Flowers in the Snow – Architecture,Entropy and Temporariness
tim ingleby
beginnings
The Swiss engineer Heinz Isler was a pioneer in the field of thin shell structures. He developed a series of form-finding methods that have informed the design of hundreds of reinforced concrete shells. Isler prototyped the most influential of these by taking advantage of his homeland’s frigid alpine winters: hanging sheets of saturated fabric overnight and returning to frozen forms that inverted became freestanding free-form shells. A little-known footnote to this story is that Isler also pioneered several other structural types using fabric and ice. Perhaps the most enigmatic of these ‘playful experiments’ as Chilton called them, is the flower form. I have looked at this structural type, the flower form, in a series of self-built experimental structures of fabric and ice. Knowingly ephemeral, the only certainty is their demise which occurs not to a planned timescale but to the caprices of the weather. Such structural entropy makes further study and understanding inherently difficult but it can start to formulate ways of embracing and addressing temporariness in architectural construction. That could stay, not forever, because we believe that nothing exists that is forever, not even the dinosaurs, but if well maintained, it could remain for four to five thousand years. And that is definitely not forever. — attributed to Christo In Christo’s terms, all architecture is temporary. In anticipating their demise, works of temporary architecture are unusually candid. Rarely is this strength exploited. By using principally fabric and ice, the story of my constructions is one of a death foretold. Although highly specific and undoubtedly quixotic by nature, to extend their lifespans offers three lessons that may benefit other architectures that also acknowledge their temporariness.
Orko, ice and burlap cloth structure. Val-des-Monts, Quebec
18
on site review 43: architecture and t ime
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter maker