Author Description

a+u’s December issue features 20 collaborations between artists and engineers, diverse in scale and materiality, and liberated from conventional architectural constraints of programs and building regulations. Ranging from Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 60-year-old project plans for L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, to monumental sculptures by Pablo Picasso in steel and concrete, the selected projects provide potentiality of discoveries in structure, form, and materiality, while offering insightful commentaries on the surrounding buildings and defining their urban environments. In this framework, engineering emerges as a humanistic discipline sharing an aesthetic pursuit. The projects undergo a process of modification due to the reciprocal relationship between artist and engineer, as ideas conveyed through sketches and reflections by the artist are tapped into by the creative interpretation of each engineer. Detailed drawings and photographs of fabrications and installations, alongside 8 essays by engineers, artists, and critics, reveal how intuition and rationality are harmonized and superimposed. Text in English and Japanese.