SCULPTURALISM : THE SEMIOTICS IN ARCHITECTURE What architectural history puts to forefront is the fact that it has not always been only the structural and other technical aspects that count in architecture. What more important is the art in it, deeply embedded, in a way that it goes on to become a representative element. A piece of architecture is a symbolic repertoire of the place it is in, the context it is built in. It is articulation of how spaces are arranged, to give a new experience. And when we think of how spaces are to be projected, is where form comes to play. Virginia Smith, in her book Forms in Modernism: A Visual Set, writes : “ In Modernism, according to these two grand theoreticians, Le Corbusier and Tschichold, neither building design nor page design were to be forced on to a traditional form, the form would result from the activity of the person, whether moving within the building, or reading the page…..” However, Jose Luis Sert, wrote: “ Architecture today has to be more functional, it cannot exist without a sense of plastic values. “ Form in architecture, is the visual language, giving a character and quality to the space, thus making it coherent. And thus Form becomes the semiotics in architecture. The utilitarian aspect of sculpture and its sound interference in architecture began soundly during the seventies. This marked the transformation of space to realise its perpetual quality. Often, the inter-relationship between an artistic creation, architecture and the environmentis incoherently interpreted. Sculpture is taken to be an independent identity. However, sculpture embedded in the building form is always an inspiration to the space, defining the flow in it, and thus is integrated in the space itself. Sculpture and architecture are inseparable entities. It is with the form that sculpture in architecture is enduring in. Functionality gets filled in the space, as per the character it portrays, the dynamism and the stagnant. Any architecture is all about creating a humane space, in a particular settings, using the humane language, and is the container of the human functions. Stating the Max Reinhardt Haus by Peter Eisenman, it can be well inferred, that architecture can take any shape, against the ethos of established order. A similar work, CCTV Building by Rem Koolhas, also embraces the idea of moving beyond the stagnant entity of space. Thus, today, contemporary architecture itself establishes form, as a precept to architecture. Sculpturalism is an indispensible part of architecture today. Architecture is now perceived as per the sculptural aspect, to make it iconic, by moulding the functions into the space, as per the form it assumes. Cesar Pelli’s National Museum ofArt, Osaka, Japan, is one such citation. Called to evolve as an sculptural landmark, the museum is to be an iconic structure in the Osaka Skyline, relying on its butterfly wings form, to give the resultant output.
The National Museum of Art,Osaka - Cesar Pelli.
Patrik Schumacher considers all space to be filled up a fluid, which flows. It is this flow, that determines the morale of the space, and thus the form is defined. He says : “We are looking into form not as an end itself, but as an instrument to articulate and organise the environment as communication, as a text as well as a kind of a platform. Each space is an invitation to join the interaction: it encodes, it awares, it tells you how to behave and what to expect, it puts you in the right mode and mood, it premises and primes into action.” AnishKapoor’s Cloud Gate installation is the attracting point, standing as the centrepiece, at the AT&T Plaza in Millennium Park, Chicago. The installation, a sculptural form, uses great subtlety to define the space around it all, accentuate it, by reflecting in itself the entire surroundings. Thus the space all around is defined, by an inconspicuous demarcation, also etching out the various functional activities centred around it.
The Cloud Gate Installation, by AnishKapoor
Michael Fried has defined the essential characteristic of shape. He suggests that shape is operated by the spatial and performative qualities. For him effect of shape is theatrical while Robert Somol suggests about it in 12 Reasons to Get Back into Shape: “illicit, easy, expandable, graphic, adaptable, fit empty, arbitrary, intensive, buoyant, projective and cool”. Shape can be interpreted as relation to architecture occurring in a particular set of circumstance which forms a larger group in contrast to abstract and immaterial realm of Form. From Freedom TowerMaster plan, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, to the Parthenon and the Pyramids, we have always been accounting the form that architecture dispatches. And it is the form, the sculptural aspect, of these architectural specimens, that has been defining the age, the cultural strata of the society, making icons. Inference may hence be drawn; Sculpturalism is definitely an important part of architecture, so much so that it can be referred to as an untold dictum.
Refernces : 1. http://www.waithinktank.com 2. http://www.strelka.com/blog_en/patrik-schumacher-each-space-is-an-invitation-to-join-theinteraction/?lang=en 3. Michael Fried, Form as Shape, in Art and Objecthood, Essays and Reviews, Chicago, London, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 4. R. E. Somol stated in an essay 12 Reasons to get Back in to Shape, AMOMA, Rem Koolhaas, Content, Taschen,2004, p.86-87. 5. http://www.jstor.org