The rare opportunity to listen to eminent architects attracted an impressive crowd to the CDA, which occupied almost the entire main hall. The lecture was delivered by Elizabeth Diller, who does not like to speak in public, Ricardo Scofidio spoke about only one project for New York. Elizabeth Diller devoted her speech to one of the main problems of creativity - the combination of the artificial and the natural in architecture.
In her opinion, talking today about open dualism or rivalry between the two principles is no longer entirely correct, since the modern space of architecture already refers to the postnatural environment - Elizabeth Diller used the term postnaural. Using the example of several architectural and design projects in which they managed to most beautifully solve this idea, Elizabeth Diller showed how the natural can participate in the formation of an architectural image, being no longer its environment, but its essence. Here the architectural form, as it were, "grows" from the simplest elements of the natural environment, such as water or trees, while experiencing the capabilities of the most advanced technologies.
To illustrate her point, Elizabeth Diller started with design, a very fresh project for the last Venice Biennale. The idea was born from two simple and at the same time very striking everyday phenomena for Venice itself - the water of the canals and the expresso, beloved by Italians. Diller Scofidio + Renfro have come up with a bar with a water treatment plant that takes water from canals and dispenses coffee directly to the center of the exhibition. This attraction, according to Elizabeth Diller, embodied two things - the idea of closed loops to save resources and the impact of tourism on the product.
Thinking about the upcoming lecture, Elizabeth Diller discovered for herself that they have quite a lot of projects, one way or another related to the topic of water. Another "water" design object by Diller Scofidio + Renfro was made in Finland. They chose a site in the harbor, where cubic tanks were cut out of ice and filled with drinking water from the world's most famous brands. The result was such artificial water in natural water, and all this was also highlighted, albeit not for long. In the spring, the ice melted, and all the waters returned to the world's oceans.
The most famous water attraction Diller Scofidio + Renfro is the Swiss project Blur or "Cloud". Diller Scofidio + Renfro came up with an exhibition pavilion that embodied the idea of architecture outside of space, outside of shell, outside of purpose - just a kind of atmosphere. The cloud itself was produced by a rather voluminous installation with a weather station inside, about 100 meters wide and 25 meters high. She took water from the lake and turned it into a dense fog. The cars pumped up the fog more when the wind blew away the cloud. “We wanted to make such a pavilion,” says Elizabeth Diller, “where there is nothing to watch and nothing to do. And it was the most popular attraction in Switzerland. It was even imprinted on branded chocolate, for an architect such a recognition is the greatest honor. " Inside the pavilion, visitors felt something like flying in an airplane over the clouds. Since it was rather damp inside the cloud, at the entrance everyone was given special raincoats, but not just raincoats - raincoats, but thinking raincoats - "braincoats". These are pretty clever gadgets that play with non-verbal forms of communication between visitors. To begin with, each of them filled out a questionnaire, the answers of which were put into the "intelligence" of the cloak, and when two people met, their outfits in color showed a possible reaction when meeting - from attraction to antipathy.
Having played on the different physical states of water in architecture and design, the architects of Diller Scofidio + Renfro turned to its extraordinary inhabitants - amphibians. The image of this creature forms the basis of the architectural concept of the school in Copenhagen. The building rises above the water, partially "sits" in it and goes out onto the land. The building, as it were, bowed, in the center there is an outdoor swimming pool almost at the level of the reservoir. A public space is hidden under the pool. The amphibious building has a glass body, where there is a "head" and a "tail" beating along the shore, the roof of which is actively used.
The element of water also dominates in another social project of Diller Scofidio + Renfro - the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. The building was part of a major reconstruction of the harbor with the creation of a walking route here. The architecture of the museum, in the words of Elizabeth Diller, "takes this route inside the museum", continuing it through the exhibition halls. In order to give maximum space to the city, they designed a huge console to house the gallery. It is curious that inside the museum, according to Elizabeth Diller, works as a kind of instrument that guides your gaze, turns it, plays with your perception of water, or completely removes visibility. The relationship between architecture and the aquatic environment is most intense in the media library. There, as in an auditorium, rows with computers from the entrance go down to a huge window at the end, which itself, like a large monitor, catches the eye to the movement of water.
The next project that Diller Scofidio + Renfro has been working on recently is the renovation of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York. Two seemingly incompatible things - a luminous marine organism and ordinary wood - became the starting point of a bright innovative project. To make a tree be alive, plastic and glow with an inner light, like sea plankton - this complex and beautiful idea has completely transformed an outdated concert hall. Lincoln Center itself is a huge building that spans an entire block. It appeared thanks to a team of famous American architects in the 1960s, which included, for example, Philip Johnson. The complex has become one of the most striking examples of non-rutalism. Diller Scofidio + Renfro was faced with the task of modernizing the concert hall for 1,100 people, turning it into a hall for chamber music, and, at the same time, increasing it by 20 thousand square meters. m. To begin with, the architects "removed" the lower part of the building, exposing the public spaces on the first level. And then they "chopped up" the corner, creating a giant console and a kind of urban space under it.
The main transformations concerned the interior, from which the customer demanded a certain intimacy and intimacy. Diller Scofidio + Renfro achieved this goal using three tricks, first with acoustic insulation. Secondly, we tried to separate the interior space from the structural shell, while the breaks in the walls and ceiling were made with the expectation of maximizing the acoustic properties of the hall. The sound was directed to the center of the hall and into the depths.
Finally, thirdly, the architects came up with the idea of visual isolation by removing all engineering equipment and other "irritants". All three questions were answered by the shell invented by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which, like rubber, covered the entire hall, while remaining wooden in memory of the previous interior. Light-emitting wood, and not a fire - how is this possible? 20% of the shell is based on a plexiglass layer, behind which there is a backlight, while the front side is finished with the finest veneer. The effect of a kind of sensory isolation occurs at the moment when, just before the beginning of the concert, all the noises in the hall subside and the audience concentrates their attention on the stage. According to Elizabeth Diller, "architecture is the first actor to enter the stage, it starts the performance first."
Ricardo Scofidio told about the only "non-water" project at the lecture - the reconstruction of the New York Highline in the Chelsea area and its transformation into a unique park. Highline is a branch of the old railway, which by the middle of the 20th century had completely exhausted itself and was abandoned. Meanwhile, this most interesting artifact had unique spatial characteristics - the line ran at a height of 10 meters through a chain of blocks, passed between buildings, changed its width…. All this turned out to be an excellent material for creating a city park. Diller Scofidio + Renfro came up with a master plan and an architectural project, in which the road was divided into thematic sections and filled with plants with different characteristics (forest, flowering forbs, marshland, meadow, heather field). The "Hanging Gardens" of the 21st century were supplemented with elevators, stairs and ramps. And now, after a while, the dry “bed” of Highline was replenished with life and around this old-new urban-planning axis rapid construction unfolded, even objects of such stars as Jean Nouvel and Frank Gehry appeared.
As you can see in the lecture, the ideas of organic architecture are close to Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, however, what they are doing still goes far beyond this direction. The material for generating ideas is not only living organisms, but also natural phenomena and primary elements like water or air. They are rethought and introduced into architecture, where they sometimes become another discovery.
