Technology
Motion Matters - UNStudio
UNStudio’s ‘Motion Matters’ extend the complexity of a diagram into a three dimensional space by exploring the significance of the ‘Pavilion’ as a transitory architectural model.
Temporary pavilions today are what the Case Study Houses were after the World War. Pavilions present an incredible opportunity to test architecture in real-time and thus become in-between models between the diagram and the building. In the age of non-standard architecture, the pavilion space serves as an experimental intermediate encouraging and recording user reactions. On appointment of Ben Van Berkel as the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, UNStudio designed an installation ‘Motion Matters’ as a transitory experiment testing architectural and urban issues in a real manner.
The space at the Gund Hall in Harvard houses six of UNStudio’s architectural installations, each one addressing a particular topic – Transitional Typologies, Urban Lobbies, Crossing Points, Kinetic Platforms, After Image, Switching On / Off – Core concepts to UNStudio’s architectural and urban experiments. These pavilions, through interaction and dynamism, question notional, structural and experimental programs to express the overall complexity of an architectural problem.
The pavilions at the Gund Hall present a paradox of entering an illusory space with prototypical possibilities presented by an architectural model but with an elaborate physical materiality and presence recording readings, interpretations and perceptions through shifting perspectives and “new & more dynamic materialisations”. The pavilion thus acts as a ‘short-lived’ form of architecture, somewhere in-between typological research and artistic production. It helps to ‘switch-off’ the utilitarian mind and ‘switch-on’ imagination tested in real-time space. The pavilions thus act as design models brought to life.
Another significant aspect of the pavilions is their ability to generate an experience rather than a mundane analytical reaction. Effects of perspective, light, colour, space and material at a real scale combine to encourage optical investigation apparent as a space for technological innovation in architectural typologies.
The pavilions not only put into perspective the idea of UNStudio’s non-standard architecture but serve a purpose of prioritising the historical dominance of the ‘image’ in experimenting with architectural typologies. The illusory space of the pavilion, as a medium, thus metamorphises into an architectural experiment similar to making a model, the difference being that this model reacts to gravity, pull, turbulence and vortex.
As graphic representations of an evolution of a phenomenon, the program for the installations departs from the need of architectural concepts to be tested in more tactile and experiential form. In an age where everything is converted into a flow of data, this experiment becomes a very versatile medium to negotiate the interplay between the real and the diagrammatic. When the floors, walls and the ceiling becomes a continuous element, architectural concepts are tested in a realistic manner to create an optical illusion of a real space – the experiential manifestation of the diagram.
Text: Ruturaj Parikh
Photographs: courtesy UNStudio; Justin Knight.
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