Which characteristics brought the four of you together and allowed the creation of ORPROJECT?
Francesco, Christoph and I studied Architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Francesco worked at Herzog and de Meuron and Zvi Hecker, Christoph worked at Youmeheshe, Tezuka Architects and Zaha Hadid and I worked at Herzog and de Meuron and Foster + Partners. While in London, we met and discovered out mutual interests. Our discussions included ecologic design, sustainability, bio-mimetic architecture, computational geometry, digital fabrication and interest in material formations. This lead the formation of a design research group that we called Orproject. We realized how easily our expertise and experiences complimented each other and we were able to engage with each other through our work.
Your talent for incorporating ‘geometry and nature’ is remarkable. Will ORPROJECT ever experiment with other elements such as water or wind?
We were always interested in growth systems found in nature - systems that changed over time and adapted to varying existing conditions. Our research in venation patterns was materialized at the installation level with Or1 and Or2 and later we extended this to Arbor - a design for a skyscraper that grows like a tree. Recently we published our concept proposal ‘Bubbles’ which explores how geometries developed from this system could be used to create bio diversity parks to deal with air pollution in developing cities like Beijing and New Delhi.
We have also researched the concept of flow in nature. This flow could be electric or magnetic fields, water, or air. Digitally, we use a system of attractors and deflectors that influence a field of vectors. The resulting vectors are used to generate architectural form. We are using this to explore proposals for traffic intensive design issues like urban design, airports, public buildings and other infrastructural projects.
Lastly, we research links between music and architecture. These experiments explore layering and bending and how they can be used to develop a consolidated formal and structural strategy for wall systems. This lead to the design for Anisotropia or Frozen Music. We discovered that this system could also work acoustically and developed Anisotropia further for the design for the Busan Opera House in South Korea.
When did the spark of creativity and the idea of integrating architecture and nature began for you? (any particular event or experience?)
Christoph would collect autumn leaves in his early childhood. He wondered how the differences in venation patterns were particular to plant types and how nature used open and closed venation patterns as a strategy to give each organism its own custom solution for structure and circulation.
Rajat's fascination with surfaces started from his study of the human body and the sensuality of its curves. He is interested in the superficial i.e. every aspect pertaining to a surface. As a tensile membrane, the skin is able to shape itself to different needs of the body - from bending, stretching and relaxing, each curve of the body seamlessly blends into the next to create a coherent form. This and his interest in writing computational algorithms allow him to explore complex architectural forms.
Francesco was just upset by how ugly existing sustainable architecture is, and wondered how an ecological narrative could be added to make designs both more readable and sculptural.
In your opinion, is sustainability moving forward and upward in our society?
Yes. Sustainability is the future! Looking at our ever increasing demands on natural resources, we need to embrace sustainability if we need to survive. However, we don't believe that architecture has to become frugal and ugly to become sustainable. Instead, we believe that architecture needs to embrace sustainability in its formal narrative. By engaging with modern technologies to develop design and using optimized construction systems that maximize the performance of a building, we can create beautiful buildings that express an ecologic agenda: New forms that embrace technology to become icons for the next century.
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