Lecture date: 2003-03-20
Cecil Balmond presents his approach to breaking down the cage between structural design and architecture. He likes to see structure less as a rigid skeleton than as a connective path through pattern, encouraging a mobile sense of geometry. Informal means not insisting on hierarchy or fixed symmetries but allowing notions of slip, jump, overlap, fold.
Balmond discusses recent collaborations with Toyo Ito on the Serpentine Pavilion in London, Ben van Berkel on Arnhem Central, OMA on the CCTV building in Beijing, and Anish Kapoor for the sculpture Marsyas that stretched from end to end of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.
Cecil Balmond is Deputy Chairman of Ove Arup and Partners Limited, and Arup Fellow and Director of the Advanced Geometry Unit (AGU), which he founded in 2000. He lectures and teaches at various architectural schools in Europe and the USA.
