A Return to Techne: On Cecil Balmond

By Michelle Linden

In today’s digital era of slick renderings and animations, many architects are enamored with the forms and shapes made possible by a litany of advances in design and building technology. Indeed, no one is more enamored of form than Cecil Balmond. However unlike many designers, Balmond’s work is underpinned by the science underlying beauty rather than merely showcasing form for form’s sake.

As Deputy Chairman of the world renowned Ove Arup Partners, Balmond consistently transforms the way we understand structure and create architecture. A true collaborator, Balmond works with architects at the conceptual stages, helping to develop both structural and planning ideas that often define the project. His work has become an investigation into the science and craft of architecture rather than traditional engineering methodology. Balmond strives to integrate the space, form, and structure into one coherent body, at all times making sense of the architectural diagram and often forcing the architect to rethink the design intent.

Kinas TV, Beijing, ARUP/OMA Architect © ARUP/OMA.
Courtesy of Louisiana Museum, Denmark.

For years, Balmond has been an innovator in the field of engineering. Architects around the world such as Rem Koolhaas, Toyo Ito, and Daniel Libeskind engage Balmond not only for his lateral thought process in solving complex engineering problems, but to work cooperatively to improve and develop the actual design. His success is due as much to his innovative solutions as to his passion for scientific research.

Mathematics and design have long been intertwined, dating back to ancient studies of techne and craft. Techne, understood as the creation of art or craft through the implementation of practical knowledge, has clear implications in architecture and engineering. For example, the study of the Golden Section has fascinated designers for ages, harkening back to ancient Greek, Roman, and renaissance architecture. A formula whose calculations provide a seemingly perfect and beautiful proportion, the golden section is one of the earliest examples of mathematics creating art. Over time, other mathematical theories have influenced artistic development including the statistical characteristics of fractals and irregular processes of chaos theory. In particular, fractals have significantly influenced current design rationale. These irregular patterns and structures found in nature and repeated at infinite smaller scales produce irregular shapes and surfaces, which have been impossible to define with classical geometry. Recently, the use of computer modeling has enabled engineers such as Balmond to better understand and use fractals as a design tool.

Serpentine Pavillion, Londres, 2002. Toyo Ito/Cecil Balmond © ARUP.
Courtesy of Louisiana Museum, Denmark.

As director of Ove Arup’s Advanced Geometry Unit (AGU), Balmond investigates such mathematical concepts and their influence on natural forms and structures. Involving a wide variety of scientific research as diverse as music, algorithms, and malignant cellular structure, Balmond delves into the root of structural order and patterns. This theoretical work in math and science is the crux of his design process, providing an abundance of abstract concepts to help define the tectonic expression.

The realized artistic ramifications of these mathematical patterns reveals Balmond’s true genius, as exemplified by the Ito-Balmond Serpentine Pavilion design in London. Here, Balmond utilizes his knowledge about fractal algorithms to act as the prime organizing agent, allowing the pavilion to exist as a holistic entity where structure and form are one and the same. Peerless in his exploration of the artistic ramifications of mathematical patterns, Balmond remains truer to the ancient philosophic meaning of techne than any of his contemporaries.

Whether through the exploration of fractals or another notion of scientific complexity and patterns, the development of these ideas affects the evolution of all of his structures. Imagining forms in need of structuring, rather than working to develop a static skeleton for a preexisting form has changed the way Balmond and his collaborators view the pragmatism of architectural design. Consistently working as a pioneer in the field of architecture, he refuses to accept standard notions of structural stability. Beyond defining the ways in which to make a design buildable, Balmond enables architects to envision forms free of typical structural constraints.

Ultimately concerned with the rational method of design rather than a more liberal and introspective form of art, Balmond consistently develops the craft of engineering as much as the craft of architecture and design, ever striving towards the Greek ideal of techne. Redefining the relationship between where structuring and composition begin and end has enabled Balmond to develop new systems of order and patterning.

Recently, this development of patterning has led Balmond to his own architectural design work. In addition to working with the world’s preeminent architects, Balmond is now coming into his own as an avant-garde architectural talent. Preferring a practical application of knowledge, rather than a strictly aesthetic approach, the root of his design is clearly his research. This development of art through mathematics is where Balmond truly manages to bridge the gap between architecture, engineering, and theoretical discourse. The Advanced Geometry Unit is now beginning to parlay their knowledge of patterning and structure into diagrammatic patterns of use and occupancy. This seems to be his next big step; by redefining current and future architectural thinking, Cecil Balmond is conquering the world whose future he has long helped to mold.

Michelle Linden is an architect based in Seattle (USA) and author of Atelier A+D’s blog about architecture and design.