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REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

ABSTRACT – The design and engineering development of two apex connected square woven flat surfaces, each constrained at ground level by three anchors and lifted to form a 3D gridshell whose theoretical geometry is modified by the small sectional profile of the rectangular members made of wood. The warp and weft of the weave are of identical section and made from Italian red oak. The process of artistic investigation is explained and then taken into theoretical designs, computed, and is then tested iteratively through choice of wood, a 33% physical model which is laser surveyed and fed back into the computer model and FEM (Finite Element Method) analysis, and finally followed by a partial full scale mock up, before realising the sculpture at the Arte Sella environmental art park.

Keywords:   Anticlastic   Arts & Crafts II   curvature   environmental art   form-finding   gridshell

Arte Sella is an extraordinary project in a magnificent mountain setting, created through Emanuel Montibeller’s passion, supported by Carlotta Strobele and Enrico Ferrari, to understand and open a dialogue between artists and the natural world about materially realised art within nature. The dream is to allow artists to respond to the freedom of the open-air setting, to their own creativity, and to the concept of their work’s transience within and as a part of nature.

I consider myself as an architect who is an artist, sometimes an engineer, and one for whom performance and purpose inhabit my art of architecture. The invitation from Emanuele Montibeller to contribute to Arte Sella gave me real pleasure. I had no idea what I would do, or where the work would end up. But I spent time at the mountain, was guided to look at specific areas, enjoyed conversations, good wine and food, and felt the generosity of its spirit of place in the wood, earth, air and views.

“Levitas” grew from this spirit of place. In this account of its creation, development and construction the importance of the symbiosis between idea (thought) and technology – which is the essence of all human creativity, including art – is emphasised. For this reason, unusually for a research paper, equal weight is given to the creative “research” embodied in words, poetry and conceptual drawings and the quantative engineering research that went into Levitas’ structure, which used both highly advanced technology and some of humanity’s most ancient human handicrafts.

PART 1 – WHAT IS ART IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY?

Art is free. No one can give art freedom.
Is it the only form of freedom that exists on Earth?
Is its boundary unknown until it transgresses human dignity – whatever expression it may be that defines the transgression – be it in a line, a word, a silent or noisy gesture?
Today, it is also nature’s dignity that we must consider, reflect upon and act with, not against.
Embrace the soil, rock, wind and sun, rain, snow, ice, wood and leaves, mulch and meadow and weave an art that searches for a truth about today, and about humanity on Earth.
Art in the twentieth century was severed by a critical knife into concrete and abstract objects interacting with reality, both incomprehensible, in that lonely place where the comprehension which may lie at art’s core is not possible.

All art is an everlasting experiment in finding the truths of our own time.
Art in the twentieth century was chopped into a thousand pieces and presented to us as a complex menu created by a thousand chefs – from stabiles to mobiles, from bold moves in the landscape to escape the constriction of the gallery, to the ephemeral works made of and in nature, to the immaterial digital works that exist forever but are composed of nothing but endless bytes of 0 and 1.
Quantum nature, revealing itself as a continuous sequence of the now, leaves us breathless for stability. And yet that nature is the place where we can be still, silent, looking.

Art and science are one world today. We dreamt of flying – Kazimir Malevich, Yves Klein, and architects in their quest for levitas, of overcoming gravitas – the thread linking Gothic cathedrals to walking cities and transparency – walking lightly on this Earth.
It is still there and elegantly expressed in the poetic work “The Stylus” by Gianandrea Gazzola, drawing the wind upon water, moved by trees in the wind – nature’s wand.
Invisible mythological wind, history maker, transporter and energy provider, a source of my art.
Art will be the spiritual voice of society – a global refuge in an age of planetary upheaval.
Art will inform and help develop human sensuality – our basic language.
Art is biological, procreative as nature, moving and evolving us in turn.

We live in a thin, screen-age of disinformation.
Society has substituted fickle taste, and amusement without responsibility, for truth.
Artists should disown and ringingly lament this era’s affliction of consumption.
Every act has an impact, so artists should act more than ever, to show the reverberant core of compassion and freedom. We present laughter, the soul’s language, and the victory of this language over dogma creates progress towards a commonality of supporting each other and the planet.
Yet a work of art stands in its own truth and will, most likely, be “read” differently from the artist’s intention.