MIES - Junk

This is a design for a metal-recycling plant by Dekleva Gregoric Arhitekti, a Slovenian design firm. The site features two rectangular buildings, one concrete and the other a steel structure, perched on a concrete wall that surrounds the site. The office is clad in steel mesh and forms a sort of control deck to oversee processing in the yard below, also providing car parking space underneath.

The project consists of an immense production plateau and two small buildings on the edge of it. The generic base, flexible are clearly divided for multiple-use and the very specific, non-flexible, therefore ephemeral and recycle friendly by its activity. In these terms the huge concrete plateau with a definition wall and attached concrete service building define the core of the current production, however they easily allow for change of program within the industrial zone.

MIES - Installation Architecture

Is it art?  Or is it architecture?  It's hard to tell.  But nARCHITECTS, a studio based out of NYC, seems to push the limit between the two.  Their vision is to clearly diagram ideas for complex clientele.  Their projects, which are not shown here, tend to involve methods of layering and phasing, to grasp the specific needs of their clients. 

But perhaps most evident, from these pieces of design, is that they wholeheartedly embrace simplicity.  These are not - I repeat, not - simple designs.  But they are presented to be as such.  The feathery lightness of the whitish dream-catching structure is particularly appealing given an unbridled clarity.  It looks easy enough, sure.  But how were these pieces fabricated, put together and positioned like Japanese botany?  There's more going on at work here than meets the eye.

The scale in the latticed pieces, and irresolution, tends to mask whether these installations are finished or not.  From the picture above, the work is large enough for a man to walk in.  It is also transparent; we can see through the piece.  The bases alternate.  Some of the structures lead into columns, others into foundations.  All of them go somewhere.  But why do they lead where they do?

Ultimately, nARCHITECTS pose a question debated by architects for centuries.  Namely, what is the role of enclosure in architecture?  Does a building have to provide shelter for it to be considered architecture?  Or is architecture something more fanciful?  Something more artistic?

It is an argument that continues into the next century and will, for the time being, be elucidated by architects that consider themselves part-artists.  This, from what I have collected, is as cogent a depiction of the question as I have seen.