ARCHILAB

ARCHILAB 2001: "Habiter aujourd'hui"

More than 90 architects were invited to present their projects during the Third International Meeting on Architecture. This meeting brings together the architects of the world for whom lodging together is a chance for thinking about new conceptual strategies. Faced with an increasing standardization in the construction industry and the fashion of dwellings in constant change, the challenge of the innovator is to adapt to these times of constant change. Modern communications have introduced us to a greater cultural diversity but, on the other hand, increasing industrialization has led to uniformity in the construction process.

The projects are grouped in a way to represent various attitudes towards the question of housing.

• Individual or collective habitation
• Flexibility
• Effects on landscape
• New life styles
• Subversion
• Form and process of creation

This article is about this last theme which touches on a recurring theme in architecture: geometry.

In the Wu House, Preston Scott Cohen gives a vision of his geometric transformations. The architect defines the movement space of the visitor. The transformation is only accessible on paper but the images show all the same that these forms are the apothesis of his reserach at a given moment. To quote from Goethe: Architecture is crystallized music.

His approach is based on the descriptive geometry of the 17th century, but he shows a novel application by using oblique projections. Perspective is also a projection which allows us to visualize certain forms. The simple volumes which we are used to seeing appear as different forms. This approach is supported by computer modelling. The calculations are rapid, sometimes preprogrammed, and the transformation from two dimensions to three is a simplified functionality of the program. Geometry is returned to its independant status after having served primarily the needs of technology during the industrialization of the West. It is no longer a tool for the production of machinery. Its use is freed from the constraits of technical representation, and recreates a link with certain periods of history such as Ancient Greece or the Ming period in China.

In the case of the Maison Wu, the curves are the intersections of cylindrical volumes. The spaces are three-dimensional images of geometrical operations. The vitality of the lines reflects an idea of design which is far from the preconceived rules of esthetics.