Metropolis Magazine reviewed architect Siamak Hariri’s winning entry for a new Baha’i temple in Chile. The competition brief wanted “a space (that would) clearly feel like a house of worship but must not prioritize the iconography of any one religion over any other. It must be welcoming to everyone—the type of place, they said, that a six-year-old child would be attracted to—but it must also be as perfect in form as humanly possible. And it must be domed, with exactly nine sides and nine entrances.” Well you were never going to get the Red Lion with a brief like that….
Iconic Design for Baha’ism
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August 9, 2004
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Hi–came across your trend-spotting blog by way of Pier’s profile on e-cademy. I was reading this entry, and I’m having trouble with the idea of this as a “trend.” The point of the article you link to seems to be that this is a sui generis design. While it’s very very cool, it’s hardly trendy, i.e., there aren’t many structures like this around, and there aren’t going to be. I’d love to see some discussion, if you’d care to explain.
August 10th, 2004 at 10:50 am
Thanks for your comment!! We love discussion!! PSFK is a lens, a sujective one at that, of subjects, products and projects that are shaping our world. Each contributor has a different bent (Simon has fashion, I have advertising, Ian has music and so on) which helps create a varied blog which should offer something for everyone.
We report on (a) interesting stories that could help shape the future and (b) trend spots we see in our everyday life. It is not a fashion-trends site.
Like the Alsop post in the Architecture feature we see the radical designs as a fresh and innovative direction for architecture. It is radical and it questions the established principles behind the field. Will Hariri’s or Alsop’s style become a new trend in architecture? We don’t know but we bloody well hope so.
August 10th, 2004 at 11:44 am
Good points, all. It would be interesting to see what kind of trends this will start–we could really go in so many directions from here. I love the organic shape. It seems to me to be the aesthetic child of Christo’s wrapping projects, Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim, and a chinese lantern. It looks like it could just float away–a look that architects of religious structures have aspired to throughout history.
Unfortunately, I don’t know if alabaster is such a good choice for a roofing material. It is very very soft, and could easily break or be worn away in tumultuous weather conditions (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabaster for a reference). The builing will probably need some kind of protective coating. It will be interesting to see how this one gets built.
August 10th, 2004 at 12:42 pm