Archimera

Researching the etymology of “hybrid,” it was not surprising that the word came from the Latin root hybridia, meaning “offspring of a tame sow and wild boar.” It was also no shock that the word was considered rare before 1850. Checking Wikipedia.com, my suspicion was confirmed: Gregor Mendel published his groundbreaking paper “Experiments on Plant Hybridization” in 1866. Where I was surprised by etymology.com was that hybridia is believed by etymologists to have originated from the Greek word hubris. The most notable hybrid from Greek mythology—the chimera (goat / lion / snake)—signaled storms, shipwrecks and natural disasters.
The FOA’s chapter on the Yokohama Port Terminal entitled “the competition phase: in the eye of the twister” begins with the sentence “this is a project we never intended to win.” The UN Studio begins their article by talking about the “Manimal,” a Photoshop morphing of man / lion / snake (an incorrect and perhaps intentional description, as we discovered in class today). These perhaps unintentional allusions to the mythological qualities and meanings of hybrid are much more fascinating to me than the ultimate definition provided by these three readings: a search for new form. For FOA, they were interested in creating a hybrid “between a shed—a more or less undetermined container—and a ground,” with circulation paths being the mutating factor. The UN Studio took a similar approach to the same competition, stating, “this interweaving of various structuring principles – the gardens, infrastructure and construction – makes up the organization of the project.” According to these terms, hybridity in architecture lies primarily in formal, surface-oriented tactics.
Greg Lynn’s article “Animating Form” makes it clear that any forward-thinking architect must consider the above approach to architecture. Focusing on nascent digital technologies to accomplish quickly latent hybrid potentials, Lynn uses metaphors to make “the computer” familiar while simultaneously designing intentionally unfamiliar architecture. Comparing the computer to a pet, Lynn states, “just as a pet introduces an element of wildness to our domestic habits that must be controlled and disciplined, the computer brings both a degree of discipline and unanticipated behavior to the design process.” However, many of Lynn’s buildings to me have been missed opportunities. It seems that how the form is generated is consummate—the architecture being consequence of the process rather than impetus. I want to see the chimera, an architecture that does signal or react to the storm—the architecture that is truly animate