On the elevator to MoMA’s 6th floor gallery, I made small talk with a nice couple who turned out to be from Philly. Hey, me too! “Oh, then you must be here to see the Cellophane House,” they said, brimming with pride as we chatted about our hometown architecture heroes, KieranTimberlake Associates. The firm’s design did not disappoint; the five-story, two-bedroom, 1,800-square-foot building was the show’s largest. And the most tactilely nuanced, with an evanescent glow that comes courtesy of see-through plastic walls embedded with photovoltaics, a translucent 3Form floor lit from below, and acrylic stair treads embedded with LEDs—all of which attach, sans hardware, to an aluminum frame. Below, James Timberlake sheds light on the luminous design—and its bright future:
You designed Cellophane to be adaptable to numerous climatic conditions. Is there a location—the Alaskan tundra, beachside in Rio—where you’d love to see it permanently installed?
Actually, we designed Cellophane as siteless, meaning that the approach for MoMA works for New York City conditions—but would have to be studied for other locales. It is mass customizable, given the scaffold frame, to allow for a variety of adaptations. We would enjoy seeing Cellophane in all the locales you have suggested and have had inquiries from dozens of others.
The stackable SYSTEM3, by Austrian architects Oscar Leo Kaufmann and Albert Rüf [olkruf.com], boasts the elongated shape of a shipping container. Inside, its austere bearing gives way to a more luxurious simplicity, thanks to amenities like an elegantly spare dining set, luxe Gaggenau appliances, and circular windows that create intriguing light effects. The design takes advantage of existing prefab technologies like CNC milling, which allows an incredible level of accuracy and customization, too; clients can choose the position, shape, and size of every window. Firm architect Jochen Specht took a break from blogging on MoMA’s exhibition journal to answer a few of our most pressing questions.
Was CNC milling part of the concept from the outset?
Our design was determined by the possibilities of the milling process. That’s why we do not have windows that extend to the floor or the ceiling—otherwise a wall element would not be stable enough to be craned. Furthermore, as you may have noticed, the windows’ corners are round; this is due to the size of the milling head—you can’t mill sharp corners. More after the jump.
+ moma.org
a collectors item - the Bird's Nest on the 10 Yuan banknote
Are there too many architects in Europe? .
See the diagram in high resolution. The design is an homage to Otto Neurath.
