TRANSFORMING METAL INTO SKIN
- Publication Type:
- Article
- Issue Date:
- 2007-10-04T23:15:33Z
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Frank Gehry’s 1997 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao drew international attention to the physical
and rhetorical potential of titanium for use as a building ‘skin.’ Titanium was transformed from a
material previously associated with the aerospace, medical and jewellery industries into a
signifier of architectural eloquence. Metal and metal-clad buildings have a largely functionalist
history in architecture of the past century; some are intentionally severe, while others result from
necessity occasioned by poverty. Less commonly, they are the work of architects including
Gehry, Kisho Kurakawa and Daniel Libeskind using metals such as titanium for their physical
and narrative possibilities. This paper examines the extended possibilities of the metal-clad
building through the tectonic and metaphoric use of titanium, set in the context of the historic
uses and symbolism of metal in architecture. Titanium is one of the most common elements in
the earth’s crust. It is assertively resistant; to heat, to electrical current, to decay, and to the
metal working techniques common to most other metals. In architectural application, it is a postindustrial
material that challenges the traditional hierarchy of material use. In the hands of
architects such as Gehry, Kurakawa and Libeskind, the titanium skin becomes a medium for poetic transformation of architectural form.
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