It's been a while since I sat down to blog… I've actually gotten married (very happily) since my last entry and had an incredibly busy, but fun, summer.
Last spring I wrote about a very cool weekly e-magazine called World-Architects. As a sculptor and an architectural photographer, I'm a bit of an architectural design junkie, and this weekly online publication always has interesting stuff to look at. One story in particular captured my attention this week: "A Digitally Drawn Façade in Frankfurt." A team of German architects, Franken Architekten, was commissioned to renovate a building in an old neighborhood in Frankfurt. The original building, which had the traditional exterior of exposed framework with plaster infill, had to be torn down, and the architects wanted the new building to have a similar neighborhood 'flavor' as the one they were replacing.
This new building was to be clad in plaster panels, and the architects came up with the concept of using a CNC machine to generate and digitally draw—or rather carve—a series of squiggly lines, that when viewed from a distance, creates a visual pattern much like the traditional exposed frame. The design is much more subtle than the stark contrast between dark wood frame and plaster infill in the neighboring buildings, but their design solution is brilliant.
The write up on the project is excellent as are the photos. There is also a video included, and even though the voice-over is German (not my first language), the easy-to-follow visuals capture the process quite nicely.
I recommend that all of you who are curious about architectural design check out World Architects. It is a wonderful up-to-the-minute glimpse of architecture around the globe that it will get you thinking beyond the world of boxes and gables that dominate architecture in this country.
