Simple City @ Bauwelt | Hybrid Space Lab

From stacking living spaces as efficiently as cardboard boxes to constructing strange amorphous objects according to standard computing power, architects can apparently do anything with the help of modules.

Consequently, “Architectural Particles – Modular Building in the Digital Age” is the highlight of the so-called Architecture Year 2012 at the Museum of Applied Arts Cologne (MAKK).

Publication Simple City, Uta Winterhager @ Bauwelt, Germany 15 September 2012

Everything
modular
?

Organized chronologically and by material, the exhibition provides a comprehensive overview. And based on the current state of digital planning and production methods, it invites visitors to explore what is still being experimented with today for the future. Cologne-based architect Aysin Ipekçi curated the show in collaboration with the MAKK, the BDA Cologne and the Haus der Architektur Köln.

Rectangular display panels and cuboid pedestals – that is the modular exhibition architecture standard. But for “Architectural Particles”, the makers have developed their own modular system, which is only logical for the theme. This can be used to create a wide variety of crystalline structures.

Of course, these are not random formations, but ones that are based on the geometry of so-called sphere packs: High-gloss white polygons guide visitors through the open stairwell. On the way to the second floor, they demonstrate with examples from all eras of settlement history that building with modules is by no means new, but inherent to the structure.

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Five timelines show the development of modular construction with wood, stone, concrete, metal and plastic – from half-timbered houses to slabs. Again and again, examples from Cologne are included. O.M. Ungers‘ residential and office building as an example of brick was almost to be expected; somewhat surprising, but coherent:
Two pinnacles of the cathedral are described as architectural particles and are included in the “stone” timeline.

With the use of digital planning and production technologies, increasingly complex geometries are becoming possible for all materials. Their individual modules can also have completely different shapes; ornamental construction is also possible at comparatively low cost, as illustrated by a curved “two-room wall module”. In the large hall on the first floor there are numerous models of projects, some of which have already been mentioned in the historical outline, such as the roof slats designed by Friedrich Zollinger in 1928 or the “Packaged House System” developed by Konrad Wachsmann and Walter Gropius in the USA in the 1940s. Other works, mostly from our digital age, which have already found their form but not necessarily their purpose, invite a speculative look into the future: the 1:1 scale “Sparkler” pavilion, for example, which was developed at the universities of Detmold and Trier, or the BUGA pavilion “Treehugger” (Bauwelt 23.11). The new landmark of Seville, the “Metropol Parasol” by Jürgen Mayer H. (Bauwelt 18.11), stands as a 1:100 model in the MAKK. The architects found the right lugs and angles for each of its 2,700 nodes in the construction kit produced in Bavaria. Here – thanks to the module – order triumphed over chaos.