Sculpture City

Can a building be a sculpture?

Can a sculpture be a building? Or more precise: can buildings be autonomous sculptures? Can sculptures be functional buildings? The building sculptures of Sculpture City Rotterdam form the assertive evidence. They are answering both questions positively. Without a major shift in the professional attitudes of both art and architecture sculpture buildings and/or building sculptures will not be feasible. Both disciplines have to be redefined. New boundaries for their freedom of movement are set by the 1994 update of thinking and technique. First, from the architectural point of view, a definition of a sculpture building: a sculpture building is an object that is generated according to a series of intuitive acts and logical instructions, both in the phase of the virtual design and in the phase of the materialization. The functionality of the building is just one out of thousands of parameters effecting the resulting image of the concept. With each step in the series of instructions and acts the functionality of the building is equivalent to other parameters. There is no hierarchy of arguments but their procedure. The electronic skin of Cloud010 is alive. The sculpture buildings of Sculpture City are granting their own functioning. Form allows function in stead of form follows function. Similarly the sculpture buildings are permitting that they are subject to gravity, that they are shaped to a specific form, and that they eventually are materialized.

Next, the definition of building sculpture, from the point of view of the arts: A building sculpture is an object that is generated according to a series of intuitive acts and logical instructions, both in the phase of the virtual design and in the phase of the materialization. The definition of a sculpture building and the definition of a building sculpture are identical. The autonomy of the sculpture is just one out of thousands of parametric acts effecting the resulting image. With each step in the series of instructions and acts the autonomy of the sculpture is equivalent to other parameters. There is no hierarchy of arguments but their procedure. The building sculptures of Sculpture City are granting their own autonomy. Similarly, the building sculptures of Sculpture City are permitting that they are subject to gravity, that they are functional, and that they eventually are materialized. Probably the most important parameter in conceiving the object is the available budget. In order to design and execute the sculpture buildings the budgets for art and architecture must be equal. This time not a mere 1% art as a humiliating brooch attached to the building, but a full 100% art fused with a 100% building. Sculpture = building // building = sculpture! Only then there will emerge a parrallel fusion between the arguments causing architecture and the motives causing art. Only then there will be sculpture buildings which are both art and architecture. Only then the plans for Sculpture City Rotterdam can be drawn.

Deisgn team: Ilona Lénárd, Kas Oosterhuis, Menno Rubbens | grant by Dutch Stimulation Fund | RAM Gallery 1994