INSPIRATION – ESSAY – DAVID LIEBERMAN

DAVID LIEBERMAN

Gramazio Kohler architects are inspiring for many reasons. Not only they deeply involved in educating the next generation of students, they put their money where their mouth is and stay active in real-world architectural practice. As I analyzed their work, I found that the common thread which ties together most of their designs is the intention to push the boundaries of how the construction of architecture takes place. With both of my parents in the building industry, I am inevitably drawn to a tectonic understanding of the world around me. This, tectonics, is exactly what draws me to their work and why I chose to study them.

The potential for advanced computing and manufacturing to enhance architecture’s tectonic capabilities is great. Complex geometries coupled with rigorous environmental standard require a level of computation that no human can undertake. Along with this robotic approach, many belief the life that architects breath into their building will be lost. Interestingly enough, at Gramazio Kohler their work, while rooted and made possible by computation, ends up becoming more organic and naturally pleasing to the eye. Their entire design process can be looked at through the lense of parametrics.

Gramazio Kohler seems to always start with a simple idea. In this new frontier of design, the most simple of ideas can be manifested in amazingly complex ways. For example, with the Winery Gantenbien project, they interpreted the concrete structure of the building as a basket of grapes. With this simple idea, they launched into one of the best examples of a parametrically designed facade, achieving a level of precision and beauty impossible without the help of parametrics. Gramazio Kohler similarly uses parametrics to find form. Private House Riedikon is a great example of this. The buildings form is derivative of the surrounding gable roofs however it is morphed into a unique form based on criteria established by the architectes. What results is a rather beautiful example of how Gramazio Kohler uses parametric design to aid in the discovery of form. By now, it seems obvious that most of their work falls into a unified genre. Parametricism can be a hard genre to define, however I interpret it as meaning the use of parametrics to both generate information based design as well as use design to reflect high levels of information. What often results from this is a curvaceous look, making the genre easily identifiable. Gramazio kohler cannot escape this classification. Even project that are made up of completely standard and orthogonal parts, can represents data points the flow along complex curves.

Where Gramazio Kohler truly excel, and perhaps the most important step in their design process is the integration of structure into their designs. How does the building stand up? How is it put together? These are all questions they use computers and robotics to help answer. It is often that means of construction of lead the designers thinking about the project, like in the Flight Assembled Architecture project. Here they whole project’s conception is based around how drones could be used to build a building. With this in mind, it is only after thinking about the structure of the project did they go back into ideas, forms and more. This highlights the iterative and ‘plug-n-play’ nature of the design process.

Finally, Gramazio Kohler add ‘surface’ to their built projects. This level of gloss can only be achieved after having gone through all the other parts of the process. The composition of a building elevation is something that is near and dear to my heart, and is my favorite part of the design process. I believe that Gramazio Kohler’s projects could be greatly improved if only they spent more time on this final area. This is why I chose to analyze parametrically designed facades by two other firms.

Herzog DeMuron and OMA are two firms that take the ‘surface’ of their building very seriously. Making iconic structures through the help of parametrics can be the what makes  project float. With the CCTV tower, the facade represents a deeply analytical approach to parametrics. With the Elbphilharmonie building, HdM used the facade as a canvas for composition.

It is somewhere in between that I would like to push my own work and the reason why I took this class. I believe that the combination of human creativity and advanced computing leads to a better architecture. Not only physically or sustainably better, but aesthetically better. I obviously have a long way to go, but with the facade example I provided, what I am attempting to show is how I was able to combined my own desire for a linear facade with parametrically designed louver system resulting in a both beautiful and functional ‘surface’.

Gramazio Kohler inspires me greatly. I love tectonics and I believe that the work they are doing will help to fundamentally change how we build. At the end of the day, however, tectonics are only half the story and a human eye, combined with a computer’s processor, can complete a project’s ‘surface’ leaving the build environment more sustainable and beautiful.