DESMA 9 Event 4 ---- Hammer Museum

Below are photos from a Hammer exhibit of Heatherwick Studio's London-based designs.  Founded in 1994 by British designer Thomas Heatherwick, the studio now has 160 architects, designers, and makers.  International recognition was acquired for this studio after plans for the Rolling Bridge (directly below). This bridge is awe-inspiring for its modernistic beauty while unrolled, by which pedestrians can cross the inlet behind Paddington Station, and its perplexing ability to fold like a roll-polly, allowing boats to pass through.  The description plaque beside the small blueprint plan of the bridge (pictured below) states that it combines "Both infrastructure and public art...[and] captivates onlookers with its engineering and advances Britain's drawbridge tradition". 

Above is an innovative plan for a biomass power station on the Tees River that will serve 2,000 new houses, but with a cultural function and an elegant form.  


 I think that engineering mixed with modern art influences (the sharp lines, octagon geometry, and stark off-white color exampled in the rolling bridge, and the gorgeous, gold-foil-like encapsulations of new power stations) should continue to be utilized in practical applications of architecture.  My brother Jay is an architect who designs modern-style custom homes in Northern California, and seeing this exquisite exhibit at the Hammer reminded me of his passion for beauty and function in the practical world, and how architecture of buildings and homes and public structures is everywhere and seen by every eye, so why not make them beautiful, innovative, and appealing?  Jay became an architect because he has impressive math skills, but he loves working with design as well.  Architecture is one art form intrinsically connected to science.  
 


Here is a high-tech "chair"--a place to sit built by "squeezing heated metal through a shaped hole, or die".  The "warped lengths" constructed from this technology intrigued the studio inventors, who then worked with a factory in Asia that houses an extrusion machine that can exert 11,000 tons of pressure.  


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