GREG LYNN

bODY mATTERS and [ANIMAT]ion

One of my favorite projects is the Leca Swimming Pools in Leca da Palmeira, Portugal. The project was done by Alvaro Siza in 1966, (years before the Greg Lynn essays).

http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/leca/index.htm
(a web article with photos written by Tatiana Berger in 2003)

The project is located at the sea-wall at Leca and involves changing rooms, a cafe and a series of man-made tide pools which are naturally fed by the sea. Siza uses much of the original topography in his project, minimizing the intrusion of man made forms. (And why did I bring this up??!! )

In his essay, "Body Matters", Lynn discusses dissimilar objects connecting in nature as parasites, wasps, or viscous fluids. The ability for one form to evolve and flow in to the next.
In the same way, Siza's sea-wall connects two different entities. The sea-wall stand uninterrupted separating the city and the sea for miles. Siza's project becomes a seamless transition between the man-made sea-wall and the sea. Two entities which are naturally dissimilar connect thorough Siza's project.

The idea of forms that evolve and change over time is presented in both "Body Matters" and "Animation". In "Body Matters", evolution can happen within a second to over centuries: from before the two entities (as the wasp and the orchid) meet to how they affect the next entity (how the wasp affects the next orchid). In Lynn's essay "Animation", time is the controlling variable that slowed down allows us to understand movement and if sped up affords an understanding or evolution.

In Alvaro Siza's Leca Swimming Pools, there is a constant evolution of the sea eroding the wall and it's surroundings away. There is sort of futility of human labor to build forms to obstruct and oppose nature. By acknowledging nature, Siza's project becomes the a point of symbiosis between the civilization's sea-wall and the nature's eroding sea.


(All done without blobs or computers, but with a very exact measurement of site conditions. Siza measures every rock on the site. And it connects better to the site and the city then a stack of books covered in mesh or a smashed guitar. Do form generators really generate better cities and better buildings?)