Video: TED TALK: Tom Mayne on architecture as connection

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/thom_mayne_on_architecture_as_connection.html

"Building elements became part of a connective fabric, the social, cultural, and the landscape recreational fabric of the city"

 INTERESTING POINTS RAISED:

As designers we try to give coherence to the world. 

As architects we synthesis the way the world is perceived. We must  be involved at beginning of generative process.

Buildings that come together through the multiplicity of systems.

Dynamic envelope! Fold out and brought back together. Skin of a building. Differentiate the skin and the body. Morph.. indoor/ outdoor. Activating the city.

Engage buildings as part of the public tissue of the city.

APPLICATION:

This talk raises some very relevant points about how architecture is integrated to become a part of the existing fabric of the city. For me the issues that Tom Mayne is talking about supports the idea that a capital cannot be designed as a completely separate entity from the cities we live in.

The talk also raises the idea of starting at the beginning of the generative process which reinforces the ideas raised in the talk of Joshua Prince-Ramus also, about the importance of going back to first principles and allowing the design to evolve from here. Although I have found the seeming ambiguity of this project frustrating I can understand better now that what we are in effect doing is going back to first principles, investigating the very idea of a capital city and of a parliament as a platform to develop an architectural solution that responds to this.

Responsive architecture is about buildings that come together through the multiplicity of systems. The planned city of Canberra on the other hand involves architecture and design which has attempted to simplify these systems as much as possible (and in a way cull the systems of anything considered unnecessary for the capital to function at the time) in effect losing the complex life of a energetically rich city.

The skin of a building idea is very interesting and relevant to our idea we have discussed in tutorials for our architectural investigation. We are looking towards a solution to distribute the parliament throughout the cities of Australia and for the architectural space to take a form which is able to morph and move around, a strategy to activate the cities.

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