Lars Matthias M. Spuybroek (born September 16, 1959,Rotterdam) is a Dutcharchitect andtheorist who lives and works inAtlanta, where he is professor of architecture.
Born inVreewijk in the south of Rotterdam, he spent most of his childhood inHillegersberg, in the north of the city. He graduatedcum laude at theTechnical University Delft in 1989. A year later, he won the Archiprix for his Palazzo Pensile, a new royal palace forQueen Beatrix inRotterdam.[1][2] Shortly after, he started NOX-magazine with Maurice Nio, of which four issues were published in Dutch between 1991 and 1994 (A: Actiones in Distans, B: Biotech, C: Chloroform, and D: Djihad).[3] From 1995 until 2010, Lars Spuybroek was the sole principal of the office that carried the name NOX, which was responsible for several buildings and artworks in the Netherlands and abroad.
Lars Spuybroek broke onto the international scene of architecture with his water pavilion on the island ofNeeltje Jans (opened in 1997), a building consisting of two halves of which he designed the silvery freshwater part. The renowned architecture criticCharles Jencks qualified the building inThe New Paradigm of Architecture as “yet to be surpassed.”[4] The water pavilion is the first building that has an interactive interior where visitors can transform sound and lighting conditions by actively using sensors. It also has a so-called continuous geometry, where floors, walls and ceilings merge into a smooth whole. This form ofblobitecture was later officially coined "non-standard architecture" at the large group exhibition of the same name at theCentre Pompidou (2003) in Paris. This architecture advocates a technological revolution where powerful computing-tools are deployed to replace simple repetition of elements by continuous variation. The computer is used as much in the design (CAD) as in the manufacture (CAM) and sometimes even in augmenting human experience. These techniques are extensively discussed in his books titledNOX: Machining Architecture (2004) andThe Architecture of Continuity (2008).[5][6]
Though the projects seem very experimental, in interviews[7] Lars Spuybroek always rejects a connection to futurism (which generally refers to the car- or filmindustry) or organicism (referring to natural forms) and only points at historical examples. Among these areGottfried Semper’sDer Stil (1860-62),Wilhelm Worringer’sForm in Gothic (1911) andWilliam Hogarth’sThe Analysis of Beauty (1753). Other influences that are often quoted areD'Arcy Thompson'sOn Growth and Form (1917) and the work of German architect-engineerFrei Otto. One of the traits common to all these is a sinuous complexity and delicacy of form, another that theaesthetics are more of feeling and bodily experience than of mental judgement. Blobs he dismisses as "uncontrolled variation" and being "at the low-end of architectural articulation."[8] He has a strong belief in the cultural effects of new technologies: "Soon it will be possible to have completely unique parts in a built structure for a price that before would only be possible through huge amounts of repetition - a variable prefab, or as it is called in production terms,mass customization. We are dissolving the opposition between elitist handwork and machined parts, between emotionality and high-tech, between Art Nouveau and Bauhaus."[9]
In 2001 his design for a new WTC in New York brought him renewed international attention. A few years later, in 2004, several works of Lars Spuybroek were completed. In France theMaison Folie de Wazemmes was opened, a cultural center at the heart of a derelict area in Lille. In the Netherlands theD-tower was completed, a large, interactive sculpture for the city ofDoetinchem which he created together with Dutch artistQ.S. Serafijn. This tower connects directly to a website that surveys the emotional lives of the inhabitants.[10] Close to Eindhoven, in the small city of Son-en-Breugel, theSon-O-House was opened, an interactive sound sculpture conceived together with composerEdwin van der Heide.
In 2001 Lars Spuybroek was appointed Professor of Digital Design Techniques at theUniversity of Kassel in Germany. And from 1998 until 2006 he also taught intermittently at Columbia University in New York. Since 2006 he is a full Professor and the Ventulett Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta where he published two books on Research and Design. The first, released in 2009, was titledThe Architecture of Variation and the second in 2011Textile Tectonics. Both publications use the research into various forms of patterning (hair braiding, leaf venation, knitting, gothic tracery, foam packing, etc.) as a new source for design methodologies based on figures and configurations.
In 2011 Spuybroek gave a more political and ethical interpretation of these ideas by publishing a study into the work ofJohn Ruskin (The Sympathy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecology of Design)[11] which explores “the digital nature of gothic,” revealing a fundamental connection between digital design and Gothic architecture.[12][13][14][15] The book proposes a vision of mass production of unique artifacts designed and built algorithmically by “our slaves of steel“ and explores Ruskin’s broad range of concepts in the context of later aesthetic theorists and philosophers such as William James, A. N. Whitehead and Henri Bergson.[16][17][18][19] Since then he has been involved in various publications that evolved from the work on John Ruskin, mainly on the topics of beauty and grace, of which many articles and essays can be read online.[20][21][22] This research culminated in 2020 with the release ofGrace and Gravity: Architectures of the Figure. With this panoramic study Spuybroek broadened his scope from a purely architectural perspective to what he calls a “nonhumanities,” a philosophy of human-thing interactions based on ancient notions of grace[23] and gift exchange.[24][25][26][27]
Lars Spuybroek is married to Joke Brouwer since 1995, who is the co-founder ofV2 Institute for the Unstable Media.
In 1989 Lars Spuybroek received the Archiprix, in 1995 the Mart Stam Incentive Prize and in 1997 the Iakov Chernikov Award and the Zeeuwse Architectuurprijs. Two years later he was also nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award. In 2006 he received the Kölner Klopfer (Cologne Thumper) for "Weltbeste Designer."
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