Clockworks

CLOCKWORKS is the design for the house of a family dominated by engineers who work with measurements of all kinds, including measurements of time (t).
In addition to the 3 coordinates of space (x, y, z), this 4th coordinate (t) shapes Clockworks and challenges fundamental tenets of architecture such as stability and statics – the latter as that discipline in particular that deals with the forces in immobile systems and is responsible for ensuring that systems are at rest and also, in its Greek form, i.e. “staikos”, with making sure systems are “kept in a state of rest”. What is paradoxical about this is that a static state (a state of rest) – as the dominant state in construction – is actually the exception, and that statics are always defined as a special case and a subdivision of superordinate dynamics and mechanics.

CLOCKWORKS emerged from the juxtaposition of 2 works, both of which are mechanical and rotational. These are the “Il Girasole” house by Angelo Invernizzi, built in the 1930s in Northern Italy near Verona, and “Railroad Turnbridge”, a film by Richard Serra about a swing bridge in the United States. The “Girasole” house, as its name (“sunflower”) implies, turns with the sun and employs its focused field of view and its ground plan to explore the surrounding landscape like a wide-field telescope. The geometry of its L-shaped ground plan marks a space that connects with a constantly changing landscape in repeatedly new ways in the course of its gradual rotation.
The film “Railroad Turnbridge” (1976) has a different, perhaps more complex perspective, as it is not just about a bridge, but about filming a bridge consisting of several parts. Richard Serra positioned his film camera in the truss of the slowly rotating swing bridge. Also like a telescope, the bridge and the camera slide over the landscape and, in the course of this pair movement, multiply the complexity of the relationships between the camera, the bridge, the landscape, the screen and the viewer nearly to infinity. In contrast to “Girasole”, this does not create a spatial connection between the telescope and the surrounding landscape; instead, the space around it slides off the camera (and the screen and the bridge) up until the point where the rotating part of the swing bridge is directed towards the static parts of the bridge and thus focuses on itself. The functionally necessary swinging motion of the bridge’s main arm amounts to a gradual deconstruction of form (and function: ships versus cars) and also to a gradual reconstruction of form when all the parts of the bridge discreetly return to their original position after a rotation of 2 times 90 degrees.

CLOCKWORKS consists of 2 circular discs about 3 meters high, superimposed at a distance of about 2.5 meters and forming 4 usable levels. The two 3-meter discs are punctuated by vertical “voids”. These voids structure the space and contain its functions: 1 void for access, 1 void for sanitary facilities and 1 void as an atrium. The upper and lower discs are then made to rotate at slightly different speeds, so that the configuration of the voids is gradually changed and deconstructed until they once again reunite in their original configuration. Conceptually, Clockworks is therefore closer to the idea of “Railroad Turnbridge”. Though the connection to the surrounding space does play a certain role in Clockworks, the focus is on the permutations of the internal configuration.
The rotation is made possible by a system of very large, dual motor-driven ball bearings that permit different rotational movements. Supply and disposal are managed via the central area. Clockworks is accessed by means of 2 spiral staircases. The lower staircase is stationary, while the upper staircase rotates with one of the two discs and is constructed in such a way that it can constantly shift its position on the other disc.