ARCHITECTURE OF

ENVIRONMENT READING OF THE MEANING OF THE BLUR BUILDING BY DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO, SWITZERLAND, 2002

Nicholas Martino - nicholas.martino@hotmail.com

INTRODUCTION 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 + Renfro’s Blur Building induce an 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 Reyner Banham’s article “A

Home is Not a House” in 1965 and the Digestible Gulf Stream by Philippe Rahm in

2008.

FORMAL 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.

The final result of Blur Building’s 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 people’s sensation.

THE NARRATIVE AS A LANGUAGE 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

Figure 1: The Blur Building.

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 Hall’s (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 + Renfro’s 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 public’s minds the mental representation of the water taste, the texture of the

water in our skins and the blinding that hampers the public’s 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 + Renfro’s 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.

ARCHITECTURE 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.

BANHAM ’S ENVIRONMENTAL BUBBLE 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)

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.

DIGESTIBLE GULF STREAM In a more practical way, Çelik (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 3: Banham’s environmental bubble.

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.

FONTS AND REFERENCES BANHAM, Reyner. “A Home is Not a House”. Art in America. n. 2, 1965.

ÇELIK, Zeynep. “From Machine Aesthetic to Environment”. Contemporary

Architecture. Isabel Bader Theatre, Toronto. 7 March, 2013. Lecture.

COELHO NETTO, José Teixeira. A Construção do Sentido na Arquitetura. Pespectiva,

São Paulo, 1979.

Figure 4: Digestible

Gulf Stream.

Diagram 1: Digestible

Gulf Stream operation

system.

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.