Dynamic Architecture*
According to a popular opinion architecture can be classified into the categories of Romanic or Gothic. The Romanic category is sculptural and uses principal Euclidean bodies like cube, cylinder, sphere and pyramid. It deals with proportion and composition. The gothic category is concerned with construction and the flow of forces. It is focussing on material, detail and the addition of discrete elements. In this division all "modern" architects can be classified too. Corbu was romanic and Rogers is gothic. So is there nothing new under the sun, is "modernity" a hoax, a failure, a unfulfilled promise? Is Architecture nothing but a description of its static form? Almost a hundred years after Einstein's theory of relativity and more then half a hundred years after Giedionīs "Time Space and Architecture" the so called "modern architecture" still operates with the formal principles of the middle ages?
As all simplifications the classification of Gothic or Romanic must fall short in describing such complex processes as the designing of architecture. Nonetheless this simplification contains a grain of truth since the architectural discourse today seems to be solely concerned with ways of creating a static form. In the scientific community we witness the dawn of the new sciences of complexity as one of the major developments of the present time. Chaos and nonlinear systems in social science, strange attractors in weather forecasting and neuronal nets in artificial intelligence are but a few to mention. A important part of complexity is the dynamic aspect of the behavior of a system over a given time. To abandon the classifications of architecture by its static formal appearance but focus on the dynamic process of designing architecture and its existence in time might be a way to incorporate strategies from the sciences of complexity into the architectural discourse.
Dynamics
Dynamics is change in time. Without change there is no time. The concept of designing architecture according to the needs of static (gravity) and function (program) is denying the basic principle of live, which is change. A Dynamic Architecture is flexible and determined by its environment, adapting to needs of its users, to changing conditions of its physical surrounding and to informational input. The need of the user can be as general as having light wherever he goes or as individual as having his personal room temperature wherever he stays. The physical surrounding can be the sunlight controlling the opacity of the windows to regulate the buildings climate. Information will be no longer invisible in cables or refined to screens but will materialize in the building itself. We will have hybrid environments with a mixture of physical and information space.
The term Dynamic Architecture refers to the process of designing and to a actual building. Computer programs and information networks are used for the design process. Up to now programs from animation industries or physical science, that can simulate processes are more suitable for the design, then classical CAAD programs. But tools that take into accordance environmental conditions still have to be developed. A example of a such a Dynamic Architecture is the design of a BMW IAA Pavilion for the Frankfurt International Automobile Fair 1997 with ABB Architekten Scheid Schmidt und Partner Frankfurt.
auto.mobile in anima.tion
The two conditions of a car are driving and parking. As the expression auto.mobile already implies self.movement is its real determination. Motorshows can only display the less interesting static condition. Referring to this problem the design study for a BMW Pavilion transfers movement into architecture. Since neither the cars nor the building were allowed to be mobile, the movement of the spectators is used to give the sensation of driving. This idea is not principally new, already the baroque transcendended the static of the enclosure of space into the dynamics of movement. In this century one principle of modernity was the emphasis of the horizontal in reaction to the flow of traffic. But up to now architects tried to represent dynamics in finding suitable form for it. In the BMW IAA Pavilion the dynamics generate form with the help of special effects software. With this changed strategy the architect is leaving behind the concept of architecture as the design of the outer shape of things. Form finds its way into being.
anima.tion
This strategy was inspired by methods developed for the car manufacturing industry. Continuous digitalization is a key feature from preliminary design to final production. In a dynamic process aesthetics and function, hardware and software are conditioning the perfection of form. The same data is used from visualization over prototyping to manufacturing. The move to a digital paradigm is manifesting even in the car itself. It is changing to a „smart environment". Intelligent agents assist the owner in driving performance even his seat position or driving style is memorized. The driver/car becomes a particle in the larger flow of traffic connected via satellite navigation. Matter becomes alive, animated, receives a soul, anima. With the use of the animation software "Explore" by Alias|Wavefront we wanted to find a design that is appropriate to this continuous digitalization. As preliminary conditions the site of the "Messe square" and a tentstructure, which was leftover from the last pavilion, were given. Also the communication subjects and the number and type of cars to be exhibited were given parameters.
Timestreets
We had statistical data of the flow of spectators on the "Messe square" of last years exhibition. According to these flow streets across the tent were layed out and cars were placed on them. To dynamize space in analogy to the driving experience we used a phenomena of the animation software: the trajectories of an animation can be recursively used as construction guidelines in the modeling software. From the projection of the view of a spectator walking along the streets on the membrane we derived a trajectory of second order. This trajectory was scaled according to the experience, that objects appear logarithmically progressive smaller over a given distance to human perception then close objects. The scaled trajectory of third order is used as a sp(l)ine for a lightcarrier.
Themebubbles
Even in the state of standing the car should have some "aura", some field of power. According to their programmatic relations we arranged the cars inbetween the streets. In another software called „blobs" we assigned fields of power to every car. The force was defined by the importance of its subject to the client. The resulting "bubbles" were merged in a last step according to their interdependence. From the programmatic fields of power emerged a event diagram of the invisible.
Landscape
Streets without a background are some how obsolete. As a last element timestreets and bubbles were connected by a smooth landscape. In this landscape all supporting technical rooms will be hidden. The form was developed with the program „dynamation" from the gravitational forces of the tent. The Olympic stadion in Munich had been the source of inspiration for the original Pavilion tent this adaptation was never complete since the corresponding landscape was missing. Just like the stadions roof reaches its beauty caused by the contrast to its environment, the new BMW-Pavilion reaches completion through the connecting landscape.
Digital Continuity
The design used no twodimensional drawings, not even for the cost evaluation. The model was done by lasersintering directly from data. The execution will use excessive CAM techniques. The construction of the wooden sections will be cut from the data by a yacht manufacturer. The membrane for the landscape is calculated and produced from the same datamodell. Bubbles and light-rig will be formed individually by a data driven welding robot.
auto.mation
Simulation software that transfers process to form is excluding the formal desire of the designer. Design will not become more scientific or objective. It will look for conditioning factors and underlying processes. Like in interactive art the designer develops a subjective relation with his tool, the form emerges out of virtual space. Parallels can be found to "ecriture automatique" of the Surrealists or Action Painting. The designer gives up the autonomy to form but gains the control over the process.
If we shift from form to process, the static classifications like gothic or romanic will become obsolete. Dynamic Architecture will never be built but will always be building, it will never be finished but will always be becoming, it will never be closed but will always be unfolding.
["Dynamic Architecture" has been presented as a video in image|architettura in movimento, International Festival for Architecture in Video, december 1998]
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