Alejandro Aravena Not Just Another Bjarke Ingels

While listening to the TED talk by Alejandro Aravena, I felt initially critical of his ideas. The first of which being the transition of the typical central core of a high-rise building to the outside of the building. Essentially taking the materials with higher thermal mass and moving them to the exterior where they can actually perform there inherent function. Not that I have any problem with this idea as a premise but as architecture students were pushed often to think critically about the context of new ideas and the other implications they might have. Based on relationships of geometry, the concrete exterior has added costs in a few areas, significantly more cubic feet, stronger connections for increased distances, potentially more unique connections to form the more particular aspects of design typically presented on the exterior. As well the core is typically acting as a structural space to reduce steel spans as well as easily accessible egress for fire safety, leaving the interior to either have a secondary core, somehow tie back to the exterior or rely on interior steel connections, while the exterior must house these paths of egress, forming multiple cores on the outside? Obviously Alejandro didn't have the time to address all the intricacies of design but rather validated it with reduction in energy costs which were significant and eventually would offset their carbon footprint in ⅓ the time of a typical high-rise.

Ultimately, these TED talk formats are meant to reel us in with the big idea. In this case, how can design, consideration of form, interactions with the public or rethinking the old way of designing lead to innovative solutions. My initial instinct to dismiss his design therefore ultimately misses the larger point and is perhaps residual ptsd from the Bjarke Ingels presentation. Here he pushed almost the same initial concept as Bjarke Ingels, but rather promoted mature processes of digesting the needs of an area. Bjarke Ingels in a way is almost child-like in what he hopes to inspire you with (Boomboxes, skiing, legos…etc) while Alelandro weakens tsunamis with trees and gets people to add value to their homes by giving the owners the framework to build additions themselves. These are truly big ideas and does help designers try to reposition their work towards processes angled at collective efforts, which is ultimately the core idea taught in school with the concept of studio culture.