The installation at the SCI-Arc Gallery in Los Angeles by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) represents an evolution of architectural methodologies related to self-supporting, curved surface geometries. The show combines parametric design (algorithmic form generation) with research by Frei Otto, Felix Candela, and Heinz Isler among others from the generation that preceded Hadid. By integrating form-finding methods, Hadid and her team expand upon Frei Otto’s material explorations and create double curved surfaces through interactive and intuitive computational simulations.
Photo by Karim Attoui, Courtesy of SCI-Arc
Initially the installation was realized with fabric as a form-finding device, using intuitive digital tools such as GPU accelerated particle spring simulation and subdivision surfaces. The physical prototype created at SCI-Arc consists of fiberglass and resin shell structures with wood framing along the finished edge. Originally there were to be five shells but only two of them were completed with fiberglass and two other structures were sketched out with wood framing to give viewers an idea of how the forms fit together.
Photo by Karim Attoui, Courtesy of SCI-Arc
Keynote Speaker architect Sir Peter Cook, Royal Academy of Arts, London, signing his book.© Yale School of Architecture, photo by Susan Surface.
In 1632 Rembrant van Rijn painted The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicholaes Tulp, in which a doctor reveals the internal mechanics of the body for a rapt audience. A sense of wonderment envelops the scene as the doctor pulls taut the subject’s tendons with a pair of medical shears, while a meditative gaze and raised hand give him the presence of a divine figure. This striking image serves as an unlikely metaphor for the recently held symposium “Is Drawing Dead?” at the Yale School of Architecture from February 9-11. While its title suggests an ideological showdown, we witnessed something more like the anatomy lesson. The analog and digital camps may have given competing testimony of the role and nature (and vitality) of drawing, but what was shared by all was the articulation of the mechanics of the process that creates architecture.
