Scultpture in Architecture - Article Example

Harris Kamran Architecture 9 December 2007 Sculpture in Architecture Lars Spuybroek, thefounder of NOX Architecture, has brought the field of architecture on new outstanding levels with the extensive usage of computers and electronics in designing and building. He has pioneered and advocated the application of new media in this field, and with it has come a new age in architecture. Spuybroek claims to be an architect who designs and constructs his fantasies, however, his designing techniques would not have been possible before the advancement in electronics and the invention of the computers. New materials, radical construction techniques, innovative and original ideas, whilst all the while pushing the envelope further has resulted in making NOX architecture stand out among the contemporary but traditional architectural techniques. NOX explores the relationship between architecture and computers, making use of digital modeling, powerful large-scale processing and computer-aided modeling. All these techniques constitutes the framework of NOX designs and brings to fruition their construction and spatial ideologies. To make possible the use of electronic media, a facility known as V2_Lab has been developed. This forms the new medium in which the NOX engineers work to design the minute specifications of their buildings. V2_Engine, a program to assist the designers in their work, was developed by a collective effort of NOX architects Joan Almekinders and Pieter Heyman, completely on computer using animation software. This has transformed architecture and has made it into a non-linear form, as opposed to the former linear construction, and has made it time dependant. In fact, the V2_Lab was renovated using this program. The critical issue here was the incorporation of the program into the design philosophy, and to make use of computer-generated designs into externalized, solid structures. For this, a technique, in which substances known as "springs", was used to change the diagram from a static picture on the board to a form process which operates on the coordination and interference of thousands of forces, whose vector forces can not be predicted, making motion and time a part of the organizational design for any pertinent building. The basic concept behind this strategy was to introduce motion into any construction medium/material. Inside the material, forces and events propagate in waves throughout its topological continuity. However, when external forces are applied on this material, they are not catered by these waves on the principal that subsequent lines intermitted by dots do not pass on forces as the dots pose as a hindrance to these forces, rather than joining the lines and allowing waves to pass on. To overcome this problem, substances called springs, which can be viewed as non-static dots capable of moving to and fro between the lines and, hence, passing on the forces, were introduced into the material. These springs in turn were linked together by lines called strings which then have to be directed towards the four extreme corners of the building to be constructed so that the forces travelling through the construction material are passed out to the extremes. These forces will then be reflected by the four corners along the same strings, where they will interact with new forces traveling outward toward the corners, and hence, each will interfere, and as these resultant or vector forces would be further interacting with other forces either toward or from the corners, or from within the material, the net result would be a non-prediction of all these forces, creating motion in the medium (V2_Lab 2004). This groundbreaking technology next extends to incorporating all sorts of movement taking place outside of the medium, such as the inflections of the supporting structures like plywood, the vibration in the furniture in the building, like tables and chairs, the movements known as undulations in the floor, tensions in springy material, and even movement between different media like vibrations passing between floor and furniture, to the extent that even tensions and flexion in the human body itself, which would be of the inhabitants of the building, are involved in the scheme, too, based on the concept of the NOX technicians that these very vibrations constitute the human behavior that would be in turn determining the state of affairs inside the building, like setting of the furniture, habits of the occupants, and their general lifestyle. The NOX ideology behind this technique has revolutionized architecture world over and has earned architects and engineers subscribing to this technology international acclaim. The concept is to make buildings better adaptable to human lifestyle which is progressively changing, and to make living much more customized and comfortable, and also to extend the horizons of construction to levels deemed impossible before. An example of a building constructed by NOX is the D-Tower. The D-Tower is an epitome of the NOX philosophy; showing an intricate relationship between different media and making architecture much more than just construction using physical material. The tower is constructed in the city of Doetinchem, the Netherlands. It is composed of three parts; the physical construction of the tower itself, which is a 12 meter tall structure made of intricate surface of polyester which has been produced by computer-generated modeling technique. The other two parts are in the virtual medium. These are a questionnaire and a website. The questionnaire is linked to the website which in turn is linked to the tower, and together they form the complete structure of the D-Tower. It meant to change colors according to the mood of the majority of the people of the city in any given day, and this change of colors is achieved by the different lighting done in the tower. As people enter the tower, they fill out a questionnaire, and the results of the questionnaire are assimilated in the website which then controls the coloring of the tower. This is a groundbreaking effort to merge different media in the field of architecture so that new dimensions are added to buildings. The tower is meant to stand as an externalization of the prevailing emotions of the people for decades, and the website would also contain past records of all the results from the questionnaire for people to check back for any studies of the former data in the future. NOX ideology is aimed at redefining the virtual world in comparison to the real world. Previously it was stated that virtual world exists as a parallel world to reality, and cannot be sensed. NOX has changed this concept by incorporating the virtual tools in its building projects, which has extreme international significance in the way construction is viewed. Now the virtual is shown to support, strengthen and accelerate the real. Because of this, NOX architecture has been awarded with many accolades and exhibited all over the world, including Venice, London and Paris. References Architects, (May 2007). NOX Architects. Retrieved December 9, 2007, from http://www.noxarch.com/flash_content/flash_content.html Joan Almekinders, J.A., Pieter Heyman, P.H., (2004). V2_Lab: interior architecture. Retrieved December 9, 2007, from http://framework.v2.nl/archive/archive/leaf/other/.xslt/nodenr-124666 (July 2004). D-Tower. Retrieved December 9, 2007, from http://lab.v2.nl/projects/dtower.html Read More