[C:OOL] POV→ An embarrassment of riches. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) at the Whitney; Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) at the National Building Museum; and, perhaps most importantly, a Cast of Hundreds at the Museum of Modern Art.
Starting With the Universe, Whitney Museum of Art, New York City, through September 21, 2008
Credit: Digital animation by Michelle Chang with Helen Han and Temple Simpson.
“The animation demonstrates how this simple geometric shape can be transformed to create several complex polyhedra. Next, it produces a different version of a vector equilibrium that Fuller called tensegrity—short for a stable structure of tensional integrity. In the last part of the animation, a map of the entire globe is transferred onto the vector equilibrium, which unfolds to produce a flat map of the earth made from six squares and eight triangles. Unlike conventional world maps, Fuller’s vector equilibrium map represents the world with minimal distortions to the relative size of the continents.”
READ♥Buckminster Fuller’s Dreams of Spanning Great Distances Are Being Realized in Big Projects. [C:OOL Page]
Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, the National Building Museum, Washington, D.C., through August 23, 2008
Credit: Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future (2006, 16 minutes) a documentary from KDN Films, which can be seen in its entirety at the National Building Museum
READ♥Eero Saarinen has his own site. [Web]
Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, through October 20, 2008
[C:OOL] POV→ Eight years into the 21st century, a telescopic look at building innovation in the 20th has finally emerged. Bucky holds court at the Whitney, but he performs in the chorus at MoMA. Quirky [Archigram, Fuller]; ahead-of-its-time [Breuer, Eames, and Fuller again]; buildable, but unattractive, [Hecker]; and downright nutty [Edison, Jantzen], every effort with any credibility is displayed on the sixth floor.
The exhibition is primarily about the experiments of the last century, but it also includes the fantastical models and chimeric fetishes of several contemporary architects. (The computer is the medium, not the message! Lest we forget.)
In a vacant lot adjacent to the museum lies the sane, economical, sustainable, and architecturally palatable future of residential design. There are five structures, none of which is merely a lifesize mock-up or a fullsize model. They are all “proof of life.”
Cellophane House provides the most proof. Philadelphia-based KieranTimberlake Architects‘ four-story, 1,800 square footprototype is a real house. Connect the plumbing and move in.
Cellophane House
View time-lapse video of the installation.
A myriad of seamless sustainable strategies are remarkably integrated, inconspicuous, and unselfconscious. The entire structure is modeled using building information modeling (BIM), a digital visualization tool that automatically and simultaneously tracks needed materials based on a set of required tolerances, a process also known as parametric modeling. The house is fabricated off site and its numerous components, both volumes and individual pieces, are hauled to the site by truck.
SmartWrap at the Cooper Hewitt (2003)
Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake have been investigating prefabrication, unitized construction, and technology transfer for at least a decade. For instance, the “cellophane” in the Cellophane House is actually a product called NextGen SmartWrap™—a composite material made of innovative products, rolled and printed onto fabrics and plastic films, and embedded with OLED technology. KTA developed SmartWrap™ in 2003 “to create a building envelope that can generate energy, control climate, and provide lighting and information display on a single printed substrate.” For the inaugural Solos exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smartwrap™ was installed on a metal structure (above) in Cooper-Hewitt’s Arthur Ross Garden.
READ♥SmartWrap: Building Envelope of the Future [C:OOL page]
READ♥KieranTimberlake: Alternative Construction Processes [C:OOL page]
