Main | In the Bubble: Designing in a complex world »
September 14, 2004
Twist & Build: Creating Non-Orthogonal Architecture
| Title | Twist & Build: Creating Non-Orthogonal Architecture | |
| Author | Karel Vollers | |
| Publisher | 010 Publishers, Rotterdam | |
| Date | 2001 | |
| ISBN | 90-6450-410-5 | |
| Reviewed by | Jane Szita | |
| For the last eight years, for little material reward but with the encouragement of the likes of Sir Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaas, architect Karel Vollers has pursued an obsession with architectural forms that are twisted, curved, warped, undulating, sinuous and otherwise non-rectilinear. Vollers is a true pioneer, although in a sense his work has been vindicated by Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, whose titanium-clad curved and twisted surfaces have popularised the possibilities of the non-orthogonal. Tracing the evolution of 'twisted architecture' back to the Gothic, through Baroque, Art Nouveau and the highly personal idiom of Gaudi, Vollers explores the variety of effects achievable, presenting a range of complex, well thought-out research models, including a number of spectacular 90-degree 'Twisters'. Particular attention is given to the development of mass-produceable warped window frames — the availability of which would arguable provide the commercial equivalent of the aesthetic impulse of Gehry's Guggenheim building. This book unites painstaking research with an unmistakable passion for the subject — to irresistable effect. | ||
Posted by Books Editor at September 14, 2004 09:33 PM