Who is michael jantzen

Jarrett Key. Amaranth Borsuk. Home Interviews Architect Michael Jantzen. Interviews Architect Artists. Share on Facebook. Interactivity is the key component here. The House as a Metaphor is part of a series of public art proposals that would either be constructed of painted steel or wood if they were smaller. These are very conceptual pieces designed to explore the symbolism behind the image of the conventional house.

In most cases they are meant to be fun, and even funny structures in white that would be ideally located in public parks in order to reinforce the symbolic nature of the designs. The project was also designed to represent the interconnection between everything and everyone on the planet.

In order for the Machines to operate properly Earthwatch Institute would have to provide appropriate information that notifies the machines to release the seeds at the right time. As the sun light moves over the surface of The Sounds of the Sun Pavilion during the day, it produces ever-changing electronic sounds patterns that are based on the ways in which the light interacts with the surface of the structure.

This increases the complexity of the total experience when visitors encounter the Sounds of the Sun Pavilion. The aim of this piece was to create a very complex form that interacts in a very unexpected way with its environment.

The structure of The Dark Shadows Pavilion would be made of bent steel pipe, and black painted wood. One is this idea of creating a kit of parts and inventing systems that allow you to do many things with the same pieces. The other end of the spectrum of where I like to work, which is more like the winery, is thinking about symbolism and how symbolic references can suggest form and function. Sometimes they come together.

In general, my work is about research and experimentation. I've been at this for almost 45 years now. I was one of the pioneers of the whole sustainable design movement back in the early s. My work has always had that element, in most cases. Your work merges art, architecture, technology, engineering, and sustainable design.

How does your process take shape? If there are clients involved -- and usually there aren't -- it's hard to tell what will stimulate an idea. The M-House, for example, started as a desire on my part to create a building system that would have attributes like sustainability. Before that was finished, other ideas would come from the process of working on that project.

What if the panels were hinged? You might play with that particular direction and generate a whole new thing. The symbolic things come from thinking about the way the thing is going to be used. If I were going to build something in that environment, how would I do it and how would I make it at least symbolically close the beauty of the terrain? I'm working on a proposal right now that was influenced by walking by a large water fountain. The wind was blowing and I noticed how the wind affected the water.

That started some thinking about how you'd create a solar fountain. It's keeping your eyes and ears open and playing these mind games. I pretty much design the thing in my head. I draw very little. Most of my work is done in the three-dimensional form of building physical models. Most of the things on the website are photographs of models. From a very early age, I've always been affected by my physical environment.

I was raised in a small house with too many kids. It was never warm enough in the winter or cool enough in the summer. We didn't have money to do it right. As a kid, I tried to upgrade that environment myself. That's how I started to get interested in the built environment -- trying to create a better one for myself and my family. My family owned a summer resort.

I started to build things on this resort that were used by the public. I started at an early age building a lot of these very different-looking kinds of structures, such as a bath house next to one of the swimming lakes.

I started making sculptures bigger, so you could use them for different functions. They became attractions because of the design. People came to this place to see the structures I built. During my undergraduate work, I became interested in doing more with less, sustainable architecture and designs that were energy efficient. It was exciting and it added to what I'd already been doing, but in a different direction.

I did a Master's in fine art, but never stopped working on using these structures as experiments on different was to look at the built environment. These became new challenges. I did that work to see what I could do. I've always been interested in having this work published to share ideas and hopefully get feedback, and even better, some clients that would actually build them.

The M-House was sold to an art collector years ago. That's the other way I like to work -- to build something or have it built and sell it. I never wanted to be an architect where I would be controlled by the client and unable to do what I wanted. The idea is to sell the vision. That's a hard question because I usually don't know. These are design studies that look at the potential of being able to change things in the physical world.

What if you could literally change the shape of a building through mass voting? You'd vote on how a certain segment of it should change. How do you begin to create these structures from a global consciousness? The Web-Shaped Pavilion is a tall, cylindrical structure that's a public gathering place.