ABSTRACT
Philippe Rahm: I am primarily interested in air and light not only as natural elements but also elements of architecture. Traditionally when we talk about elements of architecture, we talk about walls and columns, and some visible structural material elements. Yet, the real target of architecture, I will argue, is not the visible, it is not the sculptural quality, in the sense that you can stay in front of an object, but it is rather the fact that you go inside. So, the real target is more the space rather than the structural and visible elements. What denes space, and the chemical qualities of space, are elements such as heat, humidity, gas, light, and so on. If you think how to compose with dierent elements in modern architecture you try to reduce heat, to produce homogeneous space inside, and so on. It is not that much the role of the architect but that of the thermal engineer and the people working on the mechanical system of the building as they want to create the most convenient space. My question is: is it possible to introduce new elements of composition that will change the traditional composition, that is, the geometrical composition? So the tradition of symmetry/asymmetry, inclusion, addition (for instance the addition of columns or room) will not create a building. I wish to change this language of composition into a more meteorological one that would use elements like humidity, light, heat, evaporation, conduction, pressure, and so on. The aim is to introduce a meteorological language into the architectural eld in order to compose the space through natural phenomena such as convection for example, that is, the warm air going down and the cold air going up, and it creates wind. This is also the reason for wind on the planet. As we receive more sun on the Equator and less sun at the North Pole, this creates a thermodynamic imbalance between the Equator and the Northern lines of the planet. Because of the two dierent temperatures the air moves and it generates a dierent movement: wind. This meteorological knowledge informs my work and that is why I ended up doing dierent projects around 2008. But today we are still working on this. We create dierent poles in a building – a cold pole and a warm pole – in order to generate a dierent climate inside, with distinct areas that are colder and warmer. It is like using meteorological phenomena (and knowledge) to design the building. Climate is no longer located outside the building and we assume that there is no climate within it either. Rather, it is a homogeneous world. This distinction between inside and outside can be reintroduced inside the building. It is of course related to sustainability. In some traditional buildings it is warm under the ceiling and very cold on the oor level, so you use a lot of heat because of this natural rising of the warm air. And so in my case I have to say that I am less interested in introducing animals as non-human entities in architectural compositions, than substances and climatic phenomena. This is how I understand the elements of architecture.
