Elegance, Attenuation, and Geometry[Colon] Herta and Paul Amir Building, Tel Aviv Museum Of

Elegance, Attenuation, Geometry Herta and Paul Amir Building, Tel Aviv Museum of Art Preston Scott Cohen explores the elegant parametric equations, those based upon mathematical through the eye of projective geometry. He constraints, nowadays digitally mediated. The roots of finds 'fruitful lessons' in the architecture of proportional elasticity are grounded in projective geometry, the Baroque, which offers a historical model which of all the geometries used in architecture is the most of anamorphosis (the extreme perspectival susceptible to engagement with the circumstantial aspects of condition in which an image appears architectural production and reception. Applied to architecture, projective geometry is capable of distorted) and tectonic distortion. mediating the absolute and the contingent, the universal and the particular, the part and the whole. Perhaps this is due to Broadly speaking, architecture can be considered to be elegant the fact that the17th-century method was, from its inception, when it is restrained, refined and precise. But the constituents impure. It was developed for the purpose of being applied to of elegance that lend themselves most readily to the production other fields of knowledge, such as fortifications, topographic of architecture are much narrower in scope. In particular, these mapping and naval engineering. The most instrumental ties include the slender proportions that result from attenuation. between projective geometry and architecture were Attenuation exemplifies a paradox inscribed within both established for the purpose of representation and masonry elegance and architecture. Both are defined as much by construction by means of perspective and stereotomy. objective criteria as by subjective experience. Elegance aims to Two parallel developments in Baroque architecture offer reconcile the momentary and the eternal, whereas style is a fruitful lessons on the possible use of projective geometry as time-bound category. Elegance thus stands in contrast to the an instrument of mediation with particular relevance to the passing of time that is measured by the stylish and the possibility of a paradoxical foundation for a Modern fashionable. Yet, while its reference to a condition that architecture: anamorphosis and tectonic distortion. Both are ostensibly operates outside of time recalls the classical appeal paradoxical as foundations because they involve deviations to permanent values, the effects with which elegance are most rather than rules; both have the additional property of immediately associated are contingent and temporal, and embedding geometrical characteristics within the perceptual thus quintessentially modern. and material circumstances of buildings. Anamorphosis is Attenuated proportions are one of several manifestations understood to be an extreme condition of perspective in of elasticity, the dynamic and continuous adjustment of which an image, or a part of an image, appears to be distorted proportions that in contemporary architecture is defined by from a frontal view and must be viewed from an extreme oblique position to be seen undistorted. Like the attenuated condition that would seem to be an essential attribute of elegance, anamorphosis involves a deviation from the rule which calls attention to that rule. It has been argued that its antecedent, Albertian perspective, aspired to establish a metrical reciprocity in which perspective, the centralised plan governed by the grid of architecture, and the observer are unified. With anamorphosis, this unity is torn asunder. Anamorphosis divides in two the pictorial space of representation, then distorts one and superimposes it on the other demanding the observer move between frontal and oblique positions. In so far as perspective is divided, the observer is disassociated from it. Preston Scott Cohen, Herta and Paul Amir Building, Tel Aviv Museum of The movement between poles is something like an attenuated Art, Israel, 2003–09 space. All of this takes place within a very specific context of Above: Lobby view. The implicitly kinetic figures of the exterior volume and iconological codes and political matrices in which secret the interior ‘lightfall’ at once determine, and are determined by, the disparate meanings are disclosed only to those who can read the angles between the rectangular galleries and the angled site boundaries. Extending towards the sky, the parabolas of the lightfall guide visitors into the anamorphic code. architecture galleries, Israeli art galleries, auditorium, library, special In the architectural tectonics of the Baroque, one episode exhibitions and other programmes. of particular interest to this analysis stands out. There are Opposite: View of the central atrium. Located in the centre of the city’s certain 17th-century facades in Milan, Rome and Turin that, cultural complex, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art poses an extraordinary architectural challenge, one that bears directly on the motion/stasis duality of insofar as they are curved, reunify all of the elements of the elegance: how to resolve the tension between a tight, idiosyncratic triangular classical tectonic system according to a nonclassical paradigm site and the museum’s need for a series of large, neutral rectangular of order. The classical intricacy of parts and proportional galleries. The Herta and Paul Amir Building extension to the museum relationships is manifest anew in a singular, elastic form. introduces subtly twisting geometric forms, based on hyperbolic parabolas, that unify the galleries with their context and simultaneously bring natural Here we are confronted by an objective dynamism akin to the light into its deepest recesses. perceptual dynamism of anamorphosis. 55 Ground-floor plan To a certain extent, the Baroque is the nearest the subject with perspectival and gridded architectural space approximation of anamorphosis in architecture. It can be is replaced by a new subjectivity, one in which the subject, summarised as a battle between firmitas and plasticity. To viewing from the oblique, becomes a spectator of elastic make an obvious distinction, unlike its architectural transformations. This spectator observes an oscillation counterpart, anamorphosis makes its discordance explicit. between norms and extremes. The elasticity that results from But, the Baroque synthesis also involves the superimposition this oscillation establishes a modern, disenchanted subject far of two antithetical conditions – motion and stasis – in a single from the static and harmonic unity of objects and subjects instance just as anamorphosis did with distortion and hypothesised by the classical. From this standpoint, we can correction. And whereas in anamorphosis the resolution of understand that the Baroque is like a freezing of motion, an incompatible representations unfolds temporally, in the unclassical stasis. From the standpoint of the preceding Baroque the divergent representations are simultaneous. In discussion, one can say that the anamorphic (which entails this regard, the Baroque denies temporality even as the idea time-bound motion) and the Baroque (which entails frozen of motion as a temporal category is retained. motion, motion eternalised) establish significant parallels to With anamorphosis and Baroque curvature, the unity of the temporality of elegance that lies between the two poles. 56 Plan 02 Plan -2 Plan 00 Plan -4 Plan -1 Structure Walking from gallery to gallery inside the museum, gazing through the lens of the central space, visitors are able to discern relationships among all interior and exterior spaces. The building is composed according to multiple axes that deviate significantly from floor to floor. In essence, it is a series of independent plans stacked one atop the other, connected by geometrically articulated episodes of vertical circulation. The steel structural system is stacked accordingly, its members navigating the many subtle level changes necessitated by the site and resolved by the ramps and stairs. Cantilevers allow the discrepancies between the plans and provide overhangs at the perimeter of the building. 57 Entrance from the Opera Square Ramped portico Restaurant terrace Museum garden Glass passageway linking new and existing buildings South elevation The parabolas of the facade are panellised into four sided plane surfaces, able to be varied and adjusted parametrically to allow for deviations that will inevitably emerge during construction. The panels are subdivided into stone pieces no heavier than 60 kilograms (132 pounds), thus enabling assembly from a scaffold instead of lifting by cranes and contending with eccentric angles of loading due to the constantly varying shapes. 58 DAL25 - SCALE 1:5 DAL30-SCALE 1:5 ENLARGED PLAN, LEVEL -1 - SCALE 1:50 DAL26 - SCALE 1:5 DAL31 - SCALE 1:5 DAL27 - SCALE 1:5 DAL32 - SCALE 1:5 SOUTHEAST ELEVATION DAL-20 -SCALE1:50 DAL28-SCALE 1:5 DAL33 -SCALE 1:5 NORTHEASTELEVATIONDAL-21-SCALE 1:50 SECTION DAL-22 -SCALE 1:25 SECTIONDAL-23-SCALE 1:25 SECTION DAL-24 - SCALE 1:25 DAL29-SCALE 1:5 NOT USED East elevation details East elevation 59 DAL01-SCALE 1:5 ROOF PLAN -SCALE1:25 DAL02 -SCALE 1:5 LEVEL0PLAN - SCALE 1:25 DAL03 - SCALE 1:5 LEVEL-1 PLAN-SCALE 1:25 DAL04 - SCALE 1:5 ELEVATION -SCALE1:50 SECTION-SCALE1:25 DAL03 - SCALE 1:5 Details of library window North–South section 60 West elevation Construction details. The quad panelised facade thus serves as a rain-screen cladding the roughly parabolic structural concrete wall behind. The stone, though indigenous, gives shape to a synthetic whole that is nevertheless unprecedented in the city. It is accomplished by methods that become economically feasible by digital means. 4 Text © 2007 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images © Preston Scott Cohen 61.

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