Construction, deconstruction and conception, this is the answered of the exhibition "Mock-UP" at the S AM, until the end of October
How do you define a Mock-Up?
While you enter the Swiss Architecture Museum (house in the same historical building has the Kunsthalle Basel), you will encounter the new exhibition dedicated to the use of Mock-Up, and how they helped the clients, architects and engineers to construct an amazing and pristine building.
In architecture, it’s the bridge between a small architecture Muck-Up made in a studio to the final building. Therefore, the term refers to the first "real" step into the achievement of the building sizes, colors, architectures and so on.
Due to his important, this “fragment” of the building is made in full size (or 1/1 in an architectural language), using the same materials as the finish product, or at least the product we think we will use. All of this research and craft-making help the client, the architects and the builders to get a sense of what the building will look like because it even started.
However, an architect is much more keen to this Mock-Up due to the transformation of his 2D drawing into a 3D object, it’s like looking through the future of the place. But, as the architect agree on this construction, he will enlarged his dialogue to convince the client and optimize his research on the construction phase of the place.
Mock-Up, contemporary outlook on older works
This will be the question and the answer of the Canadian photographer David K. Ross. Since 2016, he’s been documenting and exploring the question of Mock-Up in an artistic project, titled “Archetypes”.
Therefore, these explorations thought photography have taken him several times to Switzerland due to the many architects and masterpieces they builded there.
From the use of photography as an archival and technical documentation for a company to his conviction of Mock-Up as a “dreamlike” object, strange but everyday like. To achieve this effect, David K. Ross photograph them during the night, with a powerful flash and his camera.
Mock-Up, a self defining "device"
In the upcoming rooms (from 2 to 4), the show is widened to numerous architects (Swiss and international) and their practices of Mock-Up and the link to their materials. But also, how each architect, studio or group of person interpret what a Mock-Up should do and look.
1 - The mock-up as a prototype: reflecting on the 25th anniversary of the Novartis Campus in Basel, the group decided to construct an exhibition building by the architect Michele De Lucchi. Therefore, the Mock-Up of this building (zero-energy media facade) was developed by the iart studio.
2 - Everything is a mock-up: in a way, every system needs a Mock-Up. Therefore, the Brandhaus II building conceived by Staufer & Hasler Architekten in Opfikon, Zurich showcases a case of extreme emergency. Nonetheless, the building is designed as a fire-test building, to train and organize the safety of the employee and the arriving of the hospital and fireman.
3 - The mock-up as a tool in the design process: for the Swiss and Basel-based architect Herzog & de Meuron’s, Mock-Up are part of the process of working as an architect. From the collaboration between teams, architects and clients all around the world to the development of a new technique, such as crushed brick, used for Musée Unterlinden in Colmar, as well as for a later project in Brazil.
4 - The mock-up as an innovation accelerator: in the context of the Empa’s modular research, the NEST building was made as an experimental platform for different configurations of spaces and architects, in the same place. Therefore, the building used and reuses materials to create new configurations, created by engineers and architects.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: S AM
Date: 28.8.2021 – 31.10.2021
Curator: Andreas Kofler
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the S AM
Steinberg 7
CH-4051 Basel
Phone: +41 61 261 14 13
Mail: info@sam-basel.org