While not entirely, but somewhat unrelated, the works of Santiago Calatrava have always amazed me. The Spanish architect began designing when he was just a teenager. Born in 1952, in Valencia, Spain, Calatrava had a passion for the arts and architecture for the beginning. What I love about his work is that he creates something so organic with materials that are so opposite of that.
Quadracci Pavillion
Milwaukee Art Museum
2001
Lyon-Satola Airport-Railway Station
Lyon, France
1994
Tenerife Concert Hall
Canary Islands, Spain
2003
I feel like Calatrava's work relates to my own sculpture in that he is taking these manmade objects to create something so fluid, beautiful and natural.
It's interesting: if you look into Bucky Fuller's research, you'll see that such forms are organic, only not on a level we tend to observe with regularity: cellular. And crystals.
ReplyDeletehttp://electrochem.cwru.edu/encycl/art-c01-carbon.htm "A more exotic form of carbon is the so-called "buckyball", discovered in 1985. It has a structure similar to a soccer ball. This discovery led to the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to H.W. Kroto, R.F. Curl, and R.E. Smalley. A typical structure of a buckyball (see Figure 1) contains 60 carbon atoms (C60) in a spherical structure consisting of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons arranged on the surface. The more scientific name for this form of carbon is buckminsterfullerene (also called "fullerene"), so named for R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) who developed the architectural structure know as the geodesic dome. This structure has a strong resemblance to the design of a soccer ball. The discovery of the buckyballs in 1985 has led to an expansion of research on C60 and variations of this structure. Evidence is available to show that buckyballs are present in nature, found in meteorite craters in Canada and New Zealand."
Also check out the institute that bears his name: http://www.bfi.org/ If you don't kmnow his work, you should: it's mind blowingly simple and complex simultaneously.
I saw him lecture once and he was mesmerizing: he doddered on stage and began to talk about so many things, we all thought he'd succumbed to Alzheimer's. And just as we doubted him, he masterfully wove all those disparate ideas back together. It was astounding the depth and breadth of his intellect and his humility.
Oh, you also need to check these out: http://www.getbuckyballs.com/
ReplyDelete