Chuck Hoberman has a vision of Buckminster Fuller. As the New York–based artist, mechanical engineer, and product designer expands his projects to large-scale architecture, he is integrating his mechanized elements to develop a new strain of sustainable and flexible structures that conceptually relate to what the late Fuller had imagined, but never realized, decades before. Often starting with the simplest of ideas, such as the mechanism of a scissors, Hoberman amplifies operability and motion by connecting a series of hinged units to playfully form what he calls the Hoberman Sphere. In 2002, he increased the scale of the sphere
Enabling collaborations Today, shared Building Information Models (BIM), rather than just physical models, as with Otto’s early projects, allow for feedback and integration between all the building professions, including that of the construction team. Adams Kara Taylor (AKT), a London-based structural and civil engineering firm of 40 people, will engage an architect’s ideas for a project design, but, as engineer Hanif Kara says, they “do not pretend to be the architect.” Key to the firm is teamwork and a constant dialogue with the architect. An in-house mathematics think tank with computational specialists assists teams, and it is common to see
A shift in the architecture profession, already entrenched with issues of control and authorship, affords the engineer an expanded role during initial project design discussions, not just as consultants after the fact.