Etudes of interdisciplinarity in digital architecture

Sille Pihlak

 

Architecture and fashion

It turns out architecture and the art of fashion aren’t very different. Scale, materiality and form create a visual distinction, but their basic essence is the same – both are protective layers on or for a body – one is closer, the other farther away.

Body 1: human. A multifunctional organism that stands, moves, breathes, thinks. Has undergone minimal shifts in form and needs over its history.

Body 2: clothing or building. Bearer of identity, depending on the user’s personal, political, religious or cultural ambitions and technological progress. In constant change over history.

In an architectural body built over half a century ago, all of the materials were clearly defined according to their qualities: iron ensured structural strength, a glass façade distinguished the internal and external world, concrete provided a usable surface. In fashion, various textiles were used as material for linings and coverings, these in turn joined together by thread and zippers. Now both disciplines are still dealing with traditional materials but, aided by technological progress and changes in the language of design, they have also arrived at hybrid materials. This is a story of the convergence of the architectural body and the human body.

Organic design

CAD technology, used in architecture, allows us to trace the evolutionary principles in architecture with increasing precision, and create mathematical models similar to living organisms. The principles of reproduction, formulas for heredity and organic simulation techniques have opened new avenues in design: the possibility to create, along with form, entire systems.

Iris van Herpen, a fashion designer who often collaborates with architects, says that design, fashion design, architecture and science are becoming one. The goal of fashion designers is to bridge the gap between nature and architecture, to create a new design language for clothing, one oriented to plentiful mutations. Although costumes have been made of various photo-polymers, they constitute natural organisms. Iris van Herpen’s works are characterized by organic language of form and constant experiments with materials in cooperation with the best architects.

New materiality

Due to rapid technological progress and mathematical invention, architecture has gone so far in its experiments with material as trying to recreate organic matter. Experiments involving multi-materiality or re-discovering intrinsic properties have led architecture to novel results and created major potential in the world of construction.

Neri Oxman’s project Monocoque is a structural surface, parts of which are able to let light through; other parts have the property of a structural skeleton. 3D printing technology makes it possible to create a body out of several materials at once, forming a composite with different mechanical properties.

The Archim Mengese and Steffen Reichert collaboration Hygroscope investigates a traditional construction material, wood, and how it responds to weather conditions. The surface properties of veneer change as humidity increases or decreases. Sheets of laminated veneer open and close without requiring additional technical equipment or energy. Materials used for millennia have found a new output. Such a responsive, adaptive façade spurs people to constantly engage in new experiments with wood. Next stop – a 3D printed house of sawdust?

Varying scale

Unlike a planted park, a wild natural forest that features different trees and shrubs, varying species and age is more dense and hardy. A strict framework, even distribution, and predefined forms are no longer sufficient in architecture. An organic system that is able to adapt and factor in the environment is able to withstand forces better.

The fashion artist Liisi Eesmaa and I collaborated on a collection of accessories this year, Hyperborea, that is modelled on the structure of a dragonfly’s wing and also functions as a structure on the architectural scale. The small-cell clustered systems work as a porous façade and the black “veins” in the dragonfly’s wings are the main framework. Unlike frame or lattice structures, the dragonfly wing system adapts to the distribution of tensions and combines in itself several solutions instead of one, these being girder system, lattice and honeycomb structure.

Creating such systems while embarked on a search for form has given architects the opportunity to compose materials on different scales, from nano to macro, intersecting and encountering other disciplines. The architect Julia Köerner, who besides her collaboration with fashion designer Iris van Herpen has just completed her first collection of clothing designed by herself, considers it important to work with architects – she sees them as having the ability to thinking about the structural whole. The combination of mathematical algorithms, a material’s operating logic and aesthetics allows these complicated spatial structures to be generated.

Fascinated by the natural world, fashion designers are looking more and more to architects, who in the process of generating technological and mathematical systems have had to learn about and start controlling organic forms. Complex geometry and mutations are the twin grails for modern design. In the future, people won’t shop online for a readymade product, but for an algorithm, the pattern, size and design can be altered in a few seconds to fit the customer’s scanned body. The result is a custom-made object.

The architectural body is finding new, unprecedented materiality and geometry. We are surrounded by surfaces that constructively support us, breathing structures and moving facades. The best way of experimenting or immediately implementing these is a small scale – a scale that is closest to the flesh, for bodies inside the architectural body.

*Originally published in Estonian Architural Review MAJA 2-2015