261 Jinhua Structures

Since we have been working for more than a year on the master plan for a new city centre in the Jindong District of Jinhua and thus already had very concrete architectural concepts for the complex on our desks, our approach to this small architectural project was unusual. Everything appeared quite simple and logical: our Jinhua Pavilion would merely be a shell consisting of the same geometric pattern we had developed for the buildings in the Jindong district. Like a dominant ordering scheme, the pattern was to cover windows, doors, and all façades as a playful, ornamental element that would contrast with the brick body of the building itself.

For the pavilion, it seemed logical and appropriate to employ the geometrical pattern that had functioned so well as an ordering scheme for all buildings in the master plan. It would be a pure shell that would serve as a veil, quite apart from its functional aspects. But the result was boring, totally uninteresting in terms of spatial configuration, design, and concept.

The geometric pattern was meant to be more than a mere veil. It was to be given depth and project into space and be converted into space in its own right. The pattern was to overcome its superficial two-dimensionality and generate a potential from which the whole world could be imagined and built -somewhat like a molecular structure or a genetic code. In order to accomplish this, the pattern, which in itself is merely an accumulation of intersecting lines, had to be projected onto a fictitious geometric body (we initially selected a cube in the interest of simplicity), from which it could then be projected once again into the interior. Thus projected from all sides, the pattern created a virtual spatial grid consisting of an infinite number of intersecting lines and points of intersection inside the geometric body. This fictitious spatial grid was the potential and the virtual material from which we – with the help of a powerful computer – developed the inconceivable and unimaginable forms and spaces of the pavilion.

However, this pattern turned out to be a real monster when it came to transforming it into three-dimensional space. It became uncanny and suddenly seemed to be speaking a rapidly growing, uncontrollable language of its own, one that we found fascinating but could not understand. How were we to reshape the random forms, figures and spaces generated by the computer and harness them for our purposes? We had to learn to manipulate the computing processes so that they would satisfy our wishes and expectations with regard to the object we were creating. We began to amplify the spatial and topographic features we discovered and found interesting, while suppressing other forms that struck us as silly and useless. In the process, the inherent anthropometric qualities of the pattern suddenly emerged as essential premises that were favorable to the development of useful, usable places. The anthropometric preprogramming of the pattern related primarily to angles of incline and matters of scale, which we had already been able to test on our buildings in the master plan. Once we had eliminated the obviously absurd forms, we were able to focus on examining and selecting the intersecting sets suggested by the computer instead of revising and reworking the form as one would in conventional architecture or sculpture. As often happens when studying a natural rock formation, closer and extended examination of the forms generated by the computer, some of which appeared idiotically bizarre at first, suddenly began to reveal interesting aspects that mutated, so to speak, into topographic features with specific qualities: a bench, a platform, a cave, an overhanging roof, or a treehouse. It is possible not only to recognize all of these topographic features but to actually use them as such. Yet at the same time, they are always somehow invisible and in determinate, rather than being conventionally figurative or functional.

The results of our observations and explorations were so surprising and fruitful that a number of very different pavilions seemed feasible to us. We therefore decided to develop three projects for three different sites: Jinhua Structure I – Cube, a kind of virtual library for the architectural park in Jinhua; Jinhua Structure II – Vertical, a pavilion that rises into the trees for the Fondation Beyeler’s Berower Park in Basel-Riehen; and Jinhua Structure III – Horizontal, a walk-in pergola for an interior courtyard in downtown Genoa.

How will the pavilions be built?

Jinhua Structure I – Cube
The cube for Jinhua will be built of dyed concrete using conventional construction methods. This meant converting digital data into conventional information for the on-site formwork of the concrete structures.

Jinhua Structure II – Vertical
The tree pavilion for Berower Park will be cut from solid, laminated wood on a computer-controlled workbench.

In contrast to Jinhua I, the Basel pavilion therefore will remain a purely digital entity until the completion of its physical construction.

Jinhua Structure III – Horizontal
The pavilion for Genoa was never executed. Unlike the other two pavilions, the finished project would have been a temporary structure.
Herzog & de Meuron, 2007