Two residences in New York / Gage Clemenceau
While visiting Gage Clemenceau Architects we learned about their design process and research on building new forms through diverse design strategies that range from the use of automotive design software to a heavy reliance on robotic digital fabrication tools.
This time we bring you two residences in New York by Gage Clemenceau – Mark Foster Gage & Marc Clemenceau Bailly.
Residence in SOHO
Griffin Residence
In the past decade architectural design has become increasingly reliant on the limited form-making tools offered in standardized architectural software packages. In order to overcome such limitations Gage / Clemenceau Architects proposes a new model of design research that creates collaborations with other disciplines of design. The sole purpose of such research is to discover innovative methods for creating, manipulating, and fabricating new genres of form for potential use in architecture. Both the institutional and residential projects of the firm capitalize on these alliances, often involving diverse design strategies that range from the use of automotive design software to a heavy reliance on robotic digital fabrication tools.
The products of these collaborations posit that the geometric, indexical, mapping, and performance based ambitions of the digitally produced architectures of the past decade have failed to yield the intended results. Instead of relying on these, now conventional, architectural fictions for legitimacy, the work examines the emerging interest in formal aesthetics as a vehicle by which architecture can seek engage a new and vibrantly altered 21st century cultural context. In place of the semiological crutches of the index, the icon, and the symbol, the research revels instead in the emerging formal positions such as the beautiful, cute, elegant, sensuous and lovely.
we might ask the question, how are rippled wood surfaces more an expression of “the beautiful, cute, elegant, sensuous and lovely” than the “geometric, indexical, mapping, and performance based ambitions”? As we see it, the former is a result of a software’s ability to implement the latter. Aren’t we simply substituting one fiction for another? After all, it is clear that software makes possible this type of milling. We agree with the turn to the poetic. However, we are all trying to understand what relationship exists between the two.
Peter Griffin? lol…
While I like the general sense of place in the projects and this comment might be a subjective impression, I am not sure of the statement “..heavy reliance on robotic digital fabrication tools..” . it seems to me that the digital process in the projects seem to be targeting the area of effect VS. actually “affecting” the generation of the space or a substantial definition of its format.
I love the SOHO apartment. What a great use of such a small space. Any chance of providing more pics?
big claims for such a modest apartment…
Delusions of grandeur, maybe? That being said, the use of materials is very carefully thought out.
Both these apartments are nothing special, apart from the centrepiece.
The statement is bold, unfortunately the design isn’t.
What I love about the SOHO apartment is the choice of materials utilized in such a small area.
I don’t really like the Griffin Residence though… the amount of wood used reminds me of something Kramer from Seinfeld would dream of. It’s like the owner is trying to turn his apartment into a log cabin!
Each of these apartments has essentially one decorative feature made “digitally” (the glass wall in the first, the wood wall in the second.) In every other respect, they seem to be not-very-interesting loft renovations that any new york architect would be capable of.
And the one digifab decorative feature in each of these apartments could have been made by a skilled woodworker or glassmaker using traditional tools. So how does that make the designers forward-thinking or exceptional?
My sense is that the architect uses a lot of fancy language and connections to do what any other decent architect could do.
“In place of the semiological crutches of the index, the icon, and the symbol, the research revels instead in the emerging formal positions such as the beautiful, cute, elegant, sensuous and lovely.” Wha?
good wokrs ,I love it
very nice interior, i really like it)))
6:54 PM Dec 10th
Reading: "Two residences in New York / Gage Clemenceau | ArchDaily"( http://twitthis.com/wsy4r4 )
2:11 AM Jan 10th
Two residences in New York / Gage Clemenceau | ArchDaily http://www.archdaily.com/?p=645