Fig.1 Arash Adel and his students at the completionof one of their studio

Twists and Turns in Recent Parametric Productions

Ayad Rahmani: Associated Professor

Washington State University

Pullman, Washington

USA

Introduction:

For a year a “fellow” by the name of Arash Adel, hired by my school, explored the prospects of computational design, focusing on materiality and structure. He produced compelling drawings and even more compelling objects, some onhis own but mostly in

collaboration with students. (Fig.1) The results were varied in looks and intention but what they did share is a certain twist, literally, a spiral of sorts that

would start in a straight line or box, square enough, but whichwould soon turn and braid. In atleast one instance the twist looked as if it had come out of Candela’s hand, in particular his ruled surfaces pivoted Fig.2 One of the results

from Arash’s explorations into twisted ruled

about a single axis to form a fan shaped structure, elegant and stout. (Fig.2) Being largely self-sufficient and needing minimal vertical supports, theseforms for candela were particularly useful given the economically modest market in which he lived and practiced, namely Mexico. But there were other twists.

The “fellow” told me at one point that what he was seeking to do is explore structural performance, which I took to be not so much how brick or steel for instance preforms under stress, resisting loads and so

on, but more how these materialsand others can and should demonstrate their ontological function, their inherent characteristics. There is more than a hint here that what is atstake is not engineering but theater, to act out the characteristics of a material and in so doing lay bare its hidden potential. For Ali Rahim,the New York Architect and educator, the results represent

the distinguishing marks between how we may understand and receive a material as technology and how we may do so as technique. “Whereas technical refinement is directed towards the efficiency of a mechanical, electrical or digital operations, “he says, “the effectiveness of a technology depends on its ability toproduce in users new patterns of behavior and levels ofperformance.”1 He also uses the word “catalytic” to suggest that embedded in technological actions is the power to act upon as well trigger change. Not unlike Shakespeare’s infusing Hamlet with enough venom and outrage so as to allow him to mobilize, on our behalf,

human passions that had become suppressed by history, legal and civic codes- so seems to be the case of the material twists here. They don’t simply “ask the brick what it wants to be,” to invoke Kahn’s famous dictum, but urge it to come out of its shell and demonstrate what that means. Perhaps there is more to the brick than its materiality and more, or at least equal, potential in its numerical factuality. By replacing theclay-like aspect of brick with wood the fellow in fact rids the brick of its materiality, including our centuries-old preoccupation with it as such, and forcesus to contend it with it as numbers that can be exploited aesthetically and structurally. (Fig.3)

Twists and Facades:

It would be safe to say that the fellow’s twists, which by now have become ubiquitous in academic settings and somewhat in practice, most notably as seen in Calatrava’s twisted torso in Malmo and Zaha Hadid’s twisted tower in Milan, (Fig.4) are at pains trying to rid themselves of the tyranny of the façade, which since the Renaissance has been erected to

both define public space but more importantly serve as one end of an ocular dialectic between viewer and

Fig.3 Another one of Arash’s explorations with students, this one showingbrick-like formations studying the various outcomes of this module

Fig.4 Proposed twisted tower in Milan, Italy. Zaha Hadid Architects.

viewed. Almost like the camera centuries later, it would specify location through frame and focus. Just asthe person looked on so the façade would look back in an effort to lock down the relationship between the twoand freeze it for forensic academic purposes. Renaissance painters, most notably Piero Della Francesco, exploited this aspect of the façade, namely as an instrument by which to sort out narrative hierarchies, usually biblical, in visual terms.2

It was the Greeks who first believed it imperative to decouple the message of the façade from the façade itself. It was a time of political and ideological

transition, around 500 BC., fromautocracy to democracy wrought by wars and the seeing firsthandthe virtues of living under a free and open system. Old class and political hierarchies had to

be overthrown in favor of a level ground that brought the collective together, in better proximity and bettervisual recognition of each other. Rather than take truths at face value here they could be debated and demonstrated and seen in the round. Nowhere is this better illustrated than on the east pediment atop the temple of Zeus, retelling the story of king Oinomaus and his daughter and how she was finally wrought from him by the clever but also sinister mind of Pelops. (Fig.5) But it would take another generation or two before a full detachment of sculpture from building would take place, most notably through the work of Praxiletes whose statues of Aphrodite would cause his generation and beyond to stare on with amazement and inspire many to copy it. (Fig.6) This is when we see the twist not only signify a wrenching away from the plane of the building but an internalization of that twist by the art work itself. Aphrodite was not only important for her role as a show piece, but more significantly for the way she performed two things in

Fig.5 Temple of zeus, Eastpediment, 470 B.C.

Fig.6 Aphrodite at Knidos, Praxiletes, 4th C

one go: first serve as an icon of detachment twisting attention away from unchecked power and toward a popular gaze, and second absorb that twist within her own body, wringing sexuality out and thereby drawing the public close to her. Some apparently came so close they copulated with her, heterosexuals from the front homosexuals from the back. Praxiletes twists were always soft and sensual, meant to remind citizens of the common bonds between them and thus the degree to which democracy is natural and good. 3

Aphrodite has been reincarnated many times over the centuries. In a particularly insightful version of her in the 20th century we can see her participate in a commentary on gender roles in the modern office. She is inside a famous Edward Hopper painting entitled

“office at night,” (Fig.7) twisting her body around in what appears to be an innocent attempt to see what her boss or colleague is up to, but which in actuality is far from and in all likelihood represents a charged intention to air out a special kind of grievance. The modern office, burdened as it were by moral and professional expectations, had so weighed modern man ittook away his powers of seduction and indeed excitement. He is now dead to his senses and focused only on his work. This troubles the woman in his

Fig.7 Office at night, Edward Hopper, 1940.

company and in a gesture of lamentation she twists her body and reveals her ripe yet undiscovered sexuality. She doesn’t necessarily seek to reverse the roles between her and her counterpart, becoming the seductress herself, but she does wish to relay in no uncertain terms her desire to see the man take note andrecapture his role as a seducer once again. She might be fully clothed but might as well not be as her dress is not only shrunk wrapped around her and thus reveals every contour of her body but is also of the material, a mixture of cotton and rayon, that smoothes over whatever wrinkles or layers of fat there might be behind it, thus making the woman that much more attractive and sexual.

Twists and Material Liberation:

Today’s architectural twists I would argue are not thatfar from Aphrodite’s; they seek to build on the liberations wrought about by the digital age, first as made manifest through globalization and the subsequent breaking down of geographic barriers and second

through such production breakthroughs as digital fabrications and the notion of mass customization. Where before the individual had lived by the ethos of the standard, now he or she could fashion an item according to his or her taste.

Fig.8 The Laocoon Group,Artists unknown, 2nd C B.C..

Today we could say that there are as many views as there are individuals. From an architecture and urban design perspective this has meant getting rid of the singular and axial relationship between viewer and viewed, city and citizen and replacing it with a systemand visual apparatus that keep the two in constant fluxand constant torque. Twisted buildings may be visually compelling but more importantly they are conjured to keep visual consumption restless and never fully unconsummated.

The twisting has had a major impact on the way we see and think of material, less as an answer to a functional problem but more a problem standing in the way of a world ripe with revolutionary and infinite possibilities. 4 Like the famous Laocoon group sculpture(Fig.8) they suggest that it may be time, given our technological advancement, to question our fidelity to materials and our square way of matching in design whatwe believe the material “wants to be”.5 Laocoon and his two sons suffering under the strangulation of sea serpents is less interesting or significant for the story it tells than for the strain it imposes on marbleand making this stone do what it was not inherently meant to do. The serpent does not so much coerce Laocoon as Laocoon coerces the stone into shapes and stresses foreign to it, putting it on par with such organic materials as flesh and blood and less rock and geological strata.

The Moral Question:

Interestingly, the new twists are unabashedly a-moral, evolving without any claim or pretension toward any onemoral position or another. There is no right or wrong here only energy, work, force, and like Aphrodite have no qualms defending their presence simply on the groundthat they are attractive and seductive. They attract and seek to transform not because of a particular social or economic issue but because like a tornado they sweep up things in their wake, namely the hard andcreative work done on their behalf. No sooner do they begin than they start to bring under their fold the collaborative work necessary to make them a reality andwith every additional turn that work increases not commensurately but exponentially, until by the end technique and practice as we know them will have been reinvented. This is their true preformative trajectory,less with material per se, but with people, generating eddies of intellectual and emotive energies that could if advanced critically bring a better future, for practice but humanity as well. They in fact could remind us of the twister that ripped through the heart of Kansas in The Wizard of Oz, uprooting Dorothy’s house and in so doing allowing the girl to dream and imagine.She would return home eventually but not before growingwise and beautiful having made the journey upward, literally and metaphorically.

Finally:

It should come as no surprise that the first wave of twisted buildings took place In places that are notoriously placeless or ones that have come to terms with their need to be placeless before becoming I suppose place-full, like Dubai, Shanghai and London andless so in say san Francisco where the community pridesitself on local responses to design production. Today they can be seen springing up in other traditionally more conservative locales, such as Malmo and now Milan.

Notes:

1-Ali Rahim, Catalytic Formations, Architecture and Digital Design,New York: Taylor & Francis, 2006, P11.

2-See Evan Robins’ “Piero’s Heads” in The Projective Cast.3-See Nigel Spivey’s Understanding Greek Sculpture: Ancient

Meanings Modern Readings. 4-For a near comprehensive review of twisted forms

produced in architecture in the 20th C but also the design field in general see Karel Vollers’ Twist & Build: Creating non-orthogonal architecture.

5-In a book Performative Materials in Architecture and Design edited by Rashida Ng and Sneha Patel authors explore ingenious ways in which materials can become active contributors to an environment in constant flux with itself and everything that is around, including humans.