It negotiates a sense of space with uncertainty, where stability gives way to being dynamic and interactive using the properties of air as an evolving architectural medium. AIRSCAPES # 1 looms as an inspiration for a new path in architectural education, an opportunity to look beyond static forms and enter the possibilities of dynamics.
Description of project by Rafael Beneytez-Duran, Peter Jay Zweig
Can man live elsewhere than in air? Luce Irigaray.
In 1986 inspired by the project "The House of Education" (1773) of Claude Nicholas Ledoux, Philip Johnson and John Burgee reassembled the new Architecture building at the University of Houston around an invented atrium to collect the knowledge and new ideas of architecture into a historical, internal court. The post-modern atrium is signified by the regularity of classic iconographies within an axis and a strong sense of symmetry.
AIRSCAPES #1, a dynamic pneumatic structure challenges the values of the stable forms of the atrium by using the ecology of air, the turbulence of our times, the rising temperature of those viewing and interacting with the AIRSCAPE. Tempered by the ever-changing surrounding atmosphere, the floating structure of 380,000 cubic feet allows one’s mind to move freely within the “House of Education”.
AIRSCAPES #1 is air-born: Its presence reminds us how much the static environments are perceived by the weight and solid materiality that have captured and dominated architectural space. AIRSCAPES #1 is inherently dynamic and opens new fields of exploration which can include: negotiating a sense of space with uncertainty, where stability gives way to being dynamic and interactive using the properties of air as an evolving medium of architecture.
By breathing, we exchange and live in the space of air as a material substance. We accumulate aerosol substances that penetrate through the lungs to the blood, to the brain, and finally to our very moods and thoughts: these accumulated forces which respond to air creates unpredictable internal weathers and turbulences. AIRSCAPES #1 is in a constant state of change: Forgotten air, layer over layer of different temperatures from the atrium’s cold floor to the one-hundred-foot temple at the top of the “House of Education”.
AIRSCAPES #1 hovers as an inspiration to a new path in architectural education, an opportunity to look beyond the static forms and enter the possibilities of the dynamic. The 21st century is in a state of transition, of moving targets, technologies, and existential climate challenges: Architecture, by its very nature can rise to the moment.
