Sometimes we tend to forget it but even though there are disapointments we are indeed living in the future. Although I can now work from anywhere (anywhere with an internet connection that is) and communicate instantly with people around the world, although in my pocket is a music player with 100 000 times more capacity than the first floppy disk drive my dad bought 20-25 years ago, I still forget it’s the future. Most times it’s techno details like the ones above that remind me but once in a while architecture can do the same thing.
Case in point, The Water Cube National Swimming Center in Beijing. It looks like a gigantic square bubble and some of its construction concept are based on the observation of actual bubbles. That’s the type of thing we’re used to seeing in sci-fi novels, this will be in real life. Wow. You can also look at Santiago Calatrava’s work which is very organic, a lot of his projects look like seashell structures or plants growing and could have been used as sets for Minority Report.
Calatrava’s work in particular reminds me of Gaudi’s (wikipedia) wonderful buildings art, especially the Sagrada Familia. One of my favorite quotes ever relates to those nature related architectures.
Originality consists of returning to the origin. Thus, originality means returning, through one’s resources, to the simplicity of the early solutions.
I just realized that I was saying it looks like the future but ended up talking about the buildings being inspired by nature and quoting an architect from the turn of the previous century. Interesting.
(Water Cube via hippopocampe)