THEME : "Relational ART MUSEUM with Parametric Design"

 

 

1. Preference 

THE CITY BECAME A MUSEUM.

 

The huge image emerged on the Victoria Harbor in the Kowloon Art District. 

It’s an artwork, not an advertisement. We can see it from Hong Kong Island in the nightscape. 

It looks like an exhibition in a “museum” called Hong Kong City. 

Museum has been closing the exhibition space as a white cubic interior. 

The works became “fine art” when they were put in the closed white box being disconnected from any other context but art. 

Architecture and the institution of modern art museums turn works into artworks. 

That is why a urinal put in a museum by Marcel Duchamp became one of the most famous artworks. 

M+ Museum designed by Herzog and de Meuron exhibited the video artworks to the city, not in the white cube. 

It seems a chance for art to visually restore the disconnected context of the externality.

 

 

RELATION FOR ART 

Since the mid of 20th century, some artists have been trying to reconnect their works to the externality, such as society. 

Situationist-International, Neo-Dada, Fluxus… they tried to release their art from museums and the institution. 

However, most of their works, including events or happenings, were watched in the white cubes in museums or galleries.

In the 1990s, new movements arose, such as Environmental Art or Relational art. 

As the words say, those movements are positive to put the artworks outside of the institution of art, 

such as natural environment or social relation. Or sometimes they insist the environment or relation itself should be art.

 

 

 Art Terms by Tate, tate.org.uk, defines 

“Environmental art is art that addresses social and political issues relating to the natural and urban environment. 

Environmental art often takes the form of installation. 

The term came into use in the late 1960s and is often closely related to land art.” 

 And the Art Story, theartstory.org, says 

“Environmental art has gained more traction since the 1990s when artists began to think about their surroundings 

not just in terms of lived or built space, but as a cohesive system in which humans have a central part to play”.

 

 

 Relational Aesthetics” by Nicolaus Bourriaud, a French curator, in 1998. 

The art story says 

“Relational Aesthetics essentially encompassed work that sought to produce a temporary environment or event in which viewers could participate in order to assimilate and comprehend the artist's specific impetus or message; 

interactivity and experience becoming more central while material, content, and form are less prioritized.” 

 

 

 

 

 Video artists, like Nam June Pike or Jenny Holzer, using the power of the media, have been showing their artworks in public spaces. 

Pixels and Places - Video Art in Public Space by Catrien Schreuder, Jorinde Seijdel, Noud Heerkens says 

“Video art is to be seen ever more frequently outside the walls of art institutions in public space. 

 Artists infiltrate advertising screens on the street, 

project moving images onto edifices or enter into far-reaching collaborations with architects. 

 At unexpected spots, this video art shakes chance passers-by out of their reverie or merges effortlessly into the streetscape. 

 The images provide a critique of the advertising messages in the city, underscore the aesthetic of the built environment, 

or make visible the skewed power relations on the street.”

 

 

You are requested to design a new Museum which is specialized in Environmental Art, Relational Art, and Video Art. 

Their artworks will be related to the environment of Wuhan city, directly outside art spaces, 

and even inside exhibition rooms because your architecture will be a kind of filter to transfer the existing environment into a new environment for the exhibition. 

However, how it can be transferred? Here, we will use the idea and technique of Parametric Design.

 

E'=[TRANSFER]E 

Assume a small square in a city. 

E’ is environment in the square, and E is the city environment. 

If nothing surrounds the square, we can say E’=E. 

If the square is surrounded by thick concrete wall and roof, we can say just E’≠E. In both type, [TRANSFER] doesn’t work. 

Then, if a line of big trees enclose the square, [TRANSFER] will work as a device to change the light, sound, wind, and circulation of pedestrian. E’=transferred E. If you change the shape of line of trees, the height, the numbers of branches and leaves, E’ will be changed automatically. You can replace the trees with artificial materials. This is called parametric design. Architecture is texture woven by the context and the environment, not an isolated building.

 

 

PARAMETRIC DESIGN 

 

You will design the Museum in Wuhan, analyzing the site and the condition. 

You will transfer it to be the best environment, to make challenging relation, and to generate visual images for the artists. 

Your architecture will adapt itself to the context and the environment, as a chameleon mimics the colors of the trees, as a bird spreads the wings to catch the wind, as a pupil controls light, or as your fashion changes according to the climate and the relationship. 

We can say, “colors” ”wind” “light” and ”climate and the relationship” are parameters, 

which are worth “x” in “y=f(x)”, which is same as E’=[TRANSEFER]E. 

“x” is something controlled by the “number slider” in Grasshopper for example. 

“Mimic” “spread” “control” and “change” means “f”, which are something called “components” in Grasshopper. “y” is your architecture, which is something the Grasshopper shows in Rhinoceros.

 

You need to learn Parametric Design. Generally, it means Computational Design, like Grasshopper and Rhinoceros. 

If you are familiar with Rhinoceros, you should try to design everything with Grasshopper because Parametric Design has become one of the standard methods in advanced schools of architecture in the world. 

On the other hand, if you are not so familiar with it, you need only to understand the idea of Parametric Design and reflect it on your architecture in this studio because it will take a long time to learn enough about Grasshopper. 

Parametric Design is a very important method you have to learn but not the purpose. The purpose is to build a “chameleon” or” bird”. 

You can build it with the parametric idea and your hand drawing and modeling. The necessary conditions for your architecture to be “chameleon” or “bird” are the followings; 

     a. It physically, visually, and sometimes flexibly responds to the urban context and the environment. 

     b. The shape, especially of the bone (structure) is very unique but the skin makes harmony with the surroundings.

 

 

 

 

2. Actual Process

 

 1. Find your site with 500m width × 200m length in the park area at west side of 長江 between 武漢長江隧道 and 武漢長江二桥.

 

The building coverage ratio is less than 50%, and the rest space should be designed as Art Garden. If any existing building or function are in the site, you need to redesign the function with your architecture, the maximal height is 25m, but higher part will partially allowed. Remember that your architecture would be asked to show the affinity and defamiliarization in the landscape.

 

 

 2. Research the history of modern art, and focus on Environmental Art, Relational Art, and Video Art. Find some artists and the artworks to be exhibited in your art museum. 

 

 3. Go back to the site and research the environment, context, landscape, life around there and find something for two purposes. First, it would be for the artists you found at the previous step to make and/or exhibit their works. Another one is for yourself to use as parameters in your parametric design.

 

 4. It depends on your idea when you begin the computational parametric design. 

For example you can begin-; 

 

    a. At the beginning of planning. The plan can be generated by parameters. 

       With this timing, outside art garden can be generated altogether.

 

    b. At the designing of the shape of the architecture. 

      The landscape of the art garden should be related with the parametric shape. 

 

    c. At the designing of “skins”, which are walls and roofs. 

     You need to have assumed the walls and roofs would be designed as “skins” with computational parametric design 

 

5. Design your Relational ART MUSEUM on demands as the following 

   

   a. Four types of exhibition rooms (spaces); 

     A, Environmental Art Room (Space) 

     B, Relational Art Room (Space) 

     C, Video Art Room (Space) 

     D, History of Modern Art Room (in white cubes) 

 

   b. Logistics, office, administration 

   c. Public space (lobby, toilet, café, and might include workshop space, lecture rooms) 

   d. Art Garden (might include rooftop garden, a big monitor or screen for video art) 

 

6. Present your idea emphasizing the computational design, such as Powerful rendering, CG animation, short video, and/or 3D printing model is recommended (not obligation)