Tyler Johnson Johnson

We are pleased to share with you a group of projects developed by students at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in New York City. The Bad Weather studio was taught by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, partners at the award-winning innovative architecture firm SO-IL. The main idea behind the studio was to explore architecture’s potential in relationship with natural forces beyond mankind’s power and reason – being the weather one of the last unpredictable and instable systems. The studio used the typology of the skyscraper as the enabler of the contemporary sublime.

“As function, symbol and form have lost their validity as drivers of the architectural project, we examine a recent reemerging interest in more phenomenological and ephemeral qualities of our physical world. Words like cloud, atmosphere, environment and realm are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in a post-icon era. This meteorological terminology tries to describe projects which are less formal and less defined. A fascination with weather not only informs architecture, also contemporary design, for instance in the work Tokuin Yoshioka, and artists such as Olafur Elliason take the weather as a point of departure. Other than in the past, where architects as Coop Himmelblau and Diller Scofidio explored weather in relation to mechanical systems, current explorations within architecture typically have as goal to re-examines the relationship between climate and architecture in order to create a “truly sustainable architecture and design, founded on the creation of new conceptual patterns, which recognize the primary role of physical and meteorological phenomena in architecture, economy, design, the media and every aspect of our society”

This studio tries to steer clear from the noble and calculable connotations that reside within the meteorological metaphor – the weather forecasters so to say – but rather is interested in the more unpredictable, the unstable and the extreme conditions weather can create. Daily we are confronted with the sheer force of the weather and its effects on our lives. We find these forces frightening yet fascinating. This fascination stems from the notion of the sublime, a category of aesthetics.

If good weather architecture would be about control, about comfort and about sustainability, what would bad weather architecture be? Can we achieve an architecture that is as powerful and effective as the worst storm? Can architecture achieve a new subliminal state?

These questions will be addressed – through the lens of the sublime – by designing a tall building, a skyscraper, in New York City.

The studio not only challenges the students to take a clear position through their architectural proposal but also seeks to develop or strengthen an ability to represent this position in a spirited fashion. During the second part of the studio we will use the work of film maker Werner Herzog, as a source of inspiration. His films are, to his annoyance, often described in terms of the sublime. They feature heroes with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who find themselves in conflict with nature.”

Tyler Johnson Johnson


Tyler Johnson Johnson

Tyler Johnson Johnson

Loukia Tsafoulia

Loukia Tsafoulia

Loukia Tsafoulia

Loukia Tsafoulia

Marcos Zotes Lopez

Marcos Zotes Lopez

Marcos Zotes Lopez

Marcos Zotes Lopez

Leonid Slonimskiy

Leonid Slonimskiy

Leonid Slonimskiy

Leonid Slonimskiy

 


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