090922 Modular Skyscraper??

Modular Skyscraper is a topic not within my field of research. However, after reading Inhabitat's post on Bio-Fuel Growing Eco Pods Rejuvenate Stalled Boston Project written by Bridgette Meinhold, I felt like writing something before I go to bed.



Modular Skyscraper is not new at all. As for as I remember, Moshe Safdie's Habitat'67 in Montreal Canada built in 1967 is a modular apartment.



Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower in Japan is another good example of modular apartment, but it is facing a strong debate over its demolition. As written in PingMag, the public has voted that this building has to be demolished due to high maintenance cost and uninhabitable space. If you have the chance to see it for the last time, you better be hurry!



Travel back to some recent projects such as Vertical Park designed by Jorge Hernandez de la Garza in Mexico. The project did not continue due to high cost and did not win the public voice.



Another famous one is by MVRDV called Sky Village. Many websites have featured this project as an evolution project which incorporate refined structure, ideal private and public space and the green. You can find some more info from COMTEMPORIST, dezeen, and bdonline.



MVRDV, a group of Data Architects, started to evolve into a modular pixelated world. What the architects are trying to do is perhaps to find a proper solution for this globalising and soon globalised world. The totality of the universe perhaps is the driving force in exploration of such. Not putting MVRDV on this table for discussion, but at this moment, I can not say modular has an architectural quality. It is more like a system which can create millions of solutions. From modular shape to its detail in exterior skin system, from its stacking pattern to its solid-void manipulation. It seems like this system could possibly be put into any part of the world. However, architecture is not about modularisation. Modular buildings can only be interesting when they start to stack very randomly. Architecture has its uniqueness to its particular site. It cannot be modularised. Unless the universe or even the Earth has a modular pattern, I see no point in doing modular "architecture". A site has no particular modular, it is human who creates this modular for modular architecture. Perhaps, yeah, modular architecture will only exist in a modular context. Modular architecture is a very technical solution which can easily be separated from conventional architecture. And is that really simple to solve all human-nature solutions by using boxes? I doubt so.

To shut down myself, I just quickly show you recent MVRDV's dnb nor headquarters, norway once posted on designboom.





Iconic? When there are more of this kind of buildings. This building won't be as iconic anymore.