marcos cruz paper
DESCRIPTION
A Brief Breakdown of Marcos Cruz and his work at the Bartlett University London.TRANSCRIPT
MARCOS
CRUZ
EDCUATION_TEACHING_FIRM_RESEARCH_PROJECTS
INTRODUCTION
Marcos Cruz is a practicing architect who lives and works in London. He is a co-founder
of the design firm marcosandmarjan, as well as a Lecturer at the Bartlett UCL (Unit 20).
His work is dedicated to the use of the human body in architecture. He questions the
current relationship between the human flesh and the architectural flesh by exploring the
possibility of inhabitable architectural interfaces. These Interfaces are designed to explore new
types of neoplasmatic conditions in which the future of a new biological flesh lie.
His architectural theory proposes Synthetic Neoplasms as new semi-living entities that
are identified as partly designed object and partly living material which blur the line between
the natural and the artificial environments. 1Marcos Cruz proposes Flesh as a concept that
extends the meaning of skin as one of architecture’s most overused metaphors.
1 Howells, Ruth. "UCL architect wins RIBA President’s Award." UCL News. University College London. Last modified
2013. Accessed November 15, 2013. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0811/08111901.
EDCUATION
Cruz began his studies at the Escola Superior Artística de Porto (ESAP) from where he
graduated in 1997. He then took courses at the ETSAB in Barcelona as an exchange student
from 2003-04 and from 2005-06. Following, he moved to London where he gained a master’s
degree with distinction in Architectural Design at the Bartlett in 1999. Cruz also started his PhD
in Design research at the Bartlett sponsored by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and
Technology (FCT), which he finished in 2007. 2
During his research on Neoplasmatic Architecture, which focused on a contemporary
discussion about the body and the impact of bio-technology on architecture, he won the RIBA
President’s Research Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis in 2008. The Prize was awarded for his
2007 PhD thesis, entitled ‘The Inhabitable Flesh of Architecture’, which re-examines the work of
a wide range of modernist architects with the aim of proposing
alternative attitudes towards space, materiality and aesthetics.
TEACHING ACTIVITY
Marcos Cruz is currently the Director of the Bartlett
School of Architecture in the University College London where
he also serves as a Reader and Studio Master of
diploma/MArch Unit 20. He has already taught as a
researcher, tutor and critic at the University College London
and University of Westminster in London, University of
California Los Angeles, University of Liverpool, Tunghai
University, Feng Chia University in Taiwan, Royal Danish
Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in Copenhagen, and the Oslo School of
Architecture, just to name a few. 3
2 iBid.,
3 Blogspot.com. NeoArch Neoplasmatic Architecture The Blog of Marcos Cruz. Last modified 2009. Accessed
November 15, 2013. http://marcoscruzarchitect.blogspot.com/2009/11/marcos-cruz-curriculum-vitae-2009.html.
UNIT 20/ STUDIO 10
Unit 20 is a research group which
Marcos Cruz has directed since 1999 along
with Prof. Salvador Perez Arroyo, Marjan
Colletti, and Studio 10 at the University of
Westminster. The group is focused on
crossing boundaries of the traditional
architectural practice by investigating
advances in a wide range of fields including
science, art, bio-technology, cyborg
phenomenology, small-scaled intelligence,
interactive environments, new materials,
digital tectonics, as well as baroque and bio
art with the aim to create innovative
conditions in architecture and the city.4 The
work of Design Studio 10 and in particular
Unit 20 has been extensively published and
exhibited and many projects awarded
national and international prizes. In 2002
Cruz was co-editor of the book Unit 20,
which presented a comprehensive
documentation of the unit’s research.
4 Blogspot.com. NeoArch Neoplasmatic Architecture The Blog of Marcos Cruz. Last modified 2009. Accessed
November 15, 2013. http://marcoscruzarchitect.blogspot.com/2009/11/marcos-cruz-curriculum-vitae-2009.html.
MARCOSANDMARJAN
Marcos Cruz and partner Marjan Colletti formed Marcos and Marjan in 2000. They
combine the practical practice and teaching of architecture, along with more experimental
design research. Their design-lead investigations focus on the applicability of new design
techniques and innovative construction technologies on architecture, as well as the
development of new typological, topological, morphological and ecological, as well as
‘corpological’ conditions in complex building projects. 5 They have practiced architecture this
way through a variety of competition and exhibition projects, built and unbuilt commissions
and a series of small-scale installations.
The work has been extensively published and exhibited in books and venues including
the Actions re Form exhibitions in Coimbra and Munich in 2002, the São Paulo Biennial in 2003,
and the solo exhibition Interfaces/Intrafaces at the iCP Hamburg.6
Cruz and Marjan built projects include two pavilions and the general layout for the 75th
Lisbon Book Fair in Portugal in 2005 and the widely exhibited Nurbster series. More recently
they have developed a housing project in Lisbon, and a large entertainment complex in Beijing,
and several competitions for the Middle East. With 'Interfaces / Intrafaces' their work was
presented for the first time within the scope of the iCP Consequence Book Series on Fresh
Architecture from the publisher SpringerWienNewYork.
5 iBid., 6 iBid.,
CONVERSATION BETWEEN MARCOS AND MARJAN
Marjan Colletti –
So is architecture the extension of the body?
Marcos Cruz –
In this sense, yes. We are living in an era, in which anti-flesh Puritanism is gradually disappearing, at the
same time, that the contemporary body is affected by a technical upgrading towards anatomical and
sensorial perfection. There is a belief in the ‘technologized’ body as capable to interface with its
increasingly changeable and responsive environment. It is a time of Cyborgs (A. Clarke/ D. Haraway) and
Biomechanoids (H.R.Giger), but also of Robosapiens (P. Wenzel/ F. D’Aluisio)4 and … yes, with more and
more Extropians. 7
RESEARCH AND INTRESET
Dr Cruz has dedicated his thesis to “a future vision of the body in architecture,
questioning a contemporary new relationship between our human flesh and the architectural
flesh” and extending the meaning of ‘skin’ as one of architecture’s most fundamental
metaphors.
His research is supervised by Professor Sir Peter Cook and Professor Jonathan Hill of the
UCL. It analyses theories by using a large variety of design proposals in a rather unconventional
way. One of its key arguments is that today’s architecture has failed in relation the body. In his
thesis Cruz argues the ‘bodilessness’ of contemporary architecture is the result of a modern
heritage that defined the body as a measurable, abstract, and rather neutral in nature.
He believes that “architectural theory and practice continue rather dissociated from
each other”, and that there is “a generalized lack of professional and academic awareness of
how much of our great buildings are indeed body-conscious, and how that has been achieved in
a both experiential and experimental way”. Neoarch, or Neoplasmatic Architecture,
investigates the impact of innovative technology on current design practices. It looks at
advances in new digital media and biotechnology within a design context that is increasingly
more interdisciplinary, while simultaneously focusing on a new spatial, programmatic and
linguistic dimension of architecture and the city. Ultimately, Neoarch aims to discuss a future
7 Viinikainen, Mari, and Duarte Soares Lema. "The Endless Project." Arch Virose. Virose. Last modified 2009.
Accessed November 17, 2013. http://arch.virose.pt/clusters/endless.html.
vision of the body in architecture by exploring ‘Flesh’ as a new concept that allows rethinking
our common and more traditional understanding of architecture.8
Marcos Cruz got into the idea of flesh in 98 as a masters student at the Bartlett who had
to design an artifact. He decided to create a space that he had not net architecturally
experienced so he built a latex model, shaved his head, and got naked to demonstrate this
process. This ‘artifact’ developed into his current architectural obsession on skin and flesh.
Central is the investigation about our Human Flesh and a new emerging Architectural Flesh; a
broader discussion about Aesthetics of Flesh; along with a vision of a new Urban, Digital and
Neo-Biological Flesh.
Now with the emergence of a Neo-Biological Flesh, unprecedented semi-living
conditions are such phenomena that Cruz defines in broad terms as Neoplasmatic Architecture
and could soon become a reality.
Hence, in a time when the impact of digital technologies risks turning the architectural
skin ever more disembodied, the aim is to put forward a ‘thick embodied flesh’ by creating
architectural interfaces that are truly inhabitable
8 iBid.,
BODY DEVIANCES
Technologic advances in science and art are affecting severely the current understanding of the human body. The increase discovery of its spectacularity runs parallel to the understanding of its limits. Body Deviances reconsiders the body as an object to be redesigned and places it in a physical surrounding built of human flesh.
Embedded in its walls and plugged into the surrounded nervous system, the body becomes building and the building becomes body.
The series of Deviant Body images were created with collage and photoshop technique as a metaphor for surgical interventions on the body’s flesh.
Inwalled Creature was performed on a nocturnal action at the Bartlett in 1998 where a human body evolved out of the physical constrains of a latex wall.9
9 Viinikainen, Mari, and Duarte Soares Lema. "The Endless Project." Arch Virose. Virose. Last modified 2009. Accessed November 17, 2013. http://arch.virose.pt/clusters/endless.html.
HYPERDERMIS Hyperdermis is a project, which explores new aesthetics of walls and membranes in the realm of architectural space and program.
Inhabitable appliance walls that incorporate several service devices: Storage Capillaries, In-wall Seats, Relaxing Cocoons and Communications Suits.
The scenario of Walls for Communicating People is speculative and rather weird: people creep into walls in order to sit, hang or lie in (hidden) chambers that are embedded within flexible and pliable surfaces.
While essential everyday functions such as sitting, sleeping or communicating are transferred from traditional room-space into wall-space, the new program resembles acts of parasitic infiltration routines. It encompasses a new haptic relationship between the human body and its sensitive-reactive environment, an architectural imagery punctured by moving bulges, sensory tentacles and stretchable orifices. 10
10 iBid.,
SKIN AND PIN
Cocoon-skin membrane wraps around the decks and provides the environmental enclosure for the new building; it lets daylight into the exhibition areas by means of skylights inserted into its upper surface and by varying its transparency; it also offers various "kangaroo pockets" for the smaller elements of the program.
The primary and most dramatic access to the exhibition spaces is provided by means of a long, low-pitch travelator along the North-South axis which penetrates, like a pin, the under-belly of the building, gradually leading up to its upper levels. The new structure added to the Eisernes Haus is a raised volume leaving the ground plane unobstructed, transparent and openly accessible to the public. It contains two large decks (and three intermediate mezzanine levels) which together house all the major exhibition areas. The relative simplicity of the building organization and the use of innovative lightweight materials for the skin lead to low levels of building mass and embedded energy.11
11 iBid.,
CONCLUSION
Now with the emergence of a Neo-Biological Flesh, unprecedented semi-living
conditions are such phenomena that Cruz defines in broad terms as Neoplasmatic Architecture
and could soon become a reality. Aiding to this is the rapid development of innovative design
approaches in the realms of environmental engineering, bio-technology and even medicine.
They are becoming of increasing significance to the architectural practice due to their aesthetic
and technical implications. A new form of design is emerging in which mixes work
methodologies, traded between artists, designers, engineers, biologists and physicians is
already happening, giving rise to hybrid technologies, new materiality and unimaginable
potentially living forms. This is all to come…
Bibliography
Blogspot.com. NeoArch Neoplasmatic Architecture The Blog of Marcos Cruz. Last modified 2009. Accessed November 15, 2013. http://marcoscruzarchitect.blogspot.com/2009/11/marcos-cruz-curriculum-vitae-2009.html.
Cruz, Marcos. "Inhabitable Inrwefaces." In Marcos and Marjan, edited by Institute For Cultural Policy, 56-73. Vol. 2. Fresh Architecture. Springer-Verlag/Wien, 2005.
Howells, Ruth. "UCL architect wins RIBA President’s Award." UCL News. University College London. Last modified 2013. Accessed November 15, 2013. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0811/08111901.
Viinikainen, Mari, and Duarte Soares Lema. "The Endless Project." Arch Virose. Virose. Last modified 2009. Accessed November 17, 2013. http://arch.virose.pt/clusters/endless.html.