Okay, so Topology Optimization and Michell Trusses may not sound terribly sexy but when married to form, function and interesting materials, you’ve got the makings of a great bridge, building or public artwork. That’s the premise behind Poetic Structure: Art + Engineering + Architecture, a mix of drawings, models and installations currently on display at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles. The show’s organizers have asked numerous artists to demonstrate the interplay between art and engineering and show how structure really can be poetic.
Take Pavilion for instance. Comprised of hinged wooden panels, Pavilion articulates to resemble a bird in flight… or a tunnel… or a shelter when manipulated by the steel wires that connect it to the overhead frame. Why? Because it can. The MAK want us to see how the whole is a sum of many parts. Individually the panels are nice to look, a mix of wood and metal. Collectively, they come together to form a multitude of purposes.
World Voices is a scale model of a similar sculpture, now sitting in Dubai, by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa. Constructed of titanium rods and bronze weights, the model allows Plensa to calculate pitch and sway, in effect working out all the kinks, before the larger piece is sent away for fabrication. Mathematics and engineering at work.
Dreamcatcher by American fabric artist Janet Echelman is an organic piece that holds its shape through tension and structural optimality. Locally, Echelman is known for her larger pieces, specifically a huge installation, 85 feet tall, that she strung between two buildings on Sunset Boulevard last year.
Scores of drawings, models and photographs are also on display, aimed at the architectural wonk (and us too) anxious to put a face to concepts like fused frames and optimal tensegrity. Even the novice has to admit engineering concepts are intriguing. Visitors to the exhibition are greeted with the opening statement, (or is it the closing statement) “an engineer should design a structure that an architect would be ashamed to cover up.” Exactly.