Siteless: 1001 Building Forms

by François Blanciak

An attempt to free architecture from site and program constraints and to counter the profusion of ever bigger architecture books with ever smaller content. Some may call it the first manifesto of the twenty-first century, for it lays down a new way to think about architecture. Others may think of it as the last architectural treatise, for it provides a discursive container for ideas that would otherwise be lost. Whatever genre it belongs to, SITELESS is a new kind of architecture book that seems to have come out of nowhere. Its author, a young French architect practicing in Tokyo, admits he “didn't do this out of reverence toward architecture, but rather out of a profound boredom with the discipline, as a sort of compulsive reaction.” What would happen if architects liberated their minds from the constraints of site, program, and budget? he asks. The result is a book that is saturated with forms, and as free of words as any architecture book the MIT Press has ever published. The 1001 building forms in SITELESS include structural parasites, chain link towers, ball bearing floors, corrugated corners, exponential balconies, radial facades, crawling frames, forensic housing—and other architectural ideas that may require construction techniques not yet developed and a relation to gravity not yet achieved. SITELESS presents an open-ended compendium of visual ideas for the architectural imagination to draw from. The forms, drawn freehand (to avoid software-specific shapes) but from a constant viewing angle, are presented twelve to a page, with no scale, order, or end to the series. After setting down 1001 forms in siteless conditions and embryonic stages, Blanciak takes one of the forms and performs a “scale test,” showing what happens when one of these fantastic ideas is subjected to the actual constraints of a site in central Tokyo. The book ends by illustrating the potential of these shapes to morph into actual building proportions.

Genres: Architecture, Design, Art, Reference, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published February 29, 2008

Reviews

[Seth Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm really impressed with this books lack of words and rich creative forms - it's a great source of inspiration for a designer, inventor, or architect. MIT Press least number of words book ever...

[Libros de Arquitectura · Rating 4 out of 5]

¿Que pasaría si en un futuro lejano la arquitectura no tuviera nada más que aportar? Seguramente todos los arquitectos entraríamos a un periodo de pesimismo y desánimo general. Al parecer esta situación la visualizó François Blanciak hace un par de años y decidió tomar cartas en el asunto. El resultado fue titulado "Siteless" (sin lugar) un pequeño ejemplar que presenta 1001 formas edilicias diferentes ubicadas en … ningún lugar. Este ejercicio formal fue originado en palabras del autor "[…] no por reverenciar a la arquitectura, sino por un profundo aburrimiento con la disciplina, como una especie de reacción compulsiva". Aunque a primera vista esta afirmación es contundente, pone de manifiesto lo que muchos arquitectos han pensado y casi nunca se han atrevido a expresar en voz alta. Blanciak reafirma esta idea lanzando una interrogante: ¿qué pasaría si los arquitectos liberaran su mente de restricciones como: el sitio, el programa y los presupuestos? La respuesta esta en este libro, que contiene a su vez 1001 respuestas "formales" de posibles edificios y muy pocas palabras.

"Siteless" es, sin duda, un excelente ejemplar para los amantes de la formas. Un exquisito manjar, no solo porque las 1001 formas son todas diferentes unas de otras, también porque han sido producto de un ejercicio de pura y total imaginación. No hay escalas, orden, sucesiones y seriaciones, tampoco hay intenciones, ideales, preceptos y conceptos. Para los estudiantes de arquitectura es una rica fuente de ideas y para los profesionales un buen recordatorio de algunas posibilidades e "imposibilidades" [sic] arquitectónicas. Para los nostálgicos será un motivo de suspiros ya que las 1001 formas están dibujadas a mano (cosa rara en nuestros días). Y finalmente para los amantes de la tecnología, 1001 desafíos para sus habilidades en el modelado y diseño paramétrico.

Formas, formas y más formas, que a los ojos de cualquier "ortodoxo" o "funcionalista" radical son solo eso… formas y nunca arquitectura. Para estos personajes, "Siteless" tiene su dosis de realidad expresada como una prueba de escala. Como un ejercicio práctico, en la parte final del libro, Blanciak toma una de las 1001 formas para convertirla en un objeto arquitectónico. Sin intenciones de hacer un juicio o crítica del resultado final, creemos que lo más interesante es el proceso para llegar a ese resultado. Estas operaciones y herramientas tradicionales del arquitecto para "tectonizar" la forma son aplicadas a un objeto con restricciones de sitio, programa y presupuesto. Todo lo anterior para demostrar que sí es posible generar arquitectura a partiendo únicamente de una forma.

www.librosdearquitectura.com.mx

[Justin Goodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Siteless gives off that Tatlin's Tower energy, the vibe of modernist promise. It's not for no reason that #990 (of the titular, minimally described 1001 forms in this book) is "Malevich tower." Not for no reason I thought immediately of the MOMA's 1948-1980 Yugoslavian Architecture exhibit Towards a Concrete Utopia. If one thinks of Modernism as the attempt to re-modernize, to break off from what preceded it in pursuit of an unknown proceeding it, Blanciak's introduction declares this project modernist:

The traditional sequence 'program plus site equals form' is here intentionally inverted... although a number of these figures constitute mere criticisms of recurrent paradigms in the discipline, most aspire to innovate and envision a more diverse future; to the point that many require construction techniques not available to date, if not different gravitational values.

Often you'll find yourself pausing to consider what kind of future, what kind of material, what kind of gravity, would be required for these shapes to be realized. How could someone live here? What would be the experience of living in the self-explanatory #550 "tower glass"? Would the glass heat up during summer months and boil the towers inside? Would they be apartments or storage facilities? Would the glass be a conductive glass and the towers an insulated steel? I can't help but think of RT Games playing City Skylines for its cartoonish possibilities.

Which is to say the big word for Siteless is potential. Blanciak ends the book by drafting one of his impossible shapes into an actual blueprint - a practice he apparently has his students do. He prefaces his blueprint with a note that he is taking "a tangential leap from the fantastical into reality." That's the modernist spirit: what begins as pure ideal is only superficially distant from its realization. It always seems impossible until it is done.

[Wasi Rizvi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolute lack of words and photos, yet so much is said in a clear way, capturing exactly what it wants to... Absolutely amazing!

This is an amazing resource for an architecture enthusiast, but also leaves a novice like me, who hasn't been to these cities, scratching my head over questions that text or photos might have been able to clarify with ease.

[Muayad Habeeb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love this book, The volume is certainly interesting
I highly recommend to architecture students. It's easy to think that you can come up with an infinite number of shapes. That shapes you can develop it by yourself.

[Alhamdamar Mudafiq · Rating 1 out of 5]

What the heck is this? just a bunch of.. nevermind, just, wasting time.

[Amin369 · Rating 3 out of 5]

کتاب جالبی بود حتا برای منی که تخصص معماری ندارم. نمیدونم برای حرفه ای های معماری هم جالبه یا نه ولی خوندن البته دیدنش ضرر نداره.
مراقب هم باشیم کنار هم بمونیم.