This architect has abandoned traditional cube and sphere building blocks for more amorphous forms
When an online home-furnishing company, Prettygoodlife.com, chose him to design its showrooms, it asked, he says, for "a blob that can mutate but maintain its basic identity." (Think of Liz Taylor in the '80s.) Lynn gave them swelling wall systems that can be easily manufactured in differing configurations. And in the New York City Presbyterian church that Lynn designed with Douglas Garofalo and Michael McInturf, metal stairway enclosures course along the exterior in dynamic, rolling strides.
Most architects make paper drawings, then use design software to visualize those as walk-through images. But Lynn's "paperless" practice brings computers in more radically and from the start. Using programs developed for auto designers and film animators, Lynn can find his way into twisting forms. "You define space in the computer with curves," he says. "Usually an architect would draw points, and connect lines and planes with them. With these programs, we've shifted to thinking of space as the sheltered enclosures of a flexible handkerchief." One thing that makes Lynn new is that he knows why they call that stuff software.
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Examine Greg Lynn's computer-generated designs as they come to life. |
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Greg Lynn FORM ETHZ Department of Architecture UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design
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Listen to excerpts from TIME reporter Richard Lacayo's interview with Greg Lynn. |
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