We thought that we could take the cultural problem of identity and personalization and translate that idea into our work, into the process itself and the people who are working on the building. We wanted to think about the intellectual concern of personalization, just in technical or constructive terms.
Construction is literally making the building. Then at that point we can translate it and think about personalization as a kind of constructive issue.
The tower is made with exposed reinforced concrete, one of the few materials able to resist a heavy daily training with real fire. The formwork has been made and assembled with industrialized procedures, a really complicated technology. But the external molds, the external layer of the formwork —that is, the internal layer, the one in contact with the concrete, facing it— were handmade. So the thin layer which is going to be the actual mold, the current form, of the concrete and the building, was handmade.
We asked all the people who worked on the building to build their own particular, favorite formworks. We gave the workers some instructions, a few simple recommendations about the number of wedges and the distance between them. From there, each person could organize the panel molding at her or his discretion or particular taste for the entire building. So each point of the surface was responding to a manual activity, and at the end, it seems like the envelope was alive —because it really is alive.
Reference to Alberto Giacometti’s slender figures, whose vertical tension and material presence informed the conception of the Textured Tower.
The tower is compressed in order to get more structural inertia, make a more efficient structure, save material and, therefore, energy. The tower is compressed and textured also to become more essential and not fill the air, as Giacometti’s “thin figures”.
We fold out the elevation not only because it is the only way to communicate the real drawing, but because you can cut it and fold it and make your own textured tower at home.
Multiple mobile filters separate the outside of the interior through deep apertures. Inside, the tower is extremely tough and spartan, built with concrete and galvanized or lacquered steel. The textured tower is filled with the drawing marks, so from inside we can know —as it happened before the Renaissance— the technical dialogue of the builders.
Again, design lives during the work process. We can still see the paper. We can still see the marksof the making process, not only the marks of the construction, but also the marks of the drawing: numbers, notes, including digital icons… the paper and the screens of the designers are still here, the process is still here, consequently we are still in the place for designing, for freedom and possibilities. Paper, texture and concrete show that designers, builders and users are part of the same community.
