Screencity Journal

2 / 2013

Edited by Alessandro Premier

COLOURENVIRONMENTINTERACTIVEMEDIA

INDEX

Editorial – S. Arcagni, M. De Rosa

Colour, Environment, Interactive Media: A Short Presentation – A. Premier

Topic 1 / Colour

Stilled in the City by Coloured Light – J. Rennie

Black Colour in Architecture and Built Environment – J. Tarajko-Kowalska

Crystal in Architecture – V. Brustolon, R. De Monte

Topic 2 / Environment

Wang Shu. Architectural Facades as Textural and Tactile Stratification – G. Scavuzzo

Black and White Screen the City: Contessa di Parma Becomes Smart – O. Castiglione

Photosensitive Architecture. The Luminous Landscapes of Computers and Screens – A. Barbara

Maxxi TV. A Public Media Art that Interfaces with the Architecture of the Museum – A. Ladaga, S. Manteiga

Topic 3 / Interactive Media

Aequilibrium. Location Based Entertainment and Transmedia for Cultural Heritage – G. Bertone, D. Morreale Elastic Systems for Compliant Shading Enclosures. Dynamic Façade System with Innovative Textile Materials – C. Gregoris

“Techno-Poetry” within Zedekiah’s Cave – A. Martini

EDITORIAL – SCREENCITY JOURNAL ISSUE #2SIMONE ARCAGNI, MIRIAM DE ROSA

Screencity Journal Directors

After the warm welcome received by issue 1, Screencity Journal launches its second volume which representsthe elaboration of many comments, suggestions and observations gathered from very numerous, stimulatingand generous readers.Screencity editorial staf tried to take on the challenge of ofering an updated, high quality and scientifcallyrigorous publication, preserving and fostering its original aims – namely, provide a specifc thoughinterdisciplinary insight about the fascinating relationship between contemporary urban environment, newtechnologies and media.

Such an efort mirrors the progressive development of the whole Screencity project, refecting therefore thearticulation of its internal structure: from summer 2013 Screencity enhanced its two-fold vocation towardacademia on the one hand, and feld application on the other. Screencity Journal plays a crucial role as far asthe former is concerned, while the brand new Screencity Lab association intends to bring to completion a360-degree intervention in more practical terms.

Tus, Screencity Journal’s renovated organization resembles the fruitful synergy between practice andtheoretical speculation; from this second issue on, project analysis, technical overviews, as well as critical andcreative articles collected in the Journal undergo a double blind peer review process that homologates thepublication to the highest national and international standards in the feld.

Such changes do not only represent technical and internal procedures, but they are rather meant to be thefounding principles of a professional and ethical framework, which characterizes Screencity project. Tey areshared here with everyone who has accepted to be part of it as author, Advisory Board member, and referee,in the hope they would also be appreciated by our readers.

COLOUR, ENVIRONMENT, INTERACTIVE MEDIA: A SHORT PRESENTATIONALESSANDRO PREMIER

University of Udinealessandro.premier@uniud.it

AbstractScreencity Journal #2 ofers a series of arguments from diferent disciplines but thickly intertwined. Te title of this issuecontains the three main topics around which was launched in July 2013, the call for papers: Colour, Environment,Interactive Media. Te three main topics give to the authors a very wide space for action within which they can mergecontributions from diferent disciplines: architecture, design, art, sociology, communication and so on. Te fnal result is ajournal in which you may fnd scientifc articles on colour in architecture: design, efects, interpretations, newtechnologies (Tarajko-Kowalska, Rennie, Brustolon-D e Monte); interventions of architecture and art and theirrelationships with the surrounding environment or the contemporary city (Scavuzzo, Castiglione, Barbara, ElasticGroup) , media architecture, interactive installations and Alternate Reality Game (Gregoris, Martini, Bertone-Morreale).

KeywordsColour, Environment, Interactive Media

Screencity Journal #2: an introduction

Screencity Journal #2 is structured in three sections, each one dedicated to one of the three topics under thecall for papers: colour, environment and interactive media.Te topic "Colour" is extended to a wide range of scientifc areas: visual culture; photography; industrialdesign; lighting design; interior design; architecture; urbanism; landscaping; colour in computer vision; colourin graphic design; multimedia in colour imaging; colour perception; colour science. A specifc subject isexpected, the result of a research with colour as a tool of analysis or critical reading.Te topic "Environment" is dedicated to contributions of studies or projects (artistic, technological, etc..) andtheir relationships with the surrounding environment: performance; art; museography; scenography; builtenvironment, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality, materiality, texture, surface; transparency andtranslucency, refection and glossiness, social media and space, screencity.Te topic "Interactive media" includes projects and researches on interactive communication in the context of:static and electronic media; multimedia; illusions resulting through light and colour interaction, virtualprojects, media façade, media studies, visual studies, screen media, locative media, interaction media.

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Colour

“Te chief function of colour should be to serve expression” (Henri Matisse)

As well known, colour is one of the fundamental aspects in the perception of the world around. Colour canalso have a strong infuence on our psyche, infuencing our mood and our behaviour. Te frst paper of thissection deals with a particular issue related to the use of colour in architecture and built environment: howcoloured light can let you take a break in the fast-paced contemporary city? With the paper “Stilled in thecity by coloured light” Julian Rennie explores, through the work and thought of artists, architects and writers,how coloured light might activate “being still” for a time in our contemporary life. At the centre of the paperthere is Futuna Chapel, an example of Modern architecture built in 1961 in Wellington city’s suburb ofKarori, New Zealand. A series of examples of places of peace and tranquillity where colour has a central role(works of Barragan and James Turrel for example) seem to demonstrate how through colour and light youcould fnd a refuge. So, why not use the deconsecrated chapel as a “coloured light-retreat?” Te answer givenby the author is articulated through the fascinating description of the use of coloured light in the chapel andthe efects created by the artist Jim Allen. As we may understand, reading for example a book by Michel Pastoureau, colour is also a great tool forunderstanding many aspects of our culture and our history and to understand features of our contemporarylife. Te paper of Justyna Tarajko-Kowalska deals with the use of black colour in architecture and builtenvironment. Te author describes the diferent meanings and uses of black colour in diferent cultures anddiferent periods. It is a fascinating journey through the cultures and architectures of diferent peoples: theancient world of Greek and Romans; the Far East cultures of Japan, China and the Arab World; the ruralbuildings of Europe and America; Twentieth century’s Modernism till contemporary architecturalenvironment with recent surface materials and technologies. “Black has become the colour of the current era,creation, power, and money – dominating not only the worlds of designers, fashion designers, or architects,but also those of lawyers and bankers” (Pastoreau: 2008). Te perception of colour is very important also when we are talking about transparent and translucentmaterials: glass and crystal, especially when they are produced in particular shapes and with the integration oflight systems. Transparent and translucent materials are often associated with the contemporary trend in artand architecture that aims to dematerialize the shapes of an artefact, creating vibrating surfaces. Tere arechanging and iridescent refections in that surfaces that are able to make fuid and elusive even more squaredshapes. Te paper by Veronica Brustolon and Roberta De Monte deals with this subject: “Crystal inArchitecture”. Te authors explore the world of Lasvit’s creations made with Bohemian crystal. Te articlefocuses particularly on the very recent creations by Ross Lovegrove for the brand. Creations in which lightinteracts with a crystal produced by new processes capable of giving the surface a liquid aspect that draws theliquid modernity theorized by Zygmunt Bauman (Bauman: 2000).

Environment

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected” (Steve Jobs)

“From the spoon to the town” said Max Bill talking about the architectural profession (Bill: 1957):environment is therefore the more general case where colour, surfaces and textures create diferent forms ofexpression. Te screen-city is probably one of the places where the current capitalist society fnds its most

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suitable forms of expression (Zennaro: 2009). But there are also experiences of contrast to this reality.Experiences that start from diferent assumptions, often linked to a more or less foggy concept ofsustainability, sometimes getting results consistent with their thoughts, sometimes in contradiction. Tepaper by Giuseppina Scavuzzo explores the current trend of an architecture that is opposed to globalizationby taking refuge in a reinterpretation of tradition. In this particular case the reinterpretation of the past isexpressed especially in the use of materials and textures of rural buildings. Other contemporary intellectualslike Vittorio Gregotti think that this “fght” against globalization would better express through criticalrealism, a sort of return to the rational lines of a certain Modernism (Gregotti: 2012). Te author starts fromthe assumption that the immateriality of the architecture of globalization “is expressed frst in the digitalprefguration of architecture and then in the aspiration to maintain this virtual character in the actualconstruction by using technologies that tend to dematerialise buildings […] (even) turning the facades intoscreens for virtual images” (Scavuzzo). As opposed to the commercial spirit of certain creations, the authorbelieve there is a new way for architecture that aspire “not only in the focus on sustainability and energysaving, to which high-tech projects must also aspire, but also in a cultural and spiritual need to establish abond, albeit visceral, with nature and the earth” (Scavuzzo). Tis new way is well represented by the work ofthe Chinese architect Wang Shu. Art and media such as cinema and literature have often predicted scenarios that would actually materialize inthe future. A diferent way to deal with the concept of “environment” seems to be represented in the paper byOrnella Castiglione who focuses her attention on a historical example of a medium that seems to anticipatesome aspects of the contemporary screencity. In fact, the author argues that a number of issues of thecontemporary debate about media and city had already been introduced in a flm of the Tirties of theTwentieth Century: Contessa di Parma by Alessandro Blasetti.

“ I n Contessa di Parma the vision is often realized through screens, mirrors or glasses in function ofdiaphragms between gaze and fction, truth and deception […] Te staged spectacle inside the movie is thebig city made by screens and by technological and audiovisual spectacle that we use to stare in our digital era.Always more close to an entertainment park or a multiplex” (Castiglione, in this issue).

Urban screens and screens in their broadest sense have certainly brought signifcant changes into our lives.Te contribution of Anna Barbara deals exactly with this topic. Te paper starts from the innovationsintroduced in architecture by the urban screens, arguing that once the facade was the refection of thebuilding layout but now it is completely independent of it. Te “end-user” of these new scenarios is no longerthe viewer of the twentieth century: “the observer of the fourth dimension (time) in the XXI century is notonly passive spectator but he takes part to the large projection in urban scenarios, being himself sometimesprotagonist or manipulator of the show” (Anna Barbara). Te variable of time becomes extremely importantin the cities of urban screens. Even the TV screens in the course of the twentieth century have changed thehabits of the families, the use and perception of the interior spaces of homes. Artifcial light thatcharacterizes our nocturnal spaces has altered the circadian rhythms of our lives. “Te main places thatreveals an interesting relationship between screens (computer, TV, etc.) and spaces are: the ofces andworkplaces 2.0 and the places of waiting or passages (mentioning Walter Benjamin's passages)” (AnnaBarbara). Te screen-city fnds its highest moments when art and culture are combined with the new means ofcommunication. Te thought, conveyed through images on a large scale, can change the perception of a placeand, at the same time, make us better understand the sense or the non-sense of the place itself. Te paper byAlexandro Ladaga and Silvia Manteiga (Elastic Group of Artistic Research) deals with MAXXI TV - thegiant eye of the TV - a Project of Public Art that Elastic Group has

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“planned for the MAXXI – National Museum of the XXI Century Arts in Rome 2% Public Art Contest. Inthis project, the giant eye of the TV generates a variable and multiple, elastic space. MAXXI TV is a PublicMedia Art that interfaces with the architecture of the Museum designed by Zaha Hadid. […] A Public Artthat observes the public and the museum, a large electronic eye that absorbs architecture” (Ladaga, Manteiga,in this issue).

Te article focuses on how the environment and the museum itself are modifed by the presence of the gianteye of the TV. As it seems, the only place for a piece of art in a museum, that is a sculpture itself, is theoutside. In fact, as the authors say, “the project MAXXI TV is planned as an expansion of the museum as itmay temporarily house video festivals and exhibitions of media art and architecture” (Ladaga, Manteiga).

Interactive media

“Style used to be an interaction between the human soul and tools that were limiting. In the digital era, it willhave to come from the soul alone” ( Jaron Lanier)

“Te medium is the message”, said Marshall McLuhan (McLuhan: 1964). In the interactive games and inthe interactive artistic creations the message can exceed the instrument itself and become a vehicle ofinformation and culture, sometimes only instilling in the user an interest that he can develop on their own.Te paper by Giulia Bertone and Domenico Morreale is focused on the Alternate Reality Game (ARG)“Aequilibrium - Te last guardian of Leonardo”. An Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is a game that connectsthe Internet to the real world. It usually develops through numerous web tools (blogs, e-mail, web sites), andpresents the player a history of mysterious clues that point to the real world (for example, monuments or realobjects hidden in certain locations).

“Te ARG Aequilibrium - Te Last Guardian of Leonardo experiments transmedia and geocaching in the feldof cultural heritage. With the playful practice of geocaching, Aequilibrium promotes connections between thefctional world and the real one, giving participants the chance to discover cultural, social and historical valuesembedded in the Lomellina landscape. Te article presented the Aequilibrium’s design process, as well as thecommunication and interaction strategies for digital engagement in new hyper mediated habitats, focusingon how the game encourages participation in the storytelling, through cultural activators able to fostercollective intelligence and grassroots production” (Bertone, Morreale, in this issue).

Te contemporary architectural surfaces are more and more capable of interacting with the surroundingenvironment, at various levels. Te paper by Chiara Gregoris focuses its attention on new textile surfaces ableto interact with the external environment so as to automatically adjust natural light or temperature inside thebuildings. Tese particular technologies are able to redesign the skin of the buildings often transformed into avehicle of messages. Te contribution by Anna Martini starts with a recent creation of the artist Dan Roosegaarde, the LotusDome, to expand its attention to smart materials and smart technologies for the creation of architecturalsurfaces. “Lotus Dome is a huge hemisphere set inside one of the biggest cave of Jerusalem. Creating a playof light and shadow on the cave’s surface, it looks like a big breathing bunch of fowers whose petals closewhen nobody get closer to it” (Anna Martini). Lotus Dome is an interactive object made of smart memoryalloy petals able to move thanks to the artifcial light, which is put into action by the movement of people.

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Tis particular interactive technology is part of a wider complex of researches on the most recent surfacetechnologies able to realize interactive, dynamic, adaptive or adaptable architectural skins in order to improvethe performance of buildings through highly expressive expedients.

ConclusionsA reading of the various contributions of Screencity Journal # 2 seems to indicate quite clearly that the manyaspects that afect the screen-city are all strongly connected with each other. Even the forms of artisticexpression that seem in confict with it, however, start with a thought that is generated by observing the wayto communicate that seems to dominate our contemporary society. Te environment in which we liveinevitably afects us, but each one of us can choose one or more ways to direct their own researches, their owninterests. Unlike certain sectors of academia that seems to move towards a single thought, Screencity Journal#2 ofers a wide range of viewpoints, even diferent, on the contemporary environment, each of whichdeserves to be deepened with a careful reading.Design the forms of time, and not only the forms of space, acquiring those new tools and scenarios thatmedia technologies make increasingly available, it will be a mandatory task.

Bibliography

Bauman, Z., (2000), Liquid Modernity, Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.Bill, M., (1957), Die Gute Form, Winterthur: Buchdruckerei (tr. eng., (2001), Good Design: An exhibition by Max Bill,1949, Baden: Lars Muller).Flam, J., (ed.), (1995), Matisse on Art, Berkeley: University of California PressGasparini, K., (2012), Schermi urbani, Milan: Wolters Kluwer.Gregotti, V., (2012), Incertezze e simulazioni. Architettura tra moderno e contemporaneo, Milan: Skira Lanier, J., (1998), “Taking stock. So, what’s changed in the last fve years?”, Wired, January, pp. 60-62.McLuhan, M., (1964), Understanding Media: Te Extensions of Man, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Pastoureau, M., (2008), Black: Te History of a Color, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Young, J. S., (1988), Steve Jobs: Te Journey is the Reward, New York: Lynx Books.Zennaro, P., (2009), Architettura senza, Milan: Franco Angeli.

Biography

Alessandro Premier, editor of Screencity Journal #2, is architect and PhD in Architectural Technology. Heteaches Design and Building Technology at IUAV University of Venice and he is adjunct professor at theUniversity of Udine, master degree in Architecture. His researches are focused on the architectural andtechnological integration of static and dynamic surfaces for the environmental quality of buildings. He isauthor of books, articles and essays published, for example, by Utet Scienze Tecniche, Franco Angeli andMaggioli.

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STILLED IN THE CITY BY COLOURED LIGHTJULIAN RENNIE

Department of Architecture, Unitec

AbstractDoes coloured light still have the power to silence us? In the current urban world of social media and 30-second soundbites, do we have any retreats from our “uba-paced” lifestyle? Is there time and are there places where we can pause andtake stock? Church architecture of the medieval period made use of coloured, (stained), glass helped to create anatmosphere that religion claimed as appropriate to worship. With the decline of religion what is to be done with suchspaces? 19.03.2011 would have marked the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Futuna Chapel, (in Wellington city’ssuburb: Karori), New Zealand. Events however overtook the chapel, in 2000 the Fellowship of Brothers who hadcommissioned it, deconsecrated the chapel due to a falling membership. Tey sold the whole site to developers, andFutuna now fnds itself surrounded by 90 housing units. “Te Friends of Futuna Charitable Trust” has since purchasedFutuna and is currently raising funds to restore the building. However, the question remains: what use can a suchrestored building be put to, given that it is no longer a religious space? Tis paper explores the ideas of writers such asMaitland who “loves Silence;” Ehm and Löfgren who adore “doing nothing;” together with artists such as Turrell whoworks directly with light; colourist architects such as Barragan who sometimes detailed “paint on glass,” amongst othersin an attempt to explore how coloured light might activate “being still” for a time in the city.

KeywordsColoured Light, Futuna Chapel, Silence

Introduction

Today we like to recycle, reuse, and, (in this case), reinvent, to stretch our limited resources. It would be easyto treat a space regardless of its past history as nothing more than a mere shelter, by renovating andoccupying it. A greater challenge would be to honour a building’s history and purpose in a meaningful andongoing way. It is the intention of this paper to discuss and show how this could be done. Tis paper’s casestudy is Te Futuna Chapel, at 62 Friend Street, in Karori, Wellington, New Zealand. It was commissionedby the Brothers of the Society of Mary to commemorate “the martyrdom of St Peter Chanel on the FrenchPolynesian Island of Futuna, in the Pacifc, (28 April 1841),” (Walden: 1987, p.15). Te Chapel was designedby the New Zealand Maori Architect: John Scott. Te “glass” windows were designed by artist: Jim Allen.Consecrated and opened on the 19th of March 1961, this Chapel functioned as a religious retreat until it was“deconsecrated around the time the Brothers sold to the developer in 1999,” (Bevin: 2010). Te FutunaChapel may not be that well known beyond Australasia, but is highly revered within local architecturalcircles, receiving a NZIA, (New Zealand Institute of Architects), Gold Medal in 1968, and also a NZIA 25Year Award in 1986 which confrms its enduring merit within the community.

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Tis paper’s idea is to investigate some of the central themes of the chapel: the coloured light and thestillness of such a scared space. To show through precedence, via writings of various authors, artists andarchitects how this deconsecrated chapel could be used as a “coloured light-retreat.” It would be a place andspace for people regardless of their beliefs or non-beliefs, to savour the delights of coloured light for its ownsake.

Fig. 1. Coloured Light: Futuna Fig. 2. Stations of the Cross: Futuna Fig. 3. Bench seating, (2010): Futuna

Fig. 5. Coloured Light: Futuna Fig. 4. Coloured Light: Futuna Fig. 6. Coloured Light: Futuna

Precedence

Te interest in natural light, and allowing lots of it into built interiors, was one of the foundations of ModernArchitecture. Te use of clear foat glass with its transparency, as a way of linking the inside to the outsideepitomised what a “modern” space was.But what of coloured light? In Chapter 106 of Glasarchitektur by Paul Scheerbart, (frst published in 1914), exclaims: “More colouredlight!...We must not strive to increase the intensity of light – today it is already too strong and no longerendurable. But gentler light is worth striving for. Not more light! – ‘more coloured light!’ must be thewatchword,” (Scheerbart: 1972, p. 72).Tese words could still apply today where too much glass has made for mundane spaces, (such as glass ofcebuildings), which tend to overheat, (due to the lack of shading), and often rely on nature to be viewed asthough a precious jewel like pavilion in a feld. “Scheerbart [also] published Der Lichtklub von Batavia:Eine damen-Novellette (Te Light Club of Batavia: ALadies Novelette) in 1912. It is a little known text; the tale is rarely included in bibliographies of Scheerbart’scollected works,” (McElheny: 2010, p. 3). Te gist of this short tale is about a proposal by a patroness whowants to build a spa at the bottom of a mineshaft, not for bathing in water but for bathing in light! M any of

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Scheerbart’s ideas related to glass from 1914 have been correctly forecast such as: “double walls of glass,”which we now know as double-glazing, and “glass fbres,” which became fbreglass. Maybe his “bathing inlight” could be another? So why not have “more coloured light?”Looking back at the history of coloured light, one associates the idea with stained glass in windows ofreligious chapels, churches and cathedrals. On a visit to Saint-Chapelle in Paris, (14.09.1988), the author hasstood back and watched peoples’ reactions to the blaze of coloured light that literally hits the visitor, as theycame up the tight curving staircase, (from the Chapelle Basse below), into the Chapelle Haute. Teir mouthsdropped open in awe, their breath seemed taken away, at the experiencing of the overwhelming afect of theChapel’s coloured light fooding in over them. Often such stained glass is overlaid with religious iconography.However, it could be argued that these literal images, (especially in cathedrals), are often too far away to beseen clearly by the naked eye to put the efect down to recognition of religious motifs.So it seems, there is some sort of experiential phenomena at play. Te direct “assault” on our sense of sighttriggers a reaction in our brains to such coloured light, seemingly independent of religious belief. Teresulting “coloured light splashes” seem to afect us in a primal or fundamental way.One person who experimented with coloured light was Mexican artist: Jesus “Chucho” Reyes Ferreira, (1880-1977); he built himself a “yellow” living room where “the glass was painted yellow so that the room is washedwith yellow light, giving the efect of sunshine. [Tis] idea…resurfaced later in the houses of [Luis]Barragan,” (Street-Porter, 1989, 144). Such an example being: the hallway of the Gilardi House, (1978),which has the frosted glass paned slots painted with yellow pointillist paint splodges, resulting in a“spacelight.” And, as Saito describes the experience:“[the light], dyes the white wall and ceiling…so that passing through it becomes a surrealistic dream-walk…the yellow corridor, the very air of which is tinged with particles of golden light, functions as a type of spaceconverter. As you walk down this long tunnel through the shower of golden light, you can feel your moodchange. No architect has explored the efect of colour on space and the human psyche to the extent thatBarragan has.” (Saito: 2002, pp. 195-197 and 31).Another explorer of coloured light as pure form, is the artist James Turrell, who says: “I make spaces thatapprehend light for our perception, and in some way gather it, or seem to hold it. So in that way it’s a littlelike Plato’s cave. We sit in the cave with our backs to reality, looking at the refection of reality on the cavewall,” (Turrell: 2006, pp. 26-27). In his so-called “Skyspaces,” Turrell merely builds a seat for the viewer, asthough inviting the viewer to stop, to be seated for a while, and let the overhead phenomena wash over theviewer. (As noted by the author during my visit to the “Skyspace,” at the De Young Museum, San Francisco,(31.05.2010)). Furthermore, within Turrell’s: Live Oak Friends Meeting House in Houston, Texas, (2000),which was commissioned by the local Quakers, there are bench like seats gathered around and under the“Skywindow,” profering the same invitation to pause and refect on the sky’s, coloured, light. By way of a living example of how a space can be transformed just by light: the author has over the yearsfrequented Sir John’s Soane’s own house, (now a museum of itself ), at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, howeveron a recent evening tour, (22 November 2011), the afect is rather magical due to the whole house being lit bycandles alone, the silence and whispered voices of the visitors, (who had queued for hours outside), was atmarked contrast of a daytime visit with tourists chattering as they shufe through the complex of tiny rooms.Quakers are renowned for their “meeting[s] in which any words emerge from silence.” (Maitland: 2009, p.141). Sara Maitland, in her book entitled: A Book of Silence, describes the phenomena associated with hervarious deliberate immersions into diferent “silent” environs, and she says: “I am convinced that as a wholesociety we are losing something precious in our increasingly silence-avoiding culture and that somehow,whatever this silence might be, it needs holding, nourishing and unpacking,” (Maitland: 2009, p. 32).Contrast this with the overloading of “visual noise” we put up with our daily contact within various cyber-worlds, which we increasingly have to inhabit, (for example, on-line shopping and on-line social networking).Busch argues that in fact we need real experiences that revolve around tactility to counter those other virtual

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activities in equal and opposite measure, to partake in such “tangible experiences…[it is essential to] demandwe use our abilities to see, smell, hold and touch in a real and visceral way[s],” (Busch: 2004, p. 4).One of the few non-ecumenical “chapels” built is Te Rothko Chapel, in Houston, Texas, (1971), whichdisplays 14No. of Mark Rothko’s paintings mounted around the walls of the octagonal plan. (NB. the authorfound himself willingly staying for a half day during a visit on 24.07.1986). Despite varying opinions of itssuccess, the “chapel” continues to draw people as a place of tranquillity. A recent check of the YELP website,(which claims: “real people, real reviews”), shows 87 reviews, of which: 33No. were 5-star rated, and 20No.were 4-star rated. Although this is hardly scientifc research it however makes the point. One women, CaraD. from Houston, commenting: “It is a place to mediate, to think, to pray, to use however you wish – so longas you are not disturbing other dwellers, of course…I visited here with a friend from Chicago…and once wewere outside she exclaimed: ‘If only every city could have a place like this.’ ” (YELP: 2013).

Discussion

Te above texts seem to support this paper’s main proposal: “Why not use this deconsecrated chapel, Futuna,as a “coloured light-retreat?” A refuge that can be enjoyed for its peacefulness, within a busy suburb. A spaceopen during sunlight hours, for all-comers. A space to take rest in silence and watch the coloured light fallwithin the “lightspace”. Compare this to what has happened to various Churches and chapels within NewZealand, some have been reused as houses or bingo halls. Tese reinventions may be practical but often showrespect little of the original “being” of the building.A question might be posed: “Are images essential to our wellbeing?” If one considers the 29 colouredphotographic images of Gavin Woodward’s in Waldren’s 1987 book, these astounding images leave the readerin no doubt as to the palpable atmosphere that light can generate within what was once a small chapel.Author: Tim Parks in his book Teach us to sit Still interestingly notes, “over the period when I wasn’t well…Ifound myself spending more and wore time looking at images…images of any kind…seemed to ofer relieffrom the language driven anxieties inside my head,” (Parks: 2010, p. vii). Te inference being: could a spaceactivated by natural light provide such images that evoke some stillness, (in our minds), to those requiring arefuge from our daily worries, stresses and strains? In the book Te Secret World of Doing Nothing, (2010), its authors: Ehm and Löfgren, discuss at great lengththe rather delicious aspect of our lives where we supposedly are “doing nothing” (Ehm and Löfgren: 2010, p.6). Tey discuss in detail what we actually do when we are “waiting,” the nuances of “routine,” and our“daydreamings,” all which they consider are essential for serious study in comparison to those writings relatedto “doing something,” (work, play, etc). Te authors argue that such times of “doing nothing” are of fullsignifcance to each individual and are of great importance to our overall wellbeing.To give some idea of the powerful afect the coloured light had in the original chapel: “Jim Allen described this event vividly: ‘You can imagine the very frst time we saw it – I think it was Johnthat saw it frst. He came running in – as we were in another building – come on, come on, and have a look atthis. We all ran across to the chapel – the yellow and blood-red light was on the wall – the most amazingthing, because for the next hour there were people standing there in silence – just watching the light… And itwas the frst time it had been seen’,” (Walden: 1987, p. 122).And still more recently: the author attended a Futuna fundraising lecture, (11.08.2010, in Auckland, NewZealand), presented by Architect: Nick Bevin, (current chair of the “Te Friends of Futuna CharitableTrust”). Before getting to the digital slides of the coloured light, (which were actually Gavin Woodward’sbeautiful images), Nick rather poignantly told the audience, “he was going to stop talking, while he showedthe next images,” Te silence was palpable, as about 50 design professionals stood stock still, (no sipping ofwine or chatter), while the coloured light images, (similar to fgures 1 to 6, below), worked their magic.

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In terms of the detail of how the coloured light is “generated” with Futuna, the coloured light windows havemany squares that are actually made of perspex, set into black painted aluminium “H” sections for support, (asopposed to stained glass with lead canes). Te creator of this system, artist: Jim Allen was “interested in a foating atmosphere of colour…[and he was looking for a way that] the hue of the colourcould be intensifed…he learned that if he isolated colour by embedding it in black, the colour became farmore intense. He also learned the value of having small panes of clear [perspex] which could focus light andmake it fash, like sun refecting of a car window,” (Walden: 1987, pp. 86-87). Tis gives the amazing coloured light splashes that rain down within the “retreat.” Tese perspex squares arealso devoid of religious iconographic images, they are made up of abstract groupings of primary colours: red,blue and yellow squares, which sometimes combine to create secondary colours of purples, greens, andoranges. Tese colours can be savoured in their own right, with no religious overtones, just colour, (e.g Fig.1).Te original bench seating, has been recently reinstated without the kneelers, thus removing the cue toworship and further freeing the space’s use, (e.g Fig.3), encouraging simply sitting and being “in themoment”.Te Stations of the Cross, which were also done by Jim Allen, were carved out of cast plaster and backlit byperspex covered electric lights. Why couldn’t switching the back-lights of, or installing a dimmer devicedownplay such icons? (e.g Fig.2).For approximately 12 years, (the period 2000-2012), Jim Allen’s original carved timber Crucifxion wentmissing from the chapel, (the crown of thorns and the crucifxion “nails” remain missing at the time ofwriting). Although the “Christ’s” return has been hailed as a triumph of community awareness and policeperseverance, and indeed this Christ fgure was justly central to the original space when it was a chapel. Tequestion remains: “in losing this icon did the space really lose something?” Tis is contentious of course withdifering opinions in relation to religious belief. But, has the sun failed to rise and set each day, (since theCrucifxion’s theft), and failed to activate the space with coloured light? I think not.While there is a lot of scepticism about the worth of colour therapy, (also known as Chromotherapy), anexample might be: a blue room may initially cause feelings of calm, but the afect soon dissipates after a shortperiod of time. In this case-study, that is all that is being asked for: a space where one could go for a smallperiod of time, to retreat into a space of coloured light, before leaving to go back into our noisy full lives.Tis notion of the change of use of a building is common enough with buildings over time, buildingsoutgrow their original intended purpose, but with spiritual buildings this is always a more delicate situation.Te reader will no doubt have seen churches converted into houses and so forth. Te scared building has tobe deconsecrated before the new use can be put into place. Opinions may vary on the validity of this but byway of example, some illustrious cousins to Futuna are: Ronchamp, La Tourette and church of Saint-Pierre atFirminy, (all by Le Corbusier), “Each has led a difcult life… Ronchamp remains a pilgrimage chapel, whose serenity returns very early andlate in the day, but at other times can be overrun with tourists… La Tourette is still occupied by a smallnumber of Dominican monks, but the monastery is otherwise flled with overnight visitors, primarilyarchitects…Saint-Pierre is more problematic, for it was abandoned by the church decades ago and had to becompleted with state funding, so that, while it has been consecrated and is periodically used for Sunday mass,it generally functions as a venue for tourism and cultural activities.” (Plummer: 2013, p. xii).So why not overlay another use for such a jewel like space? With the new purpose that is close to theoriginal, that respects its original essence, better than turning the chapel into a storage shed for the much tooclose housing development adjacent! Futuna could be just one “coloured light-retreat” for any and every person to stop by at this little gem of abuilding, tucked away in suburban Wellington, and merely sit and be mesmerized into silence by the colouredlight – a “retreat into coloured light.”Again quoting Henry Plummer:

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“Te contemporary artist James Turrell has said: ‘Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itselfthe revelation.’ Attention to light itself, and not to the object it illuminates, is the point. In a similar way, byproviding the time to live with light to watch its movement and feel its presence, to think about it and seeinto it, the twentieth-century work of “phenomenal architecture” as never before to evoke moods and feelingswe feel inside ourselves – helping modern man escape the loneliness of his social system, and fll the void leftby a ‘disappearance’ of God,” (Plummer: 2003, p. 28).

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the support of the current Chair, (Nick Bevin), of Te Friends of Futuna CharitableTrust, in allowing the author access to photograph Futuna.I am also indebted to Roger Tackery and Ross de Roufgnac who kindly accepted the task of taking manyphotos of Futuna on my behalf.

Bibliography

Bevin, N., (29.10.2010), [Edited email question about the date of Futuna Deconsecrating].Busch, A., (2004), Geography of Home: Writings on Where we Live, New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Ehm, B., Löfgren, O., (2010), Te Secret World of Doing Nothing, Berkeley: University of California Press.Maitland, S., (2009), A Book of Silence, London: Granta Publications.McElheny, J., (2010), Te Light Club (W. Werthern, Trans.), Chicago: Te University of Chicago Press.Parks, T., (2010), Teach Us to Sit Still, London: Harvill Secker.Plummer, H., (2003), Masters of Light Twentieth-Century Pioneers, Bankyo-ku: a+u Publishing Co. Ltd.Plummer, H., (2013), Cosmos of Light, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Saito, Y., (2002), Casa Barragan (5th ed.), Tokyo: TOTO Shuppan.Scheerbart, P., Taut, B., (1972), Glass Architecture and Alpine Architecture ( J. Palmes & S. Palmer, Trans.). NewYork: Praeger Publishers Inc.Street-Porter, T., (1989), Casa Mexicana, New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang.Turrell, J., (2006), A Life in Light, Paris: Somogy Publishing.Walden, R., (1987), Te Voices of Silence: New Zealand's Chapel of Futuna, Wellington: Victoria UniversityPress.YELP, (2004-2010), Yelp: Real People. Real Reviews. YELP, Te Rothko Chapel, http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-rothko-chapel-houston [Retrieved 03.08.2013]

Biography

Julian Rennie Bachelor of Architecture (First Class Honours). Graduate Diploma in Higher Education. Heis a part time tutor at Unitec, within both the Department of Architecture and the Department of LandscapeArchitecture. He also is a partner in the architectural frm rennie dowsett architects. Has won variousarchitectural prizes and awards within New Zealand.

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BLACK COLOUR IN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILT ENVIRONMENTJUSTINA TARAJKO-KOWALSKA

Cracow Univeristy of Technology, Faculty of Architecturejustarajko@tlen.pl

AbstractJapanese philosophy says that the aesthetic value of achromatic colors - as black - is perceived only by those who cancontemplate the beauty and richness of other colors. Black is in fact seen as a negative presence of color, because there isno true black without deprivation of the light. Black is the absence of hue and light through which often symbolizes thenegative values. Associated with depth and darkness, evil and death, isolates from external factors. But at the same timee.g. in the European tradition, black has extraordinary power of attraction, becoming, especially in the second half of thetwentieth century, the color of power, elegance and luxury. In architecture solid black façade fnish isn’t a typical choice,however there are some traditions of using black color in architecture and some regions where it’s used more often thanin others. e.g. China, Japan, England, Denmark, Te Netherlands. In contemporary built environment one can observeincreasing interest of black color use, which gives uniform, compact, heavy and sculpture-like appearance of thebuildings. Modern materials and façade technologies make achieving glossy and deep shades of black possible, difcultto reach in plaster. Examples of black buildings – traditional and modern, big and small, landmarks and symbols as wellas just good designed will be presented, together with material solutions for them. Black buildings are fashionable andtrendy – like a “black pearl” or “black diamond” – precious and desirable…

KeywordsBlack, Symbolism, Traditions

Introduction

Black is a specifc achromatic colour, which is perceived by man due to great absorption of light by a givenarea, or illumination so low, that it does not stimulate visual perception. Tis is why it is often associated withthe concept of darkness – the lack of light. According to Berlin and Kay (Berlin, Kay, 1969), in the languageswith the least developed nomenclature there are only two defnitions: black (which also means dark – cold)and white (bright – warm). In Polish, the adjective “czarny” means that with the darkest possible colour andabsorbing all light rays falling upon it, as well as illegal, dark, pessimistic. Te black colour has manymeanings, which are often ambivalent. Te negative associations such as evil-devil, vileness, death, mourning,impurity, appear simultaneously not only with humility, modesty, and abandonment of life’s pleasures, butalso with elegance, dignity, luxury, power, and law.

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Black colour architectural traditions

Te black colour has been used by man in arts and architecture from the earliest times. Beside red, yellow, andwhite, this colour was used in the paintings of the Palaeolithic, including the famous Lascaux cave. Accordingto Empedocles, these four colours also formed the basis for the palette of Greek painters (Rzepińska: 1989).Te frst works applied charcoal, while successive black colourings with greater depth and expressiveness wereproduced from burned animal bones (so-called bone black), and from the grinding of psilomelane crystals orother oxide minerals of manganese MnO2 (so-called manganese black) (Pastoreau: 2008).Black was also the favourite colour in the interior decoration of ancient Greece, which is evidenced in thepreserved historic monuments and the treatises of Vitruvius, who dedicated chapter 10 of volume VII of hiswork on architecture to methods of producing and applying black dyes, acquired mainly from the soot of oils,kerosene, tar, etc. burned without the access of air (lampblack) (Witruwiusz: 2004). Te popularity of black ininterior decoration was also dominant among ancient Romans, whose sources for the production of blackdyes included grapevines. Tis pigment, which was acquired from the carbonisation of plant tissue, cork, orseeds, was referred to in Medieval Europe as nigrum optimum – optimal black. Te traditional relations with the black colour in architecture can also be found in the cultures of the FarEast.In Japan, black is the colour of Yin in the Yin-Yang theory. Yin is dark, heavy, and passive, symbolising soiland water, as well as the Earth. Dark colours are often seen in the Japanese architecture due to the woodcommonly used in traditional construction, as it was often charred by fre for better protection from insects.Te roof tiles of traditional houses are also often dark grey or black. Te contemporary buildings are morecolourful, but in many cities, e.g. Kyoto, the general palette continues to be dominated by dark and dimshades, as well as black, which visibly contrasts with the white of shoji – the traditional windows made fromwhite rice paper (Lenclos: 2004). Today’s buildings sometimes refer to this tradition, including the Black SlitHouse (THREE.BALL.CASCADE architecture) in Okayama City, Villa SSK by Takeshi HirobeArchitects, Chiba1, or House O by Jun Igarashi Architects in Hokkaido from 2011.In China, the black colour is associated with water, which is one of the so-called fve elements, which,according to the Teory of Five Phases (or Five Elements), co-create the entire environment of human life,and interact under various combinations. It is associated with cold and winter, the northern direction, and isrepresented by the black tortoise. Terefore, the presence of black in architecture, particularly in traditionalhouses, is not surprising (Lee: 2012).Te black colour also plays a vital role in the tradition of Islam. Tis is the primary colour in the three-coloursystem, and it is associated with active energy, Saturn, the prophet Adam, and the metal lead. Tis is thecolour of Al-Kaba, al-Kaaba (Arabic: cube, dice) – the temple and sanctuary in Mecca, the most importantIslamic holy place, the spiritual centre of the Muslim religion, which is the destination of pilgrimages for alldevoted Muslims who want to show respect for Muhammad. Te building is covered with the black screencalled kiswah, which is decorated with embroidered gold verses from the Koran. Te eastern corner of thetemple has an embedded black meteorite – the holy Black Stone (Hajar). Legend has it that it was broughtby Archangel Gabriel and given to Abraham. Initially white, it turned black by absorbing the sins and guiltof the pilgrims paying homage to it. In the rural architecture of traditional Europe and America, the black colour was most often associated withmaterial – wood or stone. It was present in the regions, which saw the application of tar and petroleumproducts to protect the framework of wooden houses (including the village of Ropianka in Poland). Due tothe interaction of atmospheric factors or impregnation, the wood itself also frequently grew dark, resulting inthe black surface of walls or roofs. Te dark surface of the wall was often in clear contrast to the white bandsaround the windows or the white gaps between the beams. Te beams of the so-called timber frame were alsopainted black in contrast to the brighter flling (Tarajko-Kowalska: 2006). Examples of such use are found on

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the coast of the Baltic Sea, on both the Polish and Swedish sides. Black is used to this day in Bornholm topaint the pedestals and wooden beams of building structures (Lenclos: 2004).Stone objects – particularly those built from various types of slate, mainly metamorphic slate – also receivedthe black colour. Te northwest part of the Mexican municipality of Guadalajara is the home of the regionknown as Pueblos Negros (Black Pueblos) or Arquitectura negra (Black Architecture). Its peculiar name isowed to the common use of the local pizarra slate in the construction of houses, fencing, and otherarchitectural elements. Its dark-grey and sometimes even black colour provides the architecture of numerousvillages – particularly Majaelrayo – with a unique appearance2. Te application of black on building facades is common in most countries of the northern, protestant Europe.It is predominant in such countries as England, Scotland, Iceland, Belgium, Denmark, or the Netherlands.Such popularity of black in northern Europe results mainly from the implementation of the so-calledsumptuary laws, which cover the prohibition of using expensive dyes. Te 16 th century reformationmaintained this trend, condemning the “immorality” of warm and bright colours, and encouraging the use ofsimple and raw ones, not only in apparel, but for residential buildings as well. Black buildings were notcommon in the countries always dominated by Christianity, due to the rather negative associationsaccompanying the colour and its direct relation to mourning. (Lenclos: 2004)Te black colour of the facades was not always intentional – in many cases, the initial, often bright colour ofthe facades became darker from pollution and exposure to atmospheric conditions, becoming similar to blackafter many years. Te black colour became an inseparable colour in numerous towns of the 19 th-century industrial revolution,which were polluted by the products of the combustion of coal, and later of other fuels. Over time, many ofthe buildings in European and American towns were covered with a layer of dark sediment, changing theiroriginal colours to black. An example of this is London, with its dark streets and smog-covered sky describedin detail by Charles Dickens (1860). (Pastoreau: 2008) However, the black facades of the London houses alsoresulted from the common use of black bricks. Tey were used to build several front layers of the externalwalls due to their resistance to water, particularly in tenements from the Victorian era. Te most famous (notonly in England) black London buildings certainly include that at 10 Downing Street, called “Number 10,”which served as the home and ofce of successive British Prime Ministers and Her Majesty's Government.Te ultimate form of the black brick facade was achieved in the 18th century. Te original black oak doorsfrom 1735 were replaced with armoured metal doors coated with a high quality, shiny black varnish after theIRA terrorist attacks in 1991.

Black in contemporary built environment

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the 1920s in particular, with the establishment of the aesthetics ofModernism, Bauhaus, and De Stijl, black, along with white, became the expression of modernity. Blackalmost always accompanied the white surfaces of the modernistic building walls as the colour of windowframes and door wings, as well as balcony balustrades and structural steel beams (e.g. Te Rietveld SchröderHouse in Utrecht, built in 1924 by the Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld). Te most famous black buildings of this period include the Zwart Huis (literally Black House) in Knokke,Belgium, which was designed by the architect Huib Hoste in 1924. Te building, which was inspired by theaesthetics of De Stijl and covered with black plaster, was very revolutionary for its time. It was entered intothe register of historic monuments in 2000, and continues to serve as a great example of modernism inBelgium to this day. (Rouw: 2009)However, the beginning of the 20th century meant also Art Deco and the start of the American skyscrapers.During the years 1923-24, the architects Raymond Hood & André Fouilhou built a skyscraper at 40 West

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40th Street in New York. Te black brick covering the facade minimises the contrast between the walls andthe windows, providing the building with massiveness. However, the tradition of the black high risers did notestablish itself until the 1940s, when the architect Mies van der Rohe created the canon of buildingsconstructed in a black, steel framework. Over a period of 30 years, he designed and built numerous buildings,mainly in the USA: in Chicago (including the one at 330 N. Wabash) and New York (Seagram Building,with Philip Jonson in 1958), but also in Canada (Toronto Dominion Center, Canada, 1969). Tese buildingsfound numerous imitators and became the prototypes for modern skyscrapers (e.g. John Hancock Center,SOM architecture, 1969). Also worth mentioning is Te CBS Building in New York City, located at 51West 52nd Street, designed in 1965 by Eero Saarinen. Te building is known as Black Rock for the darkgranite façade cladding.In the contemporary urban environment, the black colour is most frequent in the painting of the elementslocated in front of the proper, brighter wall surface, such as balcony balustrades, downpipes, windowsills, aswell as window shutters and frames, door wings, and fnishing details. (Duttmann: 1981) Black varnish isoften used to prevent the corrosion of wooden and iron elements (tar-based varnish) and lead (made fromgraphite), thus its application in the coatings of decorative grates and other forged elements. Associated with elegance and luxury, black often appears in store windows and signs, particularly of thosecarrying exclusive products, expensive jewellery and clothing, such as e.g. Swarovski, Hugo Boss, GiorgioArmani, or Gucci. Black is also often used as the colour of roof coatings – sheet metal, roofng paper, metaland bituminous tiles. Tis coating colour is currently common in regions, where the roofs were traditionallycovered with shingles or lath. (Tarajko-Kowalska: 2006).Te signifcance of black in the colouring of interiors, architecture, and design increased in the 1980s, whichwas associated with the high-tech style. Te 1990s was the period dominated by achromatic colours, whichwas associated with the popularity of design minimalism. Black has become the colour of the current era,creation, power, and money – dominating not only the worlds of designers, fashion designers, or architects,but also those of lawyers and bankers. (Pastoreau: 2008) Te great popularity of black in architecture, not onlyin public buildings, but also private homes, even in countries without the tradition of its use, is dated at theturn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Numerous objects built near the end of the 20 th century and in the frst decade of the 21st century becamepopular due to black, often receiving names or nicknames derived from this colour, referring to, amongothers, rare precious stones, such as black pearls or diamonds. One of the more interesting contemporary black buildings is the Danish National Library in Copenhagen,which was designed by SHL Architects in 1999. Te nickname of the building, the Black Diamond (DenSorte Diamant), refers to its monolithic, irregular shape, as well as its granite coating of the facades. TeAbsolute Black granite was extracted in Zimbabwe, then cut and polished in Italy.3

Te building of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein) wasbuilt in Vaduz (Liechtenstein) in the year 2000. It was designed by the Swiss architects Meinrad Morger,Heinrich Degelo, and Christian Kerez. Te closed form of the “black box” is built from coloured concrete andblack basalt.4

Tere is a grand building located next to the highway from the Taipei airport, called the Black Pearl. It wasdesigned by Shin Takamatsu and built in 2002 for the Metropolitan Construction Company. Te blackarched external protective wall is made from Safex laminated glass panels, the special surface of which isintended to protect the building from earthquakes and typhoons5.Te Black Panther is the nickname given to the headquarters of the Uniopt Pachleitner Group, which waserected in 2011 in Graz, Austria, by the designers of GS Architects. Tanks to its sculpted form, sharpshapes, and black colour, the building has become the artistic hallmark of the city.

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Black pigments and materials in architecture

Te material is an important element in the selection of the fnishing method for black facades. Teimportant aspects include the properties of its surface, texture, transparency or opacity, matt or shine,smoothness or roughness – all of the above afect the ultimate perception of the black form in the landscape.New technologies have allowed the production of new materials, such as coloured concrete, sheet metal, glass,prefabricated tiles, and ultimately paints and varnishes with a level of intensity impossible to achieve just afew years ago. Tese materials and techniques have greatly assisted the increased popularity of the blackfnishing of building facades varying in typology, functions, and scale.

Wood

Wood in various forms and from various types of trees has been used in architecture to obtain black from theearliest times. Te efect of black was obtained by submerging the beams or boards in oils, impregnation,charring, or simply varnishing. Tere are several noteworthy objects among contemporary buildings withwood applied on the facades. An experimental building was built in 2010 in the HTW Berlin University of Applied Sciences. Both thewalls and the roof of the building were covered with scorched larch wood panels. Tis way of woodprocessing, which originates from Japan, emphasises its structure and porosity, simultaneously providing itwith considerable resistance to external factors.6

Te next building is the Knut Hamsun Museum in Norway, which was designed by Stephen Holl, who wasinspired by the black rock walls of the Swiss Alps covered with white snow. Te body of the building wascovered with tarred black wood, which commonly appears on the churches in the region.Te Swedish architects Tam & Videgård Hansson Arkitekter applied the interesting technology of stainedblack plywood panels, mounted in layers on a slowly grown pine framework in two buildings – the Museumof Modern Art in Kalmar, Sweden (2000), and in the House-K residential building in Stocksund,Djursholm.7

In 2008, the Dutch architects of Van Rooijen Architekten designed "Te Invitation" the De Meern Centrein Utrecht, Netherlands, the body of which was entirely covered with black stained wood.8

Natural Stones

Stone is another material giving numerous shades of black. Te various types of stone, such as slate or granite, are traditional construction materials in the various regions, which hosted the deposits of a given type of rock. One of the most interesting contemporary buildings built from black stone is the Giant's Causeway Tourist Centre in Ireland, which was designed by Heneghan Peng Architects (2012). Te appearance of the black stone pillars surrounding the building refers to the basalt columns formed by the volcanic eruption approximately 50 million years ago.9

Te residential social building for miners located in the heart of the Spanish Cantabrian Mountains, whichwas designed by ZON-E Architects in 2009, is like the locally produced coal – it absorbs almost all of therays of light falling on it, which provides it with an evenly monumental appearance. Te material used in thiscase is the local black slate, which refers to the mining traditions of the town.10

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Brick

Black brick has been decorating the streets of numerous European cities for centuries. As already mentioned,it was made resistant to water in the 19th century, which made it desired in cities susceptible to fooding, suchas London. It is currently used only for aesthetic purposes, sometimes as facade fnishing. An example of thisis the building of the London substation for the 2012 Olympic Park, which was designed in 2010 by NORDArchitects. Te monolithic, simple form of the building and the perfect black brick facade ensured its victoryin the category of non-residential buildings of the 2012 Wienerberger’s Brick Awards.11

Plasters, paints and varnish

It seems that there is no easier way to obtain black than painting. However, as much as the varnishesprotecting iron or lead elements are durable and resistant to atmospheric factors, black paint and plastershould not be used in all cases. Dark plaster is not recommended in moderate climate zones (such as Poland)on an area greater than 10% of the facade due to increased absorption of solar rays, which can causeunfavourable thermal tension in the insulation layers, resulting in the cracking of the surface. Te applicationof three-layer or single-layer walls is a certain method to avoid this problem. Nevertheless, black-plasteredbuildings are rare, perhaps also due to the matt and non-expressive nature of the resulting black colour. Tebuilding in Stuttgart-Möhringen, which became the object of the artistic experiment of Erik Storm andSimon Jung entitled the “House in Black” in May of 2008, is an interesting example. During the periodpreceding its demolition in 2009, the former home of a modern art gallery was covered top to bottom withmatt black paint by the artists. For several months, the building transformed into a monumental sculptureand aroused great interest, becoming the subject of numerous photographs.12

Te “Rose am Lend” building, located at Lendplatz in Graz, Austria, is an interesting example of applyingblack plaster for the entire facade surface. Renovated by the INNOCAD architects (Martin Lesjak, PeterSchwaiger, and Bernd Steinhuber) it attracts attention due to its black colour, which is livened by theadditions of silicon carbide particles and grand rose-themed decorations, which refer to its name. (Isopp,2009) Concrete structures painted black are also common solutions, for example in the 2009 building of theMarchesini France headquarters in Paris, which was designed by LAN Architecture13, or in the Shin-Yatsushiro Monument lace pavilion in the Japanese prefecture of Kumamoto, designed by Kumiko Inui in2004.14

Metal plate

Today, sheet metal is eagerly used by designers, not just due to its durability and resistance, but also its veryaesthetic appearance. An example is the new Sports Arena in Bytom (Poland), designed by MaćkówPracownia Projektowa, the form of which resembles a lump of coal. Te black rectangular cuboid of thebuilding is covered with anthracite-coloured sheet metal and cut with deeply rooted glass, which is a clearreference to the region’s mining traditions.15

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Trespa® Meteon® panels

Te Benchmark Trespa Facade System was created in cooperation with Trespa International BV. Teecological Trespa Metreon panels, which are present in numerous paintworks and textures, are frequentlychosen as a durable and aesthetic, facade fnishing. Two buildings from 2009 are interesting examples of theuse of TRESPA® METEON® black panels on the entire facade surface: the European Centre of Ceramicsin Limoges, France, designed by Atelier Jean Dubus, and the Tom Reilly Building of the John MooreUniversity, in Liverpool, Great Britain, designed by Lord Austin-Smith.

Glass

Due to its transparency and translucency, glass is always desired in facade fnishing. However, modern glass isoften much diferent from just that in regular windows. Glass panels can be provided with almost any colour,while retaining their transparency. Te Black Box Ofce, in Wildes Meadow, Australia (Southern Highlands,New South Wales), is an old machine hall reconstructed by the Tina Tziallas Architecture Studio in 2012.Te simple body of the building was equipped with a facade made entirely of black glass, the large surfaces ofwhich can be elevated, merging the interior with the exterior.16

Other unique black materials

Contemporary technology allows for the application of more innovative and avant-garde materials onfacades. Some of them, such as membranes or insulations, are not associated with standard facade fnishing.However, architects are more eager to reach for unusual materials – often black, which additionallyemphasises the ultimate visual efect. Tis is the case of the minimalistic house designed by the architects of Foaa-Norte in Calafquén, Chile,where a matt black asphalt membrane was used on the entire facade surface.17 Te Jeferson Sheard &Careyjones Architects also decided to apply a unique method when designing the Soundhouse for theUniversity of Shefeld in 2008. Te building is completely enveloped in black rubber. Te use of rubberisedtanking as an exposed external membrane, was a very innovative design solution, but it was also a hugetechnical challenge to the designers.18

In the house Black Beauty in Linz (2005r.), xArchitekten used new kind of fberglass-reinforced concreteslab to implementing dark monolithic outer skin.19

In the house located in Budapest, Hungary (2012), T2.a Architects used UV-resistant façade membrane,which is water-proof from the outside but vapour-open from the inside.20

But the most unique solution for the façade fnishing is the one for Artwood Showroom in San Miniato,Italy (2012). LDA.iMdA Architects converted the former warehouse into a design showroom for timberfurniture brand Artwood. Te exterior of the building is covered with a black curtain with only one black-framed entrance, as there are no windows.21

Conclusions

Black is the colour of both tradition and modernity. It looks very trendy and elegant, and gives a very decentand royal look to the building. Completely black cladding of the building highlights its sculptural quality.Black is simultaneously bold and neutral, creating a statement without clashing against its background.

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Bibliography

Berlin, B., Kay, P., (1969), Basic Color Terms: Teir Universality and Evolution, Berkeley: University of California Press.Duttmann M., Schmuck F., Uhl J., (1981), Color in Townscape, San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.Lee, Tien-Rein, (2012), Heaven, Earth and Humans: Color Harmony in Chinese Culture, Budapest, Hungary: Proceedings of 5th Colour Specialists International Conference in Hungary. Lenclos, J-P., Lenclos, D., (2004), Colors of the World – Te Geography of Color, NY-London: W.W. Norton& Company.Pastoureau, M., (2008), Black: Te History of a Color, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Rouw, K., Komossa, S., Hillen, J. (ed.), (2009), Colour in Contemporary Architecture: projects/ essays/ calendar/ manifestoes, Amsterdam: SUN.Rzepińska, M., (1989), Historia koloru w dziejach malarstwa europejskiego, Warsaw: Arkady. Tarajko-Kowalska, J., (2006), Kolor w wiejskich zespołach architektoniczno-krajobrazowych – ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem wsi Polski Południowej, Krakw: Politechnika Krakowska.Varichon, A., (2006), Colors – what they mean and how to make them, New York: Abrams.Witruwiusz, (2004), O architekturze ksiąg dziesięć, Warsaw: Prószyński i S-ka.

Isopp, A., (2009), Residential and retail building, http://www.a10.eu/magazine/issues/28/building_graz.html [retrieved 26.07.2013].Popp, P., 12.02.2013, Tree colours – Red Black Green: Landscape Park in Copenhagen, http://www.detail-online.com/architecture/topics/three-colours-red-black-green-landscape-park-in-copenhagen-020724.html [retrieved 14.08.2013]Black Buildings: 15 Examples of Monochromatic Architecture, 08.10.2012, http://weburbanist.com/2012/10/08/black-buildings-15-dark-examples-of-monochromatic-architecture/ [retrieved 26.07.2013].http://www.archdaily.com/153189/social-housing-for-mine-workers-zon-e-arquitectos/ [retrieved 25.08.2013].http://www.archdaily.com/239389/black-box-tina-tziallas-factor-design/ [retrieved 27.08.2013].http://www.archdaily.com/240218/house-for-sale-in-calafquen-foaa-norte/ [retrieved 21.08.2013].http://www.dezeen.com/2012/01/06/artwood-showroom-by-lda-imda-architects/ [retrieved 26.07.2013].http://www.dezeen.com/2012/10/18/giants-causeway-visitors-centre-by-heneghan-peng-architects/ [retrieved 26.07.2013].http://www.enob.info/en/solar-decathlon-europe-2010/berlin/[retrieved 27.08.2013].http://www.homesthetics.net/the-royal-library-in-denmark-by-shl-architects/ [retrieved 26.07.2013].http://www.inuiuni.com/projects/246/ [retrieved 20.08.2013].http://www.jefersonsheard.com/projects/learning/soundhouse-the-university-of-shefeld [retrieved 27.08.2013].http://www.karin-abt-straubinger-stiftung.de/kas/cms/front_content.php?idart=103 [retrieved 27.08.2013].http://www.kingspanbenchmark.info/benchmark-facades-trespa-meteon-facades.html#sthash.w7jlbMxv.dpuf [retrieved 27.08.2013].http://www.safex.com/pdf/Vanceva ® Color by Safex™ Black Pearl.pdf [retrieved 27.08.2013].http://www.tvark.se/house-k/ [retrieved 27.08.2013].http://www.tvark.se/kalmar-museum-of-art/ [retrieved 23.08.2013].http://www.vanrooijenarchitecten.nl/2-projecten/utiliteitsbouw/theinvitation/projecten.html [retrieved 20.08.2013].http://www.xarchitekten.com/ [retrieved 27.08.2013].Why is the door at 10 Downing St so shiny?, 12 May 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8677004.stm [retrieved 27.08.2013].www.kunstmuseum.li [retrieved 26.07.2013]. http://t2a.hu/en/news/housing/black-magic-2 [retrieved 27.08.2013].

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Biography

Justyna Tarajko-Kowalska, architect, academic teacher, since 2001 is working at the Faculty of Architecture,Cracow University of Technology. She is the author of over 30 articles on the issue of color in architecture;she took part to numerous conferences and scientifc sessions on colour - including the AIC InternationalCongresses. Since 2005, she is member of the Environmental Color Design Study Group. She is the authorand co-author of several studies supporting the selection of elevation colors, developed for producers offacade paints and plasters.

__________________

1 hirobe.s2.bindsite.jp

2 www.guadalajaraturismo.com/pueblos-negros

3 http://www.homesthetics.net/the-royal-library-in-denmark-by-shl-architects/

4 www.kunstmuseum.li

5 http://www.safex.com/pdf/Vanceva ® Color by Safex™ Black Pearl.pdf

6 http://www.enob.info/en/solar-decathlon-europe-2010/berlin/

7 http://www.tvark.se/house-k/

8 http://www.vanrooijenarchitecten.nl/2-projecten/utiliteitsbouw/theinvitation/projecten.html

9 http://nordarchitecture.com/projects/primary-substation-2012-olympics/

10 http://www.karin-abt-straubinger-stiftung.de/kas/cms/front_content.php?idart=103

11 http://www.lan-paris.com/project-Marchesini.html

12 http://www.inuiuni.com/projects/246/

13 http://www.mackow.pl/projekty/funkcja/publiczne,hala_sportowa__na_skarpie_bytom

14 http://www.archdaily.com/239389/black-box-tina-tziallas-factor-design/

15 http://www.archdaily.com/240218/house-for-sale-in-calafquen-foaa-norte/

16 http://www.jefersonsheard.com/projects/learning/soundhouse-the-university-of-shefeld

17 http://www.xarchitekten.com/

18 http://t2a.hu/en/news/housing/black-magic-2

19 http://www.dezeen.com/2012/01/06/artwood-showroom-by-lda-imda-architects/

20 http://t2a.hu/en/news/housing/black-magic-2

21 http://www.dezeen.com/2012/01/06/artwood-showroom-by-lda-imda-architects/

9

CRYSTAL IN ARCHITECTUREBRUSTOLON VERONICA, DE MONTE ROBERTA

Dept of Design and Planning in Complex Environments-University IUAV of Veniceveronixarch@hotmail.comDept of Design and Planning in Complex Environments-University IUAV of Veniceroberta_de_monte@hotmail.it

AbstractGiò Ponti used to say that architecture is a crystal, something extremely frail but at the same time characterized by aunique and durable beauty. Tis is the fundamental principle of the Lasvit, a company founded in 2007 within theproductive area of the Czech Republic: the Bohemia.Te will of the founder Leon Jakimic was to renovate the ancient bohemian tradition using new techniques and newapplications. For this reason he decided to collaborate with the most important local and international designers, such asPhilippe Starck, Ross Lovegrove and Nendo.Te results of this collaboration were incredible: thanks to the skills of the master glaziers in combination with thecoloured led technology, Lasvit created huge installations inside the most important hotels, museums, galleries andairports. For example, one of the last creations presented at the Fuori Salone of Milan was the Liquidkristal, an highprecision process of heat transfer on a plate creating organic glass panels, perfect for big architectural installations. Tistechnique is able to create any kind of mathematical described pictures that may be looped creating a pattern that seemsfow through the building’s or installation’s walls. Te paper will describe the new technologies created by Lasvit throughthe study and the analysis of the main works of the company.

KeywordsColour, Crystal, Glass, Lighting

Introduction

Leon Jakimic is considered one of the greatest experts in the world in the art of crystal production.In fact, after graduating in economics awarded in California, he decided to return to his homeland, theCzech Republic, to found in 2007 the Lasvit, today considered the leading company in the feld of glassware.Te secret of the success of Lasvit (whose name in Czech means “love of light”, from the combination of“laska”/love and “svit”/light) is the union between the Czech tradition of glassblowing and the ability of thefounder in advertising this art by entrusting the design of objects to designers of international fame.Te team is also made up of artist-engineers who work with capacitive skills and creative sense, in addition tobeing light-designers, in fact, they usually insert plays of light in Lasvit’s works, which, combine with glass,create special efects.

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History and tradition

Te glass and the working of this amazing material have ancient origins; it is reported that in fact already inthe Phoenician people began to appear the frst processing techniques to transform the glass vases anddecorations much appreciated all over the known world.Such was the importance and value of the glass, which it survived throughout the centuries and thetechniques were passed down from generation to generation through the people who, over time, improvedand perfected.Te 1450 was the year in which was experienced a new turning point in the history of glass, on this date, infact, in Italy was born the crystal, created from glass with the addition of sodium and manganese.Obviously, this technique also arrived in Bohemia, a historical region of Central Europe, already famous forits vast production of glass and the sophisticated manufacturing techniques.Te workers of Bohemian discovered that potassium combined with chalk created a clear colourless glass thatwas more stable than the one coming from Italy.It was in this period that emerged for the frst time in the history the term “Bohemian crystal” to distinguishits qualities from the glass of other places.Te craftsmen of Bohemia became experts in the art of working with glass that has become famous for itsexcellent cut and engraving, then later they also became qualifed teachers for all countries near and far.Producing all kinds of objects, even pearls, Bohemia soon became a formidable rival of Venice.Te Napoleonic Wars of the XIX Century changed the political aspect of Europe and, the addition to theAustrian Empire of Bohemia and Venice, between 1815 and 1866, did not eliminate the competitionbetween these two regions, which had always been ferce.In the face of this antagonism, the Czech masters found something new that has allowed them to expandtheir markets, in fact, during the XIX century, they journeyed long, asking people they met from country tocountry what kind of pearls wished, then they returned to Bohemia with many sketches for the constructionof new pearls, since gems Czech distinguished from those Venetian style and colour.Venice sustained to focus on the glass beads by hand, while the Czechs became masters of pressed glass, bothregions, however, have continued to refne and improve all forms of processing over the centuries.By the mid-nineteenth Century, in Bohemia was created a school system for the glass making technique thatencouraged the traditional and innovative methods, also favoured the technical preparation of future artisansand craftsmen of the glass. In the second half of the same century, Bohemia engaged in export trade and massproduction of coloured glass for shipment worldwide.Even now, when we speak of “Bohemian crystal” it refers to the ease of processing, hardness and tounmistakable beauty that has made this material one of the most beautiful ever created so that it depopulatedmarkets pushing factories to refne processing techniques.

Liquidkrystal and Lasvit Crystal Walls

Lasvit is in the vanguard of the crystaglassware sector for its intent to innovate the “material of materials”trying it out for every possible technics, like complex glassblowing and glass printing, worked in all of itspossibilities. Te reason why it’s called contemporary glass is that Leon Jakimic pulled together great Czechdesigners like Rony Plesl and Jitka Kamencova Skuhrava with international names like Philippe Starck,Fabio Novembre, Ross Lovegrove and Nendo, particularly the last two are the authors of the new productsexhibited at the Salone del Mobile di Milano in 2012.In particular, the Lovegrove’s work, Liquidkristal, is a high precision heat transfer process of creating organic-like glass panels, developed towards the innovative use of the material in large-scale architecturalinstallations.

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Fig. n.1 - Lasvit Liquidkristal, by Ross Lovegrove

Te system permits the precise forming of any mathematically describable design, and individual panels canshowcase slightly “shifted” versions of the model, creating the efect of an organically fowing pattern acrossa building or other large structure. Te innovative method also lets designers or architects control the levelof opacity of segments of glass, utilizable in creating spaces where certain features are highlighted andothers blend of into a blurry play of colour and light.At the Triennale di Milano during Milan Design Week 2012, Lovegrove and Lasvit exhibited theLiquidkristal technology in the Lasvit Liquidkristal Pavilion: a curved, fowing installation open toexploration by visitors, upon which video by computational designers biothing was projected to highlight therefective qualities of the material. Te panels themselves are smooth on their exterior, while the inner surfacefollows a valley of dips and pockets, which is what causes the fascinating play of light on objects visualizedthrough the panels from any angle.To develop the technique, Ross Lovegrove and a research team at Lasvit used fuid dynamics research toinvestigate the densifcation of large-scale patterns in nature. Tis information was then inserted intomathematical models to develop the thermal inductive process, or 'high precision heat transfer', that underliesthe glass's production.Liquidkristal is most fundamentally a process: an innovative technique of molding glass that enables a highlevel of precision. Lovegrove envisions the project as the frst step in what is more importantly “project baseddesign”. “I'll lend [architects and designers] my technology”, he explains, and have them develop their owndesigns for use in their work, listing David Chipperfeld, Toyo Ito, Tokujin Yoshioka, and Zaha Hadid amongthe architects whom he would like to collaborate.His own future research with the technology might include investigating the use of special coatings or theembedding of solar panels into the units, or flling the glass pockets with solid materials to ofer additionalrefective efects.

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“Glass is a facilitator of giving you all the acoustic and climatic comfort but it also gives you that visibilityand to take that to another level where you zone it, instead of it just being a repeated sheet, doesn't sound likea radical idea [but it is]. We are talking about design as an efective tool to create jobs, to build newbusinesses; to create a new sparkle in an industry that is a little bit overlooked in my estimation” . So RossLovegrove describes his project for Lasvit.

Fig. n. 2 - Lasvit Liquidkristal by Ross Lovegrove (photo Simona Cupoli)

Another important aspect of these panels, whether located inside or outside, is represented by the play oflight and refections that the wavy surface creates if exposed to daylight and/or artifcial light.Artists/designers involved in searches at the Lasvit deal with the possible placement of light sources andapparatus that control, manage, reduce, enhance or modify the emission of light in their installations. In fact,checking the light also help to control the balance of the opera, the composition, the atmosphere and thefeelings generated by colors. Te relationship among the glass, the interior space and the surroundingenvironment are the results of infnite modulations, primarily organized by the balance of shadow and light.Te dose of light represents a frst selection in the characterization of interior spaces. In addition, the choicesregarding the focus are also very important: operating on a difuse or clear light means activating a perceptionof surfaces, corners, recesses that shows a lot of variables.However, Liquidkristal is not the frst experience in the feld of architecture for Lansvit; in fact, during theSalone del mobile di Milano in 2010 the Czech ofce Koncern presented the Lasvit Crystal Walls project.Lasvit Crystal Walls is an original prefabricated module consisting in crystal components with pre-defnedmodel options and a highly esthetic efect. Te module is a new mutable device, unique for its quality, set atthe edge between applied and fne arts. Lasvit Crystal Walls represents a brand new alternative for thearrangement of deluxe and representative interior spaces of any kind, all the while embracing the custom ofglass application as seen in the Czechoslovak representative architecture of the 1960’s and the 1970’s.

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Tree basic types of bearing structures enable to form original decorative structures ft for smaller indoorsareas as well as in huge projects. A typical use of this product with a reinforced bearing structure could be forinstance a wall running up several foors in the lobby of a large building. Te Lasvit Crystal Walls design involves digitally recurring structures of crystal glass segments, remotelyreminding of the ancient decorative patterns and processes used to create forged bars in the medieval castlesof Central Europe. With simple crystal elements – two basic and three side or corner elements – you can create about twenty models, from puristic geometrical structures to richdecorative patterns. Even the range of the Lasvit Crystal Walls artistic prototypes is very wide – frommodern abstraction to variations based on ancient oriental motifs. Te color is another important visualelement. Lasvit Crystal Walls can be produced either in a traditional transparent version, or in an elegantversion of crystal with metal-plate, three colors available.

Conclusions

Even now, the Bohemian crystal is one of the most precious and refned crystals of the world and is the prideof its ancient region of origin, that isn’t existing today. In fact, the cities and towns of the ex-Bohemia are stillconsidered the birthplace of the most precious crystal and their streets are full of small shops and boutiquesselling bohemian crystals.As shown above, an important tribute was given by Lasvit with his study and technical application that thecompany is still developing. Te architectural interest of this technics, demonstrated by the examplesmentioned above represent a new potential for the future of the bohemian crystal.

Bibliography

Drahotova, O., (1991), L’Arte del vetro in Europa, La Spezia: Fratelli Melita Editori.František, K., (1960), Panorama della storia cecoslovacca, Praga: Orbis.Pešatová, Z., (1968), Bohemian Engraved Glass, Londra: Hamlyn.Stuparich, G., (1969), La nazione ceca, Milano: Longanesi.

http://www.sapere.it/enciclopedia/Bo%C3%A8mia.htmlhttp://lasvit.com/http://www.domusweb.it/it/design/2012/02/20/lasvit-esperienza-antica--giovane-passione.html

Biography

Veronica Brustolon was born in Frankfurt (Germany) in 1987. Graduated in 2012 at the IUAV University of Architecture in Venice, with a degree thesis about Media-Facades. In 2010, did an internship at the studio of architecture Ceschia&Mentil, in Venice. Partecipated in two study-tours to New York and Netherlands_Germany. Teaching assistant in ‘architectural technology’ at the Polytechnic of Milan, editor of Screencity- International Academic Journal, interesting in new technologies for media-building and smart glass facades. At the time, is research fellow at the University IUAV of Venice.

Roberta De Monte was born in 1988 in Valdobbiadene (Treviso). She graduated in 2012 at the UniversityIUAV of Venice, Master in Building Technology, with a thesis on new media façades. Trainee at the studioTAMassociati (Venice) and Laboratorio2729 (Venice), she participated in two study-tours to New York,Holland and Germany. She is now attending the Second Level Master Degree in Digital Architecture.

5

WANG SHU: FACADES AS MATERIAL AND TACTILE STRATIFICATIONSGIUSEPPINA SCAVUZZO

University of Trieste, Department of Engineering and Architecturegscavuzzo@units.it

AbstractAlongside research on high-tech architectural coverings and facades, projects are emerging that emphasize a primordialand tactile relationship with materials. Tis often coincides with an interest in the local and primitive that suggests aresistance to globalization. Te works of Chinese architect Wang Shu are perfect examples of this trend. Hisarchitectural works are multi-material assemblies in which raw materials and leftover materials from demolitions of oldvillages are assembled by combining modern and traditional techniques, developed together with local craftsmen. Tisphysical intimacy with the material paradoxically gives architecture a dimension of universality that transcends the local,because the return to the roots of constructing arouses tactile emotions and ancestral memories that can be universallyshared. Wang Shu’s vernacular and modern architecture is an afrmation of the possibility of an alternative modernity,of the importance of cultural sustainability as well as eco-sustainability.

KeywordsArchitecture, Built Environment, Materiality, Recycling, Texture Surface

Material, local, universal

Alongside research on high-tech architectural coverings and facades, projects are emerging in diferentcultural and climatic contexts that, in contrast, emphasise a primordial, tactile relationship with materials.Paradoxically, this return to matter seems to answer an almost spiritual need in reaction to the economisticmaterialism dominating contemporary globalisation. Globalisation, dominated by the market and by technique, is characterised by a pervasive immateriality offnancial fows, information and images. Similarly, its architectural expression also leans towardsimmateriality (Fernández-Galiano: 2013). Tis immateriality is expressed frst in the digital prefguration ofarchitecture and then in the aspiration to maintain this virtual character in the actual construction by usingtechnologies that tend to dematerialise buildings through transparency, extreme clarity and smoothness, andtherefore refection, or by turning the facades into screens for virtual images.I believe that the dominant market culture risks betraying the authentically innovative – and in some caseseven provocative – nature of these experimentations, pushing them towards commercialism. While themarket demands and glorifes this type of architecture, encouraging research in this direction, a counter-trendseems to be coming to the fore, supported by the demands of economic austerity dictated by the crisis, butalso by an increasingly widespread environmental awareness. Te latter results not only in the focus on

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sustainability and energy saving, to which high-tech projects must also aspire, but also in a cultural andspiritual need to establish a bond, albeit visceral, with nature and the earth.After the drunken binge in an artifcial and psychedelic world, dominated by sophisticated but often alsosuperfuous techniques and by a technological and futurist exaltation which, in the end, does not ofer reallydesirable scenarios of life, the need to return to the essential sources of construction is emerging. As Hegelput it, this is construction understood as the “architectural cultivation of the earth” to meet the basic needs ofman through the humility of raw materials. Tis return involves the rediscovery of traditional techniques thatprocess materials readily available in situ, creating a strong bond with the environment, the landscape, theclimate and the local economy.Tis trend takes the form of resistance to a globalisation which erases specifcity and local memories, butparadoxically gives architecture a dimension of universality that transcends the local, because the return to theroots of constructing arouses tactile emotions and ancestral memories that can be universally shared. Teseemotions flter mainly through the sensitive skin of such architecture when it takes the form of a textural andtactile collage, the stratifcation of tactile memories, references and afnities with the surrounding landscape.

The walls of Wang Shu

Confrmation of this premise is the fact that the return to the material emerges in contexts in which thedestruction of all roots has been systematically planned and pursued; countries where the alliance betweentechnique, market and aspiration to modernity has produced macro projects that are indiferent to thesurrounding environment and landscape.Te works of Chinese architect Wang Shu, winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2012, are examplesof the desire to oppose indiference to the location and oblivion of the past; his architectural works are multi-material assemblies in which raw materials and leftover materials from demolitions carried out in the nameof growth are assembled by combining traditional and modern techniques.Te raw materials used by Wang Shu are, above all, earth and ceramics, either in the reuse of bricks and tilesfrom old buildings or the making of new ones from scratch using traditional techniques. Earth is a buildingmaterial that has been used in China for 3000 years, and it is still used in the countryside, where it isestimated that half of the houses are built of earth (Shu: 2010). Ceramic is most directly derived from earthand, like earth, is a material that breathes, is alive. Wang Shu has mainly used the immense deposit resultingfrom the demolition of traditional villages. In the Hangzhou region, the plan for renovating traditionalbuildings led to old bricks dating back even to the Qing Dynasty being abandoned. Tese are now availableat half the price of new industrial products with inferior performance and aesthetic qualities.Tiled Garden (2006), created by Wang Shu for the 10th Venice Biennale of Architecture, was constructedwith a bamboo structure made up of 5000 pieces, and 60,000 of these recycled old tiles: a huge roof which,through the material and tactile richness of the old handmade tiles marked by time, becomes an evocativelandscape (Fig.1).Other materials used are wood, which Wang Shu learned to use as a young man working alongsidecraftsmen, and bamboo, which occupies a special place in Chinese culture. As well as its resistance, lowtendency to rot and elasticity making it an ideal material for making everyday objects, symbolic and aestheticqualities were added. Te Chinese poet composes while contemplating a bamboo grove (Marcel: 2013): theyoung bamboo has female grace and slenderness, the mature bamboo has male solidity: to the touch, a bigbamboo feels smooth and compact but when beaten with the knuckles sounds hollow; by making just a fewcuts, it becomes a musical instrument. Tese natural materials are used by Wang Shu along with cement andsteel, combining traditional popular techniques with modern technology.

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In the Ningbo History Museum (2003-2008), 20 diferent types of bricks, stones and old tiles from thedemolition of 15 villages destroyed in the region have been put together using the Wapan technique, a fastand simple construction method used by Chinese peasants to quickly rebuild villages after typhoons orlandslides, reusing the remains of destroyed buildings (Fig. 2).Again, a traditional technique has been studied and developed to meet the needs of a modern building. Infact, traditional Wapan would have imposed precise limits to the building’s dimensions. After dozens ofexperiments, Wang Shu perfected a mixed system with reinforced concrete beams, sometimes exposed andsometimes inside the thickness of the walls flled with lighter recycled materials. Tis has resulted in excellentstructural performance and insulation, in continuity with local building culture, and also the restoration of alost memory at an afordable price: Wang Shu tells the story of an elderly woman from one of the villagesdestroyed in the urban renewal plan who visits the museum every day because she feels at home there, beingable to touch the old bricks from her town.Te builders could arrange the recycled tiles, bricks and stones according to their own whim and was notplanned by the architect. Tis renunciation of a personal, self-referential statement is one of the maindiferences between traditional Chinese and Western architectural culture (Shu: 2010).Te colours of the bricks, stones and tiles thus form a mélange that is unexpected but in keeping with thelandscape, whence the materials come. However, according to Wang Shu, this multi-material building cannotbe said to be completed: the relationship between nature and the human being will only be achieved once thewalls have been covered with lichens and other vegetation – in other words, when nature has retakenpossession of the substance it has loaned man to make the construction material.

Manual labour as a model

Wang Shu attempts to overcome the confict between modernity and tradition without repeating localstylistic models or historical patterns, but by drawing on memory and fltering it through manual labour: “thesignifcance of the building lives in the hands of the workers” he says, because artisanal manual labourresponds to need in the easiest way through its use of readily available materials. Wang Shu accuses modernarchitecture of doing the opposite: it starts with the architect’s desire to create something s/he has in mind,using the materials s/he has in mind, even if these are only available in distant locations or the productionmethods for limiting energy consumption are very complicated (Shu: 2010).Wang Shu's predilection for manual labour unites manual construction work with the artisanal production ofeveryday objects, but also his own working method: hand-drawing projects and his daily practise in theancient art of calligraphy. A fne example of this ideal and practical relationship with manual labour andcraftsmanship is the cofeehouse built in Jinhua, the Ceramic House (2003-2006). It is one of 16 smallbuildings, or follies, created by Chinese and international architects and artists for the Jinhua Art andArchitecture Park, curated by the artist Ai Weiwei.Te structure of this small house recalls the form and working principle of the ancient ink stones used incalligraphy, which have a fat part and a slanted part to collect the ink (Shu: 2010). Tis principle is used toachieve the passive ventilation of the building, whose form allows the breeze from the nearby watercourse topass through it and, on the other hand, serves to drain rainwater (Fig. 3).Glazed ceramic tiles cover the Ceramic House both externally and internally. Wang Shu and master potter WuZhou, who made them, selected 40 shades of enamel for the tiles, which were then stuck to the surfaces in nospecifc order. Te colours are all from the tradition of Zhejiang province, which was renowned in ancientChina for the colours of its ceramics, especially blue. Te tiles also reproduce the shape of the ink stones, thecoloured enamel replacing the ink.I would defne a building made in this way as the architectural realisation of a metonymy, the rhetoricalfgure that results from the mental association of two realities in relationship and replacing the name of one

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with the other: for example by calling the container the contained, the cause the efect, the material theobject, and the part the whole. Derrida has already defned the Follies of Tshumi’s Parc de la Villette as anarchitectural metonymy, as the part that indicates the whole (the rest of the park), recalling its divisibility intoparts. By calling into question what had until then had given meaning to architecture, for Derrida the Folliesushered in deconstructivism (Derrida: 1987).Here, the part indicates the whole because the entire architecture responds to the same principle as theartisan’s handmade object, and what gives meaning to the architecture is that it satisfes a material and poeticneed in the simplest way, and does so by leaving impressed the unique mark of what has been made by hand.Continuing the comparison with Derrida’s interpretation of Tshumi’s follies, we could say that Wang Shu’smetonymy hopes to usher in a new humanism, a modern architecture which, by tapping into popular andmaterial culture, goes back to using technique not as a goal but as a tool of necessity. Te acceptance ofimperfection, an exercise in humility and authenticity, is emblematic of this relationship with technique. Forexample, in creating the broad walls of the Ningbo Museum, the workers were not always able to proceed in aperfectly straight line when they assembled heterogeneous materials; this imperfection, which was nevercorrected, has given movement to the surface of the museum, like the skin of a living animal.In contrast, the exaltation of technique, typical of contemporary globalisation, contains an idea of beauty tiedto anything that proclaims itself to be new, shiny and perfect. In this way, some contemporary architectureseems to be telling us, from an alien world of technological perfection, that we are all too human, with ourimperfect bodies that are subject to ageing.Architecture that uses raw and rough materials is subject to change over time, it ages along with humans, butat the same time it is renewable, it continues to live, stretching us out towards nature’s cycles, in whicheverything changes and even that which seems to die becomes nourishment for other life.

Vernacular and natural

Te relationship with the past in Chinese culture is far removed from the sense of Western history. In China,there is not that tradition of critical historical thinking which in the West led to an ebb and fow between thereturn to the ancient and subsequent reactions, followed by as many returns, reactions and re-workings in theartistic and architectural feld. In China, the past is handed down more through words, writings and oraltradition than through constructions and monuments in the Western sense (Botz-Bornstein: 2009).Many Chinese constructions of the past have not been preserved intact, or with all their authentic parts, aswe would defne them in the West, not only due to damage and destruction as a result of political andhistorical events, but also because they were not designed to last: the materials used were meant to bereplaced over time, as if they were living beings or, to use a metaphor dear to Wang Shu, gardens to bemaintained.However, today's young Chinese architects are learning Western construction methods which Wang Shubelieves are good for building infrastructure, but not for meeting the needs of living. Wang Shu identifescontemporary living requirements with the ancestral construction of a house, whether designing homes,schools, museums or entire cities (Shu: 2012). According to Wang Shu, the main value that Chinesearchitects must preserve from their tradition is naturalness: in China each building was designed incontinuity with nature, imitating it to achieve harmony. Tere was no distinction between the construction ofa garden and that of a house or a city (Shu: 2010).But for tradition to remain alive, it must be renewed, not immobilised in repetition. Traditional techniques,hitherto absent from university architecture courses, are thus studied by Wang Shu and his students, togetherwith the craftsmen who still possess and keep alive the skills inherited from the past, making them evolve.Tis is why Wang Shu defnes his architecture as “vernacular and modern” in a sense that comes close to theCritical Regionalism theorised by Frampton (Botz-Bornstein: 2009), but does not identify itself completely

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with it. It is part of the tradition but lacks a critical approach, which would be foreign to it, instead seekingcontinuity in "naturalness", in an idea of history that is not progressive but cyclical, like nature.Tis lack of a critical or controversial attitude diferentiates the work of Wang Shu from that of anotherChinese artist and intellectual, famous in the West, Ai Weiwei, with whom Wang Shu worked on the JinhuaPark project. However, even without sharing Ai Weiwei’s political dissidence, Wang Shu and his AmateurArchitecture Studio continue a resistance to the professionalism (Shu: 2012) and dictatorship of the market.His material walls are an afrmation of the freedom to be diferent and the possibility of an alternativemodernity.

Conclusions: Architecture as a seed

Responding to those who asked why he had presented an installation such as the Tiled Garden at the VeniceBiennale, which that year was dedicated to the theme of the metropolis, Wang Shu replied that for him thegarden is a seed: a city can be born from it (Shu: 2010). Tis answer refers to his interest in the tradition ofthe Chinese garden, in naturalness as a model for urban development. Te organic metaphor of the seedseems to capture and synthesise the universal value of Wang Shu’s work, which transcends considerationsabout local Chinese tradition.In her research on a “poetic reason” that releases “those things of the human soul that faith in progressneglects”, Spanish philosopher Maria Zambrano speaks of the signs of the artist, calling them seeds that arecapable of germinating (Zambrano: 1977). Tis well describes the symbolic attitude of the signs ofarchitecture, representing it as a fertile activity or “architectural cultivation of the earth”.Te metaphor of the seed reiterates the social and ethical role of architecture, because environmentalawareness and sustainability are not only good building practice, and ultimately a technical-regulatoryrequirement, which is still a dominant technical tool, but they also confer on the language of architecture itsability to express meanings, to return us to the primary condition of inhabitants of the universe. Notsurprisingly, Wang Shu speaks of “sustainable aesthetics” (Shu: 2010) and thus of cultural sustainability aswell as eco-sustainability.Architectural composition and civil responsibility are inseparable: the timeless poetic language ofcomposition is regenerated from its roots; and its signs and its primordial matter become seeds and promise acontinuation of life. Tis is exactly how Wang Shu’s architecture reaches out to the future in a vital way, notdenying the past but feeding on it.

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Fig. n. 1 - Tiled Garden, 2010, 10th Venice Biennale of Architecture, Venice, Italy. Photo by Lu Wenyu

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Fig. n.2 - Ningbo History Museum, 2003-2008, Ningbo, China. Photo by Lv Hengzhong

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Fig. n. 3 - Ceramic House, 2003-2006, Jinhua, China . Photo by Lv Hengzhong

Bibliography

Hegel, F., (1997), Estetica, Turin: Einaudi. Derrida, J., (2008), Psyché. Invenzioni dell ’altro, Milan: Jaca Book, (or Psyché. Inventions de l ’autre, Paris:Galilée, 1987).Zambrano, M., (2004), Chiari del bosco, Milan: Bruno Mondadori Editori, (or Claros del bosque, Barcelona:Seix Barral, 1977).Botz-Bornstein, T., (2009), “Wang Shu and the Possibilities of Architectural Regionalism in China”, inNordic Journal of Architectural Research, Vol. 21, No.1, pp.4-17, Helsinki: Ed. Nordic Association forArchitectural Research.Maglica, I., (2010), “Amateur Architecture Studio. Museo di storia locale a Ningbo, Zhejiang”, in Costruire inlaterizio, No. 135, pp.10-15, Milan: Tecniche Nuove S.p.A.

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Shu, W., (2010), “Desde la tierra a la cerámica, una construcción viva”, in Ensayos Sobre Arquitectura YCerámica, vol. 2, pp. 19-35, Madrid: Mairea Libros - Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura.Shu, W., (2012), Imagining the house, Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers.Marcel, A., (2013), Traité de la cabane solitaire, Parigi: Arléa.Fernández-Galiano, L., (2013) “Materia local”, in Arquitectura Viva, Vol. 4, No. 151, p. 3, Madrid:Arquitectura Viva SL.

Biography

Giuseppina Scavuzzo, researcher in Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Trieste, Departmentof Engineering and Architecture. PhD in Architectural Composition at the University Iuav of Venice, in2004 was reasearch fellow of the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris. Member of the Iuav research group“Colour and Light in Architecture”.

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BLACK AND WHITE SCREEN AND THE CITY: CONTESSA DI PARMA BECOMES SMARTORNELLA CASTIGLIONE

Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicoccaornella.castiglione@unito.it

AbstractTis paper aims to analyze some elements of medial development due to the digital convergence and to the infuence ofvisual communication in the urban space like “city of screens” and “screen city”, according to the relocation of thecinema phenomenon. Te image of the screen has became a symbol of our contemporary, it appears at the same time asa results of many computational processes and as a mirror, or a window, or a threshold of access to the real world. Alessandro Blasetti, one of the greater Italian flmmakers, in 1937 shot in Torino Contessa di Parma in which the screencan be read as a diaphragm of the narration and as symbolic object. Contessa, in fact, has been immediately considered amovie of the modernity and it shows us screens used as showcases, entrance doors of the place in which the plotsdevelops but, overall, separation in character’s gaze because inside of the hotel they always watch through mirrors orglasses, symbols of their world full of lies and deceptions.

KeywordsAlessandro Blasetti, Cinema and Te City, Screen, Urban Space

Introduction

“[Cinema is] the place par excellence of the new collective rituals because it appears as a "temple" erected for new modern sensibility, communication form in which questions instilled in the modern society may fnd symbolic and real acceptance.” (Canudo: 1908)

Alessandro Blasetti (Rome, 1900–1987) is one of the most important flmmakers of the Tirties in ourcinematic landscape, he was also active in the feld of flm critics and of cultural policies, alwaysdemonstrating competence and passion. In 1937 Blasetti shot Contessa di Parma with the productioncompany Industrie Cinematografche Italiane in Turin. Tis movie is one of the Italian examples of thatperiod where joined the model of the celebration of "modernity" within the urban context.As we all know, the city is characterized as a privileged space in the cinema since its inceptions. "Te templeof the modern", as defned by the flm historian and theorist Ricciotto Canudo (Gioia del Colle, 1877 –Paris, 1923) in an early assay, establishes a reciprocal relationship with the city in two directions. Te frst oneconcerns the way urban space hosts projections, buildings and images of cinema while the second one dealswith the way city has been elected as the ideal location to build their own plots, up to fx a model in the

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collective imaginary. City and its attractions are therefore the geographical space of modernity and cinemawas able to adhere to the needs of his time. In fact, just the representation of urban reality - and sometimes,by contrast, of the country - has been one of the central themes in flm history; although this dichotomyalready belonged to other forms of expression (theatre, literature e.g.). In this way, cinema in Twentiethcentury has assumed the role of new medium of communication for the masses and city became its ownspace, linking cinema and architecture, as Marco Bertozzi afrms concerning the early age cinema:

“Te urban imaginary in early cinema falls into that feeting boundaries mapping marked by the combinationof the art of cinema and of the one of architecture: territories that make uncertain the scientifc importance,moors traversable with slow transportation, browsing, sifting, straying in fascinating and sometimesinhospitable ravines” (Bertozzi: 2001, p. 13; author’s translation).

The city of Turin

Contessa di Parma can be classifed under the genre of the sophisticated comedy, inspired by the style ofAmerican flmmakers as Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Capra or George Cukor. Indeed the feature of the levity,typical of the frivolous comedy, should be connected to the desire of underling the diference betweenContessa and the other Blasetti’s operas, normally characterized by discussion of social issues as, for instance,1860 (1934), the controversial Vecchia guardia (1935) or the following Quattro passi tra le nuvole (1942).Blasetti defned this movie “silly” but his gaze has given us an important witness of the reality of places wherehe shot and of social conditions at the time, with a tribute to the American myth (Zagarrio, 2004, p. 180).Interior scenes are all shot into FERT Cinematographic Studios (the historical venue was located inLombardia Course 194), where Blasetti returned in 1941 in occasion of his new flm La corona di ferroproduced by Lux (Gambarotta, 2003, p. 249).

Fig. n. 1 – Te set at FERT Cinematographic Studios.

A short tale of that moments can be provided by the reminds of Enrico Paulucci (Genova, 1901 – Turin,1999) who worked on the set of the movie:

“In those years Turin was a laboratory city. It was also a hectic construction site, the town of radio andfashion, of Juventus and of the city center restructuring. We shot this flm into Fert, where the warehouseswere full of treasures, full of false things”. (Prono: 2001, p. 201; author’s translation)

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On this topic, Prono (2001, p. 202) describes us the places where outdoor scenes has been shot so that some locations of the town can be recognized:• Mirafori Hippodrome (demolished in 1958, it had occupied the area bounded by Soviet Union,

Traiano, Benedetto Croce and Onorato Vigliani Courses);• Valentino Park (located along Po river with longitudinal development, it branches of from Vittorio

Emanuele II Course);• Stadium (Municipal Stadium Pozzo - already known as Benito Mussolini Stadium - has been

inaugurated in 1934 and demolished in 1990. Nowadays it is called Olympic Stadium and it has been restored in occasion of Winter Games 2006, it is located in Filadelfa Street but the main entrance is on the new Grande Torino Square);

• Porta Nuova Railway Station (the most important station of the city, designed and completed by the architect Alessandro Mazzucchetti in 1868, it is located in the city center and its main entrance is onVittorio Emanuele II Course);

• Viotti Street (a short street in the city center with arcades only on one side); • Giovanni Agnelli Course (an avenue on the south-eastern suburb where Fiat factory is located, in

fact it is titled in honor of its founder); other city center streets.

I have insisted in placing geographically the locations of the shootings because the choice on them has notbeen by chance. Te urban imaginary proposed by cinema is a net made by routes and connections. Tecontemporary concept of “Citynet”, namely a “reticular space […], an union that creates an indistinctorganism between city and the Net” and “a space created by new connections, but also created by theexpansion of the computerization of objects and of architectures phenomenon” (Arcagni: 2012, p. 13; author’stranslation), as defned by Simone Arcagni in his recent assay Screen City, in my opinion can be considered anevolution of the Tirties dimension proposed in Blasetti’s movie. Te Citynet built by Contessa scenary, infact, is a world technologically and culturally advanced.Te places of modernity, in which Blasetti set his characters, are all connected by new transportation, as carand train, or as telephone and papers when data are concerned. Tey continuously move themselves andinformation they generate on the whole urban area. According to Zagarrio, the movie “is an important clueof a desire for ‘modernity’ ” (Zagarrio: 2004, p. 182; author’s translation), thus it takes possession of the urbanarchitectural signs: the stadium is a big concrete structure, which fgured through geometric shapes flls thescreen with aesthetic purposes. With a similar aim we fnd the hippodrome: a big place that can gather largecrowds for the football match or any other sport event, because the urban space is the space of massesphenomena. In Porta Nuova tourists and workers arrive, taking shape as the real gate of the city andbecoming a silent spectator of frst migration fows: “when departures and arrivals of the Grand Tour hasbeen concluded, in the Twentieth century Porta Nuova becomes the crossroads for thousands of Piedmontcommuters that moved from country to the city” (Andreini: 2006, p. 125; author’s translation), in theambition to become a city of landing. Urban and modern way of life has been celebrated here in the city center streets, full of shops and showcaseswhere liberated women walk, buy or, more simply, look. Obviously, the counterpart of the built space is nature and within the urban space it is represented by parks,as Valentino, one of the postcard images of Turin. Ogling on that A Sunday afternoon on the island of laGrande-Jatte in the French environment, very pleasing to Turin citizens. Outside the perimeter there areAvigliana in Susa Valley and Sestriere: holiday destinations of a rich working class who starts designing andbuilding the places where to go and have fun. In the case of Sestriere, the small town is characterized bytowers designed by architect Vittorio Bonadè Bottino (Torino, 1889–979) under a commission of GiovanniAgnelli in 1930 and still used as hotels: the FIAT-mountainside of the FIAT-city.

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We cannot forget that Italian cinema has born in Turin and besides this town has always been considered alaboratory of experiences and new technologies, the city of science and technique, of culture and progress. In conclusion of this chapter, if we can assimilate the town of Contessa to the actual term of “Smart city”, weshould also consider that Piedmont chief town remained anchored to its baroque-noble structure over havingbeen later projected under migration of countryside masses, for whom religion and tradition rules prevail onhuman decisions.

Screens, glasses and mirrors as diaphragms

In Contessa di Parma, vision is often realized through screens, mirrors or glasses in function of diaphragmsbetween gaze and fction, truth and deception.During the development of the plot we fnd screens as showcases of the shops in the city center street wherethe mannequin Marcella (Elisa Cegani), the false countess, walks meeting the football player Gino Vanni(Antonio Centa). In this occasion we see the portion of city life through another fctive framework: thearcades of Viotti Street. Showcases are the screen in which clothes are shown, namely the objects of Contessaenvironment, since that entire story runs across a fashion label. Te Grand Hotel entrance, the place where high society fellows live and meet for social events, is a revolvingdoor made of glass panels. Tis door here assumes the symbolic function of threshold between the public cityand the private space where only important people can have access. Te protected inner place is a kind of“gated community” as Arcagni writes about the new architectural assets of American metropolis in which the“ecology of fears” developed (Arcagni: 2010, p. 60; author’s translation). Climbing the stairs of the hotel, wereach widow Marta Rossi (Pina Gallini) room where we fnd the screen that hides Marcella changing heroutft. Te same aim of both hiding and separation is represented by the sliding doors in the director Cerrani(Umberto Melnati) studio during the parade rehearsal. Sliding panels are also used in the theater foor inSestriere, where the fnal parade takes place, creating a performance into the cinematic screen with ahorizontal movement. Parade, in this way, is confgured as a representation in the representation. As wellfocused by Eugeni, “Blasetti metropolis is then basically a theater stage” (Eugeni: 2007, p. 134; author’stranslation). In his assay the scholar argues that in this flm daily life is a representation for continuousfctions in identities but also because, under the aspect we mind more, “the city is seen and represented thenwith the mobile, unstable, precarious eye of cinema” (Eugeni: 2007, p. 132; author’s translation): storydevelops through a continuous game of screens that build the net in the city and open new scenarios. Besides, in this movie Blasetti shot several takes concerning the car during which the dialogues, especiallybetween Mr. Vanni and other characters, take place through windows. In Contessa there is a “performed andrepeated use of car windows to crop the faces of the protagonists” (Eugeni: 2007, p. 133; author’s translation).To the fascination of screens and of the image of the city they give us back also belong car windows, asnoticed by Arcagni. New soft screens substitute heavy and framed ones, so they ft into the architectural anddaily objects, they merge into architecture and share the space with cars windows, mirrors, glass (Arcagni:2012, pp. 82-83).Tere are other occasions in which we see car travelling or we look directly inside of them or, besides, we seethe landscape with a subjective take through the window. Achieving a “travelling gaze”: the cartographic viewof the city. Concerning the mirrors, one is located into Gino Vanni’s room and we see his image refected inside when hestops pretending to be ill and takes the decision to go out looking for the “countess” Marcella. Deceptions, representations and pretences, in fact, are the foundations of the whole story of Contessa sincethat from the title we have a fake information: Contessa di Parma is the name of a dress and is not referred tothe noble title of the women who wears it!

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Cinematographic symbolic representation realizes this condition sharing the two faces of the sphere. In oneside there is the truth, the progress, the modernity, normal people and in the other side the deceptions, highsociety fellows, the narrow lows of always. Te dance into Grand Hotel scene shows us the “other world overthe glass modular panels” made by encounters, relationships, dances: the city life of high society. Finally, in Contessa the screen intended as a picture is represented with various paintings (in Gino’s house orin the director’s studio, for instance) and with posters and afches in the hall of the theater; while the screen asa communicative instance is present in the form of display with trains information and in Gino’s watch. In order to highlight the feature of city of progress and technique, in Contessa large space has been reservedto communication system: telephone is inserted as a tool of modern age easily managed by all the charactersand also the paper messages are delivered with a certain quickness. Moreover, visual communication and theorganization of social events (dance nights or parades) play an important role within the advertisingcampaign of the fashion factory Magazzini Primavera. Trough a new mass medial system, a factory ofdreams, and of “appearance”, made by money and business has been created in this period of time (Grande:2003, p. 191).

Contessa into a screencity

If Casetti afrmed that "landscape [...] has now become a media landscape” (Casetti: 2008, p. 38; author’stranslation), in urban place we cannot distinguish architectures of buildings from architectures of images. An important pattern of this is well shown in the photographs by Michael Wolf within “Architecture ofdensity” series, taken in Hong Kong, where picture is a set of modules in which each window of the building,vertically organized, can be assimilated to the bit fow.

Fig. n. 2 – A pattern of Architecture of Density by Michael Wolf.

Is always more relevant crossing shapes and disciplines to understand cinema and the representation it gaveof the city. Image of the city is a “hybrid object” as defned by Bertozzi (2001, p. 13) such as cinema is. Eachmovie creates a universe, a set of linked elements, real or symbolic, aimed to fx an imaginary in spectators. Inthe same way, city behaves “because image development is a reciprocal process between observer and thingobserved, it is possible to enhance the image through symbolic artifces, through the re-education of theperceiver or through the reconstruction of his environment” (Lynch: 2006, p. 33; author’s translation). Spatial contiguity is fctional, it is created in function of the imaginary dimension of the specifc flm and ofwhat it aims to express. According to the study presented by Erich Rohmer on the space in Murnau’s Faust(1926) in which the French flmmaker classifed it in three notions, we can assert that moving images

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representing the architectural space, that acquires meaning in the portion of exposed flm, becomes flmicspace. Besides, as we know, in Rohmer thesis space is composed also by pictorial one (Rohmer: 2001, p. 19).Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (Bielefeld: 1888 – Santa Barbara: 1931) did not use pictorial direct quoteswithin his operas but he built every single frame as a picture, controlling carefully all the details of the image.Blasetti seems to have learnt this lesson – moreover, several takes inspired by Sunrise (1927) in Contessa canbe found - demonstrating his taste for aesthetic (mainly composing the picture by circular lines) and forvisual arts especially. In fact, this topic has been dealt during the conference organized by FAI and held inDecember 2012 in Milan titled “Avanguardie artistiche e scenografche moderne nel cinema italiano deglianni Trenta. Il caso de La contessa di Parma di Alessandro Blasetti (1937)” in which Rafaele De Berti stressesthe visual research implemented in the movie:

“In the Tirties Italian cinema is possible to identify a series of flms in which we see the adoption of amodern and close to the contemporary international avant-garde from Bauhaus Constructivism toRationalism scenography. Tis is due to the collaboration of designers as the architects and painters such asGuido Fiorini, Virgilio Marchi, Vinicio Paladini, Enrico Paulucci, Carlo Enrico Rava or by a capableprofessional as Gastone Medin”. (De Berti: 2013; author’s translation)

Particular importance for the study here presented is provided by the graphic signs designed by Paulucci forthe headlines where graphics, architecture and cinema come together. As asserted by the professor: “Note theoriginal opening sequence of Enrico Paulucci head titles with stylized shots of rationalist buildings” (DeBerti: 2013; author’s transaltion). Actually, Paulucci’s head titles became part of the architecture itself, as theydefne formal lines and take part of the building framework, highlighting the perspective.

Fig. n.3 – Enrico Paulucci’s headlines.

Conclusions

In order to keep itself alive, cinema regains the role of its early age: representing the city and confrontingwith its phenomena, expressing and developing in the inner space. In a time like ours, in which intersections and exchanges into disciplines are promoted, here is that the cityprovides the basis for a truly interdisciplinary relationship. Cinema, paintings, architecture, sociology,advertising, photography, communication, performing arts and city planning achieve a broad andcomprehensive design into the urban space of Tird millennium.

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As Contessa di Parma is a case of mirrors and glasses, the portion of space imprisoned by the rectangle of thescreen can be replied to infnity and creating infnitives recalls, fnally they can augment reality. Te stagedspectacle inside the movie is the big city made by screens and by technological and audiovisual spectacle thatwe use to stare in our digital era. Always closer to an entertainment park or a multiplex.Cinema is relocated in the city (Arcagni: 2010, p. 40) placing itself in devices made available bycontemporary metropolis, geographical and planned shape of post-modern urban space.

Bibliography

Andreini, A., (ed.), (2006), Una Mole di parole. Passeggiate nella Torino degli scrittori, Turin: Celid. Arcagni, S., (2012), Screen City, Rome: Bulzoni.Arcagni, S., (2010), Oltre il cinema. Metropoli e media, Turin: Kaplan.Bertozzi, M., (2001), L’immaginario urbano nel cinema delle origini, Bologna: Clueb.Casetti, F., (2008), “L’esperienza flmica e la ri-locazione del cinema”, Fata Morgana, No. 4.Della Casa, S., Prono, F., (eds.), (2006), Contessa di Parma. La modernità a Torino negli anni Trenta, Proceedings of the Conference Contessa di Parma – Una commedia nella Torino degli anni Trenta, Turin, Italy, 6october 2005. Eugeni, R., (2007), La metropoli tra set e palcoscenico. Figure della città nel cinema italiano degli anni Trenta, in Marrone, G., Pezzini, I. (ed.), Senso e metropoli. Per una semiotica posturbana, Rome: Meltemi.Gambarotta, B., et al., (eds.), (2004), Torino Il grande libro della città. Storia urbana, arte, musica e spettacolo, vol.2, Turin: La Stampa. Grande, M., (2003 [1992]), Le commedie degli anni Trenta, in Id., Caldiron, O., (ed.), La commedia all ’italiana, Rome: Bulzoni. Lynch, K., ([1964] 2006), L’immagine della città, Venice: Marsilio.Prono, F., et al., (eds.), (2001), Torino città del cinema, Milan: Il Castoro. Rohmer, E., ([1984] 2001), L’organizzazione dello spazio nel Faust di Murnau, Venice: Marsilio.Zagarrio, V., (2004), La contessa e il marinaio, in Id., Cinema e fascismo. Film, modelli e immaginari, Venice: Marsilio.

Form on Contessa di Parma at the Documentation Centre on architectural culture and its historyhttp://www.architettiroma.it/archivarch/scheda_flm.asp?id_flm=28 [retrieved 30.08.2013].Conference on Contessa di Parma at the FAIhttp://www.fondoambiente.it/upload/oggetti/De%20Berti.pdf [retrieved 30.08.2013].Form on Contessa di Parma at the IMDBhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028740/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_dt_dt [retrieved 29.08.2013].Form on Contessa di Parma at the Enciclopedia del cinema in Piemontehttp://www.torinocittadelcinema.it/schedaflm.php?flm_id=24 [retrieved 29.08.2013].Historical FERT site http://www.fertstorica.it/index2.html [retrieved 29.08.2013].Michael Wolf personal webpage http://photomichaelwolf.com [retrieved 30.08.2013].Museo Torino site http://www.museotorino.it/site [retrieved 29.08.2013].

Biography

Ornella Castiglione (Turin, Italy, 1973) has a master degree in Sciences of spectacle at Milan State Universitywith a thesis titled “Te bitter tears of Petra von Kant between cinema and theatre”. Currently she is adjunctprofessor of Cinema and visual arts at University of Milan-Bicocca and collaborates with Politecnico ofMilan and of Turin dealing with Communication Techniques. Her topics are cinema related with otherdisciplines, movies representing urban space and didactics of cinema.

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PHOTOSENSITIVE ARCHITECTURE THE LUMINOUS LANDSCAPES OF COMPUTERS AND SCREENSANNA BARBARA

Politecnico di Milano, Scuola di Architettura e Società, Polo territoriale di Piacenzaanna.barbara@polimi.it

AbstractTe use of screens for a large amount of activities during the day and the night has defnitely changed our relationshipwith the places, both in terms of space, brightness, both in terms of time.Te lighted city and internet enable us to be productive 24 hours for day and then force the circadian rhythms of ourday into new temporal typologies (chronotypes) whose characteristics are to be still explored. Te architecture lighted byscreens wants to be a productive, confdent, animated, safe.Beyond the transformation that the screens are introducing in the image of the contemporary city, it is also interestingto analyze how screenscapes are changing the buildings in terms of facades, but also of interiors. It begins with the entryof other monitors in the home that the centrality of the TV has multiplied. Te increase of presence of the screensmultiplies the points of attraction creating new centres indoor. From this point of view the main places that reveals aninteresting relationship between the screens (computer, TV, etc..) and space/time are: the ofces (half-private); theplaces of passage (half-public) -mentioning Walter Benjamin's passages- and the waiting rooms.

KeywordsArchitecture, Chronotypes, Interiors, Screen, Senses, Times

Screen-façade

Te presence of computers and screens are also transforming our more traditional architecture both insideand outside.Te impact of the screens on the facade of the building does not change only the urban lightscape (duringthe day, but even more at night), but also the relationship between facade and interior in terms of: lighting, interms of message, in terms of rhythms.Te façade that, in the greatest tradition of architecture, was born as a perfect transposition of the plan, tobecame its storyteller, to represent in vertical its style, meaning and function, has now become more like avideo for advertising, an information map, an extra-story with a life completely independent from thebuilding itself.Tis mutation of their relationship is one of the most interesting paradox left to us by the XX century.

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Without going back far to Venturi-Scott-Brown, when they described in Learning from Las Vegas a city nightscene of shows and entertainment, and they took for granted that the same city, during the day, would haveexisted almost exclusively as the backstage of the other.We could recognize that today, the change was not so radical, but sometime even more complex andintriguing: dramatization is not relegated only to the night hours, but often to verbose screens that transformwhole parts of the city in cacophony of sound and images, as well Rem Koolhaas describes in “Junk Space”.Screens are no longer relegated to the front side of the building, but they are skins, technological surfaces,vertical cityscapes in continuous movement.

Te architecture, which was a tectonic reference in the city of the XX century, loses another piece of fxitywith the difusion of the facades with screens.To the design of the forms of space is reached the design of the shapes of the time.Trough the mediaskin program, that introduce dynamic elements in the static architecture, passes one of thepossible ways of designing time-based architecture.In the last century were the camera, the train, the car to increase the dynamism of the bodies inside the town,adding to the mobility of the observer also the architecture, both immersed in the same reference system.Te observer of the fourth dimension (time) in the XXI century is not only passive spectator but he takespart to the large projection in urban scenarios, being himself sometimes protagonist or manipulator of theshow.From the sensitivity of one of the frst digital buildings of architectural history, the Tower of Wind by ToyoIto, we arrived at adulteration by Asymptote architects, where the façade becomes digital matrix able toshape, to bend, to redesign the building, the urban space around it, but also to engage the interior, as they didfor the GVM, or the "3-D Trading Floor" for the New York Stock Exchange in Wall Street.

New chronotypes

Te ever-lighted architecture, where the screens lit at all times, designs the city of the non-stop time, open 24hours per day. Te variable of time is extremely important, because the rhythms of the screen are fne tunedwith the ones of the city on the move. As much as the communication times of the messages projected on the screens are perfectly attuned to thetimes of the transportations (bike, bus, car, subway...), or pedestrians, the more the message is reached.Tey are not commensurate to the static city but the dynamic one, at the speed of its fuxes, at the cadence ofits rhythms.Te sequence of the images on the screens is a plausible measure of urban times, if not the driver to fow theinformation at the same speed of the people. Te more easy image, even if it refers to an analogical world, is the one in which the screens are like smallgears, inside a clock complex as the city, to tune the diferent speeds.In this urban geography, grow up new forms of time, and therefore new types of architecture whose matrix istemporal rather than spatial.In a recent publication1 I tried to explore these types of chronotypes, and some have emerged strongly relatedto this subject.Te chronotypes are architectural "types" whose matrix is not formal, but temporal.Te relationship between screens and architecture creates contemporary chronotypes like:• cararchitecture (which is a translation of a terms used by the architect Zaha Hadid) which is in the

relationship between the speed of transportation, the shape and the information of the screens on thebuildings. Tis relationship arises from the fact that the fows around the building all have diferentspeeds. Te perception that one has of a building observed at 4 km/h is diferent from that at 40km/h. Te message on the screen tunes to a main speed, or depending on the time of day on one

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rather than another. Te chronotype is the result of an algorithm linked to the movement of a pointon a line rather than at a fxed point;

• intermodal regards the interchanging nodes where the screens are not only information andadvertising. Te chronotype intermodal uses various performances of the screen: the hypnotic powerof the pulsating light for advertising; the signal value of the information that often is functional tothe distribution of the fows; the ability to slow down or speed up the individual speeds in thetransition from one mode of transport to another;

• media skins in architecture that replace the building envelope with a big continuous screen orsometime that create new shape of the building itself. Many media skin host art installations orinteraction with an audience present or distant communicating and amplifying the magnitudo of theefect;

• branded, which sees the skin as the advertising page of a magazine in which the screens are theperennial celebration of the brand hosted into the building. Tey are advertising screens that we havealways known, but which became, thanks to the degree of resolution of the LEDs, giant televisions atthe scale of the buildings/squares/infrastructures. Te time of the advertisement that fows is the oneof a stop waiting, a red light.

Screenscapes indoor

Beyond the transformation that the screens are introducing in the image of the contemporary city, it is alsointeresting to analyze the screenscaper inside the buildings.It began with the presence of screens within the buildings through the last 50 years of architecture, with theentrance in the '50s and '60s of the TV and introduced a new "fre" in bourgeois homes.Te TV revolutionized extremely spaces, furnishings and symbolic hierarchies into the residentialarchitecture of that time: the main chair was no longer in front of the freplace, but facing the TV, as well asthe living room was not around the tea-table, but directed to the new pole animated by television.With the entry of other monitors in the home the centrality of the TV has multiplied.Te spread of projectors and screens increases today the points of attraction creating new poles both indoorsand outdoors.• Te screens inside the housing are placed in various ways:as paintings hanging on the wall, i.e. as

static surface in a point to ofer the show (so were the frst monitors ... instead of the freplace);• as audio/visual attractor, in its performance always ON, and therefore capable of directing the

interior according to a geometry of "visibility" of the screen and its contents;• as a generator of space, composing new ways of living, changing the architecture itself.

Tey are the new protagonists, able to open new “windows” on other places, to light the scape of the housewith new performances, to become independent from the electric range and to disconnect the monitor fromthe perimeter walls, standing everywhere.Te geometric-symbolic relationship between the sofa and the TV is so iconic that it resurrected recently byFuture System with a SOFA in memory of Jan Kaplicky, where a large bed/sofa -reminiscent of the Romantriclinium - has a circular shape, at the center a small navel-table to allow to see 360 ° a small TV includedinto the sofa.

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Physiological mutations

Te XX century had raised the issue of transparency at the heart of research in the interior spaces.Te century of desired and reached hygiene had placed natural light as an inalienable right for the livingspaces. Healthy was synonymous with lighted space and the quality of the places was assessed by thisparameter. Even the places of the privacy had been unable to hide behind curtains and veils, but they had toaccept the entry of light as guaranty of cleaning. Te XX century had taken away the darkness even at night,lighting up with electricity the darkest areas of the city.But remove the natural light or otherwise lower the brightness is causing a progressive time dis-perception, acontinuous distortion of circadian and natural rhythms, an input in a fuid time dimension that can start andfnish when you want.Te screen comes in bright lightscape of the city and of architecture as a bright pixel, able to inform,enlighten, but also to alter the physiological rhythms of our body.Te most recent applied physiology reveals that the light emission of the screens keeps the body in a state ofunnatural sleep-wake cycles.Te places under the light of the screens even at night live a kind of "forced awakening" as it is deduced fromthe path of the electroencephalogram, but also by the eye movements much more similar to daylight hoursthan at night.A change in melatonin levels that, if you live in a daylight screens, do not have the natural increase as it isusually in the case of night shifts, for working or because of jet-lag.Te main places that reveals an interesting relationship between screens (computer, TV, etc.) and spaces are:the ofces and workplaces 2.0 and the places of waiting or passage (mentioning Walter Benjamin's“passages”).

Workplaces 2.0

Te ofces of the most important companies in the digital sector 2.0 are becoming perhaps the mostinteresting points of view to study the new screenscape in interior architecture.Tese places, now less and less tied to traditional hierarchies and geometries, mix productivity and research,live and work, study and recreation.Te spaces are informal and open to have the characteristic of being always connected with the outside worldand with the next network of collaborators.Tese qualities create the hybrid and complex spaces, both from the point of view of privacy, of concentration,of needs of light and darkness, of silence and collaborative dialogue.One of the simplest issue raised by the presence of the screens in our architecture is therefore themanagement of the diferent degrees of darkness ranging from natural open air light to the closed darkness.Although the most advanced technologies of digital are able to ofer high performance even in brightsunlight, it is undeniable that the digital world achieves the best efects in bright twilight and darkness.Te best performances of the screens, takes place in dim light and in a relationship of shading from directnatural light.In short, we use computers in ofces almost dark, preferably with difuse light.For this reason (and not only) the ofces in the recent architectural production have incredible transparentand bright open space for socializing, and shadowy spaces scattered by cabs to work at computer.Interesting examples are: the Microsoft headquarters in Wien, designed by Innocad, where natural light isalways fltered and is never used for lighting function, but rather psychological; or the ofces of GoogleCamenzind Evolution in Stockholm and Zurich; the Facebook ofces, by O + A, Palo Alto, 2009; AOLofces, by Studio O + A, Palo Alto, 2010; BBC Worldwide's ofces, by Toughtspace, Sydney, 2010.

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Waiting rooms and passages

Such as the ofces 2.0, also the passing and interchange places become extremely important because they areusually fow channels for acceleration or deceleration.Te presence of screens is usually functional to motion and not only to the message that is transmitted. It isreferred to the subway stations, or the waiting rooms, as well as to the long underground passages or treadmillor escalators.Usually these places are manned from advertising, but also lend themselves to interesting experiments in artand design.To mention two examples installations: Travelogues by architects Diller and Scofdio and Civilization(Megaplex) by artist Marco Brambilla.Travelogues was an installation inside the anonymous corridors of JFK airport in New York.Defned by a one-direction movement, the corridor hosts a series of screens (made in collaboration with TomBrigham) that comprises thirty-three backlit lenticular screens evenly spaced along the 1800 linear feet ofcorridors of the International Arrivals Building. Each screen holds one second of action, animated by thespeed of the moving viewer. Te sequence of screens creates a sort of micro-movie: the spaces betweenscreens form time lapses. Each set of panels tells a short fction about an anonymous traveler via the suitcasethey carry. Te cases are x-rayed and contents materialize to trigger a fashback of a travel experience. Te movement of passengers becomes thus pro-active with respect to the sequence of screens engendering aninteresting interaction on content, on time and space.Civilization is also a very interesting project, because it is a video installation inside the elevators of TeStandard hotel Chelsea in New York.Te video installation has its narration, which however is emphasized by the movement of the lift. Te videois inspired by Dante's Divina Commedia and according to the movement, upward or downward, goes toHeaven or to Hell.In this case the narration of the screen flls a moment of non-sense, through a narrative assisted by themovement: the observer moves, the narrative video and the display move too.Te relationship between space and time that is established through video installations is the subject ofresearch conducted by Daniel Birnbaum in the book Cronologia. Tempo e identità nei flm e nei video degliartisti contemporanei 2, which explores the experience of time as experience rather than as a way.

In this panorama emerges, from the building, the absence of any trace of memory: the “screenscape” is aworld turned on perennial present, which instead could build an interesting dialogue with the pre-existing,with the history, without necessarily deny it, neither abolish it.It is therefore begin to consider the experience of screenscapes, not only about the content being projected,but about their performances as dynamic light sources, such as watches capable of scanning rhythms of livingand creating, as new actors of architecture that can reformulate space and times.Te contribution of the diferent times on the space is perhaps one of the most challenging design problemsfor the architects of the future.Design the forms of time, and not only the forms of space, acquiring those new tools and scenarios thatmedia technologies make increasingly available, it will be a mandatory task.

Bibliography

Augé, M., (1993), Nonluoghi: introduzione a una antropologia della surmodernità, Milan: Eleuthera.Barbara, A., (2011), Storie di architettura attraverso i sensi, Milan: Postmediabooks.Barbara, A., (2012), Sensi, tempo e architettura, Milan: Postmediabooks.Benjamin, W., (2000), I passaggi di Parigi, Vol. IX, Turin: Einaudi.

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Birnbaum, D., (2007), Cronologia. Tempo e identità nei flm e nei video degli artisti contemporanei, Milan:Postmediabooks.Deleuze, G., (1989), L’immagine-tempo, Milan: Ubulibri.Flink, J., (2000), Te Automobile Age, Cambridge: MA: MIT Press.Gausa, M., (2010), Espacio Tiempo Información, Barcelona: Actar.Gwiazdzinski, L., (2003), La Ville 24 heures sur 24, Grenoble: editions de l’aube datar.Harvey, D., (2000), Between Space and Time:Rrefections of Ggeographical Imagination, Berkeley: BerkeleyUniversity Press.Koolhaas, R., (2006), Junkspace, Macerata: Quodlibet.Leupen, B., Heijne, R., Van Zwol, J., (2005), Time-Based Architecture, Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.Palumbo, M. L., (2012), Paesaggi sensibili, Palermo: Duepunti Edizioni.Sacchi, L., Unali M., (2003), Architettura e cultura digitale, Milan: Skira.Virilio, P., (2000), La bomba informatica, Milan: Cortina.

Biography

Anna Barbara. Researcher in architecture and design, 1968. Graduated in Architecture at Polithecnic ofMilan. From the 1998 to 2001 she lived between Italy and Asia. She has been visiting professor at KookminUniversity in the Architecture, Design and Interior Design faculties and professor at the Techno BrainMaster 21 at Seoul (South Korea). In the 2000 she won the Canon Foundation Fellowship for making aresearch at Hosei University Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning in Tokyo ( Japan) on therelationship between architecture and senses. Actually she is researcher in Architecture Design at Politecnicodi Milano in the School of Architettura e Società, campus Piacenza. She was visiting lecturer in manyinternational faculties of Architecture and Design in United States, Korea, Japan, Philippines, Brazil,Emirates, Jordan, etc. She is co-founder with Luca Molinari of VIAPIRANESI srl.

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1 A. Barbara, Sensi, Tempo e Architettura, Milan: Postmediabooks, 2012.

2 Italian version translated by Postmediabooks, (Milan: 2007).

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MAXXI TV, A PUBLIC MEDIA ART THAT INTERFACES WITH THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE MUSEUMALEXANDRO LADAGA & SILVIA MANTEIGA

ELASTIC Group of Artistic Researchinfo@elasticgroup.com

AbstractMAXXI TV is a monumental television, a MAXI television. A Public Art that observes the public and the museum, alarge electronic eye that absorbs architecture. As in a picture-crystal, the viewer becomes the work created by thecyclopean eye look. Te work was conceived (also as regards its overall dimensions) in order to be fexibly inserted indiferent locations of the outer area of the Museum MAXXI in Rome nevertheless the area in front of the "periscope" isthe site most efective from the point of view of contextualization and dialogue of the work with the architecture thathosts. For this reason, the giant TV should "observe" the museum where the museum is overlooking the city and thepublic, making the square a public lounge, a visual net-work, a screen city place.

KeywordsDigital Space, Electronic Media, Environment, Media City, Museography, Participatory Art Practices, Screen Media,Smart City

The Electronic Civilization: a screen city "topos", an “environment mental space”

In mathematics "topos" is a type of category that behaves like the category of sheaves of sets on a topologicalspace, on a "site", a point set localization.Right from its birth, the electronic device proved to be not only a physical space rather a mental space that wasable to make what was private, public. Te works of earlier practitioners of participatory art as BruceNauman's walks around his studio in Going Around the Corner Pieces with Live and Taped Monitors, (1970)and Vito Acconci's stream of consciousness are spatial performance works that are at the genetic origin ofvideo installations; pieces of art in which the body becomes an instrument for measuring space. Te space ofthe electronic image in a screen city culture is a place, a "topos", in which the value of the depth of feld is lostin favour of the surface of the image, where outside and inside become one and the same, where even therepresentation of the human body is an image. Te electronic image, more than any other medium, has beenable to represent space without confnes, fuid and in motion but also the inner space, the mental space of thebrain: the "space of the vision". In fact, for Andy Warhol television is the art universe: a journey through theartist's obsessions. Andy Warhol had always been fascinated by television as a medium of communicationthat was contemporary and massive; an ideal tool for the broadcast of artistic ideas and images. It was his big

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dream to have his own television show. As early as 1964 he made an imitation soap opera, to which he addedreal "adverts", and at the beginning of the 70s, he produced soap operas that were the refection of hisaesthetic and fantastical universe. In the 60's, another pioneer, Nam June Paik, began to explore video space;the suggestions of the Fluxus group give birth in him the idea of video installation that becomes a reality inits frst solo show in Wuppertal Exposition of Music - Electronic television (1963). For Paik the medium oftelevision is the totem of the video; is the centerpiece, the performance that creates space around him, as inTV Buddha (1974) and Good Morning Mr. Orwell (1984) where dialogue between the observer and theobserved generates the space of video installation.And what better that a monumental machine of vision, an extra large Monitor TV, an oversized computerscreen, to represent the way the totem machine looks at the public? Te "eye of the machine" that looks at the Museum is the totem of new space generated electronically, but...the electronic eye device, how it works? What relationship establishes with the viewer and with the space?Te answer is that the electronic eye generates an environment mental space. An environmental space as in“When Buildings Melt Into Air & Te Air Re-forms Into Buildings” (Acconci: 2012) a public art in whichthe camera view-point circles the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, one circle after another. With each circling,one building after another separates into a screen of pixels; each successive screen, one in front of the other,holds bigger & bigger pixels until all the buildings of the square are gradually dissolved.

The power of the grid and “connectedness”

MAXXI TV – the giant eye of the TV- is the Project of Public Art that we have planned for the MAXXI –National Museum of the XXI Century Arts in Rome 2% Public Art Contest. In this project, the giant eye ofthe TV generates a variable and multiple, elastic space.MAXXI TV is a Public Media Art that interfaces with the architecture of the Museum designed by ZahaHadid.Tis giant TV is a "space skin"; a communication space with the outside arena, and therefore anexteriorization of the inside that records and register, the amniotic space that is the public sphere, a "mediaticbelly". Alicia Imperiale (2000) states that surfaces are like an interface between two osmotic, communicatingspaces, deep surfaces that can undergo a meta-video-morphosis, a transfguration of their communicativecapacity. Te surface as a computer screen or a video screen is the fnal layer with which two opposing spacescan interface; it is the layer on which information fows. A surface screen on which new, ephemeral, virtual,deep architecture is projected, constructed from a palimpsest of layers in motion; and that because, accordingwith Juan Downey pioneering theories in the 70's, Public Art is a matter of environmental masscommunications.Cinema is linear continuity, a one-dimensional vision of space and surfaces. But video is dynamism of lines incontinuous metamorphosis; it is simultaneous, profound. Video is an expanded, dilated space because thespatial quality of the video image is reticular: a "grid space", an interconnected system; and the "space of thegrid" provides the framework of concepts such open/closed sets, continuity, interior/exterior, boundary andlimit points; and specially the notion of "connectedness", an "hyperconnected space".

Kinetic city: the new media image space

Modern macrostructures are kinetic spaces in which images generated by new technological media createsinformation fows that are translated into visual networks. Digital technology has the alchemic capacity totransform any surface into "image space". Te new media are able to expand perceived and represented space;they can change it, making it become an extendible structure, a hyper-surface. Te video image can reachimpossible spaces, relative environments, contracted spaces; it can simultaneously be transmitted via satellite

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or via networks in diferent spaces thanks to the power of transmission and real time, live transmission, whichcan generate the desired wireless imagination of the futurists. Te speed of the video fow can contract spaces,simultaneously, creating windows in which the screen surface, the video skin, can be divided into multiplewindows or can be expanded into a satellite atlas that monitors the territory in real time.

Point of view – observatory – perspective

Te key to a new spatiality which will strengthen contemporary architecture lies in the big structure, in thebig dimension, to use the words of Rem Koolhaas. Te visual impact of bigness, the elegy of largeness, can beseen in museums like Gehry's Guggenheim or Oldenburg's macro pop sculptures, but it can also be seen inthe new maxi-screens which cover mediatic cities throughout the planet with their video skin or in the worksof Public Video Art. A new perspective, from below up, requires a new monumentality to oppose dailybanality. Te public video art installation Observatory, which we projected on the wall of the MUVIMMuseum of Valencia (2001) played with this oversize scale relationship; in this case, an immense infrared eyetransformed the pre-existing site, the monumental architecture of the museum, giving it an air of refectingmeditation: this large eye staring out from the museum in Valencia is the eye of the museum, as it observesthe spectators who come to visit it. Te space takes on life and becomes a point of view, an observatory. AMuseum that sees!On MAXXI TV, the square, the space in front of the Museum, becomes a new mediaagora.MAXXI TV is a monumental television, a MAXI television. A Public Art that observes the public and themuseum, a large electronic eye that absorbs architecture. As in a picture-crystal, the viewer becomes the workcreated by the cyclopean eye look. Te work was conceived (also as regards its overall dimensions) in order tobe fexibly inserted in diferent locations of the outer area of the Museum MAXXI in Rome nevertheless thearea in front of the "periscope" is the site most efective from the point of view of contextualization anddialogue of the work with the architecture that hosts. For this reason, the giant TV should "observe" themuseum where the museum is overlooking the city and the public, making the square a public lounge, avisual net-work, a screen city place. Streaks over the structure of the monumental TV reinterpret in a kind oftechno-mutation the zenithal view of the museum project. Te screen, thanks to the use of LED (LightEmitting Diode), reveals the structure of the video -the pixel- as well as the MAXXI Museum reveals thestructure of its architecture. Te project MAXXI TV is planned as an expansion of the museum as it maytemporarily house video festivals and exhibitions of media art and architecture. MAXXI TV is the naturalevolution of another ELASTIC Group works of art as Tvision (2005), a website-specifc project, a work inprogress which is carried out in the public space of the web, and Video Solo/ Video Contact (2003) -a series ofvideo performances- where tv monitor is the head of both a virtual video creature and of a life performer. Inthe video performance Video Solo (a solo video performance of a man-machine; a TV man who is the physicalforerunner of the small virtual being in TVision) we make an obvious reference to a “re-feshing” oftechnology; we take a stand for the importance of men and machines being together, like bodies touching,entering into contact. Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset spoke of the “deshumanizacion del arte” as aprocess begun in the twentieth century; now that we have passed into the new millennium, technology isinstead clearly developing towards connective thought, towards the globalizing exchange of informationwithout limits. And art must leave the hortus conclusus in which it has been trapped and follow this new path.Art must abandon its own limits in order to be widely grasped. Only in this way can it become public; as inthe sacrifce of the virtual being in TVision, in which the monitor TV (it's head) becomes fnally themonument on a podium on a square or as in MAXXI TV where the monumental monitor TV becomes theobserver of the Museum.

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Fig. n. 1 - MAXXI TV, Project of Public Art for MAXXI – National Museum of the XXI Century Arts in Rome, 2008

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Fig. n. 2 - MAXXI TV, Project of Public Art for MAXXI – National Museum of the XXI Century Arts in Rome, 2008

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Conclusions: MAXXI TV, a Virtual Space of Empathy, a Space for Participatory Connections

By making McLuhan's philosophy his own, Paik understood what the role of the development of satelliteson the global consciousness would be, and how its ability to synthesize in real time completely credibleimages, with the same veracity as any other televised image, would create an enormous new power tomanipulate truth. He realized that the eventual union between computer, telecommunication technology andvideo would bring about what he called in 1974 the "electronic information highway." But other criticsbelieve we must go back to 1952, when the revolutionary Lucio Fontana introduced his frst Concetti Spazialifor RAI TV's experimental transmission Manifesto Spaziale per la Televisione.TV can be seen as a space of the social sphere in an artistic way, a participatory way. How?Transforming the medium in the metaphor of a critical viewer, transforming the form, the surface, thecontainer, in meaning, substance, concept.MAXXI TV is "the big eye", the metaphor of the new media space as a new media "agora", as the centralspot of the screen city, MAXXI TV is a gathering place for interconnections. In MAXXI TV show, theviewers are the protagonists; they participate as observers in the great simulacrum of reality; they are involvedin the spectacle of the vision machine and in the environmental space of the Museum as a topological space,a "site". Tey are linked to the notion of "localization" in a point-set topology. As in an aerial vision, MAXXITV points the public: "you are here", now!MAXXI TV represents the point of “socialization of the mind” (Teilhard de Chardin: 1961), the smart cityof “a thousand minds” (Soleri: 2002), the “dematerialized city”, the “invisible city” made of neuralconnections, made of “telepathy” (Downey: 1977) because “Tele-Vision” is the “Tele-CommunicationMedium”. It is a “far sight”: to see beyond.And MAXXI TV giant eye is an empathic far sight: the mirror experience of observing and refecting, alltogether, in the new media square of the Museum as Teatre, as a place for viewing.

Bibliography

Acconci, V., (1993), Making Pubblic, Den Haag: Stroom.Ammer, M., (2009), Nam June Paik: Exposition of Music, Electronic Television, Revisited, Berlin:Buchhandlung Walther Konig, KG Abt. Verlag.Benhamou-Huet, J., Cirimele, A., (2009), Warhol TV, Paris: Les presses du réel.Downey, J., (1973), “Technology and Beyond”, Radical Software, Video and Environment, Vol. II, No. 5, 1973,pp.2-3Downey, J., (1977), “Architecture, Video, Telepathy- a communication utopia”, Center for Advanced TVStudies, International Review of Video and Mass Media, Vol. 5, No.1, 1977, pp. 1-4.Gasparini, K., (2012), Schermi Urbani. Tecnologia e innovazione. Nuovi sistemi per le facciate mediatiche, Milan:Kluwer.Hanhardt, J. G., (2000), Te Worlds of Nam June Paik, New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications. Imperiale A., 2000), New Flatness: Surface Tension in Digital Architecture, Zurich: Birkhauser.Ladaga, A., Manteiga, S., (2006), Strati Mobili: Video Contestuale in Arte e Architettura, Rome: Edilstampa.Manteiga Pousa, S. (1991), Te Enigma of Avant-Gardes, in Tymieniecka A.T. (eds) New Queries in Aestheticsand Metaphysics: Time, Historicity, Art, Culture, Metaphysics, the Transnatural, Analecta Husserliana, V. 37,Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 213-217.Soleri, P., (2002), What If? Collected Writings 1986-2000, Berkeley: Berkeley Hills Books.Teilhard de Chardin, P., (1961), Te Phenomenon Of Man, New York: Harper Torchbooks.

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http://www.elasticgroup.comhttp://www.youtube.com/user/atelierelastichttp://eng.tusciaelecta.it/2004-elastic-grouphttp://www.elasticgroup.com/retroelastic/new_project/home.swfhttp://eng.tusciaelecta.it/2004-elastic-group/testo-criticohttp://eng.tusciaelecta.it/2004-elastic-group/intervistahttp://www.elasticgroup.com/retroelastic/videoperf/contact/textcontact.htmlhttp://giusyrubino.altervista.org/RECENSIONE/recensione.htmlhttp://www.luxfux.org/n19/artintheory1.htmhttp://www.eai.orghttp://www.vdb.orghttp://www.warholfoundation.orghttp://acconci.comhttp://www.paikstudios.com

Biography

ELASTIC Group of Artistic Research is present in the international artistic arena with a work stronglycharacterized by conceptual aspects. It's rooted in the practise of the duo the motto of Duchamp "the publicmakes the art" and so the reciprocity of the relationship between artistic product and the viewer, which isoften involved interactively in the artistic process, becoming part of the work of art. Since 1999, they areauthors of many Public Video Art projects developed in contemporary and historical architecture sites.

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AEQUILIBRIUM. LOCATION BASED ENTERTAINMENT AND TRANSMEDIA FOR CULTURAL HERITAGEGIULIA BERTONE, DOMENICO MORREALE

DIST - Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies And Planning, Politecnico Di Torinogiulia.bertone@polito.itDipartimento di studi sociologici e psicopedagogici - Facoltà di Lettere Università degli Studi Guglielmo Marconid.morreale@unimarconi.it

AbstractAequilibrium - Te last guardian of Leonardo is an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) designed to experiment with creativesolutions for cultural heritage. It is a transmedia and location-based experience that engages players in an adventure thatblurs the boundaries between reality and fction, digital and physical spaces, fctional characters and real people from thelocal community. Aequilibrium ofers useful insights for those who are interested in digital and interactive media andtheir relationship with physical space, especially in relation to the theme of engagement in the new augmented spaces(Manovich: 2006) and hyperconnected places (De Souza: 2011; Farman: 2012). Starting from the analysis of theAequilibrium project and the experience of the players, this article elaborates on some of the dimensions needed tounderstand how games and transmedia strategies may be employed in the creation of digital engagement in new hypermediated habitats (Bolter, Grusin: 2002). Furthermore the article focuses on how the game promotes participation inthe narrative construction of experience, through cultural activators able to foster collaboration, collective intelligenceand creative grassroots production.

KeywordsAlternate Reality Game, Cultural Heritage, Locative Media, Transmedia Storytelling

Introduction

Aequilibrium is an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), which exploits locative and transmedia communicationstrategies for creating an immersive experience to promote a cultural brand, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, andcultural resources of an area, Lomellina, Lombardy (Italy), and its cultural institutions. Te project is part ofthe "We Art Technology - Youth and cross-media" initiative, that aims at promoting digital creativity,involving young people in creative activities and games supported by digital media. "Youth and cross-media"is promoted and supported by the Italian Ministry of Youth and the National Association of ItalianMunicipalities, involving the City of Vigevano, the municipality of Mortara (PV), the municipality ofFormigine (MO), AST - Consortium for Territorial Development and the association for free softwareLUG Ducale (Vigevano - PV). Te project will end in December 2013. Te activities triggered by the

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project are carried out in close collaboration with LeoHub, a research center on Digital Heritage at theCastello Sforzesco in Vigevano and Politecnico di Torino - degree in "Cinema and media engineering”. Teproject aims at experimenting innovative formats for the involvement of young people, based on the potentialof game, video and social networks and physical interaction with the city and the territory through networkdevices and location-based mobile devices.

The transmedia design of Aequilibrium

Aequilibrium is a transmedia project, a narrative that unfolds through diferent media, both online and ofine,in which each medium adds an independent contribution to the narrative. Transmedia is the framework forthe creation of a universe that includes historical and geographical elements mixed with fctional charactersand situations that encourages users to actively explore contents, in a game that comes in part online andpartly in the territory. Aequilibrium is an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), namely, according to Jef Watson(“ARG 2.0” posted in Henry Jenkins’s blog on July 7, 2010), who quotes and revise the defnition of theWhite Paper of the International Game Developers Association, Special Interest Group on ARG (availableonline at http://archives.igda.org/arg/resources/IGDA-AlternateRealityGames-Whitepaper-2006.pdf), a

“form of interactive transmedia storytelling that [takes] the substance of everyday life and [weaves] it intonarratives that layer additional meaning, depth, and interaction upon the real world. In an ARG, playersdiscover the game through an encounter with one or more access points embedded in real world contexts.Tese access points, known in the parlance of ARGs as “rabbit holes,” lead players into a dynamic matrix ofstory components distributed across various kinds of digital and physical media” (Watson: 2010).

Te decision to use an ARG as a strategy of engagement capable of stimulating audience to a betterunderstanding of local areas and cultural heritage, derives from the characteristic of the transmediastorytelling to immerse the audience in an explorable fctional universe and activate the audience throughgame dynamics in which several elements function as "cultural activators" ( Jenkins: 2006). Cultural activatorsare objects that invite users to actively decoding them, ofering incomplete information and suggesting foractions and rewards, through which to increase the knowledge of the fctional universe and complete thereconstruction of the narrative. Te story of Aequilibrium spreads across hundreds of years. Te followingabstract is useful to understand how the storytelling has been distributed through diferent platforms anddiferent media, so to engage the user in a detection aimed to reconstruct the story. At the end of 1400, whilestudying natural disasters, Leonardo Da Vinci comes into contact with Xianshi, a secret society that owns apowerful device that, by manipulating water, is able to create huge natural disasters in specifc areas of aterritory. Leonardo settled for a few years in Lomellina and during his stay at the Sforzesca, near Vigevano,gave birth to the Ordo Aequilibri, an order of guardians who had the task of protecting him in his studiesand to carry on his battle against Xianshi. Leonardo designed a hydraulic machine, activated by a variablenumber of Chalices of Aequilibrium that contain a quantity of water known only by their CornerstonesKeepers. Te Ordo Aequilibri has played a key role in the defeat of Nazism. In France thanks to France libre,and in Italy thanks to Giovanni Sacchi, the penultimate guardian. After the war Giovanni founded theAurora Orchestra, an activity of coverage that allowed him weaving his relationships without beingdiscovered. He was captured by Xianshi that made him interned in the asylum of Collegno near Turin, to tryto extort the secrets of the Order. Giovanni hide valuable information (audio recordings with the history ofthe Ordo Aequilibrium) and ran. A collaborator of Giovanni Sacchi found his recordings and thanks to hisnephew, Alessandro Novaro, a young student, created a website dedicated to Orchestra Aurora, with the aimto publish Giovanni Sacchi’s recordings, in a protected area accessible only to Guardian’s assistants. Giovanni

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Sacchi was imprisoned by Tierry Latreille, one of the world leaders of the Organization. His son, LeoLatreille, created a research centre called Xianshi studying natural disasters. On September 14 Xianshi hasplanned a worldwide attack that will develop in diferent parts of the world. On September 14 th the LastGuardian, Matteo Bernini, a watchmaker who is trying to create a Novus Ordo Aequilibri, gathers all hisassistants in Lomellina to play a geocaching experience and save the world.

Aequilibrium’s Platform layout and Action Chart, the tentpole, the rabbit hole and the two-steps engagement strategy

Te project workfow included the design of the Platform layout, the Platform Action Chart and the Projectroll-out, tools and methodologies that in a transmedia project help to manage the relationships between theplatforms, the contents and user actions in a diachronic dimension (Giovagnoli: 2013). Te role of theplatforms of a transmedia system is described through the Platform layout: a scheme representative of thedistribution of contents across platforms. Te platform layout does not contain chronological indications; itrepresents all the relationships between the various media and the authorship of the works created by theauthors (at the top) and by the users (at the bottom).

Fig. n. 1 - Aequilibrium: Platform Layout

Te story of Aequilibrium is spread over 17 platforms, each one ofering a frst-person storytelling. Websites,Facebook profles and pages, blog and emails, refers to fctional characters that tell a part of the whole storyfrom their point of view. Each platform has to develop an imaginative pidgin (Giovagnoli: 2009) a languagethat mimics that used by the real referent of the fctional character and that is easily recognizable by the user(i.e. the formal language of a cultural centre for the Xianshi website). A number of Facebook profles havebeen created, so to make the storytelling more engaging and plausible and to let users interact with fctionalcharacters as if they were real persons. A number of real life experiences have been performed in two towns.Players had to reach clues in real locations and members of the Aequilibrium staf secretly video-recordedplayers’ actions posting them online.

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Fig. n. 2 - Aequilibrium: Platform Action Chart

Te “Platform Action Chart” is a diagram representative of the distribution of the story and contents acrossplatforms. It contains chronological and diachronic indications, which proceed from the frst clue and call toaction until the closing of the communication system. It is divided into platforms and shows, from left toright, all contents and relationships in the various assets, including exclusively the works and the narrativespaces provided by the authors, and not by the users. Te Aequilibrium’s “Platform Action Chart” shows howthe whole story has been spread over multiple media products to be distributed on diferent platforms duringthe phases of the game. It also shows the diferent points of entry of the story, namely the doors throughwhich users can access fctional universe and the “Rabbit Hole” (RH), the frst point of entry (inchronological order) in the fctional universe, that provides clues to the story, creates the motivation toactively enter the experience (Davidson: 2010). In Aequilibrium the Rabbit Hole is a video teaser postedonline on June 2013 showing a man in an old room, reaching a desk with strange objects from diferenthistoric periods, opening a box and fnding a key. A voice over speaks about a confict against a dangerousterrorist organization that has lasted for more than 500 years. Finally the address of a website appears: it isthe bridge to the homepage of the project. Following the link, players are able to fnd the point of entry: theFacebook page of the Last Guardian of Ordo Aequilibri and a Tumblr made by a French Man, a collaboratorof the Guardian. In a transmedia project exists a tentpole, a privileged media product/experience thatsupports a number of other experiences related to it ( Jenkins: 2006; Davidson: 2010). More casual fans canenjoy the tentpole, while more dedicated fans can fnd the diferent related media that expand the experience.Aequilibrium’s tentpole is the gameplay on the territory that will take place on September 2013, during a oneday geocaching experience. Te aim is to let players discover cultural heritage through gameplay and throughan engaging storytelling. All the participants will get the basic information about the plot before the event ofSeptember 2013, but participants have also the opportunity to explore the fctional universe through a“warm-up” gameplay (from June to August 2013) that let them acquire knowledge about fctional and nonfctional story elements: characters, relationships between Leonardo Da Vinci and Lomellina, places hosting

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the gameplay and their cultural heritage. All this topics are presented through clues that participants have tosolve moving from media to real places. Clues are the bridges that suggest other entry point for thetransmedia communication project. While the tentpole will be promoted through a social media campaign,to reach the largest audience, and the basic elements of the plot will be made available also to those whodidn’t played the “warm-up” experience, the targets of “fan” and “ARG players” will be engaged through theonline video’s clues for the cultural activation of the “warm-up” gameplay.

Aequilibrium’s Production Roll-out, collective intelligence and grassroots production. From interaction to participation.

Te Production Roll-out is a form of schematic representation of the sequence of publishing content and theactivities planned in the communication system of the project. It is divided by platforms. It indicates theduration and type of interactions and relationships between the various assets of the story in multiple media(Giovagnoli: 2013). Te “Production Roll-out” highlights the possible paths that the user can take to explorethe imaginative universe, acquire information and interact with the characters, experiencing an immersive andmore rewarding gameplay compared to that experienced by those who live only the fnal steps of the game.

Fig. n. 3 - Aequilibrium: Production Roll-out

Te “Production Roll-out” and the “Platform layout” also shows the spaces for users participation in thedecoding of cultural activators and the production of grassroots contents. With ARG there is a passage frominteractivity, that emerges from the properties of media technologies, to participation, emerging from theprotocols and social practices around media. Te two main forms of participation involved in Aequilibrium’stransmedia experience are collective intelligence applied to the solution of puzzles and the production ofgrassroots contents capable of guiding and modifying storytelling. Collective intelligence is a term coined by

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Pierre Lévy in the nineties and used by Henry Jenkins to analyze the dynamics of participatory consumptionof media contents in converging culture ( Jenkins: 2006). Since media consumption has become more andmore a collective process and online environments encourage discussions about contents, new forms of mediaproduction rises, forms that point on increasing the complexity of the contents, which function as activatorsof a fan base that perform online complex decoding operations based on the exchange of contents andsharing of information. Each participant in a collective intelligence contributes to the solution of a problemsharing his knowledge just in time (Levy: 1994). In Aequilibrium puzzle and clues are meant to be solvedcollectively, through active collaboration of players in spaces provided for their interactions: the Facebookpage of the Last Guardian, the blog of Alex Novaro, the young student who manage the website of theOrchestra Aurora, the fan site conceived to publish the audio messages of the penultimate Guardian. In thesespaces the players are encouraged to share the results of their research and to work together to achieve sharedsolutions. Players developed strategies and methodologies to improve their coordination, such as synthesisand points of the situation, posted online every time a riddle is solved, so to help new players to enter thefctional universe. Te strong engagement with contents makes fans the most active segment of audience, thedesire to strengthen the link with the fctional universe pushes them to share information with other fans andto produce content related to their passion. Te dynamics of collective intelligence put in place by the playersoften lead to the achievement of results that drive authors to modify some elements of the story, in order toinclude the contribution of users, especially when this contribution expands the fctional universe and addspossibilities for players’ identifcation with the characters. In the Aequilibrium’s fctional universe a whole newstoryline, that has to do with the expansion of Ordo Aequilibri in France, has been designed starting fromthe interpretation of the trailer made by a group of players, who identifed elements related to the cross ofLorraine and the defeat of Charles the Bold and imagined narrative hypothesis that represented a potentialenrichment of the Aequilibrium’s imaginative universe. Participation in the construction of the storyworld isalso evident in the production of content by users who have the ability to share texts, photos, images andvideos on the Facebook page. Synthesis, hypotheses, drawings, pictures of the locations during the live actiongameplay, reworking of ofcial contents (i.e. audio flterings of video in search of hidden clues…) are theheritage of content that players contribute to build around the fctional universe of Aequilibrium.

Geocaching in Aequilibrium: the “Cornerstones” and the experience of place between digital and physical spaces

On September 14th, Aequilibrium ends with a geocaching event in Lomellina. Geocaching is a playfultechnological practice typical of the world of LBMGs (Location Based Mobile Games), a high-techreinterpretation of the classic treasure hunt, in which participants use mobile GPS-enabled devices to find orhide small containers – the caches - in physical spaces. The GPS coordinates of the caches are recordedonline in digital environments (the most famous is www.geocaching.com) in which players also share theirexperience of discovery. Started almost by accident in 2000, geocaching is now a common practice all overthe world, involving more than 6 million people and generating a real subculture of fans. Since geocachinghas become increasingly common due to the spread of mobile and location-aware technologies, LocativeMedia Studies have begun investigating it with interest. Many scholars emphasizes that geocaching is anexperience that takes place in different spaces of interaction, both physical (the local area where the cache ishidden), and digital (the website on which the GPS coordinates are recorded and on which players can leavetheir reviews, or the mobile GPS-enabled device with mapping features that locates the position of the playerand the cache). Thus, this playful practice is based on a sort of collaboration between bits and atoms, virtualand material spaces and requires participants to know how to effectively manage different interfaces. It isemblematic of our current technological environment, where, with the spread of mobile interfaces,

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navigating simultaneously different spaces has become a common practice. Like other LBMGs, geocachingis a typical mobile practice at the time of Net Localities (Gordon, De Souza and Silva: 2011), in which theproduction of the space becomes an embodied experience connected with technology (Farman: 2012). Thesegames are considered by scholars (De Souza and Silva, Sutko: 2009) real creative practices, in whichparticipants can recreate the meaning of places by acting on them with digital technologies. Often throughthe charming power of exploration, these practices allow people to create an alternative level of placeexperience, stimulating their ability to experiment new meanings related to local sites. Further, Gordon(2009) investigates the geocaching as a useful practice for the production of local knowledge, that kind oflocal common culture necessary to aggregate communities around shared values and meanings,«transforming that physical space into a collectively understood platform for interaction» (Gordon: 2009,31). Starting from these considerations, we decided to experiment geocaching to connect the fictionaldimension, the online transmedia digital world, with the physical world. Geocaching in Aequilibrium isbased on the search of the Aequilibrium Cornerstones. They are special places in which small glass tubes arehidden (the Aequilibrium Chalices) containing a defined amount of water that the members of the Order havehidden all over the world for the maintenance of the cosmic balance. Of all the Cornerstones in the world,just those in Lomellina are now still working. All the others have been sabotaged by the sect Xianshi. Nowthe latter are also in danger, because the sect has managed to drain all the water of the Chalices in Lomellina,which are on the verge of quitting working. The aim of the participants is to find the Cornerstones, bysolving puzzles related to the figure of Leonardo da Vinci, reach them guided by GPS devices, and restorethe right amount of water. To do so, they will be forced to interact with the Cornerstones Keepers which arethe only ones to know the right amount of water in each Chalices. Once they fill the Chalices and solve allthe puzzles, participants will be able to find the GPS coordinates to reach the Last Guardian, who is hiddenin an unknown location.

The values of the landscape: Leonardo da Vinci, the Waters, the Rice

In addition to Leonardo, geocaching in Aequilibrium recovers two other strategic key points for the identityof the area: the water and the rice. Tese elements are embodied in signifcant points of interest in thelandscape, characterized by the presence of rice paddies and an intricate maze of canals, irrigation ditches,torrents, which create a typical environment of great natural and cultural value. As rice cultivation hashistorically characterized all aspects of local material culture and identity, lots of initiatives for theconservation and enhancement of the tangible and intangible heritage linked to it have been carried out bylocal stakeholders (projects for the valorization of local historical farmhouses, or several rural museums).Further, many local researches on the intangible heritage related to rural culture have been conducted, whichdocument, tradition and knowledge related to life in farms. It is not a coincidence, then, that the mostimportant projects of local development look at the water and rice as powerful values. Te theme of water isof course connected also with the fgure of Leonardo da Vinci, whose presence in the territory at the time ofLudovico il Moro is historically documented and is embodied in some symbolic places, real traces of theGenius in the area. With the involvement of local stakeholders we have therefore identifed the most signifcant places thatcould return most of the experience of these issues - Leonardo, the water and the rice - and there, in the areabetween Vigevano and Mortara, the caches were placed. In particular, the choice fell on signifcant placesnear rice mills and farmhouse, rice felds, canals, ditches, rivers; watermills, hydroelectric power plants,touristic and dining businesses related to the rice (typical restaurant, farm holidays, retailers of typicalproducts linked to the processing of rice); places tracing the presence of Leonardo (Castello Sforzesco, theStables, Piazza Ducale, the Mill of Mora Bassa, the Villa Sforza with the Colombarone). Te Cornerstonesare placed in these sites, at geographical coordinates that players have to discover by solving puzzles related to

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the concept of balance in the work of Leonardo. Each Cornerstone is presented through an information pageaccessible online through a QR code, printed and placed inside the Chalice. Te page contains a briefdescription of the location and information about how to fnd the Cornerstone Keepers, the person whoholds the Cornerstone, takes care of its maintenance and that will give participants the information neededto restore the exact amount of water.

The Cornerstones Keepers: experiencing the landscape on the edge of the magic circle

Te Cornerstones Keepers are envisioned to enable further interaction with places and its inhabitants andstrengthen local awareness. They are shopkeepers, farmers, restaurateurs, members of associations, elderlymillers and rice weeders… people whose lives are in some way related to the theme of water and rice andliving near the Cornerstones. In the weeks before the event, they have been involved asking their availabilityto take part in the game, helping the participants that will come at their home asking for assistance. EachCornerstone Keeper will help in the geocaching with her own peculiarity, coming from a specifc local historyand from the experience she embeds. Te Keepers are therefore elements that are on the edge of whatHuizinga (1938) defnes the “magic circle”, that metaphorical and, according to Salen and Zimmerman(2004), “fuzzy and permeable” boundary that separate what is game from what is not: they stay on the borderthat separates the space of the game from the everyday life. Tey are liminal fgures, which help to embed thegeocaching into the real physical space, into the “here and now” of the local sites. A geocaching based only onfctional elements would have had the risk of alienating the participants from the context, completelytransfgurating the physical space into the narrative space, overshadowing the physical local elements whichthe ARG, on the contrary, aims at promoting. Te interaction with the Keepers thus aims at making playersmore aware of their embodiment (Farman: 2012) in the history of places, which are characterized by valuesand elements that they are called to discover. With them Aequilibrium introduces a strong element ofunpredictability and opacity in the logic of remediation of the game (Bolter: 1999): the Keepers disturb theimmersion in the fctional world, bringing the real life inside the magic circle. Following the thinking of many scholars that have debated the concept of Huizinga’s “magic circle” - a core and often criticized issue within game studies¹ - Montola (2009) argues that the main feature of pervasive games is the “porosity” of the circle. Pervasive games, like others contemporary playful practices including ARGs, expand the spatial, temporal, and social boundaries of the game. In the case of LBMGs, this porosity stay at the core, since the space of everyday real life is introduced inside the circle as constitutive. Te space ofordinary life is not a neutral support, which must disappear in the ecstasy of an immersive playful experience, but it is indeed a key factor, of which players can have diferent degrees of awareness. According to de Lange (2009) the nature of LBMGs is actually the possibility of playing with the boundaries of the circle, moving and repositioning them in continuous and generating engagement not using fctional immersion, but throughthe exciting experience of a non-stop moving between digital and physical, between the virtual and the real, between the ordinary and the extraordinary:

“Te play element in locative media lies not so much inside the “game space” itself but in the continuousmovements between the digital world and the physical world. Part of the joy is the uncertainty of what isactually belongs to either world. Tis locative platform creates confusion: in which space am I moving? Am Iadding digital representations to the physical world? Or am I adding physical experiences of places to myonline social network? Tis locative platform afords the mobility to continuously step through the porousmembrane of the magic circle” (De Lange: 2009, p. 61).

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Conclusions

Te ARG Aequilibrium - Te Last Guardian of Leonardo experiments transmedia and geocaching in the feldof cultural heritage. With the playful practice of geocaching, Aequilibrium promotes connections between thefctional world and the real one, giving participants the chance to discover cultural, social and historical valuesembedded in the Lomellina Landscape. Te article presented the Aequilibrium’s design process, as well as thecommunication and interaction strategies for digital engagement in new hyper mediated habitats, focusingon how the game encourages participation in the storytelling, through cultural activators able to fostercollective intelligence and grassroots production.

Bibliography

Bolter J. D., Grusin R., (1999), Remediation. Understanding New Media, Cambridge-London: MIT Press.De Lange, M., (2009), From Always on to Always Tere: Locative Media as Playful Technologies, in A. de Souzae Silva, D.M. Sutko (eds.), Digital Cityscapes: Merging Digital and Urban Playspaces, New York: Peter Lang, pp. 55-70.Davidson D., (2010), Cross-media Communications: An Introduction to the Art of Creating Integrated Media Experiences, Pittsburgh: ETC Press.Farman J., (2012), Mobile Interface Teory. Embodied Space and Locative Media, New York: Routledge.Fine, G.A., (1983), Shared Fantasy: Role-playing Games as Social Worlds, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Giovagnoli M., (2013), Transmedia. Storytelling e comunicazione, Milan: Apogeo.Giovagnoli M, (2009), Crossmedia. Le nuove narrazioni, Milan: Apogeo.Gordon E., (2009), Redifning the Local: Te Distinction between Located Information and Local Knowledge in Location Based Games. In A. de Souza e Silva, D. M. Sutko (eds.), Digital Cityscapes: Merging Digital and Urban Playspaces, New York: Peter Lang, pp. 21-36.Gordon E., de Souza e Silva A., (2011), Net Locality. Why Location Matters in a Networked World, Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.Huizinga J., (1938), Homo ludens: Versuch einer bestimmung des spielelements der kultur (ed. it.: Homo Ludens, Turin: Einaudi, 2002).Lévy P., (1994), L’Intelligence collective. Pour une anthropologie du cyberespace, Paris: La Découverte.Jenkins H., (2006), Convergence Culture, New York: New York University Press.Juul, J., (2005), Half-real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Manovich L., (2013), Software Takes Command, New York: Bloomsbury Academic.Montola M., Stenros J., Waern, A., (2009), Pervasive Games: Teory and Design, Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.Pargman, D., Jacobsson, P., (2006), Te Magic is Gone: A Critical Examination of the Gaming Situation, in M. Santorineos (ed.), Gaming Realities: A Challenge for Digital Culture, Mediaterra Festival, Athens: Fournos Centre for the Digital Culture, pp. 15–22.Salen, K., Zimmerman, E., (2004), Te Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

McGonigal, J., (2003), “‘Tis is not a game’: Immersive Aesthetics & Collective Play”, in Digital arts & culture 2003 conference proceedings. DAC 2003, Melbourne: Australia. http://www.seanstewart.org/beast/mcgonigal/notagame/paper.pdfPoremba, C., (2007), Critical Potential on the Brink of the Magic Circle, in A. Baba (ed.), Proceedings of DiGRA2007 situated play conference, University of Tokyo, pp. 772–778, http://www.digra.org/wp-

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content/uploads/digital-library/07311.42117.pdf

Biography

Giulia Bertone graduated in Communication Sciences, obtained in 2012 a PhD in Cultural Heritage. TePhD thesis - "Connecting places. Te involvement of local communities in participatory development of theterritory: the prospects opened up by locative media "- explores the relationship between digital media,places, participation and communities, investigating the role that location-aware technologies can play in theenhancing of cultural landscapes. Her research investigates how digital media, and in particular location-aware and mobile technologies, are changing the concept of place, the use of public spaces and therelationship between community and places, opening new opportunities for involvement and place-basedengagement.

Domenico Morreale after graduating in Communication Sciences at the University of Turin, obtained hisdoctorate in Sociology of cultural and communicative processes at the Politecnico di Torino. He is aresearcher at the Department of sociological and psycho-pedagogical studies, Guglielmo Marconi Universitywhere he teaches the courses "Teories and techniques of mass communication" and, from 2012 "Teory andphilosophy of language of the media and entertainment" and "Literature and audiovisual Communication",within the degree course in “Film & TV Production” (in collaboration with the Full Sail University inOrlando, Florida, USA). He is teaching assistant for the course "Social sciences and cross-media" and "FilmProduction", Master of Science in “Cinema and media engineering” at the Politecnico di Torino.

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1 On this issue please refer to Salen, Zimmerman: 2004; Juul: 2003; Pargman, Jacobsson: 2006; Malaby:2007; Poremba: 2007; McGonigal: 2003; Fine: 1983.

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ELASTIC SYSTEMS FOR COMPLIANT SHADING ENCLOSURES. DYNAMIC FAÇADE SYSTEMS WITH INNOVATIVE TEXTILE MATERIALS.CHIARA GREGORIS

University IUAV of Venicechiara.gregoris@libero.it

AbstractToday textile materials perform a great number of functions in various felds. In architecture they are widely used forroofs and tensile structures; in our houses we fnd them in curtains and furniture covers. It is on façades, however, thattheir great potential can especially be shown. Textile materials used as cladding can soften the surrounding space, theycan shelter from the sun or help the light flter; they can be luminescent, colourful, or iridescent. Because of theirproperties, textile materials can be diversely used in the applications of façades, both as shielding – thus facilitatingenergy conservation – and in relation to the environment and the people – thus employing the façade either as a supportfor advertisement and information, or as an urban screen or a Landmark.In the course of this paper, we shall analyse a case study that makes use of textile materials on façades; indeed, thesetextile materials allow for the creation of a prototype of kinetic façade which uses smart materials.

KeywordsFabric Architecture, Media Architecture, Kinetic Façade, Textile Materials

Introduction

“In the essential human need for food, clothing and shelter, fabric has mostly been associated with clothingor fashion. However, the word “fabric” refers to the underlying structure of an artefact made by weaving,felting, knitting or crocheting. Woven cloth originated in Mesopotamia around 5,000 BC. From fax andrafa to camel hair and bamboo, methods of thatching or woven woods allowed primitive and ancientsocieties a way to use fabric in enhancing the function or identity of shelter.” (Rees: 2008)

In contemporary architecture, textile materials for external use are chiefy employed for roofng or solarshielding. Particularly interesting is, however, the use that can be made of them on façades, both as verticalclosure, and as mediums of images and information.

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Materials, applications and colours

Te textiles now used for cladding are called ‘technical’, for they meet prime technical/qualitativerequirements. Tey can be made from various materials, and they can generally be yarn, biaxial fabrics(weft/warp), and multiaxial fabrics (3D and 4D); while they cannot be laminated fabrics (flms), mat fabrics,coated fabrics, or multilayer composites.All textiles are characterised by three basic features: lightness, permeability to natural lighting, anddeformability. Lightness, thanks to its minimal thickness, facilitates the installation and the minimization ofboth the material and its support; permeability can be controlled by the fbre mesh; deformability enablessuch a freedom in project that would be unthinkable with traditional architecture materials.

A strategic feature of textile materials is colour. Today there are various diferent methods of coloration: fromthe more traditional ones – like coloration by immersion, appliqués, and diferentiation among the fbrecolours – to moulding by heat transfer, and digital printing. All these methods transform textiles into bigcolourful canvases. Several examples of this can be found in urban building yards, where big textile surfaces,used as locks and for security reasons, become supports of images.Textile materials can also be used as surfaces for the projections of high or low defnition videos and ofluminous efects, thus becoming true medias. Furthermore, it is possible to incorporate luminous devices –like LEDs – into the waft, thus creating illuminating surfaces. An example can be the one of “Mediamesh”,which incorporates RGB LEDs into a supporting metal mesh, thus becoming a low defnition screen.Another example can be the new luminous textiles, where optical fbres are incorporated to synthetic fbres(such as Nylon). Tese optical fbres are connected to the edges of the cloth with LEDs, which project thelight into the fbres, thus creating variations in light and colour into the textile. Textile materials become supports for communication and art. Just like the canvas receives colour from thepainter, thus textile coatings turn façades into places of exploration and of artistic and cultural research.Light and colour, however, are not the only testing grounds of textile coatings: another testing ground ismovement. Kinetic textile façades combine two fundamental aspects, they are both Media Façades, that is,they use technology to realize façades as information screens or artwork at an urban scale, and intelligentfaçades, with the possibility to create responsive membranes that adapt to changing environmental conditionsand user occupancy. In today’s architectural landscape, which aims at sustainable approach and development,solar shielding systems contribute towards energy conservation, becoming more and more widespread.Furthermore, textile materials have the advantage of enabling solar shielding even when making the lightflter, thus creating original efects.

Elastic Systems for Compliant Shading Enclosures

Tis prototype, developed by Brent Vander Werf for the University of Arizona, aims at fnding a system ableto deform in response to thermal and light incentives, and to create apertures, in order to produce shadingand thermal comfort between the outdoor and the indoor spaces.Te study focuses on elastic materials and structures. It investigates their physical and mechanical propertiesin order to fnd the perfect combination which is able to deform and then retrieve its original form withoutleaving any permanent alterations.Te system is conceived to be placed on the east and west façades of a building in a desertic area. Te projectconsists in a mobile mechanism within a glass enclosure. Te mechanism is activated exclusively by the heatof sunlight. Te sun heats up a coil – the actuator – which expands, and then starts rotating bimetal strips.Tese strips are made of thermo-bimetals (TB), which are, in their turn, made of several metals layers – allwelded together – with diferent coefcients of thermal expansion. Terefore, when subjected to heat, the

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metals deform in various and diferent ways, thus acquiring a curving form. Te bending is also afected bythe ratio of the moduli of elasticity of the metallic layers and their thickness ratio; it is, furthermore, thebending of the metal is directly proportional to the diference in the coefcient of expansion and thetemperature change of the component. When it is more subjected to heat, the system resumes its originalposition.“With direct exposure to sunlight, the enclosure experience a “miosis” function, or the constriction of light,based on thermal expansion properties of smart materials and programmatic structural arrangement. With nodirect exposure to sunlight, the enclosure experiences a “mydriasis” or dilation function, allowing for indirectlight to penetrate into interior spaces based on the orientation and materials ability to recoil with lack of heatinput.” (Vander Werf: 2009)Several experiments were performed in order to fnd the most suitable material for the membranes. Tetextile had to be extensible and deformable; it had to bear all the necessary cuts to produce the apertureswhich would make the mechanism work. Te materials considered were: Rubber membranes: SiliconeRubber, EDPM (Ethylene-Propylene), SBS (Styrene Butadiene Styrene); Plastic sheets: ETFE (Ethylene-Tetrafuorethylene); Fabric Membranes: Plastic Fabrics, PVC Coated Polyester, PTFE Coated Glass Fiber,Urethane Coated Nylon, Silicon Coated Fiberglass.In the end, the chosen material, whose features best encountered the requirements of this prototype, wasPVC Coated Polyester, which was, then, sewn into the metal support system regulating its movement.Te colour of the membrane was also considered as a variable:

“Te color and fnish of the membrane was considered an integral property throughout the system as itdirectly relates to the resultant light and heat characteristics. Dark fabrics were utilized in an attempt toincrease heat gain in the enclosure while providing less light refection and in turn light fabrics were modeledto refect and redirect light while decreasing heat gain. Neutral colors were also investigated as a medianfabric which could take advantage of both light and heat properties critical to the system.2.” (Vander Werf:2009)

Te prototype developed by Vander Werf is completely independent and autonomous, as well as involvingzero energy consumption. It guarantees both solar shielding, and permeability of light without theintervention of its users; thanks to the smart materials employed in it, this prototype adapts to the sunlight.Te more and more widespread study and employment of innovative solar shielding systems, together withthe appearance of kinetic façades in the architectural landscape, are two reasons for innovations intechnologies, systems and materials – which often come from other felds, like mechanics or electronics.

Elastic Systems for Compliant Shading Enclosures, Brent D. Vander Werf, 2009

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Other recent façade systems

Te prototype "Elastic Compliant Shading Systems for Enclosures" is a homeostatic enclosure seeking toensure the internal thermal and visual comfort by controlling the entry of light and of heat into indoorspaces.In recent years, many projects have been aiming at developing self-regulation systems which allow climatecontrol – while taking account of both energy resources, and of the costs involved in these systems.Researches have often resulted in kinetic façades:

“Te primary purpose of the building envelope is to protect the inhabitants from the outside environment.Although usually static systems, façades are designed to respond to many scenarios and perform functionsthat can be contradictory to each other: daylighting versus energy efciency, ventilation versus views andenergy generation. By actuating the façades and making them dynamic, they can better adapt to theconditions, provide for improved comfort of the occupants, and achieve a more sustainable design byreducing the compromises needed for that balance.” (Kensek, Hansanuwat: 2011)

One of the most famous and signifcant examples is the “Homeostatic façade” by Decker and Yeadon.Another example by the same authors is “Smart Screen”. Both projects employ intelligent membranes,which reduce energy consumptions by preventing both direct light and the heat of the sun from enteringindoor spaces, through the use of autonomous mechanisms that screen without any control by users.Te research for new textile materials for the construction of façade systems is developing also as regardsstatic surfaces. An example can be the “ICD / ITKE Research Pavilion 2012”, the new temporary researchpavilion at the University of Stuttgart – a cooperation between the Research Pavilion of the Institute forComputational Design (ICD) and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE). Tepavilion is entirely robotically fabricated from carbon and glass fbre composites, the fabric was chosen as thematerial in research of material and morphological principles of arthropods’ exoskeletons as a source ofexploration for a new composite construction paradigm in architecture: the fbre orientation, fbrearrangement and associated layer thickness and stifness gradients in the exoskeleton of the lobster werecarefully investigated to “design a robotically fabricated shell structure based on a fbre composite system inwhich the resin saturated glass and carbon fbres were continuously laid by a robot, resulting in acompounded structure with custom fbre orientation.”

In a contemporary society dominated by restlessness and a constant bombing of information, architectureadapts and becomes a mirror of this trend. Façades, therefore, become suitable for experimentation, seek toprovide the buildings and the interior spaces with functional improvements, and they also supportcommunication by creating messages and images visible by observers.As regards façade claddings and, more particularly, textile coatings, research is a key element of projects.Materials and systems are analysed so that new and diferent solutions can be found – as we have seen in theabove - mentioned examples. Tey are more and more in the van, and take inspiration from other felds ofapplication, such as chemistry, electronics, mechanics, and so on.

“At frst glance, the idea of a “smart” fabric may seem curious, but smart fabrics represent an area ofenormous potential. […] Many applications developed to date are for clothing, but similar technologies canbe envisioned as applying to the many fabrics used in architecture or product design.” (Addington, Schodek:2005)

Indeed, high-performance intelligent textiles can present changes in their properties, transfers of energy, orthey can function as sensors.

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Colour can also be a fundamental aspect of these researches:

“Tere are many fabrics that deal in one way or another with light and color. Diferent kinds of flms withspecial refective or transmission qualities can also be applied to traditional fabrics or directly woven intothem, imparting many of the qualities of flms.” (Addington, Schodek: 2005)

Te potentials of technology and materials create chromatic expressions that can be innovatively employed,especially in communication. Colour is an inextricable part of human perception; thus, by employing it onfaçades, it helps create clear and intelligible images and symbols.

Conclusions

In conclusion, it is clear that the feld of fabric architecture is in constant development thanks to theinnovations in the felds of materials, of systems, and of technologies.Several researches deal with issues such as the transmission of sound through textiles, or new multilayermaterials ensuring thermal insulation, or even rigid materials which do not need to be supported by othermaterials such as steel.Textile materials are, then, beginning to play a role that goes far beyond the traditional ones of fnishing,ornament, or simple technical element; on the contrary, they are becoming architectural elements of façades.

Bibliography

AAVV, (2004), Innovation in Architecture, London: Spoon Press.Addington M., Schodek D., (2005), Smart materials and new technologies, Oxford: Architectural Press.Gasparini, K. (2009), Design in superfcie, tecnologie dell ’involucro architettonico mediatico, Milan: FrancoAngeli.Gasparini K., (2012), Schermi urbani: tecnologia e innovazione: nuovi sistemi per le facciate mediatiche, Milan:Wolters Kluwer.Kensek, K., Hansanuwat, R., (2011). Environmental Control Systems for Sustainable Design: A Methodology forTesting, Simulating and Comparing Kinetic Façade Systems, Sandy Bay: CSABE.Premier A., (2012), Superfci dinamiche: le schermature mobili nel progetto di architettura: innovazionetecnologica, architectural design, sostenibilità, Milan: Franco Angeli.Reed P., (2008), “Fabric transforms buildings and allows designers to get creative,” in Specialty FabricsReview, October 2008, pp. 15-18.Sebestyen G., (2003), New Architecture and Technology, Oxford: Architectural Press.Vander Werf B. D., (2009), Elastic Systems for Compliant Shading Enclosures, Tucson: University of ArizonaLibrary Release.Zanelli A., (2011), “I tessili tecnici per l’architettura”, in Costruire in laterizio, No.144, pp. 20-24.Zeh M., (2012), “On the move: fabric membranes change shape”, in Fabric Architecture, may, pp. 31-37.

http://www.lumigram.comhttp://www.deckeryeadon.comhttp://icd.uni-stuttgart.de

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Biography

Chiara Gregoris, graduated at University IUAV of Venice in the 2012, with a thesis entitled: "Media DesignContest: From Competition to the Project: A New Envelope for an Industrial Building", advisors prof. K.Gasparini and P. Zennaro. She’s a member of the research unit “Colour and Light in Architecture” as well asfree researcher at the University IUAV of Venice.

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“TECHNO-POETRY” WITHIN ZEDEKIAH’S CAVEANNA MARTINI

UAV University of Venicemartini.anna@gmail.com

Abstract“Techno-poetry” is the way the artist Dan Roosegaarde describes the combination of nature and technology heaccomplished with the installation Lotus Dome for the Design Light Festival, held in Jerusalem the past June. Itconsists on a sensitive illuminated dome that continuously opens and closes, changing the cave’s inner surfaces inresponse to human behaviour. Making use of materials and technologies hailing from external research branches, notonly the Studio Roosegaarde but many other architects and artists have developed interactive walls and installations thatangle for the “union of innovation and imagination in a merging of disciplines”(Dan Roosegaarde: 2013): techno-poeticcould be every interactive artwork that behaves like an intangible natural and organic reaction while using digital andphysic systems.

KeywordsDigital Art, Dynamic Façades, Light in Architecture, Media Architecture, Smart Screen

Introduction

In the last fve years several prototypical façades and artworks acting like a natural phenomenon have beendeveloped: projects based on the concept of photosynthesis, electromagnetism, homestasis or pupillary lightrefex are proposed to better the human life and, most of all, the human life inside a building. Reproducingnatural self-adjustment mechanisms, these technologies are able to control several factors such as heat, light,humidity, etc. and to act as a membrane from the exterior to the interior (or vice-versa) surfaces of theinstallation. In order to reach such accomplishment, they are mainly using smart materials and/or smarttechnologies coming from external branches of scientifc research such as chemistry, computer science,aerospace engineering, etc. When talking about architecture, the integration of these smart solutions inside, outside or above the externalenvelope helps reducing energy consumption in buildings by continuously regulating heat and light transferand assisting HVAC systems. Most of the architectural projects that reproduce natural efects have beendesigned to combine an innovative and charming skin with the necessity of reducing electricity consumptioninside the building and greenhouse gas emission outside the building.

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Lotus Dome: a merging of technology and nature

Lotus Dome is one of the latest works of Studio Roosegaarde, a dutch design frm whose aim is that ofletting a physical space becoming “immaterial in a poetic morphing of physical space and human interaction”(Roosegaarde: 2010). Te Dome is a development of their previous project Lotus 7.0: a wall made out ofsmart mylar foils, lights and custom electronics connected to movement proximity sensors that make thewhole process starting when visitors are passing by. In the meanwhile the spectator is approaching Lotus 7.0,sensors trigger a lighting input to the lamps, which in turn give out heat, causing a shape changing to thefoils. Tose hundreds of foils are made of a shape memory alloy (SMA), a material that permits them tounfold in response to a temperature increase and to change back to their initial state when the externalsolicitation is gone by. No movement, no heat – the “lotuses” will close again, slowly sealing the “transparentvoids between private and public,” as Roosegaarde wrote on his website.

Fig. n. 1 - Picture by Avital Pinnick, source: http://www.fickr.com/photos/spindexr/9025030381/in/photolist

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Lotus Dome is a huge hemisphere set inside one of the biggest cave of Jerusalem. Creating a play of lightand shadow on the cave’s surface, it looks like a big breathing bunch of fowers whose petals close whennobody get closer it. Te use of mylar on its petals surface, helps the light and the changing context tobecome as more refected as possible, merging elements of architecture and nature into an interactiveenvironment.

Te installation was frst set inside the 17th century Sainte Marie Madeleine church in Lille, France.As we know, Reinassance sculptures and paintings were created in a manner that makes them coming alivewhen beams of light are fltrating from the windows and brushing by. In the same way, the StudioRoosegaarde’ s artists tried to “update the Renaissance” by “applying a high-tech layer that makes architecturecome alive”.“Not only is the Lotus Dome a way for people to experience the dichotomy of modern and historic in onesetting, but it also allows visitors to reacquaint themselves with long-forgotten culture, beauty, and art in newlight.” (Roosegaarde: 2013)

Fig. n. 2 - Lotus 7.0, Sculpture lumineuse digitale et interactive by Digitalarti

Adaptive materials and Technologies

As above- mentioned, most of the technologies reproducing natural and organic adaptions make use ofmaterials that are diferent from the standard ones like glass, plastic, wood, steel, etc. Tey mainly adoptSmart Materials, that is innovative materials, discernible from the traditional for their selectivity, reversibility,immediacy and auto-activation (Addington: 2005). Such innovative materials can be distinguished into twomain categories:

• Energy exchange capability materials• Property change capability materials

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“While property change capability materials absorb the input energy and undergo a change, energy exchangematerials stay the same but energy undergoes a change” (Addington: 2005). Energy exchange capability materials (also known as “frst law materials”) are materials capable of producingenergy, changing an input energy into another form, thanks to the law of conservation of energy. Productslike photovoltaics (PV), photoelectrics, piezoelectrics and thermoelectrics, which produce electric, elastic andthermic energy are part of this category. Technologies using PV materials are the most common in nowadaysarchitecture. PV cells systems installation on roof and façades is already common in new buildings‘construction, because they can combine together energy production and light-shading. Tese cells, made ofcrystalline semiconducting materials (mainly siliceous ones) can interact with the solar radiation and convertit into electric energy. In addition to modules, photovoltaics systems that are being used in architecture arethe thin flm technologies, that is systems using thinner cells on the order of micron and the dye sensitized solarcells (DSSC), using a photoelectric active dye, but they’re still less common than the traditional siliconmodules. A prime example on the use of PV modules in order to create an adaptive-responsive system is theSolar Display, settled in the main square of Linz, Austria, in 2008 and designed by the DOM Research Labof the University of Art and Industrial Design of Linz: a “self-sustained optical apparatus”. It consists on aregular grid made of Solar Pixel modules (components having a PV module of solar cells on one side and aplastic white surface on the other) that are capable to turn individually and follow the sunlight whileregulating solar incidence inside the building. Every Solar Pixel unit communicates with the others throughan embedded infrared system controlled by a central computer. Tis technology helps them to create animage or an announcement on the whole display, by tilting towards the ground or the sky and showing theirlighter or their darker “face”.

Property change capability materials are those smart materials that undergo a change in one or moreproperties in response to a change on their environment. Included in this class are all color-changingmaterials such as photochromics, thermochromics, chemochromics, etc., shape memory alloys (SMA) and allthe phase changing materials (PCM). Teir property changing is due to an environmental change such astemperature and solar radiation or to a direct energy input such as voltage and current. Shape memory alloys, as we learned from the Lotus Dome, are those materials able to “remember andrecover from large strains without permanent deformation” (Schwartz: 2002). Tey’re capable of modify theirmacroscopic structure in response to a change in tension or in temperature and to get back to their initialshape without undergoing a microscopic variation.

Most of the latest prototypes based on the property change capability are using PCM materials, that is thatclass of materials capable of absorbing energy in the form of latent heat. As a consequence of temperature orpressure changing, they absorb energy by changing from a solid phase to a liquid/gaseous state and release itwhen, after cooling down, they get back to the earlier state. An emblematic example of the use of adaptivetechnologies using phase changing materials is the Kinetower, a project from Kinetura, whose double skin ismade of PCM shafts that can respond to the environment and adapt to the amount of light is wanted orneeded inside the building. Te shafts are paired through a rear stand made of small ashlars that allowedthem to maintain a certain grade of rigidity when warping.

Another example of innovative adaptive façade system is the Homeostatic Façade, designed by Decker &Yeadon in 2011, a prototype system able to prevent the solar heat gain by acting like an artifcial muscle inorder to control the direct solar radiation. Its muscles are made of silver dielectric elastomers (DEs), “a varietyof electro-active polymer that deform due to an electrostatic interaction between two electrodes withopposite electric charge” (Mc Hugh, O’Halloran, O’Malley: 2008). Tese muscles open when the sun lights

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them up and close when the light efect is gone by. Dielectric elastomers are electrically insulating polymersthat have a “large amorphous structure, but are lightly cross-linked, and are thus able to undergo large andreversible elastic deformations” (Schwartz: 2002). Te Homeostatic Façade muscles consist on a couple ofdielectric foils applied on an inner fexible polymeric core, which warp when lit. Tey don’t need anyprogramming or physical adjustment, they just change shape on their own.

Tese are just some examples of the big amount of projects that are being experimented in the feld ofadaptive materials and technologies. As we saw, their purpose is not only that of interacting with visitors butalso of integrating with the environment in a natural way, combining technology and sensitivity. Most ofthese “new generation” façade systems and artworks are still on their planning phase but they’re becomingestablished more and more.

Conclusions

Architecture is nowadays asked to achieve a low carbon footprint, a positive impact on the built environmentand signifcant savings in operating costs. It has to be environmental responsive, intelligent, reconfgurableand interactive, or, in other words, to be adaptive: the use of smart, nature-emulating materials andtechnologies is probably the best way to satisfy such requests."Climate change represents a clear imperative for innovation [...]. Using today's technology, we can embed abuilding with physical intelligence. It is up to us as designers and engineers, to invent the means and formthis intelligence will take.” (Hoberman: 2011).

Bibliography

Addington, M., Schodek D., (2005), Smart Materials and Technologies for the Architecture and DesignProfession, Oxford: Architectural Press.Gasparini K., (2012), Schermi urbani, tecnologia e innovazione. Nuovi sistemi per le facciate mediatiche, Milan:Wolters Kluwer.Gasparini, K., (2009), Design in superfcie, tecnologie dell ’involucro architettonico mediatico, Milan: FrancoAngeli.Schwartz M., (2002), Encyclopaedia of Smart Materials, New York: Wiley and Sons.McHugh, O’Halloran, O’Malley, (2008). “A review on dielectric elastomer actuators, technology, applicationand challenges”, in Journal of Applied Physics, Vol., 104, New York: American Institute of Physics,http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2981642www.studioroosegaarde.net/http://www.designboom.com/technology/studio-roosegaarde-lotus-70/http://www.homestyler.com/procms/project/MTZIJXDHIYGSMN6-1031/lotus-70-by-daan-roosegaardewww.domresearchlab.comhttp://www.deckeryeadon.com/projects/HomeostaticFacadeSystem.htmlwww.kinetura.comhttp://www.adaptivebuildings.com/Hoberman, C. (2011). Living form exhibition, London, Te Adaptive Architecture Conference: http://www.buildingcentre.co.uk/adaptivearchitecture/speakers.html

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Biography

Anna Martini, born in Camposampiero (Padua) in 1985, graduated at IUAV University of Architecture ofVenice in 2011 with a thesis focusing on Moving Mediabuilding Façades. She started her research on thisfeld during her Erasmus Program in Graz (Austria), at the Institut für Architekturtechnologie of the TUUniversity of Graz. She’s a member of the research unit “Colour and Light in Architecture” as free researcherat the University IUAV of Venice.

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Screencity JournalIssue 2 / 2013

It is a four-monthly online publication, which includes double blind peer reviewed articles dealing with a assigned topic. The selected papers can include one of more tags listed by Screencity Journal.

Cover: photo by Lorenzo Gerbi

ISSN 2281-1516

screencitylab.net