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ISBN 978-88-96370-094
Chromoland
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This book is the result of research conducted within the Research Unit of University IUAV of Venice : “Colour and Light in Architecture”, which has been researching changes in approaches to color in architecture and/or landscape architecture through the writings and analyses of a variety of authors. The authors have been selected based on their specific interest in focusing on colour/ light in architecture. The intent is to understand how these authors have contributed to the evolution of the topic within their own contemporary context. Starting from the most contemporary authors we has gone back in time to see if there may be similarities in approaches to the built environment project, or if, from the ‘colour and light’ point of view, there are noticeable shifts in direction over time. Which research has focused upon factors of continuity, and which has highlighted a rupture with the past? Clearly, technology has played and continues to play a key role in environmental approaches to colour/light. But does technology bring about a change in how designers operate, or does the design process remain essentially intact, using new tools for similar goals (e.g. to excite, shock or challenge traditional perspectives)? The book addresses these issues with the specific intention of selecting diverse authors whose perspectives on color and light in architecture have provided a rich contribution to the discourse on color/light as important aspects of architectural and urban design.
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Architectural Color and Light Design
Edited by P. Zennaro
NEMESI©
Book Series C&L_Color&Light in Architecture Director Pietro Zennaro International Advisory board Pierre Auboiron Doreen Balabanoff Fiorenzo Bertan Nick Harkness Leonhard Oberascher Franca Pittaluga Verena M. Schindler Justyna Tarajko-Kowalska Dario Toffanello Pietro Zennaro
The book is the outcome of a research conducted at the University Iuav of Venice by the “Colour and light in architecture” Research Unit, member of the broader research area “The landscape project”. It was financed with funds of the Iuav Department of research, year 2011-2012.
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The volume contains essays by some teachers and researchers, both internal and external, of the Research Unit: Valeria Benacchio, Federico Bulfone Gransinigh, Chiara Cibin, Gian Camillo Custoza, Katia Gasparini, Chiara Gregoris, Anna Martini, Alessandro Premier, Giuseppina Scavuzzo, Pietro Zennaro, Emanuela Zorzi.
Front cover Toyo Ito landscape by P. Zennaro Editor Pietro Zennaro Design Veronica Brustolon Published by Š 2012 by KNEMESI, Verona, Italy All rights reserved Print and bound 2012 October, in Italy, by ATENA.NET srl, Vicenza First edition 2012 ISBN 978-88-96370-094
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No part permission of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of review. Unless specified, images and photos are the authors of the individual articles. For citations, photos and drawings belonging to the owned by third parties included in this opera, the authors of the articles are available to eligible not been able to find as well as for any unintentional omissions and /or errors of attribution in the references. Errors or omissions will be correct in subsequent editions.
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Index Pages 7 13 29 39 55 65 79 93 111 125 141 159
Author
Title
P. Zennaro Introduction P. Zennaro Chromo_Land. Colour, light and built environment A. Martini Kinetic colouring. Research and innovation on Ned Kahn surfaces K. Gasparini Colour tools and technologies in Herzog & De Meuron’s architecture C. Gregoris Sauerbruch & Hutton, the colour’s technology A.Premier Frank Gehry. Chromatic expressiveness on surface C. Cibin Cesar Manrique and the light of the Canary Islands G. Scavuzzo The Mystery of colour for the young Le Corbusier: chromatic memories from Voyage d’Orient to Maison Blanche V. Benacchio The function of light and of chromatic elements in the architecture of Palladio and Scamozzi G.C. Custoza Munire et ornare: colour and light archetypes in Sanmicheli fortified architecture M. Zorzi The “monocromi” of Giovanni Maria Falconetto F. Bulfone The colors of history and the history of colors Gransinigh Urbs picta and private locations in Terraferma’s architecture
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Colour tools and technologies in Herzog&De Meuron’s architecture
Katia Gasparini
“Modern architecture, as an artistic expression of our contemporary world, is increasingly laden with colors, sometimes in garish tones, suiting the drives of the society that it seeks to represent. In the best building traditions, architecture uses both traditional building materials and those borrowed from other sectors to make semi-finished and finished products that best represent the modern world. Because architectural works are perceived predominantly through liminal surfaces, they have obviously become increasingly the focus of greater attention than other aspects of building�.1
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To be aware of the role played by the color in the city and the paysage in general means becoming aware of the scope and effect of the same perception in the man-made landscape and man. There are many elements that make up the urban physiognomy, both static and mobile. Mobility and speed, symbols of the third millennium, identify the contemporary cities and their usability. The perception of the environment is becoming more fleeting and characterized by the instant, as abundantly and widely theorized by sociologists, planners and mass mediologists as Virilio, Foucault, De Kerchove or architects like Tschumi, Ito, etc. in the last quarter of the century.2 Then the cities are covered by fast transport from which barely the people perceive the surroundings except for
Colour tools and technologies in Herzog&De Meuron’s architecture Katia Gasparini
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stain of color: the more saturated and compact they are and better they are perceptible in the instant they appear. For this reason, building surfaces are increasingly covered by posters and advertisements in brilliant colors and high impact images, same as by shop signs ever more extensive and interactive displays inviting to stop and enter a different world than the one surrounding us. The Las Vegas experience is significant in this regard. Today we are now immersed in another dimension, in augmented reality technology and the latest generation of digital screens that transport us into another reality. In this context, how architecture reacts? Contemporary architecture reflects the changes taking place, albeit at a rate much lower than that of digital technologies pervading it, and adapt itself to the cultural context interacting or disappearing (dematerialization), emerging in a new form of paints and colored materials or changing to a bright finish and made of interactive displays and smart materials. Accordingly changes also the perception of architecture. It’s a change that should be analyzed on an architectural, urban and environmental scale. Many contemporary architects, aware of this evolution in action, transfer the input derived from observation of contemporary architecture on the surface, that becomes a place of experimentation and interaction between the
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environment and the content. Interaction is accomplished through the use of color, light technologies in natural and artificial materials used in synergy with each other and with the new surface communication systems. Each one of these architects emerges by the color characteristics of the project, as they do for example Sauerbruch & Hutton, known and recognized by the polychromatic surfaces that characterize their projects. Or Jean Nouvel, who thanks to a thorough understanding of the technologies and potential of materials can achieve color effects dematerializing them on architectural surfaces, integrating the building with the skyline exposing the full scope of the project. Fundamental in this cultural evolution and constructive dematerialized architectures are the Tschumi primordial experiments and the Toyo Ito media and blurring architecture. In all these projects are part the Swiss firm Herzog & De Meuron, architects who can skillfully integrate these trials, the client needs and the places identity through the innovative use of technology and traditional materials. The central theme in all of their projects is the exterior of a building, on which experiment with new design approaches and technological solutions using either traditional and innovative materials and technologies, but playing on the perception and visibility of the surfaces compared to the urban context and landscape.
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Colour tools and technologies in Herzog&De Meuron’s architecture Katia Gasparini
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Their fame is due to the conversion project of the Bankside Power Station in London at the Tate Modern, for which in 2001 they won the Pritzker Prize. In 2002, they design the Allianz Arena where they experience a plastic envelope of pneumatic and lighted. Technology, materials, color In the creative process and design of architects is possible to recognize two different approaches to the envelope architectural project: one more material and the other more evanescent. These are two different ways to use materials and technologies, working on the architectural facade texture through materials and the perception of architecture than the environment in which it operates and communicates with. In the first case, just think of relatively recent projects such as the Barcelona Forum 2004 or the expansion of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis or the Museum Schaulager Munchenstein in Switzerland. These three projects, which are limited to only a summary of the contemporary works of the Herzog & De Meuron firm, have in common the choice of material having very pronounced surface treatments. All volumes are introverted, interacting with the landscape through the
project of the California Dominus Winery (1995-1998). In this case the building skin is composed of modular cages of wire mesh containing boulders of local stone in different shape and size, a technology commonly used in infrastructure engineering, stiffened inside by a metallic modular structure. From the point of view of landscape and environmental integration solution that provides an original effect. Externally, the changing partition of the basalt that fades from black to green, significantly reduces the environmental impact of such a building could have. The building merges well with the landscape, which seems to be a horizontal line slightly more pronounced than the vegetation. In these projects there is no transparency, no special play of light, the architectural surface shines with reflected light on the metallic coating, such as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis or stainless steel cladding of the lower part of the Forum Barcelona. For the rest we can say that the surface is treated in a very rough, apparently, where the matter seems to come back to the origin.
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wall color and integrated with the landscape according to the colors of the landscape and building materials, both natural or artificial, but reused in new ways. As in shotcrete (spritzbeton)and painted blue Klein of the Forum, or the coating in rough stone in the Museum Schaulager. Going back in time, there was also the
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Colour tools and technologies in Herzog&De Meuron’s architecture Katia Gasparini
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The Swiss Museum was conceived as a building halfway between a museum and a deposit, so as to give greater importance to the artistic creation itself, rather than to the visitor. Designed as a museum-deposit, place of study and for gallery exhibitions is presented as a closed volume and aseptic nine levels with a variety of boxes, one for each artist, opened only on request. The MAM is inserted inside the Museum Park in Miami. The name of the museum derives from its original structure, as “Schaulager” in German means “warehouse open to the vision.” Three of the four sides that delimit the volume museum are coated with stone layers obtained during digging foundations for the building erection. Similar in concept, but different in technology and materials, is the intervention for the Forum Barcelona (Fig. 1). The Universal Forum of Cultures in Barcelona (20002004) is the representative building of the exposition of the “Forum 2004”, marked by events, conferences, exhibitions and shows. In this project, the Swiss architects have focused on geometric shape, but with a strong iconic impact: a prism with a triangular base colored blue Klein, capable of intrigue, attract the attention of the public and to act as a symbolic image of the event. The building, in its monolithic image, highlighted by the lack of windows and uniform coating and raw, already
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Fig. 1
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Colour tools and technologies in Herzog&De Meuron’s architecture Katia Gasparini
anticipated in the Schaulager with a solution natural color, ground color, looks like a massive body off the ground. The volume is, in fact, supported on three points, arranged in the central zone of the architectural figure and disguised by coating materials in the lower part (ceiling and walls), such as glass and polished metal-reflective. The single material block suspended is covered with shotcrete on a support frame and steel mesh. This surface has some breach, deep fissures and false cuts with mirrored surfaces. Diametrically opposite in the effects and in the results is the cladding of the lower part of stainless steel hammered and embossed (fig. 2), laid with the aim of illuminating the
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Fig. 2
Tecnology, innovation, light Certain projects and works of Herzog & De Meuron seem to be geared to the subversion of the principles of the concept of “envelope� in architecture. The coatings don’t appear to
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bottom through the multiple effects of light reflection by mirrored surfaces. This part is fully enclosed on itself, illuminated by reflected light and reflection from the surface of the colors of the surrounding landscape or tourists. The switch then to the complete covering of the building skin with metal mirror we find him in the next project of the Walker Art Center in 2005. In this building, the exterior walls are completely covered with aluminum panels, reflecting in the 24 hours surrounding environment integrated with it. The reference reflection of environmental conditions on the surface allows the work to constantly change colors: at times, due to the light effect, the building appears as gray cement in certain other white as snow. Manifests itself in this project, although characterized by a compact coating material such as metal, a sort of dematerialization of the envelope and integration with the environment during the day, when the building blends into the landscape, which is reflected in it, complementing colors and ambient light.
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Colour tools and technologies in Herzog&De Meuron’s architecture Katia Gasparini
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exist because they are “simple” cages from which one sees stones (Dominus Winery) or stones that act as casing as in the Museum Schaulager or, on the contrary, it is lightweight skins semitransparent and colored only by light. Or are constituted by the structure itself, which is carried out and its shape generates only the sense of the casing as in the recent stadium in Beijing. A stadium, this, which in the technological ostentation, try retrieving a ancient relationship between man and nature.3 The stadium for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China, nicknamed the “Bird Nest” has a circular shape and flattened as a nest. Made with a braided structure of exposed concrete resembling the plots operated by birds, refers to the more archaic form of container in nature. In this project the architects oppose the fading color of the light that shines between the structural weaves to the heaviness of structure-shell concrete, enhancing the texture, shape and visibility (Fig. 3). It’s the last frontier of experimentation of light and color that architects have begun carrying semitransparent envelopes and dematerialized initiated from the surface of the screen-printed Ricola factory in 1986-91 in the expansion project of the homonymous factory in Laufen, Switzerland. The expansion of Ricola, of rectangular shape,
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Fig. 3
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Colour tools and technologies in Herzog&De Meuron’s architecture Katia Gasparini
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is characterized by two completely different surface treatments. The shorter building walls are in dark concrete. The rain water that collects on the roof flows down along the concrete walls. In this way the wet walls reflect light and when the water starts to dry form of dark lines on the walls. Finally, when the walls are dry so here is a new effect, a brown and green algae. Along the perimeter of the two long sides of the roof protrudes 8 meters with a slight inclination upward. The longer walls are made throughout their height with the three layers panels in transparent polycarbonate 8 meters long and half a meter wide, to form a sort of homogeneous skin of the building interrupted by doors of different heights and large windows, high 2 meters. On the inside of the panels have a pattern repeated six times in height: a print of the twenties of the last century by Karl Blossfeldt representing a leaf. From the outside, during the day, this is only partly visible, while inside has a very strong impact that dampens pleasantly light, creating an effect similar to that of a tent. At night, however, with the interior lights on, the effect changes being reverted. The whole building seems like a big light printed box. The Ricola factory experiment on envelope and evanescent light polycarbonate project continued in the Laban Center in London in 2003.
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In this project the project IKMZ BTU Cottbus Information, Communications and Media Center of the Brandenburg Polytechnic, the two architects play on the effect of dematerialization of a colored translucent envelope. In the case of the Laban Center they realize cladding panels alternating white polycarbonate and glass; in the draft Brandenburg the envelope is made with a double-skin system glass, of which the outer part silkscreened. Back in this project the effect of screen printing, as the plant Ricola, with different concept, but always with the dual objective of communication and shielding. The effect that unites the draft Brandenburg with the Laban is the perception dematerialized that has the color of the inner surfaces, to the outside. The architects have made a very important use of color on the inner walls of the two buildings, using large areas of deep hues of pink, red, yellow, blue, green, etc. in common parts of the buildings such as corridors, dining areas, etc. Outside the perception of the so colorful walls is dematerialized by the lens effect of the walls in frosted glass or polycarbonate. No perceptible by day, in which the landscape is reflected on envelope integrating them inside it, at night the lighting system inside buildings transmits a series of colored effects rarefied outwards, transforming the two structures into evanescent icons.
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Colour tools and technologies in Herzog&De Meuron’s architecture Katia Gasparini
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The use of light sources integrated to the shell system becomes progressively more and more pervasive in the projects of the two architects. If the projects just described the design is highlighted by the natural day light and artificial lighting system inside at night, in projects for the two stadiums (Monaco and Beijing), the light becomes a fundamental element of the project and field of coating. Allianz Arena, before mentioned, with its pneumatic Etfe cushions (Fig. 4), at night becomes a colored icon thanks to the LED lighting integrated into the frame of the plastic, lighting alternately red, blue or white or transmitting words and graphic at the same time illuminating the pillows with different colors. In this way the Etfe cushions can be treated as one large pixel screen at city size. In Beijing stadium the light is part of the envelope, because exalting the gaps left by the structure of large nest concrete, realizes perceptually large panels of colored light, in a second level of an ideal stratigraphy colored casing.
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Fig. 4
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Colour tools and technologies in Herzog&De Meuron’s architecture Katia Gasparini
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Notes 1
Zennaro P., “Unconscious color”, Materia n.60/2008, p.146 On this topic : Gasparini K., Design in superficie, FrancoAngeli, 2009, Milano; Gasparini Katia, Facciate mediatiche, Utet, 2012, Torino; Arcagni S., Oltre la città, metropoli e media, Kaplan, Torino, 2010; Zennaro P., Architettura senza, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2009. 3 See Campanella P., “Herzog e de Meuron: architetture permeabili ed unitarietà del molteplice”, www.fotoartearchitettura.it, 2007 2
Captions
Fig. 1: Barcellona Forum Fig. 2: Barcellona Forum, stainless steel cladding system Fig. 3: Bird Nest Stadium (photo © Chun Lee, Chun@Vancouver album, Flickr) Fig. 4: Allianz Arena Stadium (photo ©A.Premier)
References
- Arcagni S., Oltre la città, metropoli e media, Kaplan, Torino, 2010 - Costanzo M., “Due progetti a Barcellona: Il Forum 2004 di Herzog & de Meuron e Las Arenes di Richard Rogers”, www.vg-hortus.it - Gasparini K., Design in superficie, FrancoAngeli, 2009, Milano - Gasparini Katia, Facciate mediatiche, Utet, 2012, Torino - Zennaro P., Architettura senza, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2009 - www.herzogdemeuron.com - www.architetturaeffimera.blogspot.it - www.archimagazine.com - www.floornature.it