1 Internet Hiroshi Toyoizumi [email protected] [email protected].
Cecil Balmond and Toyo Ito
Transcript of Cecil Balmond and Toyo Ito
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Toyo Ito: The first time I collaborated with you, Cecil, was the
Serpentine Gallery project. Since then we have collaborated
on a project in Oslo and the ongoing Selfridges project. Ourrelationship is not that of an architect and an engineer but that
of two partners working together on a project. My own approach
to architecture has changed considerably as a result of those
projects. It is thanks in large measure to you that I have been
having such an exciting time.
Cecil Balmond: Thank you. For me, it is important having
met you, because I believe you understand the mobile sense
of geometry I speak of. I have a major collaboration with
Rem Koolhaas, exploring many types of exciting projects like
ZKM, Jussieu, Agadir, Seattle Library... many kinds of projects
in which we explore structure as episode. In the traditional
assumption of structure, elements are uniformly distributed.But episode means specific moments of structure, like in the
Kunsthal that act as catalyst to the architecture. Recently I
have been developing the idea of structure as trace. You seem
to understand more than most the idea of algorithm, the idea
of sequential movements, the idea of serial structures... a thing
that is changing all the time and that is different. I think you
are the only significant architect now who is committed to
looking at these ideas. So, for me it is a very important moment
to collaborate with you. I continue my research, but it is nice
to have occasions to build projects as well. I also enjoy it. It is
the way I have always worked: in collaboration. It is impossible
otherwise. I personally make no distinction between architecture
and engineering up to the concept stage. We are completelyequal in creating ideas. After the concept, of course there is a
separation of thinking, more about architectural concerns as
entrance, exit, color, texture... and then there is an engineering
or scientific concern to check with gravity and forces. But I
deliberately do not think of those things first, because it will
restrict the invention. So the mind is totally free to explore. I
also have a belief that first comes pattern, then configuration,
and only after that comes material, and after that structure1. It
is a different approach to normal engineering, because I think if
we are to explore form, we have to be creating new a language
to explore configuration.
Ito:Would you explain in greater detail this idea ofconfiguration?
Balmond: For instance if you have a table, you put four legs
or columns underneath it, for support. Structurally the center
of gravity is in the middle of the table. We make a diagram for
the engineer to calculate, but this is not about architecture. If
I want to make new space, I have to study the configuration of
four points in space. To create something new I can move two of
the four points outwardly, and change the support arrangement
in plan and section, like the Maison Bordeaux. But the center
of gravity is exactly the same. By looking at the configuration
of four points in relation to the plane, the Maison Bordeaux is
created as a thing of surprise, a levitation. It is not a table likethe Villa Savoye.
ZKM
,
Conversation: Cecil Balmond and Toyo Ito"Concerning Fluid Spaces"London, November 26 in Carlow House, Carlow Street, at 8 AM
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Ito:An extremely static space then begins to move and change
into a fluid space. Ive long been interested in that notion of
fluid space. I imagine it, not so much as an architectural space,
as the space of Noh. Noh is a traditional performance art of
Japan. I dont know if youve ever seen Noh, but there is only
an abstract stage about 5.4 meters square in plan. Actors enter
the stage by way of a bridge. Noh actors always move quite
deliberately. Its almost like looking at a film in slow motion.
The actors movements are extremely slow and abstract butcontinuous. Through the dance of actors the abstract space
changes into a fluid space. Ive long wondered how such a
continuous and continually moving space might be achieved
in architecture. Ive become convinced since meeting you that
achieving that in architecture is possible.
Balmond: I also have been thinking about it for a long time,
how to create a sequence in space through a tectonic form. We
are stuck with certainty, static certainty. Structure cannot move,
otherwise it would be very scary. It is all fixed. But the problem
with that is that we have lost the idea of what made these spaces
originally! The original Greek idea of ratio, a very abstract idea,
for me is like a response to as what you are saying about theNoh theatre. To draw a rectangle, to the ancient people who
5.4m2
Sketches of the configuration of four points and Maison Bordeaux by Cecil Balmond
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started to invent geometry, it was about the energy of one line
in relation to the energy of the other line. It was not about the
shape. Importantly it was a ratio or frozen time constricting
movements in space. Imagine a piece of string and a bead you
put on that piece of string. When you move the bead slowly,
the ratio of each side to the other changes. When you start in
the middle, you have the arithmetical mean. Move the bead a
little more, you get the golden ratio. You can move the bead
and have what is called, geometric mean, harmonic mean. Allof these come from just a movement of a position in a line. So
for me classical geometry is about taking different positions, in
time like the Noh actor: slowly the position is changing. That
is classical. I take those ideas and transform them today into
a more mobile idea of a continuum. And so I agree with you,
I think the movement, the slow changing of space, and the
feeling of how it changes, gives us the dimension of time in the
tectonic.
Ito: I think youre right. The same is true of the human body.
If one observes it in a static condition, nothing happens.
However, the moment a Noh actor, for example, begins moving,
an unstable condition is created. That instability, in seekingto restore stability, calls forth the next instability. There is a
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succession of states. In the past Ive been imagining stable, static
shapes such as squares and pyramids, but for you geometry is
something generated by a more dynamic movement. To start tomove is to invite instability; spatial tension is heightened all at
once. The successive generation of tension makes space exciting.
Balmond: I think that is an important moment, when you
break with symmetry, you have a moment of instability.
Architecturally I think those moments are very interesting. If
you catch the moment...
Ito: I found it interesting, when you lectured in Kumamoto,
to hear you say that in structural analysis an optimal solution
exists only for a certain instant. That is because up to now weve
been taught that there is a flow of forces that is most rational
for any proposed form. When I heard your remark, it occurredto me that what you said was applicable, not just to structure
or space, but to the process by which architecture is designed.
From that moment I began to feel the approach to architectural
design should also be nonlinear.
The modernist approach is to decide first what the best solution
is. One must then design the work in just that way. Deviating
from that initial solution is considered bad. An approach where
one thinks as one designs an approach where one cant see
what the next step ought to be until one gets to a certain point
and one is continually discovering unfamiliar spaces is more
contemporary in character.
Balmond: Also I think if you have a perfect idea in yourmind when you design, you are designing in the assumption
of an answer, which is 99% of what happens. People think of
an answer and they make a design. If you make it a different
way, so that it is evolving in design, more flexible, more as an
approach as you are saying, the interest there is that you get
moments, different moments, as the design is evolving in the
tectonic. Something happens to the space. Because you dont
have the answer in a way, you are looking for it and somehow
that is expressed in the architecture. It is more interesting.
Ito:At todays meeting on the Coimbra project, you suggested
a structural idea in response to the image I proposed. It wasnt
so much a structural idea as it was a conceptual architecturalidea. It was extremely abstract. It was an image of a space of
abstract movement, like the space of Noh actors. Since it isnt
simply a structural analysis of the form we imagined, we had no
alternative but to return once more to the question of what sort
of space it was to be, that is, the original image. We began to use
our imagination once more, but from this new starting point.
Such a process is extremely unstable but extremely exciting.
Balmond: I see a building as a static certainty, but if it is to be
a piece of architecture, it should be a dynamic improbability.
Philosophically I do this deliberately, because everything is
conspiring with gravity to be like so (hitting the table). Nothing
will ever change. Because gravity will never change. It is alwaysthere. How do you explore new for me configurations,
99%
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new space? I am interested in space, as you are. What is its
meaning? How do we move in it? What is it for us? And I made
a statement to myself, like a manifesto, saying: the building isa static certainty, the column, the beam, the floor... everything
is certain. It has to be, but against this, I push a concept that a
piece of architecture has to have a dynamic improbability in it,
to be interpreted, changing, and always being interesting to the
people.
And yes, you are right, when I think of the model for Coimbra,
I see a rotation in space, an orbit, and I quickly talked to you
this morning about electron and spiraling orbits, a particle that
is moving in a line in space differently. This is the abstraction,
and the architecture will be one down from the abstraction.
And the structure of the architecture will be one down from
the architecture. But if it is done well, the structure and the
architecture will describe it. In fact the word structure andarchitecture I find very difficult then. They are the same. The
abstraction has infinite potential. So we can do a hundred other
rings, but only one ring will be made in Coimbra, which will be
a reduced reality of structure. The real reality is the architecture
of the abstraction.
Ito: In the Serpentine Gallery, I was touched by the fact that,
confronted by a new spatial proposal, and by its instability,
people became, not tense, but relaxed. There was something
there that liberated people from the pressure exerted by spatial
hierarchy; people felt free. I was happy to see that.
Balmond: I think the Serpentine Gallery was a very delightfulproject, because everybody who went, I agree, enjoyed being
there. There was something very strange with all the lines of
structure, all these movements. It was yet not overbearing. It
was effortless. A very strange situation. If we made a box, and
put structure in a traditional way, this would not have been
the same. Something happened because somehow, people
realized like a billiard ball on the table, when you hit the ball
they suddenly sensed the movement. Although they didnt
understand, they did feel something. That is the dynamic
improbability I talk about. But of course it is static and you hit
the steel, and little children like to sit on the steel, because it is
chunky.
Ito: I want to ask you about algorithms. In the Serpentine
Gallery, you developed a structural interpretation from an
algorithm based on a spiraling square. With Selfridges, the
columns dance on each floor; that is, the columns all lean
in different directions. The rules determining the angles of
the columns are created by a kind of algorithm. At first, we
thought that your approach based on algorithms was a sign
of a preoccupation with a kind of Western rationalism rather
than the pursuit of randomness. However, you explained in
our previous discussion in Tokyo that drawing lines at random
results, not in the generation of new spaces, but the very
opposite that is, it is apt to lead to conventional spaces. One is
more apt to achieve an unexpected freedom using an algorithm.Id like to hear a bit more of your thoughts on that.
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Algorithm for inclined columns of Selfridges project
Column geometry of Selfridges project
Column arrangement of Selfridges project
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Balmond: I have to answer at length, because this is at the
heart of my philosophy.
First I agree, if we think what is random, it is not random, wesoon run out of ideas. If we took a big square and try to draw
lines randomly, it wont be as beautiful as the Serpentine.
Almost certainly. In fact you and I started drawing lines. Then I
said No, lets go into certain rules.
There is something about structure, deep structure, that
the human mind detects, and if you have an algorithm that
starts with a simple motive, and it begins to move, very soon
you have a complexity, a hybrid condition, a juxtaposition,
in a strange unpredictable way. The reading of architecture
becomes genuinely more surprising, more inventive than if you
worked on traditional methods and then tried to do something
interesting. When you try to be surprising by intuition it is not
as surprising as the answer from an algorithm. So, the beliefI have is, that an algorithm to a rule would produce a more
interesting configuration than if you would do it by memory.
Also the field is huge and you can zoom in at different scales
and find different answers. So the algorithm power in the next
project we do together, should be at its full extent: the algorithm
is also landscape and local event. In a small condition, it is the
pavilion, the building. In a micro condition, it is the furniture
or the tiling. This arises due to patterns having no scale.
Orbits of algorithmic inclined columns of Selfridges project
Points of algorithmic inclined columns of Selfridges project
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Algorithms grow all the necessary detail.
It is intellectually a powerful way to think. The process is
additive and growing at the same time, which is always avery interesting condition. It is additive and also jumping,
conceptually. The thing about algorithm is that it is time-
dependent. As the line is embedded in time, you have speed.
I think the idea of motion is important. I think these are
interesting things to explore in a tectonic.
I thought of all of this to have a different attack on modernism.
I was tired of the minimal tendencies that strip things out.
We can do them, but in the end it becomes more glass, more
minimum steel, more box typology and cleanliness, and it
becomes like a clinical thing as in a hospital: terminally dead.
Nowhere to go in inventive terms. So, I thought of how to
break out of this, and particularly as an engineer, trained as a
scientist. How do you break out of the box, the cage? That iswhy with Rem Koolhaas I began experimenting with episodes
of structures, and consequently developed the idea of tracing.
Episode is juxtaposed moments of structure. It is dramatic. Trace
moves continuously with time as in the Serpentine.
I remember your lecture ten to fifteen years ago at the R.I.B.A.
In the very first moment of the talk, the first slide you showed,
completely interested me even years ago before we knew each
other. The first slide if I remember was of a river, and the
river is flowing. When a river is flowing in turns, every now and
then it forms a quiet moment. But then, if you add little energy,
that point dissolves and moves to another location. So, when
you look at the river, you have still moments and yet constant
motion. I felt in this talk, there was a similar spirit, followingmy thoughts.
Ito: I remember. I was showing photographs of a meandering
river and computer graphics of the dynamics of eddies
generated in a water current and talking about my concept of
architectural space based on the notion of pools and flows. I had
that sort of image of architecture in mind, but there was this
contradiction in that as design progressed, architecture always
became a thing with a definite boundary.
Balmond: At that time I was exploring these ideas and its
really delightful for me personally after all these years to have a
collaboration with you now on the same concerns.I think it is very important for architecture today that we
continue to explore this area. People, like my colleague here,
Daniel Bosia, are completely inventing a whole series of
algorithm for anything. It is amazing what he can do. Not just
me now, but a group of people, a young generation of ARUP
is changing how we think about structure. And it is not about
structure. What we explore here in my Advanced Geometry Unit
is a new Architecture, which in turn is all about deep structure.
I see myself as a kind of natural philosopher! In the old days
if you studied the things we are studying, you called yourself a
natural philosopher. Meaning one was interested in the structure
of things, not the ethics of the soul. And I am interested in how
things are organized. How does the world happen? How doesa molecule happen? And how does a building happen? This is
1015RIBA
CG
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what intrigues me. In that connection biology and cosmology
and economics have been moving into a new way of thinking
compared to 20 years ago. Architecture is not aware of it atall. Architecture has no idea that the world is changing, how it
thinks about organization in those areas. Ito-san now is aware
and touching it, but it is a whole area that is shifting. The idea
of string theory is that a vibration becomes the quarks, and the
fundamentals of matter are only vibrations.
I will draw you a very interesting diagram to finish. When
you take a piece of string and half it, this is the oldest string
theory, 2500 years old! and you vibrate it, you get a note, an
octave up. Musical harmony, western harmony, is in the ratios
of various lengths of a string being vibrated, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, the
octave, dominant, sub dominant. Like I drew the bead on a
line, when the bead is half way on the line, you get the octave.
The ratio is 1:2. When the bead is here, you get the ratio 2:3,which is the dominant. A key harmonic structure of Beethovens
9th symphony Ode to Joy is the dominant, the octave to the
dominant. When the bead is here, you get the ratio 3:4, which is
subdominant. Like the A-men notes in church hymns.
The Serpentine pavilion connect 1:2 to 1:3. Mathematically this
is identical to 2:3. And maybe, who knows, that is why it also
pleases people. It was music being made.
I didnt think this as we made it, but it was the simplest ratio. I
recently thought of this analogy.
Ito: On the one hand, architecture is a quite conceptual
thing existing at the leading edge of our consciousness. In the
consciousness, it can be weightless, and three-dimensionalcurved surfaces that twist and rotate in any way are quite
possible. On the other hand, however, architecture is a highly
conventional space in which we have continued to live in much
the same way since ancient times. Moreover, despite advances
in technology, architecture must still be constructed by what
are basically primitive methods. Architects all lacked the skill
or art to reconcile that space delineated in the forefront of
consciousness with that primitively-built, practical space. The
more we tried to introduce a conceptual space directly into
reality, the more evident became the gap between the two.
However, the emergence of structural designers such as yourself
has given architects a new opportunity. Youve shown architects
a way of thinking that enables us to escape the contradictionthat has been our fate until now. There is now the possibility
of realizing a fluid architecture, thanks to you. Still, it would
take only one misstep for one to lapse into expressionism.
Nevertheless, I believe a new, dynamic architecture can only be
achieved by taking this difficult, narrow path.
Translated Toyo Itos words from Japanese to English by Hiroshi
Watanabe.
20
2500
1:2
2:3
3:4
1:2
1:32:3
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1.
9,
, informal
Notes:
1. Structure in the conventional sense of calculation. But for me all of it is the
structure of architecture, of new space, not of traditional space.
Cecil Balmond
Cecil Balmond is Deputy Chairman of Arup. Born and educated in Sri Lanka
and then came to London for further post graduate studies. His interest lies in
the genesis of form using numbers, music and mathematics as vital sources. His
commitment to architecture and design has led to successful collaborations with
major international architects. Currently working with Rem Koolhaas on the
Concert Hall project in Porto and on the CCTV Headquarters building in Beijingand with Daniel Libeskind on the World Trade Centre.
Lectures and teaches at various architectural schools including: the Harvard
Graduate School of Architecture, Yale University School of Architecture, and the
University of Pennsylvania developing a radical programme on the generation
of form. His books include:Number 9 The Search for the Sigma Code which
explores the architecture and engineering beneath the surface of our decimal
number system andInformal a monograph on seminal projects with architects
Koolhaas, Libeskind, Siza and Van Berkel including essays and theory.
Sketch about string theory by Cecil Balmond
p. 46: Serpentine Gallery. Photo by
Kenich Suzuki /Shinkenchiku-sha.46