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Operated by the Calgary Contemporary Arts Society May 28 – June 24, 2010 |
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Snow, Rain, Light, Wind: Installations by Filiz Klassen
The lenticular photographs contain four layered images of the prototype projections taken at four diverse exterior locations in Toronto in the fall of 2008. They captured Klassen’s intention to present building facades in a way that allows us to perceive a building’s transformation under various weather conditions.
Triangle Gallery is pleased to have the opportunity to present Filiz Klassen’s compelling work. Esther E. Shipman Artist Statement
Buildings in general are conceived, designed, and built to be timeless and un-weathered. However, given the impact of individual buildings and building industry on local environments and cumulatively on global warming, I believe that the relationship between architecture and weather begs for change. My proposal is that weather responsive, or ‘weathered’ buildings have the ability to positively and effectively react to hourly, daily and seasonal changes in the weather. These responses will enhance rather than negatively alter or impact the structural integrity or performance of a building.
Filiz Klassen Biography
Ms. Klassen is the recipient of a research/creation grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) and funding from Ryerson University, as well as several corporate gifts in kind which have enabled her to pursue the research for and the realization of this Malleable Matter: Material Innovation in Architecture project. Details of her work including lectures, articles, exhibitions can be found at www.ryerson.ca/malleablematter. List of Images (left to right, top to bottom):
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For millennia, buildings have been designed and constructed to resist the elements of nature. What if this convention was purposefully subverted? Architect and designer Filiz Klassen explores how material innovations and exterior textiles might transform rigid architectural structures into responsive weather laboratories. By developing unique fibre-based coverings, skins and cladding for buildings, Klassen reveals the capacity to harness the four elements of Snow, Rain, Light and Wind and documents the findings in a methodical, yet creative framework.
Snow, Rain, Light Wind: Weathering Architecture is a multi-media presentation of video projections, lenticular photographs, and interactive textile prototypes. Video projections depict each weather element in a variety of exterior locations and then meld Klassen’s microscopic experiments with water, light, heat and reverberation that served as impetus for her larger architectural installations. The final sequences reveal early prototypes that use weather elements to expose hidden poetry, and all collect precipitation through netting, amongst others. These prototypes are ultimately rendered as images themselves and projected onto building facades, becoming ‘weathered architecture’.
Finally, there are three actual prototypes on display: Fibreoptic Sky, Windquills, and Temperature Net. Fibreoptic Sky demonstrates how a building surface can change according to the light and colour variations of the sky by intergrading end and side-emitting fibre-optic filaments. Windquills makes wind energy visible through the random motion of wind quills. As the wind modulation changes, electricity can be generated from the motion of the quills and can be turned into dynamic light pattern/modulations revealing the sweeping actions of wind around a building. Temperature Net integrates high intensity RGB LED modules and microcontrollers that sense temperature differences and displays the state of the building ‘hot’.
If you work in an urban environment, it is highly likely that the building(s) you work in, shop in, exercise in, attend movies in, or eat your lunch in, are sealed and static environments. Meaning, that they are temperature and lighting controlled, don’t offer operable windows, or any direct links with the outside environment except through doors to the street or parking lot. In downtown Toronto, as in numerous other northern cities, it is possible to walk for kilometers via underground walkways, transfer to public transit and arrive in far flung destinations without ever stepping outside. As a result, it is not difficult to build a case that people’s visceral connection to their exterior environment is severely diminished.
The conceptual architectural ideas and material prototypes developed of Snow, Rain, Light, Wind: Weathering Architecture are conceived as building canvases that allow weather elements to wash away, appear, disappear, reveal, scatter, accumulate and transform an individual building. Rather that mere visual constructions, to be judged solely as big/small, or beautiful/ugly structures, buildings can be perceived as ‘living’ entities that can read, measure, or convert weather to recover their environmental impact. The visceral connection to built environments and regional climate can be revived through multi-sensory and ephemeral experiences such as hot/cold, wet/dry, luminous/dark, still/moving, provided by the building skins. A tremendous amount of academic and technical research has been applied to this project, over a number of years. By providing weather responsive art installations that are intended to engage both the building’s occupants and casual passerby, I hope to lessen people’s distance to climate change, and soften attitudes that weather is a remote abstract phenomenon. 
Filiz Klassen is an artist/researcher, with an extensive background in architecture, and is an Associate Professor at Ryerson University in the Faculty of Communication and Design. Her primary focus in the last several years has been her project Malleable Matter: Material Innovations in Architecture that involves developing prototypes in the creation of building skins that respond to weather elements. She has presented aspects of this work at international conferences in Boras (Sweden), Singapore, London, New York, Istanbul, Eindhoven, Delft, and nationally in Banff and Toronto. Her articles on material innovations and responsive built environments have been included in the book ‘Mobile Nation’ (Riverside Press, 2008), as well as academic and professional journals. In addition, she created and directed ‘Weathering Architecture’, a performance that was staged as part of Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH: Emerging Performance Project in 2008. The Snow, Rain, Light, Wind: Weathering Architecture exhibition and the publication of her book of the same title are the culmination of this project.