a+u 2022:12 Feature: Engineering Art
Content
a+u’s December issue features collaborations between artists and engineers. Liberated from conventional architectural constraints such as programs and building regulations, such collaborations provide the potentiality of new discoveries in structure, form, and materiality. Twenty such works, diverse in scale and materiality, are presented in this issue, ranging from Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 60-year-old project plans, L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, which was realized using the latest technological ingenuity, to Richard Serra’s tallest sculpture and Donald Judd’s visionary concrete shell structure. Many of the projects presented here, such as monumental sculptures by Pablo Picasso in steel and concrete and Janet Echelman’s lightweight net installations, offer insightful commentaries on the surrounding buildings and define their urban environments as part of an ensemble. In this framework, engineering also emerges as an artistic and humanistic discipline sharing an aesthetic pursuit. Dialogues with artists, conveyed through sketches and reflections, attest to the parallel trajectories of engineering and art. These productive relationships, often personal, tap into the creativity of, and interpretation by each engineer that goes beyond execution, “shaping a process that modifies the project itself,” as described by guest editor Guy Nordenson. Detailed drawings and photographs of fabrications and installations are highlighted, alongside 8 essays by engineers, artists, and critics, to reveal how intuition and rationality are harmonized and superimposed. (a+u)
Essay: Artist Engineer
Guy Nordenson
L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped
Christo and Jeanne-Claude / Mike Schlaich
Essay: L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped – The Structure
Mike Schlaich and Anne Burghartz
The London Mastaba / The Mastaba
Christo and Jeanne-Claude / Mike Schlaich
Essay: Feasibility Study for The Mastaba
Yoshiyuki Hiraiwa
Everywhere The Edges (ETE)
Rebecca Lazier, Janet Echelman / Sigrid Adriaenssens, Bill Baker
Dream Catcher
Janet Echelman / Mark Sarkisian (SOM)
Essay: Creative Tension: How a Choreographer and an Engineer Innovate Together
Sigrid Adriaenssens
Essay: Creative Construction: How Artists and Engineers Collaborate
Mark Sarkisian, Bill Baker, and Alessandro Beghini
Benjamin Franklin Memorial
Isamu Noguchi / Paul Weidlinger
Horace E. Dodge Fountain
Isamu Noguchi and Shoji Sadao / Paul Weidlinger, Matthys Levy
Creature from Iddefjord
Martin Puryear / Eker Design
Brick Sculpture for Storm King Art Center
Martin Puryear / Rebecca Buntrock (Silman), John Ochsendorf
Essay: Engineering of a Brick Sculpture
John Ochsendorf
Essay: Urban Landscapes: Zones of Destruction, Upturned Beams, Wetlands, and Façades
Walter Hood
7
Richard Serra / Leslie Robertson
Chicago Picasso
Pablo Picasso / Fazlur Khan and Joseph Colaco (SOM)
Bust of Sylvette
Pablo Picasso, Carl Nesjär / Weiskopf & Pickworth
Free Ride Home / Osaka
Kenneth Snelson
Day’s End
David Hammons / Guy Nordenson and Gina Morrow
Concrete Buildings
Donald Judd / Robert Kirk
Reversible Destiny Lofts – Mitaka (In Memory of Helen Keller)
ARAKAWA and Madeline Gins / Yasui Architects and Engineers, Inc.
Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle / Bill Baker (SOM)
Lucerne Festival Ark Nova
Anish Kapoor, Arata Isozaki / Taiyo Kogyo
PSAD Synthetic Desert III
Doug Wheeler
Essay: At Hearing’s Edge: Artist Doug Wheeler Achieves a Semi-Anechoic Immersive Artwork, Synthetic Desert, with Arup’s SoundLab
Walker Downey and Caroline A. Jones
Afterword
Adam Weinberg