Open Form Architecture Blog

Vi­deo by Brooklyn Di­gi­tal Foundry

Here again, we ea­sily dis­tin­guish REX’s ope­ra­tion to comb, con­so­li­date, and iden­tify a set of pro­gram­ma­tic clus­ters de­sig­ned with dif­fe­rent pur­po­ses: a 5,000 m² con­tem­po­rary art cen­tre; 3,400 m² of stu­dios, glass shop, and ga­llery for the Uni­ver­sity of Louisville’s Mas­ter of Fine Arts pro­gram; a 250-room Wes­tin Ho­tel; 98 lu­xury con­do­mi­niums; 117 lofts; 25,000 m² of of­fice space on 13 floors; 1,860 m² of res­tau­rants and shops; un­der­ground par­king ga­rage for 800 cars.

The fi­nal re­sult is a 214-meter-tall, 62-story skysc­ra­per, dis­pla­ying another dis­tinc­tive and ico­nic fi­gure which par­ti­ci­pa­tes in what Koolhaas desc­ri­bes as: “an archi­pe­lago of ci­ties in the city”. One might see a co­llec­tion of tra­di­tio­nal skysc­ra­pers pla­ced on top of each other above a tra­di­tio­nal ur­ban pat­tern, but in rea­lity, even if the Mu­seum Plaza doesn’t re­vise the su­per­po­si­tion of floors in the ty­pi­cal Ame­ri­can high-rise –in the same way as the Seattle Li­brary– this pro­ject is a beau­ti­ful and in­ven­tive va­ria­tion on the clas­sic skysc­ra­per; a new vi­sion of skysc­ra­per. The Mu­seum Plaza will doubt­less re­de­fine the Loui­siana sky­line and cer­tainly change the way archi­tects, ur­ba­nists, and en­gi­neers shall think about tomorrow’s new high-rises and the pro­cess of urbanization.

Thom Mayne, archi­tect, and 2005 Pritz­ker Prize lau­reate, in in­ter­view with Char­lie Rose

What if a buil­ding could shape itself de­pen­ding on the con­text where it is built!
This sta­te­ment might be hard to un­ders­tand in a phy­si­cal world, but let’s as­sume, for ins­tance, that it is a theo­re­ti­cal pro­blem. In fact, a buil­ding al­ways has to res­pond to cer­tain cons­traints due to the con­text whe­rein it is insc­ribe. In­deed, streets, su­rroun­ding buil­dings, mu­ni­ci­pa­li­ties’ ru­les and co­des, to­po­graphy, the pro­gram of the buil­ding (its use), etc. are the tip of the ice­berg of what an archi­tect has to deal with when he is de­sig­ning a building.

Con­ti­nue rea­ding ‘Trac­ta­ble Shape I’

Please click here for PDF

Click here for PDF

In 2006, I par­ti­ci­pa­ted at the NKS Sum­mer School, which was a de­fi­ning ex­pe­rience. The to­pic of my re­search was THE SPACE BETWEEN THE CELLULAR AUTOMATA: Re­wor­king the Spa­tial Di­vi­sion in Archi­tec­ture. Du­ring the last year, I con­ti­nued to ex­plore this idea and used it in va­rious in­ter­na­tio­nal archi­tec­tu­ral com­pe­ti­tions en­tries, such as the Plan-Less House (Ja­pan) and The Stockholm Li­brary (Sweden).This sum­mer, I will par­ti­ci­pate for a se­cond time to the NKS Sum­mer School at the Uni­ver­sity of Ver­mont, Bur­ling­ton, Vt. Du­ring this year’s pro­gram I will ad­vance my re­search by ex­plo­ring Net­work Struc­tu­res in architecture.

As Ste­ven Wol­fram ar­gues, “Space is a giant net­work of no­des” we see that, as op­po­sed to the me­tro­po­li­ses of the twen­tieth cen­tury, con­tem­po­rary so­ciety pro­du­ces Net­works of Ci­ties. These ci­ties work si­mul­ta­neously on their in­ter­nal re­no­va­tion, inc­rea­sing their ef­fi­ciency from within, while they or­ga­nize them­sel­ves te­rri­to­rially in the form of a NETWORK OF CITIES.
Con­ti­nue rea­ding ‘Net­work Struc­tu­res in Architecture’