WHAT IS BEYOND RATIONAL?

The past two decades has witnessed a dramatic rise in technology as an aid to architecture whether from a material, a production, or a logistical point of view. While architects often serve as mediators between technological changes, culture and society, translating the advancements into spaces that alter our habits and behavior, technology has also changed the way that we think and design projects. The role of technology is not simply rational but also philosophical, sensational, and conceptual.

Showing objects, projects and ideas from young architects now practicing in Zurich, the exhibition hopes to highlight not only the emerging voices of design but also the thoughts and trajectories that have resulted from contemporary tools and techniques. The contributions run across a spectrum from the pioneers of new digital technologies in form-making to the revisiting of low-tech means in confronting our social and ecological responsibilities.

Michael Hansmeyer presents his Platonic Solids, an investigation of mathematical polyhedras created through highly rigorous and iterative steps that belies the rationality of the computational logic and take us beyond what our imagination alone can produce. ROK’s Flat2Form brings geometry and digital processes to structural ornamentation, questioning our common assumptions of materiality while Ueli Degen and Merkli Architekten show that low-tech ideas when applied at a large scale can also make a difference. Re-using PET-bottles, their lamps challenge us to take on the responsibility that comes with modern technology to make design accessible to all. Karamuk Kuo, combining low-tech construction with hi-tech logistical programming, show that our world, like the technologies that we use are often not so easily categorizable and that design thinking necessarily has to adapt. ILAI and Duplex Architekten each present material and spatial studies to current architectural projects, the results of a sensibility that embeds architecture within a culture of making. Hosoya Schaefer Architects show two films, using a medium that has come to define more and more design communication. L(E)ICHTRAUM is a structural investigation using logics, rules and algorithms to produce radically lightweight, ribbon-like columns while Mobiglobe turns to much grander issues to question what the mobility of the future might be. And last, but not least, futurafrosch presents 144 thought-provoking ideas to get us out of our seats to engage with technology.

Liberated from the prosaic constraints of typical construction projects, and the functionalism that often defines our measure of technology, the exhibited works chart relationships between technology and design, whether high- or low-tech, whether material or immaterial, to speculate beyond just the rational.

ILAI : H47 18'

H47°18’  (2010)
by ILAI

The showcase piece is part of a House on the hills alongside the Lake of Zurich called H47°18’.
In the process of designing this building we made an effort not to think with an architectural vocabulary for as long as possible. This enabled us to keep our development process highly explorative and full of unexpected discoveries.
The House is designed with the thinking about coexistence, division and reunion: there are four ideas interlocked in each other and therefore offer diverse and rich situations to daily living.

View or the perspectival Hinge
There are visual connections throughout the house. They form and frame the spaces, influenced by the adjacent rooms. A narrative aspect of spacial relationships is being formed.

Directions or sometimes there is no need for a wall
The main hall is being shaped by the succession of kitchen, dinning area, sitting area around the fireplace, and finally, the library. Those spaces come alive through subtle changes in orientation. This creates a sense of space and purpose but not a final division.

Heights or the most extreme experience in architecture
The main hall is also accentuated with two, three-steps height differences, same as the terrace. On the inside this movement emphasizes the aforementioned divisions between spaces/functions. On the outside this dividing feature becomes an element of mediation between the corresponding levels in the garden.

Threshold or how are you today, ma’am?
Some of the spaces are framed through a difference in ceiling heights, continuing in the adjacent walls and thus forming a throughway. The chimney is such an element and defines the sitting area just by changing the proportion of the space.

Being able to design and experiment outside of a strictly rational frame allowed us the luxury of using technological means in a playful way, as shown in the exhibited piece here. The shown object is a model in scale 1:33 of the walls that surround the internal guest patio and the terrace of the main hall. Although not purely functional and structural the built succession of walls determines the topographical expression of the entire building and enhances it’s presence on site.

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