Thomas Lieser: Making Connections Where There Were None

Thomas Lieser: Making Connections Where There Were None
Thomas Lieser: Making Connections Where There Were None

Video: Thomas Lieser: Making Connections Where There Were None

Video: Thomas Lieser: Making Connections Where There Were None
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Thomas Lieser was in Moscow for the first time and had already noticed that, despite the breadth of the Moscow streets, someone was pushing him all the time, then he himself was surprised to find that he had started pushing people in the subway. This is the first impression of the city received by an American architect, but Lieser will still have the opportunity to get to know Moscow better. In any case, Leeser Architecture is one of those bureaus that will be presented in the international pavilion at the Moscow Architecture Biennale, and then in the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In his hour and a half lecture, Lieser gave a very informative excursion into what their bureau is doing, showing mainly the most advanced innovations in the field of digital architecture and the so-called "reaction architecture" (ie interactive), which caused everyone to delight. The audience saw buildings stuffed with all sorts of gadgets, houses that talk to people, turn them into images, monitor their movement - all this looked more like the scenery for a science fiction film, if some of these projects had not already been implemented.

Thomas Lieser immediately emphasized that he was not a supporter of a formalistic understanding of architecture, and it was more important for him to consider it more as a representation and as an art. Without retiring to theory, Lieser preferred to illustrate his concept with specific examples, and the first of them was a small bar in New York's Chelsea district, which, according to Lieser's idea, was turned into a permanent performance. This project is called "Glass", translating into Russian, one could call it "behind the glass", remembering the scandalous TV show.

Thomas Lieser:

“Since the main concept of clubs and bars is to see people and to show themselves, and the most interesting things there often happen in the toilets, we tried to place the shared toilet directly opposite the street, replacing its wall with a one-way mirror. When you go to the toilet, you cannot see what is happening on the street, but people from the street can see you. You walk along the street, see how people straighten their clothes, and then go inside and naturally forget what you saw and take their place yourself. It turns out that going to the toilet becomes the best advertisement for this bar."

Among the projects shown, Lieser has a whole block of innovative museum buildings and exhibition centers, to which, by the way, our Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk belongs. Modern media art, according to Lieser, no longer needs a frame, it can be projected onto any surface and occupy any area, so the concept of the building itself is being revised. Museums are turning into some kind of virtual space, where architecture itself becomes part of the media. For example, the Convention Center in South Manhattan, New York, Leeser conceived to turn into a kind of spaceship: "We wanted to create the feeling that going to the theater or exhibition center is akin to traveling to another world." The center is built into the existing garage and accommodates, in addition to the exhibition space, a theater hall, and it is arranged in such a way that everything that happens on the stage could also be seen from the street.

For contemporary Korean artist Nam June Paik, Thomas Lieser created a museum project taking into account the peculiarities of the visual art of one of the founders of video art, which will be exhibited in it.

Thomas Lieser:

“A lot of Pike's works are images that constantly move around this building. The building itself is formed by a system of stairs that are located in its center. The staircase and the floor are one surface and are squeezed further into the storage. The outer walls of the building are made reflective because there is a beautiful forest around, and because all Korean restaurants in New York have a huge number of mirrors."

The project of the Yakut Mammoth Museum is also somewhat akin to an installation created in the middle of an icy desert. In this competition, Leeser Architecture bypassed world stars, Massimiliano Fuksas and Antoine Predok, although until now, according to Lieser, they have not seen official documents on the results of the competition.

Thomas Lieser:

“This is not really a museum, only part of it is a museum, the other is a research laboratory, where scientists will deal with the problem of DNA and cloning experiments. Therefore, while making the project, we tried to take two completely different groups of building users who would collide with each other. There is a museum level, and there is a laboratory level, through which a glass tube with an escalator passes, from where tourists look after scientists."

Lieser's project is striking in its glassiness, and this is in permafrost conditions. Inside, they designed two conservatories. The structure of the museum is quite complex, according to the architect, "it will be a system of animated pictures that are constantly moving inside and out." Now the matter rests on implementation, and there are already disagreements. For example, in order to prevent the permafrost from melting under the building, Lieser suggested artificially cooling the supports, which the customer did not like at all.

Probably the most amazing "museum" project Leeser has shown was for the Eyebeam Arts and Technology Center in New York (2001). This building is the embodiment of the postmodern "fold". Its shape resembles a folded ribbon, giant media facades react to your presence, and inside the house watches your every move, you become a part of this large mechanized organism, you turn into an image, into a virtuality.

Thomas Lieser:

“We have tried to combine here a museum and studios where artists will work, and to make this museum more a tool for artists than just a container. One idea was to use the building's façade as a low-resolution screen. The fabric of the microcircuit is printed directly on the glass using "electronic ink" technology. The building reacts to the one nearby, but you yourself can influence it using your mobile. You will play with people you don't know, you just call the building, and it immediately connects you with another user.

At the very top of the building is a robotic garden. Below is an automated library. Further studios where artists work and live. Below is a revolving theater and at the very bottom of the lobby and bar. Here we have created a panel that scans and shows the most active moments taking place in the building. They are monitored by a system of cameras that move on all floors and scan what is happening. The lobby floor transforms into a sliding cinema. A special video elevator gives an image of those people who enter it, that is, when you get into it, you become an image. We also used a special floor structure in the lobby called digital mud. When you physically enter the museum, you leave your footprints, the same happens if you enter the museum using the Internet. So we tried to unite the community attending the museum."

Leeser Architecture lost a major competition to design an Olympic Village for the 2012 New York Games, Thomas Leeser noted, not without regret. They worked on the project in conjunction with the Rotterdam bureau MVRDV.

Thomas Lieser:

“First of all, we tried to analyze what type of urban fabric for building could be suitable and, in part, even compete with Manhattan. We immediately decided to make a classic scheme of the stylobate part with a tower on it or low-rise construction, as well as to arrange towers in front of the park. In the end, we decided to create a programmable, mutable system that could satisfy all city requirements. We moved the whole construction to the back of the lot, getting a structure with very narrow streets, but on the vacant part we created a beach, right in front of Manhattan! It's funny that the beach is the only part that came out of the project."

Another major project and a disappointing loss in the competition is the Design School in Germany on the site of a former coal mining facility. “The Germans love architecture in the form of cubes, and we made a big mistake by not providing them with cubes,” Lieser explained his failure. The Design School was conceived as a huge machine building that reacts to the presence of people with a series of ingenious technical know-how and engages in its own creativity based on your intellectual activity. The architect explained how it works.

Thomas Lieser:

“The task was to develop a concept for the entire huge site and convert these buildings to other functions. All of them are under protection, so we suggested replacing only one brick in them - with a digital one. When you pass by, he calls your cell phone and tells the story of the building. The colored line and black screens on the ground are motion sensors that respond to your presence and help you receive information. We also made light screens on the building where you can make an announcement using your cell phone. Directly in the middle, the building is cut by a train line.

There is a vertical library in the central part of the school. It is automated and brings the book directly to your desk in colored containers, which you can also use to store your belongings. The system of containers is installed on glass, polymerized with a special film. On the book delivery robot, which you can control yourself with a laptop or cell phone, there is a light source that leaves a trail on the glass when it moves, and it turns out that you are tracking the movement of information. The more students learn, the more drawings our computer leaves, and the design school turns into a kind of huge drawing machine."

Another design school, Leeser Architecture, was designed for Hong Kong.

Thomas Lieser:

“A lot of people here love to spend time outside, but because of the hot and high humidity, they love to sit outside under buildings. Therefore, we decided to create as many overhanging parts of the building as possible. The lower level is given to the public space, this is a park that goes right into the building. The middle level is a university space, a “covered garden”. And on the roof there will be a public swimming pool, where a transparent elevator takes you through the whole building."

In addition to "big architecture", Leeser Architecture also does exhibitions.

Recently, in 2007, they designed two exhibitions at the Center for the Arts and Technical Creativity of Guyon, Spain, Tate modern in London and Whitney museum in New York. These were two expositions with a non-linear concept - one was called Feedback, which means "feedback" and consisted of an interactive map. The second exhibition, called Gameworld, was devoted to computer games and consisted of deep blue play areas.

Thomas Lieser:

“For Feedback, we tried to create a drawing of a child's toy - a gluing that could rotate in different directions and form spaces where objects were exposed. We had to make groups and agglomerations so that the visitor would slide from one to the other. For Gameworld, we came up with a project that is a mixture of a paintball machine and a children's lego set. The places occupied by the players were highlighted with pink light, the vacant ones were plunged into the blue half-darkness.

Thomas Lieser's lecture was greeted with great enthusiasm - they gave him a standing ovation and pelted him with questions. This is not surprising, because the architect almost literally demonstrated the process of realizing the actual futuristic dream of media, introducing digital technologies and interactivity into modern architecture. Obviously, all these implementations are especially relevant in public buildings and museums - this is how Thomas Lieser deals with this, museums and exhibitions. At the lecture, one could observe with interest how the "small" form of an interactive exhibition pushes its boundaries and captures the entire museum, flashing its digital technologies, like a computer interface, into the building.

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