Global Symmetry Local Asymmetry: In the Realized Buildings by the Innovation Studio ONL BV

This paper explores the dominant role of symmetry in the nonstandard architectural designs of ONL Ltd, the innovation studio founded directed by the author and his partner visual artist Ilona Lénárd. As in historic examples of palaces and public buildings, the symmetry feels like a natural phenomenon for built structures. The author clarifies that the concept of the design of synthetic organisms contrasts strongly with previous architectural -isms like modernism and deconstructivism, as well as with more recent -isms like parametricism as promoted by the current director of Zaha Hadid Architects Patrik Schumacher. The conceptual global symmetry often goes hand in hand with local contextual adaptations, leading to local asymmetries. In the works of ONL the global symmetry is a natural aspect of the concept of the building body. Distinctive from historical examples the body plan that serves as the genetic information for the to be realized building features an embedded forward driving force. As if the materialized building body still wants to move forward and go places where it has never been before. ONL’s building bodies are considered to be vectorial bodies, bodies with a vector. Moreover, the building bodies by ONL include features lines and folding lines inspired by car body design techniques. Typically, ONL’s building bodies are built up with a structure that is wrapped in an exterior skin and accommodated with an interior skin. Metaphorically speaking the difference of pressure makes the interior skin adhere to the structure. In the design of the iWEB for the TU Delft Campus, the interior skin was literally blown up like a balloon to match the structure. While cars are bodies in speed, ONL’s building bodies just evoke speed and friction. The local climatic conditions, the geographical landscape and the urban context feed back into the genes of the design concept, in a similar fashion as organic (living) species adapt to local conditions. Contextual friction causes local asymmetrical amendments, by and large, due to the connections to the local urban fabric as affected by the functioning of the building body in relation to the larger functional complex it is part of, as is the case with the Garbage Transfer Station. The asymmetries are seen as local specifications of the skin of the yet undeveloped symmetrical initial volume. Asymmetries occur where there are doors, windows and other spots where the building body connects to neighbouring buildings, i.e., the A2 Cockpit to the Acoustic Barrier and/or communicates with the outside world. Also, the internal flow of people and things may be reflected in the structure and the skin as in the Saltwater Pavilion. While in ONL’s building bodies skin and structure are inherently synchronized, the symmetry and the asymmetry translates into the logic of both the structure and the skin.