ARCHITECTURE OF

ENVIRONMENT
READING OF THE MEANING OF THE BLUR BUILDING BY DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO, SWITZERLAND, 2002
Nicholas Martino - nicholas.martino@hotmail.com

I NTRODUCTION
This paper addresses to analyze how the Blur Building (fig. 1 and 2) can be linked with cultural manifestations to transmit a meaning through sensations beyond the vision as a kind of language. Designed for the Expo 2002 at Switzerland by the new Yorker studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the Blur Building intend to create an architecture of atmosphere - a fog mass resulting from natural and manmade forces (Diller Scofidio + Renfro, 2002). The narrative produced by the Blur Building will be my starting point. This essay focus on how Diller Scofidio + Renfros Blur Building induce a n architectural experience beyond the spatial interpretation through the eyes. In other words, how the pavilion communicates a sensation without a spatial arrangement, but only through its environmental context. The information acquired and discovered about the Blur Building will be compared with others works that could be related to it in questions of meaning. I will try to show how the concept of an architecture focused on environment transmitted by the Blur Building can be founded in other works like Rey ner Banhams article A Home is Not a House in 1965 and the Digestible Gulf Stream by Philippe Rahm in 2008.

F ORMAL ANALYSIS
Its operation focus on the public sensations. The vaporized water shot through 35.000 pressure nozzles in the middle of Lake Neuchatel creates a different texture in the air that shapes itself in an ellipsoidal symmetric form discarding into a tail depending on the strength of the wind. The accumulation of the vapor model a white and bright cloud connected to the ground through walkways.

Figure 1: The Blur Building.

The final result of Blur Buildings design counts with a 300 ft. wide by 200 ft. deep structure. Elements the Angel Deck in the top side of the cloud, where you can appreciate the sky view; coats for people that change its color according to compatible between people; and the water that you can drink composes the design focusing on peoples sensation.

T HE NARRATIVE AS A LA NGUAGE
The narrative adopted by the design studio can lead us to the meaning that I propose to the building. Diller Scofidio + Renfro define themselves as a design studio that integrates architecture, the visual arts and the performing arts. In the Blur Building, the studio explores an optical white-out and an acoustic white-noise (produced by the nozzles) that almost eliminates both of these sensations increasing the sensibility of others senses like taste, smell and tact. Thus, the building narrative consists at the partial elimination of some senses and increase of others. The partial elimination of vision can be used to justify an architecture that does not focus on architecture adopted by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, but an architecture primarily focused on environment. According Coelho Netto (1979), the space arrangement is the main focus and what defines the study of architecture. Consequently, our main ways of expression are drawings and others graphic representations. The vision has a truly important part at the absorption of space organization and, thus, the absorption of architecture. Diller Scofidio + Renfro are able to decrease the power of vision, decreasing the interpretation of that building as a work of architecture (spatial arrangement), but pointing the idea that the building is designed to create and work as an environment. People do not interpret the spatial arrangement, but they feel the environment. All those elements that compose the cloud of Blur Building can be pointed as representations signs for the encoded meaning of environment, at this case. According Hall (1997), the language is organized in signs, and each sign has a meaning. In other words, things have meaning through language. The concept of

representation - the production of the meaning of the concepts in our minds through language - generates the conceptual maps and the mental representations. In the case of the Blur Building, we can identify a sign that creates a specific language possible to lead us to the intended meaning. If we follow Halls (1997) line of reasoning, the building must have a language that - through signs and symbols draw mental representations and achieve concepts in our mind producing a meaning. In this case, our senses are the one who interprets the signs to create the meaning, so the signs would be elements that act into our senses explored by Diller Scofidio + Renfros design. Thus, the vaporized water works as the sign that does not allow the public to use the whole capacity of vision to identify spaces, but induce in the publics minds the mental representation of the water taste, the texture of the water in our skins and the blinding that hampers the publics spatial perception leaving the interpretation of that environment, without spatial organization. So, we can say that the water, as a sign, induces a mental representation of no-architecture in the meaning of no spatial arrangement, but the environment designed by the architects, in this way: architecture of environment. That is why Diller Scofidio + Renfros narrative (this kind of play with our senses) can translate the meaning encoded at the pavilion. The fact that we are no longer able to feel the spatial arrangement, but an singular environment that will be, according Hall (1997), reflected in our mental representations, the meaning will no longer be interpreted as spatial arrangement, but as an architecture of environment.

A RCHITECTURE OF ENVIRONMENT
This meaning of architecture of environment can be studied in others buildings besides the Diller Scofidio + Renfro one. Those other examples, and its similarities with the linguistic elements of Blur Building, also serve to reinforce these characteristics at our study object.

B ANHAM S E NVIRONMENTAL B UBBLE

One appear of thoughts like those are encoded at the famous work by Reyner Banham A Home is Not a House. At this article, Banham analyzes architecture not through its spatial arrangement as well, but through its relation and performance into its immersive environment. In other words, he tries to focus an analysis at the environment. In a way to proposes an architecture focused on performance and environment, Banham designs a Transparent plastic bubble dome inflated by air-conditioning output (Banham, 1965) (fig. 3) In the present state of the environmental art, no mechanical device can make the rain go back to Spain; the standard-of-living package is apt to need some sort of an umbrella for emergencies, and it could well be a plastic dome inflated by conditioned air blown out by the package itself. (Banham, 1965)

Figure 3: Banhams environmental bubble.

We can read the environmental bubble as another example of architecture of environment. As Banham propose a dwelling focus at environmental performance, his work does not concern about spatial arrangement, but on installation and mechanical systems and etc. In this way, he designs a dwelling composed predominantly by environment.

D IGESTIBLE G ULF S TREAM

In a more practical way, elik (2013), that also recognizes the Blur Building as architecture of the environment, points the Digestible Gulf Stream (fig. 4) by Philippe Rahm in 2008 for the Venice Biennale as another kind of architecture of environment. According the architect of the pavilion: *+ in order to reappraise the field of architecture in a broader way, extending it to other dimensions, other perceptions, from the physiological to the atmospheric, from the sensorial to the meteorological, from the gastronomic to the climatic. A Digestible Gulf Stream is the prototype for architecture that works between the neurologic and the atmospheric, developing like a landscape that is simultaneously gastronomic and thermal. (Rahm, 2008) In opposition to the Blur Building, the Digestible Gulf Stream does not eliminate the vision, but other characteristics can be pointed to justify its meaning as architecture of environment. When we stop to realize, the building there is no spatial arrangement, so its senses (gastronomic and thermal, diagram. 2) are what the building was designed for.

Figure 4: Digestible Gulf Stream.

Diagram 1: Digestible Gulf Stream operation system.

Thus, if we remounts to the Hall (1979) concept applied at the Blur Building that meaningful signs will reproduce mental representations in our mind relating with a concept the building can be interpreted as a architecture of environment (although by a different way from the Blur Building). The idea that the vision not be removed this time would make the spatial arrangement fully recognizable does not apply in this case because the fact that, at the Digestible Gulf Stream, there is no spatial arrangement at all. So, in this case, the work means to be an architecture of environment not only because its senses, but because the senses as well the environment is the only narrative to be felt.

F ONTS AND REFERENCES

BANHAM, Reyner. A Home is Not a House. Art in America. n. 2, 1965. ELIK, Zeynep. From Machine Aesthetic to Environment. Contemporary Architecture. Isabel Bader Theatre, Toronto. 7 March, 2013. Lecture. COELHO NETTO, Jos Teixeira. A Construo do Sentido na Arquitetura. Pespectiva, So Paulo, 1979.

HALL, Stuart. The Work of Representation. In.: Hamilton, et al. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. The Open University, Milton Keynes, 1997. ROWE, Colin; SLUTZKY, Robert. Transparency. In.: ROWE, Colin. The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1947.