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The Marisfrolg Gardens - A green wall with a mosaic detailed port hole.
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The Marisfrolg Gardens - A green wall by the Spiral Vehicle Ramp.
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The vehicle ramp in the foreground with the green wall and conoid walk in the background.
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High garden walls in the Marisfrolg Gardens.
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The Marisfrolg Gardens.
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The Marisfrolg Gardens.
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The Marisfrolg Gardens is often used for Marisfrolg events, catwalk shows and photoshoots.
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The Marisfrolg Gardens is often used for Marisfrolg events, catwalk shows and photoshoots.
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The Marisfrolg Gardens - Catwalk shows and photoshoots.
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The Marisfrolg Gardens is often used for Marisfrolg events, catwalk shows and photoshoots.
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EPILOGUE
Fred van Brandenburg
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Peta Carey’s Prologue and Professor Brian Stoddart’s Introduction both note Park Guell is not truly a garden. It was originally a residential subdivision
how a 2006 fleeting visit to my studio by Ms. Zhu Chongyun initiating the on land Eusebi Guell purchased in 1899 in the town of Gracia and for which
project, at that point I knew nothing about her or her business and learned little commissioned Antoni Gaudi (1852 – 1926) to design a sixty-lot subdivision.
more from that discussion.
Unfortunately, it failed commercially because it was on the outskirts of the city
At the time of that first meeting I was also amidst an architectural-design style and not on the tram system.
transition. To that point my practice was built on buildings like Millbrook Golf
Resort; Huka and Wharekauhau Lodges; a couple of large hotels in Brisbane In 1923 it was donated to the local authority and became a municipal park for
and Queenstown, and similar others. But I had now already informed my extant locals to enjoy. It was made a national monument in 1969 and a World Heritage
client base I was changing, indeed almost rejecting that approach in favour of a Site in 1984, and contains the remnants of walkways meant to be carriage way
new style based on forms found in nature. routes to vacant lots in a walled-off estate.
When Ms Zhu arrived, I was still in the R & D phase, to the point of having my I had not seen Gaudi’s work since my student days in 1972 and secretly wanted
fingers covered in glue constructing a model of a hypothetical building that to see it again, beginning with Park Guell. My son had no idea what he was in
would experiment with a structural concept based on nature. She must have for. As it turned out, neither did I, because this visit to see Gaudi’s work would
change the direction in my architectural philosophies. Indeed, seeing Gaudi’s
noticed that, and I would have explained what was going on, except the meeting work again told me I needed to push my architectural boundaries much further:
was brief and conducted in translation which meant explaining it all technically
was difficult. ”...If Gaudi pushed the boundaries more than 100 years ago, then there
is no excuse for me.”
So it was that she arrived in my studio, drawn by my past work but at exactly
the point when I was rejecting that style in favour of a very different one. Yet It struck me with such force that I resolved to become what my wife would later
seventeen years have now passed since that moment, and the Marisfrolg call a “Born Again Architect”.
building that eventuated is now nearly complete. This Epilogue recounts how
that came to be.
August 2004.
The story began with my Landscape Architect son Jude and I travelling through
Europe on a six-week tour to study gardens. We reached the end of a rigorous
program a week earlier than planned, so I said:
“There is one other garden I’d like to show you. It’s in Barcelona. And it’s
more than a garden as we know it. It’s called Park Guell. And the work is
not by a Landscape Architect. Far from it: it is by an architect working in
the late 1800’s and his work is still on-going today. This architect’s name
is Antoni Gaudi”.
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Parc Guell - Hypostyle.
That began a paradigm shift that day in Park Guell, as we wandered the We commenced with one of Gaudi’s first major commissions, a house called
wonderland that is among Gaudi’s most famous works. This “garden” like no Casa Vicens (1883) which contained decorative details in ceramics that boggle
other takes you past two “Hansel and Gretel” type buildings and up a flight of the mind. This was Gaudi’s “over the top” version of the Modernisme style then
steps to a “Hypostyle” (community) hall filled with close-spaced columns topped in vogue.
by squat shaped capitals to support a vast terrace that holds yet another secret.
The house was still under private ownership, so I couldn’t get inside to check the
Its purpose was to gather water and funnel it into a huge underground reservoir,
an object lesson in sustainability. structure.
What is not hidden are the structures that you walk over and under, Next came Palau Guell (1886-88), a more measured façade. This was a major
immediately awestruck by leaning stone-clad columns and stone-clad ceilings commission for Guell who, it is said, had earlier become aware of Gaudi by
that defy gravity. way of a display cabinet design at the 1878 Paris World Fair. Guell promptly
commissioned Gaudi to design liturgical furniture and a life-long friendship
ensued.
It was not until much later that I noticed the fanciful mosaic decoration and
seemingly arbitrary colourful cladding. But the structure, the geometry hidden
inside the structures that allowed this early 1900’s work to be so revolutionary
struck me immediately. One instant thought arose:
“…If I can find out what these secrets are – the geometry that allows
these structures to float overhead with such beauty and honesty, and
I applied this to my architecture, then I would be able to take my
architecture in a new direction that could also be inspiring.”
Having spent the day wandering all over the “garden”, we spent the next ones
visiting his other famous works culminating in the Sagrada Familia, his magnum
opus.
I returned to Barcelona within three weeks of my return to New Zealand. Now,
it was with a client for whom I would do my last house design. I had already
completed the plans when I announced this would be the last in my “old style”.
He was miffed, wanting instead to be the first in my “new style”, whatever that
might be. I said he’d better come with me to Barcelona, and we embarked on
another extensive tour of Gaudi’s work. This time, I was more interested in
lesser-known sites that exhibited the origins of his structural design principles.
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Palau Guell Entrance.
Palau Guell was to be Guell’s private palace dwelling in the heart of medieval-like
Barcelona. This was the first time I could see the engineering, the catenary arches
on the façade based in paraboloid geometry, and other surprises emerged too.
The first was in the basement where horses would have been stabled. Here were
the beginnings of what I was looking for in the engineering, the mushroom
brick-worked columns, brick vaults and brick arches supporting the building. The
space was serene. The clerestory windows spilled natural light over shaped sills
and reflected the structures in silhouette. It was almost a place of reverence.
Clearly, Gaudi took great care to design these colossal structures as beautiful
sculptures in their own right. It gave such a calming effect I could have stayed for
hours, reflecting on my past architecture and that to come.
The second surprise was his piece-de-resistance, the interior dome with its holes
that let in light and represent the star-lit sky. This was no ordinary half-round
dome. It tapers, and to do that, Gaudi used a revolved paraboloid geometry
trimmed with paraboloid arch barrel vaults on four corners. The pointed dome
is clear to see where it emerges above the roof space that provided my next
exploration. Palau Guell Basement.
Yet more surprises were on the roofs, as in the brickwork and ceramic chimney
structureswith which Gaudi experimented in forms based upon his geometries.
Here also was another key to Gaudi’s theories, the use of colour to attract the eye.
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Palau Guell - Interior Dome.
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Colourful chimneys on the roof of Palau Guell.
Near Palau Guell, two buildings are within walking distance from La Rambla,
Barcelona’s tree-lined pedestrian street, to the elegant Passeig de Gracia
boulevard that linked medieval Barcelona with Gracia when the fortification
walls that surrounded Barcelona came down.
Casa Batlo (1904-07) was actually a renovation of an existing building where
Gaudi refashioned the façade and the owner’s apartment. The façade ceramics
are fascinating. So is the apparently free-formed roof that pours over the
parapet. The interior spaces holding up the top floors have been renovated to
expose the structures, a series of white painted, soft plastered parabolic arches.
This space is so sensual, so serene in contrast to the visually stimulating forms
found throughout the building, especially the façade.
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Casa Batlo. Casa Batlo interior.
Further along the Passeig de Gracia is Casa Mila (1906 -12) known as La Pedrera, Next was the roof, another undulating space echoing the façade and creating
a reference to the façade looking like a quarry. Just a short walk from Casa Batlo, the possibility to experiment with forms, the most interesting being the “Darth
the two are so different it is hard to believe they are by the same architect, or Vader” look-alike chimneys. These would later be used as sentries on the
team of architects, because Gaudi had collaborators and gave his artisans license Sagrada Familia (Passion) façade, depicting Christ’s death.
to be creative, as demonstrated here by the cast-iron balcony designs.
Here was a clear example of Gaudi using his building to tell a story, a concept I
Gaudi kept pace with change so Casa Mila’s structural engineering had advanced would adopt.
considerably compared with Palau Guell designed 20 years earlier. Instead of
the traditional load bearing masonry construction, he designed this building
as a post and beam construction which allowed the skin, the façade, to be
tied back into the structure. In turn, that allowed the facade to look like very
thick undulating blocks of limestone when it was actually a self-supporting thin
veneer.
Like his other buildings, the roof is supported by slender brick arches, and
although this was also servants’ quarters in an attic, the area is now opened
up to show it as a wonderful space defined by a tight rhythm of brick parabolic
arches.
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Casa Mila. The chimneys on the roof of Casa Mila.
The best of the Gaudi tour still remained at a lesser-known building just a train Below, see the famous example of Gaudi designing the structure as
trip out of central Barcelona, an unfinished work that began as a crypt for a interconnecting strings with the forces represented by bags of lead shot hung
planned major church. That crypt, now a church in its own right, I had to see off these strings, the technique known as the “Polyfuncular model”. The strings
again, having been awe-struck in 1972. show the arches in tension. If you put a mirror under the model, the strings
represent the arches in compression. That was how Gaudi simulated the entire
It is now the church for Colonia Guell, the “colony” built by Guell to house structure, the basement that is the crypt, the domes over the church, the
workers near one of his factories. Gaudi apparently received the commission towers, the complete design.
in 1898 but construction only commenced in 1908 and stopped in 1917, a year
before Guell died and when all construction in Park Guell also stopped. Bear in mind that the resultant hyperbolic parabolic is essentially a 3D parabolic
arch, a form found in nature. That means the entire building is derived from
The phenomenon here was that Gaudi could straightforwardly experiment with forms found in nature. It is brilliant.
all his structural principles. It became my passion to study those geometries in
one building. This was the structural engineering for which I was looking, the
spiral, the parabolic arches and especially the hyperbolic paraboloid in the roof
plane, walls, and ribs that I understood to be the key to his structural system.
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The Church of Colony Guell (The Crypt). “Polyfuncular Model”.
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The Pavillions of the Guell Estate.
OUT WITH THE OLD - IN WITH THE NEW So, the Professor sat me down with a pile of technical books, none in English
but all replete with photos and diagrams I might study. Occasionally, the walking
I returned to NZ, announcing I would no longer continue the work I had been encyclopedia Gaudi professor would come talk to me and I would learn even
doing, turning away any potential ventures unless clients joined me on the new more. Every time I returned to Barcelona he would greet me:
journey. All work stopped. No matter, I visited Barcelona many times, revisiting
all of Gaudi’s works, each time learning more. On the third visit I examined a “Ah...Mr. New Zealand... you are back again...”
building not on the normal Gaudi route, the Pavilions of the Guell Estate (1884),
the Gatehouse complex, the ex-Porter’s Lodge, and the Stables connected by the That Mr. New Zealand was an endearment and we became good friends,
renowned Dragon Gate. spending hours chatting just as Gaudi would have done. The Professor was
happy to share what he knew, our discussions a forerunner for an easy to
Circling the buildings, studying the early Gaudi details representing his Oriental understand student book he would publish later, Gaudi – The Entire Works.
period in brickwork and stucco, I sneaked into the property via a gate opened
to allow someone out. I found the beautiful yet simple Stables Building which I I also remember him giving me some excellent advice:
soon learnt was the seat of an offshoot of Gaudi Architectural Studies headed
up by Professor Joan Bassegoda i Nonell. The institution is called Reial Catedra “Looking toward the future, the lesson of Gaudi is not to copy his
Gaudi, its students mostly post-graduate architects doing theses on Gaudi. solutions but rather to look at nature for inspiration.”
As luck would have it, I had come to the right place. Instead of scolding me as an Professor Bassegoda fortunately finished his book before his untimely death in
intruder, the Professor welcomed me and explained that Gaudi left no writings. 2012. I treasure my copy, and also a signed copy of his father’s book, a structural
Hating pseudo intellectuals, he refused to write the treatises on architecture engineer who was also a Gaudi student. From these two books and all those
that were then the norm. discussions, I learned Gaudi’s secrets.
The Professor told me that, instead of writing, Gaudi simply chatted to anyone All geniuses have drawn simple ideas from complex situations. Gaudi derived his
who would listen, especially students because his contemporaries neither structural principles from simple, even school-boy geometry. To quote Professor
understood nor liked him. For example, when Gaudi completed his studies at Bassegoda:
the School of Architecture in 1878 the principal, Elies Rogent, is said to have
declared: “I don’t know whether we have given the qualifications to a madman “Gaudi is the architect of simplicity, the author of works that are
or a genius”. As time would show, it was the latter. governed by a continuous and logical sense of rationality and
functionalism.”
There is no record of why Gaudi did not record his theories. I can only surmise
that because he experimented so much with models and worked so closely with In explaining rationality and functionalism, forms that follow functions, and
his builders that he had no time to formalize his views and ideas. Naturally, then, why they are so beautiful, Professor Bassegoda prompted me to examine the
the Professor suggested that the only way to study Gaudi was to study those geometry inherent in what we see when considering forms created by nature:
who studied Gaudi.
“...nature is capable of creating forms of great beauty and usefulness as
By then I had visited every bookstore selling Gaudi books I could find, and all the forms that survive, are repeated and which give generation after
works were tourist and souvenir in type. None were technical or advanced in generation of people a great deal of pleasure.“
analysis. And I also knew why: Gaudi’s work would have been a mystery to most.
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I understood this immediately. We have only to walk in a park and note the feel-
good factor, as opposed to city centers where sharp angled architecture gives
the opposite sense.
Note Professor Bassegoda on these thoughts:
“The geometry of architects, from the Pharaonic pyramids to the glass in
the courtyard of the Louvre, has always been the same: abstract
geometry, which means using forms that are rarely produced in nature,
but which are easy to draw with the compass and set-square…”
He was referencing architects who rely on the tools of trade to draw up projects,
the compass divider and the set-square, because that is the easiest route. But
semi-circular arches do not exist in nature, the parabolic (catenary) arch does.
Notice this when looking at a water fountain, the trajectory is a parabolic arch.
Gaudi made that observation while holding a chain by its two ends. Insert a
mirror under the chain, and this same parabolic shape is a perfect arch.
So, I began searching for new meaning in my work, not just for my clients but Reial Catedra Gaudi.(Photo credit: Pere Vivas y Biel Puig)
also for a more important mission, to give joy to the general public normally
exposed to what architects impose on them. I knew one thing for sure, sharp
angled architecture could not possibly bring joy to anyone.
I changed my style. Not just for the sake of it, but for deep philosophical reasons
that I can sum up in a favourite phrase:
“All architectural forms must be derived from forms found in nature.”
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Prof Joan Bassegoda i Nonell. (Photo credit: Pere Vivas y Biel Puig)
THE MARISFROLG PROJECT The key was to figure out how this geometry could be built simply.
For several years I continued to turn clients away, knowing one day someone Once again, enter Gaudi who observed that all these forms can be built using
would allow me to further these architectural principles. That happened when straight lines. Professor Bassegoda explained this during a long walk in a garden,
Ms Zhu Chongyun arrived, then two years later invited me to China, along with pointing out what Gaudi must have observed when referring to nature as his
my wife. basis for his structural principles:
Diane and I arrived as a couple to meet a client I hardly knew and with no “Gaudi, a keen observer, noticed this and all his architecture was
indication as to what she might want me to do as her “architect”. As it turned based on the idea of transferring ruled geometry to architectural
out, the “client” was also a couple and we met Ms. Zhu’s husband, Mr. Yao construction.
Jianhua. We became instant friends, reminiscent of Gaudi’s relationship with
Guell: Friends, first; client-architect, second. He was the first to build vaults of hyperbolic paraboloids, one of the
ruled surfaces, in the portico in the crypt of the Colonia Guell in Santa
That produced one of the biggest commissions a New Zealand architect has Coloma de Cervello. (The Crypt at Colony Guell). He was the first
ever received, to design and deliver a 180,000m2 headquarters for a leading architect to do so, since nature had arranged them since time
women’s fashion label, the “Louis Vuitton of China”. immemorial on the leaves of trees, the tendons between our fingers…”
During the briefing session I asked the translator about the budget, back came I had already observed Gaudi’s use of hyperbolic paraboloids in the Crypt at
this answer: Colony Guell. To now be told these forms could be built using straight-line
geometry, was exactly what I needed to hear.
“Design First; Budget Second.”
Designs started in 2007 when I travelled to China frequently, first with Di then
I could do whatever I liked. And yes, if I wanted to experiment with this new Damien in 2008 onwards.
style of architecture, that was OK, too.
On-site work commenced after three years of design and working drawings
That new approach was now based in the idea that nature uses structural done in association with a local Chinese construction company. The structural
engineering principles in plant growth, with the hyperbolic paraboloid as the engineers executed straight line geometry for all the hyperbolic paraboloid
base structural design. I explained that this hyperbolic paraboloid form is seen structures, and cannoid shapes.
easily in nature, an example being the base of a tree where the roots are still
exposed above the surface before they plunge into the earth to hold up the After a number of 1:1 on-site prototypes, the contractors recognized the ease
tree. The roots are the anchor. That form, the interface between the trunk (the of construction if they followed the methodology precisely. The contractors
column) and the roots (the foundation) is, therefore, the anchor for all our mastered this approach, together Damien and Ash then directed the finishing
structural engineering. (See Sagrada Familia’s Passion Façade, where Gaudi does work with the end results a pleasure to behold.
the same on the base of his inclined portico columns.)
All geometry that nature uses became our engineering principles, remembering
I needed to design this building in New Zealand a year before I would meet the
engineers based in China.
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Ms Zhu and Mr Yao.
ARCHITCTURAL STUDIO IN DUNEDIN
Damien and I assembled a specialist team to deal with the enormous Marisfrolg
project that was approximately six times the size of Te Papa Museum of New
Zealand in Wellington. We located in Dunedin being an effective city to gather
the resources required, majority of the staff members were graduates from the
Otago Polytechnic Product Design school, model-making experts continuously
running digital fabrication tools - laser cutters, CNC routers and 3D printers to
build prototypes of various components of the project.
Those models were essential in visualising the project. This was another
significant revelation from Gaudi’s approach. He made models from which
he produced his drawings. In other words, “Models first, Drawings second,” a
reverse of common practice that became our modus operandi. Our design space
looks more like a sculptor’s studio than an architect’s drawing office.
I encouraged visitors into the studio to observe what we were doing. That
attracted many young people, especially students in Product Design who
eventually sought employment, wanting to learn the skills they observed in
action. Mr. Phil Kerr, the-then CEO of the Otago Polytechnic, also came to see
what his former students were doing. He and fellow supporters proposed an
idea: why not exhibit these models at the 2014 Venice Biennale? This would put
the contemporary Gaudi process on the world stage.
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Model making in the Dunedin Studio.
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Model making in the Dunedin Studio (Bess, Jacob, Damien and Fred).
2014 VENICE BIENNALE “UNFURLING” EXHIBITION
We entitled the exhibition, “Unfurling” with its symbol the unfurling fern, a
New Zealand icon. In many ways, the geometry in that natural phenomenon
represented the geometry in our work. We had already observed that the spiral
occurs everywhere, sometimes clear to see in micro (an unfurling fern, a shell)
as well as macro (the spirals in the weather patterns, even the universe).
The other easy observation is called fractals – the growth in spirals as can be
seen in pinecones and pineapple fruit. The Italian mathematician Leonardo
Fibonacci (1170-1250) calculated the geometric proportions in a spiral growth
in ratio of a steadily increasing series where each number is equal to the sum
of the preceding two numbers: 0+1=1; 1+1=2; 2+1=3; 3+2=5; 5+3=8; 8+5=13;
13+8=21; 21+13=34…and so on. A lmost all spiral growth uses this formula.
Thus, nature uses strict geometry. By now I had also observed that Gaudi used
spirals for his structural systems, and that became our Venice Biennale theme.
From June – November 2014, the exhibition attracted more than 9,000
visitors. The organisers provided their own mostly multilingual young locals as
professional guardians.
Outside the AVB Unfurling Exhibition in Venice.
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Theme for the 2014 Venice Biennale Unfurling Exhibition. AVB Unfurling Exhibition in San Francisco.
We intended to stay for the opening festivities only but immediately noticed the I cupped my two hands together to form one shape to explain this further:
effect our exhibition had on the public. We saw joy on peoples’ faces when they
completed their visit, so needed to stay on and understand why they reacted to “…you will notice that the leaf is strengthened by this shape. Nature
our work that way. has figured out a geometry to ensure the leaf projects itself to
face the sun to maximize its surface to help facilitate its function
Visitors came from around the world: Europe, Asia, the Americas, The Middle – to photosynthesize. In other words, nature is a structural engineer and
and Far East, Russia, Australia and also New Zealand. All agreed on one thing: the geometry nature uses in this instance is called a ”hyperbolic
their love for the curvaceous nature of our work. We had a video running that paraboloid.” These are the same shapes we use in our building… gentle
showed me explaining the rationale for the design. curved shapes that are not only very strong, but also nice to look at: just
as a leaf on a tree is nice to look at, and not only that: we know how to
Some people were surprised I was there in person, at a desk with my wife. The build these using simple school-boy geometry …”
guardians would usher visitors to us or I would wander over to them for a first-
hand explanation. That meant I got first-hand descriptions of why they related to My reference to “school - text book geometry” was deliberate. The boy ran back
the curvaceous forms so positively. to his father, a fist pump marking this as the best day in his life. I often wonder
whether he became an architect. Another young visitor to Venice certainly did.
One day a fifteen years old schoolboy arrived, darting from one exhibit to Nine years after the Biennale, a graduate architect wrote to say she was also
another in a loud and agitated manner. His father implored him to be quiet but fifteen years old when she visited our exhibition. It made such an impression on
he could not rest, so I went to speak with him to end his father’s anguish. Full of her, she became an architect.
excitement, the boy asked:
Following the success of 2014 Venice Biennale, the exhibits went to San
“What is the reason for your architectural shapes? They are beautiful. Francisco in 2015 for another unparalleled success. So much so that the San
How did you arrive at this? Francisco-based NZTE used it as a venue to promote New Zealand.
This was an unusual question from such a young boy who was clearly bright. To
avoid being too intellectual or flippant, I used an analogy:
“Imagine an ant scurrying about on a forest floor, and was suddenly
caught in a rainstorm. So he took refuge under a leaf. He
remained there until the rain passed. And while he waited, he looked
about to note that not only did the leaf shape cantilever from a twig to
hold itself up, its shape is also quite attractive…”
He stared at me. I had his attention. So, I continued:
“…The ant would have noticed how the leaf has a shape that seems to
angle away from its centre vein…
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Marisfrolg Sketch of a leaf cantilevering from it’s stem.
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AVB Unfurling Exhibition in Venice 2014.
BRIGHT COLOURS VS NEUTRAL I took the concept of colour and tones further when using waste material on
TONES IN ARCHITECTURE projects. Again, observe animals in nature. No matter the species, it uses colour
either to attract or distract. A male bird displays colourful plumage to attract a
Gaudi used glazed ceramics as cladding, and these became opportunities to mate or hides its colourful feathers to remain camouflaged. Plants do the same.
place symbols on his buildings. Many of them are on roofs, windowsills and Flowers in summer are colourful to attract insects. Fragrance plays a similar role.
seats, so I wondered whether they were as much for waterproofing as for
comfort. Colour in nature has a purpose and brings joy that we recognise. Not for
nothing do we bring a bouquet of flowers to celebrate occasions or be uplifted.
I also toyed with a similar idea, to use ceramic industry waste on buildings like Dull tones do the opposite. There is no joy in the neutral, drab commercial
Marisfrolg. That might both protect their surfaces and allow the projects to tell architecture we see around us, grey and black buildings behind colourful
stories. China’s large ceramic industry creates plentiful waste that usually ends billboards.
up in landfills. So, too, does the regular building industry where offcuts from
marble and granite sheets are discarded. Whilst visiting a Murano glass factory So, we can use colour for a purpose, like bright ceramics when we want to
in Venice, I had noticed similarly beautiful slag on the floor. China, too, has a vast accentuate a feature. Or do the opposite when we want to distract from certain
glass manufacturing industry that produces a lot of waste. parts of the building by using freely available cast-off fragments of stone and
other materials.
So, using ceramic, glass, and stone waste became a feature in protecting all
Marisfrolg’s exposed concrete surfaces. When placed on the surface of buildings, these materials of recycled waste
become a strong statement on sustainability.
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Ceramics in Crypt of the Colony Guell Facade. AVB Ceiling Detail.
SCIENTIFIC BACKING This makes even more sense when you consider how easy it is to drive a short
The Venice Biennale showed that our curvilinear and colourful architecture distance out of town and within minutes, be walking along well-established
mountain trails finding tranquility and well-being.
created joy in architecture while straight line, sharp and angular architecture
creates the opposite. Luckily, a particular scholar visited us at the Venice People become immersed in nature, a retreat from the urban hubbub that
Biennale to put a scientific explanation on the positive public response to my causes enormous stress.
new style of architecture.
Professor Bassegoda’s words are worth repeating here:
Professor Morten Kringelbach, Professor of Neuroscience and Senior Research
Fellow at Queen’s College, Oxford is also a fan of Jan Utzon’s Sydney Opera “…nature is capable of creating forms of great beauty and usefulness, forms that
House and its curvilinear architecture. His research focuses on “pleasure”, and survive, are repeated and which give generation after generation of people a
studies brain receptors by exposing his patients to certain objects including great deal of pleasure (joy).”
curvaceous architecture versus sharp angled architecture. When patients were
exposed to sharp pictures, their brain receptors showed up as jagged imageries There is more to this than meets the eye immediately. Peter Wohlleben
in a state of agitation, while the receptors of those exposed to curvilinear shapes hypothesizes that trees work in harmony and communicate with each other,
showed up as rounded imageries, denoting relaxation. just as families do. That’s why trees grow in such close proximity. Wohlleben
cites ground-breaking scientific research to describe how tree parents live and
That explains why Biennale visitors experienced joy when seeing our communicate with their children, support them as they grow, share nutrients
architectural models. with the sick or struggling, and even warn of impending dangers.
CREATING “JOY” IN ARCHITECTURE His publicity suggests:
Professor Kringelbach and I were not alone in these observations. A fellow
trustee from the “Olive Leaf Centre”, another of my projects, pointed me to a “…After you have read the book: ‘The Hidden Life of Trees,’ a walk in the woods
TED TALK by Ingrid Fetell Lee entitled ‘Where joy hides and how to find it’. Lee will never be the same.”
refers to a study that claims to prove scientifically that sharp angled architecture
can cause stress, while joy and destressing is found in non-straight-line There is a further point here. Natural forests are a jungle of curvaceous forms
that put us at ease and reduce stress as the Kringelbach and Lee findings
architecture.
suggest. This is the very opposite of angular shapes. So, there is every reason to
walk in a forest as an escape from angular architecture.
NATURAL HERITAGE CONTEXT
So, we know that nature brings us joy by simply taking a stroll in a park, a hike That endorses another of our philosophies promoted in Marisfrolg from the
in the country or the mountains. When you think about it, there is not one outset. We wanted our building to be placed in a garden, and a garden placed on
the building. The Marisfrolg building is nearly complete in so far as the building
straight line in nature. More, there is joy in nature’s non-straight lines, and in is in a garden, but the planting on the building is still to happen.
observing curvilinear shapes in the natural world. It follows that curvilinear
shapes in architecture must also create this joy. Professor Kringelbach’s research
conclusions also include the joy found in music and art as well as architecture as
a cure for depression.
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SUMMARY
My journey began with revisiting Gaudi’s work for the first time since student
days and understanding why it brings joy to millions of people. I have heard this
many times:
“After you have walked through the Sagrada Familia, you will never be
the same.”
That became more understandable once I realized Gaudi’s architecture draws
inspiration from nature both in colour and texture. Most importantly, I learned
that nature is a structural engineer, that these forms we find so beautiful can
hold themselves upright and defy gravity. They can withstand massive forces
relative to their size.
Those forms are also beautiful in their simplicity and become complex when
intertwined, intersected, trimmed and angled in many ways while always
retaining their beauty. All plants/trees have one broad leaf shape as you can see
in a plane, an oak, a birch or any tree. Yet they all differ slightly, one perhaps
bigger than the other, bent or angled differently so that the tree becomes a
complex but coherent form of many shapes.
The most important lesson for me was that these shapes can be transposed
into architectural forms by using simple geometry. This, then, is the formula
for all our future projects whether they be in New Zealand or abroad, like this
Marisfrolg project in China.
Fred van Brandenburg
285
La Sagrada Familia - Interior.
PLANS AND ELEVATIONS
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287
288
SITE PLAN
289
PLAN LEVEL -2F
290
PLAN LEVEL -1F
291
PLAN LEVEL GROUND
292
PLAN LEVEL 1F
293
PLAN LEVEL 2F
294
PLAN LEVEL 3F
295
PLAN LEVEL 4F
296
PLAN LEVEL 5F
297
PLAN LEVEL 6F
298
PLAN LEVEL 7F
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Marisfrolg
VAN BRANDENBURG
First published by ASH productions.
Photo Credit.
Architecture van Brandenburg Archive (1-274, 276-301).
Pere Vivas y Biel Puig (page 275).
Forward text © Peta Carey.
Introduction text © Professor Brian Stoddart.
Epilogue text © Fred van Brandenburg.
Design by ASH productions.
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Except as provided by the Copyright Act 1994, no part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the
copyright owner(s) and the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available by request from Van Brandenburg.
Printed and bound in New Zealand by Bookprinting.co.nz
ISBN: 978-0-473-66917-1
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