Marc Simmons, founding partner of Front Inc. Рthe specialist fa̤ade consulting practice of Seattle Public Library and CCTV China fame Рwas in Singapore recently for the Ong Siew May Distinguished Lecture Series held in the National University of Singapore (NUS) and FIVEFOOTWAY was in attendance to have a chat with him.
The OSM lecture series brings preeminent speakers from around the world to lecture based on an annual theme and this year’s was Sustain/Ability. It is hoped that the lectures will open up, challenge, and enrich the way we think through sustainability, to challenge our assumptions of architecture and its seeming ability to change our environment.
To the uninitiated, Front is a cross-disciplinary group of creative individuals with professional backgrounds in Architecture, Structural Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering and the firm provides design and technical consulting services through intensive collaboration to realize innovative projects and responsible design. Perhaps most significantly, FRONT has been involved in a series of the most innovative projects of late which includes projects such as the Seattle Central Public Library with OMA; the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art with Sejima Nishizawa Associates; the Walker Art Center expansion with Herzog de Meuron; and the Morgan Library & Museum expansion with Renzo Piano Building Workshop.
What’s a skin?
Many buildings are recognized by their facades more than their spatial qualities and this highlights the obvious role of a facade beyond its purpose to keep out the elements of nature. As Marc Simmons puts it, beyond its functional role, the facade is a signifier that evokes thoughts about what the building is about. Having said that, Simmons concedes that not all architects are interested in creating facades that achieve an architectural effect that is capable of being a chameleon in the city and that there are plenty of architects out there who sees a facade as a formal and functional part of the building.
Some would comment that when a building is layered with meaning, it becomes architecture and when a building, or in this case a facade, is created purely out of functional reasons, it loses its ‘architectural’ quality. However, that is of course a shallow understanding and this is perhaps best debunked by the design process that FRONT undertook with SANAA for the design of the Toledo Museum of Art.
As Simmons explains, the whole design conversation for the project revolved around lighting conditions and how the building should be an instrument to render and control light for the museum’s artifacts. The facade was thus designed from a performance standpoint where glass was treated differently for various areas and similarly, the usage of glass as a double-layered skin was a decision taken in order to make the skin behave as a thermal control device.
At the same time, the transparency of the landscape was important to the building and thus the facade had to be designed to achieve this technical requirement. If any, this simply showed that innovation in facade design can come from an approach that is purely technical in nature and the results of which, are no less marvellous then if it was done purely out of aesthetic effects.
On Collaboration
As mentioned, FRONT have collaborated with many of the most brilliant architects in the world to produce some of the most exciting facades in today’s world of architecture. Being involved in such powerhouse project teams, it is clear that there’s no room for large egos and Simmons shed some light on the dynamics of FRONT’s collaborative process.
Simmons explained that for a large proportion of projects, the source of the ideas and poetics would come from the architect and from a primary concept, both the facade specialists and the architects will work together to search for the best expression of the idea. In his words “the facade specialist is like a player in an orchestra led by the architect”. But the true key to any successful collaboration is perhaps the willingness to listen and engage all parties in a discussion to push the project forward.
“A designer needs to bring something special to the table and the only way to make a meaningful contribution is to be deeply involved in the process”, says Marc. By that, he means that any consultant or designer must be able to go beyond speaking the design language and at the same time, become more than simply a technician. Marc believes that a designer brings greater value to a project when he is conversant in larger global issues such as politics, economy, legal issues; all of which are deeply intertwined with the architecture-making process but often overlooked.
License to be creative
Despite the fact that the architect tends to take the lead in most project, it is by no means an indication that the facade specialist have less creative abilities and license. In fact, it is the very ability to author work at such great detail was what attracted Simmons to become a facade specialist.
The fact should not be lost that the technical challenges that consultants like FRONT faces are just as challenging if not more, due to the scale at which the facade specialist operates. Through operating at such a small and intimate scale, the facade specialist is possibly the one who is in closest contact with the technicalities of facade construction in terms of materials and techniques. Because of this, it is perhaps not too far-fetched to suggest that firms such as FRONT are best positioned to push the boundaries of architecture.
To end off the conversation, we asked Simmons to imagine if every building developer in the world tried to have a fancy media facade or something to that effect. Now with that, we asked him to consider the possibility that a large proportion of it would go wrong and potentially the city could become a huge mess of incoherent design language. To that, Marc Simmons posed a rhetorical question, ” Would we rather then have a city filled with boring and mediocre facades?”.
