“We make cages out of our structures, we want our buildings to have frame works but out of a Cartesian compulsion, we compartmentalize space into strict horizontals and verticals” Cecile Balmond expressed his dissatisfaction with the how space is often compartmentalized into a strict and rigorous grid of verticals and horizontals. There is a dominant immobility in such structure, no sense of movement and imagination becomes trapped in such regime. Our environment is imperfect, everything around us is complex and irregular. Juxtaposition becomes rhythm, where hybrid entities are understood as ‘nature’ and not odd and freaky. Why should architecture be any different? Balmond points out that we enter an era where “ambiguities arise, interpretation is the only way forward. There is no single reading of such a building”
Balmond talks about the informal in his article which has no specific rules or fixed patterns, what we call chaos is actually a succession of several orders “quite different from the idea of trapping the arbitrary and calling it order”. Isaac Newton saw the flow of force as a linear movement, and the informal depicts it as the “minimum path through a field of potential”. The informal has no distinct rules nor fixed patterns, it cannot be copied and the mutation of different situations must be taken as valid starting points as opposed to random accidents or exceptional cases.
The works of Rem Koolhass and Daniel Libeskind are the ultimate example of the ‘informal strategy’, in the Université de Jussieu in Paris and the Kunsthal of Rotterdam, structure was an informal response to space, the structural elements were self-generated and chaotic “columns move out of regular sequence in a shameless opportunism” Balmond explains how that resulted in the entrance area of the Kunsthal of Rotterdam only has 3 columns whose juxtapositions defines the “threshold, in a fresh new way”.
Danniel Libeskind expressed his notion of the informal is the Victoria and Albert Mesum, Libeskind proposed the spiral of history, a spiral that is pointed upwards, open ended and entirely holistic.
Balmond demonstrates his ideas through the rotating disk with the light that shines through it, that generates chaotic but symmetrical and even shapes, adding some complexity to the process (i.e.making the disk expands and contracts) will add a different dimension to the outcome, the disk may appear free and suspended but it is supported by a hidden internal strategies that forms the understructure of that particular shape. Mathematics is racing forward with non-linear dynamics, so is science in chemistry, biology…etc, Belmond questions where is architecture in all that? And where is science in architecture? “Flying in the face of conventional ideas of pre-arrangement, new science proposes the plan instead as the starting point and the resulting boundary as a surprise”.
There is no set of fixed rules for generating structures. The rhythm of the hidden connections are implied and felt but not seen.The algorithm of the pattern is to remain hidden “The method is informal, the framework is new structure. The inspiration is science”.
Questions:
How effective is the randomness of the rearrangement of different spaces in creating an informative and cohesive space that will function properly?
Balmond touches on using sickness and mechanical process in creating a random outcome. What is the architect’s role in such process? Does that mean that the machine is replacing the architect? Or perhaps the architect is becoming the operator that machine and the machine become the true creator/architect?
Is the informal to be interpreted as without form or on the outside of form?
Is new structure really new, or just seemingly new to us as new technologies allow it to be explored?
If randomness does not actually exist, but is simply an indicator of something we do not yet understand, with the study and attempted emulation of chaos detract from its enigma?
