Hybrid_liwen

Reading response_ Hybrid
Liwen Zhang

The ideals shown through the notion of hybridization in architecture is a provocative one which calls for what Ben van Berkel would deem as “not a building design [but rather] a design of the relations between structure, circulation systems, programmatic spaces and surfaces”.

For van Berkel, the architecture of hybridization “amounts to the organization of continuous difference… free to assume different identities, architecture become endless”. The notion of ahistorical and acultural architecture, is not a novel thought, international style from the beginning of our last century is perhaps a direct response to the increasingly globalized paradigm of our time. However, as architecture starts to take on new systems of meaning, culture is redefined. Previously confined to racial, geographical and technical limitations, architecture, with the aid of innovative computer techniques for formal generation, material fabrication and structural and program organization, now embraces the increasing demands of a networked culture where the need for hybridization is imperative. Whether this hybridization calls for an integration of architectural systems, social and cultural livelihoods or the ephemeral, the role played by the use of computer aided design is a crucial one which continues to push the boundaries of contemporary architectural discourse.

Despite the fantastical properties that the computer brings to architecture, one which van Berkel aptly describes as a “computer-generated fantasy …being transformed into reality”, the use of such innovative computer techniques, is however heavily cautioned by Greg Lynn. Being the pioneer for the adoption of computer-based animation techniques, the use of animations to aid in representation for his architecture has become Lynn’s trademark. He poses that "the challenge for contemporary architectural theory and design is to try to understand the appearance of these tools in a more sophisticated way than as simply a new set of shapes”. For Lynn, the computer serves merely as a “pet” that has “already been domesticated”. Perhaps this need to disparage the computer serves as a way to alleviate the stigma that he previously mentions to be present in many architects, due to the fear of losing control as the ultimate designer to the cusps of generative and organizational software.

To fully integrate the use of innovative computer techniques is proving to be difficult as software programs demand high levels of expertise and control, thus one cannot blame Lynn’s cautions as many of us tend to be easily seduced by the provocative forms that new software allows for. The Yokohama Port Terminal project by Foreign Office Architects is a good example where the use of computers plays an integral and highly successful part of the realization of the project, with the architects retaining their roles at the forefront of the entire design process. This is probably attributed to the fact that the actual software used for solving structural needs for the project is not currently at the forefront of what is available out there, thus enabling such mediums to be more fully within our control. However, this hardly becomes an issue as the end product is truly what Alejandro Zaera-Polo describes it to be, “an organization that hybridizes a pure enclosure with topography”.