杏吧原创

Building higher (Image: Greg Girard/Gallerystock)

Crossover by Cecil Balmond blends maths, engineering, art and architecture and adds a dash of mythology. The result is an interdisciplinary masterpiece

THE work of structural engineer and architect Cecil Balmond tends to polarise opinion. Some of his sculptures and buildings have been hailed as 鈥渁we-inspiring鈥� and 鈥渂eguiling鈥�, while others have been reviled as 鈥減ornographic鈥� or 鈥淢eccano on crack鈥�.

Balmond is the non-celebrity half of audacious collaborations, from The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London, in 2002 with Japanese architect Toyo Ito to the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower built for London鈥檚 2012 Olympics with Turner prizewinner Anish Kapoor.

Now, in Crossover, he chronicles the journey from initial concept and back-of-the-envelope scribbles to some of the most iconic and contentious bridges, buildings and artworks in the world. But the book is much more. It is a genuine effort to unite the interdisciplinary strands of mathematics, engineering, science and architecture. The language is undoubtedly arty and occasionally philosophical, but stick with it. Crossover is far from airy-fairy and may even change the way you view art-speak.

If anyone has the right interdisciplinary pedigree to pull all this off, it is Balmond. Born in Sri Lanka, he studied maths and chemistry and went on to obtain an MSc in advanced structures at Imperial College London. Balmond joined engineering firm Ove Arup in 1968, launching its Advanced Geometry Unit in 2000, and eventually becoming deputy chairman. He left the firm in 2010 to set up his own practice, Balmond Studio.

Balmond is also an author, scooping the Royal Institute of British Architects鈥檚 Sir Banister Fletcher Prize for the best book on architecture in 2005 for Informal. A book like Crossover, however, involves a delicate balancing act 鈥� with the potential to slip into pretentiousness at every turn.

As you might expect, Crossover is a thing of beauty. Fortunately, it has real substance too 鈥� packed as it is with pages of photographs, handwritten memos and diagrams, equations and computer-generated geometrics, as well as columns of text.

There are times when Balmond waxes a little too poetic: 鈥淭he guessing game goes on between shape and form, substance and metaphor. The imagination is primed between a reality of the void and the fiction of its substance.鈥�

But this is the authentic voice of the man. I interviewed him in 2011, as the last pieces of cherry red steel were about to be placed on the top of the Orbit. And his talk of the languages and energies of form that we use to construct our own narratives as we experience art or architecture made perfect sense.

Laid out in sections, according to the building or sculpture, Crossover contains just the right mix of artwork and text. One of my favourites is the new China Central Television (CCTV) tower in Beijing. This buckled-over, 234-metre-high skyscraper, with a scary, 13-storey overhang that angles and turns in mid-air, has, as ever, been both celebrated and derided. The New York Timessaid the CCTV headquarters 鈥渕ay be the greatest work of architecture built in this century鈥�, but Chinese critics saw it as 鈥減ornographic鈥� and the locals simply dubbed it 鈥�da kucha鈥� 鈥� 鈥渂ig underpants鈥�.

The looping skyscraper was designed in collaboration with Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren of Dutch firm the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, and it is fascinating to follow the journey from an initial scribble that climbs straight up the page and turns at right angles, then returns to the ground, through various simulations and structural models before arriving at the finished building.

There is drama as Balmond describes the major challenges 鈥� gravity, of course, plus the added complication of building in an earthquake zone. The team addressed these problems by inserting vertical columns and cores to take most of the tower鈥檚 gravitational load. In addition, they designed the bracing meshwork 鈥渟kin鈥� that patterns the sides of the CCTV tower. As well as taking some of the load, this is designed to help the building withstand earthquakes. As Balmond puts it: 鈥淣ot a Great Wall to keep things out but a massive armature to absorb all.鈥�

Eventually, the plans satisfied China鈥檚 seismic design expert review panel. But in the light of 9/11, there was another worry, he recalls: 鈥淲hat if a plane flew into it? We calculated CCTV would survive a direct hit,鈥� he says.

The Pedro e In锚s bridge in Coimbra, central Portugal, was a simpler proposition. Echoing the fate of the star-crossed lovers after whom it is named, the bridge does not seem to meet in the middle. Balmond explains how he conceived its unconventional form as he flew back to London following a meeting with engineer Ant贸nio Ad茫o da Fonseca, who was leading the project. Balmond describes looking out of the plane window and his eye following the river鈥檚 eddies and ripples and imagining 鈥渁nother kind of crossing鈥�. 鈥淎ll straightness disappears. Meanders take place, small turns. The bridge has no direction to meet,鈥� he writes. 鈥淚 draw two curves. They miss.鈥�

Of course, the bridge does meet in the middle, but the connection takes the form of a hovering deck. The team hired 200 local students to jog up and down the deck to test the bridge鈥檚 wobble before it had been 鈥渄amped鈥�. Their calculations were correct.

It was only after the bridge was opened and Coimbra鈥檚 mayor asked if it could be named after a local legend that Balmond heard the tale of the Portuguese prince, Pedro, who fell in love with Spanish lady-in-waiting In锚s in medieval times. The court was unhappy with the affair and In锚s was murdered. So when Pedro became king he hunted down her killers and had them tortured to death. He had her body exhumed, dressed in bridal attire and married her. 鈥淭hey say Pedro is on the left side and In锚s to the right of the bridge,鈥� says Balmond. 鈥淚n the centre they meet.鈥�

Another delight for me is Balmond鈥檚 hand-drawn circular scrawls of the London Orbit. They are so unlike the straight-up, straight-down workings of traditional towers and remind me of the drawings Balmond used to illustrate his vision when I visited his studio two years ago. I remember him scribbling snaking figures-of-eight and then cutting off their bottoms so they could stand on the ground.

You couldn鈥檛 get a better grounding in the creative process than this book. Balmond invites you into his studio and lets you peer over his shoulder at drawings and models while he explains the thinking behind them. If you ever thought mathematics or engineering were boring, Crossover will make you think again.

聯Balmond invites you into his studio and lets you peer over his shoulder while he explains his drawings聰

The book offers a fresh perspective on mathematics and is stuffed full of geometry, algebra, golden ratios, tessellations and fractals. But be warned: it does help if you know your Fibonacci sequence from your complex numbers.

Crossover,like its author, is a one-off. As art curator and critic Hans Ulrich Obrist observes in the book鈥檚 preface, Balmond鈥檚 command of multiple disciplines is 鈥渘othing short of astounding in a world where鈥� we are forced in our professional lives鈥� to find our niche and stick to it, to stay鈥� within our comfort zone鈥�.

So if you want a trip outside your comfort zone, this book may be a good place to start.