Wednesday 13 January 2010

+ Toyo Ito / Tower of Winds(1986)


Friedrich Schelling's famous quote, "Architecture is Frozen Music" attempted to find a relationship between the solidity of architecture and the intangibility of music in his era. While the Baroque, and subsequent Rococo, styles in architecture contain a plasticity and flow of ornament that seems to validate the statement, it does not go beyond purely surface characteristics. If we look at the purpose, goal and process of both music and architecture, finding clear relationships is difficult, though this does not deter architects from finding inspiration in music, and vice-versa. A good example of both is Toyo Ito's Tower of Winds, in Yokohama, Japan, and Savvas Ysatis and Taylor Deupree's album of the same name.
During the day the Tower of Winds stands as a 21m tall opaque object, its aluminum cladding shielding the mirrored plates and lights within. At night the lights and reflective surfaces dance to the music of the city, computer-controls reacting to both man-made and natural forces: ambient sounds, wind forces, time of day and season. The images that follow illustrate the variety of patterns and degrees of transparency achieved by a combination of over 1,000 lamps, twelve neon rings, and thirty flood lights, the last situated on the ground and directed upwards within the tower. Ito created a work of art/architecture of simplicity that reflects the complexity and nature of the city and its inhabitants. His influence is the music of the environment combined with our interaction and effect upon it.
http://www.archidose.org/Apr01/040901.html

We will be designing the time just as we design the space?http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/ito_statement.html

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