A Study on the Concept of 'Fold' in Contemporary Architecture

摘要

For the last twenty years, many architects, especially so called "Deconstructivists," have been primarily concerned with the production of heterogeneous, fragmented and conflicting formal system as a way to embody external forces, such as social and cultural contexts, into architecture. Recently, however, as the opposite way, "fold architecture" appeared. Instead of the fragmented formal gesture taken by Deconstructivism, "folding architecture", an architectural phenomenon on which the concept of "fold" was applied, relies on formal unity and reconstruction by taking smooth and pliant gesture. In this article, the authors performed a profound study on fold architecture and the concept or fold in terms of the theoretical origin, the method and the meaning. The results of this study can be summarized as follows: the concept of fold has its theoretical origin in non-architectural fields such as philosophy, mathematics and biology; folding process in architecture is divided into surface transformation and mass transformation; transformation is done at either one single homogeneous mass or multiple heterogeneous elements; formal transformation involves diverse process such as rotating, weaving, twisting, enveloping and overlapping; the final formal appearance can be classified to be either manifold or curvilinear.