August 13, 2007
lnstitut du Monde Arabe and aperture
Nearly twenty years ago the French Architect Jean Nouvel completed the lnstitut du Monde Arabe in Paris, one of the first of Mitterrand´s Les Grands Projects. The famous facade, comprised of thousands of mechanical apertures that, like a camera lense, would open and close to modulate the light in the interior based on the suns brightness outside. Unfortunately due in part to the design and in part the difficulty in maintaining the giant wall they have not operated for many years.
Designer Gunnar Green has created a project aptly named, aperture. Apeture shares a similar mechanical element, the apeture, as well as program, the building facade, but highlights a great shift in design thinking in the last twenty years.
aperture is a facade installation with interactive and narrative displaying modes. consisting of an iris diaphragm matrix, the facade’s surface with its apertures’ variable opening diameters is enriched by a dynamic translucency, that creates new imagery as well as a new channel for communication between inside and outside.
Buildings are becoming media in and of themselves.
