Els Altres
Arquitectes (The Other Architects)
Museu de Zoologia,
Barcelona, Spain
June 3, 2003 to April 15, 2004. 3.50 Euros
Zoomorphic Architecture: New Animal Architecture
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Until January 4, 2004. Free
Reviewed by Dennis Dollens
Department of Genetic Architectures
Universitat Internacional de Catalunya,
Barcelona
exodesic@mac.com
Less internationally
publicized than the Zoomorphic exhibition
at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London,
but more intently focused, the Els Altres
Architects at Barcelonas Zoological
Museum is by far the more satisfying of
the two.
Zoomorphic presents beautiful architectural
projects, yet only weakly illustrates the
relationships between natural organisms
and the works paired with them. In most
cases projects are represented by models
and drawings, then merely set next to natural
objects, as if juxtaposition explained similarity
or architectural evolution. For example,
Fosters 30 St. Mary Axe tower sits
next to the sponge, euplectella and
we are told: "The building's shape,
structure and ventilation scheme all find
a parallel in the class of sea creatures
known as glass sponges. These have delicate,
elongated exoskeletons. They filter nutrients
from water they suck in at their base and
expel from a hole at the top, just as Foster's
tower circulates air." Well, yes. But
"parallel" is imprecise and many
sponges look nothing like elongated exoskeletons.
Did Foster actually study euplectella?
The tower has a beautifully engineered structural
braid while euplectella is also beautifully
composed of spiraling strands complexly
cross-braced from within. So, indeed, visual
biomimesis exists but its not analytically
consideredwas the sponge a visual,
mnemonic device or an inspirational, biological
one? The show provides little guidance to
such relationships.
Furthermore, euplectellas siliceous
fibers are currently under intense biomimetic
observation (Lucent Technologies), since
its glassy material is the identical to
manufactured fiber optics. Yet this animal
grows under waterat low temperatures,
and subject to low pressure, a process
that, if understood, could provoke a revolution
in engineering and architectural materials.
Is it possible that Foster was looking to
such qualities of growth and being? Did
he study the sponges algorithms? Its
important to know, because new architecture
isnt going to arrive on the basis
of visual "parallels." For example,
if you could secrete sheets of material
the way the sponge grows, you could create
a chance of developing an architecture more
attuned to biology and hence more attuned
to the environment. Because Zoomorphic,
subtitled New Animal Architecture
lacks sufficient biological information
and specific connections to the generation
of architecture it fails to make more than
tenuous, pictorial use of biology and results
in an intellectual tease.
The Barcelona exhibition in the Zoological
Museum takes us into a nineteenth-century
naturalists environment. A beautiful
enigma in relation to modern museums, this
institutions second floor retains
a core collection in original cases, traditionally
displayed, that now biomimetically supplements
the intelligence of the Els Altres Arquitectes
work downstairs.
The show is well conceived and organized,
stressing the idea that animals and insects
(even amoeba) build naturally and genetically,
in a hypothesis Richard Dawkins labeled
extended phenotypes. The exhibition
displays such construction with animal/insect
houses and housing colonies, detailed bilingual
wall texts in Catalan and Spanish, and an
accurate translation available in English.
The tiny, woven, patched, compiled, or secreted
buildings not only present a world of related
structures, they also demonstrate building
as a genetic occupationdifferent but
perhaps not totally unrelated to human building,
which is generally discussed in cultural
terms that should be revised in order to
consider human architecture as extended
phenotypes.
Els Altres Arquitectes considers
materialstwigs, grasses, silk, mud,
paper pulpand relates them both to
the natural world and to their counterparts
in human architecture. An un-narrated video
is set approximately in the middle of the
exhibition and projects close-up views of
insects and animals in the process of building.
Showing a wasp secreting paper pulp, then
fashioning it along a nests edge goes
a long way toward stimulating and developing
your thinking about material strengths and
secretions in biomimesisconsiderations
only now beginning to be studied for nanotechnology
projects, only now sharpening the cutting
edge of architectural theory.
This didactic exhibition is also fun. An
excellent, unexpected production, Els
Altres Arquitectes is an all too rare
modelgeneral enough for children and
specialized enough for adults, including
professionals. I left the exhibition to
email friends with children, saying that
heres an event where parents and children
can unite in the joy of watching birds tie
knots and insects plaster wallsas
well as experience, whether knowingly or
not, an introduction to genetic architecture.