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122. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This evening I am faced with the task of giving you the third lecture which is, probably, for me the most difficult one because I would like to convey to you, in a way, the most intimate part of the work. This part is the result of an addition of ideas, sculptures, small figures and drawings that have generated this or that building. And in my showing you these it is like the cook who wants to give to other people - especially to the young people - his secrets - what kind of grass, or what kind of plant, or what kind of things he has been mixing to give this or that particular taste. |
123. But also, there is something else that I would very much like to underline in the beginning. Although the work is very personal in nature, it is also the addition of many things that I have learned during my life. The approach of different artists. The approach of the idea of art. The approach of the idea of the art of engineering, the art of architecture. And how these things can be linked together. So what I want to give you is quite a lot. For this, I will speak with very simple words because it is the most easy way to communicate and because, in this manner, I can most directly relate to the drawings and images that I will show you.
124. In the first two lectures I began with small sculptures made from the architectural blocks of my children. They were not very big - something like one foot wide. In both, the problem was how to hold a stone hanging from these machines, and, if you look, it is only the change in the placement of the bearing (I want, specifically to use this word which is an engineering word) that creates two different ways of ordering the forces. In the first case, the forces are working parallel, and in the other, they are crossing each other. But in fact, it is exactly the same exercise - how to hold a stone. Relative to this, there are several things that I would like to emphasize. Firstly, to hold a stone is, itself, something important because you are working against the tendency of the stone to fall. I would like you to remember the scientist who once received an apple on his head and this started him thinking about why the apple hit him on the head. This elementality is very important. We are living in a field of forces and gravity is something that is immediate to us. Probably, our bodies would be built completely differently if gravity, or the other forces around us, were other than they are.
125. Another beautiful thing to think about is that the sculptures hold together because the weight of the stone is activating the system. This means that, if the stone was not there, it would be very difficult to hold this machine together. So, the weight, or the permanency of gravity, is also something that is materially present. The sculpture stays together because gravity is there and gravity is a constant situation. What would happen if I were to cut the cord that transfers the weight of the stone through the whole system? It is very simple - the stone would fall down. And then, also, the whole structure. When the stone falls down, a movement is produced. This means that the presence of force is always related to a movement that cannot be established prior to its activation. Consider, for a moment, that forces are like crystallized movement. This is, in my opinion, quite a beautiful understanding because even in its static condition, in the most stable thing, movement is hidden. A movement is there. And because of that, I went from the idea of force and form, which I talked about in the previous lecture, showing you my bridges, to the idea of movement and form which is much more difficult to represent especially in stable figures such as these machines. But, with our imaginations and the images, I think we might get it.
126. As I have been holding these conferences in an autobiographic way, I would like to start by talking about three projects that were done while I was a student at the ETH in Zürich. The first is a very small construction for a roof in which movement was important. I designed this dynamic model for an articulated roof structure. By pulling a cord, the roof halves display a sequence of movement.
127. Another project was done with a group of students under the direction of a gentleman called Jurg Altherr. We built a swimming pool hanging from the cupola of the ETH. It was hung by 24 wires that supported 24 ribs and a skin of polycarbonate that was 1.2 millimeters thick. It contained 24 cubic meters of water and it was even possible to swim in it although it was not possible to remain for long because the pressure of one's feet might have broken or deformed the membrane.
128. Different from, but not unrelated to, this idea of holding something that is heavy - even if it something as inconsistent as water, I also dedicated myself during this period of time to the study of the explicit movement of polyhedra. My doctoral thesis was called: On the Foldability of Frames, and a basic idea behind it was the study of topology and the way in which a polyhedron - a very complex polyhedron - could be folded or could be changed through transformation to become a bundle n which all the lines are parallel. In fact, the whole process of changing its shape to recuperate the major polyhedron which approximates a dome - one that does not look very extremely good. But the focus was on the complex geometrical process of changing shape from bundle to half sphere.
129. Another source of interest that I would like to emphasize is nature, and the very simple and pure observation of nature, meaning looking in a straightforward and pure way at the natural objects that exist around us: the trees, grass, flowers, or whatever the natural object. One early model that I made was an attempt to take the idea of the structure of a tree and apply it to an idea of a group of trees done in steel and glass. And, no longer thinking in the specific quality of the object itself but, rather, through a kind of systematic approach to the object, I decided to make them transformable. Transformable meaning, in this case, that they change their form. So, the squares of the tops of the trees - of the roof - turn around the points in which they are supported and the entire roof opens through a mechanical transformation.
130. The idea of the trees was incorporated into the project for the gallery in Toronto which I spoke about in my first lecture - the gallery being made of two rows of trees. However, in this project, the idea of the mechanically-transformable was not incorporated into the trees but into a very large openable window that separates the gallery, which is quiet, from Heritage square which is a more noisy and animated space.
131. Continuing with the idea of the tree and the alignment of trees, which is an idea that is quite general, in my opinion, we are now building this station in Lisbon. Here, I used the same vocabulary, specifically choosing this approach because the city of Lisbon is, not only a very beautiful city, but one that has this very, very soft character of an Atlantic city. There are hills, small parks and the space is very transparent with a beautiful quality of light. In this context, I did not want to do a very strong structure, like in Lyon, but a soft one - an open structure with the trains passing on one side and the view passing on the other side.
132. Now, I would like to come to another topic that is also very important in architecture and that is the topic of the anatomy. It is the idea of reading in the human body, structures. Or, reading and appreciating in the human body, a sense of architecture. And this is very important because whatever we do, the magnitude or the dimension of a thing is always related to our body. And we also are in the middle of space. So, architecture, in a very natural way, is purely human related because it is done for, and with, people. This makes the anatomy a very powerful source of inspiration. And not just in the Renaissance sense where the human anatomy was the basis for rules and proportional systems, as it was also for the Modulor in the 20th century, but also anatomy as the idea of the hand - the idea of an open hand - the idea of the eye, mouth, the skeleton. This is a rich source of ideas and inspiration. And in the tectonic of our own bodies you can discover an internal logic that can be used in the design of a building. I should do a small drawing to explain this. I have done some studies of faces and sketches of the eye. This is the human eye and this could be abstracted to such a figure. So, as much as you could have an eye like this then, in a symmetrical way we could generate a particular shape.
133. I would also like to emphasize, here, the idea that pure plastic research is important - to recognize in the phenomenon of architecture, its purely plastic or sculptural aspect, which is, I believe, one of the very, very important transcendental faces of architecture. And this is not in contradiction with the functional aspects of architecture, nor is it with the structural aspects. The wings of the station in Lyon, for example, take their geometry from a sculpture that was done previously as a study on the eye.
134. More abstract than my studies on the eye are the studies of how our head is supported over our shoulders. Why and how I can turn my head. The entire mass is supported only in the vertebrae atlas and so the head can move. And this wonder of moving the head - rotating it, inclining it, and both simultaneously - is quite an interesting principle to follow and, in a way, quite dramatic if you look at my sketches of the heads. So, in a series of sculptures I have been studying how to hold the head - that I begin by associating with a pure volume and mass - a cube - trying to hold it with a minimum amount of elements. For example, with a very, very thin spindle and a series of cables around it. Or, there is also the situation in which the head does not even touch the body. It is just suspended, like someone who is very anxious, or has a lot of problems, or something like that. Yet, even hanging, the head is still in equilibrium.
135. In a later study there is another idea in which the mass - the head - is supported vertically by one element and a second oblique element is used to push it back - to fix it in its horizontal position. In the section of the Stadelhofen Station, the same principle is used but the mass that is represented as a cube in the sculpture is here given by the earth.
136. But, the anatomical references can get even more complex. I like very much the purity of a single idea, just as the pure expression of a single letter, "AAAA", or of a single note can be a very powerful thing. However, one does not have to use only "A", or "B" - single sounds - but can also make words which means putting letters together, creating meaning and making sentences. Complexity comes from a superpositioning of ideas in a coherent way. This means that, while each one of those ideas is capable of living independently, you can also put them one over the other, like a painter who works with, not only black and white, but several colors in a painting. Or, puts a lot of blue in order to capture the horizon, that you do not see, behind the painting - as Cezanne did. So, for example, in Stadelhofen, in addition to the reference to the propped head, there is also the idea of the hand - the open hand - which is extremely powerful and you can represent it throughout a project like you see here. You have the profile of the hand and it becomes a leitmotif for the configuration of the station. And even here, it is the pergola, and here, it is the element in the back, and even here down twice you generate the cross-section. So that in many points there is a gesture that is literally deriving from the geometry, or wants to - just an idea of emphasizing and repeating this idea of a part of your anatomy in a project. The use of the anatomy in this manner, together with the siting of the station - the fact that it is hidden, that it is almost a non-station - creates an intimate and almost secret aspect.
137. Another important series of plastic studies, of sculptures, goes a step further. Having described the head already, these now describe the spine. They describe how our body stands up. The spine is made of vertebrae which are represented in the sculptures, in a very elemental way, as a series of cubes. In the body the spine curves and concludes in the pelvis. In the sculpture, I make this very abstract. The basic element is a cube in white marble, two cones, and a wire behind. And then there is another one that is repeated four times. To stop this repetition in an orderly way, the cord going through all the cubes is attached to a small ball.
138. Once you have the concept of the spine, it is very easy to move the elements around, reshaping the spine in several ways. In one case, I staggered the position of the cubes around the central cord. In another, they are stepped out and back so that the idea of movement is much more explicit. Although the material is the same, the hieratic look, or the rigidity, has disappeared so that you now have the idea of a curving spine. Also quite important is how our spine twists - how it turns around an axis - and how it bends and reaches. There are some other studies that deal with this movement and, suddenly, what before was quite a shy movement, becomes very explicit.
139. In some later studies, I changed the geometry of the cube in order to make the sculptures bigger. In one project that is 12 meters - forty feet - I wanted to create a more organic shape and, so, I moved away from the cube, using double pyramids, or octahedrons , instead. There are a series of seven of these octahedrons in concrete, one after the other, each held back by two pins and a single cable. At this scale, the sculpture in now more than an abstract form - it is also a construction principle. The seven pieces are counter balanced by two very long legs and this sculpture became the basis for the bridge I built in Seville.
140. So, step-by-step, starting in a very pure and abstract study of the human body, and anatomical relationships of weight, one can move through to a major problem in steel. When you start building a sculpture that is 12 meters the construction problem begins there. How to hold things, how to choose the material - these issues become critical. You have to deal with concrete. You have to deal with cables. You have to deal with supports and with tensions. With transport and many other things. And this is the beautiful transgression, that I showed you at the beginning of this lecture; when we wanted to build the pool below the cupola of the ETH, the construction was a very particular challenge because below the cupola, under the swimming pool, was the library. Can you imagine? All that water over the library.
141. In particular views of the bridge in Seville , you can recognize the very abstract origin in the bridge's idea. When you look at the bridge from the front or from the back, you do not think in a bridge. Instead, it is the expression of something autonomous. At this point, I would like to underline something about architecture and engineering. A plastic, or a sculptural, exercise is very beautiful in itself because you feel free. You are only bound in terms of the limits you set, saying, for example, I would like to be extremely orthodox. I will work only with cubes. I will use the A, the B, the C. I will do poems. Whatever the specific terms you are just using a few words. You have limited your vocabulary, but you are still free because the only goal that you are pursuing is a pure plastic achievement. This is what architecture and engineering are all about. You only bound yourself. When you are dealing with the construction like a bridge or a building, even if it is a plastic event, you are bound by functional needs. However, on the other hand, you have a big advantage and that is the scale. No sculpture in itself will ever reach the scale of a bridge or a building. It is this that gives architecture, and particularly architecture that is integrated with engineering, a significance that goes beyond that of sculpture.
142. Continuing with my studies on anatomy I went forward with another idea - the idea of a walking man. In a very simple way, of course, because it is very difficult to represent and Michelangelo has already done it so well. In this idea, the movement is implied movement and the rules are very clean. In the sculptures done on this theme I was again working purely with cables and cubes, and the cubes do not touch each other.
143. In the telecommunications tower for the Olympic Games in Barcelona, in this particular project, the idea of the anatomy and the human figure plays an important role. The tower is done using steel. There are two arms that hold the platform of telecommunications. At the top and the shaft of the tower is the body. One also finds the idea of the eye, again, in an opening at the back of the tower , in the base. The notion of the eye, you see at, which is a fairly big opening. You see here the support of the tower -is very tiny- and the water. The span of the door is something like 36 meters. Also at the base of the tower is a wave - a solid water wave - which I also represented in a sculpture done in bronze, but as a wave that can move. If you saw the wave at the base of the tower you would see it move, and it represents in a way, a water wave that can effectively move. This is our garden. This is the study of the fountain; it was a project for the Fondation Cartier. Here is what I told you: it moves.
144. One can recognize in the telecommunications tower themes of the anatomy - the eye, the wave - that belong to the tower particularly, but also are part of an ongoing experimentation that is separate from the particularities of each project. And in other buildings as well. The idea of the spindle support is studied in several sculptures and it appears in several of the projects: in wood, it is repeated many times to make the folded 'v' sections of the cupola roof for the entire space in Wohlen; or in steel, as a single element it holds up the shell of the Wohlen library roof.
145. Another one of the sculptures experiments with thoughts on how to work with light and the change of the light over a special surface such as polished corrugated metal. A piece of corrugated metal is held on a prism in wood that has been cut at an angle. The upper part of the block of wood from which the prism has been cut is brought up to the top to be supported by the corrugated metal. The metal is just cut into the wood and, because of the rigidity of the corrugated metal, the block is held on top without falling. Because of the rigidity provided by the corrugations you get this stable figure. But, also, it is very nice when you move around this figure because you see these waves in black and silver that constantly change. Or, if you put it into different ambient conditions you find thst it is extremely sensitive to the light. From this study, we projected the façade in corrugated aluminum for Ernsting Warehouse. Other research done for the making of a mechanical eye was used in the large doors for the same warehouse. The mechanism that opens and closes the eye is very similar to the aluminum hinging mechanism for the doors. In fact, things - my work, ideas and references - are no more complicated than this.
146. Here, I would like to talk about some research that is, again, related to movement, but more specifically, to simple structures that can move. We built a pavilion for the State of Kuwait in the World's Fair in Seville and it is done using a series of wooden half arches that can open. This structure covers a terrace whose floor is made of translucent marble. Below this terrace is the interior part of the pavilion and during the day, sunlight is filtered through the marble to light up the interior space. The marble is glued to laminated glass so that you can walk on it. The roof elements are supported by members in concrete and each one of them can be activated by an independent motor - a small motor - so that very slowly the whole roof transforms and opens. Because each element is independent and can be opened in a controlled way, you can direct the different stages and shapes of the roof's opening. When the wings are completely open, they generate a space related to the sky and, in the movement of their opening, one can imagine the hand and their fingers moving - bent down serving to protect the space and then opening palms up to cup the sky.
147. A sculpture that we did for the courtyard of the Museum of Modern Art. in New York, is beside a weeping willow. The branches of the willow are curved - gently curved. Also, the branches of the sculpture are curved and they fall slowly - each one turned by a wheel - to almost touch the sculpture of the 'River' by Aristide Maillol, which is below on the surface of a pool. We also took this sculpture to Venice for the Biennale. It was put in front of the Ca Foscari, which is the university. Here, also, it formed a sympathetic relationship with the water particularly and with the Venetian bridges.
148. Another project, just to remind you, was my first attempt at movement with concrete done in a pavilion for the Swiss Association of Concrete Makers which I talked about in my first talk.
150. A leaf that hangs and can turn around, like a kind of windmill, in black marble and brass. In the detail of the hanging point, I tried to express the extreme limits of the material. The leaf is extremely thin yet the point from the support goes into the interior of the leaf at this detail and it can still hang and turn around.
151. A balançoire - a seesaw- that can move over a disk in polished black granite.
152. Two stones and a leaf. The leaf is supported by a wire that is held in tension by the weight of the stones which are, also, themselves, kept from falling by the wire.
153. A leaf jumping out from a stone.
154. A bronze head held by a wire, using also a black stone that is cut in the middle. Through the weight of the bronze part and the wire and stone, the entire composition is held in equilibrium.
This is a very early figure and it is influenced by the work of Constantine Brancusi which I admire very much.
155. A reel that can circulate on two cords coming from the idea of a toy on a string.
156. Another project in which the idea of structures that move was explored, this time helping very much to resolve certain functional conflicts, was the project for a community in Alcoy. Alcoy is a city south of Valencia and the problem, here, was to make this community hall in a very popular plaza in the center of the city. The municipality is towards the end of the plaza and at the other end is the church, so we decided to do the community hall in the middle of the square, but underground. We wanted to build a fountain at one end and the entry into the underground hall at the other end, but because this is a popular place, it is sometimes full of people, and so we had to do a fountain on top of which people can stand. The motion is possible by two plates that cause the parts to move in a certain manner. Also, the entrance to the underground closes up to become part of the ground so that people can stand on it, if necessary. This is Alcoy Commune Hall subway entrance. This is with daylight. There are openings in the roof through which daylight can filter in. The white light you see is daylight.
157. Going down the staircase of the entry, you arrive at a space that is formed of many, many arches. They are all equal but, because the square is trapezoidal, what starts as one arch on one end becomes two arches at the other end. The intersection of the arches, purely geometrically, generates a longitudinal half arch that spans from one side to the other. So this double shape merges into one, and in between, the crossing gesture generates the longitudinal arch that carries the center of the square.
158. Sculptural studies : The foldability of geometrical elements.
159. This case here is exactly about the foldability of a geometrical element. This is an inside-out inversion of surfaces.
160. From a series of sculptural studies that were done based on the idea of movement and, specifically, the idea of topological surfaces that are generated by straight lines which revolve around multiple centers, came another set of studies for a roof structure. In the sculptures, straight lines generate the folding curving surfaces.
161. In the architectural studies, these straight lines became single elements of construction. You have a shape on the ground, then one central inclined ridge line, and the single construction elements connect the profile of the shape - which is a circle in one case and a half-ellipse in another - to the inclined line. This same study was also a source for ideas about how to make this type of form move and open. The two halves connected by the central line are like two hands that are hinged together along the length of the thumbs. They open, up, and close, down, around the axis of this hinge. This is a small project that I submitted for a competition in Los Angeles. It is a small chapel for the sculpture of Junípero Serra. and I thought that I would do a design at the end of the Olvera Boulevard that concludes it where there is a small square. And then there are two ramps that go to a small chapel. And then I would place the sculpture of Junípero Serra in the interior. You see here the ramp going in.
162. The proposed extension for the Milwaukee Art Museum which we are now building, uses a variation of this roof structure that we had studied before. I will just give you a few words on the project, in order to not get too far away from architecture. The original building, by Saarinen, and the extension done by David Kahler, something like 20 years ago, sit on the axis of East Madison Street. In my proposal, I took the axis of Wisconsin Avenue and linked the museum back to the city with a bridge along its axis. The existing museum is, itself, like a bridge and, in my opinion, what I have done is very respectful of the idea of this museum and its relationship to the city. In the existing museum you have a bridge and a sculpture-like volume in front of the lake. In my proposal you also have a bridge and another volume in front of the lake. While the existing volume is compact and closed, this new volume is transparent. A very shallow shed building links the new extension to the old extension permitting, from the height of the bridge, a view of the horizon of the lake beyond.
163. The center pavilion is the reception hall for the museum. Its roof can be opened and closed, and its form is generated by the studies on geometry and the sculptures that I spoke about before. In this case, the structure functions as a large brise soleil that can move in response to the sun through the hours of the day. The bridge and the spire will be seen from far away so I tried, through an addition of a bridge, and of a roof, to create a whole unity with the idea of wings, the idea of the sails, and the lake that is behind. My idea was not to interfere with the existing museum that is extremely solid, but to create something that is extremely transparent and soft that refers back to the original museum.
164. Now, so as to conclude with architecture, I will speak about another American project that I like very much. This is the cathedral of Saint John the Divine which was never completed. It was started by LaFarge, continued by Cram, with some work done on the vaults by Rafael Guastavino. Only the nave and the apses exist today. In the project for the cathedral I thought of the idea of comparing the cathedral with a tree , you see, with the roots, the earth, and green at the top. In fact, one of the topics of the competition was to create a so-called bioshelter. The bioshelter was supposed to be in the interior of the cathedral, but I thought it would be better outside, or over the cathedral. The idea of bioshelter on top derives from an attempt to improve these dark and closed spaces of cathedrals. You can visit these spaces in many, many cathedrals; even in Nôtre Dame you can observe that this part is closed and dark; and the idea that I proposed is to change the roof -which is provisional today- and make a glazing structure. And then, create a kind of garden above the cathedral by planting here at the top -which it is possible. The vaults of the cathedral, in the interior will stay as they are. And it is interesting that -because the plan of the cathedral follows this geometry, the garden, will reproduce the temple itself, which is a very romantic idea. You can hear it in some of Beethoven's musical fantasies, for example, Fantasy for Strings, Orchestra and Piano, which is otherwise called In der Tempel der Natur, in the temple of nature. So, conceiving nature as temple, as much as Western religion sees the human body as a temple, you can read the interior of this shape, you see, as the idea of the human body. And I mean, this kind of mystic thought, you see, that reaches from very far away in the conception of a building, is in my opinion -together with this idea that we submitted- still there. Even if it was difficult to bring the contemporary notion of sacralization of nature: To approach the natural world with respect, to approach to the landscape with much more respect - this is a concerns of architects and engineers. And I would like very much to underline this, without going too far into this theme, but the integration of buildings into the landscape is something very important. I think that in the basic idea that we submitted for Saint John the Divine was found an interesting equilibrium. You see the transparent roofs and the triangular segments that are removable, they can turn and let the rain in; and the spire. This is filmed in my hometown in Valencia, in what is probably the most beautiful Gothic hall, civic hall.
165. I wanted to make the glass roofs of the garden openable so as to let the rain go into the garden and collect the water. Between the and the structure you would have to put a waterproof area, of course, so that the vaults stay dry but this is possible and the garden could work as a true garden. The triangular sections of the glass roof work in a similar way to the big windows that are in the gallery of Toronto. They just turn around an axis. The roof was designed with a very, very high spire and there were ideas for using this spire for thermal purposes in order to create a micro-climate at the interior of the roof.
166. My wife has helped me very much in these talks and she has prepared a video that shows some of these structures in movement. So, we will show you this video which takes its name from the book of Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre: "Movement, Structure and the work of Santiago Calatrava".
Thank you very much to everybody.