The reviews of contemporary practice and discourse have revealed sophisticated taxonomy of control systems and a range of approaches to interactivity, but provides minimal insight for this study of kinetic morphology. This section extends the discus- sion, through an examination of key texts that address kinetics in a wider historical context. While there are useful backgrounds to movement in architecture within books on Santiago Calatrava54 and an excellent study of transportable architecture by Robert Kronenburg,55 two sources are particularly relevant. The most direct prec- edent is Kinetic Architecture, by Zuk and Clarke, which summarizes architectural research in kinetics during the 1960s.56 The second is Flying Dutchmen: Motion in
Architecture, which places Dutch architecture of the 1990s within a potentially use-
ful philosophical context.57
The legacy of the 1960s
The fi rst book to comprehensively articulate defi nitions, design philosophy, and archi- tectural applications of kinetics is Zuk and Clarke’s Kinetic Architecture, published in 1970. The authors have an academic background and the book collates research and teaching agendas undertaken during the 1960s at the Universities of Virginia and North Carolina. The emphasis of the book is on adaptable spaces via kinetic structural systems, with no documentation of kinetic screens, relief or materials. The majority of the examples are structural systems that operate at a scale outside the scope of this research. Zuk and Clarke’s thorough classifi cation does, however, reveal one possibility not considered in contemporary discourse. A wider defi nition of kinetics might be considered around the category of ‘disposable architecture’. Potentially, this may be incorporated into the agenda of kinetic facades if, for example, materials that rapidly decompose are zoned and deformation controlled in some manner. This hovers on the margins of the inquiry within the tradition of weathering, and calls into question the issue of temporal scale. Kinetics as defi ned for the purposes of this study is physical movement in space via the three geometric transformations and their composites, or deformation due to controlling material properties. Zuk and Clarke’s idea of material change at a longer temporal scale suggests speed of transformation needs to be considered. As discussed in Chapter 1, the concentra- tion on facades locates a generally vertical orientation, observable from a fi xed point of view. Observable, by extension, infers that the timescale is such that the detection of movement is within the limits of human vision. These limits will obvi- ously vary dependent on individual and context, but the lower threshold is between two and three seconds.58 That is, for a kinetic to be based on material deforma- tion as suggested by Zuk and Clarke, recognizable change needs to occur within three seconds.
While the focus of Zuk and Clarke is fi rmly on kinetic structures at a scale generally outside the research scope, they do include a taxonomy of machines that can be seen as prefi guring the taxonomy of controls by Fox. The four categories are based on the degree of adaptation: level 1 machines perform a singular function and include lever devices such as water clocks, or rotating machines such as water mills; while level 2 machines can perform multiple functions, for example a bicycle or a steamboat; level 3 machines are distinguished by automatically adaptive control systems; level 4 machines link the adaptive control system to a computer – this, as conceived in 1970, offered the optimistic promise of ‘machines which will construct whole buildings completely and automatically, to machines that will automatically repair and perhaps reproduce themselves’.59 This machine taxonomy would appear to provide precedent for contemporary control systems, such as the taxonomy of Fox discussed in the previous section.
After methodically documenting their categories of architectural kinet- ics, in the fi nal section on future implications for design, Zuk and Clarke introduce the issue of kinetic aesthetics. This would appear to be the fi rst direct discussion
Part I
32
of kinetics in architecture that goes beyond function or technology. Their emphasis is on the need to develop a temporal understanding of aesthetics. This idea occurs throughout their examples, as designers conceive kinetics in terms of multiple over- lapping rates of change, from daily to yearly temporal scales.
Since time is the basic measure of motion, it becomes an important fac- tor in design. This suggests that kinetic architecture must be considered as a continuum. The movement unfolds, but what the form has just been or what it will be, are a matter for recollection or conjecture. This architecture can never be confronted whole. A defi nition of form which is time-dependent must be recognized …. The sense of motion, itself, then, can be a visual aesthetic much as has traditionally being the case with basic elements like colour, texture and pattern.60
Zuk and Clarke identify the potential for a new aesthetic based on kinetics, and suggest ways in which this might be studied, such as time lapse or stroboscope. However, there is no further development of this idea, either through subsequent publications or design studies. The book ends with the evocative idea of an archi- tectural aesthetic based on the ‘sense of motion itself’, suggesting that the kinetic arts may provide further insight. Their intuition that the kinetic arts provide a valuable source for understanding aesthetics will be taken up in some detail in Chapter 4.
Philosophical insight
The second source that provides some insight is Kari Jormakka’s Flying Dutchmen:
Motion in Architecture. Jormakka is a professor in architectural theory, and his
critique of motion in architecture is undertaken by positioning architectural projects within a historical framework.61 It is in a section titled ‘living Architecture’ that Jormakka considers actual movement, as opposed to the representation of dynamic lines of force. His references include: Aldo Rossi’s fl oating theatre, the Teatro del Mondo; Ron Herron of Archigram and his walking city; Bruno Taut’s expressionist vision of a city on wheels; and John Ruskin’s ‘living architecture’.62 This thread is then followed through to the 1935 Casa Girasole, ‘the classic version of the rotating house’, and Herman Hertzberger’s water villas, which achieve a similar effect by fl oating on water.63 The tendency to actual movement in contemporary architecture is discussed in relation to Kas Oosterhuis and the Hyperbody research group. Jormakka is critical of the effectiveness of Oosterhuis’s approach, describing his Trans-Port pro- ject as ‘a strong form that does not appear to change very much: it can never assume identities other then what it already has as a large sculpture, albeit a kinetic one’.64
From actual movement, Jormakka then explores other ways in which the theme of movement can be utilized in architecture. A chapter on ‘Framing Movement’ considers architects UN Studio’s, ‘creative use of diagrams,’65 while a chapter on ‘Architectural Promenades’ discusses the Japanese concept of architec- tural experience as ‘topological chains of discontinuous space’, and compares this with Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and other contemporary examples, in which move- ment through space ‘unfolds’ in time.66 Both these examples consider the movement
of the surveyor rather than the focus here on kinetics. Perhaps of more potential for this inquiry is a philosophical discussion, which Jormakka argues underpins the theme of movement in architecture. This provides some references that offer insight for this study of kinetic morphology. In particular, duration as proposed by philosopher Henri Bergson, suggests that a study of kinetics might be informed by the ideas of continuity and difference. Bergsonian duration is introduced by Jormakka through the example of a melody. It is argued that melody resides in the memory of past notes and in anticipation of a complete phrase rather then the real time hearing of discrete notes. The concept of duration, as will be developed at the end of this chapter, also provides a basis for considering the temporal form of kinetic facades.