ARTIFICAL ENVIRONMENT The Blur Building and Fondation Cartier both create an artificial environment, directly related to the existing site, through their specific choice of materiality. The Blur Building not only takes concepts directly related to its environment, but also creates an environment through a continuously shifting structure and ephemeral state.8 The primary material, indigenous to site – water, is used as the key material to achieve this artificial environment. ‘Blur is not a building, BLUR is a pure atmosphere, the water particles suspended in mid-air’.9 This creates a weather system with the fog reacting to wind and temperature directly off the lake. The Blur Building emphasizes the absence of distinction between architecture and environment.10 Pre-existing environmental conditions on site of the Fondation Cartier influenced the design, the layout and the materials. Heavy choreography around the Cedar Tree with the intermediate surface framing this feature.11 Similarly to Blur, the Fondation Cartier creates it’s own environment through the properties of glass and light, reflecting and refracting to create a series of superimpositions of the surrounding sky, trees and streetscape.12 ‘Both physical building and the reflections the façade collects are part of the environment the human subject appreciates’.13
Figures from top left 13. Site location of Blur Building with lake blacked out for reference to materiality the design incoporates. 14. Angel Deck with fog floating beneath and lake water (dark) in context. 15. Site Map of Fondation Cartier with all existing trees blacked out for reference to influence in materiality. 16. Garden area between structure of Fondation Cartier with heavy reflective properties creating a deeper environment.
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