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Architecture, design and inflatable structures

PRESS KIT

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AERODREAMARCHITECTURE, DESIGN AND INFLATABLE STRUCTURES

CONTENTS1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................5

2. EXHIBITION ITINERARY ......................................................................7

3. CATALOGUE ......................................................................................20

4. QUESTIONS FOR THE CURATORS .....................................................21

5. PARTNERS........................................................................................24

6. VISUALS ..........................................................................................27


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Josep Ponsati, Sculpture gonflable Barcelona 77, 1977Collection de l’artistePhotographie : Toni Vidal

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1. INTRODUCTION

The image of Homo bulla was used by Erasmus to suggest the brief ‘bubble’ of human life, and became a reference of choice for vanitas painters from the 15th century to the works of Chardin or Manet. It connects with the ancient Greek concept of pneuma (breath, and by extension, the spirit or soul) as an evocation of the essence of life itself. In this context, inflatable forms are metaphors, too: envelopes or skins that suggest both the finite physicality and life of the body, and the potent dream of expansive, weightless flight, achieved first thanks to hot-air balloons, and later in the era of the great airships. The history of inflatable structures is suffused with this rich, allusive symbolism – multiple meanings and references that resurfaced and were exploited to striking effect in the late 1960s, in experimental projects by artists and architects alike. But the history of inflatable structures is industrial, too, from their military role, first seen in World War II (dirigibles or blimps, floating structures, and decoys), to civilian uses (by NASA, in particular) as radomes or weather balloons. Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Buckminster Fuller used inflatables in his experiments with geodesic domes, heralding new forms of nomadic architecture, and the creation of structures forming sealed ‘climate envelopes’.

The development of new materials (rubber and its derivatives, plastics, reinforced mesh fabrics) brought a wealth of unprecedented applications

for inflatable structures, as credible architectonic alternatives for architects such as Victor Lundy, Walter Bird, Frei Otto, Gernot Minke, Cedric Price or Arthur Quarmby. The Stuttgart conference on inflatable architecture, held in May 1967, became a reference for practitioners exploring new, mobile, modular forms: agencies and collectives including Archigram, Ant Farm, Eventstructure Research Group, Coop Himmelb(l)au, and Haus-Rucker-Co, together with international artists such as Graham Stevens or Panamarenko, and individual architects including Jean Aubert, Jean-Paul Jungmann, Antoine Stinco, Hans Walter Muller, Johanne and Gernot Nalbach or Günther Domenig and Eilfried Huth.

But it is thanks to a handful of iconic events and exhibitions that inflatables ultimately inspired the public imagination and found a wider international audience – chief among these were the Structures gonflables (‘Inflatable structures’) show at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1968, pavilions at Expo ‘70 in Osaka (including those by Yutaka Murata and Taneo), documenta 4 in Kassel (1968), featuring Christo’s 5600 Cubicmeter Package, and documenta 5 (1972), with Haus-Rucker-Co’s bubble space (Oase Nr 7) on the façade of the city’s Fridericianum museum.

These shows established inflatables in the public eye, as a cultural phenomenon, and a lifestyle choice expressed in a huge variety of forms, furniture items, dwellings and structures reflecting a new culture of the environment. Plastic polymers were now widely available, heralding an

AERODREAM ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN AND INFLATABLE STRUCTURES

January 30 to August 23, 2021Gallery 2

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extraordinary flowering of creative works, shapes and colours. Furniture by Bernard Quentin, A.J.S. Aérolande, Quasar Khanh, and De Pas, d’Urbino & Lomazzi became part of the iconography of Pop Art, in light - filled, fluid decorative schemes that embodied a new openness and porosity of lifestyles and social norms.

Prior to our later rejection of plastic and oil - industry derivatives, inflatable architecture took centre stage in the environmental debate: this ‘architecture of the air’ was detached from the ground, and eschewed its own permanent, irreversible inscription in space and time, or the use of ‘heavy’, environmentally costly raw materials. In England, work by artist Graham Stevens revealed the ecological potential of pneumatic structures, as a means of irrigation in desert environments.

Le gonflable acquiert aussi une fonction critique et politique. Son impermanence lui donne, en effet, une nouvelle dimension temporelle, celle de l’évènement, de l’action, de la participation. Il est l’instrument possible pour toute intervention dans l’espace public, une fonction dont s’emparent les artistes comme ceux du Gruppo T, ou Piero Manzoni, Yves Klein, Hans Haacke, Otto Piene, Franco Mazzucchelli, Marius Boezem, Lars Englund, Andy Warhol… Les architectes en feront le support d’interventions politiques comme UFO en Italie, ou le medium d’une critique sociale pour le groupe Utopie et les architectes radicaux de la scène viennoise au travers des nombreuses interventions publiques ou performances d’Hans Hollein, Walter Pichler, Coop Himmelb(l)au, d’Haus Rucker - Co ou celles du groupe Hollandais Eventstructure Research Group. Vecteurs et support de la contestation qui gronde pour la génération des baby - boomers, les gonflables servent de prisme de lecture pour voir le monde qui nous entoure autrement (à l’instar des Urboeffimeri d’UFO) et pour vivre ensemble différemment (Instant City, Ibiza, 1971). Le gonflable est ainsi utilisé par le groupe A.J.S. Aérolande, pour remettre en cause le concours du prix de Rome à la veille de mai 68 et proposer une nouvelle manière de bâtir, festive et sans cesse transformable.

The oil crisis of 1973 sounded the death-knell for ideologically inspired works based on the use of plastics. Inflatables were perceived negatively in the post-modern world, as industrial products. But over the past ten years, they have found renewed favour with numerous architects (Diller Scofidio and Renfro, Nicholas Grimshaw, Arata Isozaki, Herzog & de Meuron, Snøhetta etc.) as an alternative to conventional built structures, thanks to the introduction of new, more environmentally friendly technologies. Inflatable structures invent new spatial possibilities, altering our perception and cognition of the public space, as with Anish Kapoor’s Leviathan. Recent developments in organic textiles open new avenues of exploration for the

innovative use of inflatables in architecture and design, and the widespread introduction of new principles of construction, as witnessed in the experimental work of Achim Menges, Kengo Kuma, Mad Architects, Selgascano and others.

Kengo Kuma, Fu An, 2007© Kengo Kuma & Associates, Galerie Philippe Gravier, Paris

Curators:

Frédéric Migayrou et Valentina Moimas, Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle, Centre Pompidou.

Adaptation for the Cité de l'architecture & du patrimoine

Stéphanie Quantin-Biancalani, Scientific adviser and curator of modern and contemporary architecture at the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine, Paris.

Exhibition co-produced by the Centre Pompidou Metz and the Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine, with the support of the Centre Pompidou.

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2. EXHIBITION ITINERARY

Visitors enter a fluid space, organised into sections featuring works of visual art, design and architecture, accompanied by substantial documentary material. Magazines and journals, written works, posters, and photographs situate the works on display in their original contexts, together with extensive audio-visual material presenting an array of often ephemeral works, happenings and installations. Large-sale projections of contemporary film footage create a colourful, entertaining, polyphonic environment that evokes

the extravert creativity of the 1960s. Visitors are invited to discover clusters rather than sequences of works. Open vistas of the works ahead situate each section within the exhibition’s narrative, while at the same time encouraging viewers to make their own, personal connections between the works on show. Works of visual art feature at key points along the itinerary, addressing the status of the work of art as object, the dematerialisation of art, and its interaction with our perception, the body and the environment.

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‘Air in art’ is an important theme throughout the exhibition. Marcel Duchamp’s blown-glass phial of ‘Air de Paris’ is an early use of actual air in modern art, but the inflatable proper enters the realm of art sometime later, with Piero Manzoni, whose work both critiques the art object and evokes the artist as creator, represented here solely by the force of his own breath. This organic image, a metaphor for the artist’s body, is transfigured by the members of Gruppo T, in the Grande oggetto pneumatico, an inflatable, interactive ‘Hydra’-like installation.

Otto Piene of the ZERO group saw inflatables as a forum for exchange and interaction, in a radical re-think of the artwork’s spatial relationship to its surroundings, whether in a gallery or museum setting, or through public ‘actions’.

The critique of the art object is expressed through the reinterpretation of abstract or minimalist works: Iain Baxter transforms works by Donald Judd and Mark Rothko into inflatables, while works by Hans Haacke, Josep Ponsatí, Christo and Panamarenko inflate until they seem to float in space.

A video of Anish Kapoor’s monumental, immersive sculpture Leviathan completes the section. Installed at the Grand Palais, Paris, for Monumenta 2011, the work allowed visitors to step inside it and walk about, drowning in colour. Leviathan alludes to a matrix of themes addressed by radical, immersive installations in the 1960s, but ultimately makes a quite different statement, offering a far more poetic experience than its playful, protest-oriented predecessors.

SECTION 0: MORPHOGENESIS, AIR IN ART

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Piero Manzoni (1933 - 1963)

Italian artist Piero Manzoni pioneered conceptual art, with an ironic meditation on the condition of art itself. His pneumatic sculptures (including his own ‘canned breath’) follow in the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp, who captured a breath of Paris air in a blown-glass phial, in 1919. Manzoni’s Corpo d’aria (1959 - 1960), Scultura nello spazio (1960) and Fiato d’artista (1960) feature balloons filled with his own breath. Time has taken its toll, and the deflated Fiato now contains only air. Manzoni’s Placentarium (1961) – a project for a theatre space, designed to contain Otto Piene’s Light Ballet – brought inflatable sculpture into the realm of architecture.

Gruppo TGiovanni Anceschi (b.1939), Davide Boriani (b.1936), Gianni Colombo (1937 - 1993), Gabriele Devecchi (1938 - 2011)

Gruppo T was part of a dynamic movement spearheaded by the art review Azimuth. The group was founded in 1959 by Giovanni Anceschi, Davide Boriani, Gianni Colombo, and Gabriele Devecchi. Members worked together as a collective, in parallel with their solo careers. Gruppo T explored kinetic art, optics, time, space and the interaction between artwork and viewer. The group’s manifesto project – Grande oggetto pneumatico, shown at Milan’s Pater gallery in 1960 as part of the exhibition Miriorama 1 – comprises seven huge inflatable plastic tubes of various sizes.

Piero Manzoni, Fiato d'artista, 1960 c. Ballon, wooden base, 2,5 x 18,2 x 18,2 cm Fondazione Piero Manzoni, Milan © Fondazione Piero Manzoni, Milano Courtesy Fondazione Piero Manzoni, Milano © Adagp, Paris 2021

Gruppo T (G. Anceschi, D. Boriani, G. Colombo; G. Devecchi), Grande oggetto pneumatico - Ambiente a volume variabile, 1960 Archivio Gabriele Devecchi © Giovanni Anceschi, Davide Boriani, Archivio Gianni Colombo and Archivio Gabriele Devecchi

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SECTION I: A NEW INDUSTRIAL SECTOR

The Montgolfier brothers rose (literally) to great heights in the 18th century, but it was not until the 1870s that the industrial potential of inflatable structures was exploited, when the photographer Nadar used balloons to facilitate military observations in the Franco-Prussian war. Their use became widespread, leading to the creation of aerostats (giant static balloons), dirigibles or ‘blimps’ and airships. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937 brought the era of commercial airship flights to an end.

Similarly, the innovations of Dunlop, Goodyear and Michelin (the first businesses to make rubber tyres) lead to a wealth of new applications, from inflatable objects to military and industrial structures (inflatable decoy tanks, cannons, trucks and boats), and works of civil or military engineering (bridges, barrages, hangars and warehouses). Inflatable structures began to be widely used in architecture: pioneering architects such as Franck Lloyd Wright and Richard Buckminster Fuller produced designs for often large-scale urban buildings free of foundations.

In the 1960s, inflatables were widely used in industry, by developers and engineers such as Walter Bird, Frei Otto, Victor Lund, and Cedric Price – pioneers who presented their work at foundational conferences, beginning with Stuttgart in 1967.

Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983)

A self-taught inventor, architect and designer, Richard Buckminster Fuller registered a patent for the geodesic dome in 1954. Composed of tetra- and octohedra, the domes were both lightweight and structurally solid. The design was used for radomes (housing military radar antennae), and for the United States pavilion at the Montreal Expo of 1967. Fuller’s design for a two-kilometre dome covering part of Manhattan, and his theories on energy efficiency, established him as an ecological pioneer and a pivotal reference for the Archigram and Utopie groups, along with other counter-cultural movements.

Frei Otto (1925 - 2015)

The German architect, winner of the Pritzker prize in 2015, was the author of an important theory of pneumatic structures. Inspired by organic forms, his study of soap bubbles led to the development of his theses on lightweight structures and tensile membranes. Otto was a university professor and researcher who founded the Institute for Lightweight Structures, first in Berlin and subsequently at Stuttgart University. He translated his research into practical applications (suspended grain silos, coverings for greenhouses), and designed a celebrated inflatable pavilion for the Rotterdam Expo of 1958.

Frei Otto, Silos à grains ou à ciment, 1959© saai | Archiv für Architektur und Ingenieurbau am Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Carlsruhe

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Architects working with inflatable structures – notably Cedric Price, and Johanne and Gernot Nalbach – sparked a body of utopian and critical research on ‘pneumatic’ architecture.

In England, Arthur Quarmby designed a pneumatic structure for Brighton Marina, and an inflatable dome for director Robert Freeman’s 1968 film The Touchables. The Archigram group designed the Instant City and the Cushicle, imaginative, visionary works that defined a new relationship between the human body, living space and the city. Archigram’s work fascinated the practitioners of radical Austrian architecture, including Coop Himmelb(l)au, Haus-Rucker-Co, Günther Domenig and Eilfried Huth. Their imaginative ‘megastructures’ envisioned new, mobile, flexible ways of living, that complemented or opposed historical urban structures.

Archigram’s influence was felt in Paris where students of Emmerich, including Jean Aubert, Jean-Paul Jungmann and Antoine Stinco, presented designs for pneumatic architectural projects.

SECTION II: UTOPIAN VISIONS, SOCIETAL CRITIQUES

Gernot Nalbach, Pneumatic furnishing carpet, 1967© Gernot Nalbach , Berlin

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ArchigramWarren Chalk (1927 - 1987), Peter Cook (1936), Dennis Crompton (1935), David Greene (1937), Ron Herron (1930 - 1994), Mike Webb (1937)

In 1961, six young British architects founded the Archigram group. Their ‘paper architectures’ draw on the visual vocabulary of the consumer society: mass media, electronics and the conquest of space transform human dwellings into ephemeral, hyper-technological machines. Mobility is the key feature of their design for ‘instant cities’ formed of aggregated capsules, with no façades or foundations, that can be attached to three-dimensional megastructures. Archigram’s legacy resides not in their projects or built structures, but in their renewal of the ways in which architecture is depicted or represented, and our concept of architecture itself.

Coop Himmelb(l)auWolf D. Prix (1942), Helmut Swiczinsky (1944)

The Coop Himmelb(l)au agency was created as part of a move to break with the formal precepts of funct ionalism. Its founders approached architecture from an experimental, psychological and relational perspective, centred on dematerialisation. Their work includes spectacular, lightweight, transparent, pneumatic structures such as the Vertical pneumatic city (1968). In 1967, the agency designed Cities with pulsating frame: organic metaphors of breath, vibration and pulsation transformed the relationship between the individual and the city.

COOP HIMMELB(L)AU, City Soccer, Vienne, Autriche, 1971© COOP HIMMELB(L)AU© Katharina Vonow

Archigram, Étude, 1968Collages sur carton, 22,7 x 73,8 cm© Archigram© Georges Meguerditchian - Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI /Dist. RMN-GP

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SECTION III: THE INFLATABLE AS MEDIUM AND MEDIA - THREE IMPORTANT EXHIBITIONS

Numerous artists and architects used inflatable forms as a critical and forward-thinking medium, but it was thanks to three large-scale exhibitions that they achieved widespread public and political recognition.

Structures gonflables (‘Inflatable structures’), staged by the Utopie group in Paris, connected industrial research with creative experiments from a new generation of artists and designers. The show became a manifesto for the medium and achieved instant international acclaim. Among the featured artists, Bernard Quentin was notable for his use of inflatables in design, architecture and visual art.

Expo ’70 in Osaka (1970) provided an international showcase for inflatable structures, with several pavilions (the Fuji Group, Yutaka Murata’s Floating Theatre, Taneo Oki’s Mushballoon and others), together with several pneumatic architectural projects that were never realised, but were widely published nonetheless.

Documenta 4 in Kassel (1968) featured interventions by Christo and Walter Pichler, while documenta 5 (1972) established inflatables as a mainstream medium, with Haus-Rucker-Co’s celebrated Oase Nr7 (‘Oasis No.7’) and The Aeromodeller by Panamarenko.

Haus-Rucker-Co, Oasis Nr. 7, documenta 5, Kassel 1972

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Yutaka Murata (1917 - 1988)

Japanese architect Yutaka Murata exploited the potential of tensile membrane structures from the 1960s onwards, achieving international fame at Expo ’70 in Osaka. In collaboration with engineer Mamoru Kawaguchi, he applied the principles of monumentality to inflatables. The Fuji Group pavilion was a spectacular structure comprising sixteen inflatable tubes, on a circular base measuring 50 metres in diameter. Visitors experienced an organic, open, modular architectural form, an approach further expressed in the floating theatre created for the same event.

Christo (1935 - 2020) and Jeanne - Claude (1935 - 2009)

Celebrated around the world for their ‘wrappings’ of well-known monuments, sites and buildings, Christo and Jeanne-Claude also created two monumental, ephemeral inflatable projects that ‘wrapped’ or enveloped air itself. Their 42,390 Cubic Feet Package, made with students at the Minneapolis School of Art in 1966, featured double-compressed air in 2,800 coloured balloons inside four research balloons suspended six metres above the ground. The 5,600 Cubicmeter Package installed at documenta 4 in Kassel (1968) remains the biggest non-reinforced inflatable structure ever created, containing seven tonnes of air. The work was 85 metres high and 10 metres in diameter.

Yutaka Murata, Pavillon du groupe Fuji, Osaka, 1970© Yutaka Murata© Photo courtesy of Osaka Prefectural Government

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 42,390 Cubic Feet Package, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1966 Photo Carroll T. Hartwell © 1966 Estate of Christo V. Javacheff

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Simple, rapid inflatable installations enable cultural events and entertainments to (quite literally) expand and reach out to the public at large.

Numerous, early architectural interventions in the urban space focused on the individual human body: architects ran, worked, cocooned and relaxed in ‘bubble’ environments (Hans Hollein’s Mobiles Büro, the Unruhige Kugel by Coop Himmelb(l)au, or Mark Fisher’s Inflatable Body Suit). More large-scale installations invited the public to experience pneumatic spaces through play, or simply by traversing them on foot (Haus - Rucker - Co’s Giant Billiard, or the Waterwalk Tube by the

Eventstructure Research Group). Each new creation offered unprecedented, alternative ways to experience and apprehend the urban environment, through the use of inflatable structures.

Interventions such as these drew large, diverse audiences: UFO’s impromptu ‘actions’ in Florence (Urboeffimeri) are one example. Others include events staged by Ant Farm in the US, or Bendito, Ferrater and Prada Poole’s Instant City in Ibiza.

The ecological dimension of inflatables was forcefully established by works such as Graham Stevens’s Desert Cloud, for the 1970 Earth Day event in New York, and the Air Dome by Yukihisa Isobe.

SECTION IV: SITUATIONS, POLITICAL AND URBAN ACTIONS

Eventstructure Research GroupJeffrey Shaw (1944), Theo Botschuijver (1943), Sean Wellesley - Miller (?), Tjebbe van Tijen (1944)

Artists working as part of the collective (founded in 1967 and active chiefly in the Netherlands) use inflatables as a support for installations and happenings centred on interactions with the public at large. Their concept of artistic practice as a social movement and recreational activity is expressed through art as a form of sensory exploration and play. Other projects include experiments with expanded cinema, shattering the artist/spectator hierarchy, and collaborations with inflatables pioneer Graham Stevens and the rock group Pink Floyd.

Franco Mazzucchelli (1939)

Milanese artist Franco Mazzucchelli was closely associated with the conceptual art movement of the 1960s, and used inflatables throughout his career. In 1970-71, his series A. to A. (Art to Abandon), marked his continued exploration of an approach first developed in 1964: inflatable structures were left unattended in urban spaces, and the reactions of ‘visitors’ were analysed. Mazzucchelli was determined to obliterate his own role as artist, and encouraged the public to interact with his inflatable structures in a spirit of fun. His intervention in front of the Alfa Romeo factory in Milan, in 1971, attracted the attention of curious workers, and created a huge traffic jam.

Franco Mazzucchelli, A. To A. (Alfa Romeo Factory, Milan), 1971Courtesy the Artist and ChertLüdde, Berlin; Photo: Enrico Cattaneo

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The universal availability and use of plastic enabled numerous designers to create furniture in a wide array of shapes and colours reflecting the Pop Art imagery of the 1960s and 70s. Quasar Khanh’s Aerospace collection established him as the most prolific and wide-ranging designer in the form, creating everything from mobile partitions to lamps and even an inflatable house.A.J.S. Aérolande created modular furniture based on simple elements (cushions, tubes assembled to form seats, banquettes, sofas) while other designers issued occasional or one-off pieces – the Blow armchair by De Pas, D’Urbino & Lomazzi, or Verner Panton’s Inflatable Stool.

Early environments by Quasar Khanh and A.J.S. Aérolande established an iconography of ‘new ways of living’ that was quickly taken up by the advertising, fashion and film worlds, and came to define a particular, ‘futuristic’ vision. Landmark films like Barbarella, L’Écume des jours or La Decima vittima were the vehicles for a wave of Pop imagery that brought mass-produced inflatable furniture into everyday interiors.

SECTION V: HABITAT, BUBBLES AND CELLS

De Pas, D'Urbino, Lomazzi, Fauteuil Blow, 1967Fauteuil gonflable Polychlorure de vinyle ( PVC), 78 x 105 x 100 cmCentre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris© droits réservés© Photo Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP

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QuasarNguyen Mahn Khanh (1934 - 2016)

Born in Hanoi, Quasar began his career as an engineer in France, experimenting with compressed air to design inflatable structures. Fascinated by the transparency and strength of plastics, he launched his own brand of inflatable furniture in 1967, and revisited classics like the traditional Chesterfield sofa.

His colourful, imaginative inflatables were issued in ‘haute couture’-style collections, inspired by fashion trends, psychedelia and the conquest of space. First exhibited in 1968, they were an immediate media sensation and enjoyed great commercial success.

A.J.S. AérolandeJean Aubert (1935 - 2015), Jean - Paul Jungmann (1935) et Antoine Stinco (1934)

Founded in Paris in 1966, the A.J.S. Aérolande group sought to harness new, technological materials for utopian, political projects by pneumatic architects working under the guidance of David Georges Emmerich. Rigid PVC plastics offered an alternative to the precepts of modernist architecture. But it was in furniture that A.J.S. Aérolande realised its ideal of mobile, lightweight, modular forms, inspired by Pop Art and science-fiction. As architects, the partners were associated with the Utopie group, organisers of France’s first exhibition of inflatable structures.

Quasar, Chauffeuse Apollo, 1968 Chauffeuse gonflable PVC souple bleu transparent, 80 x 76 x 90 cm Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris© droits réservés Photo Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP

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The oil crisis of the 1970s curtailed the industrial use of plastics, and inflatables lost their appeal. The advent of post-modernism favoured a return to more traditional modes of construction. But since 2000, architects have revisited pneumatic architectural forms, using new materials to create ephemeral projects, installations and large-sale amenities. Kengo Kuma has created a dedicated space for the Japanese tea ceremony, while Selgascano and Snøhetta create ‘signal’ architectural spaces for temporary public pavilions. Diller Scofidio and Renfro designed an inflatable extension for the Hirshhorn Museum, and Anish Kapoor has conceived a genuinely mobile performance space in association with Arata Isozaki.

Other architects use inflatable technology for large-scale projects, reconnecting with the aspirations of the pioneers of pneumatic architecture such as Frei Otto. Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond designed the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, Herzog & de Meuron created Munich’s Allianz Arena, and Atelier Zündel Cristea – AZC have proposed an inflatable bridge over the Seine, Paris.

SECTION VI: TEMPTATIONS, OPPORTUNITIES AND A CONDITIONAL REVIVAL

Selgascano + FRPO, Spanish Pavilion, Expo Dubai 2020© selgascano + FRPO

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Diller Scofidio et RenfroElizabeth Diller (1954), Ricardo Scofidio (1935) et Charles Renfro (1964)

The agency’s trio of architects advocate an interdisciplinary, experimental approach embracing the visual arts, installations and performance. Their unrealised Bubble project (2011) is a temporary, inflatable extension to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., housing an auditorium, café and ‘piazza’ in the museum’s inner courtyard. A transparent bubble fills the empty space and creates a dome for the Hirshhorn (one of few buildings without one along the National Mall), conferring greater visibility on the institution.

Ark Nova

Commissioned by the Lucerne Festival, English artist Anish Kapoor (b.1954) and Japanese architect Arata Isozaki (b.1931, winner of the Pritzker prize in 2019) worked together to create an inflatable, nomadic concert space. In 2013, the festival toured Japan, organising concerts in localities affected by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011.

Honouring Japan’s long tradition of ‘emergency’ architecture in the face of natural disasters, the space is an ephemeral symbol of resilience that can be quickly erected and dismantled, holding up to 500 people.

Anish Kapoor, Ark Nova, 2013P.V.C 18×29×36 m© Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved DACS/ADAGP, 2020Photo Anish Kapoor Studio; Iwan Baan; Yu Terayama; IAA Isozak Aoki and Associates

Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Bubble: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden© Diller Scofidio + Renfro

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The catalogue is connected to the exhibition while at the same time encompassing a wider perspective. The study comprises a critical archaeology of inflatables and inflatable structures, their aeronautic and industrial sources, and a closer, more direct focus on the cultural, critical and political developments and contexts within which inflatables established themselves as a medium of choice. Centred on two generic texts, the book is divided into six parts: the first is devoted to industrial-scale projects, followed a chapter on artistic experiments with a particular focus on the American scene and the spatialist movement. An extensive section is devoted to the ‘manifesto’ events: Structures gonflables, organised by the Utopie group (1968), Expo ’70 in Osaka, (1970), documenta 4 (1968) and documenta 5 (1972). Another chapter examines social and political practices, in which inflatables support a variety of interventions and actions in the urban space, together with community events and entertainments. The body is central to a further section on inflatable environments, dwelling spaces and furniture collections. The closing section presents more contemporary, international projects, together with young artists and designers who are revisiting the experimental, critical dimension of inflatables today. Lavishly illustrated, with a comprehensive chronology and bibliography.

320 pages

Editions HYX

Publication: 28/04/2021

3. CATALOGUE

Taneo Oki et Sekkeirengo, Mushballoon, Exposition universelle d’Osaka, 1970

© Taneo Oki et Sekkeirengo

© Photo courtesy of Osaka Prefectural Government

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4. QUESTIONS FOR THE CURATORS

1 – From hot air balloons to aerostats and dirigibles, the history of inflatable structures is connected to the history of aeronautics, and the automobile. How have the industrial roots and history of inflatables shaped their prominence in architecture?

The history of inflatables is one of diverse, intersecting narratives that have fed the culture and popular imagination, from simple soap bubbles – symbols of the brevity of human life, in painting – to the earliest hot-air balloons that transformed our spatial perception and gave humanity its first release from the laws of gravity. Inflatables were a part of the ever-evolving industrial landscape throughout the 20th century: from aerostats to the great airships, and weather balloons that rise to the edge of space, they inspired research into pneumatic structures and their many applications in architecture. In World War II, inflatables were used as decoys (trucks, tanks etc.), emergency field hospitals, bridges, pontoons and floating transportation. In the 1950s and 60s, architects embraced the flexibility and speed of installation afforded by inflatables, designing numerous projects that exploited the medium as a construction material in its own right: the ‘envelope’ as both partition and covering. Richard Buckminster Fuller is one example: his experiments with geodesic domes culminated in his work with NASA, and the revelation of the potential of inflatables. Frei Otto experimented widely with new applications (water tanks, grain silos, exhibition pavilions, sports halls etc.), while Walter Bird created his own company, Birdair, producing numerous designs for architects. Architects and experts such as Cedric Price, Wallace Neff, Victor Lundy, and Dante Bini, attended major conferences (Stuttgart, 1967; Delft, 1972) that established the medium’s architectural credentials and credibility. Research into new materials, their resistance and assembly techniques, led to bigger and bigger structures, and iconic ‘demonstration’ projects, showcased at events such as Expo ’70 in Osaka.

2 – Beginning in the 1960s, inflatables took on a critical role, as a creative medium in the Spatialist movement, conceptual art, and ‘happenings’. Inflatables also became the medium of choice for radical, ‘alternative’ architects in Europe and the US. How do you explain their appeal in these contexts?

Developments in space exploration, and the first space flights (Yuri Gagarin, 1961) fired artists’ imaginations. Lucio Fontana’s Spatialist movement embraced the new concept of infinite, multidimensional space in immersive, participative artworks. Piero Manzoni saw the inflating of a balloon as a metaphor for the creative act (Fiato d’artista, 1959), but it was the ZERO group who established inflatables as an art medium in their own right. Akira Kanayama presented his work Balloon at the first exhibition staged by the Gutai group (1955), and contributed similar works to the first ZERO event, inspiring the use of inflatables by other artists and groups, including Yves Klein (Sculpture Aérostatique, Iris Clerc, 1957), and Gruppo T (Grande oggetto pneumatico, 1960). Other artists developed large-scale ‘actions’ in urban settings, including Hans Haacke (whose Sky line was staged in 1967, after his arrival in the US) and Otto Piene (Sky Event, 1968). At the same period, a series of performances entitled 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering featured collaborative works by artists and architects. The event’s co-creator Billy Klüver subsequently founded Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T), an association of numerous artists and designers that collaborated in the making of Andy Warhol’s Pillows (1960), Les Levine’s Slipcover (1967), and Jasper Johns’s inflatable balloon set for choreographer Merce Cunningham’s 1968 work Walkaround Time. Inflatables became instruments for public actions and happenings by artists such as Alan Kaprow (GAS, 1966), and Ant Farm (Clean Air Pod, 1970). Inflatables and pneumatic forms became media tools for groups like Archigram (Instant City, 1968) and UFO (Urboeffimero n° 6), as

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well as supports for urban interventions by Coop Himmelb(l)au or Haus-Rucker-Co (Hans Hollein’s Giant Billiard, 1970).

3 – Ultimately, inflatables played an important role in popular culture, as the embodiment of new ways of living, and a particular response to environmental challenges. How would you characterise the contribution of this ‘mythology’ of inflatable forms?

Pneumatic forms became widespread in architecture, with numerous experimental works, and then very quickly established themselves as the instrument of choice for a critique of modernism, permanence, and the rationalisation of living space in relation to the environment. Radical architects opposed the minimal dwelling spaces of modern functionalism, with extreme visions that exploited developments in cybernetics, the media and digital technologies. This movement critiqued traditional dwellings, living spaces, and spatial organisation, from small-scale, individual architectural structures to urban zones or even wider territories. Here, the body is no longer an abstract unit of measure, but a physiologico-cognitive field to which alternative architectural forms must respond. Reyner Banham’s text A Home is not a House (1966) and its accompanying illustrations by François Dallegret reduce the dwelling space to a technical conduit for the influx of vital utilities (water, electricity and other media) at the heart of an inflatable envelope – a concept radicalised still further with the Cushicle and the Suitaloon (1966 and 1968), in which the dwelling is reduced to a form of capsule garment, a connected technological skin to be inflated as required.

Walter Pichler’s Minimalumwelt (1967) and Hans Hollein’s Mobile Office (1969) echo this critical movement and its advocacy for access to alternative ways of experiencing and enacting space. The multiplicity of masks in installations by Walter Pichler of Haus-Rucker-Co resonates with this exploration of the psycho-cognitive expansion of space and time. This is not a quest for an ‘other’ space or island: these experimental works override the concept of utopia or dystopia. Space is no longer defined as an abstract extent, or a geographical area in which forms are inscribed, hence architecture must free itself, embrace nomadism, shed its foundations and evolve beyond even pneumatic structures or Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, which were themselves a reflection

of these new aspirations. From Jungmann’s Dyodon (1968) to Haus-Rucker-Co’s Gelbes-Herz (1968), and from Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Villa Rosa (1968) to cells in the Stadt Ragnitz megastructure (1969) by Huth & Domenig, dwelling spaces obey the imperative of mobility, and space is transformed into an environment that anticipates contemporary ecological concerns.

4. How do you interpret the sudden ‘fall from grace’ of inflatables in the 1970s, and their resurgence of interest among artists and architects today?

With hindsight, we see that the ‘inflatables craze’ lasted less than ten years, and corresponded exactly with a period of social, political and cultural crisis, a new generation’s struggle for emancipation. Ultimately, these new environments featured in films, and influenced collections of mass-produced furniture (Quasar, A.J.S. Aérolande, or De Pas, D’Urbino & Lomazzi) that embodied a change in outlook and mindset arising from the social and economic models of the post-war decades, the American Dream, and the resulting counter-cultural backlash – the hippie movement, and the political unrest that shook France in the late 1960s, for example. Inflatables are a part of the ambivalent, colourful Pop imagery of the triumph of capitalism, on the one hand, and instruments of a critique of the functionalist, unidimensional constraints of modernism, on the other. The oil crisis marked the end of a golden age for all things plastic. Travel was now individualistic (a far cry from drug- and music-fuelled journeys to an expanded consciousness), while postmodernism’s cynical detachment from the modern world quickly marked the end of alternative architectural experiments, and the role of inflatables therein. Decades later, the current resurgence of interest in inflatables is a response to new developments in materials technology, the environmental emergency, and the infinite expansion of digital networks: a particular set of circumstances to which the ambivalent status of inflatables – their connection to primordial origin myth, and industrial and technological history alike – appears ideally suited. Environmental issues and climate change are now central to the debate around urban density: artists and architects are revisiting lightweight architectural forms and modes of intervention, creating events that invite reflection on architectural and urban contexts. Nicholas Grimshaw’s Eden Project (1996)

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reconnects with the spirit of Fuller and Frei Otto, while the Ark Nova concert hall (2013) by Anish Kapoor and Arata Isozaki evokes itinerance and nomadism. Kapoor’s Leviathan (2011) or the much smaller Tea House (2017) by Kengo Kuma, invite us to (re)experience immersive environments. The many possibilities of inflatable architecture are being re-explored in a growing number of contemporary projects, reinforced by innovations in materials and technology. Of these, perhaps Diller and Scofidio’s project The Bubble (2009), in dialogue with the Hirshhorn Museum, best illustrates the capacity of inflatable architecture to intervene in the built environment and create alternatives to our traditional use of its space.

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5. PARTNERS

The Centre Pompidou-Metz is France’s first example of decentralisation by a major national institution – the Centre Pompidou – in partnership with regional authorities and organisations. The Centre Pompidou Metz is an autonomous institution that draws on the experience, expertise and international renown of the Centre Pompidou and shares its values of innovation, inclusivity, cross-disciplinarity and outreach to the public at large.

The Centre Pompidou-Metz organises temporary exhibitions based on loans from the collection of the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne – Europe’s largest collection of modern and contemporary art, and the second largest in the world, with over 120,000 works.

The Centre works in partnership with museums and institutions around the world. Exhibitions are accompanied by programmes of related events: dance performances, concerts, screenings, and lectures.

The Centre Pompidou-Metz is supported by its founding patron, Wendel.

Exhibition co-produced by the Centre Pompidou-Metz and the Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine (Paris), with the support of the Centre Pompidou.

With the participation of Vranken-Pommery Monopole.

Media partners

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The Cité de l’Archtecture & du Patrimoine is an operational branch of the French Ministry of Culture, dedicated to architecture and France’s architectural heritage. The Cité pursues a mission to showcase, promote and teach architecture and urban planning from a both a contemporary and historical/heritage perspective. Opened in 2007 at the Palais de Chaillot, in Paris, the institution’s history dates back to the late 19th century and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s plan to establish a ‘museum of casts of statuary and ornamental sculpture, taken from the finest monuments of the 12th to the 16th centuries.’ The Musée de Sculpture comparée (‘Museum of Comparative Sculpture’) opened in 1882, quickly followed by the Ecole de Chaillot in 1887, with a parallel, complementary mission to train heritage architects and restorers.

In 1980, the Institut français d’architecture was opened as a dedicated forum for exchange and debate on modern and contemporary architecture. An important archive of 20th century architecture joined the Institut shortly after.

The three institutions merged in 2004 to form the Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine, a unique ensemble, unparalleled anywhere in the world, comprising a museum, an observatory of new architecture, archives, Europe’s largest library of contemporary architecture, and a training centre for State architects, planners, and heritage architects/restorers.

The Cité project encompasses every aspect of architecture, in the broadest sense of the term, both historically and with regard to the contemporary scene, in fertile dialogue with other contemporary, creative arts (film, photography, literature) and areas of expertise. The Cité aims to be a destination of choice for lovers of architecture past, present and future. An annual programme of events targets the public and professionals alike: temporary exhibitions, school workshops, roundtables, conferences, publications, screenings and more. The Cité is a centre for the arts and culture in the widest sense, a forum for continuous exchange and reflection on the balance between past and present, heritage and architecture.

‘AERODREAM’

EXHIBITION AT THE CITÉ DE L’ARCHITECTURE & DU PATRIMOINE, PARIS, FROM 6 OCTOBER, 2021 TO 14 FEBRUARY, 2022

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WENDEL, FOUNDING PATRON OF THE CENTRE POMPIDOU METZ

Wendel has been a committed supporter of the Centre Pompidou-Metz since its opening in 2010, reflecting our determination to support an iconic, influential cultural institution with the widest possible audience.

Wendel’s cultural patronage over many years earned it the title Grand Mécène de la Culture in 2012. Wendel is one of Europe’s oldest listed investment companies, promoting committed support through long-term share ownership as an expression of trust and confidence, with a mission to pursue continuous innovation, sustainable development and growth through diversification.

Wendel identifies and supports leading companies, including those that make up its current portfolio: Bureau Veritas, Constantia Flexibles, Crisis Prevention Institute, Cromolgy, IHS Towers, Stahl and others.

Created in 1704 in the Lorraine region of eastern France, Wendel has developed and diversified over 270 years, with a particular focus on steelmaking before devoting itself to long-term investment in the late 1970s.

The Group is supported by over 1,000 Wendel family shareholders – a reference in the sector – in the family company Wendel-Participations, a 39.1% shareholder in the Wendel Group.

CONTACTS:

Christine Anglade Pirzadeh + 33 (0) 1 42 85 63 24 [email protected]

Caroline Decaux + 33 (0) 1 42 85 91 27 [email protected]

G R A N D M E C E N E D E L A C U LT U R E

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The works below are all protected by copyright, in whole or in part. Each picture must be accompanied by its caption and credits, for press purposes only. Any other use is at the discretion of the rights holders, with their express permission. Conditions of use on request.

Works protected by the ADAGP are marked copyright © Adagp, Paris 2019 and may be published by the French press only, under the following conditions: - For press signatories to a general agreement with the ADAGP: please refer to the conditions therein.

- For other press publications: exoneration for the first two works illustrating an article devoted to a news event to which they are directly connected, maximum size ¼ page. Any additional or larger reproductions are subject to reproduction/broadcast rights. Any visuals reproduced on a front cover or front page require the express permission of the ADAGP’s Press Service.

Copyright accompanying each reproduction must include: the name of the artist/author, title and date, followed by © Adagp, Paris 2019, irrespective of the provenance of the image, or the place where the work is conserved.

Conditions valid for publications and Web sites having the status of online press publications, in which case the definition must not exceed 1600 dpi (height and width together).

ADAGP CONTACTS:

Linda FRAIMANN: [email protected] MIGUET: [email protected]

Société des Auteurs dans les Arts Graphiques et Plastiques11, rue Berryer - 75008 Paris, FranceTél.: +33 (0)1 43 59 09 38 Fax.: +33 (0)1 45 63 44 89adagp.fr

6. IMAGES AVAILABLE

FOR THE PRESS

Visuals, including the visuals below, are available for download at:centrepompidou-metz.fr/phototheque

Username: pressePassword: Pomp1d57

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Yutaka Murata, Pavillon du groupe Fuji, Osaka, 1970© Yutaka Murata© Photo courtesy of Osaka Prefectural Government

Haus-Rucker-Co, Gelbes Herz [Coeur jaune], 1968Matière plastique PVC gonflable, structure métallique tubulaire et ventilateur électrique de 500 W, 360 x 480 x 240 cmParis, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne© Haus-Rucker-Co© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Georges Meguerditchian / Dist. RMN-GP

Haus-Rucker-Co, Mindexpander 1, 1967Polychlorure de vinyle (PVC) et polyester armé, 210 x 140 x 160 cmParis, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne© Haus-Rucker-Co© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP

Archigram, Étude, 1968Collages sur carton, 22,7 x 73,8 cm© Archigram© Georges Meguerditchian - Centre Pompidou, MNAM -CCI /Dist. RMN-GP

Gernot Nalbach, Pneumatic furnishing carpet, 1967© Gernot Nalbach , Berlin

Bernard Quentin (FR, 1923-2020), Fauteuil Croissant, 1963Première étude, Milan21 x 29,5 cmCollection famille Quentin © Adagp, Paris, 2020© Photo : Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Georges Meguerditchian et Ph. Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

De Pas, D'Urbino, Lomazzi, Fauteuil Blow, 1967Fauteuil gonflable Polychlorure de vinyle ( PVC), 78 x 105 x 100 cmCentre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris© droits réservés© Photo Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP

Haus-Rucker-Co, Oasis Nr. 7, documenta 5, Kassel 1972© Haus-Rucker-Co

Taneo Oki et Sekkeirengo, Mushballoon, Exposition universelle d’Osaka, 1970© Taneo Oki et Sekkeirengo© Photo courtesy of Osaka Prefectural Government

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Franco Mazzucchelli, A. To A. (Alfa Romeo Factory, Milan), 1971Courtesy the Artist and ChertLüdde, BerlinPhoto: Enrico Cattaneo

Davis, Brody and Associates, Pavillon des États-Unis, Exposition universelle d’Osaka, 1970© Davis, Brody and Associates© Photo courtesy of Osaka Prefectural Government

Hans Hollein im mobilen Büro (Hans Hollein dans son bureau mobile), 1969© Hans Hollein© Photo : Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Jean-Claude Planchet/Dist. RMN-GP

Klaus Pinter, The Cocoon, 1971Photomontage composé d'un tirage offset, de tirages argentiques, de zip, rehausssés de crayons de couleur, 51,5 x 63,5 cm© Adagp, Paris, 2020© Photo Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI /Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP

Jean-Paul Jungmann, Dyodon-Intérieur, 1967Graphite et encre de Chine sur papier calque, 52 x 94 cm© Adagp, Paris, 2020© Photo Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI /Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP

Jean-Paul Jungmann, Dyodon flottant, 1967Encre noire rehaussée crayon noir sur calque , 34 x 55 cm© Adagp, Paris, 2020© Photo Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Audrey Laurans/Dist. RMN-GP

Jean-Paul Jungmann, Dyodon et constructions pneumatiques annexes, 1967Encre noire rehaussée de crayon noir sur calque, 52 x 98 cm© Adagp, Paris, 2020© Photo Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Jean-Claude Planchet/Dist. RMN-GP

Christo and Jeanne-Claude , 42,390 Cubic Feet Package, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1966© Photo : Carroll T. Hartwell© 1966 Estate of Christo V. Javacheff

COOP HIMMELB(L)AU, City Soccer, Vienne, Autriche, 1971© COOP HIMMELB(L)AU© Katharina Vonow

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Kengo Kuma, Fu An, 2007© Kengo Kuma & Associates, Galerie Philippe Gravier, Paris

Selgascano + FRPO, Spanish Pavilion, Expo Dubai 2020© Selgascano + FRPO

Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Bubble: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden© Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Anish Kapoor, Ark Nova, 2013© Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved DACS/ADAGP, 2021Photo Credits : Anish Kapoor Studio; Iwan Baan; Yu Terayama; IAA Isozak Aoki and Associates

Anish Kapoor, Ark Nova, 2013© Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved DACS/ADAGP, 2021Photo Credits : Anish Kapoor Studio; Iwan Baan; Yu Terayama; IAA Isozak Aoki and Associates

AZC, Pont Trampoline à Paris, 2012© AZC architectes

LE CENTRE POMPIDOU-METZ1, parvis des Droits-de-l’Homme 57000 Metz+33 (0)3 87 15 39 39 [email protected] centrepompidou-metz.fr

Centre Pompidou-Metz

PompidouMetz centrepompidoumetz_

OPENING TIMESDaily except Tuesday, and May 101.11 > 31.03 MON. I TUES. I THURS. | FRI. I SAT. I SUN.: 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.01.04 > 31.10 MON. I WEDS. I THURS.: 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.FRI. | SAT. I SUN.: 10:00 a .m. – 7:00 p.m.

WHERE TO FIND USThe shortest routes:

ADMISSIONIndividuals: 7 € / 10 € / 12 € (depending on which exhibition spaces are open)Groups (20 people or more): 5.50 €, 8 €, 10 € (depending on which exhibition spaces are open)

The Centre Pompidou Metz and its partners offer the following special deals: C.G.O.S ticket (combined Centre Pompidou Metz/TER Grand Est train fare), combined train fare + admission (Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois), Pass Lorraine, Pass Time, Museums Pass Musées, City Pass.

Free admission for the following:French teachers (in post, on presentation of their professional card or a completed, valid pass éducation), under-26s, students, job seekers registered in France, benefit recipients (on presentation of proof, dated to within 6 months), professional artist members of the Maison des Artistes, handicapped visitors with one guest, recipients of French old-age pension credit, State guides and lecturers, Icom, Icomos, Aica and Paris Première card holders, press card holders.

PRESS CONTACTS

CENTRE POMPIDOU-METZRegional press

Marion Gales +33 (0)3 87 15 52 76

[email protected]

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architecture, design and inflatable structures

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