# An Architecture "des humeurs" by R&Sie(n)

photograph by Matthieu Kavyrchine

I already published some information about R&Sie(n)'s exhibition An Architecture "des humeurs" but I thought it was definitely worth it to introduce less the exhibition in itself and more of the speculation as much as emphasizing the fact that R&Sie(n) is one of the extremely rare architectural offices who offer the totality of documents and information on their website.

As an introduction of Francois Roche's lecture at Columbia last week, Mark Wigley brilliantly elaborated on the fact that a lot of contemporary architects are self proclaimed "experimental", "provocative", "on the edge", "innovative"; however the proper of such characteristics is to disturb people by their novelty and few architectures can be defined as suchnowadays. Wigley then affirmed that Roche was one of those few who lead you in the uncomfortable zones of experimental architectures and narratives.

Only a little has been written about An Architecture "des humeurs", and a lot of us can see in this fact a proof that consensual architecture only is leading the current (non)-debate of ideas whereas true research is being underrated. One could possibly argue that this speculation remains too much on the surface, and that rather than dealing with a dozen of dimensions of the project, R&Sie(n) should have confront with the depth of only of them. Nevertheless, from his own words, Francois Roche prefers to "swim between the surface and the abysses, from speculation to fiction until the negotiation with ambiguous and contradictory forces of the here and now".

As a result, An Architecture "des humeurs" attempts -and often succeeds- to articulate all together neurosciences, robotic, politics, mathematics, engineering, biology, computation and philosophy. To do so, R&Sie(n) spent those two last years working with mathematicians, scientists, robotic designers, artists, philosophers and developed a debate of ideas (see previous article) at the same time than proposed its speculation.

The exhibition was first commissioned by Le Laboratoire in Paris and is currently moving between Basel and Graz.

The official website of An Architecture "des humeurs", as I wrote above is extremely rich and generous in information so I recommend to explore the following categorized links:

Links and Press articles

Synapses Speeches
-Event the 16th of February / Paris / Some transcripts included

Pictures
- Models
- Prototypes
- Exhibition

An architecture des humeurs
- Intro (English/Francais)

Credits

Physiomorphologies
– “Humeurs”
– Temperaments linked to the four “humeurs”
– Bio-chemistry
– Physiological interview through Nano-particles
– Data extracted from Ip(m) / Interview
– Set theory
– Mathematical inputs which affects the physio-morphologies
– Transactional relation operations
– Schemas and formulations
– Morphological definitions
– Morphological stratum
– From mathematical equations to computational procedures.
– Morphologies resultants

Multitude
- Assemblage
- Strategies of aggregation
- Morphologies
- Tribal arborescences

Mathematical operators for structural optimization
- Calculation parameters
- Inputs received via a text file of the morphology
- Forces and constraints taken as system inputs
- Shape optimization
- Protocols of tests
- Calculation on physio-morphologies
- Profile resultant

Alg(s)
- Global+local association

Robotic + Substances
- Robotic Movie
- From the “Algorithm(s)” to bio-knit physicality
- Morphologies-Weaving / Bondage

Bio-cement secretions/ extrusions
- Tooling / Weaving concrete bio-polymer (material expertise)
- Recipe of the bio-component
- Comparison concrete/bio-concrete
- Tests of secretion-weaving concrete bio-polymer
- Structural Computation of weaving
- Y Fragment

Machinisme
- Tooling / Robotic process
- Description
- Definition / Fluidic Muscle
- Research and Development

Script/Computation/Text-files
- Schemas
- Scripts

Other
- Affective Substances
- Natural machine

Credits
…
…
-R&Sie(n) / Le Laboratoire / 2010
-Scénario, design, production : R&Sie(n)

Associé à :
-François Jouve / Process mathématiques
-Winston Hampel, Natanel Elfassy / Computations (with some help of Marc Fornes)
-Stephan Henrich / Process et Design Robotique
-Gaëtan Robillard, Frédéric Mauclere, Jonathan Derrough / Design

et Process de captations physiologiques
-Berdaguer et Péjus / Scénario Nano-récepteurs
-Mark Kendall / Microneedles
-Delphine Chevrot / Takako Sato / “The Lift”
-Candice Poitrey / Interview Physiologique
&
-Chris Younes / Machine Naturelle
&
-Jiang Bin, architecte
-Laura Bellamy
-Rosalie Laurin

# Building Landscapes by Lebbeus Woods

Lebbeus Woods released a new article on his blog entitled "Building Landscapes" featuring works of Thom Mayne, Peter Eisenman, Robert Smithson and some of his beautiful drawings for the Korean DMZ.

# The Oblique Function by Claude Parent and Paul Virilio

Sometimes I like to revisit the classics ! The Oblique Function was first developed in the 60's by Architecture Principe (Claude Parent & Paul Virilio) and since then is still the main element of Parent's architecture (see previous article).
The idea was to tilt the ground in order to revolutionize the old paradigm of the vertical wall. In fact, being inclined, the wall becomes experiencable and so are the cities imagined by the two French architects. The oblique is fundamentally interested in how a body physically experience a space. The slope implies an effort to climb up and a speed to climb down; this way the body cannot abstract itself from the space and feel the degrees of inclination.
Parent and Virilio associated this research with their bunker archeology (see previous article) in order to design the Church Sainte Bernadette in Nevers (France) that I should probably include in a near future article...
Claude Parent demonstrated the quality of the oblique for the French Pavilion at the 1970 Venice Biennale as I already wrote in a former article.

# Eco Commune by Richard Hardy (Weareom)

Eco Commune is a beautiful short movie by Richard Hardy for Nic Clear's (see previous posts 1 and 2 and his manifesto for boiteaoutils) studio at the Bartlett. This film introduces a 2050 post-apocalyptic London gained by vegetation and wild animals. The city is eventually re-appropriated by humans but only in a way that consider those hybrids of ruins and nature as the new fabric of their environment.

See also his Transcendent City and its Miyazaki-like graphics.

THE ECO-COMMUNE from Richard Hardy on Vimeo.

# Lebbeus Woods' Labyrinthine Wall for Bosnia

This project has been posted by Lebbeus Woods on his blog a year and half ago and it certainly catch my interest for walls, borders and labyrinth. As a matter of fact, this project gathers those three typologies in one as a poetical response to the Bosnian war of 1992-93.
Lebbeus Woods imagines this monumental wall all around Bosnia which does not forbid its entry but rather make it more difficult by the experience of this labyrinth. He narrates how this giant edifice would ultimately becomes a whole city (probably started by people who never found the exit).
His text can be read on his blog but another explanatory paragraph deserve attention when Woods answers to a criticism of a comment posted on it:

"You are certainly correct in saying that the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was not as simple as my project seems to suggest. However, there were trench lines around Sarajevo, manned by the Bosnian army and Sarajevo citizens, and these prevented the Bosnian Serb military forces from overrunning the city. I was in Sarajevo several times at the height of the siege, and knew many architects who would fight in the trenches half the day, then return to their houses and offices and work on their ideas for rebuilding the city.

I also agree that walls are often used to divide people. This work and others are meditations on how walls can unite them. It remains to be seen whether or not they might be useful.

There is no doubt, however, in light of the known facts that Serbia and Croatia directed the destruction of BiH. The Muslim majority bear some responsibility for having declared independence based on their slim numerical majority, without considering the consequences. And the governments of the West bear some responsibility, too, for offering recognition of BiH independence too quickly and also heedless of the feelings of Serbs and Croats. But the ultimate responsibility for the destruction belongs to the destroyers.

Finally, it must be said that Sarajevo was much more diverse in its people before the war than after. Many Serbs and Croats left with the signing of the Dayton Accords. Many Muslim refugees sought refuge from the notorious ‘ethnic-cleansing’ campaigns carried out by Serbian military and paramilitary forces in the smaller towns and villages. Sarajevo is not the cosmopolitan city it once was, but today far more ethnically polarized."

# Pratt first year student's work by Roberto Godinez

Let's start this new Academic Year with a refreshing first year's student work. Roberto Godinez was in Enrique Limon's studio at Pratt Institute last semester and following the rule of the assignment (aggregation of a standard element composing a landscape, then appropriation of this landscape by a wooden architecture), he created this beautiful space of meditation under the rocks (or concrete blocks) he first set.

# Dense Rhythm by Zifan Liu & Shengping Lin

Zifan Liu recently sent me the project he just designed with Shengping Lin for Marcelo Spina's Sci Arc studio. The tower they designed for Tokyo is mostly characterized by a beautiful structural facade that is composed by a jungle more or less dense of branches. Their density is directly related to the needs in structure and in transparency of the building.
Here is their text linked to the project:

This design is an research and study of having a project of lines instead of a project of surfaces. The super dense refers to the city context, the contrast between the building and the surrounding, the program and the challenge of how to create a space built by lines. Beyond the boundary of the structure, membranes or envelopes, this design merges them together while providing an efficient space in the dense of tokyo. The thickens of the strings wall create an buffer space from the outside, it also support itself as well as the lateral force of the building and provide a column-free space for the museum. its not a surface, but it create a strong felling of surface by having a super dense pattern and hierarchies.

The strings system describes how the pattern transfer from the facade into the building and depart the space. Also it shows a serial of variations in terms of scripting to generate different patterns. We used different methods to control it ranges from density, orientation, thickness or color. We could control the density or the thickness in order to create a pattern of more or less transparency or even a solid facade to response the environmental interaction. We designed the way that the strings were generated and build the bounding box as a volume to contain the strings. The unpredictability of the scripting create variations of density in certain area and some part of it just fade out and become the access between different spaces. More particular for this project, it is more important to research how to apply the technique scripting-wield onto the integrated building rather than explore how the strings could operate architecturally.

# Excursions on Volume.by Shawn Sims & Erik Martinez (Part 2)

A bit more than six months ago, I published Shawn Sims & Erik Martinez's Thesis Research for Michael Chen and Jason Lee's undergrad thesis studio [CRISIS FRONTS] at Pratt Institute. This article is about the project that came out of this research.
Excursions on Volume is a study about freight and its participation to counterfeit market. Shawn and Erik thus created their own "counterfeit" freight production by designing a harbor that creates its own terrain thanks to the containers' weight. In fact, the containers are sitting on a mechanism that dredges the ooze in the bottom of the Hudson River and thus transforms a deep muddy material into a physical more or less solid reclaiming land. The heaviest the container is, the most effective the process of solidification which produces an interesting contradiction with capitalism's eternal wish of profitability. In fact, the most effective container is the one that did not succeed to make itself cheap (i.e. light). One can even think of some "counterfeit" containers filled with concrete, extremely expensive to freight but tremendously effective in the production of land...

Here is a small text related to the project:

Historically the process of standardization has spawned from the need for new structures of efficiency. The performance requirements of this process create unbiased arteries that are susceptible to forms of exploitation. This entails that at a global logistical scale, the network is blind with regard to the status of the goods; being licit or illicit. As globalization generates new organizational models for distribution, the intelligence of the counterfeit network is understood to be its ability to uncover and anticipate opportunities embedded within these structures of efficiency.
The modern shipping container is analogous with these standardized practices, both physical and protocological, and in an effort to increase globalization, this mechanism generates an opportunity for the insertion of a hack. Perhaps with an excursion into understanding the ability for weight and volume to be an operable energy, the container field of a port becomes an untapped resource able to generate new land.
Currently the dredged materials form the Hudson River are carried out into the ocean and dumped because of their toxic attributes. However the toxicity levels are dropping and for the first time since an industrialized New York, the sediment collected from dredging operations has the potential to remain in the city and be utilized in this land forming process.
The use of weight as a latent energy, and of dregde as a material are combined to reconsider the arrival of infrastructure to a once industrialized Hudson river. The fluctuating weight of container traffic is utilized to rigidify dregde to create a pixelated landscape which emerges from the existing water level. The commercial materials utilized within this infrastructure provide an emerging architecture with the products necessary to begin a series of retail and market spaces. A porous pixelated landscape rigidified by a membrane is stretched vertically to enclose space and change continuously as the market fluctuates in size.