CHiLL performs prophecy in architecture. It is an event and phenomenon. CHiLL pertains a capacity to analyze requisite conditions that initiates to set its own rules. CHiLL exploits architecture that flirts and negotiates with the users. CHiLL’s systematic ecology instigated by the user is emblematic of symbiosis of two entities, imagination and realty, that built upon a shared domain of ‘fragility’. CHiLL, hinged on this fragility, envisions a reciprocity of the constructed and the experienced.

 

“CHiLL” interacts to form a game as one of the many gestures perceived in architecture as a distinctive vocabulary. Furthermore, it is a metaphor calling out the undercurrent issues of human existence. Its broader purpose is for users and viewers to potentially contemplate the intricate, interconnected, technological, and mechanical applications employed outside of architecture. The intention here is to investigate how a system that is in opposition to a reciprocal design approach would disturb architectural principles of consent, the same consent breached by human intervention in a natural world.

 

The conditions of the Venice Biennale motivated an original architectonic construct realized to project new experiential possibilities. This calculated approach provokes the normative system and structuralism; however, computation is not the final destination. Parametric design requires us to think in a different algorithmic logic that subordinated the predictable, pre-programmed, and the post-structural. Therefore, the latitude of this provocative experiment is not to answer but rather question- to think what architecture might be. CHiLL enables the action of participants to be performed on a kinetic surface, and poses the question:

 

"What if architecture is no longer a static entity? Rather, it is engineered to be an animated autonomy that self regulates its own destiny as a living organism thriving in a challenging environment. It endures and is adapted to ever-changing conditions by reacting to the external forces........." cara lee

 

The questions posed in forming the parameters and conceptualization of the Biennale construct is relational to the grand salon in the piano nobile of Palazzo Mora, Venice. The four meter tall by two meter diameter volume of CHiLL compliments the symmetry and proportion of the salon with its dramatic verticality, while the two dimensional construction is relational to human scale. Thereby, it captivates the subject and allows detail to perform and communicate possibilities of tempering, animating, and engaging. CHiLL moves beyond a search for form, media, and materiality to construct an architectural dancewerk.

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The exterior surface of CHiLL consists of 228 mylar ‘flowers’ fastened to 3D printed mechanic nerves, attached to a lightweight aluminum spine and operated by a complex network of servo software. The instigator steps into the core space of CHiLL, and the sensors perceive the action and reaction of the instigator’s movements and commands. The data is delivered to the 'brain' for analysis, interpreting 'desires’ and ’motivations’ to the controls of the mechanic nerves.

 

The reality of limited resources, personal/professional conflict, and cross cultures causes creative resourcefulness and persistent negotiation- without compromise. Self-patronage challenges architectural thought, and the service art paradigm. The unique phenomenology of Venetian culture and context informed the motivation to imagine and construct an original installation to embody open-ended associations and a sensibility of light and color. The reality of the climatic perils facing this sea/island landscape cannot be ignored, grimly recalling the fragility of assumed permanence. Imagination and reality are co-conspirators in our constant search for an elegant simplicity of self-similar design units. The surface elements breathe life into memories of Venetian costumes, masks, and giardini.....

 

The sound of the opening and closing recalls the fabric of a garment, a sea breeze through foliage, the crunching of fresh snow, or the ply of leather. The abstract order of blue dots is reminiscent of the color field painters of the 1950s and 60s, who rejected figuration and cubism, and chose to refer back to Malevich, early 20th century abstraction, and nonobjective art, embodying a controlled Pollock, a 3D Bridget Riley, or Dan Flavin illuminations. Our reality of CHiLL is to attempt to communicate through the tasks of fabrication, delivery, construction, and operation.

 

May 26th, 2016,

TIMe-SPACEL- EXISTENCE  /  La BIENNALE DI VENEZIA-ARCHITTETURA, 2016

PalazzoMora, Venice, Italy