gdb/cummulus: 04_materials

Cummulus_1664

architect: Ciro Najle
collaborators: Martin Alvarez, Carolina Telo, Anna Font, Analia Hanono
construction: Ciro Najle, Martin Alvarez, Carolina Telo, Stella Acosta, Laura Ruiz Diaz, Clide Brianni, Osvaldo Najle
installation: Ciro Najle, Anna Font, Nick Silici, Noah Manos, Casey Campbell, Tricia Robson, Leah Darling, Sara Kate Baie, Nora Burnett Abrams, Ama Mills-Robertson, Sandra Fettingis, Alexandra Hodkowski

MCA Denver
Energy Effects
Art and Artifacts From the Landscape of Glorious Excess
curators: Adam Lerner, Paul Andersen
opening: 30 June 2010

description

Cummulus_1664 is a cashmilon crochet surface prototype conceived as a multiplicity of catenary structures that hang from one another in a cascade that escalates by following the progression of subdivisions 0001-0002-0004-0008-0016-0064-1024. Cummulus_1664 follows the principle by which a surface hanging from another introduces a geometrical asymmetry that is only neutralized by the dominance of the gravitational forces that are embedded in the system as an undivided whole. Cummulus_1664 attempts both at preserving and at exaggerating this asymmetry from the behavior of the whole, firstly by fixing and secondly by increasing local curvilinearity through the systematic introduction of points in a crochet.

Under such premise, a simple crochet proliferation technique is used, on the one hand, as a means through which an over-determined surface curvature is geometrically constructed and materially ensured. The technique consists of a series of local proliferations of points, going from one to two at those instances where the surface curvature changes beyond the stretching capability of a textile, using material excess to control curvature differentials with precision. Increments in the number of points at each line of the crochet enable an increase in the length of a line as it curves along its trajectory within a surface, in such a way that the textile is indirectly controlled in its global curvature via cumulative local proliferations.

On the other hand, the proliferation pattern is not only used as a means of geometric control but also as a seed to paradoxically lose control through the same means that enable control, thus engendering a consistent mechanism of expression and nonlinear behavior. The exaggeration of curvature via the excessive increment of points in turn produces the emergence of local wrinkles and their distribution across the surface in a consistently variable manner. Such increment is exploited to engender a variety of traits and to articulate an overall cloud-like effect through the control of density. Counter-intuitive rigidity to deformation is produced at a local level, working against any gravitational intuition.

Cummulus_1664 projects a number of resemblances to well-known natural formations – broccolis, cauliflowers, brains, wombs, intestines, turbulences, etc, but beyond this, it brings about an irreducible semblance of geometric exuberance, thus working as an abstract means of resonance and proliferation of meanings. Cummulus_1664 is designed to occupy the central space of the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Denver, in the context of the exhibition ‘Energy Effects, Arts and Artifacts from the Landscape of Glorious Excess’. Its occupation reduces such abstract spectrum to a single slippery figure that, under the incidence of natural light, overwhelms the space from above with an intangible, warm, dense atmosphere.

ciro najle

Dipl.arch.UBA-FADU(hons)

MsAAD Columbia University (hons)
Architect practicing in Buenos Aires and Visiting Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Ciro Najle is the former Director of the Landscape Urbanism Graduate Design Program and Diploma Unit Master at the Architectural Association in London, and has taught at various architectural schools and institutions, including the Cornell University AAP, the Columbia University GSAPP, the Berlage Institute, the Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, and the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Director of GDB General Design Bureau, architectural office and multidisciplinary laboratory of research in Buenos Aires, of Mlab Machinic Laboratory in Chile, and previously of MID, Young Architect of the Year Second Prize in London in 2001, his work has been exhibited in various cultural venues including the Prague Biennale of Art and the Beijing Biennale of Architecture, where he was the curator of the London Pavilion. His writings and projects have been published in Quaderns, Praxis, Esquire, Summa, UR, Plot, Oris, Architectural World, Egg Magazine, After the Sprawl. He is the author of the introduction to the 2G Monographs on FOA and on MGM, designer and coeditor of ‘Tokyo Bay Experiment,’ and coeditor of the book ‘Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape.’ He is currently working on his upcoming book ‘Material Discipline.’

cironajle@hotmail.com

20100409

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Cummulus_1664

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