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Asymptote: Flux
Asymptote, an award-winning New York City -- based architectural firm, expands the boundaries of traditional architectural practice with work that ranges from buildings and urban design to computer-generated environments. Recognized internationally as both leading-edge architects and virtual-reality artists as well as sought-after critics and teachers, Asymptote partners Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid have emphasized research into cultural trends and technological influences as the core of their practice. The firm has completed or is overseeing projects around the world, with commissions as diverse as a trading floor for the New York Stock Exchange; a multimedia research park in Kyoto, Japan; a modular furniture system for the Knoll furniture company; a music theater in Graz, Austria; and a new center for art and technology for the Guggenheim Museum in SoHo, New York. Designed and written by the partners, Asymptote is the first book to fully document their "real world" (as opposed to virtual) projects.In mathematical terms, the word "asymptote" is defined as a line that a given curve gets closer and closer to, but never touches, as it gets further from the origin towards infinity. In architectural terms, Asymptote is the Manhattan-based architectural design and research practice established by Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid in 1989.
Rashid and Couture's work is intriguing because it draws inspiration from a wide range of sources not traditionally associated with architecture -- among them the design of airline interiors, sporting equipment, and organic systems like seashells and honeycombs; and various means of communicating and disseminating information. Their projects areconcerned as much with light, speed, and traversing virtual boundaries as with "real-world" geometries and building systems. Hani Rashid is one of the founding instructors in the "paperless studio" curriculum at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, a program of study that emphasizes designing directly via computers and communications networks and encourages students to pursue investigations into the evolving possibilities of digital design and "placeless" environments.
Echoing Asymptote's approach, this book presents a seamless trajectory of projects organized in a non-linear fashion and illustrated with installation photographs, collaged photographs, and computer-generated diagrams and environments, all in color. Photographs of an installation might be followed by a spread of Asymptote's "scapes" -- computer diagrams morphed into a variety of potential body forms or structures -- followed in turn by images of a virtual environment. The projects follow one another in a panoramic, filmstrip fashion and are interspersed with descriptive text and the speculative writing that Asymptote is known for. The book is intended to be explored at random, without strict beginning or end.
Rashid and Couture's work is intriguing because it draws inspiration from a wide range of sources not traditionally associated with architecture -- among them the design of airline interiors, sporting equipment, and organic systems like seashells and honeycombs; and various means of communicating and disseminating information. Their projects areconcerned as much with light, speed, and traversing virtual boundaries as with "real-world" geometries and building systems. Hani Rashid is one of the founding instructors in the "paperless studio" curriculum at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, a program of study that emphasizes designing directly via computers and communications networks and encourages students to pursue investigations into the evolving possibilities of digital design and "placeless" environments.
Echoing Asymptote's approach, this book presents a seamless trajectory of projects organized in a non-linear fashion and illustrated with installation photographs, collaged photographs, and computer-generated diagrams and environments, all in color. Photographs of an installation might be followed by a spread of Asymptote's "scapes" -- computer diagrams morphed into a variety of potential body forms or structures -- followed in turn by images of a virtual environment. The projects follow one another in a panoramic, filmstrip fashion and are interspersed with descriptive text and the speculative writing that Asymptote is known for. The book is intended to be explored at random, without strict beginning or end.
- GenresArchitecture
240 pages, Hardcover
First published July 15, 1995
15 people want to read
About the author
Hani Rashid
15 books1 followerHani Rashid is an architect and educator. He co-founded the New York-based architecture firm, Asymptote Architecture with Lise Anne Couture.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 23, 2010
Architectural and design attempts at blending the real and the digital. Primarily inspired by digital art's effect on art world, a lot of the projects are semi-online semi-real-life museums. There were interesting parts spun around things like "airport urbanism" or adopting sports/athletic design for offices but they were short.
In all reality, the conceptualization and/or creation of structures to accomodate a hyper-real future at this point and time leads to a bunch of walls of hdtv's put into about 2/3 of the projects in this book, and a indecisive use of barriers (glass walls in just about every structure that adjust to sunlight or project images on or through or inside themselves.
If you're still with me and this all sounds appealing to you, think of it like reading the back of a book and then being disappointed - I just about pointed out a lot of the interesting things but what I wrote here is about how much you'll leave with after reading this architecture book.
In all reality, the conceptualization and/or creation of structures to accomodate a hyper-real future at this point and time leads to a bunch of walls of hdtv's put into about 2/3 of the projects in this book, and a indecisive use of barriers (glass walls in just about every structure that adjust to sunlight or project images on or through or inside themselves.
If you're still with me and this all sounds appealing to you, think of it like reading the back of a book and then being disappointed - I just about pointed out a lot of the interesting things but what I wrote here is about how much you'll leave with after reading this architecture book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review