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Natural Metaphor: Architectural Papers III
Esta compilación de artículos e imágenes explora el uso de formas en la naturaleza para diferentes propuestas y perspectivas sobre diseño.
175 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 2007
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April 15, 2021
A short collection of short essays, excerpts or partial interviews. A quick and interesting read, but surprisingly, given the title, not a lot was useful for my research on architectural metaphor. Many of the short essays only fit the discussion paper’s premise with a rough push and shove, and perhaps this is the norm for such assemblages, but there is something a tad frustrating when the core elements are absent from the discussion (although I suppose almost anything can be said to be ‘metaphorical,’ even the essay on frozen music and sonic wallpaper). Moreover, there was little emphasis on the role that metaphor plays in the response to, or relevance of, architecture within nature, or natural analogies within architecture.
The other issue I have with the book is that it is light on the anti-arguments. There was only one article which was vocally against metaphor. Christian Kerez says; “I find it absurd to use nature as an analogy, to translate it or to utilise it as a metaphor for architecture. I believe it is always an expression of weakness, when an architect uses something else for explaining his own work other than the architecture itself.” It would have been useful in a montage of ideas such as this, to have a few more critics who highlighted the limitations or potential problems with metaphoricity in design or construction.
Nonetheless, there are a handful of comments by architects which made me sit up straighter and pay attention, such as the one quoted directly above. Regardless of whether I agree with it or not, it forces me to think harder about the topic on hand. There are others however that make me a little squeamish about steretypes of head-in-the-cloud-designers, such as Peter St John’s comments about the decorative coloured stone elevation of his Museum of Childhood, London, which; “is like that because it is an extension to a listed Victorian building from a period when decoration was freely used. We are trying to give the building a decorative language, which perhaps the building never had, but might have wanted to have. So to me this is a contextual response.” I get the contextual response for the time period, but the idea that a building would have ‘wanted to be decorated’ but wasn’t is a bit of an anthropometric or metaphysical stretch.
One of the most interesting notions was the shift in natural metaphors in 1968, at which time both the 2m tall double helix model and the NASA photo of the earth surrounded by void were released. They represented nature as ‘unfathomably’ magnified and miniaturised respectively, and each in turn shifted the way that humans understood nature and accommodated it into their designs.
Unfortunately the book did not provide much material in terms of insight or discussion into ‘natural metaphor’ as the title suggested.
The other issue I have with the book is that it is light on the anti-arguments. There was only one article which was vocally against metaphor. Christian Kerez says; “I find it absurd to use nature as an analogy, to translate it or to utilise it as a metaphor for architecture. I believe it is always an expression of weakness, when an architect uses something else for explaining his own work other than the architecture itself.” It would have been useful in a montage of ideas such as this, to have a few more critics who highlighted the limitations or potential problems with metaphoricity in design or construction.
Nonetheless, there are a handful of comments by architects which made me sit up straighter and pay attention, such as the one quoted directly above. Regardless of whether I agree with it or not, it forces me to think harder about the topic on hand. There are others however that make me a little squeamish about steretypes of head-in-the-cloud-designers, such as Peter St John’s comments about the decorative coloured stone elevation of his Museum of Childhood, London, which; “is like that because it is an extension to a listed Victorian building from a period when decoration was freely used. We are trying to give the building a decorative language, which perhaps the building never had, but might have wanted to have. So to me this is a contextual response.” I get the contextual response for the time period, but the idea that a building would have ‘wanted to be decorated’ but wasn’t is a bit of an anthropometric or metaphysical stretch.
One of the most interesting notions was the shift in natural metaphors in 1968, at which time both the 2m tall double helix model and the NASA photo of the earth surrounded by void were released. They represented nature as ‘unfathomably’ magnified and miniaturised respectively, and each in turn shifted the way that humans understood nature and accommodated it into their designs.
Unfortunately the book did not provide much material in terms of insight or discussion into ‘natural metaphor’ as the title suggested.
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