Posted Jul 10, 2010, 2:19 PM
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Ahead of the curve
Ahead of the curve
July 09, 2010
By Greg Callaghan
Read More: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1225889741164
Quote:
LET'S start with a splendid over-generalisation. In the 20th century architecture was male; in the 21st century it's female. No, we’re not talking about the flood of women graduates from our architectural schools but the shape of the structures themselves. The iconic buildings of the 20th century, barring a few notable exceptions, were built around straight lines, squares and rectangles, incarnated in the flat-topped, “big box” skyscrapers of the post-World War II period, and epitomised by New York’s World Trade Centre towers, destroyed in 2001.
Now, thanks to a revolution in digital modelling, architects are thinking outside the box, replacing straight lines with curves, right angles with bends, rectangles with sensuous silhouettes, plain, flat facades with shimmering folds and seams. Think Marilyn Monroe rather than Charlton Heston.
There’s common agreement that Canadian architect Frank Gehry, 81, trailblazed the trend to radical new forms with his billowing Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which has helped revitalise the Spanish city since its opening in 1997. A host of wildly-shaped titanium imitators have sprung up in its wake, including the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England (2002), and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003). Gehry, whose buildings were once described as resembling “a party of drunken robots” is about to construct his first project in Australia, the new Faculty of Business at the University of Technology, Sydney, pending council approval.
But it’s in the field of skyscraper design that architecture has suddenly become curvier than ever. Take the sensuous silhouette of the Phare Tower in Paris, which will be the tallest skyscraper in the traditionally low-rise city (only a smidgeon below the spire of the Eiffel Tower) when it’s completed in 2014. Designed by American architect Thom Mayne, Phare Tower is the centrepiece of a dramatic redevelopment of Paris’s La Défense district. Or check out Iraq-born architect Zaha Hadid’s lyrical, gravity-defying bending tower in Milan, designed in collaboration with American architect Daniel Libeskind who has designed a triptych of towers to go with it, part of a giant urban redevelopment project.
The roll-call of “starchitects” at the forefront of the movement for curves – Gehry, Hadid, Libeskind, Renzo Piano, Santiago Calatrava, Rem Koolhaas – spent much of their youth dreaming up fantasy-like forms and structures, most of which were then considered impossible to build. Just as new techniques of pressing and moulding steel revolutionised the shapes of cars in the ’40s, so these avant-garde designers started to come into their own in the ’80s when it became apparent that the modelling software used in aircraft and car design could also be applied to buildings. It’s no coincidence that their careers really took off once the digital revolution began in the early ’90s, and new building materials also became available.
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Frank Gehry's first project in Australia is the faculty of business at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Facelift
Abu Dhabi's Capital Gate building, which leans more than four times that of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
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