Holotecture

Holotecture (from holos - whole, entire, tekton - builder, constructor, architect) - a modern architectural trend - was initiated in 1991 by the architect Bruno Urh, with his competition entry for the revitalisation of the region of Rome's access roads (Lo SDO - Sistema Direzionale Orientale). He described the advantages and weaknesses of the emerging new trend in July, 1993, in a book entitled Holotecture, which he published at the University of Ljubljana, School of Architecture in a print run of 100 copies for an E.A.S.A. (European Architecture Students Assembly) meeting in the Shetland Islands.
The origins of such architecture go back to the 1970s, when architects began to use continuous reflexive glass on facades, so that it reflected the surroundings as a »simulacrum«, a copy of something that never existed (see Foster Associates, headquarters of Willis-Faber & Dumas, Ipswich 1974). It continued in a host of displays in city centres, such as Picadilly Circus in London. At the start of the nineties, above all DGH (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Holografie) encouraged pioneer projects with the use of holograms in various spatial plans. In September 1991 Holografielabor Osnabrueck published a study Solar Pavilion with holograph panels (see Interferenzen 1992, II/4). Primarily Vito OraÅ¾em (see Interferenzen 1994, 5. year, Nr.1) and Dr. Peter Zec (see Interferenzen 1994, V/1)*1 in Germany have been involved with holography as a design medium.
Holography has not find a real place in architecture, although discussions of the multilayered functionality of holograms in architecture has also been transferred to the field of science (physics and optics) (see Proceedings of SPIE, 1993, 1732-pg 447-452 and 1994, 2169-pg 195) *2.
The use of holograms on facades has not to date become widespread. However, the basic philosophy of holotecture - multilayered architecture of multilayered man - seems to have become increasingly established in everyday contemporary architecture, with all the advantages and defects already shown in the book Holotecture and Urh's other publications. The advantage is the multilayerness of arhitecture and the weakness man's difficulties (primarily psychic) with too- multilayered architecture, so a kind of Orwell 1984 in the west. The user's senses are ever clumsier. He becomes more awkward than the building. In order to understand it he would have to be (mechanically) improved, which leads to a particular scruplen about the humanity of such architecture, or even to the question of whether holotecture is at all architecture for a human being, and not for a robot.
The buildings that can be denoted as the first realisations of the philosophy of holotecture are thus not necessarily fitted with hologram membranes but aspire to communication between the building and the observer, such as Galeries Lafayette, Berlin 1995 by the architect Jean Nouvelle.
*1 http://www.holonet.khm.de/Holographers/DGH/text/Interferenzen/Interferenzen_194.html
*2 http://spiedl.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prognormal&idPSISDG001732000001000447000001&idtypecvips&gifsyes

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