The nature of building technologies today dictate that increasing levels of complexity can be coordinated with advances in computer systems. From design to construction there exists a common platform for computationally directing the process creating our built environment. These advances labeled Building Information Modelling or BIM involves the generation and management of digital representations of physical and functional characteristics of places. BIM allows a digital “sketch” of a design to move from a basic formal model to design development, prototyping, production and installation all as data and software. In other words, with today’s BIM a common model can be used by the architectural team to design the building, the construction group to model the construction of the building and then the building owner to manage it. Throughout the process design, engineering and construction are tightly woven together in the common foundation in information provided by the computational model.

Beginning in the 2000s this common computer model brought together the architect and structural engineer and increasingly the building contractor into a new-networked computational hyper realm that was the basis for new integrated design thinking. The operation required seeing the process of building holistically yet with respect to its complexity. The development of an interoperable language that could be a basis for the sharing of common terms with architects, engineers and later builders was as important as the technical efficiencies gained by the common computational model. To sum, BIM and computational design laid the ground works to see all aspects of building — structural, material, and aesthetic — as part of a interoperable whole that was the subject of design and construction together.

In this way BIM and the parallel computational design methods between design, structure and construction it created has started to look intriguingly like the unified ideas of design and architecture that were a part of Eastern modes of building before the modern era. It is to this subject we should turn to look in depth at how an Eastern perspective can shed light in the design of architectural ceramics.

An Eastern Perspective on Making

The nature of form in art, design and architecture in the East is completely different from that of the West. Ever since the Renaissance when visual perspective, pictorial and sculptural realism became priorities in art in the West, the divergence between eastern and western modes of art became clear. In architecture and design this transformation also occurred through a neo-classicism that redirected architectural form away from material and craft towards the visual language of ancient Greco-Roman examples. Whereas Romanesque, Byzantine and Gothic architecture along with vernacular examples were focused on the union of form, materiality and decoration, neo-classicism largely separated architectural form from the physical reality of its indigenous base. Overall art and architecture became discrete and separate activities that took their meaning primarily through individual expression aligned to economy and politics. From Renaissance patrons to Baroque and Enlightenment royalty up to the 19-century imperialists and first industrialists, realist, perspectival art and the associated neoclassic architecture were at the service of the political and economic imperatives and hence cultural tastes of these groups up until to the onset of Modernism.

In Eastern cultures the division between art, architecture, design and building never occurred in this way. All types of form making in visual creative practices came out of a unitary understanding of the world that connected human expression to a larger cosmological worldview. In this way Eastern forms of making were closely aligned to functional needs tied to a mix of local material conditions based on Eastern belief systems. While the role of the individual did exist it was always as a vehicle for a larger philosophy bringing together man, nature and the universe. What the West knew as science, art, religion was up to the 19th century in the East simply the manner in which man created meaningful relations between himself and the world in material reality.

Abstraction played a key role in this process of creating profound relations between man and his environment. The application of abstract geometries and patterns tied in part to mathematics was the visual form of expression that generated works as buildings, interiors and objects that surrounded mankind. Visuality while important was much like personal vision subsumed into the greater cosmology combined with material reality. The role of the individual practitioner was to adapt local techniques to these abstract geometries.

For centuries the masters of Eastern form making relied on this method. For example, in the Turkish Ottoman Empire this unity between geometry and pattern can readily be seen in the 98-foot-long Topkapı Scroll, a compendium of 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and architecture. Used by craftsmen responsible for building in the Islamic world, the scroll illuminates the role of geometry as a primary design conceit for the area’s hybrid Eurasian culture. Up until the 20^th century despite the propagation of neo-classicism and then modernism in architecture these geometric and pattern based forms of abstract composition still were important in Turkey. Especially in what we know of as craft, traditional arts such as textiles, ceramics, pottery, basket weaving, metalwork and jewelry relied on the geometric pattern in the “design” of this work. The method of composition often abstract yet tied to handcraft, technique and material remained in existence in these arts in the 21^st century.

Conclusion: Architectural Ceramics in the 21^st Century

Today we can start to think about how an eastern perspective to making can be related to the holistic view of construction that underlies the common computational model implied by BIM. Here the design view for architectural ceramics unites these advances in technology with tradition and modernism to point to new directions for design, engineering and construction together.

In fact it is the process in the realm of ceramics that I have tried to outline in this group of articles for the Turkish Ceramics blog. Initially in the first article, HUMANE GEOMETRIES, we looked at ways to generate new architectures from a basis in the pattern based design possibilities of materials such as ceramic dating from Medieval Islamic Architecture. Geometric patterns in surface materials and building units extending from the micro to the macro dimensions of building from these historical design/building systems provide intriguing design strategies coordinated with present needs. After looking at these ancient methods we moved into the modern period in the second article DEEP SPECIFICiTY, looking at the architectural ceramics of modernist Turkish ceramicists Belma and Sadi Diren specifically their geometric surfaces in ceramic tiles, panels and murals that complemented the space and light of modern architectural settings. Utilizing the traditions of creating abstract forms through patternmaking the Direns realigned these craft based traditions to design to a completely new modern synthesis of form and material.

And in conclusion in this article we have reviewed the possibilities of BIM and computational design and seen how its holistic view of design and building is close in spirit to the Eastern approach to making and building. We have seen that these two making cultures share the same interests in seeing the creation of the built environment in a holistic way where design, engineering and construction are closely connected.

The next step in this process is to see further advances in these holistic methods applied to architectural ceramics as we move past modernism into 21^st century design. There have already been recent examples where architectural ceramics have through the aid of computational design or BIM have been integrated into a building’s overall design approach. We can point to projects such as the exterior ceramic façade of the Austrian Pavilion at Expo 2010 by Austrian architects Matias del Campo and Sandra Manninger of Span and Arkan Zeytinoğlu where the small round ceramic tiles facilitate the highly complex shape of the building. Or we can look at the Porcelain Cladding system by the designers Billings Jackson that can be used to generate a variety of formal facade alternatives. And lastly there is also a more craft and design based approach within a complex building program seen in Eric Parry’s New Bond Street Facade, London and Maria Botta’s terracotta surfaces in the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte, North Carolina, 2010. In all of these large-scale architectural projects architectural ceramics have played an important role in creating character and advanced design through its materiality and visual properties. These projects show that architectural ceramics have an important role to play in 21^st century life.

This role though needs to be studied and applied in more depth based on the still important nature of making that we see originating out of Eastern practices. A future direction for architectural ceramics and architecture in general lies in this synthesis of computation and the eastern holistic approach to making that combines design, engineering and construction. While many other materials of course can be applied this way, architectural ceramics as the oldest of man’s building materials with its flexibility, durability and malleability show a degree of potential in creating rich and complex environments closely aligned to computational design and construction. Architectural ceramics in the 21^st century as cladding, decoration and structure presents an ecological design approach for a variety of functions from facades, rainscreens and sunscreens and beyond.

But more importantly architectural ceramics as we have seen in Eastern examples of Islamic, Ottoman and Turkish architecture have the potential to formally unify a design through patterns and geometries that relate human scale to the increasingly massive scale of cities today with connections to the patterns and cycles of nature. This harmony between man, the built environment and the larger natural world through material and geometry will continue man’s ancient practice of building their world from the basic materials of the earth through ceramics.

ABOUT GÖKHAN KARAKUŞ

Gökhan Karakuş is an Istanbul-based designer, curator and writer. He is the founder and director of Emedya Design, an interactive and environmental design studio creating a range of projects including wayfinding, exhibitions and publications. As a writer he is the editor of the stone architecture magazine, Natura, and a regular contributor to leading global architecture publications such as Detail, The Architect’s Journal, Architectural Record, Dwell and Bauwelt. He is also a curator of many important exhibitions on architecture and design including the recent exhibition, The Performance of Modernity: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, 1946-1977, on Turkey’s modern opera house at Salt Galata in Istanbul.

He is a noted lecturer on topics such as architecture in non-Western contexts, design and craft.

Twitter: @gokhankarakus

Clerkenwell Design Week is a three-day festival, which takes place annually in May for the last 5 years, celebrating the creativity, social relevance and advancements in technology behind design in Clerkenwell of central London-UK.

Clerkenwell Design Week is a must to go showcase, if you are a member of the design community and want to enlighten yourself, get informed about the happenings and meet people and brands from the industry. More and more people are getting interested each year. Did you know in 2013 the event attracted around 54,000 enthusiasts? This year between 20-22 May, over 20 local bars and restaurants in the area took part in the showcase.

So why Clerkenwell? Slowly but surely becoming one of the most important design hubs in the world, Clerkenwell has been home to more creative businesses and architects per square mile than anywhere else on the planet for the last years. The name comes from the Clerks’ Well in Farringdon Lane. Since the Industrial Revolution there were craft workshops, clock makers and jewelers, as well as graphic designers. The region housed central studio and workshop spaces in the last two decades. So, “design” has always been in the area.

Clerkenwell, being UK’s most important generator of creativity and innovation, also  has become home to  new media agencies, graphic and interactive design studios and more than 200 architectural practices – and houses over 60 design showrooms including world leaders Vitra, Poltrona Frau, Knoll and Steelcase.

This year CDW has been recurated into for focused exhibitions:

The Design Factory took place in the Farmiloe Building with high-profile international brands such as Foscarini, BoConcept, Another Country, Anglepoise, Pinch and Mark previewed their latest collections alongside new participating brands including Benchmark, Vitamin Design, Discipline and Decode London

Platform showcased talented up-and-coming designers in the subterranean Victorian prison at The House of Detention. This year’s line-up highlights a strong presence of home-grown design talent, from Kit Mil

Additions, which was a new section added this year took over the Crypt on the Green at St. James Church, exhibiting small design pieces and accessories. Designers including Chisel and Mouse, HAM, Tori Murphy and Jimbobart showcased their latest collections in this brand new venue, the perfect hotspot for all key retail buyers, interior designers and specifiers

Detail took place in the majestic Priory Church at the Order of St John, focusing on high-end interiors and decoration. In addition to the venue’s majestic Church, Crypt and Cloister garden, a new pop-up pavilion has been installed on St John’s Square. Key names such as Ochre, Ginger and Jagger, Munna and Tracy Kendall returned to the venue once again, while the likes of Christopher Jenner for Drummonds and St Judes made their debut at the show this year.

Speaking of St John, we have to mention the modern Eastern ceramic installation: Tile Mile, located at 500 years old St. John’s Gate. Tile Mile is a tiled passageway by Turkishceramics and design studio russ + henshaw featuring parallel inward-facing mirrors that allow visitors to experience diminishing images of themselves that extend to infinity. The parallel mirrors reflect the vaulted ceiling of the arch, as well as the floor. russ + henshaw used 7,200 ceramic tiles to create this colourful passageway beneath the medieval arch.

Bahadir Kayan, Chairman of Turkishceramics, describes the installation as a creative representation of how modern Turkish ceramics products and historical architecture work together harmoniously since the Tile Mile Project was inspired by the columns, vaults and their reflection to the water of  Basilica Cistern in Istanbul and influenced by Turkey’s traditional Iznik ceramics. The designers chose diamond-shaped tiles in ten colors – red, oil blue, yellow, sage green, dove grey, white, scarlet red, cobalt blue, sky blue and turquoise. It is no wonder that, this playful installation was appealing to most of the visitors.

Alongside four central venues, a series of talks, seminars and workshops with leading industry specialists took place.

CDW has consistently increased its influence and reach in the international architecture and design arena. Among 54,000 visitors in 2013 27% were architects and developers, 21% interior designers, 22% product designers and manufacturers, and 11% buyers and retailers. Growing year-on-year, 2013 saw over 250 design brands exhibit across a series of pop-up exhibitions and open showrooms from Erwan Bouroullec and Patricia Urquiola, to Giulio Cappellini and Ross Lovegrove. Over 35 countries were represented by exhibitors, while a 7% rise in international visitors (2012-2013) saw guests from over 100 countries attending the festival.

Now established as one of the key international design festivals, CDW was awarded Best Festival and Best Cultural Event by the UK Event Awards in 2012, and Best Live Event by AEO Awards in 2013.

Turkish Ceramics Promotion Group participated in Clerkenwell Design Week, the biggest independent design festival of the United Kingdom organized in England/London between 20-22 May 2014, promoting Turkish ceramics with its ‘Tile Mile’ project exhibited at St. John’s Gate.

“Tile Mile” expressed by Russ+ Henshaw architectural office as a project reflecting today and future and representing “infinity” has been formed by bringing together the tiles supplied by various Turkish ceramic firms. Created by taking inspiration from the original style of Turkish ceramics, ‘Tile Mile’ project incorporating a creative and authentic style has already been cited in many British design magazines and blogs as Clerkenwell’s outstanding project.

Turkish Ceramics Promotion Group representing ‘Tile Mile’ project organized a special cocktail on 20 May in London/ St. John’s Order Museum to bring together the world’s leading designers and architects and Turkish ceramic firms.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German born American Architect. Commonly known as ‘Mies’, Along with Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, and Frank Lloyd Wright, he is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture. By emphasizing open space and revealing the industrial materials used in construction, he helped define modern architecture. He referred to the buildings he created as “skin and bones” architecture, believing a rational approach to design would guide his creative process.

Deep specificity: Sadi and Belma Diren and the Role of Architectural Ceramics in the Generation of Design Character in Modern Architecture in Turkey 

Blog by Gökhan Karakuş

Istanbul University Social Center – Istanbul 1972

The modernist period in architecture was characterized by an interest in abstract form and industrial methods and materials. Steel, glass and reinforced concrete augmented later by industrially manufactured building materials were used to develop the foundation of modern architecture. Today the aesthetics of late modern architecture is with us appreciably the same as it was for most of the 20th century. Moreso, modern architecture, its design principals and building conventions are now a worldwide phenomenon that that has expanded into all geographies and cultures as a unified global system for architecture and construction in a dramatic expansion of the principals of modern architecture.

Ataturk Kültür Merkezi – İstanbul
The results of this system on the quality of human life though have been mixed. While an increasing standardization of the built environment around the tropes and materialism of this now watered down commercial modernism has provided economic efficiencies, the impact of this architecture on society has not been as successful.  A similar set of conventions using a standard group of materials has pushed architecture into a common global language at a massive scale that increasingly lacks meaningful connections to society, environment and importantly human experience. Looking around at urban areas from Mumbai to Santiago, the spaces of the ubiquitous grey, multifloor reinforced concrete buildings that fill up our cities with no apparent reference to what they are and the lives they house has resulted in a bland one size fits all monoculture for architecture. In this massively standardized world cost-efficient construction methods have failed to create architecture with a design character aligned to society and human needs.

Ataturk Kültür Merkezi – İstanbul 1965
But it was not that far in the history of modern architecture that architects were working to address the lack of character of modernism with a deeply specific approach that brought together architecture and design. Starting with the Arts and Crafts Movement through the Bauhaus and up to the global modernism of the 1950s and 1960s there was a constant dialogue between architects, designers and craftsmen responsible for giving detail to buildings. Architects working in coordination with these designers for example in areas such as plaster, ceramics, woodworking and glasswork generated spaces with local character that was standard architecture practice up through the 1970s. Architects and designers together finessed the details of their buildings to bring handicraft back in touch with the creation of architecture to stress the deeply specific nature of space.

Ceramic Wall Panel – 1965

An interesting and otherwise forgotten aspect of the deeply specific in modern architecture can be found in Turkey. With its long history of architectural ceramics dating to the Ottoman period there was in Turkey in the modern era a widespread use of ceramics in construction. Of those working in this period the ceramicists Sadi Diren with his wife Belma Diren were the most important designers of ceramics for architectural settings in this trend in Turkey in the second half of the 20th century.  The Direns’ technical knowledge combined with an aesthetic merging modern and traditional Turkish forms resulted in original panel murals and tiles that decorated significant public buildings in Turkey from the 1960s to the 1980s. While Sadi Diren focused on creating forms in part based on the decorative geometry of Anatolian craft, Belma Diren concentrated on surface glazing and color. Their designs were influenced by their experiences in the commercial ceramics and pottery sector in Germany where they worked from 1955 and 1964. But also importantly they continued to transform architectural ceramics, a traditional art form associated with Turkish culture and Anatolia since ancient times, into a modern format in line with Turkey’s emerging cities and society.

Atatürk Kültür Merkezi – Istanbul 1969 Entrance Plaza

Their art and designs emphasized abstract and archetypal forms with articulated, colored surfaces and rich textures. Their murals and tiles were significant additions to the newly emerging modern building types such as hotels, corporate offices, residential buildings and cultural spaces. For these architectural settings they designed representational murals with Turkish iconography or working closely with modernist architects such as Hayati Tabanlıoğlu and Abdurrahman Hancı they developed original combinations of relief tiles that resulted in large, geometrical interior surfaces that complemented the space and light of modern architectural settings. Utilizing the traditions of creating abstract forms through patternmaking they realigned these craft based traditions to design to a completely new modern synthesis of form and material.  Their work with Eczacıbaşı, one of the major industrial ceramic producers in Turkey, ensured that their designs became a popular art form and design format whose acceptance can also be seen in similar architectural ceramics produced by other companies such as Çanakkale Seramik and Gorbon-Işıl.

Ceramic Wall Tile – Şekerbank Ankara – 1970

The Direns were the leaders in a period in ceramic design in Turkey that saw the widespread application of ceramics in architectural settings. From the 1960s their architectural ceramics in the form of ceramic panels, murals and relief tiles were a common strategy to provide specific character for public space.  Today we can look to these modernists as inspiration for the design of the details of architecture. The deeply specific way that ceramic designers such as the Direns worked with architects to give spaces individual character were instrumental in enhancing the experience of architecture. Today architects working closely with ceramics industry with the assistance of computer generated design have the opportunity to replicate these efforts with the use of industrially produced ceramics with an eye toward a similar notion of deep specificity.

ABOUT GÖKHAN KARAKUŞ

Gökhan Karakuş is an Istanbul-based designer, curator and writer. He is the founder and director of Emedya Design, an interactive and environmental design studio creating a range of projects including wayfinding, exhibitions and publications. As a writer he is the editor of the stone architecture magazine, Natura, and a regular contributor to leading global architecture publications such as Detail, The Architect’s Journal, Architectural Record, Dwell and Bauwelt. He is also a curator of many important exhibitions on architecture and design including the recent exhibition, The Performance of Modernity: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, 1946-1977, on Turkey’s modern opera house at Salt Galata in Istanbul.

He is a noted lecturer on topics such as architecture in non-Western contexts, design and craft.

Twitter: @gokhankarakus

Our architect of the week is Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

Rem Koolhass is often regarded as being one of the most influential architects of our time. Today Rem is a founding partner at influential Rotterdam based architectural practice, OMA, as well as being Professor in Practice, at the prestigious Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Rem studied architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and at Cornell University in Ithaca in New York. Today Rem is regarded as being one of architectures most influential teachers, those few architects that have had the good fortune of interning under his tutelage at OMA have generally gone on to carve out successful careers of their own, REX – Architecture Principle,Joshua Prince Ramus being one.

Koolhaas was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2000 for his contributions to architecture, whilst in 2008 Time Magazine named him in their top 100 most influential people in the world list.

Meet Frank Gehry. Much of Gehry’s work falls within the style of Deconstructualizm, which is often referred to as post-structualist in nature for its ability to go beyond current modalities of structural definition. This can be seen in Gehry’s house in Santa Monica. In architecture, its application tends to depart from modenism its inherent criticism of culturally inherited givens such as societal goals and functional necessity. Because of this, unlike early modernist structures, Deconstructivist structures are not required to reflect specific social or universal ideas, such as speed or universality of form, and they do not reflect a belief that form follows function. Gehry’s own Santa Monica residence is a commonly cited example of deconstructivist architecture, as it was so drastically divorced from its original context, and in such a manner as to subvert its original spatial intention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_gehry

During Eastanbul Westanbul (November 2013), Turkishceramics invited six architectural practices to Istanbul to research and discover the history and use of ceramics in Turkey. During the programme, Istanbul-based design, curator and writer, Gökhan Karakuş presented a lecture to the architects on the origins, historical context and contemporary use of ceramics.

To find out more about the insights of the lecture given by Gökhan Karakuş, please read his blog post, ‘Humane Geometries’ – part one of a three part blog series.

Please check back here in February for part 2!

Part 1

HUMANE GEOMETRIES

Blog by Gökhan Karakuş

Architecture in eastern contexts has a distinct pedigree that while somewhat watered down in the vagaries of 21st century economic and urban transformation is still vibrant today in our modern world. While we can no longer convincingly speak of national architectures, there is still an interest in and practice of local architecture cultures that are tied to different notions of composition, form and materials. Starting with the early modernism of the 18th century there has been a slow adoption of the Western system of architecture and design in the rest of the globe including Eastern geographies. But interestingly despite this rapid pace of change the remnants of age old systems of construction and architecture are still with us today as possible inspirations for new ways of working

One of these eastern traditions is the history of the pattern-based approach to architectural decoration often with ceramics as the important aesthetic and material catalyst. Widespread in the Middle Ages in the Islamic world and Central Asia up into the modern period, geometric patterns were used to generate architectural decoration on the facades and vertical surfaces of buildings but were also central to design strategies that were a significant part of the compositional repertoire that was used to build up mass, volume and space. Abstract geometric patterns in two and three dimensions were utilized by architects or more correctly master builders from Istanbul to Samarkand to generate buildings that placed an importance on the practical and the metaphysical in epistemological and architectural concepts different from Western tradition. While the West and Europe was and is still today caught up in its origins in the Classicism of the Greco-Roman period with the classical orders at its center, the East and in particular Islamic architecture focused on a combination of mathematics, geometry, pattern and materials to create architecture. In this non-Western architectural traditional, geometric pattern in the form of non-periodic tilings pointing towards abstract notions of infinity generated a profound understanding of man and the universe in the underlying mathematics behind these designs.

It is here in the connection between composition and materials through the application of geometric pattern that we can turn today contemporary practice. While architecture in places like Turkey, Central Asia and the Islamic world is in our times dominated by the Late Modernism of European origin, there exists still in the traditions of construction and materials in the East ways to generate new architectures from a basis in the pattern based design possibilities of materials such as ceramic. Geometric patterns in surface materials and building units extending from the micro to the macro dimensions of building provide intriguing design strategies coordinated with present needs. For example, patterns are a simple way to relate human scale to the vast new urban scale that is growing rapidly in our cities. More so traditions in architecture based in geometric patterns enabled by todays computational design hints at the possibilities of a transformation to an architecture that is at once ancient and profound but thoroughly aligned to contemporary needs for builders and society alike.

ABOUT GÖKHAN KARAKUŞ

Gökhan Karakuş is an Istanbul-based designer, curator and writer. He is the founder and director of Emedya Design, an interactive and environmental design studio creating a range of projects including wayfinding, exhibitions and publications. As a writer he is the editor of the stone architecture magazine, Natura, and a regular contributor to leading global architecture publications such as Detail, The Architect’s Journal, Architectural Record, Dwell and Bauwelt. He is also a curator of many important exhibitions on architecture and design including the recent exhibition, The Performance of Modernity: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, 1946-1977, on Turkey’s modern opera house at Salt Galata in Istanbul.

He is a noted lecturer on topics such as architecture in non-Western contexts, design and craft.

Twitter: @gokhankarakus