Challenging the conventions of sustainable design with Baumgartner+Uriu's Apertures

Baumgartner+Uriu looked to none other than Mother Nature for their Apertures installation, which was publicly displayed at the SCI-Arc Gallery in Los Angeles this past spring. If B+U's Apertures sound familiar, perhaps you may recall their "Animated Apertures" Housing Tower that was exhibited at the FRAC Center in Orleans, France.

Whatever its organic form reminds you of, the shell structure let visitors catch a glimpse of B+U's ongoing exploration in architectural biomimicry and how it challenges the boundaries of ecological design.

Check out the installation's setup right below.

Baumgartner+Uriu APERTURES from Baumgartner + Uriu on Vimeo.

"Apertures reflect a current architectural discourse of digital ecologies, emphasizing the relationship between the natural world and advances in digital technology, which leads to a new type of interactive, organic buildings. The installation focuses on a symbiotic relationship between nature, building morphologies, and material expression."

Rooted in Baumgartner+Uriu’s work and ongoing research, Apertures challenges the notion of an architectural opening as a static object.  Moreover,  it aims to redefine the DNA of a window both in terms of its appearance and materiality, as well as its nature as an object in continuous flux, responding to its environment through movement or sound.

The pavilion and its apertures are designed to physically engage the visitor with the architectural work through sensors and sound feedback loops creating an immersive spatial  environment in which the visitor can experience their own biorhythms."

"The 16‐foot‐tall, thin shell structure was designed to solely rely on its extremely thin surface (1/8”) as support, requiring  no additional structural elements.  Structure and surface  are collapsed into a single component supported through its shape, creased surfaces and material strength only.

Each one of the 233 panels is unique in terms of its shape. They are CNC milled from polyurethane foam, heat  formed  out  of  thermoplastic  polymer resin,  and then laminated together into a single object."

"Unique to this project is the proposal of building as organism, challenging how architecture can interface with its users and its environment in which the boundary between the human body and architectural object dissolves into an immersive, interactive environment. This entails both the use of technology to augment its performance and a design aesthetic that is incongruous and can incorporate analog features into a digital design process."

Project credits

Design: Herwig Baumgartner and Scott Uriu 
Exhibition Coordinator: B+U Aaron Ryan 
Exhibition Team B+U: Nema Ashjaee, Viola Ago, Nick Taylor, Derek Ramsey, Andranik Ognayan 
Structural Consultant: Matthew Melnyk

Sound: Hannes Koecher - Media Artist, Vienna Austria 
Filming: Ryan Tyler Martinez and Lord Ceniza 
Music by: Deepshader and Nazca: Covered by the Blue Fog 
Panel Fabrication: Warner Bros. Entertainment

SCI-Arc Student Workshop Team: Eduardo Bellosta, Kevin Chen, Lord Ceniza, Chuck Diep, Shahe Gregorian, Jeff Halstead, Suky Ho, Jessica Hong, Kyungjoo Kim, Dennis Lee, Yu Liu, Ricardo Lledo, Sara Loy, Michelle Lozano, Ryan McGriff, Pierina Merino, Sara Moomsaz, Tony Morey, Sergio Ormachea, Stephen Rafferty, Hemila Rastegar-Aria, Kirill Ryadchenko, David Sarafyan, Tommy Shao, Rea Sohn, Maricarmen Soto, Evelyn Tring, Benjamin Vanmuysen, Joao Velazquez, Carlos Vargas, Jacob Zindroski

Images courtesy of Baumgartner+Uriu

Click the thumbnails below to see more photos