I was recently rather enchanted by the buildings of Japanese Architect
Tadao Ando, whos designs at first glance seem incredibly cold and sparse, but on further inspection reveal a masterful interplay of ratio and space, creating expressive buildings that excentuate and invite exploration of the spaces contained within them. The japanese style of these wonderful buildings reminded me of the Shinto shrines I visited on a trip to Tokyo a few years ago; these traditional structures seem to blend into the surrounding woodland, and through the use of gentle lighting and paper dividing screens, both exude a peaceful spiritual feeling, and at the same time, invite the visitor to invent a narrative around the minimal but perfect interiors. I am always amazed at the power of paper as a building material, and the inventive ways it is used in Japanese, Korean and other oriental style structures.
I was rather delighted then to find that physicist Robert Lang has made a scientific discipline of the ancient art of paper folding, Origami. This is not a main post, so I am just going to link to an article in the new yorker that explains Langs fascination with the ancient art, however I find this a particularly inspiring example of the way maths can be used to create sculptures, which are even more spellbinding when you consider are folded froma single sheet of paper.
No comments:
Post a Comment