Removed Form
Challenging the form of the Vitra.
The construction industry is estimated to produce 30% of the world’s pollution, more than any other single industry. Demand for sustainability in the sector is growing as concerns for the wellbeing of the natural environment increases. Suggestions have been made that sustainability should become a fundamental consideration for all designers but what does this actually mean for architects? How will considerations of sustainability impact on the design of buildings? Will sustainable architecture result in neutral designs which simply exist to fulfil their purpose and do not make any statements of any kind? Or does a middle ground exist where notions of sustainability can be intertwined with innovative design? These are all questions which have lead to this re-visioning of the Vitra Design Museum. The museum represents excellence in design & it is for this reason it has been re-visioned to question the role of design when it comes to sustainability. The architecture of the museum is widely acclaimed as being of great architectural importance and presents the perfect subject to question architectural sustainability. As the Vitra Design Museum is a post-modernist deconstructivism building it is strongly associated with ideas of fragmentation, non-rectilinear forms, manipulated ideas of internal structure versus external structure, and a sense of controlled chaos. This style of architecture is quite wasteful & excessive when considering sustainability and the amount of energy required to produce it. In the re-visioning of the museum this notion has been used to increase the sustainability of the building by transforming it into a simpler structure. This transformation occurs through the progressive expansion of the original form as various elements of it expand & morph to eventually become one simple structure. The whole process of transformation is documented through number of layers (six specifically) constructed of both solid & negative spaces which will allow for the progressive contrast of changing structure to be observed. The transformation originates from the original structure of the museum which is rendered as negative space in the re-visioning.
Ironically the process used to document the physical simplification of the form adds additional unnecessary structure to the building. This is an intended contradiction that is meant to further emphasise the notion of excessive structure and the size of the impact this has on the environment. With the progressively changing form, & the combination of both void & solid space, ideas of reducing the structural excess are suggested in each simplified layer of the transformation. Although simplifying the form is not implied as the answer to the issue of how to increasing sustainability but instead serves as a metaphor for the measures that architects need to take to incorporate sustainability into their designs. What is being discussed is the notion that having sustainability as a fundamental consideration will most likely change how architecture is designed. But a middle ground needs to be found so architecture does not just satisfy sustainability requirements but also has content in its design. This is directly associated with the two ended symbolism in the re-visioning. The transformation starts & finishes with a simple block/rectangular structure, providing a context for a beginning & an end of the transformation, allowing for the existence of a middle ground. The beginning block also serves to symbolise the unavoidable origin of structure in its most basic representation. The form of the original Vitra would have been derived from a series of standard primitives which construct the world around us. The presence of beginning block in the negative space of the original Vitra is meant to allow for observers to contrast the origin of the buildings form and understand that it is something that was created by choice & not necessity.
References
a) STATE. EXPLORING SUSTAINABLE DESIGN. RESPOND. Exhibition at the Object Gallery. http://www.object.com.au/files/file/5229_StateRespondEdKit_lowres.pdf
b) Digital Architecture Now: A Global Survey of Emerging Talent by Neil Spiller c) Article: THE NEW SUSTAINABILITY: What goes Around in October 2010 issue of Wallpaper magazine
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