-Dokumentation, 2015; 127 pages. Localization BETSAM: 72OTT MEI FRE MOON, Karen. Modeling Messages: the architect and the model. New York: The Monacelli Pres, 2005; 176 pages. Localization BETSAM: 72.026 MOO MOD MOREYRA Garlock, Maria E. Félix Candela: engineer, builder, structural artist. Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008; 207 pages. Localization BETSAM 72CAN MOR FEL. MUÑOZ Cosme, Alfonso. El proyecto de arquitectura: concepto, proceso y representación. Barcelona: Reverté, 2016; 274 pages. Localization BETSAM: 721.011 MUÑ PRO OTTO, Frei. Frei Otto: complete works, lightweight construction, natural design. Nerdinger, Winfried (edition). Basel: Birkhäuser, 2005; 391 pages. Localization BETSAM: 72OTT NER FRE — Frei Otto: conversación con Juan María Songel. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2008; 96 pages. Localization BETSAM: 72OTT SON FRE PICON, Antoine. Digital culture in architecture: an introduction for the design professions. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2010; 223 pages. Localization BETSAM: 004:72 PIC DIG ÚBEDA Blanco, Marta. La maqueta como experiencia del espacio arquitectónico. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid\Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Castilla y León, Demarcación Este, D. L, 2002; 354 pages. Localization BETSAM: 72.026 UBE MAQ

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Illustrations source: Figure on the cover: Bruggen, Coosje van. Frank O. Gehry: Guggenheim Museum. Nueva York: Publicaciones del Museo Guggenheim, 1998; 211 pages. Versión Española: Frank O. Gehr: Museo Guggenheim Bilbao. Bilbao: Departamento de Publicaciones, Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, 1998; 211 pages. Localization BETSAM 72GEH BRU FRA (ESP) Figure 1: http://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/2015/modeling-the-worldancient-architectural-models Figures 2, 3 y 4: Muñoz Cosme, Alfonso. El proyecto de arquitectura: concepto, proceso y representación. Barcelona: Reverté, 2016; 274 pages. Localization BETSAM: 721.011 MUÑ PRO Figures 5 y 6: http://tectonicablog.com/?p=57736 Figures 7, 9, 11: Úbeda Blanco, Marta. La maqueta como experiencia del espacio arquitectónico. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid\Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Castilla y León, Demarcación Este, D. L, 2002; 354 pages. Localization BETSAM: 72.026 UBE MAQ Figure 8: https://es.pinterest.com/pin/9851692905462135/ Figure 10: https://es.pinterest.com/pin/51228514484561302/ Figures 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 y 17: Moon, Karen. Modeling Messages: the architect and the model. New York: The Monacelli Pres, 2005; 176 pages. Localization BETSAM: 72.026 MOO MOD Figure 18: http://abduzeedo.com/architect-day-santiago-calatrava Figure 19: http://www.a57.org/articulos/actualidad/Zaha-Hadid-Architects-y-JMPFArquitectos-Concurso-CICB Figure 20: http://libeskind.com/work/palazzo-delledilizia-of-alessandria/ Figure 21: http://www.domusweb.it/it/dall-archivio/2011/04/28/il-palazzo-delleesposizioni.html Figure 22: https://es.pinterest.com/pin/297659856595964812/ Figures 23, 25, 28, 30 y 31: Moreyra Garlock, Maria E. Félix Candela: engineer, builder, structural artist. Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008; 207 pages. Localization BETSAM 72CAN MOR FEL. Figure 24: https://icaronycteris.tumblr.com/page/149 Figures 26 y 29: http://fresharquitectos.blogspot.com.es/2012/12/restaurante-losmanantiales-mexico-df.html Figure 27: own edition from: http://garciasoriano.es/blog/2013/05/ Figure 32: http://lightismore.tumblr.com/ Figures 33, 34, 35, 36, 38: Otto, Frei. Frei Otto: complete works, lightweight construction, natural design. Nerdinger, Winfried (edition). Basel: Birkhäuser, 2005; 391 pages. Localization BETSAM: 72OTT NER FRE

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Figure 37: Holgate, Alan. The art of structural engineering: the work of Jörg Schlaich and his team. Stuttgart: Axel Menges, 1997; 294 pages. Localization BETSAM: 62 SCH HOL Figure 39: own edition from: Holgate, Alan. The art of structural engineering: the work of Jörg Schlaich and his team y http://www.viajesfutboleros.com/fotogaleria-estadioolimpico-de-munich/ Figures 40, 41 y 47: Gehry, Frank O. Gehry draws. Violette, Rappolt; Violette, Robert (edition). Londres: Violette Editions, 2004; 544 pages. Localization BETSAM: 72GEH BRE GEH Figures 42, 43, 44 y 46: Bruggen, Coosje van. Frank O. Gehry: Guggenheim Museum. Nueva York: Publicaciones del Museo Guggenheim, 1998; 211 pages. Versión Española: Frank O. Gehr: Museo Guggenheim Bilbao. Bilbao: Departamento de Publicaciones, Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, 1998; 211 pages. Localization BETSAM 72GEH BRU FRA (ESP) Figure 45: https://es.pinterest.com/pin/301178293809991050/ Figure 48: http://www.e-architect.co.uk/bilbao/guggenheim-museum-bilbao

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