B+U's Animated Apertures to be featured at the ArchiLab 2013 exhibition

Baumgartner+Uriu's "Animated Apertures", a housing tower in Lima, Peru, will be featured at the ArchiLab 2013 exhibition at the FRAC (Les Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain) in Orleans, France starting in September. Curated by ArchiLab founders Marie-Ange Brayer (Director of FRAC Centre) and Frédéric Migayrou (Deputy Director of the Centre Pompidou), the exhibit will display the projects of 40 international architects focusing on the topic, "Naturaliser l'architecture" (naturalizing architecture). The topic "explores the challenges in simulating the real world" and the relationship between digital architecture and the sciences.

Staying true to nature as possible, Herwig Baumgartner and Scott Uriu designed Animated Apertures to be "an interactive and intelligent building organism" as opposed to digitalized congruity. And that idea is clearly conveyed with the structure's biomorphic forms and natural color palette. A large scale model, drawings, renderings and an animation of the housing tower will be displayed at the exhibit.

The exhibit opens Sept. 5 for the press preview and on Sept. 14 for the public. The exhibit will run until Feb. 14, 2014.

Keep reading to learn more about Animated Apertures.

Baumgartner+Uriu (B+U) "Animated Apertures" Housing Tower

"The topic of this internationally renowned exhibition is to be a true laboratory for architecture, presenting the most advanced research in terms of architectural design today. The exhibition features projects by 40 architects from all over the world that represent the cutting edge of architectural design [...] Today the most advanced digital tools make it possible for architects to envision projects, which evolve according to principals similar to those found in nature. This architecture is designed like an organism in constant adaptation, with the ability to evolve in close interaction with the material conditions of its environment. These new design processes which integrate the fields of robotics, nanotechnology, genetics and biotechnology are presented in this exhibition through the research and works of a new generation of architects and designers."

"The conceptual framework for Baumgartner+Uriu’s animated aperture project, arose from a 'clear interest in emphasizing an architecture that can exist between nature and technology,' inspired by natural patterns, movements and colors with the overarching goal of creating an 'interactive and intelligent building organism'. According to the architects, its design aesthetic embraces incongruence, disruption and deformation rather than homogeneity and parametric smoothness – a common solution in many digital designs that the firm wished to avoid."

"What makes Animated Apertures so unique is its attempt to rethink and redesign the DNA of the window in terms of function, components, appearance and materiality and then its application to a 20‐story tall housing typology. The apertures function as inhabitable spaces or thresholds between interior and exterior that respond to environmental forces such as sun and wind and exploit potential energetic exchanges between the natural and built environments.

The exterior of the building is a direct result of the interior spaces and their relationships to specific points in the city, with linear extensions along the window frames that create a soft, blurred building edge that is always in flux rather than a traditionally sharp and rigid one.

Above the entrance lobby and café at the ground level L‐shaped multi level living units are stacked on top of one another with a North‐South orientation. Each unit occupies three levels, giving it a double height living room that is oriented towards an urban park and has access to exterior terraces on either side."

"The overall structure is a cast in place concrete slab and core structure with most of the exterior enclosure made of cast in place concrete. The rough textured concrete shell contrasts sharply with the highly articulated fiberglass composite apertures that are translucent and illuminated with LED’s from within, giving the tower a distinguished colorful glow at night. These apertures will be made out of advanced silicon composites that mix material properties on a molecular level, are able to move without mechanical components and ultimately mimic systems found in nature. In addition, the new window frames will be coated with thin solar film that produces electricity for the building."

"B+U’s hope is that these advancements in material technology will allow us to design new building components in which properties like strength, weight and flexibility can be modified on a molecular level and adapt to the specific local conditions so that buildings become less invasive and instead become closer to functioning as adaptable organisms."

Project details

Title: Animated Apertures
Architect: Baumgartner+Uriu (B+U)
Location: Lima, Peru
Design Principals: Herwig Baumgartner, Scott Uriu
Project Team: Nema Ashjaee (lead), Aaron Ryan, Jack Gaumer, Ricardo Lledo, Anthony Morey
Type: Housing tower
Size: 5,000 sqm
Material: Advanced silicon composites, ETFE, concrete, glass
Photo credits: B+U, LLP – Herwig Baumgartner, Scott Uriu