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 theimportance and role of nature in our society, being perceived, in thevisual arts and architecture, a growing inclusion and manipulation ofnatural systems and processes that goes beyond the social and scientificawareness and environmental protection, to affirm themselves as physicaland theoretical elements of critical thinking. In the '60s, with the adventof counter-culture, nature is no longer understood as an outer domainand likely to be controled, but it's encompassed in the political and socialculture of balance with the environment, slowly gaining a preponderancein all aspects of human civilization. But if this evidence is very presentin the political, economical and social discourse of most professions, inthe arts it is more timid and fragile, having only recently been reinstatedin theoretical discourse and usually related to more technical and construction aspects of architecture. The conception of a world where thenatural is in balance and dialogue with the artificial, where humans andnature interact healthily, has significant influences on the conceptual andtheoretical fields of the arts, not only contributing to the redefinition of therelationship between both elements but also to rethink the base conceptsand ideas of the arts. The use and operation of natural phenomena in thefine arts and architecture, also influenced the relationship between thevarious artistic disciplines, showing very similar appropriations of ideas but,simultaneously, demonstrating the time lag of the experiences with naturalelements. Initially, even in the early days of the new environmental thinking,European and North American artists, commonly associated with LandArt or Earthworks, begin to explore the creative possibilities of inclusionand manipulation of nature in sculpture and installation, paving the wayfor the subsequent and recent architectural operations using systemsand processes such as wind, condensation, evaporation, light, electricalenergy, magnetism or growth of plants.Among the conceptual issues of handling natural phenomena, someacquire special importance for the ability of questioning core and, to someextent, predetermined ideas of what is architecture. As postulated byLavoisier, nature is in constant change and evolution in time, thus beingin opposition to the static and timeless vision of wich architecture andart are usually associated. Projects rarely include components of formvariation, time variation or partial control of its elements, showing a closerelationship to the rationality and predictability of handling multiple technical,construction and conceptual variables, typical of human knowledge. Byadding or using natural elements, the characteristics of changeability andevolution, transfer to the building and increase the range of architecturalintervention. What is a sure thing to us becomes questioned and changed.Among the many possibilities, a building can now have a life span relatedto the entropy of the selected material, shape or image can continuouslychange depending on the chosen natural process or may be partially orcompletely unpredictable in the evolution of the used organisms. In the sensory field of architecture and art, nature and its phenomenacan be used to alter our perception of a certain element. Phenomenologyemerges here as the theoretical basis of the manipulation of perception,influencing countless authors to seek experimentation and disclosure ofnatural phenomena that normally are sealed to our senses, changingthe spatial understanding by controlling light, or question our knowledgeand expectations of certain natural elements through the invertion of theircommon disposition and/or location.