Equal, That Is, To The Real Itself
Ali Rahim did not want to deceive with the apparent simplicity of the fluid and futuristic elements of his designs.
The quality of elegance that he aspires to, Rahim said Wednesday, comes through complexity and variation.
“It seems really simple but behind it there is a rigor of thought,” he said.
Rahim, founder of Contemporary Architecture Practice in New York, spoke to roughly 300 attendees of the second lecture of the Rice Design Alliance’s series Getting High: Towers in Architecture. The series continues Wednesday, Sept. 30 with Winka Dubbeldam of Archi-Tectonics, New York. To read a report on the first installment of the series, click here.
Ali Rahim is an architect, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, visiting professor at Harvard University, and the 2007 Louis I Khan Visiting Professor at Yale. Rahim spent only a fraction of his hour-long lecture talking about towers. He focused instead on his method of design — illustrated by several projects by his firm. Rice University Architecture School Associate Professor Christopher Hight introduced Rahim as “one of the leaders of the generation of architects innovating the field through digital parametric design.”
According to Rahim, his use of digital parametric design is not simply a pursuit of greater efficiency but also the coaxing of an emerging set of techniques and aesthetics.
Rahim stressed flexibility; not only during the creative process but also in the multiple uses of the final product.
A parameter is a variable — a dimension of a design— that is related to other variables. Parametric design is a computer-based modeling technique that establishes relationships between different variables and modifies the design when one of the values is changed.
Rahim said that a parametric model allowed him to explore the aesthetic, technical, and economic implications of proposed revisions.
The method also allowed for complexity and variation in the permutations of structural elements.
“Parametric systems gives us a lot to work with,” he said. This flexibility is reflected in the multi-uses of designs. Rahim showed pictures of his work for the Reebok Flagship store in Shanghai, China in which stairs also doubled as display shelves and even seating if needed.
The Reebok store illustrates the way a project “emerges,” Rahim said from different factors and restraints that come from all directions, including: “numerical, aesthetic, (lighting), monetary constraints.” It’s how “the store unravels itself,” Rahim said.
The same fluidity of design and function was used in a project for an unidentified fashion designer in London, Rahim said. The designer, which Rahim said he could not name— a well-known female designer with a home in New York City as well — wanted a residential space that could also double for work space.
“It’s about hybridized relationships,” Rahim said. “The idea is to combine a dynamic series of moments.” The design was flexible enough that the roof could be removed and replaced with another “as long as we are the architects,” Rahim said. “We are interested in working with space,” Rahim said of Contemporary Architecture Practice. “That’s what differentiates us; others are interested in surface, we are interested in space.”
According to the firm’s website, Contemporary Architecture Practice was founded in 1999 and is located in SoHo, New York City. Architect Hina Jamelle is co-Director at the firm. Contemporary Architecture Practice has established an award winning profile in futuristic work using digital design and production techniques.
Its work includes master plans, residential, commercials and product design projects. A book on Contemporary Architecture Practice titled Catalytic Formations was recently released.
Rahim’s projects have been published extensively in the international press including the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Harvard Design Magazine, Domus, Fram Netherlands, Monitor Moscow and Der Spiegel Berlin, Architectural Design London, A+U Tokyo, Space China, and Architettura Milan.
Near the end of the lecture, Rahim finally demonstrated how his preferred method of design translated on the grand scale of a tower. Rahim helped design a residential tower in Dubai. According to Architectural Record, the tower “features flexible units whose shapes are dictated mostly by the amount of space they require. Their forms, in turn, affect the layout of the entire floor. This variability results in a highly malleable design for the building as a whole.”
According to Rahim, Dubai is similar to Houston when it comes to building. “It’s a little like Houston, there’s no zoning there,” he said. While the tower — which is actually two adjacent towers joined by the middle floors– bears the unmistakable fluidity and complexity that characterizes Rahim’s work, he said there were only 8 pieces that repeated in the construction. It achieves “variation without paying a lot for it.”
In looking ahead, Rahim said that building will be produced, fully-formed “with all the plumbing and systems in it.”
Rahim said “in 20 years you’ll be able to print out your home.” He said,”I don’t think anything is new,” but evolving methods of design have changed the way architects think, allowing for innovation.
“That’s what we try to bring to the fore,” Rahim said of his firm’s work. “To have people influenced by the spaces that we build.”
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