Xefirotarch

I stumbled upon quite an intriguing art and architecture exhibit at the Art Institute a few weeks ago. It was a showcase of work by Xefirotarch, a San Francisco-based art team/design brigade/architecture collective/brainchild of Hernan Diaz Alonso, whose fancy has been struck by biomorphic architecture. The setting was surreal, and was quite sensorily overwhelming at the time: the entire gallery space is painted a bright red, and as you descend the few stairs into this womb-space you are confronted with display cases containing structures reminiscent of vertebrate spines, of configurations of enlarged neurons, of cellular architecture. A little farther down was a pulse-quickening, equally red, structure, about the size of a car and a half, with these biological forms perched in between rounded nodes and tucked into crevices. I was struck by a thrilling feeling of dread and anticipation as I rounded a (rounded) corner where a gigantic computer-created image suggested how the interior of these architectural-sculptural forms might be negotiated and experienced. The other side displayed similar red couch-car-tables and these magical-natural models. I've wondered for a long time why it is that human-created things, especially architectural things, are filled with straight lines and edges and sharp planes, when almost nothing in nature (or anything that's not an artifact) is organized in that way. Xefirotarch asks that question in a less naïve and much more theoretically sharp manner: they're pushing the boundaries of architecture in a way that has never been tested before, although most of the practical burden rests upon the engineers, I'm sure. So far, a large-scale installation in a public park is the only one of Xefirotarch's biologically-inspired designs to be realized, and the larger-scale host bodies-as-hotels-or-living/working-spaces-etc. are so conceptually and visually challenging that I'm sure their birth is delayed by a kind of resistance based on this novelty of form and design. Stretching and stepping across the boundaries of art, architecture, biology, and formal structural conventions is something that absolutely incites the imagination and inspires wonder.