Why This Megastructure was Never Built (Paper Architecture)

I came here for the first time when I was 14 years old I never really thought about architecture before but this was the first time I thought wow this is a really nice building and this space kind of made me feel something this was the first time I started to think about the people who created this building the more and more I visited buildings I started to notice the different ways it made me feel and so for me architecture was always kind of synonymous to something that you can go inside and experience and feel and something that was built but then I went to architecture school and I saw a project like this and this and this and I also designed projects like this and this so why do Architects design projects that are not meant to be built a portion of this video is sponsored by paperlike more on them later in this video before I can explain that I need to explain what is architecture well first and foremost architecture is a tool it's a tool for us to influence how people use space and how people interact with the space and with each other using space and form [Music] this has a different relationship to this and this has a different relationship to this and because it reflects our Behavior changes in architecture is usually a pretty good reflection of the changes in our social or cultural or economic values this is your typical shingle style house from the early 20th century with a typical cross-shaped plan a central steer core a typical arrangement of the public rooms on the first floor and a wrap around veranda and this is a very similar plan designed by Frank Lloyd Wright can you see the difference this was during a time when the Dynamics at home were really changing and a lot of people wanted a better connection between these rooms and so a lot of Architects they try to achieve by increasing the opening in these walls but what Frank Lloyd Wright did is he overlapped the geometry is to create one continuous floor Hughes intermediate elements like fireplaces or screens to divide the space but you can still see the continuity of the floor and the ceiling so it makes it feel like one big open space and then later he started to offset the geometry from the grid to give even a better connection between the spaces his houses started to take the form of whatever the function was happening on the inside and he started to take a lot more liberties with the geometry and the Symmetry then there was the open plan instead of a building being a series of boxes and closets became more and more open more and more a sense of space the outside came in more and more and the inside went out more that went along until we had a practically a new floor plan Frank Lloyd Wright built over 500 homes over the time span of six decades so when you look at the evolution of his designs throughout the years you can also see the changes in our culture and our economy in the 1920s the Great Depression hit and a lot of people didn't have the money to spend on homes so he developed a much more economical design which he called the usonian home he condensed the entire house into a single story in the shape of an L with the communal rooms on one leg and the private rooms on the other people didn't have servants anymore and it was the average housewife doing most of the work and so the kitchen gets a lot more Compact and it's located in a more central location so at the housewife can have eyes in both directions he developed multiple iterations of this depending on the cost and the size of the family and he designed it in a way by if the family grew the family could just add another room in this direction fast forward to today cooking becomes more trendy and the kitchen becomes a part of the entertainment and so for a lot of people the kitchen is actually where you spend a lot of your money on these walls disappear the kitchen and the living room become more connected and you get a much more open space and as we shape the function we change the shape and also the form of the building function space form function space form function space form but if you ask any architect they're going to tell you form follows function which follows form which which follows shape foreign a lot of paper yeah but I like drawing on paper have you tried using paper like for your iPad no what is it I use paper like to give my iPad that paper feeling like what well have you tried paper like 2.1 it's got even better Clarity and visibility because they improve the material composition the nanodots which are the little micro beads that I add resistance to your stylus they're spread more evenly across the surface that means with this new iteration the images are sharper and crisper than paper-like too while having the same texture and feeling whoa check the link in the description for more information and lastly you incorporate time into the equation because you don't just experience Space by just looking at it right you either walk through it or you sit around it for an extended period of time when we walk through a series of arcades we experience the Rhythm the light Bouncing Around The Arches so we might feel our steps going down when we go from a narrow space to an open space we might feel a sense of expansion we might even experience a sense of awe but there's another aspect to architecture which is meaning because we're complex sophisticated creatures we always attach meaning to things to things that might not even have a meaning Remember When Donald Trump said he wanted all the federal buildings to be in the classical style that's obviously absurd classical style came from a very specific time and place and so to try to force fit that into our society it doesn't really reflect who we are today right but it is symbolic and it's symbolic of and I quote the dignity Enterprise Vigor and stability of the American system of self-government and by using this architecture they wanted to create an image for the government that was in control but this doesn't mean the same thing now as it did back in the 18th century and neither does this neither does this and sometimes architecture doesn't really remind us of anything it just makes us feel something foreign [Music] because architecture is a combination of all of these things and because it's so intertwined with our culture and our behavior and how we interact with each other it's kind of the perfect way for us to ask questions about who we are and how we are and where we want to be this is one of boulay's buildings that was never meant to be built about two decades after Newton's death one of his prodigies reached out to Boule you might not know this but Newton actually died before his ideas became popularized so a lot of people living before the enlightenment they had never really heard of his ideas but when boulay learned about them he was mesmerized he wanted to honor him with a Worthy cenotaph foreign just look at the scale of this thing it's a 150 meter tall sphere taller than the gray pyramids this is a scale of a person so you can kind of get a sense of how big this thing is it's nestled into this pedestal and it's encircled by hundreds of cypress trees which gives it the illusion of being both half buried into the Earth and hovering from gravity in order for you to reach the inside you need to walk into this long dark tunnel you're walking for almost 150 meters in the darkness your eyes adapt to the dark you're probably feeling a little bit scared and the more you walk you feel yourself getting farther and farther and farther from reality once you reach the end you're in this Grand concrete sphere when you enter you feel this sense of release and you're inspired by the magnitude of the space it's designed so that if it's day outside light pierces through these holes in the vaulting which creates the illusion of stars in the night sky when you come in at night it's the opposite the spherical light fixture hangs in the center of the sphere and it creates this mysterious glow of daylight although this building would never get built I think boulay created poetry through his architecture and he really expressed what it means to be a human in this world we actually have a name for these types of projects the projects that are never meant to be built it's called paper architecture let me know if you have a favorite unbuilt project and if you want to check out my paper architecture I'll leave the playlist right here if you like this video please leave me a thumbs up and if you're not subscribed subscribe button is right there and with that I'll see you guys in the next video [Music]

Channel: DamiLee

Views: 528,851

Keywords: architecture, architecture student, architect, female architect, life of an architect, architecture life, architecture school, archinect, career, career in architecture

Id: 7pM3xtOeFjM

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 21 2022