hot cold Phillippe Rahm’s architecture as meteorology
technology | digestible gulfstream by terri peters
experience technology climate modification temperatuve
— architecture should no longer build spaces, but rather create temperatures and atmospheres
Paris-based Swiss architect Philippe Rahm proposes a new way of looking at architecture, beyond mere building, beyond modernist ideals that he claims have created ‘petrified narratives of social, political and moral conventions’. Atmosphere, weather, diet, climate and neurology are explored in Rahm’s pioneering and controversial installations, creating debate about new forms and purposes of architecture. At the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, curator Aaron Betsky argued that architecture is more than just building: ‘architecture is everything that is about building. It is how we think about building, how we draw buildings, how we organise buildings, how buildings present themselves, through façades or interiors’. Betsky selected Rahm’s Digestible Gulfstream for the Arsenale exhibition ‘Experimental Architectures’ because it highlights the architectural possibilities of taste, touch, smell, light and temperature. Digestible Gulfstream is composed of two metal plates at different heights and temperatures (the lower is heated to 28°C and the upper is cooled to 12°C) that naturally moves the air using convection to create a gulfstream effect. Rahm’s invisible landscape is heightened with taste and smell with mint on the cooler plate (menthol causes sensations in the brain as coolness, perceptible at a temperature of 15°C) and chili on the lower plate (capsaicin activates the neuro-receptor TRPV1, which is sensitive to temperatures over 44°C). Rahm calls this project ‘the prototype for architecture that works between the neuralgic and atmospheric, developing like a landscape that is simultaneously gastronomic and thermal’. Here Rahm links the body (diet) and the outside environment (atmosphere). Rahm’s concerns are the invisible parts of experiencing a building, and in bringing the invisible to the forefront. “After decades devoted to the visible, in which a subjective approach and “storytelling” shamelessly replaced the progressive and moral programs of modernity, we are now in a new and extremely interesting period.” he says. Currently, when architects speak of weather or climate it is about controlling, taming or blocking out interaction with it. Solar shading, thermal insulation, weather and moisture barriers, we try to protect building inhabitants from any non-standard environment that could be too hot or too cold, but are we really making people more comfortable? Rahm customises environments with weather, using it as a design tool — at the heart of his work is the questioning of the standard 20° temperature found in every modern building. Architects would rarely think that one standard lighting strategy or sectional relationship would be ideal for all parts of an environment, so why should temperature be any different? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that we can’t see temperature, like we can, say, light
or form, and it cannot really be drawn (except as blue arrows for cold air or red for hot). Temperature is rarely considered or communicated in architectural drawings and does not play a part in mainstream architectural design. Perhaps temperature is like acoustics, it is not part of the standard architects’ toolkit of space, light and form, so it is easily ignored, with design control passed off to engineers or worse, to chance. It only becomes part of architectural design when it needs to be dealt with after the fact, when retrofit solutions are necessary. Rahm is optimistic that change is required and that architects are going to experiment with new architectural solutions. ‘A slippage of the real, from the visible toward the invisible, is taking place — a shift of architecture toward the microscopic and the atmospheric, the biological and the meteorological’. Rahm’s ‘invisible’ architectures have been exhibited extensively, including at the CCA in Montreal, Centre Pompidou in Paris and Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. This year his work will be exhibited at the Milan Furniture Fair, FORCE DE L’ART 02 in the nave of the Grand Palais in Paris and Louisiana Museum in Denmark in their summer exhibition ‘The Future Has Arrived-Architecture for a sustainable world’. this page below and opposite: Gulfstream: temperature as a design criteria, like light, space and form, rather than an afterthought. Must every room be the same 20°? No. At the 2008 Venice Biennale, Philippe Rahm’s installation ‘Digestible Gulfstream’ created a micro-climate that relates temperature and gastronomy to spatial experience, with two glossy white temperature platforms providing setting for the opening night performance where naked people played saw and guitars to an amused audience (overleaf). The technology behind ‘Digestible Gulfstream’ is simple, the lower plate is heated to 28 degrees, sprinkled with chilli peppers and the top plate is cooled to 12 degrees with mint. The work challenges people to think differently about temperature, and consider it as a varying and dynamic part of spatial experience.
2
On Site review 21: stormy weather
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator