Sistemas e processos naturais. variação, mutação e evolução na arquitectura e arte dos últimos 50 anos

Abstract

After the second world war, has been seen a reassessment of the importance and role of nature in our society, being perceived, in the visual arts and architecture, a growing inclusion and manipulation of natural systems and processes that goes beyond the social and scientific awareness and environmental protection, to affirm themselves as physical and theoretical elements of critical thinking. In the '60s, with the advent of counter-culture, nature is no longer understood as an outer domain and likely to be controled, but it's encompassed in the political and social culture of balance with the environment, slowly gaining a preponderance in all aspects of human civilization. But if this evidence is very present in the political, economical and social discourse of most professions, in the arts it is more timid and fragile, having only recently been reinstated in theoretical discourse and usually related to more technical and construction aspects of architecture. The conception of a world where the natural is in balance and dialogue with the artificial, where humans and nature interact healthily, has significant influences on the conceptual and theoretical fields of the arts, not only contributing to the redefinition of the relationship between both elements but also to rethink the base concepts and ideas of the arts. The use and operation of natural phenomena in the fine arts and architecture, also influenced the relationship between the various artistic disciplines, showing very similar appropriations of ideas but, simultaneously, demonstrating the time lag of the experiences with natural elements. Initially, even in the early days of the new environmental thinking, European and North American artists, commonly associated with Land Art or Earthworks, begin to explore the creative possibilities of inclusion and manipulation of nature in sculpture and installation, paving the way for the subsequent and recent architectural operations using systems and processes such as wind, condensation, evaporation, light, electrical energy, magnetism or growth of plants. Among the conceptual issues of handling natural phenomena, some acquire special importance for the ability of questioning core and, to some extent, predetermined ideas of what is architecture. As postulated by Lavoisier, nature is in constant change and evolution in time, thus being in opposition to the static and timeless vision of wich architecture and art are usually associated. Projects rarely include components of form variation, time variation or partial control of its elements, showing a close relationship to the rationality and predictability of handling multiple technical, construction and conceptual variables, typical of human knowledge. By adding or using natural elements, the characteristics of changeability and evolution, transfer to the building and increase the range of architectural intervention. What is a sure thing to us becomes questioned and changed. Among the many possibilities, a building can now have a life span related to the entropy of the selected material, shape or image can continuously change depending on the chosen natural process or may be partially or completely unpredictable in the evolution of the used organisms. In the sensory field of architecture and art, nature and its phenomena can be used to alter our perception of a certain element. Phenomenology emerges here as the theoretical basis of the manipulation of perception, influencing countless authors to seek experimentation and disclosure of natural phenomena that normally are sealed to our senses, changing the spatial understanding by controlling light, or question our knowledge and expectations of certain natural elements through the invertion of their common disposition and/or location.