by: Lisa Delgado
Event: Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling Panel
Location: Center for Architecture, 09.02.08
Speakers: Ali Rahim — Director, Contemporary Architecture Practice; Hina Jamelle — Director, Contemporary Architecture Practice; Neil Cook — Designer, Reiser + Umemoto; Michael Overby — Designer, Reiser + Umemoto; Scott Marble — Partner, Marble Fairbanks; Karen Fairbanks — Partner, Marble Fairbanks; Barry Bergdoll — The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, MoMA (introduction); James McCullar, FAIA — 2008 AIANY President & Principal, James McCullar & Associates (introduction)
Moderator: Peter Christensen — Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA
Organizers: Museum of Modern Art; Center for Architecture
Sponsors: Center for Architecture; AIANY Housing Committee
Contemporary Architecture Practice. “Migrating Formations, 2008.” Commissioned by MoMA for the Home Delivery exhibition. High-performance composite. This project supported in part by Z Corporation and ARUP.
Photograph by Richard Barnes, © 2008 The Museum of Modern Art
They are the only works that visitors to MoMA’s Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling exhibition inevitably see twice, remarked curator Barry Bergdoll. They’re at the heart of the show’s mission to explore evolving technological innovations in architecture fabrication and delivery. Yet the three digitally designed and manufactured walls in the vestibule have been overlooked in most press coverage, Bergdoll said, at a recent panel featuring the three NYC firms behind the creations. Calling them “among the most radical propositions in the show,” he said the museum commissioned the projects as “provocations to see where we are in the still-nascent revolution” of computer-aided design and manufacturing.
Ali Rahim and Hina Jamelle of Contemporary Architecture Practice (CAP) explored the design possibilities of rapid 3-D printing with “Migrating Formations,” a semi-opaque divider whose biomorphic forms resemble rows of bones. The printing was extremely fast, and the process obviated using molds or mechanical joints (the pieces were joined with epoxy resin). One day, similar technologies will be able to print entire homes in a day, Rahim said, which would be efficient, but not necessarily for good aesthetics. Home design is becoming easier for anyone with access to the technology — for better or worse. Therefore, CAP aimed for experimentation balanced with aesthetics. The patterns created by the wall’s curvy, bonelike pieces range between bulbous and angular forms to maximize the visual impact while adhering to the firm’s design sensibility.
The industrial looking “Flatform” by Marble Fairbanks was made, instead, of two laser-cut metal sheets that could be transported flat and then connected with foldout tabs. The result: a kind of “stainless steel Velcro,” as Scott Marble put it, where the intricate system of pinwheeling and opposing tabs provide the wall’s structure as well as its visual appeal. He was enthusiastic about how new digital fabrication techniques have inspired fresh architectural forms, seeing it as an opportunity to further architectural processes, not products, he said.
Reiser + Umemoto RUR Architecture used laser-cut steel to a different effect in “Vector Wall.” Undulating patterns of slits allowed the steel to be hammered into flowing curves, an easier installation than for Flatform, which required a squadron of students to help attach the tabs. The “Vector Wall” design process involved experimenting with variables such as the slits’ length, spacing, and patterning, said Neil Cook, one of the designers involved in the project. Like the other walls, Reiser + Umemoto is already exploring similar ideas and forms on a larger scale in projects such as the O-14 commercial tower in Dubai.
While the panels addressed technological and aesthetic concerns, the architects seemed less preoccupied with the practicality of their creations. Despite the three walls’ permeability, there was barely any talk about issues of visual or auditory privacy (apparently the designers all chose to envision their projects as decorative dividers). Bergdoll aptly observed that all three seemed more in the realm of materials research than an actual domestic program. Still, the panel justified the walls’ prominent placement, helping to elucidate some of digital design and fabrication’s advantages and pitfalls.
Lisa Delgado is a freelance journalist who has written for Oculus, The Architect’s Newspaper, Blueprint, The LEAF Review, and Wired, among other publications.