The art of making buildings

19th September 2018

Today I went to the Renzo Piano exhibition at the RA.

It gave me that must need buzz of inspiration, I can't wait to get into the design studio and get making......

So where do I start?

With my love for the Ra, in the square there is a great instillation 

Cornelia Parker - PsychoBarn was an interesting juxtaposition to the surrounding buildings .....

I really liked that you get to see how the piece is exhibited the skeleton behind the piece.

Each of Renzo's project is born from a deep consideration of how structural components can be bought together to build the vision he holds in his head. Ideas are developed by making models and then always tested in detail through full-scale prototypes.

Engineers are involved early in the design process, working with piano to ensure a unity of form, aesthetic, function and execution.

The first room in the Renzo Piano exhibition......

Renzo has always been interested in the act of making, he came from a family of builder and made his first boat at the age of 16 (it was 6m long).

This act of making empowers the designer.

That you can do things, surprise yourself.

Oh my god I made it.

You should become a builder.

Before we get started in the exhibition I have to warn you the models are very beautiful......

Pompidou centre 

The pre-centre Pompidou work was marked by radical experiments with lightweight structures, supported by both his farther and brother(both builders).

These projects explored prefabrication and modulate construction using materials and techniques at the frontiers of technology, underlined by an interest in the craft of building.

 To achieve maximum flexibility within these vast internal spaces, the services and circulation have been placed outside them. Lifts and escalators are contained within the support structure on the piazza façade. Escalators zig-zagging through transparent tubes up the front of the building afford increasingly extraordinary views out over Paris. The colour-coded utilities (blue for air, green for water, yellow for electricity and red for vertical circulation) are positioned along the Rue Beaubourg, street-side façade. Deliberately leaving behind the tradition of the austere, impenetrable monument, the Pompidou Centre is totally transparent in both face and function. It is inviting and understandable.

Jean-Marie Tjibao - 1991-98

The centre celebrates the Kanak culture, the building includes exhibition spaces, studios for music, dance and art.

The whole complex is filled with the sound of birds and the deep notes if the wind as it meets the facade.

The building draws on French anthropologist Alban Bensa (a consultant on the project) - using Kanak building traditions and develops them using material and structural sophistication of contemporary architecture/engineering.

As the area is prone to earthquakes - lightweight construction is vital, termites are another regional hazards.

The wood used was Iroko- Iroko is known to the Igbo people as oji wood. It is one of the woods sometimes referred to as African teak, although it is unrelated to the teak family. The woodcolour is initially yellow but darkens to a richer reddish brown over time. 

Section showing the layers of the facade.

Its about pushing and trying.

Try, try and then jump.

step by step.

This is how architecture is made.

You become an architect to change the world not to seduce people.

IBM TRAVELLING PAVILION- 1982-86

The pavilion is a transparent tunnel, sitting on a raised platform that houses its supporting services. It is 48m long, 12m wide and 6m high. In order to facilitate easy assembly, disassembly and transportation, the enclosure is made of modular, repetitive elements of wood and polycarbonate. These elements are connected together by carefully crafted aluminium joints to form the weathering envelope as well as its structure.

The pavilions development started with ideas from natural structures such as leaves which in turn inspired details of joints and conjunctions of materials.

These ideas were developed through discussion, sketches and mock ups.

Joints were prototyped in wood to get the organic shapes and then cast in aluminium.

As part of the testing process, a single full size arch was mocked up on a beach in Genoa.

The polycarbonate is manufactured using thermoforming techniques. The timber is glulaminated beech – composed of thin timber laminations that are glued together to give structural uniformity. The timber connections are in cast aluminium.

 

After prototyping, the design were developed with Arup. The joints were modified to simplify construction and to accommodate the different rates of expansion and contraction of the three materials - Polycarbonate, wood and metal.

What your doing will change peoples life.

California academy of science - 2000-08

The museum, which contains an aquarium, a planetarium, a natural history museum and research and educational facilities, features a "green" roof and numerous sustainable features.

The entire 37.000 sq. m complex is like a piece of the park that has been cut away and lifted 10 m up above the ground. This “living roof” is covered with 1,700,000 selected autochthonous plants planted in specially conceived biodegradable coconut-fibre containers. The roof is flat at its perimeter and, like a natural landscape, becomes increasingly undulating as it moves away from the edge to form a series of domes of various sizes rising up from the roof plane. The two main domes cover the planetarium and rain forest exhibitions. The domes are speckled with a pattern of skylights automated to open and close for ventilation.

Photovoltaic cells are contained between the two glass panels that form the transparent canopy around the perimeter of the green roof; they provide more than 5% of the electricity required by the museum. The choice of materials, recycling, the positioning of the spaces with respect to the natural lighting, natural ventilation, water usage, rainwater recovery and energy production: all of these design issues became an integral part of the project itself, and helped the museum obtain LEED platinum certification.

The multi-tasking living roof offers an environment in which the optimum conditions for native plants, insects and birds.

The undulating roof resembles a natural landscape, it role includes insulating, cooling, reducing noise, capturing storm water, generating power(Photovoltaic) and controlling sunlight/glare.

Architecture is about exploring the magic of the invisible, the voids and imagined space.

Jerome Seydoux Pathe Foundation 2006-14

The art of inserting a new building into an historic city block means engaging in an open, physical dialogue with the existing city buildings. Building onto a structure also presents an opportunity for a wideranging renovation project, a reclaiming of space. The new headquarters of the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé is an unexpected presence, a curved volume glimpsed floating in the middle of a courtyard, anchored on just a few supports. It is complimented by a group of birch trees, a floral island set in the dense mineral context of the city.

A new transparent building just behind the street facade that looks a little like a greenhouse, is the public area of the Foundation. From this building, visitors have a view through the transparent ground floor of the second building in the courtyard that houses the project’s main activities, to the garden beyond. The peculiar design of this building is determined by the limits and requirements of the site. While keeping its distance from the surrounding buildings, the new building actually improves its neighbours’ access to daylight and air and by reducing the building’s footprint, the project creates space for a garden at the back of the site.

Ethics are important in design.

The Shard- 2013 

The tower is raised 9m above concourse level, and 16m above St Thomas Street, creating new public space with two retail kiosks, public seating and landscaping. This creates a south facing balcony overlooking St Thomas Street. Above this, the 26 storey and 15,000m2 residential tower will contain 148 apartments.

A public stair will connect the two levels bringing a sense of pleasure to moving through and around the site. 

Emergency Children's Surgery Center - 2013

Our vision of Africa has recently undergone a slow but steady development, from neglected continent to the new frontier of an evolving world. The challenge of this new project of Emergency NGO is to combine the practical requirements of a paediatric surgery hospital in Africa with the desire to create a model piece of architecture: rational, tangible, modern, beautiful, but firmly linked to tradition.

Earth is the raw material used to build the homes of the poorest people in most parts of the world. It’s a simple, cheap building technique but one which, in Africa, is associated by most people with a past of poverty that needs to be forgotten. We were fascinated by the idea of giving back some dignity to this technique, using the excavated land to build the load-bearing walls with the rammed earth technique. 

The rammed earth technique is an ancient building method involving a mixture of earth, sand, gravel, binding agents and a little water, compressed in wooden or metal frames or moulds. The great advantage is that the material is available locally, and there’s no need for cement or highly specialised workers. An eye on sustainability, right from the construction phase.

This building, born from the earth, will get its energy from the sun. Indeed, the roof will be made from a suspended trellis structure supporting 9,800 square metres of photovoltaic panels (equal to the surface of a football pitch). This system will ensure that the hospital has an autonomous electricity supply during the day. It will also be connected to the main line, to provide energy to the surrounding area at times when consumption is low. The photovoltaic roof, “floating” above the building, will also guarantee shade for the hospital and all the uncovered walkways.

Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don't read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.

This project is currently under development in the area of the museum’s campus in Miracle Mile, Los Angeles: the creation of the Academy Museum of Motion Picture will redevelop the former 1938 May Company Department Store building, which was recently named the Saban Building. The building's additions to the north side - dated 1946 - will be removed and replaced with a ‘bubble’, a 1000-seat theatre and a terrace with views towards Hollywood. A dialogue between the existing building (‘gravitas’) and the new extension (‘levitas’) will emerge and with it, a discourse between shadow and light, heaviness and weightlessness.

Its a must go to exhibition, to get your inspiration juices flowing ..........