3 ECurrent events
3.46E
« Géologie blanche »
La Force de l'art 02
Grand-Palais, Paris
24 April - 1st June 2009
Philippe Rahm
Architect
La Force de l’Art 02
WHITE GEOLOGY
A CERTAIN LEVEL OF REFLECTION
White Geology planned for La Force de l’Art 02, the second triennial contemporary art fair at the Grand Palais, is an exploration of the reflection of a background and the power of a white surface to emit light and create optical reflection. The material used for the background serves simply to ensure a high degree of reflection, 80%, and diffract and diffuse the light.
It is a white landscape, a white museum cube unfolded to provide a stand for the art works which are set like natural objects on and in front of it. Their shapes and colours stand out sharply against this neutral white background, which blurs the distinction between vertical and horizontal. It is a simplified, white geological form.
Our proposal is more than an architectural project. It is an impoverished geological process that is triggered by the forces in the art works themselves. Originally a white rectangle measuring 125 metres by 24 metres, it buckles, hollows and swells under the geological forces that come into play in the formation of a landscape: tectonic shifts, distortion, pressure and depression, folding. Here, the movements and distortion of the territory are caused by the abstract forces in the art works. At the start, each work is allocated the same space and volume. Depending on their actual size and distance from the viewer, they start pushing against one another just like shifting tectonic plates. Their weight and the amount of light they need will determine how far they distort the surface, burrow into it or inflate it, creating bulges or hollows.
It is therefore the opposite of exhibition design in the sense that it is not the work of art that fits into the architecture, but the architecture which yields to the demands of the work of art. The exhibits will work together to shape the landscape through the simultaneous play of pressure and checks and balances. A landscape that evolves, sinking and swelling, making shady spaces underneath away from the light of the Grand Palais and bright areas above exposed to the changing daylight that floods through the roof. Shallow, objective and devoid of mystery, White Geology has a reflection level that is similar to snow – 80% –, where all shadows and architectural ornament are obliterated.
Architecture does not construct images and functions. Instead it creates environments and interpretations. It works in emptiness, on air and light, on the phenomena of reflection, effusion and reverberation, like so many mild and fluctuating meteorological conditions, which are becoming the new paradigms for contemporary architecture. It is shifting from metric design to thermal design, from structural thinking to climate-oriented thinking, from narrative thought processes to meteorological thought processes.
3.45E
« Digestible Gulf Stream »
Architecture Venice Biennale 2008 - 11th International Architecture Exhibition
Out There: Architecture Beyond Building
Directed by Aaron Betsky
September 14th to November 23rd 2008
Digestible Gulf Stream
Philippe Rahm
« Digestible Gulf Stream »
Philippe Rahm
‘Digestible Gulf Stream’
The problem of global warming has placed as the relationship between climate and architecture at the center of current preoccupations. In order to assume our responsibility in the face of these new ecological concerns, we must make the most of the moment in order to reappraise the field of architecture in a broader way, extending it to other dimensions, other perceptions, from the physiological to the atmospheric, from the sensorial to the meteorological, from the gastronomic to the climatic. A ‘Digestible Gulf Stream’ is the prototype for architecture that works between the neurological and the atmospheric, developing like a landscape that is simultaneously gastronomic and thermal.
Architecture as Meteorology
Architecture should no longer builds spaces, but rather create temperatures and atmospheres. Here, two horizontal metal planes are extended at different heights. The lower plane is heated to 28°C, the upper one is cooled to 12°C. Like a miniature Gulf Stream, their position creates a movement of air using the natural phenomenon of convection, in which rising hot air cools on contact with the upper cool sheet and, falling, is then reheated on contact with the hot sheet, thus creating a constant thermal flow, akin to an invisible landscape. What interests us here is not the creation of homogeneous, established spaces, but of a plastic, climatic dynamic, the activation of forces and polarities that generate a landscape of heat. In this case the architecture is literally structured on a current of air, opening up a fluid, airy, atmospheric space. This architecture is based on the construction of meteorology. The inhabitant may move around in this invisible landscape between 12°C and 28°C, temperatures at the two extremities of the concept of comfort, and freely choose a climate according to his or her activity, clothing, dietary, sporting or social wishes.
The concept of thermal comfort depends not only on external temperature, but also on clothing, the physical activity of those who live in the space and their diet. For example, when we feel too hot, we have five ways of cooling down, which act on different scales:
1. reducing the air temperature in the room, for example by air conditioning (atmospheric solution);
2. drinking (physiological solution);
3. taking off clothes (social solution);
4. resting (physical solution);
5. stimulating a sense of coolness with the mind (neurological solution).
Each one of these solutions is architecture. Architecture is a thermodynamic mediation between the macroscopic and the microscopic, between the body and space, between the visible and the invisible, between meteorological and physiological functions.
Architecture as Gastronomy
We then propose to add two culinary/pharmaceutical preparations to the two plates that directly stimulate the sensory receptors of hot and cold at the cerebral level and that can be eaten or applied to the body.The first preparation, on the upper cold plate, contains mint, which has molecules of crystalline origin known as menthol that cause the same sensation in the brain as the coolness perceptible at a temperature of 15°C. The menthol activates the TRPM8 (transient receptor potential) molecular sensory receptors on the skin and in the mouth that stimulate the group of peripheral sensorial neurons known as cold-sensitive units. The second composition, on the lower hot plate, contains chilli, in which one of the molecules, capsaicin, activates the neuro-receptor TRPV1, which is sensitive to temperatures over 44°C.
The traditional field of architecture thus expands, operating on both the atmospheric and gastronomic scales, breaking down the barriers between internal and external, body and space, neurology and physiology. The sensations of hot and cold may be perceived as much inside the body (diet) as outside (atmosphere). So the question of diet also comes into the field of architecture, on a par with its climatic dimension.
Our architecture extends between the microscopic and the macroscopic, the gastronomic and the atmospheric, the visible and the invisible. Architecture becomes a ‘Gulf Stream’ that polarises the contrasts on different scales (hot/cold, low/high, clothed/unclothed, internal/external, rest/activity) to give rise to architecture as a convective movement of air, creating a place like geography, designing space like climate, atmosphere and gastronomy.
Biennale de Venise 2008
Biennale Architecture - 11th International Architecture Exhibition
Out There: Architecture Beyond Building
Directed by Aaron Betsky
September 14th to November 23rd 2008
Digestible Gulf Stream
Philippe Rahm
Philippe Rahm architectes
collaboration:
-comic strips: Piero Macola
-clothes: Isabel Marant / Gaspard Yurkievich
-music: Syd Matters
-climatic model: Comsol
Philippe Rahm
3.454E
« Uchronian climate »
Manifesta 7
Fortezza, Italy
summer 2008
Curator: Adam Budak
Philippe Rahm's work raises the possibility that climate can replace typology, function, and form of what we use and define as architecture. For "Projected Scenarios" he designed the light installation "Climate uchronia ". It refers to the actual phenomena of global warming and how they renew our perception of what is natural and what is artificial. What we recognized before as the natural climate – which has always been outdoor, at the exterior of the building – is no longer natural today. The classical architectural dichotomy between inside and outside ceases to exist. Human activities and its CO2 consumption are changing the global atmosphere of the planet, manipulating it as a product. The paradox is: if we want to experience the “natural” climate we have to reproduce it “artificially”. “Climate uchronia” is the construction of a fake sun, the physical projection of this uchronian universe, the world as it would be if climatic reheating had not existed.
Based on the Atmospheric Chemistry Model that removes the greenhouse gases effect since 1850, a computer generates this uchronian climate for each minute of duration of Manifesta 7 through a variation of light intensity depending of the variation of the relative humidity in the air calculated by the software. With "Climate Uchronia" Philippe Rahm offers the possibility to inhabit the world that we will never know.
3.43F
LECTURES IN SPRING 2008
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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, USA
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9
AGENCY LECTURE, 6 pm, Betts Auditorium
Architecture as Physiological Climate, Philippe Rahm, Principal, Philippe Rahm Architects, Paris
http://soa.princeton.edu/03eve/eve_frame.html---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE COOPER UNION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, NEW-YORK, USA
THURSDAY, APRIL 10
Architecture as Physiological Climate, Philippe Rahm, Principal, Philippe Rahm Architects, Paris
http://archweb.cooper.edu/
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RICE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, USA
THURSDAY, APRIL 07
Recent projects as atmospheric construction, Philippe Rahm, Principal, Philippe Rahm Architects, Paris and Lausanne
http://arch.rice.edu/---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HFG KARLSRUHE, GERMANY
FRIDAY, APRIL 25
Symposium ,hertzianismus: electromagnetism in architecture, design and art“, curated by Stephan Trüby
http://www.hfg-karlsruhe.de---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COLEGIO OFICIAL DE ARQUITECTOS DE MADRID
MAY 7 SIN-ENERGIAS, 7 pm, atmología,
Philippe Rahm, Principal, Philippe Rahm Architects, Paris Fundación COAM, en la C/ Piamonte, 23, Madrid, Spain
http://www.coam.org/portal/page?_pageid=33,22418&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EPFL – LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND
SARTURDAY, MAY 31
BACK TO THE CAMPUS, 4 pm, Energy
Philippe Rahm, Principal, Philippe Rahm Architects, Paris / Lausanne
http://a3.epfl.ch/retour-sur-le-campus.html---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ESADSE – ECOLE SUPERIEURE D’ART ET DESIGN DE SAINT-ETIENNE, FRANCE
MARCH 12
14h15, salle de conférence de l’ESADSE. Curated by Claire Fayolle,
Lecture by Philippe Rahm, architect, Paris / Lausanne
http://www.institutdesign.com/infos_mars.pdf
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LECTURES AUTUMN 2007
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THE HARVARD LECTURE INTRODUCED BY ANTOINE PICON
Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD)
Philippe Rahm Principal, Philippe Rahm Architects EPFL. "Invisible Architecture - The Design of the Atmosphere: Selected Projects of Philippe Rahm Architects". Sponsored by the Department of Architecture. 6 - 9 PM.
November 27, 2007
Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall Piper Auditorium
48 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA, 02138 USA
http://sorcerer.design.harvard.edu/gsdlectures/f2007/rahm.mov
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UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design
November 26, 2007
Los Angeles, California, USA
Philippe Rahm Principal, Philippe Rahm Architects EPFL.
" Architecture as meteorology: Selected Projects of Philippe Rahm Architects"
http://www.aud.ucla.edu/
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SERPENTINE GALLERY
15 September 2007
A celebration of the work and influence of writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet. Introduced by Jean-Max Colard and Hans Ulrich Obrist, leading visual artists pay tribute to Alain Robbe-Grillet, who will be in conversation at 7pm, followed by the UK premier screening of Gradiva (C’est Gradiva qui vous appelle), 2006, in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007. Participants include: Michel Auder, Miriam Bäckström, Olafur Eliasson, Liam Gillick, Dan Graham, Philippe Rahm, Sarah Morris, Runa Islam, Carsten Höller, and Cerith Wyn Evans.
Kensington Gardens
London W2 3XA
http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2007/08/alain_robbegrillet_art_archite.html
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Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou
Airs de Paris
Group show
Philippe Rahm’s diurnisme
Curators : Alfred Pacquement - Art : Christine Macel et Daniel Birnbaum - Design, Paysage, Urbanisme et Architecture : Valérie Guillaume
April 25 – August 15, 2007
Photo: © photo Adam Rzepka, Centre Pompidou.
The introduction of the street lighting in the city during the 19-century was at the origin of one the most important social and political revolution of the urban practice and of the form of the city. The ambition was demiurgic: to make the day during the night. The street lighting caused new urban typologies (the boulevard for example) but was also the cause of new behaviors, those of the noctambulism, sauntering the evening on the boulevards, dancing in the balls. It is an ambition of the same order that we want to produce today but more contemporary, more ambiguous: that to create the night during the day. Our project is that to reinvent the night in this continuous artificial day, producing the night during the day, physically. It’s a perverted answer to the perpetual day created by the modernity, Internet and the contemporary globalization. After the “Noctambulisme” we would like to invent the “Diurnisme”, using a yellow bright light which wavelengths, upper than 600 nanometers, are perceived by the body through the melatonin rhythm as a true night. The room becomes a paradox between the visible and the invisible: a night which looks like a bright day.
3.41E
dysfashional / adventures in post–style
Luxembourg et grande région capitale européenne de la culture 2007
April 21 – May 27, 2007
curators: Luca Marchetti – Emanuele Quinz
The message is the medium
"The initial concept of P.S. - a peep-show brought by Luca Marchetti and Emanuele Quinz - joined my concerns of architect. Traditionally in this kind of place, the spectators look through a mirror without silvering, the glance goes only in one direction, the sound is attenuated, the odor does not pass. It deals with what the medium lets pass and what it retains, between the actor and the spectator. My proposal materializes the flow tended between the emission and the reception of information. The fluorescent tubes set out again in a circular way, and in their length. They spatialize the medium. And in the precise case of P.S., the medium is sexy! The light excites the retina of the spectator, it contaminates it in a sensitive way. It prolongs the sensuality of the performance of the dancers who are inside the structure, it carries it towards outside, to the witnesses. Thus P.S. is not a work on object-architecture, but on the interface."
Interview of Philippe Rahm/Catalogue of exhibition
3.40E
EXTENSION GALLERY
Chicago, USA
Solo Show : Philippe Rahm – the descent
Opening : April 13th 2007
Until juin 2007
The project is organized like a vertiginous descent inside atmospheric parameters of space, like the Russian headstocks, in dimensions always more small. It is initially a fall in the temperature while passing the first envelope, then a lowering of light intensity while passing the second envelope, then finally a lowering of the relative humidity. Our project is thus a voyage in the middle of the space, inside the air, a descent relentless in its atmospheric composition, and in its values increasingly smaller, less hot, less luminous, less wet.
The project arises thus, like a lowering progressive, envelope-by-envelope, of the parameters climatic parameters of the space. First of all, a white laminated ground covers a surface. On this surface, a first wrap makes of walls and covered with transparent glass. An air-conditioned machine rejects heat outside of this first envelope, decreasing temperature inside this one. The second envelope is made of 4 walls covered with filter glass that diminish the light intensity by a factors of 60%, decreasing the light intensity inside the second and the third boxes. The last envelope, smallest, is covered with transparent glass. From this envelope, we withdraw by dehumidification, the vapor rate, lowering thus, in this last smallest part, the relative humidity. Thus, each envelope separately lowers one of the climatic parameters of space and one goes down, inevitably, to the bottom of the climate of the gallery.
Philippe Rahm architects
(Philippe Rahm / collaboration : Jérôme Jacqmin)
3.39E
LECTURE IN EUROPE
AUSTRIA
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ÖGFA / Schindler lecture series
Lecture: Philippe Rahm architectes
Vienna
May 4th 2007
SWITZERLAND
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HGKZ / Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich
Lecture: Philippe Rahm architectes
May 16th 2007
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Batiment d'art contemporain, Geneva
"Sueño de Casa Propia"
Lecture : Philippe Rahm architectes
Curated by Juan Herreros (Abalos&Herreros)
June 23rd 2007
FRANCE
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FRAC Champagne - Ardenne / Ecole Supérieure d'Art et de Design de Reims
Reims
Conference : Philippe Rahm architectes
April 3rd 2007
ITALY
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1st of June.
Università Iuav di Venezia, Tolentini, Santa Croce 197.
Dialogues between architecture and landscape. A comparison among different approaches.
Lectures:
1. Anne Lacaton
2. Inaki Abalos and Renata Sentkiewicz, Four observatories of the energy
3. Philippe Rahm, Atmosphere Architecture
4. Francesco Careri
Debate: chairman: Renato Bocchi
3.38E
LECTURES IN USA
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Cornell University
College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
Ithaca, NY
Lecture: Philippe Rahm architectes
April, 5, 2007
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School of Architecture
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY 10180
Lecture : Philippe Rahm architectes
April 11th 2007
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Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture and Designed Objects
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Mitchell Lecture Series : Philippe Rahm architectes
April 12th 2007
3.37E
CANADIAN CENTRE FOR ARCHITECTURE / MONTREAL - CANADA
Octobrer 18, 2006 to June 23, 2007– Montreal, Canada
"Gilles Clément / Philippe Rahm / environment: approch for tomorrow"
18.10.2006 – 23.04.2007
Curated by Giovanna Borasi
http://www.cca.qc.ca
« Interior Weather »
Installation designed for the CCA – Octobre 2006 for « Form and function follow climate »
Philippe Rahm architectes
Collaborator : Jérôme Jacqmin
Partenaires :
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Application "Form & function follow climate": écal (Ra&D - project "Variable environment"), fabric | ch (project's managers, programmation)
Bram Dauw (animations), Aude Genton (furniture design), Tatiana Rihs (graphic design).
Interpretive architectureThe installation at the CCA is conceived as two spaces, one gallery designated as the locus of production and measurement of an "interior weather" condition, and the other as the locus of interpretation of the resultant data. The first room could be described as objective, the second as subjective. The goal is to project an architecture that is capable of indicating possible uses of space which are dictated only by the chance confluence of three climatic parameters: temperature=T, light intensity=lux, and relative humidity=HR), so that T x lux x HR = form and function. The installation is conceived as a study to test the potential of fluctuating climatic conditions to generate new functions, and thus new architectural programmes. The proposals offered here are in no sense univocal: they represent the realm of sheer accident and possibility, one interpretation, and obviously not the only one.
Taking inspiration from the history of dwelling, in which climatic conditions have been the traditional generator of functions, we have also drawn upon ergonomic recommendations for lighting, Swiss and EU thermal guidelines, and ambient temperature levels in relation to a range of different activities and types of clothing: precise manual work, for instance, calls for bright light, while heavy physical activity suggests a cool temperature. Our three parameters are keyed to sustainability-oriented reductions in energy expenditure. Temperature, light intensity, and relative humidity are understood as the three elements of a specific equation which translates into an atmospheric or climatic condition; the combination and recombination of these three parameters suggest an infinite number of possible interior weather situations. Temperature variations define what degree of clothing is appropriate, for example naked at 28° C, light clothing at 23° C, and outdoor wear at 16° C, and thus define the subject. Variations in light intensity define the activities in which this subject might engage in this space, becoming the verbs that animate the subject. The humidity level suggests a space as complement. Each equation invents certain activities for certain subjects in certain places, however these amount to purely objective readings.
Interior geographyIn the first room, space is designed as a micro-geography, as "interior weather" constantly in flux. The meteorological data fluctuate in real time, giving birth to a variety of climatic moments and situations within the spatial volume. As an abstract reproduction of the earth's movement around the sun, the room's light source moves through space, generating modifications of the other climatic parameters via the appearance of micro-lows, convection mini-phenomena, and turbulence. Some parts of the space are slightly warmer and more humid, others are cooler and more humid or cooler and less humid. A constantly evolving three-dimensional geography takes shape, with its temperate, tropical, and polar zones. Sensors distributed throughout the volume are plotted on a regular grid that is projected onto the six regular surfaces of the room, walls, floor, and ceiling. They measure variations of light intensity, relative humidity, and temperature in real time, providing a comprehensive meteorological reading of the entire space as its interior weather condition fluctuates.
These "measurements" are transmitted to the second gallery that is conceived as a space for reading and interpreting the data. Each of the coordinates (a point of mesurement in the space, given by a altitude, a latitude a longitude) is analysed by a computer, which outlines a situation for it; the situations are then interpreted from different points of view: physiological, social, functional, etc. These interpretations initially draw on recognised physiological values, such as the relationship between the temperature of the space and the type of bodily activity or clothing it suggests, or between light intensity and hormonal activity. The data are then freely reinterpreted in "fictions" suggesting new spatial practices, new forms of social behaviour, and new urban and architectural forms.
An "interior geography" is inferred from these readings, which together constitute an "objective" language. We might say (as did Roland Barthes in his 1954 essay "Objective Literature: Alain Robbe-Grillet") that the descriptions they generate are "only spatial and situational, and in no case analogous." Produced in a continuous present tense, the constantly changing climatic situations invoke Robbe-Grillet's 1956 summons to gestures and objects in the fictional constructs of the future, in the sense that they "are there before being something." At the risk of openly contradicting his literary method, we invited Robbe-Grillet to offer another set of subjective interpretations of the various In opposition to his own approach, we invited him to offer subjective interpretations of the various climatic situations that occur spontaneously, as if at the throw of the dice, in the space.
3.36F
MAK - SCHINDLER HOUSE / LOS ANGELES - USA
Opening October 29, 2006 – Los Angeles, USA
Exhibition The Gen(h)ome Project, Mak Schindler House
Curated by Open Source Architecture and Kimberli Meyer
29.10.2006-25.02.2007
http://www.makcenter.org/
Polarized house
Philippe Rahm Architects
Collaboration: Mustapha Majid
Consulting: Michael Terman, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York
Can a modern house also be haunted? Where do the phantoms hide if the house has neither cellar nor attic? Where are they dissimulated if the thickness and the moisture of the walls of the castles of yesteryear are replaced by the fine partitions of plaster and glass? What are the shapes of its spectra? What is the nature of modern phantoms? The threat is always about the immaterial — it always evolves in the invisible, in fields unperceivable by our senses. More deeply, it penetrates the interior of our body and our imagination, and haunts them.
Science — which progressively penetrates the infinitesimal — reveals new, haunting fields each day. Our project for the Gen[H]ome Project is to haunt the Schindler house, to make possible there — physically, chemically — the apparition of modern phantoms and contemporary phantasms. Architecture today is evolving rapidly toward the invisible. The architectonic form is now less based on space than on climate. This is a new, sensitive territory for architecture. The visible — surfaces and squar meters — superposes on other dimensions: chemical; electromagnetic; air, light, temperature, and humidity. The inhabitant is not a passive but an active agent in the process of immersion: by breathing, through the skin, or in the retina. The perception of architecture is not limited to the senses — we must address other modes of perception of space: by the endocrine system, by ingestion, by inhalation. Scientific research is beginning to probe these elusive, microscopic dimensions of space at the chemical, molecular and genetic levels. And in this exploration of unknown fields of space, science inevitably delivers uncertainty — new fears and phantoms.
The polarization of air, which one measures in terms of ion balance, is one of the invisible dimensions that prompts us to question the impact on spatial perception. Differences in ion density are imperceptible; there is no known sensory organ for ions. Research is in progress, however, and with it new phantasms and concerns. Dr. Michael Terman and his team at Columbia University are at work on the psychological/ psychiatric effects of air ion balance. They have come to the conclusion that ambient ion balance influences mood state.
“Negative air ions in the ambient circulation — concentration tends to be higher in summer than winter and in humid than dry environments — has long been contended to have mood elevating effects, although until recently there have been no placebo-controlled studies. In response to negative ion exposure, subjects have reported reduced irritability, depressed mood and tension, and increased calmness and relaxation. By contrast, a higher balance of positive air ions — as is found in artificially heated and air-conditioned home and work environments — has been associated with increased irritability, depressed mood and tension.”
Controlled trial of bright light and negative air ions for chronic depression. NAMNI GOEL, MICHAEL TERMAN, JIUAN SU TERMAN, MARIANA M. MACCHI AND JONATHAN W. STEWART. Psychological Medicine, 2005, 35, 945–955. Cambridge University Press.
Our contribution to the Gen[H]ome Project purposely exacerbates the duality of the house and transforms it into schizophrenia. Schindler house was originally designed to make it possible for two families to live separately under the same roof — in the east for the first, the west for the second. But Schindler house is a Janus house with two faces, where we are amplifying duplicity by polarizing the air ion balance in opposites. In the east, the ions are high-density negative; in the west, they are high density positive. A luminous face, a dark face — visually identical but different in the invisible, open to the phantoms and the phantasms. The floor of the installation is connected to the GND of the ionizers, a large set of hidden units that project the ion flow through portholes set at head level if the visitors are standing, about 1.67 m from the floor. The negatively ionized eastern area is humidified for ion retention, and separated from central air conditioning or exhaust fans. Michael Terman hypothesizes — but are we so sure ? — that the contrast between lowand high-ionized areas will be detectable by effects on mood within about 10 min exposure.
3.35F
KUNSTHAUS GRAZ / AUSTRIA
Opening September 23, 2006 – Graz, Austria
“Polarized kunsthaus”
Exhibition Protections, Kunsthaus Graz
23.09.2006-22.10.2006
Curated by Christine Peters, Adam Budak
http://www.kunsthausgraz.at/
Polarized Kunsthaus
Philippe Rahm Architects
Collaboration: Mustapha Majid
Consulting: Michael Terman, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York
Architecture today is evolving rapidly toward the invisible. The architectonic form is now less based on space than on climate. Air conditioning, lighting and humidity control are contemporary tools in the definition of architecture, especially in the precise, closed, controlled, environment of the museum. This is a new, sensitive territory for architecture. The visible — surfaces and square meters — superposes on other dimensions: chemical, electromagnetic: air, light, temperature, and humidity. The inhabitant is not a passive but an active agent in the process of immersion: by breathing, through the skin, or in the retina. The perception of architecture is not limited to the senses — we must address other modes of perception of space: by the endocrine system, by ingestion, by inhalation. Scientific research is beginning to probe these elusive, microscopic dimensions of space at the chemical, molecular and genetic levels. And in this exploration of unknown fields of space, science inevitably delivers uncertainty — faiths of new wellbeing but also new fears.
But where is the limit between conditioning and control, between comfort and manipulation? What is the nature of modern control? Can the space of the contemporary museum manipulate the visitors? What are the shapes of its control? Where is the uncertainty? The threat is about the immaterial, in this perfectly controlled environment of the museum— it evolves in the invisible, in fields unperceivable by our senses. More deeply, it penetrates the interior of our body and our imagination, and secures them or worries them. Science — which progressively penetrates the infinitesimal — reveals new doubtful fields each day. Our project for Protections is to create a possible new wellbeing environment that could turn suddenly to a possible nightmare. It is to make possible there — physically, chemically — the apparition of contemporary phantasms and contemporary fears.
Our contribution to Protections purposely is to produce this new polarized air environment: a promising wellbeing environment, which could be physically, but in an invisible way, experimented by the visitors. Michael Terman hypothesizes — but are we so sure ? — that the high-ionized areas will be detectable by effects on mood within about 10 min exposure. The floor of the exhibition’s spaces will be connected to the GND of the ionizers, a large set of units that project the high-density negative ion flow through portholes set at head level if the visitors are standing, about 1.67 m from the floor. The air of the museum will be negatively polarized during all the days of the exhibition, except one. Friday the 13th October, the polarization will be inverted. During this day only, the ions will be high-density positive.
3.34E
KUNSTMUSEUM BASEL / SWITZERLAND
September 12, 2006 – Basel, Switzerland
Philippe Rahm and Alain Robbe-Grillet
Architektur dialoge, Kunstmuseum
Curated by Herbert Schmid
http://www.architekturdialoge.ch
3.34bisF
28
Laurent Grasso/ Philippe Rahm
Galerie de l’Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Valenciennes
Exhibition March, 23 to April, 21 2006
To condition the air at 28° C, it is to put between bracket the years of recession at 18°C, between 1974 to our days, it is a return to the climate of before the oil crisis and to find the atmosphere of the end of the Sixties, where the carefree energy consumption was accompanied by manners liberalization, topless bronzing, and nudist desires.
3.33E
"BIG BANG"
Centre George Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, France
15 june 2005 - 27 mach 2006
Winterhouse for Fabrice Hyber,
Décosterd & Rahm, associés 2002
link: http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Musee.nsf/Docs/ID0E64BF36DBAFD87DC12570ED002D801D
3.32E
"Invisible architecture/Philippe Rahm"
with projects of Bauart/cero9/Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster/ Diller Scofidio + Renfro / Fabric.ch / Christelle Lheureux
Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris
12 march - 15 April 2005
Today, globalization and climatic disturbance -- two important mutations of the beginning of the 21st century -- have engendered a deep transformation of the notions of space and time. Architectural space is no longer defined in terms of day and night, the local and the far away, heat or cold, light or dark, but in a sort of global and permanent climatic continuum. There is the same light, average temperature and constant level of humidity everywhere. Architecture deploys itself in a henceforth universal space, projecting without discontinuity an eternal continuous present that is invariable, everywhere the same, always there. The continuum creates spatiality and temporality extending beyond biological cycles, without sleep or season, outside of astronomical and climatic rhythms, without night or winter, without rain or chill. Information is instantaneous, connections simultaneous, and the communications network is global, without interruption. Here and now, but also over there and tomorrow, all meteorological variables have been stabilized to an average of shared comfort: somewhere around 21° Celsius, relative humidity at 50%, light intensity at 2000 lux, like a beautiful Spring day in Paris that we have decided to repeat infinitely, all over the world.
In this eternal climatic homogeneity, architecture is the instrument that enables us to articulate this continuum, to create fault-lines, ruptures, and fog. Making certain climates swell punctually or momentarily, naturalizing a context or on the contrary distancing it even more, creating moments, generating meteorologies, projecting seasons and times, spatializing functions, shortening or amplifying distances, diminishing the length of the day or creating an endless night, here and there, out of time and space. Going backwards, from winter to summer. Working through climatic disturbance, desynchronization, making form appear and modifying it through seasonal shifts, projecting through thermo-periodization, through dormancy or vernalization. Going back several hours, several months, a season, finding this moment of comfort that we lost as the year advanced, going back from winter to fall, from night to afternoon. Architecture as constructed temporalities.
Philippe Rahm
link: http://www.ccsparis.com
3.31E
Philippe Rahm / Décosterd & Rahm / 2000-2005
Exhibition
FRAC CENTRE, Orléans
21 January 30 April 2005
Philippe Rahm (b.1967) and Jean-Gilles Décosterd (b. 1963) "studied" architecture at the Lausanne and Zurich Federal Polytechnic School in Switzerland. They set up their agency in 1995 in Lausanne and are also working out of Paris today. In 2002 they represented Switzerland at the 8th Venice Architectural Biennale. Their work has been shown in many international shows (Archilab 2000, SF-MOMA 2001, City of Paris Museum of Modern Art, CCA Kitakyushu 2004...) and at the Lisbon, Valencia, Tirana, Prague and Graz Biennials. (...)
With the participation of the National Museum of Modern Art and the Industrial Creation Centre (CCI) (Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris). We extend our heartfelt thanks to the Décosterd and Rahm Associates agency for the loan they have made for us.
For the occasion, Editions HYX will be publishing a monographic catalogue devoted to the work of Décosterd & Rahm, Associates.
www.editions-hyx.com/
>>> In partnership with : Emmetrop (Bourges), the Swiss Cultural Centre and 49 NORD 6 EST Regional Contemporary Art Collection of Lorraine.
FURTHER INFORMATION ON :
www.frac-centre.asso.fr/public/expositi/expoante/
2004/compress/rahm.htm
3.30E
"We were already there an eternity of time and all things with us"
Transpalette, association Emmetrop
solo exhibition
curated by Jérôme Poret
20 january - 19 march 2005
Bourges, France
Deeply connected to any production of architecture, there is a will of stability, balance and eternity, which is expressed at the same time through space and in time. The statics of constructions, the balance of the masses, are accompanied by the perenniality of the structures and the standardization of the climates. Architecture generates immobility and inheritance. The concept of inheritance is for the time what air-conditioning is for the space: an extraction of the human environment out of time and the astronomical and climatic movements. With the ruptures of the day and night, with the variations of the meteors, alternations of the seasons, architecture opens motionless and stable spaces, generates a temperature and a light intensity constants, atmospheres which are repeated, days by days, year by year until forming an artificial landscape. Eternal midday, continuous spring, architecture deploys a temporality abstracted out of the world and which is transformed into inheritance, generating cultural geographies which are superimposed on those, natural, of the moving landscapes and times. Our project for the transpalette is a trap in the race of time. It is one moment, which is torn off, to be repeated without end and exhaust, ad infinitum, in the same space. Production of a temporal inheritance, constitution of a space like an eternal return, is showed. It's one moment of winter that one extends without discontinuity until next spring.
3.17E
Omnisports hall, Neuchâtel, 1998
National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Beaubourg, Paris
from 19th November 2003 to 18th October 2005
Omnisports Hall, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Project 1998
Collection of National Museum of Modern Art , Centre Pompidou, Beaubourg, Paris, 2003
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Décosterd & Rahm, associés
Collaboration: Xenia Riva, Janka Pasquier, Jérôme Jacqmin, Bram Dauw, Alexandre Armand
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New viewing of the collection, level 4, curator : Marie-Laure Jousset, Valérie Guillaume, Frédéric Migayrou
National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Beaubourg, Paris
From 19th November 2003 to 19th October 2004
