Cecil Balmond and Toyo Ito

8/3/2019 Cecil Balmond and Toyo Ito

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Toyo Ito: The first time I collaborated with you, Cecil, was the

Serpentine Gallery project. Since then we have collaborated

on a project in Oslo and the ongoing Selfridges project. Ourrelationship is not that of an architect and an engineer but that

of two partners working together on a project. My own approach

to architecture has changed considerably as a result of those

projects. It is thanks in large measure to you that I have been

having such an exciting time.

Cecil Balmond: Thank you. For me, it is important having

met you, because I believe you understand the mobile sense

of geometry I speak of. I have a major collaboration with

Rem Koolhaas, exploring many types of exciting projects like

ZKM, Jussieu, Agadir, Seattle Library... many kinds of projects

in which we explore structure as episode. In the traditional

assumption of structure, elements are uniformly distributed.But episode means specific moments of structure, like in the

Kunsthal that act as catalyst to the architecture. Recently I

have been developing the idea of structure as trace. You seem

to understand more than most the idea of algorithm, the idea

of sequential movements, the idea of serial structures... a thing

that is changing all the time and that is different. I think you

are the only significant architect now who is committed to

looking at these ideas. So, for me it is a very important moment

to collaborate with you. I continue my research, but it is nice

to have occasions to build projects as well. I also enjoy it. It is

the way I have always worked: in collaboration. It is impossible

otherwise. I personally make no distinction between architecture

and engineering up to the concept stage. We are completelyequal in creating ideas. After the concept, of course there is a

separation of thinking, more about architectural concerns as

entrance, exit, color, texture... and then there is an engineering

or scientific concern to check with gravity and forces. But I

deliberately do not think of those things first, because it will

restrict the invention. So the mind is totally free to explore. I

also have a belief that first comes pattern, then configuration,

and only after that comes material, and after that structure1. It

is a different approach to normal engineering, because I think if

we are to explore form, we have to be creating new a language

to explore configuration.

Ito:Would you explain in greater detail this idea ofconfiguration?

Balmond: For instance if you have a table, you put four legs

or columns underneath it, for support. Structurally the center

of gravity is in the middle of the table. We make a diagram for

the engineer to calculate, but this is not about architecture. If

I want to make new space, I have to study the configuration of

four points in space. To create something new I can move two of

the four points outwardly, and change the support arrangement

in plan and section, like the Maison Bordeaux. But the center

of gravity is exactly the same. By looking at the configuration

of four points in relation to the plane, the Maison Bordeaux is

created as a thing of surprise, a levitation. It is not a table likethe Villa Savoye.

ZKM

,

Conversation: Cecil Balmond and Toyo Ito"Concerning Fluid Spaces"London, November 26 in Carlow House, Carlow Street, at 8 AM


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Ito:An extremely static space then begins to move and change

into a fluid space. Ive long been interested in that notion of

fluid space. I imagine it, not so much as an architectural space,

as the space of Noh. Noh is a traditional performance art of

Japan. I dont know if youve ever seen Noh, but there is only

an abstract stage about 5.4 meters square in plan. Actors enter

the stage by way of a bridge. Noh actors always move quite

deliberately. Its almost like looking at a film in slow motion.

The actors movements are extremely slow and abstract butcontinuous. Through the dance of actors the abstract space

changes into a fluid space. Ive long wondered how such a

continuous and continually moving space might be achieved

in architecture. Ive become convinced since meeting you that

achieving that in architecture is possible.

Balmond: I also have been thinking about it for a long time,

how to create a sequence in space through a tectonic form. We

are stuck with certainty, static certainty. Structure cannot move,

otherwise it would be very scary. It is all fixed. But the problem

with that is that we have lost the idea of what made these spaces

originally! The original Greek idea of ratio, a very abstract idea,

for me is like a response to as what you are saying about theNoh theatre. To draw a rectangle, to the ancient people who

5.4m2

Sketches of the configuration of four points and Maison Bordeaux by Cecil Balmond


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started to invent geometry, it was about the energy of one line

in relation to the energy of the other line. It was not about the

shape. Importantly it was a ratio or frozen time constricting

movements in space. Imagine a piece of string and a bead you

put on that piece of string. When you move the bead slowly,

the ratio of each side to the other changes. When you start in

the middle, you have the arithmetical mean. Move the bead a

little more, you get the golden ratio. You can move the bead

and have what is called, geometric mean, harmonic mean. Allof these come from just a movement of a position in a line. So

for me classical geometry is about taking different positions, in

time like the Noh actor: slowly the position is changing. That

is classical. I take those ideas and transform them today into

a more mobile idea of a continuum. And so I agree with you,

I think the movement, the slow changing of space, and the

feeling of how it changes, gives us the dimension of time in the

tectonic.

Ito: I think youre right. The same is true of the human body.

If one observes it in a static condition, nothing happens.

However, the moment a Noh actor, for example, begins moving,

an unstable condition is created. That instability, in seekingto restore stability, calls forth the next instability. There is a


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succession of states. In the past Ive been imagining stable, static

shapes such as squares and pyramids, but for you geometry is

something generated by a more dynamic movement. To start tomove is to invite instability; spatial tension is heightened all at

once. The successive generation of tension makes space exciting.

Balmond: I think that is an important moment, when you

break with symmetry, you have a moment of instability.

Architecturally I think those moments are very interesting. If

you catch the moment...

Ito: I found it interesting, when you lectured in Kumamoto,

to hear you say that in structural analysis an optimal solution

exists only for a certain instant. That is because up to now weve

been taught that there is a flow of forces that is most rational

for any proposed form. When I heard your remark, it occurredto me that what you said was applicable, not just to structure

or space, but to the process by which architecture is designed.

From that moment I began to feel the approach to architectural

design should also be nonlinear.

The modernist approach is to decide first what the best solution

is. One must then design the work in just that way. Deviating

from that initial solution is considered bad. An approach where

one thinks as one designs an approach where one cant see

what the next step ought to be until one gets to a certain point

and one is continually discovering unfamiliar spaces is more

contemporary in character.

Balmond: Also I think if you have a perfect idea in yourmind when you design, you are designing in the assumption

of an answer, which is 99% of what happens. People think of

an answer and they make a design. If you make it a different

way, so that it is evolving in design, more flexible, more as an

approach as you are saying, the interest there is that you get

moments, different moments, as the design is evolving in the

tectonic. Something happens to the space. Because you dont

have the answer in a way, you are looking for it and somehow

that is expressed in the architecture. It is more interesting.

Ito:At todays meeting on the Coimbra project, you suggested

a structural idea in response to the image I proposed. It wasnt

so much a structural idea as it was a conceptual architecturalidea. It was extremely abstract. It was an image of a space of

abstract movement, like the space of Noh actors. Since it isnt

simply a structural analysis of the form we imagined, we had no

alternative but to return once more to the question of what sort

of space it was to be, that is, the original image. We began to use

our imagination once more, but from this new starting point.

Such a process is extremely unstable but extremely exciting.

Balmond: I see a building as a static certainty, but if it is to be

a piece of architecture, it should be a dynamic improbability.

Philosophically I do this deliberately, because everything is

conspiring with gravity to be like so (hitting the table). Nothing

will ever change. Because gravity will never change. It is alwaysthere. How do you explore new for me configurations,

99%


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new space? I am interested in space, as you are. What is its

meaning? How do we move in it? What is it for us? And I made

a statement to myself, like a manifesto, saying: the building isa static certainty, the column, the beam, the floor... everything

is certain. It has to be, but against this, I push a concept that a

piece of architecture has to have a dynamic improbability in it,

to be interpreted, changing, and always being interesting to the

people.

And yes, you are right, when I think of the model for Coimbra,

I see a rotation in space, an orbit, and I quickly talked to you

this morning about electron and spiraling orbits, a particle that

is moving in a line in space differently. This is the abstraction,

and the architecture will be one down from the abstraction.

And the structure of the architecture will be one down from

the architecture. But if it is done well, the structure and the

architecture will describe it. In fact the word structure andarchitecture I find very difficult then. They are the same. The

abstraction has infinite potential. So we can do a hundred other

rings, but only one ring will be made in Coimbra, which will be

a reduced reality of structure. The real reality is the architecture

of the abstraction.

Ito: In the Serpentine Gallery, I was touched by the fact that,

confronted by a new spatial proposal, and by its instability,

people became, not tense, but relaxed. There was something

there that liberated people from the pressure exerted by spatial

hierarchy; people felt free. I was happy to see that.

Balmond: I think the Serpentine Gallery was a very delightfulproject, because everybody who went, I agree, enjoyed being

there. There was something very strange with all the lines of

structure, all these movements. It was yet not overbearing. It

was effortless. A very strange situation. If we made a box, and

put structure in a traditional way, this would not have been

the same. Something happened because somehow, people

realized like a billiard ball on the table, when you hit the ball

they suddenly sensed the movement. Although they didnt

understand, they did feel something. That is the dynamic

improbability I talk about. But of course it is static and you hit

the steel, and little children like to sit on the steel, because it is

chunky.

Ito: I want to ask you about algorithms. In the Serpentine

Gallery, you developed a structural interpretation from an

algorithm based on a spiraling square. With Selfridges, the

columns dance on each floor; that is, the columns all lean

in different directions. The rules determining the angles of

the columns are created by a kind of algorithm. At first, we

thought that your approach based on algorithms was a sign

of a preoccupation with a kind of Western rationalism rather

than the pursuit of randomness. However, you explained in

our previous discussion in Tokyo that drawing lines at random

results, not in the generation of new spaces, but the very

opposite that is, it is apt to lead to conventional spaces. One is

more apt to achieve an unexpected freedom using an algorithm.Id like to hear a bit more of your thoughts on that.


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Algorithm for inclined columns of Selfridges project

Column geometry of Selfridges project

Column arrangement of Selfridges project


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Balmond: I have to answer at length, because this is at the

heart of my philosophy.

First I agree, if we think what is random, it is not random, wesoon run out of ideas. If we took a big square and try to draw

lines randomly, it wont be as beautiful as the Serpentine.

Almost certainly. In fact you and I started drawing lines. Then I

said No, lets go into certain rules.

There is something about structure, deep structure, that

the human mind detects, and if you have an algorithm that

starts with a simple motive, and it begins to move, very soon

you have a complexity, a hybrid condition, a juxtaposition,

in a strange unpredictable way. The reading of architecture

becomes genuinely more surprising, more inventive than if you

worked on traditional methods and then tried to do something

interesting. When you try to be surprising by intuition it is not

as surprising as the answer from an algorithm. So, the beliefI have is, that an algorithm to a rule would produce a more

interesting configuration than if you would do it by memory.

Also the field is huge and you can zoom in at different scales

and find different answers. So the algorithm power in the next

project we do together, should be at its full extent: the algorithm

is also landscape and local event. In a small condition, it is the

pavilion, the building. In a micro condition, it is the furniture

or the tiling. This arises due to patterns having no scale.

Orbits of algorithmic inclined columns of Selfridges project

Points of algorithmic inclined columns of Selfridges project


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Algorithms grow all the necessary detail.

It is intellectually a powerful way to think. The process is

additive and growing at the same time, which is always avery interesting condition. It is additive and also jumping,

conceptually. The thing about algorithm is that it is time-

dependent. As the line is embedded in time, you have speed.

I think the idea of motion is important. I think these are

interesting things to explore in a tectonic.

I thought of all of this to have a different attack on modernism.

I was tired of the minimal tendencies that strip things out.

We can do them, but in the end it becomes more glass, more

minimum steel, more box typology and cleanliness, and it

becomes like a clinical thing as in a hospital: terminally dead.

Nowhere to go in inventive terms. So, I thought of how to

break out of this, and particularly as an engineer, trained as a

scientist. How do you break out of the box, the cage? That iswhy with Rem Koolhaas I began experimenting with episodes

of structures, and consequently developed the idea of tracing.

Episode is juxtaposed moments of structure. It is dramatic. Trace

moves continuously with time as in the Serpentine.

I remember your lecture ten to fifteen years ago at the R.I.B.A.

In the very first moment of the talk, the first slide you showed,

completely interested me even years ago before we knew each

other. The first slide if I remember was of a river, and the

river is flowing. When a river is flowing in turns, every now and

then it forms a quiet moment. But then, if you add little energy,

that point dissolves and moves to another location. So, when

you look at the river, you have still moments and yet constant

motion. I felt in this talk, there was a similar spirit, followingmy thoughts.

Ito: I remember. I was showing photographs of a meandering

river and computer graphics of the dynamics of eddies

generated in a water current and talking about my concept of

architectural space based on the notion of pools and flows. I had

that sort of image of architecture in mind, but there was this

contradiction in that as design progressed, architecture always

became a thing with a definite boundary.

Balmond: At that time I was exploring these ideas and its

really delightful for me personally after all these years to have a

collaboration with you now on the same concerns.I think it is very important for architecture today that we

continue to explore this area. People, like my colleague here,

Daniel Bosia, are completely inventing a whole series of

algorithm for anything. It is amazing what he can do. Not just

me now, but a group of people, a young generation of ARUP

is changing how we think about structure. And it is not about

structure. What we explore here in my Advanced Geometry Unit

is a new Architecture, which in turn is all about deep structure.

I see myself as a kind of natural philosopher! In the old days

if you studied the things we are studying, you called yourself a

natural philosopher. Meaning one was interested in the structure

of things, not the ethics of the soul. And I am interested in how

things are organized. How does the world happen? How doesa molecule happen? And how does a building happen? This is

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what intrigues me. In that connection biology and cosmology

and economics have been moving into a new way of thinking

compared to 20 years ago. Architecture is not aware of it atall. Architecture has no idea that the world is changing, how it

thinks about organization in those areas. Ito-san now is aware

and touching it, but it is a whole area that is shifting. The idea

of string theory is that a vibration becomes the quarks, and the

fundamentals of matter are only vibrations.

I will draw you a very interesting diagram to finish. When

you take a piece of string and half it, this is the oldest string

theory, 2500 years old! and you vibrate it, you get a note, an

octave up. Musical harmony, western harmony, is in the ratios

of various lengths of a string being vibrated, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, the

octave, dominant, sub dominant. Like I drew the bead on a

line, when the bead is half way on the line, you get the octave.

The ratio is 1:2. When the bead is here, you get the ratio 2:3,which is the dominant. A key harmonic structure of Beethovens

9th symphony Ode to Joy is the dominant, the octave to the

dominant. When the bead is here, you get the ratio 3:4, which is

subdominant. Like the A-men notes in church hymns.

The Serpentine pavilion connect 1:2 to 1:3. Mathematically this

is identical to 2:3. And maybe, who knows, that is why it also

pleases people. It was music being made.

I didnt think this as we made it, but it was the simplest ratio. I

recently thought of this analogy.

Ito: On the one hand, architecture is a quite conceptual

thing existing at the leading edge of our consciousness. In the

consciousness, it can be weightless, and three-dimensionalcurved surfaces that twist and rotate in any way are quite

possible. On the other hand, however, architecture is a highly

conventional space in which we have continued to live in much

the same way since ancient times. Moreover, despite advances

in technology, architecture must still be constructed by what

are basically primitive methods. Architects all lacked the skill

or art to reconcile that space delineated in the forefront of

consciousness with that primitively-built, practical space. The

more we tried to introduce a conceptual space directly into

reality, the more evident became the gap between the two.

However, the emergence of structural designers such as yourself

has given architects a new opportunity. Youve shown architects

a way of thinking that enables us to escape the contradictionthat has been our fate until now. There is now the possibility

of realizing a fluid architecture, thanks to you. Still, it would

take only one misstep for one to lapse into expressionism.

Nevertheless, I believe a new, dynamic architecture can only be

achieved by taking this difficult, narrow path.

Translated Toyo Itos words from Japanese to English by Hiroshi

Watanabe.

20

2500

1:2

2:3

3:4

1:2

1:32:3


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1.

9,

, informal

Notes:

1. Structure in the conventional sense of calculation. But for me all of it is the

structure of architecture, of new space, not of traditional space.

Cecil Balmond

Cecil Balmond is Deputy Chairman of Arup. Born and educated in Sri Lanka

and then came to London for further post graduate studies. His interest lies in

the genesis of form using numbers, music and mathematics as vital sources. His

commitment to architecture and design has led to successful collaborations with

major international architects. Currently working with Rem Koolhaas on the

Concert Hall project in Porto and on the CCTV Headquarters building in Beijingand with Daniel Libeskind on the World Trade Centre.

Lectures and teaches at various architectural schools including: the Harvard

Graduate School of Architecture, Yale University School of Architecture, and the

University of Pennsylvania developing a radical programme on the generation

of form. His books include:Number 9 The Search for the Sigma Code which

explores the architecture and engineering beneath the surface of our decimal

number system andInformal a monograph on seminal projects with architects

Koolhaas, Libeskind, Siza and Van Berkel including essays and theory.

Sketch about string theory by Cecil Balmond

p. 46: Serpentine Gallery. Photo by

Kenich Suzuki /Shinkenchiku-sha.46

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Cecil Balmond and Toyo Ito