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More Than Hot Air The Lasting Impact of InflatableArchitecture - In the Air
He told a friend who asked about his post-graduation plans that he wanted to form an undergroundarchitecture practice to which she replied like and toy ant farm I had as a kid As Lord who likemay was influenced by Fuller and Archigram said they just wanted to be rock stars Image viaWikimedia Commons
Chip Lord a co-founder of the underground architecture practice Ant Farm with his friend DougMichels said when he graduated architecture school at Tulane in 1968 nobody was thinking aboutworking in an office with the student movement in full swing
By the early 60s a triumverate of influencesBird along with German architect ad structuralengineer Frei Otto and American architectural iconoclast Buckminster Fullerwould help inform ageneration of architectural experimentation The Air Pod an Ant Farm installation at the Universityof California at Berkeley during the first Earth Day in 1970 created an oasis of clean air amid thepolluted environment shared by those dwelling within polluted smoggy modern society an agitproparchitectural event Many of the collectives involved also edited and printed their own journalshelped to disseminate information and designs Ant Farm created a project called the WorldsLargest Snake visitors would enter in one end and as they explored a plastic enclosure measuringthe length of a football field encounter a number of stations involving portable video equipment
A page from the Inflatocookbook by Ant Farm
What may have seemed like another nutty space age suburban novelty utilizing the miracle ofplastic had by then attracted the attention of architects Photo Haus-Rucker-Co Gerald Zugmann
1971 LIFE magazine article about Whiz Bang Quick City
And for many there was also a strong desire to turn these flexible and organic settings into spacesfor experimentation and consciousness raising In 1965 British critic Rayner Banham proposed anUn-House in his article A House is Not a Home a portable dome that contained all thenecessities of life within a transparent piece of plastic with a television screen replacing thefireplace of antiquity as the main rooms central focus
As the material is quite tough this must have required a considerable effort says Ortner Forsome reason theres confluence between portable architecture and communications
Its a fundamental belief held by the designers of the time who amid the cultural tumult of the 60sand student protest saw these structures as nothing less than revolutionary
Perhaps the most public and publicized of these events was the Osaka Expo in 1970 a nearlyoverwhelming display of creativity and cutting-edge design (complete with a monorail and a moonrock display) which featured the work of a young Renzo Piano Wind wants to take the structurewith it across the country so you get into heavy anchoring operation
The Fuji Group Pavilion at the 1970 Osaka Expo then the worlds largest air-supported structure
Haus-Rucker-Cos Environment TransformerFlyhead Helmet (1968) Photo by Iwan Baan
The wave of inflatable structures stood for many different things And different groups andarchitects cataloged DIY patterns and previous designs such as Ant Farms Inflatocookbook andCedric Price who worked as part of the Lightweight Enclosures Unit in the United Kingdom createda vast survey of the movement Air Structures A Survey for the British government
While the more wild esoteric and eccentric visions of many pioneers of inflatable architecture werenever built or were simply meant to make a statement the temporary work has made alongstanding impact on modern design and architecture
It was a means of democratizing he says You can see they were coding every structures they wereincluding saying what are the strengths and whats relevant But isnt that sentiment at the core ofwhat we consider larger architectures mission
After completing our studies we didnt want to waste away in some dull office says Haus-Rucke--Co member Laurids Ortner But the eccentric and eclectic history of inflatable architecture anddesign from early dome-shaped structures to chic plastic chairs and radical installations offers anentire genre of transportable and buoyant buildings grounded in theory and more influential thanone might imagine from 1972
LIFE magazine article feature a plastic swimming pool shelter by Birdair Structures
As Geoff Manaugh once wrote about Archigram the group suggested we could all act differently ifwe had the right spaces in which to meet love and live Its simple to look at an inflatable plastic
wonder and accuse the creator of wide-eyed optimism and impractical daydreaming Someonepierced the installation before the exhibit officially opened The inspiration for inflatablearchitecture structures suspended by invisible particles of air turns out to have been equallyimperceptible radar waves
httpcurbedcomarchives20160121inflatable-architecture-geodesic-dome-design-legacyphp
They offer a bubble-like atmosphere a separation from the world says Andrew Blauvelt curator ofthe Walker Art Centers current show Hippie Modernism which included numerous examples ofinflatable architecture A challenge that is until literally the bubble burst It was in the words ofArchigram member Ron Herron architecture built for change a building that accepted that thingsdont sit there forever buildings that adapt
The Fridericianum project called Oase No7 had a similar utopian and artistic slant part of thegroups ambition to challenge concepts of contemporary architecture Important journals addressedthe movement as it was loosely defined a 1968 issue of Architectural Design titled Pneu Worldhave the structures mainstream respect The government seeking to deploy an early warning radarsystem especially in harsh climates invested in Bird radomes starting in 1946 and constructedhundreds of them during the 50s In 1957 one of his plastic swimming pool shelters earned anincredible plug with an appearance on the cover of LIFE magazine
The organic non-linear shapes of these structures the complete opposite of Brutalism also wentagainst the norm and suggested different designs (during an Ant Farm video one speaker refers tothe flexible nature of these structures introducing a fourth dimension into the design) Created byHaus-Rucker-Co a collective of like-minded avant-garde architects the experimental bubble wasthe work of a group concerned not with habitability but with expansion and experimentation Thecurved organic shapes endemic to the more academic and avant-garde work have become commonfeatures in architecture in the age of high-powered computers and parametric design New ideasabout our relationships to space were being pushed focused around new idea of nomadicism andtemporary dwelling
Often ephemeral and always lightweight by design inflatable furniture and architecture was ameans for architects to make heavy statements about design space and culture The Whole EarthCatalog one of the bibles of 60s counterculture included this overview of the inflatable movement
The lasting obsession with architectural installations was certainly established during this periodand the movements impact has filtered down throughout the architecture and design world
While the hippie associations with these structures conjure up images of longhairs blowing uptuning in and dropping out their inventors were most likely wearing crew cuts and working in themilitary Its easy to take that in the colloquial and infer that the heavy statements about radicalpolitics and shifting definitions of society attached to glorified balloons were nothing more than hotair in Buffalo New York to sell storage shed greenhouses and enclosures to the suburban set In1956 he set up Birdair Structures Inc
Prices 1971 air structures bibliography was 240 pages says Bratishenko
Created during the same era of Marshall McLuhans media studies and a rise in affordable audio-visual technologies inflatables also became props and tools for explorations into technology andcommunications The experiments of the 60s and 70s made way for a wave of air-supportedstadiums such as the Metrodome Look no further than the day-glo plastic forms Selgascano created
for last years Serpentine Pavilion an example of bulbous shapes and transparent forms take centerstage Its kind of like designing buildings as things that people can rearrange a fundamentallysocial conception of design
Germans strolling down the genteel Treppenstrasse in Kassel Germany in late June of 1972 mighthave been surprised to see an unexpected addition poking out of the facade of their belovedFridericianum When the sun goes behind a cloud you cease cooking and immediately start freezingClearly you can tell this would have been the great online resource
Structures created during Instant City a 1971 event that built a pop-up city in Ibiza Spain
There was a link between this idea of lightweight materials and reconfigurable spaces and the ideaof architecture enabling a certain idea of cities and spaces and so on says Lev Bratishenko Editorof Publications at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Prices proposals for flexible enclosedplastic spaces such as the unbuilt 1968 Fun Palace have been cited as influences on both theCentre Pompidou in Paris and the London Eye and a recent exhibit suggested he was one of themost influential architects youve never heard of And plastic inflatable structures are often the go-to format for temporary structures and relief housing This form of fine energy needs to bediscovered Able to be transported in a single rail car and assembled by a dozen workman in justfour days it was a flexible monument to efficiency Archigram influenced in part by developments atNASA proposed all manner of lightweight transportable concepts from the Suitaloon and Cushicleplastic skins for mobile living and the Inflatable Suit-Home another experiment in portable living
The Mind-Expander and the Environment-Transformer were prototypes for the possibility ofexpanding consciousness the cold way says Ortner The following year the US Atomic EnergyCommission commissioned architect Victor Lundy to design a massive double-skinned balloonbuilding for a traveling exhibit in Latin America One of the worlds first independent publicmuseums and a model of classical style and enlightened culture built in the late 18th century the
institution once employed brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the library Frei Otto who elevatedthe shape of a simple tent into complex beautiful structures won the Pritzker last year The nameHaus-Rucker is derived from a mountain range in the region of Austria the group came from butwas also a mottoHuser zu verrcken or rocking or shifting houses Curtis Schreier a member of thegroup who helped out out the Inflatocookbook says they could have been the Bill Gates ofinflatables but were more interested in sharing knowledge But his most important work may havebeen popularizing the concept
Gelbes Herz a 1969 project by Haus-Rucker-Co
Inflatables are trippy cheap light imaginative space not architecture at all The blazing redundantsurfaces disorient one wallows in space In 1972 it was in the midst of hosting the Documentacontemporary art show and as part of the event a group of experimental architects were installinga plastic orb amid the columns and stonework on the facade a pneumatic pimple of PVC foil 8meters in diameter that contained a catwalk of tubular steel
Architects of inflatable structures werent always greeted as revolutionary and their work wasntalways seen as particularly good by critics and the media The Viennese group founded in 1967 hadriffed on the periods obsessions with plastic structures audio-visual experimentation and curvedcritique-laden structures that challenged convention (in 1971 they installed a 14-meter-tallinflatable index finger next to the highway near the Nuremberg Airport) Environmentally what aninflatable is best at is protecting you from a gentle rain military as quickly assembled easilydeployable radar antennae Its best experienced via this video set to a song by Iron Butterfly Itsvery symbolically important
Ant Farms Clean Air Pod had already made a name for itself as one of a loose confederation ofgroups experimenting with the possibilities of inflatable architecture In April 1971 the Whiz BangQuick City constructed near Woodstock New York by hundreds of undergrads and enthusiastscreated a city in mere days with irregular rows of domes and cardboard homes sprouting up in thecountryside (a LIFE article about the gathering noted that when one builder ran out of polyethylenethey continued with a flowered shower curtain) Bird considered the father of the field would go onto collaborate with numerous architects and create memorable structures such as the MinneapolisMetrodome There are no right angles Image via Urbanophil
But for a certain section of the architectural media world these structures were a significant focusTheyre terrible to work in What designers nowadays lavishly decorate doesnt interest us at all
Inflatable Architecture coverage [Curbed]
Buckminster Fuller coverage [Curbed]
Like many inventors and engineers in the 50s Bird would try to take a technology developed andrefined with military money and support and make a profit on it in the civilian world In contrastthat is to the hot way drugs
Changing trends as well as the increasing price of plastic due to the Oil Crisis later in the decadespelled an end to a period of busy experimentation Many designers talked about the sense ofisolation and alienation the cocooning aspect of the structures and removing themselves fromcurrent reality Other inventions such as audio-visual helmets created by Haus-Rucker-Co weremore directly about changing perspectives
A collection of inflatable structures published by the Lightweifht Enclosures Unit
Oase No7 a project by Haus-Rucker-Co
By this point in 1972 Haus-Rucker-Co We wanted to be a glamorous and successful band in thearea between architecture and art
We believed and we still believe that architectural means can be employed to exert a focusedinfluence on a persons physical and psychological qualities says Ortner In the early 60s bothFuller and Otto proposed and publicized designs for massive domes Fullers was meant to cover andprotect Manhattan while Otto had designed a structure to withstand the harsh climate of theAntarctic Contemporaries such as Superstudio and Archizoom from Italy Ant Farm from SanFrancisco Archigram from the United Kingdom an influential collective of publishers thinkers anddesigners who utilized a portmanteau of architecture and telegram and fellow Austrian group CoopHimmelblau spent the 60s and early 70s creating a wealth of fantastical reinterpretations ofarchitecture often in the form of plastic seemingly floating installations The militarys inflatablestructures would soon be turned into a plaything of the counterculture (Ant Farms first experimentswere created from surplus military parachutes) who took cues and influences from the space racethe budding environmental movement and a new generation of audio-visual technology Working atthe Cornell aeronautical lab engineer Walter Bird designed a simple radar antennae protected by ainflatable plastic enclosure and steel rings Some began to see plastic dwellings especially mass-produced models without the theoretical underpinnings advanced by avant-garde architects asimpersonal and a wider movement back towards natural materials rendered plastic passe Musicbands showed us the way things could be Other architects from this period such as Cedric Pricehave been celebrated as much for their finished work as for their theoretical designs StructuresGonflables which linked pneumatics to political shifts came to Paris in 1968 just as the studentmovement reached its peak Especially as the underside of the Oase N7 was about 9 metres aboveground level
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
1971 LIFE magazine article about Whiz Bang Quick City
And for many there was also a strong desire to turn these flexible and organic settings into spacesfor experimentation and consciousness raising In 1965 British critic Rayner Banham proposed anUn-House in his article A House is Not a Home a portable dome that contained all thenecessities of life within a transparent piece of plastic with a television screen replacing thefireplace of antiquity as the main rooms central focus
As the material is quite tough this must have required a considerable effort says Ortner Forsome reason theres confluence between portable architecture and communications
Its a fundamental belief held by the designers of the time who amid the cultural tumult of the 60sand student protest saw these structures as nothing less than revolutionary
Perhaps the most public and publicized of these events was the Osaka Expo in 1970 a nearlyoverwhelming display of creativity and cutting-edge design (complete with a monorail and a moonrock display) which featured the work of a young Renzo Piano Wind wants to take the structurewith it across the country so you get into heavy anchoring operation
The Fuji Group Pavilion at the 1970 Osaka Expo then the worlds largest air-supported structure
Haus-Rucker-Cos Environment TransformerFlyhead Helmet (1968) Photo by Iwan Baan
The wave of inflatable structures stood for many different things And different groups andarchitects cataloged DIY patterns and previous designs such as Ant Farms Inflatocookbook andCedric Price who worked as part of the Lightweight Enclosures Unit in the United Kingdom createda vast survey of the movement Air Structures A Survey for the British government
While the more wild esoteric and eccentric visions of many pioneers of inflatable architecture werenever built or were simply meant to make a statement the temporary work has made alongstanding impact on modern design and architecture
It was a means of democratizing he says You can see they were coding every structures they wereincluding saying what are the strengths and whats relevant But isnt that sentiment at the core ofwhat we consider larger architectures mission
After completing our studies we didnt want to waste away in some dull office says Haus-Rucke--Co member Laurids Ortner But the eccentric and eclectic history of inflatable architecture anddesign from early dome-shaped structures to chic plastic chairs and radical installations offers anentire genre of transportable and buoyant buildings grounded in theory and more influential thanone might imagine from 1972
LIFE magazine article feature a plastic swimming pool shelter by Birdair Structures
As Geoff Manaugh once wrote about Archigram the group suggested we could all act differently ifwe had the right spaces in which to meet love and live Its simple to look at an inflatable plastic
wonder and accuse the creator of wide-eyed optimism and impractical daydreaming Someonepierced the installation before the exhibit officially opened The inspiration for inflatablearchitecture structures suspended by invisible particles of air turns out to have been equallyimperceptible radar waves
httpcurbedcomarchives20160121inflatable-architecture-geodesic-dome-design-legacyphp
They offer a bubble-like atmosphere a separation from the world says Andrew Blauvelt curator ofthe Walker Art Centers current show Hippie Modernism which included numerous examples ofinflatable architecture A challenge that is until literally the bubble burst It was in the words ofArchigram member Ron Herron architecture built for change a building that accepted that thingsdont sit there forever buildings that adapt
The Fridericianum project called Oase No7 had a similar utopian and artistic slant part of thegroups ambition to challenge concepts of contemporary architecture Important journals addressedthe movement as it was loosely defined a 1968 issue of Architectural Design titled Pneu Worldhave the structures mainstream respect The government seeking to deploy an early warning radarsystem especially in harsh climates invested in Bird radomes starting in 1946 and constructedhundreds of them during the 50s In 1957 one of his plastic swimming pool shelters earned anincredible plug with an appearance on the cover of LIFE magazine
The organic non-linear shapes of these structures the complete opposite of Brutalism also wentagainst the norm and suggested different designs (during an Ant Farm video one speaker refers tothe flexible nature of these structures introducing a fourth dimension into the design) Created byHaus-Rucker-Co a collective of like-minded avant-garde architects the experimental bubble wasthe work of a group concerned not with habitability but with expansion and experimentation Thecurved organic shapes endemic to the more academic and avant-garde work have become commonfeatures in architecture in the age of high-powered computers and parametric design New ideasabout our relationships to space were being pushed focused around new idea of nomadicism andtemporary dwelling
Often ephemeral and always lightweight by design inflatable furniture and architecture was ameans for architects to make heavy statements about design space and culture The Whole EarthCatalog one of the bibles of 60s counterculture included this overview of the inflatable movement
The lasting obsession with architectural installations was certainly established during this periodand the movements impact has filtered down throughout the architecture and design world
While the hippie associations with these structures conjure up images of longhairs blowing uptuning in and dropping out their inventors were most likely wearing crew cuts and working in themilitary Its easy to take that in the colloquial and infer that the heavy statements about radicalpolitics and shifting definitions of society attached to glorified balloons were nothing more than hotair in Buffalo New York to sell storage shed greenhouses and enclosures to the suburban set In1956 he set up Birdair Structures Inc
Prices 1971 air structures bibliography was 240 pages says Bratishenko
Created during the same era of Marshall McLuhans media studies and a rise in affordable audio-visual technologies inflatables also became props and tools for explorations into technology andcommunications The experiments of the 60s and 70s made way for a wave of air-supportedstadiums such as the Metrodome Look no further than the day-glo plastic forms Selgascano created
for last years Serpentine Pavilion an example of bulbous shapes and transparent forms take centerstage Its kind of like designing buildings as things that people can rearrange a fundamentallysocial conception of design
Germans strolling down the genteel Treppenstrasse in Kassel Germany in late June of 1972 mighthave been surprised to see an unexpected addition poking out of the facade of their belovedFridericianum When the sun goes behind a cloud you cease cooking and immediately start freezingClearly you can tell this would have been the great online resource
Structures created during Instant City a 1971 event that built a pop-up city in Ibiza Spain
There was a link between this idea of lightweight materials and reconfigurable spaces and the ideaof architecture enabling a certain idea of cities and spaces and so on says Lev Bratishenko Editorof Publications at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Prices proposals for flexible enclosedplastic spaces such as the unbuilt 1968 Fun Palace have been cited as influences on both theCentre Pompidou in Paris and the London Eye and a recent exhibit suggested he was one of themost influential architects youve never heard of And plastic inflatable structures are often the go-to format for temporary structures and relief housing This form of fine energy needs to bediscovered Able to be transported in a single rail car and assembled by a dozen workman in justfour days it was a flexible monument to efficiency Archigram influenced in part by developments atNASA proposed all manner of lightweight transportable concepts from the Suitaloon and Cushicleplastic skins for mobile living and the Inflatable Suit-Home another experiment in portable living
The Mind-Expander and the Environment-Transformer were prototypes for the possibility ofexpanding consciousness the cold way says Ortner The following year the US Atomic EnergyCommission commissioned architect Victor Lundy to design a massive double-skinned balloonbuilding for a traveling exhibit in Latin America One of the worlds first independent publicmuseums and a model of classical style and enlightened culture built in the late 18th century the
institution once employed brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the library Frei Otto who elevatedthe shape of a simple tent into complex beautiful structures won the Pritzker last year The nameHaus-Rucker is derived from a mountain range in the region of Austria the group came from butwas also a mottoHuser zu verrcken or rocking or shifting houses Curtis Schreier a member of thegroup who helped out out the Inflatocookbook says they could have been the Bill Gates ofinflatables but were more interested in sharing knowledge But his most important work may havebeen popularizing the concept
Gelbes Herz a 1969 project by Haus-Rucker-Co
Inflatables are trippy cheap light imaginative space not architecture at all The blazing redundantsurfaces disorient one wallows in space In 1972 it was in the midst of hosting the Documentacontemporary art show and as part of the event a group of experimental architects were installinga plastic orb amid the columns and stonework on the facade a pneumatic pimple of PVC foil 8meters in diameter that contained a catwalk of tubular steel
Architects of inflatable structures werent always greeted as revolutionary and their work wasntalways seen as particularly good by critics and the media The Viennese group founded in 1967 hadriffed on the periods obsessions with plastic structures audio-visual experimentation and curvedcritique-laden structures that challenged convention (in 1971 they installed a 14-meter-tallinflatable index finger next to the highway near the Nuremberg Airport) Environmentally what aninflatable is best at is protecting you from a gentle rain military as quickly assembled easilydeployable radar antennae Its best experienced via this video set to a song by Iron Butterfly Itsvery symbolically important
Ant Farms Clean Air Pod had already made a name for itself as one of a loose confederation ofgroups experimenting with the possibilities of inflatable architecture In April 1971 the Whiz BangQuick City constructed near Woodstock New York by hundreds of undergrads and enthusiastscreated a city in mere days with irregular rows of domes and cardboard homes sprouting up in thecountryside (a LIFE article about the gathering noted that when one builder ran out of polyethylenethey continued with a flowered shower curtain) Bird considered the father of the field would go onto collaborate with numerous architects and create memorable structures such as the MinneapolisMetrodome There are no right angles Image via Urbanophil
But for a certain section of the architectural media world these structures were a significant focusTheyre terrible to work in What designers nowadays lavishly decorate doesnt interest us at all
Inflatable Architecture coverage [Curbed]
Buckminster Fuller coverage [Curbed]
Like many inventors and engineers in the 50s Bird would try to take a technology developed andrefined with military money and support and make a profit on it in the civilian world In contrastthat is to the hot way drugs
Changing trends as well as the increasing price of plastic due to the Oil Crisis later in the decadespelled an end to a period of busy experimentation Many designers talked about the sense ofisolation and alienation the cocooning aspect of the structures and removing themselves fromcurrent reality Other inventions such as audio-visual helmets created by Haus-Rucker-Co weremore directly about changing perspectives
A collection of inflatable structures published by the Lightweifht Enclosures Unit
Oase No7 a project by Haus-Rucker-Co
By this point in 1972 Haus-Rucker-Co We wanted to be a glamorous and successful band in thearea between architecture and art
We believed and we still believe that architectural means can be employed to exert a focusedinfluence on a persons physical and psychological qualities says Ortner In the early 60s bothFuller and Otto proposed and publicized designs for massive domes Fullers was meant to cover andprotect Manhattan while Otto had designed a structure to withstand the harsh climate of theAntarctic Contemporaries such as Superstudio and Archizoom from Italy Ant Farm from SanFrancisco Archigram from the United Kingdom an influential collective of publishers thinkers anddesigners who utilized a portmanteau of architecture and telegram and fellow Austrian group CoopHimmelblau spent the 60s and early 70s creating a wealth of fantastical reinterpretations ofarchitecture often in the form of plastic seemingly floating installations The militarys inflatablestructures would soon be turned into a plaything of the counterculture (Ant Farms first experimentswere created from surplus military parachutes) who took cues and influences from the space racethe budding environmental movement and a new generation of audio-visual technology Working atthe Cornell aeronautical lab engineer Walter Bird designed a simple radar antennae protected by ainflatable plastic enclosure and steel rings Some began to see plastic dwellings especially mass-produced models without the theoretical underpinnings advanced by avant-garde architects asimpersonal and a wider movement back towards natural materials rendered plastic passe Musicbands showed us the way things could be Other architects from this period such as Cedric Pricehave been celebrated as much for their finished work as for their theoretical designs StructuresGonflables which linked pneumatics to political shifts came to Paris in 1968 just as the studentmovement reached its peak Especially as the underside of the Oase N7 was about 9 metres aboveground level
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
The Fuji Group Pavilion at the 1970 Osaka Expo then the worlds largest air-supported structure
Haus-Rucker-Cos Environment TransformerFlyhead Helmet (1968) Photo by Iwan Baan
The wave of inflatable structures stood for many different things And different groups andarchitects cataloged DIY patterns and previous designs such as Ant Farms Inflatocookbook andCedric Price who worked as part of the Lightweight Enclosures Unit in the United Kingdom createda vast survey of the movement Air Structures A Survey for the British government
While the more wild esoteric and eccentric visions of many pioneers of inflatable architecture werenever built or were simply meant to make a statement the temporary work has made alongstanding impact on modern design and architecture
It was a means of democratizing he says You can see they were coding every structures they wereincluding saying what are the strengths and whats relevant But isnt that sentiment at the core ofwhat we consider larger architectures mission
After completing our studies we didnt want to waste away in some dull office says Haus-Rucke--Co member Laurids Ortner But the eccentric and eclectic history of inflatable architecture anddesign from early dome-shaped structures to chic plastic chairs and radical installations offers anentire genre of transportable and buoyant buildings grounded in theory and more influential thanone might imagine from 1972
LIFE magazine article feature a plastic swimming pool shelter by Birdair Structures
As Geoff Manaugh once wrote about Archigram the group suggested we could all act differently ifwe had the right spaces in which to meet love and live Its simple to look at an inflatable plastic
wonder and accuse the creator of wide-eyed optimism and impractical daydreaming Someonepierced the installation before the exhibit officially opened The inspiration for inflatablearchitecture structures suspended by invisible particles of air turns out to have been equallyimperceptible radar waves
httpcurbedcomarchives20160121inflatable-architecture-geodesic-dome-design-legacyphp
They offer a bubble-like atmosphere a separation from the world says Andrew Blauvelt curator ofthe Walker Art Centers current show Hippie Modernism which included numerous examples ofinflatable architecture A challenge that is until literally the bubble burst It was in the words ofArchigram member Ron Herron architecture built for change a building that accepted that thingsdont sit there forever buildings that adapt
The Fridericianum project called Oase No7 had a similar utopian and artistic slant part of thegroups ambition to challenge concepts of contemporary architecture Important journals addressedthe movement as it was loosely defined a 1968 issue of Architectural Design titled Pneu Worldhave the structures mainstream respect The government seeking to deploy an early warning radarsystem especially in harsh climates invested in Bird radomes starting in 1946 and constructedhundreds of them during the 50s In 1957 one of his plastic swimming pool shelters earned anincredible plug with an appearance on the cover of LIFE magazine
The organic non-linear shapes of these structures the complete opposite of Brutalism also wentagainst the norm and suggested different designs (during an Ant Farm video one speaker refers tothe flexible nature of these structures introducing a fourth dimension into the design) Created byHaus-Rucker-Co a collective of like-minded avant-garde architects the experimental bubble wasthe work of a group concerned not with habitability but with expansion and experimentation Thecurved organic shapes endemic to the more academic and avant-garde work have become commonfeatures in architecture in the age of high-powered computers and parametric design New ideasabout our relationships to space were being pushed focused around new idea of nomadicism andtemporary dwelling
Often ephemeral and always lightweight by design inflatable furniture and architecture was ameans for architects to make heavy statements about design space and culture The Whole EarthCatalog one of the bibles of 60s counterculture included this overview of the inflatable movement
The lasting obsession with architectural installations was certainly established during this periodand the movements impact has filtered down throughout the architecture and design world
While the hippie associations with these structures conjure up images of longhairs blowing uptuning in and dropping out their inventors were most likely wearing crew cuts and working in themilitary Its easy to take that in the colloquial and infer that the heavy statements about radicalpolitics and shifting definitions of society attached to glorified balloons were nothing more than hotair in Buffalo New York to sell storage shed greenhouses and enclosures to the suburban set In1956 he set up Birdair Structures Inc
Prices 1971 air structures bibliography was 240 pages says Bratishenko
Created during the same era of Marshall McLuhans media studies and a rise in affordable audio-visual technologies inflatables also became props and tools for explorations into technology andcommunications The experiments of the 60s and 70s made way for a wave of air-supportedstadiums such as the Metrodome Look no further than the day-glo plastic forms Selgascano created
for last years Serpentine Pavilion an example of bulbous shapes and transparent forms take centerstage Its kind of like designing buildings as things that people can rearrange a fundamentallysocial conception of design
Germans strolling down the genteel Treppenstrasse in Kassel Germany in late June of 1972 mighthave been surprised to see an unexpected addition poking out of the facade of their belovedFridericianum When the sun goes behind a cloud you cease cooking and immediately start freezingClearly you can tell this would have been the great online resource
Structures created during Instant City a 1971 event that built a pop-up city in Ibiza Spain
There was a link between this idea of lightweight materials and reconfigurable spaces and the ideaof architecture enabling a certain idea of cities and spaces and so on says Lev Bratishenko Editorof Publications at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Prices proposals for flexible enclosedplastic spaces such as the unbuilt 1968 Fun Palace have been cited as influences on both theCentre Pompidou in Paris and the London Eye and a recent exhibit suggested he was one of themost influential architects youve never heard of And plastic inflatable structures are often the go-to format for temporary structures and relief housing This form of fine energy needs to bediscovered Able to be transported in a single rail car and assembled by a dozen workman in justfour days it was a flexible monument to efficiency Archigram influenced in part by developments atNASA proposed all manner of lightweight transportable concepts from the Suitaloon and Cushicleplastic skins for mobile living and the Inflatable Suit-Home another experiment in portable living
The Mind-Expander and the Environment-Transformer were prototypes for the possibility ofexpanding consciousness the cold way says Ortner The following year the US Atomic EnergyCommission commissioned architect Victor Lundy to design a massive double-skinned balloonbuilding for a traveling exhibit in Latin America One of the worlds first independent publicmuseums and a model of classical style and enlightened culture built in the late 18th century the
institution once employed brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the library Frei Otto who elevatedthe shape of a simple tent into complex beautiful structures won the Pritzker last year The nameHaus-Rucker is derived from a mountain range in the region of Austria the group came from butwas also a mottoHuser zu verrcken or rocking or shifting houses Curtis Schreier a member of thegroup who helped out out the Inflatocookbook says they could have been the Bill Gates ofinflatables but were more interested in sharing knowledge But his most important work may havebeen popularizing the concept
Gelbes Herz a 1969 project by Haus-Rucker-Co
Inflatables are trippy cheap light imaginative space not architecture at all The blazing redundantsurfaces disorient one wallows in space In 1972 it was in the midst of hosting the Documentacontemporary art show and as part of the event a group of experimental architects were installinga plastic orb amid the columns and stonework on the facade a pneumatic pimple of PVC foil 8meters in diameter that contained a catwalk of tubular steel
Architects of inflatable structures werent always greeted as revolutionary and their work wasntalways seen as particularly good by critics and the media The Viennese group founded in 1967 hadriffed on the periods obsessions with plastic structures audio-visual experimentation and curvedcritique-laden structures that challenged convention (in 1971 they installed a 14-meter-tallinflatable index finger next to the highway near the Nuremberg Airport) Environmentally what aninflatable is best at is protecting you from a gentle rain military as quickly assembled easilydeployable radar antennae Its best experienced via this video set to a song by Iron Butterfly Itsvery symbolically important
Ant Farms Clean Air Pod had already made a name for itself as one of a loose confederation ofgroups experimenting with the possibilities of inflatable architecture In April 1971 the Whiz BangQuick City constructed near Woodstock New York by hundreds of undergrads and enthusiastscreated a city in mere days with irregular rows of domes and cardboard homes sprouting up in thecountryside (a LIFE article about the gathering noted that when one builder ran out of polyethylenethey continued with a flowered shower curtain) Bird considered the father of the field would go onto collaborate with numerous architects and create memorable structures such as the MinneapolisMetrodome There are no right angles Image via Urbanophil
But for a certain section of the architectural media world these structures were a significant focusTheyre terrible to work in What designers nowadays lavishly decorate doesnt interest us at all
Inflatable Architecture coverage [Curbed]
Buckminster Fuller coverage [Curbed]
Like many inventors and engineers in the 50s Bird would try to take a technology developed andrefined with military money and support and make a profit on it in the civilian world In contrastthat is to the hot way drugs
Changing trends as well as the increasing price of plastic due to the Oil Crisis later in the decadespelled an end to a period of busy experimentation Many designers talked about the sense ofisolation and alienation the cocooning aspect of the structures and removing themselves fromcurrent reality Other inventions such as audio-visual helmets created by Haus-Rucker-Co weremore directly about changing perspectives
A collection of inflatable structures published by the Lightweifht Enclosures Unit
Oase No7 a project by Haus-Rucker-Co
By this point in 1972 Haus-Rucker-Co We wanted to be a glamorous and successful band in thearea between architecture and art
We believed and we still believe that architectural means can be employed to exert a focusedinfluence on a persons physical and psychological qualities says Ortner In the early 60s bothFuller and Otto proposed and publicized designs for massive domes Fullers was meant to cover andprotect Manhattan while Otto had designed a structure to withstand the harsh climate of theAntarctic Contemporaries such as Superstudio and Archizoom from Italy Ant Farm from SanFrancisco Archigram from the United Kingdom an influential collective of publishers thinkers anddesigners who utilized a portmanteau of architecture and telegram and fellow Austrian group CoopHimmelblau spent the 60s and early 70s creating a wealth of fantastical reinterpretations ofarchitecture often in the form of plastic seemingly floating installations The militarys inflatablestructures would soon be turned into a plaything of the counterculture (Ant Farms first experimentswere created from surplus military parachutes) who took cues and influences from the space racethe budding environmental movement and a new generation of audio-visual technology Working atthe Cornell aeronautical lab engineer Walter Bird designed a simple radar antennae protected by ainflatable plastic enclosure and steel rings Some began to see plastic dwellings especially mass-produced models without the theoretical underpinnings advanced by avant-garde architects asimpersonal and a wider movement back towards natural materials rendered plastic passe Musicbands showed us the way things could be Other architects from this period such as Cedric Pricehave been celebrated as much for their finished work as for their theoretical designs StructuresGonflables which linked pneumatics to political shifts came to Paris in 1968 just as the studentmovement reached its peak Especially as the underside of the Oase N7 was about 9 metres aboveground level
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
Haus-Rucker-Cos Environment TransformerFlyhead Helmet (1968) Photo by Iwan Baan
The wave of inflatable structures stood for many different things And different groups andarchitects cataloged DIY patterns and previous designs such as Ant Farms Inflatocookbook andCedric Price who worked as part of the Lightweight Enclosures Unit in the United Kingdom createda vast survey of the movement Air Structures A Survey for the British government
While the more wild esoteric and eccentric visions of many pioneers of inflatable architecture werenever built or were simply meant to make a statement the temporary work has made alongstanding impact on modern design and architecture
It was a means of democratizing he says You can see they were coding every structures they wereincluding saying what are the strengths and whats relevant But isnt that sentiment at the core ofwhat we consider larger architectures mission
After completing our studies we didnt want to waste away in some dull office says Haus-Rucke--Co member Laurids Ortner But the eccentric and eclectic history of inflatable architecture anddesign from early dome-shaped structures to chic plastic chairs and radical installations offers anentire genre of transportable and buoyant buildings grounded in theory and more influential thanone might imagine from 1972
LIFE magazine article feature a plastic swimming pool shelter by Birdair Structures
As Geoff Manaugh once wrote about Archigram the group suggested we could all act differently ifwe had the right spaces in which to meet love and live Its simple to look at an inflatable plastic
wonder and accuse the creator of wide-eyed optimism and impractical daydreaming Someonepierced the installation before the exhibit officially opened The inspiration for inflatablearchitecture structures suspended by invisible particles of air turns out to have been equallyimperceptible radar waves
httpcurbedcomarchives20160121inflatable-architecture-geodesic-dome-design-legacyphp
They offer a bubble-like atmosphere a separation from the world says Andrew Blauvelt curator ofthe Walker Art Centers current show Hippie Modernism which included numerous examples ofinflatable architecture A challenge that is until literally the bubble burst It was in the words ofArchigram member Ron Herron architecture built for change a building that accepted that thingsdont sit there forever buildings that adapt
The Fridericianum project called Oase No7 had a similar utopian and artistic slant part of thegroups ambition to challenge concepts of contemporary architecture Important journals addressedthe movement as it was loosely defined a 1968 issue of Architectural Design titled Pneu Worldhave the structures mainstream respect The government seeking to deploy an early warning radarsystem especially in harsh climates invested in Bird radomes starting in 1946 and constructedhundreds of them during the 50s In 1957 one of his plastic swimming pool shelters earned anincredible plug with an appearance on the cover of LIFE magazine
The organic non-linear shapes of these structures the complete opposite of Brutalism also wentagainst the norm and suggested different designs (during an Ant Farm video one speaker refers tothe flexible nature of these structures introducing a fourth dimension into the design) Created byHaus-Rucker-Co a collective of like-minded avant-garde architects the experimental bubble wasthe work of a group concerned not with habitability but with expansion and experimentation Thecurved organic shapes endemic to the more academic and avant-garde work have become commonfeatures in architecture in the age of high-powered computers and parametric design New ideasabout our relationships to space were being pushed focused around new idea of nomadicism andtemporary dwelling
Often ephemeral and always lightweight by design inflatable furniture and architecture was ameans for architects to make heavy statements about design space and culture The Whole EarthCatalog one of the bibles of 60s counterculture included this overview of the inflatable movement
The lasting obsession with architectural installations was certainly established during this periodand the movements impact has filtered down throughout the architecture and design world
While the hippie associations with these structures conjure up images of longhairs blowing uptuning in and dropping out their inventors were most likely wearing crew cuts and working in themilitary Its easy to take that in the colloquial and infer that the heavy statements about radicalpolitics and shifting definitions of society attached to glorified balloons were nothing more than hotair in Buffalo New York to sell storage shed greenhouses and enclosures to the suburban set In1956 he set up Birdair Structures Inc
Prices 1971 air structures bibliography was 240 pages says Bratishenko
Created during the same era of Marshall McLuhans media studies and a rise in affordable audio-visual technologies inflatables also became props and tools for explorations into technology andcommunications The experiments of the 60s and 70s made way for a wave of air-supportedstadiums such as the Metrodome Look no further than the day-glo plastic forms Selgascano created
for last years Serpentine Pavilion an example of bulbous shapes and transparent forms take centerstage Its kind of like designing buildings as things that people can rearrange a fundamentallysocial conception of design
Germans strolling down the genteel Treppenstrasse in Kassel Germany in late June of 1972 mighthave been surprised to see an unexpected addition poking out of the facade of their belovedFridericianum When the sun goes behind a cloud you cease cooking and immediately start freezingClearly you can tell this would have been the great online resource
Structures created during Instant City a 1971 event that built a pop-up city in Ibiza Spain
There was a link between this idea of lightweight materials and reconfigurable spaces and the ideaof architecture enabling a certain idea of cities and spaces and so on says Lev Bratishenko Editorof Publications at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Prices proposals for flexible enclosedplastic spaces such as the unbuilt 1968 Fun Palace have been cited as influences on both theCentre Pompidou in Paris and the London Eye and a recent exhibit suggested he was one of themost influential architects youve never heard of And plastic inflatable structures are often the go-to format for temporary structures and relief housing This form of fine energy needs to bediscovered Able to be transported in a single rail car and assembled by a dozen workman in justfour days it was a flexible monument to efficiency Archigram influenced in part by developments atNASA proposed all manner of lightweight transportable concepts from the Suitaloon and Cushicleplastic skins for mobile living and the Inflatable Suit-Home another experiment in portable living
The Mind-Expander and the Environment-Transformer were prototypes for the possibility ofexpanding consciousness the cold way says Ortner The following year the US Atomic EnergyCommission commissioned architect Victor Lundy to design a massive double-skinned balloonbuilding for a traveling exhibit in Latin America One of the worlds first independent publicmuseums and a model of classical style and enlightened culture built in the late 18th century the
institution once employed brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the library Frei Otto who elevatedthe shape of a simple tent into complex beautiful structures won the Pritzker last year The nameHaus-Rucker is derived from a mountain range in the region of Austria the group came from butwas also a mottoHuser zu verrcken or rocking or shifting houses Curtis Schreier a member of thegroup who helped out out the Inflatocookbook says they could have been the Bill Gates ofinflatables but were more interested in sharing knowledge But his most important work may havebeen popularizing the concept
Gelbes Herz a 1969 project by Haus-Rucker-Co
Inflatables are trippy cheap light imaginative space not architecture at all The blazing redundantsurfaces disorient one wallows in space In 1972 it was in the midst of hosting the Documentacontemporary art show and as part of the event a group of experimental architects were installinga plastic orb amid the columns and stonework on the facade a pneumatic pimple of PVC foil 8meters in diameter that contained a catwalk of tubular steel
Architects of inflatable structures werent always greeted as revolutionary and their work wasntalways seen as particularly good by critics and the media The Viennese group founded in 1967 hadriffed on the periods obsessions with plastic structures audio-visual experimentation and curvedcritique-laden structures that challenged convention (in 1971 they installed a 14-meter-tallinflatable index finger next to the highway near the Nuremberg Airport) Environmentally what aninflatable is best at is protecting you from a gentle rain military as quickly assembled easilydeployable radar antennae Its best experienced via this video set to a song by Iron Butterfly Itsvery symbolically important
Ant Farms Clean Air Pod had already made a name for itself as one of a loose confederation ofgroups experimenting with the possibilities of inflatable architecture In April 1971 the Whiz BangQuick City constructed near Woodstock New York by hundreds of undergrads and enthusiastscreated a city in mere days with irregular rows of domes and cardboard homes sprouting up in thecountryside (a LIFE article about the gathering noted that when one builder ran out of polyethylenethey continued with a flowered shower curtain) Bird considered the father of the field would go onto collaborate with numerous architects and create memorable structures such as the MinneapolisMetrodome There are no right angles Image via Urbanophil
But for a certain section of the architectural media world these structures were a significant focusTheyre terrible to work in What designers nowadays lavishly decorate doesnt interest us at all
Inflatable Architecture coverage [Curbed]
Buckminster Fuller coverage [Curbed]
Like many inventors and engineers in the 50s Bird would try to take a technology developed andrefined with military money and support and make a profit on it in the civilian world In contrastthat is to the hot way drugs
Changing trends as well as the increasing price of plastic due to the Oil Crisis later in the decadespelled an end to a period of busy experimentation Many designers talked about the sense ofisolation and alienation the cocooning aspect of the structures and removing themselves fromcurrent reality Other inventions such as audio-visual helmets created by Haus-Rucker-Co weremore directly about changing perspectives
A collection of inflatable structures published by the Lightweifht Enclosures Unit
Oase No7 a project by Haus-Rucker-Co
By this point in 1972 Haus-Rucker-Co We wanted to be a glamorous and successful band in thearea between architecture and art
We believed and we still believe that architectural means can be employed to exert a focusedinfluence on a persons physical and psychological qualities says Ortner In the early 60s bothFuller and Otto proposed and publicized designs for massive domes Fullers was meant to cover andprotect Manhattan while Otto had designed a structure to withstand the harsh climate of theAntarctic Contemporaries such as Superstudio and Archizoom from Italy Ant Farm from SanFrancisco Archigram from the United Kingdom an influential collective of publishers thinkers anddesigners who utilized a portmanteau of architecture and telegram and fellow Austrian group CoopHimmelblau spent the 60s and early 70s creating a wealth of fantastical reinterpretations ofarchitecture often in the form of plastic seemingly floating installations The militarys inflatablestructures would soon be turned into a plaything of the counterculture (Ant Farms first experimentswere created from surplus military parachutes) who took cues and influences from the space racethe budding environmental movement and a new generation of audio-visual technology Working atthe Cornell aeronautical lab engineer Walter Bird designed a simple radar antennae protected by ainflatable plastic enclosure and steel rings Some began to see plastic dwellings especially mass-produced models without the theoretical underpinnings advanced by avant-garde architects asimpersonal and a wider movement back towards natural materials rendered plastic passe Musicbands showed us the way things could be Other architects from this period such as Cedric Pricehave been celebrated as much for their finished work as for their theoretical designs StructuresGonflables which linked pneumatics to political shifts came to Paris in 1968 just as the studentmovement reached its peak Especially as the underside of the Oase N7 was about 9 metres aboveground level
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
LIFE magazine article feature a plastic swimming pool shelter by Birdair Structures
As Geoff Manaugh once wrote about Archigram the group suggested we could all act differently ifwe had the right spaces in which to meet love and live Its simple to look at an inflatable plastic
wonder and accuse the creator of wide-eyed optimism and impractical daydreaming Someonepierced the installation before the exhibit officially opened The inspiration for inflatablearchitecture structures suspended by invisible particles of air turns out to have been equallyimperceptible radar waves
httpcurbedcomarchives20160121inflatable-architecture-geodesic-dome-design-legacyphp
They offer a bubble-like atmosphere a separation from the world says Andrew Blauvelt curator ofthe Walker Art Centers current show Hippie Modernism which included numerous examples ofinflatable architecture A challenge that is until literally the bubble burst It was in the words ofArchigram member Ron Herron architecture built for change a building that accepted that thingsdont sit there forever buildings that adapt
The Fridericianum project called Oase No7 had a similar utopian and artistic slant part of thegroups ambition to challenge concepts of contemporary architecture Important journals addressedthe movement as it was loosely defined a 1968 issue of Architectural Design titled Pneu Worldhave the structures mainstream respect The government seeking to deploy an early warning radarsystem especially in harsh climates invested in Bird radomes starting in 1946 and constructedhundreds of them during the 50s In 1957 one of his plastic swimming pool shelters earned anincredible plug with an appearance on the cover of LIFE magazine
The organic non-linear shapes of these structures the complete opposite of Brutalism also wentagainst the norm and suggested different designs (during an Ant Farm video one speaker refers tothe flexible nature of these structures introducing a fourth dimension into the design) Created byHaus-Rucker-Co a collective of like-minded avant-garde architects the experimental bubble wasthe work of a group concerned not with habitability but with expansion and experimentation Thecurved organic shapes endemic to the more academic and avant-garde work have become commonfeatures in architecture in the age of high-powered computers and parametric design New ideasabout our relationships to space were being pushed focused around new idea of nomadicism andtemporary dwelling
Often ephemeral and always lightweight by design inflatable furniture and architecture was ameans for architects to make heavy statements about design space and culture The Whole EarthCatalog one of the bibles of 60s counterculture included this overview of the inflatable movement
The lasting obsession with architectural installations was certainly established during this periodand the movements impact has filtered down throughout the architecture and design world
While the hippie associations with these structures conjure up images of longhairs blowing uptuning in and dropping out their inventors were most likely wearing crew cuts and working in themilitary Its easy to take that in the colloquial and infer that the heavy statements about radicalpolitics and shifting definitions of society attached to glorified balloons were nothing more than hotair in Buffalo New York to sell storage shed greenhouses and enclosures to the suburban set In1956 he set up Birdair Structures Inc
Prices 1971 air structures bibliography was 240 pages says Bratishenko
Created during the same era of Marshall McLuhans media studies and a rise in affordable audio-visual technologies inflatables also became props and tools for explorations into technology andcommunications The experiments of the 60s and 70s made way for a wave of air-supportedstadiums such as the Metrodome Look no further than the day-glo plastic forms Selgascano created
for last years Serpentine Pavilion an example of bulbous shapes and transparent forms take centerstage Its kind of like designing buildings as things that people can rearrange a fundamentallysocial conception of design
Germans strolling down the genteel Treppenstrasse in Kassel Germany in late June of 1972 mighthave been surprised to see an unexpected addition poking out of the facade of their belovedFridericianum When the sun goes behind a cloud you cease cooking and immediately start freezingClearly you can tell this would have been the great online resource
Structures created during Instant City a 1971 event that built a pop-up city in Ibiza Spain
There was a link between this idea of lightweight materials and reconfigurable spaces and the ideaof architecture enabling a certain idea of cities and spaces and so on says Lev Bratishenko Editorof Publications at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Prices proposals for flexible enclosedplastic spaces such as the unbuilt 1968 Fun Palace have been cited as influences on both theCentre Pompidou in Paris and the London Eye and a recent exhibit suggested he was one of themost influential architects youve never heard of And plastic inflatable structures are often the go-to format for temporary structures and relief housing This form of fine energy needs to bediscovered Able to be transported in a single rail car and assembled by a dozen workman in justfour days it was a flexible monument to efficiency Archigram influenced in part by developments atNASA proposed all manner of lightweight transportable concepts from the Suitaloon and Cushicleplastic skins for mobile living and the Inflatable Suit-Home another experiment in portable living
The Mind-Expander and the Environment-Transformer were prototypes for the possibility ofexpanding consciousness the cold way says Ortner The following year the US Atomic EnergyCommission commissioned architect Victor Lundy to design a massive double-skinned balloonbuilding for a traveling exhibit in Latin America One of the worlds first independent publicmuseums and a model of classical style and enlightened culture built in the late 18th century the
institution once employed brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the library Frei Otto who elevatedthe shape of a simple tent into complex beautiful structures won the Pritzker last year The nameHaus-Rucker is derived from a mountain range in the region of Austria the group came from butwas also a mottoHuser zu verrcken or rocking or shifting houses Curtis Schreier a member of thegroup who helped out out the Inflatocookbook says they could have been the Bill Gates ofinflatables but were more interested in sharing knowledge But his most important work may havebeen popularizing the concept
Gelbes Herz a 1969 project by Haus-Rucker-Co
Inflatables are trippy cheap light imaginative space not architecture at all The blazing redundantsurfaces disorient one wallows in space In 1972 it was in the midst of hosting the Documentacontemporary art show and as part of the event a group of experimental architects were installinga plastic orb amid the columns and stonework on the facade a pneumatic pimple of PVC foil 8meters in diameter that contained a catwalk of tubular steel
Architects of inflatable structures werent always greeted as revolutionary and their work wasntalways seen as particularly good by critics and the media The Viennese group founded in 1967 hadriffed on the periods obsessions with plastic structures audio-visual experimentation and curvedcritique-laden structures that challenged convention (in 1971 they installed a 14-meter-tallinflatable index finger next to the highway near the Nuremberg Airport) Environmentally what aninflatable is best at is protecting you from a gentle rain military as quickly assembled easilydeployable radar antennae Its best experienced via this video set to a song by Iron Butterfly Itsvery symbolically important
Ant Farms Clean Air Pod had already made a name for itself as one of a loose confederation ofgroups experimenting with the possibilities of inflatable architecture In April 1971 the Whiz BangQuick City constructed near Woodstock New York by hundreds of undergrads and enthusiastscreated a city in mere days with irregular rows of domes and cardboard homes sprouting up in thecountryside (a LIFE article about the gathering noted that when one builder ran out of polyethylenethey continued with a flowered shower curtain) Bird considered the father of the field would go onto collaborate with numerous architects and create memorable structures such as the MinneapolisMetrodome There are no right angles Image via Urbanophil
But for a certain section of the architectural media world these structures were a significant focusTheyre terrible to work in What designers nowadays lavishly decorate doesnt interest us at all
Inflatable Architecture coverage [Curbed]
Buckminster Fuller coverage [Curbed]
Like many inventors and engineers in the 50s Bird would try to take a technology developed andrefined with military money and support and make a profit on it in the civilian world In contrastthat is to the hot way drugs
Changing trends as well as the increasing price of plastic due to the Oil Crisis later in the decadespelled an end to a period of busy experimentation Many designers talked about the sense ofisolation and alienation the cocooning aspect of the structures and removing themselves fromcurrent reality Other inventions such as audio-visual helmets created by Haus-Rucker-Co weremore directly about changing perspectives
A collection of inflatable structures published by the Lightweifht Enclosures Unit
Oase No7 a project by Haus-Rucker-Co
By this point in 1972 Haus-Rucker-Co We wanted to be a glamorous and successful band in thearea between architecture and art
We believed and we still believe that architectural means can be employed to exert a focusedinfluence on a persons physical and psychological qualities says Ortner In the early 60s bothFuller and Otto proposed and publicized designs for massive domes Fullers was meant to cover andprotect Manhattan while Otto had designed a structure to withstand the harsh climate of theAntarctic Contemporaries such as Superstudio and Archizoom from Italy Ant Farm from SanFrancisco Archigram from the United Kingdom an influential collective of publishers thinkers anddesigners who utilized a portmanteau of architecture and telegram and fellow Austrian group CoopHimmelblau spent the 60s and early 70s creating a wealth of fantastical reinterpretations ofarchitecture often in the form of plastic seemingly floating installations The militarys inflatablestructures would soon be turned into a plaything of the counterculture (Ant Farms first experimentswere created from surplus military parachutes) who took cues and influences from the space racethe budding environmental movement and a new generation of audio-visual technology Working atthe Cornell aeronautical lab engineer Walter Bird designed a simple radar antennae protected by ainflatable plastic enclosure and steel rings Some began to see plastic dwellings especially mass-produced models without the theoretical underpinnings advanced by avant-garde architects asimpersonal and a wider movement back towards natural materials rendered plastic passe Musicbands showed us the way things could be Other architects from this period such as Cedric Pricehave been celebrated as much for their finished work as for their theoretical designs StructuresGonflables which linked pneumatics to political shifts came to Paris in 1968 just as the studentmovement reached its peak Especially as the underside of the Oase N7 was about 9 metres aboveground level
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
wonder and accuse the creator of wide-eyed optimism and impractical daydreaming Someonepierced the installation before the exhibit officially opened The inspiration for inflatablearchitecture structures suspended by invisible particles of air turns out to have been equallyimperceptible radar waves
httpcurbedcomarchives20160121inflatable-architecture-geodesic-dome-design-legacyphp
They offer a bubble-like atmosphere a separation from the world says Andrew Blauvelt curator ofthe Walker Art Centers current show Hippie Modernism which included numerous examples ofinflatable architecture A challenge that is until literally the bubble burst It was in the words ofArchigram member Ron Herron architecture built for change a building that accepted that thingsdont sit there forever buildings that adapt
The Fridericianum project called Oase No7 had a similar utopian and artistic slant part of thegroups ambition to challenge concepts of contemporary architecture Important journals addressedthe movement as it was loosely defined a 1968 issue of Architectural Design titled Pneu Worldhave the structures mainstream respect The government seeking to deploy an early warning radarsystem especially in harsh climates invested in Bird radomes starting in 1946 and constructedhundreds of them during the 50s In 1957 one of his plastic swimming pool shelters earned anincredible plug with an appearance on the cover of LIFE magazine
The organic non-linear shapes of these structures the complete opposite of Brutalism also wentagainst the norm and suggested different designs (during an Ant Farm video one speaker refers tothe flexible nature of these structures introducing a fourth dimension into the design) Created byHaus-Rucker-Co a collective of like-minded avant-garde architects the experimental bubble wasthe work of a group concerned not with habitability but with expansion and experimentation Thecurved organic shapes endemic to the more academic and avant-garde work have become commonfeatures in architecture in the age of high-powered computers and parametric design New ideasabout our relationships to space were being pushed focused around new idea of nomadicism andtemporary dwelling
Often ephemeral and always lightweight by design inflatable furniture and architecture was ameans for architects to make heavy statements about design space and culture The Whole EarthCatalog one of the bibles of 60s counterculture included this overview of the inflatable movement
The lasting obsession with architectural installations was certainly established during this periodand the movements impact has filtered down throughout the architecture and design world
While the hippie associations with these structures conjure up images of longhairs blowing uptuning in and dropping out their inventors were most likely wearing crew cuts and working in themilitary Its easy to take that in the colloquial and infer that the heavy statements about radicalpolitics and shifting definitions of society attached to glorified balloons were nothing more than hotair in Buffalo New York to sell storage shed greenhouses and enclosures to the suburban set In1956 he set up Birdair Structures Inc
Prices 1971 air structures bibliography was 240 pages says Bratishenko
Created during the same era of Marshall McLuhans media studies and a rise in affordable audio-visual technologies inflatables also became props and tools for explorations into technology andcommunications The experiments of the 60s and 70s made way for a wave of air-supportedstadiums such as the Metrodome Look no further than the day-glo plastic forms Selgascano created
for last years Serpentine Pavilion an example of bulbous shapes and transparent forms take centerstage Its kind of like designing buildings as things that people can rearrange a fundamentallysocial conception of design
Germans strolling down the genteel Treppenstrasse in Kassel Germany in late June of 1972 mighthave been surprised to see an unexpected addition poking out of the facade of their belovedFridericianum When the sun goes behind a cloud you cease cooking and immediately start freezingClearly you can tell this would have been the great online resource
Structures created during Instant City a 1971 event that built a pop-up city in Ibiza Spain
There was a link between this idea of lightweight materials and reconfigurable spaces and the ideaof architecture enabling a certain idea of cities and spaces and so on says Lev Bratishenko Editorof Publications at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Prices proposals for flexible enclosedplastic spaces such as the unbuilt 1968 Fun Palace have been cited as influences on both theCentre Pompidou in Paris and the London Eye and a recent exhibit suggested he was one of themost influential architects youve never heard of And plastic inflatable structures are often the go-to format for temporary structures and relief housing This form of fine energy needs to bediscovered Able to be transported in a single rail car and assembled by a dozen workman in justfour days it was a flexible monument to efficiency Archigram influenced in part by developments atNASA proposed all manner of lightweight transportable concepts from the Suitaloon and Cushicleplastic skins for mobile living and the Inflatable Suit-Home another experiment in portable living
The Mind-Expander and the Environment-Transformer were prototypes for the possibility ofexpanding consciousness the cold way says Ortner The following year the US Atomic EnergyCommission commissioned architect Victor Lundy to design a massive double-skinned balloonbuilding for a traveling exhibit in Latin America One of the worlds first independent publicmuseums and a model of classical style and enlightened culture built in the late 18th century the
institution once employed brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the library Frei Otto who elevatedthe shape of a simple tent into complex beautiful structures won the Pritzker last year The nameHaus-Rucker is derived from a mountain range in the region of Austria the group came from butwas also a mottoHuser zu verrcken or rocking or shifting houses Curtis Schreier a member of thegroup who helped out out the Inflatocookbook says they could have been the Bill Gates ofinflatables but were more interested in sharing knowledge But his most important work may havebeen popularizing the concept
Gelbes Herz a 1969 project by Haus-Rucker-Co
Inflatables are trippy cheap light imaginative space not architecture at all The blazing redundantsurfaces disorient one wallows in space In 1972 it was in the midst of hosting the Documentacontemporary art show and as part of the event a group of experimental architects were installinga plastic orb amid the columns and stonework on the facade a pneumatic pimple of PVC foil 8meters in diameter that contained a catwalk of tubular steel
Architects of inflatable structures werent always greeted as revolutionary and their work wasntalways seen as particularly good by critics and the media The Viennese group founded in 1967 hadriffed on the periods obsessions with plastic structures audio-visual experimentation and curvedcritique-laden structures that challenged convention (in 1971 they installed a 14-meter-tallinflatable index finger next to the highway near the Nuremberg Airport) Environmentally what aninflatable is best at is protecting you from a gentle rain military as quickly assembled easilydeployable radar antennae Its best experienced via this video set to a song by Iron Butterfly Itsvery symbolically important
Ant Farms Clean Air Pod had already made a name for itself as one of a loose confederation ofgroups experimenting with the possibilities of inflatable architecture In April 1971 the Whiz BangQuick City constructed near Woodstock New York by hundreds of undergrads and enthusiastscreated a city in mere days with irregular rows of domes and cardboard homes sprouting up in thecountryside (a LIFE article about the gathering noted that when one builder ran out of polyethylenethey continued with a flowered shower curtain) Bird considered the father of the field would go onto collaborate with numerous architects and create memorable structures such as the MinneapolisMetrodome There are no right angles Image via Urbanophil
But for a certain section of the architectural media world these structures were a significant focusTheyre terrible to work in What designers nowadays lavishly decorate doesnt interest us at all
Inflatable Architecture coverage [Curbed]
Buckminster Fuller coverage [Curbed]
Like many inventors and engineers in the 50s Bird would try to take a technology developed andrefined with military money and support and make a profit on it in the civilian world In contrastthat is to the hot way drugs
Changing trends as well as the increasing price of plastic due to the Oil Crisis later in the decadespelled an end to a period of busy experimentation Many designers talked about the sense ofisolation and alienation the cocooning aspect of the structures and removing themselves fromcurrent reality Other inventions such as audio-visual helmets created by Haus-Rucker-Co weremore directly about changing perspectives
A collection of inflatable structures published by the Lightweifht Enclosures Unit
Oase No7 a project by Haus-Rucker-Co
By this point in 1972 Haus-Rucker-Co We wanted to be a glamorous and successful band in thearea between architecture and art
We believed and we still believe that architectural means can be employed to exert a focusedinfluence on a persons physical and psychological qualities says Ortner In the early 60s bothFuller and Otto proposed and publicized designs for massive domes Fullers was meant to cover andprotect Manhattan while Otto had designed a structure to withstand the harsh climate of theAntarctic Contemporaries such as Superstudio and Archizoom from Italy Ant Farm from SanFrancisco Archigram from the United Kingdom an influential collective of publishers thinkers anddesigners who utilized a portmanteau of architecture and telegram and fellow Austrian group CoopHimmelblau spent the 60s and early 70s creating a wealth of fantastical reinterpretations ofarchitecture often in the form of plastic seemingly floating installations The militarys inflatablestructures would soon be turned into a plaything of the counterculture (Ant Farms first experimentswere created from surplus military parachutes) who took cues and influences from the space racethe budding environmental movement and a new generation of audio-visual technology Working atthe Cornell aeronautical lab engineer Walter Bird designed a simple radar antennae protected by ainflatable plastic enclosure and steel rings Some began to see plastic dwellings especially mass-produced models without the theoretical underpinnings advanced by avant-garde architects asimpersonal and a wider movement back towards natural materials rendered plastic passe Musicbands showed us the way things could be Other architects from this period such as Cedric Pricehave been celebrated as much for their finished work as for their theoretical designs StructuresGonflables which linked pneumatics to political shifts came to Paris in 1968 just as the studentmovement reached its peak Especially as the underside of the Oase N7 was about 9 metres aboveground level
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
for last years Serpentine Pavilion an example of bulbous shapes and transparent forms take centerstage Its kind of like designing buildings as things that people can rearrange a fundamentallysocial conception of design
Germans strolling down the genteel Treppenstrasse in Kassel Germany in late June of 1972 mighthave been surprised to see an unexpected addition poking out of the facade of their belovedFridericianum When the sun goes behind a cloud you cease cooking and immediately start freezingClearly you can tell this would have been the great online resource
Structures created during Instant City a 1971 event that built a pop-up city in Ibiza Spain
There was a link between this idea of lightweight materials and reconfigurable spaces and the ideaof architecture enabling a certain idea of cities and spaces and so on says Lev Bratishenko Editorof Publications at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Prices proposals for flexible enclosedplastic spaces such as the unbuilt 1968 Fun Palace have been cited as influences on both theCentre Pompidou in Paris and the London Eye and a recent exhibit suggested he was one of themost influential architects youve never heard of And plastic inflatable structures are often the go-to format for temporary structures and relief housing This form of fine energy needs to bediscovered Able to be transported in a single rail car and assembled by a dozen workman in justfour days it was a flexible monument to efficiency Archigram influenced in part by developments atNASA proposed all manner of lightweight transportable concepts from the Suitaloon and Cushicleplastic skins for mobile living and the Inflatable Suit-Home another experiment in portable living
The Mind-Expander and the Environment-Transformer were prototypes for the possibility ofexpanding consciousness the cold way says Ortner The following year the US Atomic EnergyCommission commissioned architect Victor Lundy to design a massive double-skinned balloonbuilding for a traveling exhibit in Latin America One of the worlds first independent publicmuseums and a model of classical style and enlightened culture built in the late 18th century the
institution once employed brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the library Frei Otto who elevatedthe shape of a simple tent into complex beautiful structures won the Pritzker last year The nameHaus-Rucker is derived from a mountain range in the region of Austria the group came from butwas also a mottoHuser zu verrcken or rocking or shifting houses Curtis Schreier a member of thegroup who helped out out the Inflatocookbook says they could have been the Bill Gates ofinflatables but were more interested in sharing knowledge But his most important work may havebeen popularizing the concept
Gelbes Herz a 1969 project by Haus-Rucker-Co
Inflatables are trippy cheap light imaginative space not architecture at all The blazing redundantsurfaces disorient one wallows in space In 1972 it was in the midst of hosting the Documentacontemporary art show and as part of the event a group of experimental architects were installinga plastic orb amid the columns and stonework on the facade a pneumatic pimple of PVC foil 8meters in diameter that contained a catwalk of tubular steel
Architects of inflatable structures werent always greeted as revolutionary and their work wasntalways seen as particularly good by critics and the media The Viennese group founded in 1967 hadriffed on the periods obsessions with plastic structures audio-visual experimentation and curvedcritique-laden structures that challenged convention (in 1971 they installed a 14-meter-tallinflatable index finger next to the highway near the Nuremberg Airport) Environmentally what aninflatable is best at is protecting you from a gentle rain military as quickly assembled easilydeployable radar antennae Its best experienced via this video set to a song by Iron Butterfly Itsvery symbolically important
Ant Farms Clean Air Pod had already made a name for itself as one of a loose confederation ofgroups experimenting with the possibilities of inflatable architecture In April 1971 the Whiz BangQuick City constructed near Woodstock New York by hundreds of undergrads and enthusiastscreated a city in mere days with irregular rows of domes and cardboard homes sprouting up in thecountryside (a LIFE article about the gathering noted that when one builder ran out of polyethylenethey continued with a flowered shower curtain) Bird considered the father of the field would go onto collaborate with numerous architects and create memorable structures such as the MinneapolisMetrodome There are no right angles Image via Urbanophil
But for a certain section of the architectural media world these structures were a significant focusTheyre terrible to work in What designers nowadays lavishly decorate doesnt interest us at all
Inflatable Architecture coverage [Curbed]
Buckminster Fuller coverage [Curbed]
Like many inventors and engineers in the 50s Bird would try to take a technology developed andrefined with military money and support and make a profit on it in the civilian world In contrastthat is to the hot way drugs
Changing trends as well as the increasing price of plastic due to the Oil Crisis later in the decadespelled an end to a period of busy experimentation Many designers talked about the sense ofisolation and alienation the cocooning aspect of the structures and removing themselves fromcurrent reality Other inventions such as audio-visual helmets created by Haus-Rucker-Co weremore directly about changing perspectives
A collection of inflatable structures published by the Lightweifht Enclosures Unit
Oase No7 a project by Haus-Rucker-Co
By this point in 1972 Haus-Rucker-Co We wanted to be a glamorous and successful band in thearea between architecture and art
We believed and we still believe that architectural means can be employed to exert a focusedinfluence on a persons physical and psychological qualities says Ortner In the early 60s bothFuller and Otto proposed and publicized designs for massive domes Fullers was meant to cover andprotect Manhattan while Otto had designed a structure to withstand the harsh climate of theAntarctic Contemporaries such as Superstudio and Archizoom from Italy Ant Farm from SanFrancisco Archigram from the United Kingdom an influential collective of publishers thinkers anddesigners who utilized a portmanteau of architecture and telegram and fellow Austrian group CoopHimmelblau spent the 60s and early 70s creating a wealth of fantastical reinterpretations ofarchitecture often in the form of plastic seemingly floating installations The militarys inflatablestructures would soon be turned into a plaything of the counterculture (Ant Farms first experimentswere created from surplus military parachutes) who took cues and influences from the space racethe budding environmental movement and a new generation of audio-visual technology Working atthe Cornell aeronautical lab engineer Walter Bird designed a simple radar antennae protected by ainflatable plastic enclosure and steel rings Some began to see plastic dwellings especially mass-produced models without the theoretical underpinnings advanced by avant-garde architects asimpersonal and a wider movement back towards natural materials rendered plastic passe Musicbands showed us the way things could be Other architects from this period such as Cedric Pricehave been celebrated as much for their finished work as for their theoretical designs StructuresGonflables which linked pneumatics to political shifts came to Paris in 1968 just as the studentmovement reached its peak Especially as the underside of the Oase N7 was about 9 metres aboveground level
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
institution once employed brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the library Frei Otto who elevatedthe shape of a simple tent into complex beautiful structures won the Pritzker last year The nameHaus-Rucker is derived from a mountain range in the region of Austria the group came from butwas also a mottoHuser zu verrcken or rocking or shifting houses Curtis Schreier a member of thegroup who helped out out the Inflatocookbook says they could have been the Bill Gates ofinflatables but were more interested in sharing knowledge But his most important work may havebeen popularizing the concept
Gelbes Herz a 1969 project by Haus-Rucker-Co
Inflatables are trippy cheap light imaginative space not architecture at all The blazing redundantsurfaces disorient one wallows in space In 1972 it was in the midst of hosting the Documentacontemporary art show and as part of the event a group of experimental architects were installinga plastic orb amid the columns and stonework on the facade a pneumatic pimple of PVC foil 8meters in diameter that contained a catwalk of tubular steel
Architects of inflatable structures werent always greeted as revolutionary and their work wasntalways seen as particularly good by critics and the media The Viennese group founded in 1967 hadriffed on the periods obsessions with plastic structures audio-visual experimentation and curvedcritique-laden structures that challenged convention (in 1971 they installed a 14-meter-tallinflatable index finger next to the highway near the Nuremberg Airport) Environmentally what aninflatable is best at is protecting you from a gentle rain military as quickly assembled easilydeployable radar antennae Its best experienced via this video set to a song by Iron Butterfly Itsvery symbolically important
Ant Farms Clean Air Pod had already made a name for itself as one of a loose confederation ofgroups experimenting with the possibilities of inflatable architecture In April 1971 the Whiz BangQuick City constructed near Woodstock New York by hundreds of undergrads and enthusiastscreated a city in mere days with irregular rows of domes and cardboard homes sprouting up in thecountryside (a LIFE article about the gathering noted that when one builder ran out of polyethylenethey continued with a flowered shower curtain) Bird considered the father of the field would go onto collaborate with numerous architects and create memorable structures such as the MinneapolisMetrodome There are no right angles Image via Urbanophil
But for a certain section of the architectural media world these structures were a significant focusTheyre terrible to work in What designers nowadays lavishly decorate doesnt interest us at all
Inflatable Architecture coverage [Curbed]
Buckminster Fuller coverage [Curbed]
Like many inventors and engineers in the 50s Bird would try to take a technology developed andrefined with military money and support and make a profit on it in the civilian world In contrastthat is to the hot way drugs
Changing trends as well as the increasing price of plastic due to the Oil Crisis later in the decadespelled an end to a period of busy experimentation Many designers talked about the sense ofisolation and alienation the cocooning aspect of the structures and removing themselves fromcurrent reality Other inventions such as audio-visual helmets created by Haus-Rucker-Co weremore directly about changing perspectives
A collection of inflatable structures published by the Lightweifht Enclosures Unit
Oase No7 a project by Haus-Rucker-Co
By this point in 1972 Haus-Rucker-Co We wanted to be a glamorous and successful band in thearea between architecture and art
We believed and we still believe that architectural means can be employed to exert a focusedinfluence on a persons physical and psychological qualities says Ortner In the early 60s bothFuller and Otto proposed and publicized designs for massive domes Fullers was meant to cover andprotect Manhattan while Otto had designed a structure to withstand the harsh climate of theAntarctic Contemporaries such as Superstudio and Archizoom from Italy Ant Farm from SanFrancisco Archigram from the United Kingdom an influential collective of publishers thinkers anddesigners who utilized a portmanteau of architecture and telegram and fellow Austrian group CoopHimmelblau spent the 60s and early 70s creating a wealth of fantastical reinterpretations ofarchitecture often in the form of plastic seemingly floating installations The militarys inflatablestructures would soon be turned into a plaything of the counterculture (Ant Farms first experimentswere created from surplus military parachutes) who took cues and influences from the space racethe budding environmental movement and a new generation of audio-visual technology Working atthe Cornell aeronautical lab engineer Walter Bird designed a simple radar antennae protected by ainflatable plastic enclosure and steel rings Some began to see plastic dwellings especially mass-produced models without the theoretical underpinnings advanced by avant-garde architects asimpersonal and a wider movement back towards natural materials rendered plastic passe Musicbands showed us the way things could be Other architects from this period such as Cedric Pricehave been celebrated as much for their finished work as for their theoretical designs StructuresGonflables which linked pneumatics to political shifts came to Paris in 1968 just as the studentmovement reached its peak Especially as the underside of the Oase N7 was about 9 metres aboveground level
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
Gelbes Herz a 1969 project by Haus-Rucker-Co
Inflatables are trippy cheap light imaginative space not architecture at all The blazing redundantsurfaces disorient one wallows in space In 1972 it was in the midst of hosting the Documentacontemporary art show and as part of the event a group of experimental architects were installinga plastic orb amid the columns and stonework on the facade a pneumatic pimple of PVC foil 8meters in diameter that contained a catwalk of tubular steel
Architects of inflatable structures werent always greeted as revolutionary and their work wasntalways seen as particularly good by critics and the media The Viennese group founded in 1967 hadriffed on the periods obsessions with plastic structures audio-visual experimentation and curvedcritique-laden structures that challenged convention (in 1971 they installed a 14-meter-tallinflatable index finger next to the highway near the Nuremberg Airport) Environmentally what aninflatable is best at is protecting you from a gentle rain military as quickly assembled easilydeployable radar antennae Its best experienced via this video set to a song by Iron Butterfly Itsvery symbolically important
Ant Farms Clean Air Pod had already made a name for itself as one of a loose confederation ofgroups experimenting with the possibilities of inflatable architecture In April 1971 the Whiz BangQuick City constructed near Woodstock New York by hundreds of undergrads and enthusiastscreated a city in mere days with irregular rows of domes and cardboard homes sprouting up in thecountryside (a LIFE article about the gathering noted that when one builder ran out of polyethylenethey continued with a flowered shower curtain) Bird considered the father of the field would go onto collaborate with numerous architects and create memorable structures such as the MinneapolisMetrodome There are no right angles Image via Urbanophil
But for a certain section of the architectural media world these structures were a significant focusTheyre terrible to work in What designers nowadays lavishly decorate doesnt interest us at all
Inflatable Architecture coverage [Curbed]
Buckminster Fuller coverage [Curbed]
Like many inventors and engineers in the 50s Bird would try to take a technology developed andrefined with military money and support and make a profit on it in the civilian world In contrastthat is to the hot way drugs
Changing trends as well as the increasing price of plastic due to the Oil Crisis later in the decadespelled an end to a period of busy experimentation Many designers talked about the sense ofisolation and alienation the cocooning aspect of the structures and removing themselves fromcurrent reality Other inventions such as audio-visual helmets created by Haus-Rucker-Co weremore directly about changing perspectives
A collection of inflatable structures published by the Lightweifht Enclosures Unit
Oase No7 a project by Haus-Rucker-Co
By this point in 1972 Haus-Rucker-Co We wanted to be a glamorous and successful band in thearea between architecture and art
We believed and we still believe that architectural means can be employed to exert a focusedinfluence on a persons physical and psychological qualities says Ortner In the early 60s bothFuller and Otto proposed and publicized designs for massive domes Fullers was meant to cover andprotect Manhattan while Otto had designed a structure to withstand the harsh climate of theAntarctic Contemporaries such as Superstudio and Archizoom from Italy Ant Farm from SanFrancisco Archigram from the United Kingdom an influential collective of publishers thinkers anddesigners who utilized a portmanteau of architecture and telegram and fellow Austrian group CoopHimmelblau spent the 60s and early 70s creating a wealth of fantastical reinterpretations ofarchitecture often in the form of plastic seemingly floating installations The militarys inflatablestructures would soon be turned into a plaything of the counterculture (Ant Farms first experimentswere created from surplus military parachutes) who took cues and influences from the space racethe budding environmental movement and a new generation of audio-visual technology Working atthe Cornell aeronautical lab engineer Walter Bird designed a simple radar antennae protected by ainflatable plastic enclosure and steel rings Some began to see plastic dwellings especially mass-produced models without the theoretical underpinnings advanced by avant-garde architects asimpersonal and a wider movement back towards natural materials rendered plastic passe Musicbands showed us the way things could be Other architects from this period such as Cedric Pricehave been celebrated as much for their finished work as for their theoretical designs StructuresGonflables which linked pneumatics to political shifts came to Paris in 1968 just as the studentmovement reached its peak Especially as the underside of the Oase N7 was about 9 metres aboveground level
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
Ant Farms Clean Air Pod had already made a name for itself as one of a loose confederation ofgroups experimenting with the possibilities of inflatable architecture In April 1971 the Whiz BangQuick City constructed near Woodstock New York by hundreds of undergrads and enthusiastscreated a city in mere days with irregular rows of domes and cardboard homes sprouting up in thecountryside (a LIFE article about the gathering noted that when one builder ran out of polyethylenethey continued with a flowered shower curtain) Bird considered the father of the field would go onto collaborate with numerous architects and create memorable structures such as the MinneapolisMetrodome There are no right angles Image via Urbanophil
But for a certain section of the architectural media world these structures were a significant focusTheyre terrible to work in What designers nowadays lavishly decorate doesnt interest us at all
Inflatable Architecture coverage [Curbed]
Buckminster Fuller coverage [Curbed]
Like many inventors and engineers in the 50s Bird would try to take a technology developed andrefined with military money and support and make a profit on it in the civilian world In contrastthat is to the hot way drugs
Changing trends as well as the increasing price of plastic due to the Oil Crisis later in the decadespelled an end to a period of busy experimentation Many designers talked about the sense ofisolation and alienation the cocooning aspect of the structures and removing themselves fromcurrent reality Other inventions such as audio-visual helmets created by Haus-Rucker-Co weremore directly about changing perspectives
A collection of inflatable structures published by the Lightweifht Enclosures Unit
Oase No7 a project by Haus-Rucker-Co
By this point in 1972 Haus-Rucker-Co We wanted to be a glamorous and successful band in thearea between architecture and art
We believed and we still believe that architectural means can be employed to exert a focusedinfluence on a persons physical and psychological qualities says Ortner In the early 60s bothFuller and Otto proposed and publicized designs for massive domes Fullers was meant to cover andprotect Manhattan while Otto had designed a structure to withstand the harsh climate of theAntarctic Contemporaries such as Superstudio and Archizoom from Italy Ant Farm from SanFrancisco Archigram from the United Kingdom an influential collective of publishers thinkers anddesigners who utilized a portmanteau of architecture and telegram and fellow Austrian group CoopHimmelblau spent the 60s and early 70s creating a wealth of fantastical reinterpretations ofarchitecture often in the form of plastic seemingly floating installations The militarys inflatablestructures would soon be turned into a plaything of the counterculture (Ant Farms first experimentswere created from surplus military parachutes) who took cues and influences from the space racethe budding environmental movement and a new generation of audio-visual technology Working atthe Cornell aeronautical lab engineer Walter Bird designed a simple radar antennae protected by ainflatable plastic enclosure and steel rings Some began to see plastic dwellings especially mass-produced models without the theoretical underpinnings advanced by avant-garde architects asimpersonal and a wider movement back towards natural materials rendered plastic passe Musicbands showed us the way things could be Other architects from this period such as Cedric Pricehave been celebrated as much for their finished work as for their theoretical designs StructuresGonflables which linked pneumatics to political shifts came to Paris in 1968 just as the studentmovement reached its peak Especially as the underside of the Oase N7 was about 9 metres aboveground level
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
A collection of inflatable structures published by the Lightweifht Enclosures Unit
Oase No7 a project by Haus-Rucker-Co
By this point in 1972 Haus-Rucker-Co We wanted to be a glamorous and successful band in thearea between architecture and art
We believed and we still believe that architectural means can be employed to exert a focusedinfluence on a persons physical and psychological qualities says Ortner In the early 60s bothFuller and Otto proposed and publicized designs for massive domes Fullers was meant to cover andprotect Manhattan while Otto had designed a structure to withstand the harsh climate of theAntarctic Contemporaries such as Superstudio and Archizoom from Italy Ant Farm from SanFrancisco Archigram from the United Kingdom an influential collective of publishers thinkers anddesigners who utilized a portmanteau of architecture and telegram and fellow Austrian group CoopHimmelblau spent the 60s and early 70s creating a wealth of fantastical reinterpretations ofarchitecture often in the form of plastic seemingly floating installations The militarys inflatablestructures would soon be turned into a plaything of the counterculture (Ant Farms first experimentswere created from surplus military parachutes) who took cues and influences from the space racethe budding environmental movement and a new generation of audio-visual technology Working atthe Cornell aeronautical lab engineer Walter Bird designed a simple radar antennae protected by ainflatable plastic enclosure and steel rings Some began to see plastic dwellings especially mass-produced models without the theoretical underpinnings advanced by avant-garde architects asimpersonal and a wider movement back towards natural materials rendered plastic passe Musicbands showed us the way things could be Other architects from this period such as Cedric Pricehave been celebrated as much for their finished work as for their theoretical designs StructuresGonflables which linked pneumatics to political shifts came to Paris in 1968 just as the studentmovement reached its peak Especially as the underside of the Oase N7 was about 9 metres aboveground level
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
Inflatables in their simplest and most rudimentary form were initially designed by the US Its anincredible document like a database Organizers Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama brought togethera massive collection of domes inflatables and prefabricated structures in effect creating a futuristictemporary city The portable viewing centers signified a democratization of communications to theircreators a series of simple DIY broadcast Blauvelt likened to YouTube citizen journalism and publictelevision In 1959 Paul Weidlinger collaborated with Birdair to design an inflatable roof for theBoston Arts Center Theater A series of public events including the Freestone Conference in 1970held on a farm in Northern California and two Instant City events in the United States broughttogether all manner of temporary structures tents and domes
The military was interested in things that are easily deployable such as inflatable bridges thetechnology advanced during the war period and then it was subverted by the counter culture muchlike personal computing says Blauvelt
Armchair in transparent PVC (parts spray finished) designed by architects Jean Aubert Jean-PaulJungmann and Antonio Stinco
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
Interior of the Selgascano Serpentine Pavilion
Ant Farm members discussing an inflatable design
The movement reached its peak during a series of big events and showcases between 1968 and1971
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
Pavilions at the Osaka Expo Its definitely not the suburban home
