Mertins, Detlef
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Publication Walter Benjamin and the Tectonic Unconscious: Using Architecture as an Optical Instrument(1999) Mertins, DetlefThe writings of Walter Benjamin include appropriations and transformations of modernist architectural history and theory that offer an opportunity to broaden the interpretation of how the relationship between the 'unconscious' and technologically aided 'optics' is figured in his commentaries on cultural modernity. This essay focuses on three moments in his writings, each of which touches on this topic in a different way: first, on Benjamin's reading of Carl Bötticher's theory of architectural tectonics as a theory of history in which the unconscious serves as a generative and productive source that challenges the existing matrix of representation; secondly, on Benjamin's transformation of Sigfried Giedion's presentation of iron structures into optical instruments for glimpsing a space interwoven with unconsciousness, a new world of space the image of which had seemingly been captured by photography; and thirdly, on Benjamin's suggestion that the mimetic faculty continues to play within representation, history and technology to produce similarities between the human and the non-human. In each instance, Benjamin reworked the dynamic dualism of nineteenth-century architectural tectonics - (self)representation seeking reconciliation with alterity - into a dialectic. In so doing, he set the cause of revolution (of a modernity yet to come) against metaphysical and utopian claims, progressive and regressive alike.Publication Design in the World: An Interview with Detlef Mertins(2006-09-11) Manaugh, Geoff; Mertins, DetlefGeoff Manaugh, editor of BldgBlog , interviews Detlef Mertins, Professor and Chair of the Architecture Department at the University of Pennsylvania for the website Archinect . The interview covers a range of subjects concerning architecture and education today, including the nature of contemporary experimental design, the role of digital media, formats of commercial development, issues of ecological design, and architecture's social and political responsibilities.Publication Where Architecture Meets Biology: An Interview with Detlef Mertins(2007-01-01) Mertins, DetlefI began doing research on Mies van der Rohe in the early nineties, after Fritz Neumeyer had published his book The Artless World, (1994). Neumeyer foregrounds Mies' library, the books that Mies read. He was also the first to collect all the things that Mies himself wrote. One of the things that I found very surprising was that Mies was a reader of science, and especially of biology in the 1920s. He had a collection of about 40 books by the botanist Raoul Francé, the author of Der Sanze als Erfinder ("The Plant as Inventor," 1920). This was surprising, for I had always thought of modernism as an architecture of technology rather than an architecture that was imbued with organic aspirations and ethos. One thought of organic architecture more in terms of biomorphic form; in the German context, one thought of Hugo Häring, but not the straight-up-and-down, orthogonal architecture that Mies developed, or his expression of structure.Publication Bioconstructivisms(2004-01-01) Mertins, DetlefOn meeting the German structural engineer Frei Otto in 1998, Lars Spuybroek was struck by the extent to which Otto's approach to the design of light structures resonated with his own interest in the generation of complex and dynamic curvatures. Having designed the Freshwater Pavilion (1994-97) using geometric and topological procedures, which were then materialized through the exigency of a steel structure and flexible metal sheeting, Spuybroek found in Otto a reservoir of experiments in developing curved surfaces of even greater complexity by means of a process that was already material- that was, in fact. simultaneously material, structural and geometric. Moreover. Otto's concem with flexible surfaces not only blurred the classic distinctions between surface and support, vault and beam (suggesting a non-elemental conception of structural functions) but also made construction and structure a function of movement or, more precisely, a function of the rigidification of soft, dynamic entities into calcified structures such as bones and shells. Philosophically inclined towards a dynamic conception of the universe - a Bergsonian and Deleuzian ontology of movement, time and duration - Spuybroek embarked on an intensive study of Otto's work and took up his analogical design method. A materialist of the first order, Spuybroek now developed his own experiments following those of Otto with soap bubbles, chain nets and other materials as a way to discover how complex structural behaviours find forms of their own accord, which can then be reiterated on a larger scale using tensile, cable or shell constructions.Publication The Modernity of Zaha Hadid(2006-01-01) Mertins, DetlefDuring the heyday of postmodernism in the 1980s, as architects turned to historical styles, urban traditions, and popular culture to rebuild the public support that modernism had lost, Zaha Hadid declared that modernity was an incomplete project that deserved to be continued. This was an inspiring message and its bold vision was matched by projects such as the competition-winning design for The Peak in Hong Kong (1982-1983). Hadid's luminous paintings depicted the city and the hillside above it as a prismatic field in which buildings and landform were amalgamated into the same geological formation of shifting lines, vibrant planes, and shimmering colors, at once tangible and intangible, infused with the transformative energy that Cubist, Futurist, and Expressionist landscapes had sought to capture.