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Archisculpture

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 2005 by Rob Gregory

On first impression, some architects will find the Fondation Beyeler's current exhibition, Archisculpture, nonsensical. Drawing simplistic comparisons between Corbusier and Moore, Wright and Brancusi, Gehry and Tatlin, will, I suspect, inspire few. However, this exhibition is a must see. With an extensive collection of architectural models and sculptures displayed throughout Piano's fine Beyeler galleries, visitors cannot fail to be impressed by the curator's spectacular narrative; a complete architectural experience that traces architecture's relationship with art from 1784 to the present day. From Boullee to van Berkel, Gilly to Greg Lynn, the study of how architectural form has been determined is explored through a series of sculptural confrontations. Artworks are set against architectural models to demonstrate direct reciprocities between art and architecture, presenting a two hundred year history of form-finding rationale. Or at least that is what an architect may hope to discover. What actually emerges is something far less searching. Something less theoretical and sophisticated. Perhaps to its credit, unlike Zoomorphic, this exhibition makes little attempt to over-intellectualize its thesis. The relationships it highlights are far more impressionistic. Drawing out essences and moods in architectural form more than rationale, theory or technique--it enriches the way that buildings can be understood as objects. The placement of crisp, exacting, and accurate architectural models next to more richly figured sculptures sets up curious tensions; tensions that demonstrate profoundly that beyond the iconic silhouette, materiality, texture, solid, void, shadow, luminance, and lustre--to name just a few of the many sensory constituents of a sculpture--are as fundamental to architecture as they are to sculpture.

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Through their direct juxtaposition with the sculptures, the abstracted representations of buildings in model form, perhaps more than the curators ever imagined, demonstrate how the term sculptural means far more than mere shape.

There is, of course, substantial theoretical content to the exhibition that is included in a beautifully illustrated catalogue. Organized in ten chapters, the curators consider Early History (Classical, Gothic and Baroque), the Triumph of Scale, The Conquest of Three-Dimensional Space (Cubism, De Stijl, and Bauhaus), The Discovery of Sculptural Form (Expressionism), Spirit Soul and Space (Steiner and Wittgenstein), The Age of Sculpture (1950-60 Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright), Sculpture, Path and Place (monuments and installations), Minimalism or the Love of the Box, The Sculpted City (Utopias), and Blob and Box (twenty-first century virtual reality). The essays and chapter introductions cover a lot of theoretical ground, highlighting many cross discipline comparisons; however, more interesting is how the exhibition clearly demonstrates that architecture is categorically not sculpture, subtly emphasizing significant differences (such as the notions of utlility, habitation, and scale). It also raises many contemporary issues relating to the formal extremes of boxes and blobs, and with the concluding chapter focusing on the sculptural opportunities offered by parametric modelling techniques, new dilemmas emerge. The proposition that a building has to be shapely and curvaceous to be sculptural should be rigorously challenged; blobs are after all no more sculptural than boxes. (I am sure van Doesburg could convincingly argue that point.) And, when considering the much-heralded creative potential of the computer, we should not lose sight of the fact that designers--ie human beings with human judgement--ultimately decide on the formal resolution of their buildings. Whether you derive form from screwing up newspaper, moulding plasticene, or running parametric modelling sequences, at some point the human eye decides, that is it! And the form is frozen. Balance, harmony, and proportion in composition will always be based on human sensibilities.

So, as the exhibition naturally comes full circle back to Boullee, we can conclude that the most profound relationship between architecture and sculpture is that both always have and always will rely on the inspired vision of creative designers.

ArchiSculpture--Dialogues between Architecture and Sculpture from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day, curated by Markus Bruderlin, runs at the Fondation Beyeler until 30 January 2005.