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.