NOX ARCHITEKTEN

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(NL)

Lars Spuybroek (*1959)

 

 

 
Presentation
       
 
     
Nox has been working on developing the possibilities of an interactive architectural territory for a number of years. His analysis of the relational transformations provoked by the multiplication of the information media serves as the embryo to an approach which sees in the "world's extreme liquation" as a means of designing spaces where the fusion of matter and information -- and of subject and object -- is possible. Nox frees his areas of a certain architectural logic to adapt architecture to evolution in our perception modes. More than mere adaptation, however, he synthesises existing and emerging technologies. An embodiment of this research is the Fresh Water Pavilion, at FreshH2O eXPO, which becomes emblematic of a "liquid" architecture, as defined by the American Markos Novak. In a simultaneous fusion of the walls, ground, and ceiling, the "architecture-body" spreads out in a wave-like effect to absorb the territory. Non-aggressive, Nox' architecture becomes the interface for an active organisation of space where visitors act upon a reactive architecture. The most recent projects touch on the notion of a cognitive architecture achieving a reactive "expert system" which mutates according to needs and functions.
   
       
       
       
     
         
 
       
 
Exhibition
       
  nox archilab        
           
           
           
     
NOX is a design office that has produced videos, installations, a magazine, texts, and architecture. This hybrid production was guided by their unease with the limited possibilities for development within the field of architecture and the notion that it had got stuck within the territory architecture had created for itself in the early nineties.
NOX has, by a sort of genetic engineering where architecture has been crossbred with other media, been able to generate a supple architecture that has nestled itself in the transitional area of two, often thought of as parallel, worlds: one of biological organisms and the other, as diverse as the first, the metallic and electronic fauna of modern technologies. NOX operates in that ever growing twilight zone of blurring and fluidity.
We are experiencing an extreme liquidizing of the world, of our language, of our gender, of our bodies. A situation where everything becomes mediated, where all matter and space are fused with their representations in media, where all form is blended with information. We are shifting from matter to substance, from solidity to grain and resolution, we're shifting from a space situation to field condition. The liquid in itself is the substance of metamorphosis, of the in-between and the vectorial, of form constantly being informed by outside influences and inner coherence, expressed in a plastic metastability. Nothing, no object, no function can stay isolated and is always in a process of transformation to the next - everything is necessarely opened up and leaking. Nothing is treated as an element in space, but everything is stretched within a field of gradual or sudden changes. The wet in architecture has earlier been associated with the easing back of architecture for human needs, of real-time fulfillment. But this soft technology of desire can only end up with the body as a residu where its first steps in cyberspace will probably be its last steps altogether. To NOX, the desire of technology seems far greater and a far more destabilizing force, as our need for the accidental is far greater than our need of comfort, as our need for potentialities and events is far greater than determination and function.
The liquid in architecture not only means generating the geometry of the fluid and the turbulent, it also means the dissolving of all that is solid and crystalline in architecture, that is: not only its materiality, but even the functional and programmatic, and especially the orthogonal basis of perception with the horizontality of the floor crossing the verticality of the window. With the fluid merging of skin and environment, body and space, object and speed we will also merge plan and volume, floor and screen, surface and interface, and leave the mechanistic view of the body for a more plastic, liquid and haptic version where action and vision are synthesized.
   
       
     
     
     
           
     
V2 Lab, Rotterdam, Hollande, 1998
   
           
     
V2-Lab is part of a larger concept for the (future) renovation of the entire V2 building, which will include a conversion of the facade and hall, as well as the insertion of an extra floor for public activities (book shop, café and lecture space) in the large exhibition space on the ground floor. This concept, called V2-Engine, has been developed in its entirety by computer with animation software which allows for a non-linear and time dependent architecture.
V2-Engine consists of a central void, that will be partially finished with synthetic translucent fabric and will protrude noticeably from the facade. This space will be filled mainly with sounds and images, generated by a specially developed software engine that will roam the Internet in search of webcam images of other facades around the world. These images are then projected from the inside onto the fabric of the facade. This architecture acts as Carrier and media as Image.
   
     
       
     
       
           
     
Blow Out, Toilet Block - Neeltje Jans, Hollande, 1997
   
           
     
This building establishes a dynamic equilibrium between internal pressure ("gotta go") and huge external forces. It is modelled in such a way that the wind blows through it at high speed (with the "grill" on the male side and the "exhaustion-pipe" on the female side). The doors in the completely distorted passage are too large for the limited space and this, together with the vector of the wind produces, prior to total release on the luxury toilet, an additional external pressure of increased intimacy.
These "external forces" are not just another "natural element" in the architecture: they are media, it is furniture, it is a mobility, a vector carrying other acts of other people, the vector of the wind carries the smell of others, their noises, their interiors. This liquid machine connects one interior with another, it shapes intimacy, builds it up, and releases it. Finally, sitting on the toilet, orthogonal to the direction of the geometry, one can relax and let go.
   
       
       
       
     
       
       
     
     
           
     
Fresh H20 eXPO - Water pavilion and interactive installation, Neeltje Jans, Hollande, 1997
   
           
     
This pavilion is a turbulent alloy of the hard and the weak, of human flesh, concrete and metal, interactive electronics and water. A complete fusion of body, environment and technology. The design was based on the metastable aggregation of architecture and information. The form itself is shaped by the fluid deformation of fourteen ellipses spaced out over a length of more than 65 meters. Inside the building, which has no horizontal floors and no external relation to the horizon, walking becomes akin to falling. The deformation of the object extends to the constant metamorphosis of the environment which responds interactively to the visitors to the water pavilion via a variety of sensors that register this constant reshaping of the human body called action.
   
     
       
     
       
           
     
Beachness, New Palace Hotel and Boulevard - Noordwijk, Hollande, 1997
   
           
     
"Beachness" is being defined as a certain state of mobility, because the beach should be primarily conceived as a field in which everything is in a state of openness and non-fixation. A loose architecture of light materials, wood and fabric, and also sand which is used for a highway when wet and for a bed or a chair when it is soft. Everything is mobile and moveable furniture. Bodies, fabric, sand, cars: as long as everything remains soft and in motion, it remains coherent - like a swarm. Where Noordwijk is concerned this is being expressed in a two-part design: the boulevard and the New Palace Hotel. Both parts are linked in terms of content and both are based on two characteristics of soft matter: plasticity and memory. On the one hand, this implies the capability to move and to transform and on the other hand the possibility to "imprint" multiple movements (the traces in the sand, the browning of the skin, brands on the fabric), to remember these and to let these interact with actual movements.
   
       
       
     
       
       
     
           
         
 
       
 
Resources
       
 
 
Biography
       
     
Nox - Lars Spuybroek (1959)
Diplômé de Technical University Delft, Architecture.

1989 - Archiprix (1er Prix).
1991 - Mart Stam (Prix d'encouragement)
1997 - Iakov Chernikov (Mentionné)
1998 - Zeeuwse Architectuurprijs.

Enseignement :
1998 - Columbia University, New York ; Technical University Delft ; Technical University Eindhoven ; Berlage Institute Amsterdam.
Principaux projets et réalisations
1999 - "OffTheRoad part II" (Logements et barrière anti-bruit, Eindhoven ).
1998 - "Tommy" (céramique pour Cor Unum, Den Bosch) ; "OffTheRoad/103.8 Mhz" (Logements et barrière anti-bruit, Eindhoven ) ; "V2-MediaLab" (conversion, Rotterdam) ; "Flying Attic" (installation d'une exposition, Arnhem) ; "The New Man of Cacharel" (Bouteille de Parfum, Amsterdam) ; "Goesgoes" Goes, Zeeland ; "Cheers!" ( Un verre pour Kristin Feireiss, 10 years NAI) ; "Two-D-Tower" (Tour Média, Doetinchem avec Q.S. Serafijn) ; "2001-future.com" (expo Bielefeld, pour UBS, Suisse avec Harm Lux and Mike Tyler).
1997 - "Edit Sp(l)ine (installation interactive à "freshH2O eXPO" Zeeland) ; "Blow Out" (bloc - toilettes, Zeeland) ; "Foam Home" (Logements, près de Nijmegen, Hollande - project) ; "ìbeachnessî" (hôtel de rivage, Noordwijk, projet ) ; "V2-Engine" (Façade interactive pour l'Organisation V2) Rotterdam.
1994 - "Excessive Force" (Installation d'entrée pour l'Organisation V2) Rotterdam ; "The Laboratories" ; "freshH2O eXPO" 1994 - 1997 ("waterpavilion", Ile de Neeltje Jansí, Zeeland).
1993 - "1001 PK"(Amsterdam) ; "Centropa" (Austria) ; "Full Moon"

Expositions récentes :

1999 - "Deep Surface", Installation, Galerie Exedra, Hilversum, Hollande.
1998 - "Arquitectura Virtual" Centre Culturel de Belem, Lisbonne, Portugal ; "NearDeathHotel" Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
1998 - 1997 - "transArchitectures 02/03" IFA Paris, New York, Graz, Los Angeles, Bordeaux, Monte Carlo, Bruxelles, Rotterdam, Vienne ; "NINE+One" Expo. Collective - 10 Jeunes Architectes Hollandais - Rotterdam, Los Angeles, New York, Sao Paolo, Vienne, Berlin.
1997 - "NOX Sixty minutes" installation vidéo-expo individuel, NAI, Rotterdam.
   
           
 
Bibliography
       
     
Nox Editeur
1998 - Editeur de "The Art of the Accident" DEAF98, V2-Organisation, et festival.
- NOX : Editeur, designer graphique et collaborateur -
1995 - NOX D, Djihad (Ed. 1001, Amsterdam).
1993 - NOX C, Chloroform (Ed. 1001, Amsterdam).
1992 - NOX B, Biotech (Ed. 1001, Amsterdam).
1991 - NOX A, Actiones in distans (Ed. 1001, Amsterdam).
- FORUM : Editeur, de 1994 à 1998 -
1997 - FORUM 39, #4: MASSA/MASS (A et A, Amsterdam).
1996 - FORUM 38, #3: HET PUBLIEKE/THE PUBLIC (A et A, Amsterdam).
1995 - FORUM 38, #1/2: COMFORT/COMFORT (A et A, Amsterdam).

Principales Publications de Lars Spuybroek :
1998 - "Where space gets lost" The Art of the Accident : V2-Organisation ; "The motorization of reality" Archis (nov).
1997 - "Motor Geometry": TechnoMorphica, V2-Organisation ; AD Hypersurface ; Profile (133) ; Arch+ (138) ; Space (9902).
1996 - "SoftSite" V2-Organisation, Catalogue Death 96.
1995 - "X and Y and Z, a manual " avec Maurice Nio, Archis (nov) ; "Phantombody Phantomhouse" FORUM 38, #1/2.
1994 - "De Strategie van de Vorm" avec Maurice Nio, de Architect, special issue 57 ;"De Remu formatie" avec Maurice Nio, de Architect (fev).
1992 - "Cybernetic Circus" de Architect, special issue 49 ; "Jap Tek Anima" de Architect (nov).
Bibliographie sélective
1998 - DAIDALOS (n°68), "Constructing Atmospheres" En Route to a New Tectonics, Bart Lootsma ; QUADERNS (218), "Rethinking mobility" ; PROFILE (138) ;
AD (vol.68), "Architects in Cyberspace II"…