A photographic survey of the robotic face of Tokyo buildings and an argument that robot aesthetics plays a central role in architectural history.
In Tokyoids, architect François Blanciak surveys the robotic faces omnipresent in Tokyo buildings, offering an architectural taxonomy based not on the usual variables--size, material, historical style--but on the observable expressions of buildings. Are the eyes (windows) twinkling, the mouth (door) laughing? Is that balcony a howl of distress? Investigating robot aesthetics through his photographs of fifty buildings, Blanciak argues that the robot face originated in architecture--before the birth of robotics--and has played a central role in architectural history.
Blanciak first puts the robot face into historical perspective, examining the importance of the face in architectural theory and demonstrating that the construction of architecture's emblematic portraits triggered the emergence of a robot aesthetics. He then explores the emotions conveyed by the photographed buildings' robot faces, in chapters titled "Awe," "Wrath," "Mirth," "Pain," "Angst," and "Hunger." As he does so he considers, among other things, the architectural relevance of Tokyo's ordinary buildings; the repression of the figural in contemporary architecture; an aesthetic of dismemberment, linked to the structure of the Japanese language and local building design; and the influence of automation technology upon human interaction.
Part photographic survey, part theoretical inquiry, Tokyoids upends the usual approach to robotics in architecture by considering not the automation of architectural output but the aesthetic properties of the robot.
Parasites structurels, tours grillagées, planchers à billes, coins ondulés, balcons exponentiels, façades radiales, cadres rampants.
Que se passerait-il si les architectes libéraient leur esprit des contraintes de site, de programme et de budget? premier manifeste du xxe siècle ou dernier-traité d'architecture, ex situ est d'un nouveau genre. comme une réaction compulsive, sorti de nulle part, c'est un ouvrage à la fois laconique et foisonnant qui vient répondre à la profusion de, livres d'architecture toujours plus volumineux et au contenu toujours plus réduit.
Mille et une formes de bâtiments et autant d'idées architecturales qui, défiant toute gravité, veulent croire en de nouvelles techniques de construction. stimulation visuelle permanente, ces formes, désolidarisées de tout site, sont présentées sous un angle constant - douze par page - sans échelle, sans ordre: délibérément infinies.
