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ArchitectureSafdie Architects

Modarch ConsultantsTypeFORM Architectural Consultants

Cannon Design

HeritageAinsley Lewis

InteriorsDipen Gada Associates

InternationalHugo Kaici and Felix de Montesquiou

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let’s partner

Dr. Cecil Balmond is a Sri Lankan-British designer, engineer, artist, architect, and writer. He has been hailed as “One of the most important forces in contemporary architecture today,” and in 2003, received the prestigious RIBA Charles Jencks award for Theory in Practice. He is also the recipient of the Gengo Matsui prize, one of the highest prizes for engineering given in Japan. He teaches extensively and currently holds the Paul Philippe Cret chair at Penn Design as Professor of Architecture where he is also the Founding Director of the Non-Linear Systems Organization, a material and structural research unit. Cecil Balmond has worked with almost all influential designers in the past century and continues to work with the most versatile designers in diverse fields. His practice – the Balmond Studio is one of the most experimental multi-disciplinary design practices in contemporary architecture.

Dr. Cecil Balmond talks about his work and his philosophy of a non-controlled, programmatic architecture that develops from a deep understanding of natural systems, in conversation with IA&BPhotograph: courtesy Balmond Studio

IA&B: Can you elaborate on your practice? What can we identify as your core design philosophy? CB: An inclusive approach gives work a full three-dimensionality. Toyo Ito once said about a room in my Tokyo exhibition called ‘Element’ that, “In this room, I can smell and hear the abstraction”. That, for me, is what design is about. You enter a building and the configuration and connectivity does something to you without you having to understand. But when you then tr y to understand (because we will tr y to find the pattern to it) your eye is taken on a narrative, which underpins making of the form. Somehow you experience some other dimension, but you are willing to accept and intellectualise then, only after you emotionally accept it. That for me is most impor tant.

For a long time, we have been blinded by a classical mode of thinking - methodically planning and strictly controlling invention. In doing that, designers can override the relationship between form and connectivity arising from that and appropriate material for that scale wedded to a structural system. They neglect the innate logic of certain forms that have their own radiance. Instead, from a formal sense of order, they subdivide everything so much that they chop it into a non-entity with no meaning at all. The basic thing is to make people smile and feel better. For me, that is achieved by allowing an informal approach.

Now I feel that we are beginning to recognise more flux into our design and that complexity is irreducible. That means, admitting algorithms to the

Architecture of Spontaneity

making of form and allowing ideas like ‘slip’ and ‘jump’ and ‘overlap’ to come into design, not strict compartmentalisation as we do now. The answers are not predictable. At some moment we have to accept we want more layers to architecture than a stripped-out minimalism.

The challenge to the designer is to let go for a while, but control the balance and tensions between forms and textures. It is more the process of guiding outcomes to designs than trusting on planning everything from the outset. The approach is informal.

IA&B: Can you elaborate on ‘non-linearity’ of geometry and architectural form?CB: In practice, non-linear architectural form is in the art of compiling space, designing in motives that are not periodic but a-periodic and generated by algorithm or sequences of overlap. On a conceptual level, it’s a belief that ‘seriality’ matters, and leads to surprise, variety, and adaptability, more than traditional thinking.

Take the ‘Arcelor Mittal Orbit’ for example, which I designed with Anish Kapoor. A tower is seen as a continuously connected vertical. Instead, in the Orbit, a scatter of points is the structure and a network of stability. The points arise from promoting the idea of a generating line that moves up and down in space and at moments of overlap connect; the connections produce stability out of the instability of the idea. In a way it is like a lot of my work, it uses standard materials, but in a very new kind of geometry. An orbit can pass by itself and connect which gives enough points to take a load down to the ground without being restricted.

It just builds itself. There is no scaffolding. When connected up into an orbiting form, not only does it strengthen itself, but also creates a different sort of map in space - a scatter instead of a framework.

This gives a narrative to space and elaborates a process of making that is serial and multiple sequenced – very different to the straight extruded vertical of a tower.

IA&B: Your works have been inspired and have a close relationship with nature. Do you find it essential to engage with natural elements to understand design? CB: I have always been intrigued by the abstract - the root of form making: nature at its beginnings is a wonderful abstract. At the start point, it’s totally a puzzle. It is not mystical and it is not prescriptive, but you could almost say that there seems to be a will in the universe for things to grow, multiply and take shape out of processes of chance and probability, from the

sub-atomic right up to the macroscopic. If the initial starting conditions aren’t quite right then the form does not survive, it dies, or, if it was right, it succeeds and flourishes.

These very simple natural processes intrigue me and I studied them. In particular, I looked at the structure of chemical bonds, protein chains and DNA. So in a way, yes, I am influenced by nature, but it is a focus on nature not in the romantic sense. When we think of nature in architecture we think of copying a tree, a leaf or a river motif, but for me it’s not that, it is what nature processes at its source. And at that source point, it is also geometry, and arithmetic. Not complex mathematical equations, just little things being put together. Between the structures of the inorganic world and the templates/processes of biology, lies architectural form.

The Serpentine Pavilion that Toyo Ito and I did in 2002 is one of the best examples of this as it demonstrates pure algorithm in form-making. By simply drawing a line from half the side of a square to a third of the adjacent side, a web of great complexity is created. It is not complicated mathematics or natural forms that I am ultimately interested in, but simply how can we create the artificial of architectural forms with processes that resonate in nature? And that means us, because we are made by nature and have all nature’s patterns and structures embedded in us. We enjoy the work better. There is a bond with our reading of the form.

IA&B: Can you explain the absence of scale in your conceptual work? Is it essential?CB: Patterns are scale-less. We find meaning by how we connect them up. Then, we choose a scale for the work. Then, given the configuration of the pattern in relation to the chosen scale, a material can be chosen. Out of that comes the design of the elements of architecture and structure. The notion of line and its connection are dimensionless. We give scale by choice. A particular configuration related to scale dictates material choice. At large scale, such a pattern can be the structure for a large stadium roof, a net of massive steelwork.

My prime concern is not about the systems, but about injecting a new humanism into the work through pattern. I engage with patterns that emerge through a complex view of the world and I believe that there are deep structures that are archetypal within us. They are huge reservoirs inside us to do with branching, folding, rocking, and if we just tap it, there is a deeper resonance in the forms and in the spaces you enter and be part of. My exhibitions have been vital in confirming this to me, the effect of a serial aspect of form, seeing how positive the responses are. Starved by the limited

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boxes we keep designing, that are formulaic and have no meaning anymore. I believe people want to engage with more complex forms, that are rich in layers of interpretation.

The challenge is always to somehow show spatial effect, and my concern is for space to be seen, to be made, in time, as it were. Architectural space is full of time and not timeless as the traditionalists think.

IA&B: You have worked with a kaleidoscope of mediums and materials. Is there a common method to approach all design challenges, or does every challenge require a development method?CB: Every challenge needs a development method as architecture essentially is a testing of prototypes. Parts can be standardised, but the overall design is a proposal for a particular site, not a final answer for all sites and outcomes. And, the emphasis in relation to what one makes for a site is important. It need not be in context to what is around (because good work creates its own context) but must give a rhetoric of mass, volume and texture in relation to the programme within and orientation of placement.

IA&B: You have collaborated with many architects and artists. Which encounter of yours has left the deepest impression?CB: It is hard to pick a favourite. Each person I collaborated with has left impressions on me for how they think; and I hope I have done the same to them. With Alvaro Siza, Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito, Rem Koolhaas, they may all have different views of what architecture is, but they agree with me that every site needs a unique effort; to solve a building in its urban context and programme sensibilities related to elements of architecture and structure. The longest collaboration I have had is with Rem Koolhaas and OMA over many years and many iconic buildings. In a few years we looked at new typologies for several ground-breaking projects, Agadir, Zeebrugge, Jussieu, Grande Bibliotheque, Kunsthal, etc. The work continued with Seattle public library, CCTV most recently. They are one of the most interesting practices.

My studio does its own designs on architecture and product design but I would also still collaborate with my friends because two creative minds can jump their respective limitations, to produce new work. There are tensions, but they are positive.

IA&B: Which project of yours do you recognise as your most challenging commission. Why?CB: Most challenging has always been ‘the next one’. When you make a piece of work you want it to hit a certain agenda, to break new ground and so each project pushes one to face and try to invent new horizons. Even if small, or

big, the same rush is there to find a unique solution. There is always room for looking anew at things. In my Bridge in Coimbra the deck shifts in plan and out of that side step at mid-span comes a strong equilibrium from arch forms placed on each half, at the extreme edge but displaced to give a left and right handedness. Depending on the sun’s angle, one half of the bridge support is revealed the other retreats, so that the bridge changes its shape in elevation during the day. The new sculpture I won for the landmark between England and Scotland recently sets a new challenge of having an earth form change into a dynamic of steel curves and rods. I have to find a way to convert the potential energy of the mound into the kinetic of the sculpture.

IA&B: There is a lot of curiosity on your Teesside’s Landscape project. Can you elucidate on the project?CB: The Teesside project with Anish Kapoor is the largest public art project in the world. We are commissioned to design five very large sculptures, in five different cities in that region. The first one built is at Middlesborough and is a steel net stretched between two rings up in the air, to give a strong anti-gravity feel to the work against the tough industrial background of the area. Despite the financial crisis, I hope as art brings regeneration to the region, the projects will happen.

IA&B: You have been closely working with students. What is your take on current methods of teaching architecture? What according to you does it lack?CB: Teaching in architecture is poor, essentially looking back on the legacy and to classical ideas, and to breed intellectual cleverness. That is very limiting. I see an arrogance that is not justified against other professional training. The world is changing its conceptual models from certainties to more informal ways of organisation and the focus on past modes of thinking stunts architecture from being a contemporary positive discipline in our society.

The curriculum needs to adjust to embrace new ideas of technology and be alive to new organisation of ideas in the sciences. There also needs to be a better understanding of procurement methods of projects and economics of scale. More exposure to multi-disciplinary thinking is essential. The teaching of architecture generally hides behind old ideas from the Bellas Artes period and is not robust to face the future. There needs to be a more humble approach, open to modern methods and thought.

Architecture fundamentally affects our urban lives and our cities are accumulating many problems. Handling this for the future needs a wider view on the participation of the built form as a catalyst within our environment, leading to more adaptive ideas of design.

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