建筑学的危机？
2000年，普利策建筑奖颁给了荷兰人库哈斯。在授奖仪式上，这位极具争议的建筑师说道：“我们仍沉浸在沙浆的死海中。如果我们不能将我们自身从‘永恒’中解放出来，转而思考更急迫、更当下的新问题，建筑学不会持续到2050年。”
耸人听闻的言论！难道建筑学正面临危机吗？或者这只是库哈斯又一次的故作惊人之语。
传统的建筑理论及言论
成熟的、经典的建筑史通常是一部关于建筑风格的历史；这种历史着重于对建筑的外在形态的描述，做出分类，便于人们认出和认识。比如欧洲早期从事建筑史研究的主要是一些艺术史家。他们所运用的术语和观念自然也来自艺术史，关注的重点是各种图案和形态。《建筑七灯》的作者拉斯金对威尼斯的描写充分展现了一个图案艺术研究者的文学才华。著名的建筑史学家吉第翁（S. Giedion）、佩夫斯纳等，其学术训练来自瑞士艺术史家沃尔夫林，后者最有名的著作是《风格论》，大致是关于文艺复兴和巴洛克艺术风格的比较研究。建筑史主要成为一种艺术风格流变的历史，跟随黑格尔之后，许多学者将各种风格与时代精神联系起来，这种丰富的联想尤其具有煽动性。于是，风格的交替，在进步史观的照耀之下，成为一个不可流转的洪流，深入到专业和业余爱好者观念中。建筑学登上了艺术的神坛，一种宏伟的艺术，无数人们将他们的梦想和欲望投射到建筑之上，建筑可以体现财富、高贵、威严、神圣、或者其他各种浪漫情调。
每个时代都有自己流行的建筑学话语，比如，几何性、比例、构成等等，最近的统治建筑学的是“空间”的话语，这几乎是20世纪本学科中最大的神话。然而，每个时代的风气和观念都会变迁、流逝，流行的建筑学话语或者被人遗忘，或者最终只会变成历史书中的文字，建筑却仍然在那里。事实上，当逐渐屏蔽掉所有笼罩在建筑上的光环，那么我们将会发现，建筑最本质的方面是它作为一个某些材料的结合体。他们连接在一起固然是为了为人们提供一个空间，一个避难所，但它本身仅仅是一个物质结构体。回到最物质主义的层面，建筑就是将某些材料以合适的方式结构起来，以抵抗永恒的地球引力，以及风雨、地震等自然以及人为的破坏力。
风格化的建筑史主要是描述性的、图像化的，建筑物被简化为各种图案和符号，当作菜单来使用，而忽略了这些形态是何种建构方式的结果。当代著名学者弗兰普顿有感于美国建筑的布景化和图片化，以及形式主义的盛行，写作了《建构文化研究》，无疑是对建筑风格史学的一种抵抗。
结构师vs建筑师
人们对建筑师背后的工程师默默无闻的形象已经习以为常。在聚光灯下抛头露面总是意气风发的建筑师，他们被当作形式赋予者（form-giver），建筑产品的“设计师”。而结构工程师只是为建筑师的伟大构想提供技术支持。结构工程师，一向被当作建筑师和施工单位的桥梁，他们负责测量和计算荷载和受力，处理纯粹技术型的、功能性的问题，满足建筑师的形式要求。在公众心目中，结构工程师通常是老实巴交，毫无创建的幕后人员，有时甚至是不思进取的保守形象。
在古希腊语中，“技艺”（techne）是工程师和建筑师的组合，他们在设计中分担价值，建筑师的图解和工程师的计算，建筑师的概念和工程师的数学，都属于一种“诗意的发明”。他们共同创造了建筑。西方在很长的历史时期内，职业建筑师并不存在，工匠就是建筑师，据说文艺复兴时的帕拉底奥是第一个职业建筑师，他是石匠出身。到了十八世纪，巴黎成立了专门的道桥学院和理工院校，工程师和建筑师逐渐发生专业分化，古典主义建筑的大本营巴黎美院变得越来越形式主义、远离了技术进步的道路。所以毫不奇怪，现代建筑运动的重要人物中没有一个是出自巴黎的学院派建筑学体系（巴黎美院的学术体系通过美国宾西法尼亚大学，影响了当时在那里求学的梁思成和杨廷宝，他们作为现代中国建筑学术的奠基人，自然也将这种体系传播到中国）。 19世纪的钢铁和钢筋混凝土技术得到了迅速的发展，学院派建筑师仍然延续古典建筑形式语言的训练，关心的只是形式和图案而已，他们甚至也无意发挥这些新技术的优势。如果了解他们同时代的柯布西耶和密斯在做什么，就能知道为什么这两个建筑师对现代建筑文化产生了巨大影响。
柯布西耶在佩雷那里学会了钢筋混凝土技术，发展出一种多米诺结构体系(Dom-ino)，并申请到专利。多米诺结构是一种柱板结构，同时在两头悬挑。因为没有梁，所以可以做所谓的“自由平面”。柯布西耶意在发明一种快速建造、不断复制的结构系统，这种多米诺结构体系在战后得到了最广泛的应用。
密斯尽管出生石匠，接受了古典建筑训练，但是却以发展新的技术为己任。他在20年代做出了第一栋玻璃高层方案。这种玻璃摩天楼最终在美国大行其道。他所开拓的钢结构和玻璃幕墙的建筑文化，以至于被称为“密斯风格”，在某种程度上塑造了当代都市景观。
密斯和柯布西耶至今不断被人重提，表面上看来仿佛是他们发明了一种现代主义风格，或者国际式建筑，或者流动空间、粗野主义等等。而在最本质的立场来看，他们同时是结构技术和构造上的探索者，正是他们主动选择了尝试新的技术和材料，才能产生如此久远的影响。稍后一代的建筑师，比如康、伍重等，也都有过成功的结构技术创新。
积极的结构工程师
建筑学大致有两个方向，一个是在原有的学科范式基础上，继续建筑形式语言的探究；另一方面就是与其他学科，比如生物、环境技术的结合，寻找交叉学科发展的可能性。这两种方向分别拓展了建筑学的深度和广度。结构学其实是建筑学的核心知识部分，结构学对建筑的可能性影响至关重要，在一些建筑中，结构概念很大程度上是产生建筑形式的关键。回溯历史，我们发现，建筑和结构天生就是捆绑在一起的，结构知识的发展一直是建筑学发展的主要动力。
结构学对建筑学的渗透可以极大地提高建筑的质量。最近广为人知的建筑师如西班牙的卡拉特拉瓦（Calatrava），本来是学结构工程的，其结构概念主要是仿生学的，具有强烈的表现性。另一个享有盛名的结构师塞西·巴蒙，虽然成就巨大，在建筑师圈内却比较不为人知，他的结构观念比较抽象，特别追求一种诗意的含混性。塞西·巴蒙几乎与所有当代知名的建筑师都有过合作，包括库哈斯、斯特林（James Stirling）、里贝斯金、菲利普·约翰逊、西扎（Alvaro Siza）、伊东丰雄等著名建筑师。除了在世界各地大量的实践工程（包括颇有争议的北京CCTV总部大楼）以外，巴蒙著有《异形结构》（发表在Domus中文版第四期），阐述了自己独特的结构思想。他质疑传统的结构范式，稳定的笛卡儿几何系统，线形的结构设计过程，以及所谓“最佳的结构方案”。詹克斯（Charles Jencks）声称巴蒙正在“改变建筑学”。库哈斯则说道，巴蒙几乎是单枪匹马地撼动了工程学的地面——在这个领域内地面罕有动静——从而使人们能够以迥然不同的方式来幻想建筑。正是通过巴蒙的努力，结构工程学能够进入到一个更为实验性和感性的领地；如果建筑学要超越当前作为一种的点缀（花瓶）的地位，那正是通过巴蒙等人的思考，为我们提供了新的严肃性（seriousness）和新的愉悦。”
库哈斯的言论表达了对当下建筑学学科的反思，建筑学除了在物质层面生产房子以外，可能会成为各种风格的俘虏，并变成商业、财富和威权的花瓶。因为在各种标准、规范成熟之后，造房子成为一套近乎机器生产的程序。除了传授一种职业技能外，建筑学学科还能凭什么存在？库哈斯认为，结构技术可能是把学科从目前这种状态解救出来的途径。他在回答针对中央电视台的质疑时说：“谁说结构是不能再设计的？谁说重力是不可战胜的？谁说对结构的再设计不是一种创新？我只是想让你们认真思考你们所用的‘不可行’这个词。这是可行的…….这不过是一个如何支撑，并如何让形式与其结合的问题而已。”。西方的建筑观念未必都适合中国，但是技术在某种程度上却是普适性的。对于库哈斯来说，如果没有结构工程师巴蒙的创造性合作，他也不可能一直处于建筑学的前沿。
密斯曾总结自己的经验说“我越来越相信，如果不接受新的科学和技术进步，就不可能有我们时代的建筑。…..建筑决不是要发明什么有趣的形式，也和个人的趣味无关。真正的建筑总是客观的，是时代的内在结构的表达。”
在密斯看来（虽然也蒙着黑格尔“时代精神”的魅影），就形式论形式毫无意义，好的建筑是弱化建筑师的个人趣味，而必然要发挥体现新技术。创新应该开始于比形式更深层的物质层面，即结构和材料。巴蒙的实践证明了一个结构工程师可以做的事情不仅仅是这里要加根柱子，或者那里要加根梁，他可以更深入地参与到创造新的建筑形式和文化之中。人们也有理由相信，当下中国巨大的房屋建设量，必然应该有结构学的独特贡献。
Monday, June 6, 2011
The Informalist
Cecil Balmond has a simple plan to reinvent architecture: Break down the cage that separates structural engineering from design.
By Jennifer Kabat
Architectural superstar Rem Koolhaas swears by him. Structural engineer Cecil Balmond has been Koolhaas' collaborator on 30 projects since the mid-'80s, including the three that have made Koolhaas' name: the Bordeaux villa, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, and the new Seattle Public Library. Today, Koolhaas won't even start a project until Balmond has weighed in. "When we work together, there's more to it than just an engineer saying you need a column here, support there," Koolhaas attests. "Cecil has changed my outlook on structure and enabled me to rethink architecture."
German conceptualist Daniel Libeskind - famous for his museums in Denver, Berlin, and now London - also brings Balmond in at the earliest stage. "He's a thinker, a mystic," says Libeskind. "He's not your average engineer brought from the outside to check things out. He's there with us from the very beginning with his keen insights and keen design ability. Most engineers don't see engineering as an evolving adventure in design, but Cecil does." Balmond and Libeskind collaborated on the Spiral, the Victoria and Albert Museum's contemporary wing, a $100 million project awaiting British government funding.
Perhaps most impressive is the respect Balmond has won from Philip Johnson, one of the 20th century's architectural titans. Johnson, now 94, is working with Balmond on Chavasse Park, a planned $300 million shopping center in Liverpool. The great man actually calls Balmond "my teacher, my mentor." This from a guy who was whelped by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.
"Balmond's mad, he's brilliant, he's changing shapes for the world," Johnson says. Then he sighs theatrically and confides that Balmond will be largely responsible for the look of Chavasse Park, whose tentlike roof will swoop over the organic megastructure. "I gave him free rein, and I didn't really keep up with it," Johnson admits. "It was clear to me that this man knew perfectly what it was I wanted."
At 56, Balmond has reached the very top of his profession. According to the celebrated architects who have worked with him, he not only makes their buildings stand up, but also inspires their designs. He has two advanced engineering degrees from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, and a third from the University of Southampton. He sits on the board of London-based Ove Arup, the most prestigious structural engineering firm in the world. Established in 1946, the company built the iconic Sydney Opera House, the vast Tate Modern museum in London, and the just-completed longest bridge in the world, øresund Fixed Link - a 10-mile-long double-decker that stretches between Sweden and Denmark. Balmond is the chair of Ove Arup's operations division, which puts him in charge of global strategies for research and development and other specialist departments.
Balmond, however, might never get what he wants - public acclaim. It's not his place to be in the public eye. Structural engineers are meant to stay behind the scenes and work to bridge the gap between the architect and the builder. They measure forces and calculate load. They plan a building's foundation and place the columns that will bear its weight. Typically, engineers design the core - that is, the elevators and stairs at the center of a skyscraper - and often the facade as well. When an architect says, "I want glazed bronze glass that lets in only a certain amount of light and looks gold at sunset," it's the engineers who interview window manufacturers and evaluate their cladding systems. The results of this painstaking process are working drawings that spec out every last fixture. Builders can't even begin without them. Balmond's goal - outlined in a monograph, Informal, to be published this June - is to offer a new structure for architecture.
Engineers, as a rule, find glory in structural firsts and feats. Balmond calls it the "macho-ness of structure - the tallest, the thinnest." Ove Arup, in particular, values the big and the bold. Load bearing is made blatantly obvious. "Arup is hi-tech, our traditional image is hi-tech, and the hi-tech aesthetic is a certain belief in structural comprehensibility," he says. "The hi-tech style is right in your face - structure like the mast of a boat or gussets or a tension wire." Working with the British-born, Yale-educated master of hi-tech, Lord Norman Foster, the company gave the $645 million Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters massive cross-bracing in the atrium lobby and giant trusses up its 47-story glass exterior. Completed in 1986, it is considered the epitome of the style.
Balmond is more subversive. He tweaks structure: Where a typical engineer would simply place columns in a grid, he'll slide them off center, or tilt them so they lean as they rise from the floor. He hides structure: Instead of bracing a high-rise with mammoth steel Xs on the exterior, Balmond will turn the building itself into a brace and morph the floors into ramps that distribute the load downward. He invents structure: When Libeskind called for tiling on the Spiral extension of the V&A, Balmond came up with "frac-tiles" - tiles that repeat their shapes in a fractal pattern.
Often, Balmond's engineering solutions affect the form of a building so much that his work is indistinguishable from architecture. Take, for example, the Yokohama International Port Terminal. The London- and Tokyo-based FOA (Foreign Office Architects) - a trendy, young firm going for its first major project - tapped Balmond while competing for the $200 million commission. Balmond came up with an innovative plan that eliminated all columns.
"He said we could do it with a wavy piece of steel," explains Alejandro Zaera Polo, a partner at FOA. The terminal is not yet built, but Balmond's solution has it looking like a huge piece of corrugated cardboard. Koolhaas, who sat on the competition's jury, calls the concept "really beautiful. The shape of the building itself is its structural solution." Balmond's engineering is the architecture, and vice versa. The overlap is so remarkable that to understand Balmond's contribution is to ask: What's the role of the official architect?
I get an answer, of sorts, from the eminent British critic Charles Jencks. In 1997, the BBC asked him for a list of buildings that were transforming architecture. He came up with 15 structures and almost as many architects. Balmond engineered more than a quarter of them. "There's the V&A Spiral, of course, and Rem's Bordeaux villa, and also the library, Jussieu, with Koolhaas, and the stadium at Chemnitz with Ulrich Königs and Peter Kulka," Jencks says, rattling off the buildings that Balmond engineered.
Jencks says that since he made the list, Balmond has only grown more important: "If I were to do it again today I'd have to add Arnhem, a project Balmond did with Ben van Berkel, and the Yokohama terminal, and that project with Philip Johnson in Liverpool. Really," he interrupts himself, "Cecil Balmond is the world's leading thinker on form and structure. He's the power behind the throne."
While interviewing Jencks in his London townhouse, I press the issue. I ask him whether, in the design of those famous buildings, it's Balmond who is really calling the shots. Jencks, who's perched on a sofa across from me, leans forward over a coffee table shaped like the top of a Doric column - a relic of postmodernism, the architectural movement that Jencks made famous - and answers: "To try and decide who did what gets you into the area of libel."
Philip Johnson calls Balmond "my teacher, my mentor." This from a guy who was whelped by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.
But that is what Balmond is saying, or at least hinting at, in Informal: New Structure in Architecture. The book, his second, is a manifesto, a call to arms urging his fellow engineers "to release the world of engineering and feel free to enter architecture." The accolades from Koolhaas, Libeskind, Johnson, and Jencks aren't enough anymore: Balmond wants some credit. The book is risky. He's nearly been sued - by FOA - over the credit issue before. And, after all, he is dependent on his good relationships with architects. They are the ones who hire him and bring him in on projects; while the process of making a building is clearly collaborative, the architect is still the star of the show.
Balmond's London office is modest: no prestigious corner, no great views. You'd hardly know he's in charge of 1,700 people. Photos of various Koolhaas projects hang on the wall next to a company-issue poster.
Balmond is bent over some architectural plans. The posture plays up his monkish appearance: He's dressed all in black, hair thinning into a tonsure. The plans are by the Dutch avant-gardist Ben van Berkel - one of a new wave of architects who, in the wake of fellow countryman Rem Koolhaas, are turning the Netherlands into an architectural promised land. The drawings are for the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh. The brief calls for a 160,000-square-foot extension and rehab of the existing 200,000-square-foot building on the bank of the Ohio River.
Balmond and van Berkel have been collaborating on the proposal for a month; the competition deadline is in two weeks' time. Balmond's research assistant, Gwenola Kergall, and another Arup engineer, Charles Walker, sit next to him, armed and ready with a ream of sketch paper and a tray of sandwiches cut into quarters. Balmond has called the meeting to go over van Berkel's latest design. They have only a couple of days to analyze this new set of drawings and get back to him.
A month ago, Balmond and van Berkel met to discuss their initial ideas for the center. Van Berkel was toying with some slablike shapes. Sketching out the logic of the site, Balmond scribbled down his idea: two crossing tubes, each with a smaller tube inside. Aligned on the north-south and east-west axes, the outer tubes would drop people in front, link to parking behind, and hide the old structure. The inner tubes would house the exhibits. By their next meeting, van Berkel had jettisoned the slab design for Balmond's schematic. The drawings on Balmond's table today show the Carnegie Science Center as two sets of concentric tubes. Van Berkel has the outside tube folding over to generate the inside tube in an endless skin, almost like a sock rolled back on itself, turning inside out.
Balmond looks at the new plan and shakes his head. In his original sketch, he had the inner tube hanging from the wall of the outer tube - they were joined together. Now, with the folded-over design, the inner tube needs to be held up by columns, and Balmond is irritated that he has to even consider adding any sort of pillar. He's convinced the columns will detract from the building and make it harder to put in exhibition space.
He takes a sheet from the ream and starts to draw, talking in a stream of consciousness as his hand moves. "Supports will interfere with the seamlessness. But it's a tube folded in on itself and will need internal supports. We need a new language for it, but it can't be a separate language. It should have branches like filaments, like tendrils from the wall ..." The drawing he makes to describe the tendrils looks like a swirling red-and-white peppermint.
Kergall suggests a filigree support with an art nouveau look and sketches it out. Balmond nods approval, but still laments. "How can I ruin it with such language?" he demands of Walker and Kergall. "Let's not talk column because I cannot, I can't, I'll die, how can I do that - fold a skin over on itself and then stick columns in?"
This searching for metaphors, this scribbling on paper, this is what Balmond calls "the informal." The informal is Balmond's radical philosophy of engineering; he describes it as "opening the door ... and breaking down the cage." Stripped of metaphor, the informal is Balmond's term for the creative process.
Balmond started reexamining traditional engineering when he turned 40. "It suddenly hit me: I'd been doing this for 20 years without questioning the basic configuration I was dealing with. I'd spent hours minimizing and putting in columns, and architects were saying, 'Oh he's a great guy to work with ...'" Here Balmond trails off. As he hit midlife, engineering became empty. He was winning awards for his buildings - the Merrill Lynch headquarters in London, the Carlsberg Brewery in Northampton - but still felt there was something lacking. He was just making "meaningless containers of form." Searching for a connection between form and meaning, Balmond discovered Pythagoras, the geometer-priest of ancient Greece, and James Gleick's book Chaos.
Inspired, Balmond set out to investigate the mathematical composition of fractals, and soon found that the golden ratio - the basis of Greek architecture - was itself fractal, a pattern repeating endlessly on several different scales. It was the start of a renewed fascination with math, especially its more cabalistic aspects. His first book, Number 9, published in 1998, is a novel with a numerology theme. His study is lined with notebooks filled with fractal patterns and magic squares, sketches that he says "help focus my mind." One binder contains sketch after sketch of bending lines, curves crossing over each other - they look a bit like sine waves. He says they served as the inspiration for the curving supports of the Yokohama terminal.
Right now he's drawing, trying to find some inspiration for the Carnegie Science Center. Sheets of paper are flying, each filled with a tube sketch. He eats as he draws, and indicates for Walker and Kergall to help themselves. Balmond is talking and chewing, trying to find an elegant solution for the central space where the tubes meet. Walker shakes his head, saying that "the complexity of the hub is lost."
Balmond is frustrated. He wants the tubes' intersection to create energy, speed, a sense of velocity. "Spin," he says. He draws swooshing whirlpools and circles over the plan, tracing through the space to get a feel for it. "If you spin from a hub, then you're putting structure into it. It will stand independently and face out." Then he pauses. "Stairs!" he pronounces. "We spin the stairs and shoot off around it!" He arrives at a grand spiral staircase, which serves as a structural support and creates the focal point for the entire building.
He takes another bite of sandwich and moves over to dial van Berkel's office on the speakerphone. The receptionist explains twice that van Berkel is in a meeting with clients, but Balmond insists that she put him through. Once on the phone with van Berkel, it takes Balmond about five minutes to work it out that, yes, van Berkel assumed there would be legs and columns underneath the tubes, which Balmond then corrects with his tendril notion. When he suggests a central vortex with a spiraling staircase, van Berkel replies quietly, "That is what I have in mind, but it's not drawn yet."
Later, Balmond explains the pitfalls of his working style. "The problem is about claiming credit for the architecture. For the record, that's architecture," he says, pointing at the plans on the table, "that's Ben van Berkel." Balmond came up with the crossed-tube plan and then worked out a way to make it feasible, but that detail will fade away. "No one will ever know what Balmond did," he says, using the third person. "Part of an engineer's job description is to remain anonymous."
In conversation, Balmond speaks in a quasi-spiritual patois, peppered with phrases like "tuning in" and "it came to me." He exudes a mystical demeanor that must serve him well while working with big architects and their notoriously big egos.
But Balmond has a big ego, too. It nearly landed him in court, thanks to a messy round of accusations and counter-recriminations over Yokohama. FOA won the competition and started attracting press. "But nobody at FOA mentioned me," he complains. Then the firm chose to work with another engineer for the execution phase of the project, saying, among other things, that Ove Arup was too expensive. "This was the worst episode in my career," Balmond explains, looking down. "Here was an idea that frankly transformed their work. I gave it to them and then, goddamn it, they cut me out!" It's the only time I hear him raise his voice. "It became embarrassing," he adds quietly.
Alejandro Polo of FOA explains from Tokyo that the firm had no choice. "The competition copyright is owned by us, so we had to instruct our lawyer to write a letter saying that we will take court action against them. That was the bitter end of a relationship that probably could have been much better."
Charles Jencks points out that attribution is a touchy issue within architecture. "Even as a professional critic, it's very hard to know who to credit. There's the legal issue of copyright as well as the issue of who actually did it." The bottom line, says Jencks, is that "it's hard for an engineer to get the kind of fame architects do. An engineer isn't asked to be a showman. By necessity and positioning, they are like actors asked to play the secondary role, the Rosencrantz or the Guildenstern. There is an inevitable tension: the architect versus the engineer who forgets his place."
This puts Balmond in a tough position with his new book. "How much do you really say?" he asks rhetorically. "If you write yourself in, you've blown the architect away completely, and I can't do that professionally. I've got to give them more credit than they're due. That's part of the game."
But Koolhaas, who has read an early version of the manuscript, doesn't object. "The book's important. We need it to create the sense of being on the same level," he says. It's no blurb. Koolhaas has twice asked Balmond to join him as business partner and creative equal - working as an architect, not as an engineer.
When I ask Philip Johnson who should get the laurels on the Chavasse Park project, he says, "Cecil always needs to have credit. And why not? He deserves it. What he's doing defies categorization. We need to invent a new word for what he does." Yet Balmond is ambivalent about staking his claim. He's afraid of offending Libeskind and doesn't even want to tell him about the book. There is a chapter that covers the fractal tiles that coat Libeskind's V&A Spiral. In the book, Balmond seems chastened - and doesn't take credit for things that, in private, he says are his. He goes to extremes to sound diplomatic, obscuring credit under the umbrella of "we."
The question of credit would be moot if Balmond left Ove Arup to become an architect. Then there would be no questions about authorship. One evening while sitting in his house, I ask him why he hasn't left, why he hasn't taken Koolhaas up on his offers. He tells me a story: When he was young and just starting his 33-year career at Ove Arup, he fell in love with the guitar. "I started playing classical guitar seriously at 22, and by the age of 30, it was too late - you couldn't become a classical professional," he sighs with regret. "So it's like the guitar. By the time I seriously found out what I wanted, I was in my mid-forties. To be an architect - well, maybe I should have thought about that in my twenties. I don't know."
Balmond puts on some Bach but continues talking over the rising strains of the music, his words clipped but perfectly enunciated. "I know there are some problems now, where I lose out on the ideas and they get taken and appropriated, but I have something deeper than the idea. They take the shape, maybe, but I've got something ahead of them, because structure for me is about the connection of ideas. I want to blaze a new path in the philosophy of structure. That's a bigger agenda than architecture, and I guess that's where I am."
By Jennifer Kabat
Architectural superstar Rem Koolhaas swears by him. Structural engineer Cecil Balmond has been Koolhaas' collaborator on 30 projects since the mid-'80s, including the three that have made Koolhaas' name: the Bordeaux villa, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, and the new Seattle Public Library. Today, Koolhaas won't even start a project until Balmond has weighed in. "When we work together, there's more to it than just an engineer saying you need a column here, support there," Koolhaas attests. "Cecil has changed my outlook on structure and enabled me to rethink architecture."
German conceptualist Daniel Libeskind - famous for his museums in Denver, Berlin, and now London - also brings Balmond in at the earliest stage. "He's a thinker, a mystic," says Libeskind. "He's not your average engineer brought from the outside to check things out. He's there with us from the very beginning with his keen insights and keen design ability. Most engineers don't see engineering as an evolving adventure in design, but Cecil does." Balmond and Libeskind collaborated on the Spiral, the Victoria and Albert Museum's contemporary wing, a $100 million project awaiting British government funding.
Perhaps most impressive is the respect Balmond has won from Philip Johnson, one of the 20th century's architectural titans. Johnson, now 94, is working with Balmond on Chavasse Park, a planned $300 million shopping center in Liverpool. The great man actually calls Balmond "my teacher, my mentor." This from a guy who was whelped by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.
"Balmond's mad, he's brilliant, he's changing shapes for the world," Johnson says. Then he sighs theatrically and confides that Balmond will be largely responsible for the look of Chavasse Park, whose tentlike roof will swoop over the organic megastructure. "I gave him free rein, and I didn't really keep up with it," Johnson admits. "It was clear to me that this man knew perfectly what it was I wanted."
At 56, Balmond has reached the very top of his profession. According to the celebrated architects who have worked with him, he not only makes their buildings stand up, but also inspires their designs. He has two advanced engineering degrees from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, and a third from the University of Southampton. He sits on the board of London-based Ove Arup, the most prestigious structural engineering firm in the world. Established in 1946, the company built the iconic Sydney Opera House, the vast Tate Modern museum in London, and the just-completed longest bridge in the world, øresund Fixed Link - a 10-mile-long double-decker that stretches between Sweden and Denmark. Balmond is the chair of Ove Arup's operations division, which puts him in charge of global strategies for research and development and other specialist departments.
Balmond, however, might never get what he wants - public acclaim. It's not his place to be in the public eye. Structural engineers are meant to stay behind the scenes and work to bridge the gap between the architect and the builder. They measure forces and calculate load. They plan a building's foundation and place the columns that will bear its weight. Typically, engineers design the core - that is, the elevators and stairs at the center of a skyscraper - and often the facade as well. When an architect says, "I want glazed bronze glass that lets in only a certain amount of light and looks gold at sunset," it's the engineers who interview window manufacturers and evaluate their cladding systems. The results of this painstaking process are working drawings that spec out every last fixture. Builders can't even begin without them. Balmond's goal - outlined in a monograph, Informal, to be published this June - is to offer a new structure for architecture.
Engineers, as a rule, find glory in structural firsts and feats. Balmond calls it the "macho-ness of structure - the tallest, the thinnest." Ove Arup, in particular, values the big and the bold. Load bearing is made blatantly obvious. "Arup is hi-tech, our traditional image is hi-tech, and the hi-tech aesthetic is a certain belief in structural comprehensibility," he says. "The hi-tech style is right in your face - structure like the mast of a boat or gussets or a tension wire." Working with the British-born, Yale-educated master of hi-tech, Lord Norman Foster, the company gave the $645 million Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters massive cross-bracing in the atrium lobby and giant trusses up its 47-story glass exterior. Completed in 1986, it is considered the epitome of the style.
Balmond is more subversive. He tweaks structure: Where a typical engineer would simply place columns in a grid, he'll slide them off center, or tilt them so they lean as they rise from the floor. He hides structure: Instead of bracing a high-rise with mammoth steel Xs on the exterior, Balmond will turn the building itself into a brace and morph the floors into ramps that distribute the load downward. He invents structure: When Libeskind called for tiling on the Spiral extension of the V&A, Balmond came up with "frac-tiles" - tiles that repeat their shapes in a fractal pattern.
Often, Balmond's engineering solutions affect the form of a building so much that his work is indistinguishable from architecture. Take, for example, the Yokohama International Port Terminal. The London- and Tokyo-based FOA (Foreign Office Architects) - a trendy, young firm going for its first major project - tapped Balmond while competing for the $200 million commission. Balmond came up with an innovative plan that eliminated all columns.
"He said we could do it with a wavy piece of steel," explains Alejandro Zaera Polo, a partner at FOA. The terminal is not yet built, but Balmond's solution has it looking like a huge piece of corrugated cardboard. Koolhaas, who sat on the competition's jury, calls the concept "really beautiful. The shape of the building itself is its structural solution." Balmond's engineering is the architecture, and vice versa. The overlap is so remarkable that to understand Balmond's contribution is to ask: What's the role of the official architect?
I get an answer, of sorts, from the eminent British critic Charles Jencks. In 1997, the BBC asked him for a list of buildings that were transforming architecture. He came up with 15 structures and almost as many architects. Balmond engineered more than a quarter of them. "There's the V&A Spiral, of course, and Rem's Bordeaux villa, and also the library, Jussieu, with Koolhaas, and the stadium at Chemnitz with Ulrich Königs and Peter Kulka," Jencks says, rattling off the buildings that Balmond engineered.
Jencks says that since he made the list, Balmond has only grown more important: "If I were to do it again today I'd have to add Arnhem, a project Balmond did with Ben van Berkel, and the Yokohama terminal, and that project with Philip Johnson in Liverpool. Really," he interrupts himself, "Cecil Balmond is the world's leading thinker on form and structure. He's the power behind the throne."
While interviewing Jencks in his London townhouse, I press the issue. I ask him whether, in the design of those famous buildings, it's Balmond who is really calling the shots. Jencks, who's perched on a sofa across from me, leans forward over a coffee table shaped like the top of a Doric column - a relic of postmodernism, the architectural movement that Jencks made famous - and answers: "To try and decide who did what gets you into the area of libel."
Philip Johnson calls Balmond "my teacher, my mentor." This from a guy who was whelped by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.
But that is what Balmond is saying, or at least hinting at, in Informal: New Structure in Architecture. The book, his second, is a manifesto, a call to arms urging his fellow engineers "to release the world of engineering and feel free to enter architecture." The accolades from Koolhaas, Libeskind, Johnson, and Jencks aren't enough anymore: Balmond wants some credit. The book is risky. He's nearly been sued - by FOA - over the credit issue before. And, after all, he is dependent on his good relationships with architects. They are the ones who hire him and bring him in on projects; while the process of making a building is clearly collaborative, the architect is still the star of the show.
Balmond's London office is modest: no prestigious corner, no great views. You'd hardly know he's in charge of 1,700 people. Photos of various Koolhaas projects hang on the wall next to a company-issue poster.
Balmond is bent over some architectural plans. The posture plays up his monkish appearance: He's dressed all in black, hair thinning into a tonsure. The plans are by the Dutch avant-gardist Ben van Berkel - one of a new wave of architects who, in the wake of fellow countryman Rem Koolhaas, are turning the Netherlands into an architectural promised land. The drawings are for the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh. The brief calls for a 160,000-square-foot extension and rehab of the existing 200,000-square-foot building on the bank of the Ohio River.
Balmond and van Berkel have been collaborating on the proposal for a month; the competition deadline is in two weeks' time. Balmond's research assistant, Gwenola Kergall, and another Arup engineer, Charles Walker, sit next to him, armed and ready with a ream of sketch paper and a tray of sandwiches cut into quarters. Balmond has called the meeting to go over van Berkel's latest design. They have only a couple of days to analyze this new set of drawings and get back to him.
A month ago, Balmond and van Berkel met to discuss their initial ideas for the center. Van Berkel was toying with some slablike shapes. Sketching out the logic of the site, Balmond scribbled down his idea: two crossing tubes, each with a smaller tube inside. Aligned on the north-south and east-west axes, the outer tubes would drop people in front, link to parking behind, and hide the old structure. The inner tubes would house the exhibits. By their next meeting, van Berkel had jettisoned the slab design for Balmond's schematic. The drawings on Balmond's table today show the Carnegie Science Center as two sets of concentric tubes. Van Berkel has the outside tube folding over to generate the inside tube in an endless skin, almost like a sock rolled back on itself, turning inside out.
Balmond looks at the new plan and shakes his head. In his original sketch, he had the inner tube hanging from the wall of the outer tube - they were joined together. Now, with the folded-over design, the inner tube needs to be held up by columns, and Balmond is irritated that he has to even consider adding any sort of pillar. He's convinced the columns will detract from the building and make it harder to put in exhibition space.
He takes a sheet from the ream and starts to draw, talking in a stream of consciousness as his hand moves. "Supports will interfere with the seamlessness. But it's a tube folded in on itself and will need internal supports. We need a new language for it, but it can't be a separate language. It should have branches like filaments, like tendrils from the wall ..." The drawing he makes to describe the tendrils looks like a swirling red-and-white peppermint.
Kergall suggests a filigree support with an art nouveau look and sketches it out. Balmond nods approval, but still laments. "How can I ruin it with such language?" he demands of Walker and Kergall. "Let's not talk column because I cannot, I can't, I'll die, how can I do that - fold a skin over on itself and then stick columns in?"
This searching for metaphors, this scribbling on paper, this is what Balmond calls "the informal." The informal is Balmond's radical philosophy of engineering; he describes it as "opening the door ... and breaking down the cage." Stripped of metaphor, the informal is Balmond's term for the creative process.
Balmond started reexamining traditional engineering when he turned 40. "It suddenly hit me: I'd been doing this for 20 years without questioning the basic configuration I was dealing with. I'd spent hours minimizing and putting in columns, and architects were saying, 'Oh he's a great guy to work with ...'" Here Balmond trails off. As he hit midlife, engineering became empty. He was winning awards for his buildings - the Merrill Lynch headquarters in London, the Carlsberg Brewery in Northampton - but still felt there was something lacking. He was just making "meaningless containers of form." Searching for a connection between form and meaning, Balmond discovered Pythagoras, the geometer-priest of ancient Greece, and James Gleick's book Chaos.
Inspired, Balmond set out to investigate the mathematical composition of fractals, and soon found that the golden ratio - the basis of Greek architecture - was itself fractal, a pattern repeating endlessly on several different scales. It was the start of a renewed fascination with math, especially its more cabalistic aspects. His first book, Number 9, published in 1998, is a novel with a numerology theme. His study is lined with notebooks filled with fractal patterns and magic squares, sketches that he says "help focus my mind." One binder contains sketch after sketch of bending lines, curves crossing over each other - they look a bit like sine waves. He says they served as the inspiration for the curving supports of the Yokohama terminal.
Right now he's drawing, trying to find some inspiration for the Carnegie Science Center. Sheets of paper are flying, each filled with a tube sketch. He eats as he draws, and indicates for Walker and Kergall to help themselves. Balmond is talking and chewing, trying to find an elegant solution for the central space where the tubes meet. Walker shakes his head, saying that "the complexity of the hub is lost."
Balmond is frustrated. He wants the tubes' intersection to create energy, speed, a sense of velocity. "Spin," he says. He draws swooshing whirlpools and circles over the plan, tracing through the space to get a feel for it. "If you spin from a hub, then you're putting structure into it. It will stand independently and face out." Then he pauses. "Stairs!" he pronounces. "We spin the stairs and shoot off around it!" He arrives at a grand spiral staircase, which serves as a structural support and creates the focal point for the entire building.
He takes another bite of sandwich and moves over to dial van Berkel's office on the speakerphone. The receptionist explains twice that van Berkel is in a meeting with clients, but Balmond insists that she put him through. Once on the phone with van Berkel, it takes Balmond about five minutes to work it out that, yes, van Berkel assumed there would be legs and columns underneath the tubes, which Balmond then corrects with his tendril notion. When he suggests a central vortex with a spiraling staircase, van Berkel replies quietly, "That is what I have in mind, but it's not drawn yet."
Later, Balmond explains the pitfalls of his working style. "The problem is about claiming credit for the architecture. For the record, that's architecture," he says, pointing at the plans on the table, "that's Ben van Berkel." Balmond came up with the crossed-tube plan and then worked out a way to make it feasible, but that detail will fade away. "No one will ever know what Balmond did," he says, using the third person. "Part of an engineer's job description is to remain anonymous."
In conversation, Balmond speaks in a quasi-spiritual patois, peppered with phrases like "tuning in" and "it came to me." He exudes a mystical demeanor that must serve him well while working with big architects and their notoriously big egos.
But Balmond has a big ego, too. It nearly landed him in court, thanks to a messy round of accusations and counter-recriminations over Yokohama. FOA won the competition and started attracting press. "But nobody at FOA mentioned me," he complains. Then the firm chose to work with another engineer for the execution phase of the project, saying, among other things, that Ove Arup was too expensive. "This was the worst episode in my career," Balmond explains, looking down. "Here was an idea that frankly transformed their work. I gave it to them and then, goddamn it, they cut me out!" It's the only time I hear him raise his voice. "It became embarrassing," he adds quietly.
Alejandro Polo of FOA explains from Tokyo that the firm had no choice. "The competition copyright is owned by us, so we had to instruct our lawyer to write a letter saying that we will take court action against them. That was the bitter end of a relationship that probably could have been much better."
Charles Jencks points out that attribution is a touchy issue within architecture. "Even as a professional critic, it's very hard to know who to credit. There's the legal issue of copyright as well as the issue of who actually did it." The bottom line, says Jencks, is that "it's hard for an engineer to get the kind of fame architects do. An engineer isn't asked to be a showman. By necessity and positioning, they are like actors asked to play the secondary role, the Rosencrantz or the Guildenstern. There is an inevitable tension: the architect versus the engineer who forgets his place."
This puts Balmond in a tough position with his new book. "How much do you really say?" he asks rhetorically. "If you write yourself in, you've blown the architect away completely, and I can't do that professionally. I've got to give them more credit than they're due. That's part of the game."
But Koolhaas, who has read an early version of the manuscript, doesn't object. "The book's important. We need it to create the sense of being on the same level," he says. It's no blurb. Koolhaas has twice asked Balmond to join him as business partner and creative equal - working as an architect, not as an engineer.
When I ask Philip Johnson who should get the laurels on the Chavasse Park project, he says, "Cecil always needs to have credit. And why not? He deserves it. What he's doing defies categorization. We need to invent a new word for what he does." Yet Balmond is ambivalent about staking his claim. He's afraid of offending Libeskind and doesn't even want to tell him about the book. There is a chapter that covers the fractal tiles that coat Libeskind's V&A Spiral. In the book, Balmond seems chastened - and doesn't take credit for things that, in private, he says are his. He goes to extremes to sound diplomatic, obscuring credit under the umbrella of "we."
The question of credit would be moot if Balmond left Ove Arup to become an architect. Then there would be no questions about authorship. One evening while sitting in his house, I ask him why he hasn't left, why he hasn't taken Koolhaas up on his offers. He tells me a story: When he was young and just starting his 33-year career at Ove Arup, he fell in love with the guitar. "I started playing classical guitar seriously at 22, and by the age of 30, it was too late - you couldn't become a classical professional," he sighs with regret. "So it's like the guitar. By the time I seriously found out what I wanted, I was in my mid-forties. To be an architect - well, maybe I should have thought about that in my twenties. I don't know."
Balmond puts on some Bach but continues talking over the rising strains of the music, his words clipped but perfectly enunciated. "I know there are some problems now, where I lose out on the ideas and they get taken and appropriated, but I have something deeper than the idea. They take the shape, maybe, but I've got something ahead of them, because structure for me is about the connection of ideas. I want to blaze a new path in the philosophy of structure. That's a bigger agenda than architecture, and I guess that's where I am."
A Return to Techne: On Cecil Balmond
Balmond's work is an open-ended visual application of theory. His principle that "structure as conceptual rigour is architecture" has become a compelling force, changing the face of architecture, art and engineering. Balmond’s dynamic and organizational approach to structure is informed by the sciences of complexity, non-linear organization and emergence. Recognizing that the universe is a constantly changing array of patterns, he draws on ancient wisdom and non-western mathematical archetypes as sources. Through his research, Balmond investigates mathematical concepts and their influence on natural forms and structures, interrogating algorithms, fractals, rhythm and cellular structure. “Peerless in his exploration…Balmond remains truer to the ancient philosophic meaning of techne than any of his contemporaries.
Books
No 9, The Search for the Sigma Code (Prestel 1998)
Translations: Portuguese, Japanese, Hebrew
His first book, Balmond travels into a semi-mystical world to unlock a secret realm of numbers.
informal: the informal in architecture and engineering (Prestel 2002)
Translations: Japanese, Korean and Chinese
The definintive account of Balmond’s investigative approach to structure and form. It earned him the Banister Fletcher prize for the best book of the year on architecture (2005). Deyan Sudjic of The Observer says,“ its glimpses of a hidden order of things, of the occult properties of numbers and shapes, suggest it could be the next Brief History of Time, but with pictures” [11]
The book invites the reader to enter the dialogues between Balmond and the architects he works with, sharing the intimacies of the design process. Projects range from a Villa in Bordeaux to a large Transport Interchange in Arnhem, from a canopy in Lisbon to the V&A spiral in London and an Exhibition Centre in Lille, highlighting his collaborations with Ben van Berkel, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Alvaro Siza and Peter Kulka with Ulrich Konigs. The design, realised with Jannuzzi Smith, is inspired by mathematics books and children’s fiction.
Element (Prestel 2007)
Balmond looks through drawing and composition at a perception of space that has interconnected narratives. The narrative unfolds in three conceptual chapters - elements, pattern, nature - linked by two conceptual bridges, digital 'tectonics' and numbers.
Books
No 9, The Search for the Sigma Code (Prestel 1998)
Translations: Portuguese, Japanese, Hebrew
His first book, Balmond travels into a semi-mystical world to unlock a secret realm of numbers.
informal: the informal in architecture and engineering (Prestel 2002)
Translations: Japanese, Korean and Chinese
The definintive account of Balmond’s investigative approach to structure and form. It earned him the Banister Fletcher prize for the best book of the year on architecture (2005). Deyan Sudjic of The Observer says,“ its glimpses of a hidden order of things, of the occult properties of numbers and shapes, suggest it could be the next Brief History of Time, but with pictures” [11]
The book invites the reader to enter the dialogues between Balmond and the architects he works with, sharing the intimacies of the design process. Projects range from a Villa in Bordeaux to a large Transport Interchange in Arnhem, from a canopy in Lisbon to the V&A spiral in London and an Exhibition Centre in Lille, highlighting his collaborations with Ben van Berkel, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Alvaro Siza and Peter Kulka with Ulrich Konigs. The design, realised with Jannuzzi Smith, is inspired by mathematics books and children’s fiction.
Element (Prestel 2007)
Balmond looks through drawing and composition at a perception of space that has interconnected narratives. The narrative unfolds in three conceptual chapters - elements, pattern, nature - linked by two conceptual bridges, digital 'tectonics' and numbers.
Daniel Libeskind
“吸引我去探索的，总是那些被叫做空洞的东西，那是当一个社会被消灭，或个人的自由被践踏，当生命的进程被粗暴地中断，生命的结构被永远地扭曲变异，存在的那种压倒一切的虚无感”。很少会想到这样的话出自一个建筑师之口，他就是丹尼尔·里伯斯金(Daniel Libeskind)——举世瞩目的柏林犹太博物馆（Jewish Museum in Berlin）和纽约9·11世贸大厦遗址（Ground Zero）重建的建筑师
柏林犹太博物馆，可以称得上是浓缩着生命痛苦和烦恼的稀世作品。反复连续的锐角曲折、幅宽被强制压缩的长方体建筑，像具有生命一样满腹痛苦表情、蕴藏着不满和反抗的危机，令人深感不快。外墙上的窗户，也是不规则而重迭的长条形状，就像一条条受害者身上被乱劈的伤痕一样。在里伯斯金看来，不规则弯折的形状是一个被扭曲的犹太人标志——戴维之星，而窗户看似杂乱无章，但其实这些线都有时空上的特别意义。建筑师找出了柏林的几十个历史上与犹太人相关的地方，在地图上连在一起，这些线划过犹太博物馆的地方，就成了窗户。整个建筑体顺应着里伯斯金强烈的个人美学及设计风格，有着统一而重复的空间感，从头至尾没有平行和垂直线，而是充斥者倾斜的墙面、天花板嵌入的斜行灯具线、展示橱柜的不规则开口。里伯斯金称该博物馆为“线状的狭窄空间”，理由是在这座建筑中潜伏着与思想、组织关系有关的二条脉络：其一是充满无数的破碎断片的直线脉络；其二是无限连续的曲折脉络。这二条脉络虽然都有所限定，却又通过相互间的沟通，而在建筑和形式上无限地伸展下去。使充满被驱逐、遭受屠杀的犹太人的悲痛与苦恼的犹太博物馆，超越了设计的特异性和观念的前卫性，将一个民族的悲惨命运用历史封印。
柏林犹太博物馆，可以称得上是浓缩着生命痛苦和烦恼的稀世作品。反复连续的锐角曲折、幅宽被强制压缩的长方体建筑，像具有生命一样满腹痛苦表情、蕴藏着不满和反抗的危机，令人深感不快。外墙上的窗户，也是不规则而重迭的长条形状，就像一条条受害者身上被乱劈的伤痕一样。在里伯斯金看来，不规则弯折的形状是一个被扭曲的犹太人标志——戴维之星，而窗户看似杂乱无章，但其实这些线都有时空上的特别意义。建筑师找出了柏林的几十个历史上与犹太人相关的地方，在地图上连在一起，这些线划过犹太博物馆的地方，就成了窗户。整个建筑体顺应着里伯斯金强烈的个人美学及设计风格，有着统一而重复的空间感，从头至尾没有平行和垂直线，而是充斥者倾斜的墙面、天花板嵌入的斜行灯具线、展示橱柜的不规则开口。里伯斯金称该博物馆为“线状的狭窄空间”，理由是在这座建筑中潜伏着与思想、组织关系有关的二条脉络：其一是充满无数的破碎断片的直线脉络；其二是无限连续的曲折脉络。这二条脉络虽然都有所限定，却又通过相互间的沟通，而在建筑和形式上无限地伸展下去。使充满被驱逐、遭受屠杀的犹太人的悲痛与苦恼的犹太博物馆，超越了设计的特异性和观念的前卫性，将一个民族的悲惨命运用历史封印。
Alvaro Siza
注重在现代设计与历史环境之间建立深刻的联系，并因其个性化的品质和对现代社会文化变迁的敏锐捕捉，而受到普遍关注和承认。
乡土情结
阿尔瓦罗·西扎是伴随着他的祖国从封闭走向开放而成长起来的建筑师。他的主要思想与理念，成型于20世纪50年代——葡萄牙建筑的一个重要时期。随着国门的逐渐打开，葡萄牙在政治、经济、科技等各方面与世界的差距，对其建筑发展产生了强烈刺激力；而与此同时，那些根植于本土传统的文化诉求，在与全球化抑或是现代化浪潮的相互激荡中，更表达出前所未有的强烈。
正是在上述时代背景之下，西扎早期建筑作品表现出对源于“地方”与“乡土”的形式敏锐，通过致力于用现代的手法演绎葡萄牙传统，西扎发展了他独特的空间技巧和建筑语言，为他随后的建筑创作积淀了原型性的力量。
以波诺瓦茶室(Boa Nova Tea House, Portugal,1958-1961)为例，整个建筑的体量与屋项形式，使其如同是从满布岩石的海岬地段中生长出来；平面布局，反映了建筑与地质结构相适应的处理方法；空间中多样的门窗开口设计，以不同的方式增强着室内与周边景观之间的联系；出挑很深的屋檐，把红木天花延伸至室外，形成一个减弱当地强烈阳光的防护；加上覆盖暖红板瓦的单坡屋顶，木窗木板的装修，白色粉墙等源自于地中海岸传统的建筑构造的运用……以上种种都无不体现了西扎对于葡萄牙乡土建筑传统的探求。
【编辑】
极简主义
受到卢斯(Adolf Loos)等世纪初现代主义建筑大师们的影响，西扎的建筑也表现出摒弃装饰的倾向。他曾说：“最使不安的是建筑中的浪费现象，无论是用材还是用光。”所以，他力图用简洁的形式表现建筑内在的丰富性，这实质上是基于重视细部、重视建筑与人的亲和性基础之上的对建筑“简约”的追求。
这种“简洁的丰富”，在西扎的圣玛利亚教堂设计(Santa Maria Church and Parish Center, Marco de Canavezes, Portugal, 1990-1996)中，更是表现得淋漓尽致。教堂的入口凹陷于两个高耸的简洁建筑体量之间，超高尺度的门扇便使得身临其下的人们顿时感受到了教堂的庄严肃穆；教堂的精神性集中体现于室内的用光，一侧的墙体呈弧形突出，倾斜地伸向圣徒们的头顶上方，而紧靠着天棚的三个大窗，则将圣洁而神秘的光线也由此从头顶播撒下来——这使人容易联想到法国建筑师勒·柯布西埃(Le·Corbusier)的名作朗香(Ronchamp)教堂，它同样也采用了厚重墙体的塑性来操作光线——这面厚重的墙体使光线显得遥远而圣洁。这是传统的教堂模式，但其造型却是现代手法。
【编辑】
尊重环境
西扎十分尊重建筑所处环境的本身特性，即所谓“场所精神”。他认为，新的建筑应该归属或融入该地区的传统。他曾写道：“新因素的加入通常会与现有状况产生尖锐对立和剧烈碰撞……我们努力使‘新’与‘旧’发生千丝万缕的联系，使它们和谐地共处。”
在设计加里西安当代艺术中心(Galician Center for Contemporary Art, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 1988-1996)时，西扎就面临了基地中的种种矛盾：地段东北向是一座依山而建的修道院，西南向散落着城市住宅，西侧是一个地形起伏错落的公园，东侧紧邻着波那瓦(Bonaval)公墓。西扎将建筑东侧外墙略微退后，与波那瓦公墓之间让出一定的空间；西侧则与城市街道紧邻。在两个长方形为主的体量的错动下，形成了若干了个楔形空间，这与公园的曲折地形取得了呼应。内部流线也取曲折之态，最后汇聚于屋顶平台。这里可以展览雕塑作品，同时也可以眺望修道院和全城的景象。建筑外墙采用淡黄色花岗石，新材料的运用标志着新建筑的与众不同，另一方面，又唤起了人们对当地比比皆是的城市建筑的联想。
【编辑】
建筑师不是专家
西扎认为，建筑师不是专家，或者说是没有专业的专家。他十分重视团队合作与学科间的交融，他说：在我们生活的社会中，建筑设计追求时代性和自由的形式，那么没有矛盾与灵感，有质疑与理解、没有对话与共识的设计，将是无法想象的。对西扎来说，建筑意味着思考并发掘自己潜在另一面，意味着从矛盾的对立面中学习从而超越矛盾，从这点来讲，他认为日益严重而不合理的劳动分工，导致了建筑师与客户、建筑师与工人间缺乏沟通，这是阻碍建筑业发展的一大障碍。
从另一方面来讲，西扎也反对忽视场地性格与建造过程的做法，反对忽视场建筑所应根本尊重并延续的社会文化要义的理念。他认为，建筑师的工作不是进行发明创造，而是通过建筑对社会文化进行诠释、延续和发展。他把建筑比作语言：“必须明确，我们不能发明语言，就像我们不能发明生活方式一样。语言是逐渐演变、不断发展的，要适应现实生活、表达现实生活。”
如果脱离城市环境来看西扎的建筑，将难以理解那些平面的奇特与多变，但是当把平面重叠在基地上时，你就会发现，这些建筑仿佛早就存在于那个地方了，并与周围每件东西都发生着关联。西扎将他的主题与技巧应用在100多个建筑作品上，把传统方式与现代特征巧妙结合在建筑里，简单性和复杂性、时代性和历史性，不断交织渗透在视觉和功能的领域中。
当人类在两个时代之间彷徨无定之时，毫无疑问，西扎的建筑表明了自现代主义以来建筑学的一个重要方向，必将鼓舞和深深影响到21世纪的建筑文化.
乡土情结
阿尔瓦罗·西扎是伴随着他的祖国从封闭走向开放而成长起来的建筑师。他的主要思想与理念，成型于20世纪50年代——葡萄牙建筑的一个重要时期。随着国门的逐渐打开，葡萄牙在政治、经济、科技等各方面与世界的差距，对其建筑发展产生了强烈刺激力；而与此同时，那些根植于本土传统的文化诉求，在与全球化抑或是现代化浪潮的相互激荡中，更表达出前所未有的强烈。
正是在上述时代背景之下，西扎早期建筑作品表现出对源于“地方”与“乡土”的形式敏锐，通过致力于用现代的手法演绎葡萄牙传统，西扎发展了他独特的空间技巧和建筑语言，为他随后的建筑创作积淀了原型性的力量。
以波诺瓦茶室(Boa Nova Tea House, Portugal,1958-1961)为例，整个建筑的体量与屋项形式，使其如同是从满布岩石的海岬地段中生长出来；平面布局，反映了建筑与地质结构相适应的处理方法；空间中多样的门窗开口设计，以不同的方式增强着室内与周边景观之间的联系；出挑很深的屋檐，把红木天花延伸至室外，形成一个减弱当地强烈阳光的防护；加上覆盖暖红板瓦的单坡屋顶，木窗木板的装修，白色粉墙等源自于地中海岸传统的建筑构造的运用……以上种种都无不体现了西扎对于葡萄牙乡土建筑传统的探求。
【编辑】
极简主义
受到卢斯(Adolf Loos)等世纪初现代主义建筑大师们的影响，西扎的建筑也表现出摒弃装饰的倾向。他曾说：“最使不安的是建筑中的浪费现象，无论是用材还是用光。”所以，他力图用简洁的形式表现建筑内在的丰富性，这实质上是基于重视细部、重视建筑与人的亲和性基础之上的对建筑“简约”的追求。
这种“简洁的丰富”，在西扎的圣玛利亚教堂设计(Santa Maria Church and Parish Center, Marco de Canavezes, Portugal, 1990-1996)中，更是表现得淋漓尽致。教堂的入口凹陷于两个高耸的简洁建筑体量之间，超高尺度的门扇便使得身临其下的人们顿时感受到了教堂的庄严肃穆；教堂的精神性集中体现于室内的用光，一侧的墙体呈弧形突出，倾斜地伸向圣徒们的头顶上方，而紧靠着天棚的三个大窗，则将圣洁而神秘的光线也由此从头顶播撒下来——这使人容易联想到法国建筑师勒·柯布西埃(Le·Corbusier)的名作朗香(Ronchamp)教堂，它同样也采用了厚重墙体的塑性来操作光线——这面厚重的墙体使光线显得遥远而圣洁。这是传统的教堂模式，但其造型却是现代手法。
【编辑】
尊重环境
西扎十分尊重建筑所处环境的本身特性，即所谓“场所精神”。他认为，新的建筑应该归属或融入该地区的传统。他曾写道：“新因素的加入通常会与现有状况产生尖锐对立和剧烈碰撞……我们努力使‘新’与‘旧’发生千丝万缕的联系，使它们和谐地共处。”
在设计加里西安当代艺术中心(Galician Center for Contemporary Art, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 1988-1996)时，西扎就面临了基地中的种种矛盾：地段东北向是一座依山而建的修道院，西南向散落着城市住宅，西侧是一个地形起伏错落的公园，东侧紧邻着波那瓦(Bonaval)公墓。西扎将建筑东侧外墙略微退后，与波那瓦公墓之间让出一定的空间；西侧则与城市街道紧邻。在两个长方形为主的体量的错动下，形成了若干了个楔形空间，这与公园的曲折地形取得了呼应。内部流线也取曲折之态，最后汇聚于屋顶平台。这里可以展览雕塑作品，同时也可以眺望修道院和全城的景象。建筑外墙采用淡黄色花岗石，新材料的运用标志着新建筑的与众不同，另一方面，又唤起了人们对当地比比皆是的城市建筑的联想。
【编辑】
建筑师不是专家
西扎认为，建筑师不是专家，或者说是没有专业的专家。他十分重视团队合作与学科间的交融，他说：在我们生活的社会中，建筑设计追求时代性和自由的形式，那么没有矛盾与灵感，有质疑与理解、没有对话与共识的设计，将是无法想象的。对西扎来说，建筑意味着思考并发掘自己潜在另一面，意味着从矛盾的对立面中学习从而超越矛盾，从这点来讲，他认为日益严重而不合理的劳动分工，导致了建筑师与客户、建筑师与工人间缺乏沟通，这是阻碍建筑业发展的一大障碍。
从另一方面来讲，西扎也反对忽视场地性格与建造过程的做法，反对忽视场建筑所应根本尊重并延续的社会文化要义的理念。他认为，建筑师的工作不是进行发明创造，而是通过建筑对社会文化进行诠释、延续和发展。他把建筑比作语言：“必须明确，我们不能发明语言，就像我们不能发明生活方式一样。语言是逐渐演变、不断发展的，要适应现实生活、表达现实生活。”
如果脱离城市环境来看西扎的建筑，将难以理解那些平面的奇特与多变，但是当把平面重叠在基地上时，你就会发现，这些建筑仿佛早就存在于那个地方了，并与周围每件东西都发生着关联。西扎将他的主题与技巧应用在100多个建筑作品上，把传统方式与现代特征巧妙结合在建筑里，简单性和复杂性、时代性和历史性，不断交织渗透在视觉和功能的领域中。
当人类在两个时代之间彷徨无定之时，毫无疑问，西扎的建筑表明了自现代主义以来建筑学的一个重要方向，必将鼓舞和深深影响到21世纪的建筑文化.
异规 Cecil Balmond
（英）塞西尔·巴尔蒙德 Cecil Balmond
本书从一个结构工程师的视角来解析建筑的形成方式。这里“异规”是指规整的建筑构成相反的建筑表达。作者列举了一系列与建筑结构相关的数学和物理定义以及由此引发的形成种种随意、自由、非传统的建筑形成及空间的方式组合。本书适合建筑师、结构师及相关专业师生阅读。
本书向读者展示了一个全新的审视和构思建筑的起点和角度。它颠覆了先建筑再结构的习惯思维和操作次序，而把结构构件和体系的“异规”作为设计方法的入手点。从这里出发，我们会发现一个令自己欣喜和惊讶的世界。
本书以夹叙夹议的结构展开，即理论的宣示和分析与一组组工程案例相间呈现并相辅相成、互相支持。书中列举的8个案例都是在当代建筑界极具影响的项目，并且在建筑结构上都颇有挑战性。作者在与瑞姆·库哈斯、丹尼尔·李伯斯金、阿尔瓦罗·西扎等建筑大师的合作中，以其创造力使建筑结构及构件精彩地实现并诠释了建筑师的思想。或者说结构本身也是建筑，也述说着建筑思想，而不光是支撑建筑的幕后英雄。
本书的编排也极具特色：文字、草图、图纸、照片交替出现。正如塞西尔本人所说，阅读也有自己的空间和结构形式，他想让此书犹如布鲁斯一样，吟唱与器乐交相辉映、相互对话。
目录
14 序
17 波尔多别墅
57 鹿特丹当代美术馆
109 异规
125 凯姆尼兹方案
173 再访里尔
189 螺旋
217 宣言
229 眺望波尔多的窗户
241 分形面砖
265 分形
273 会展中心
309 顶盖
345 阿纳姆中央车站
369 模块
393 附录
本书从一个结构工程师的视角来解析建筑的形成方式。这里“异规”是指规整的建筑构成相反的建筑表达。作者列举了一系列与建筑结构相关的数学和物理定义以及由此引发的形成种种随意、自由、非传统的建筑形成及空间的方式组合。本书适合建筑师、结构师及相关专业师生阅读。
本书向读者展示了一个全新的审视和构思建筑的起点和角度。它颠覆了先建筑再结构的习惯思维和操作次序，而把结构构件和体系的“异规”作为设计方法的入手点。从这里出发，我们会发现一个令自己欣喜和惊讶的世界。
本书以夹叙夹议的结构展开，即理论的宣示和分析与一组组工程案例相间呈现并相辅相成、互相支持。书中列举的8个案例都是在当代建筑界极具影响的项目，并且在建筑结构上都颇有挑战性。作者在与瑞姆·库哈斯、丹尼尔·李伯斯金、阿尔瓦罗·西扎等建筑大师的合作中，以其创造力使建筑结构及构件精彩地实现并诠释了建筑师的思想。或者说结构本身也是建筑，也述说着建筑思想，而不光是支撑建筑的幕后英雄。
本书的编排也极具特色：文字、草图、图纸、照片交替出现。正如塞西尔本人所说，阅读也有自己的空间和结构形式，他想让此书犹如布鲁斯一样，吟唱与器乐交相辉映、相互对话。
目录
14 序
17 波尔多别墅
57 鹿特丹当代美术馆
109 异规
125 凯姆尼兹方案
173 再访里尔
189 螺旋
217 宣言
229 眺望波尔多的窗户
241 分形面砖
265 分形
273 会展中心
309 顶盖
345 阿纳姆中央车站
369 模块
393 附录
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