Non-Static Architecture

Definition

Non-static architecture is architecture whose space does not merely accommodate movement but appears to be in movement itself. Goldberger borrows the term from Eero Saarinen's account of the TWA Terminal: the Baroque architects, Saarinen said, "were wrestling with the same problem of creating dynamic space… they were trying to see how far they could go into a non-static architecture. At TWA, we tried to take the discipline imposed by the concrete shell vault and give it this non-static quality." The greatest Baroque spaces "do not so much encourage you to move within them as appear to be in movement themselves; they take conventional spatial experience and bring it to the tenth power." Borromini is the type: at Sant'Ivo he superimposed two triangles to make a six-pointed star, turned three points into semicircular recesses and three into polygonal concavities, and carried all the concave and convex lines straight up through the vaults to a circle and lantern, so that everything "seems designed to thrust your eye upward." Saarinen's own curved concrete shells and Frank Gehry's later sculptural forms extend the register into the modern period. The concept marks the point at which architecture's static-object ontology is most directly challenged by its spatial and temporal experience.

Key Thinkers

• Paul Goldberger — transmits Saarinen's term and reads Borromini through it.
• Eero Saarinen — the TWA Terminal and Ingalls Rink as modern non-static spaces. (PAGE NEEDED — see log.)
• Francesco Borromini — Sant'Ivo and San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane as the type of Baroque dynamism. (PAGE NEEDED — see log.)
• Frank Gehry — the sculptural, computer-enabled descendant of non-static form.

Related Concepts

• architecture-as-space — the dimension in which non-static effects occur.
• ineffable-space — the affect non-static space can produce, especially in religious buildings.
• static-vs-dynamic-architecture — the wiki's standing debate on whether architecture should be conceived as static or dynamic.
• procession — bodily movement as distinct from the space's apparent own movement.
• temporality — the time-dimension that non-static architecture makes visible in form.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• source-notes/goldberger-2009-why-architecture-matters — ch. 4 (pp. 94–96) develops the term from Saarinen's TWA Terminal and Borromini.

Open Questions

• Is "non-static" a property of the building's form or of the viewer's perception — and if the latter, does it differ from the sublime's transport?
• Do digital and parametric practices realise non-static architecture at building scale, or do they simply produce more complex static forms?