Universe Architecture by Janjaap Ruijssenaars

When researching my most recent project on Futurism, I came across an image of the Floating bed by Janjaap Ruijssenaars. Janjaap is a Dutch architect/designer who studied across multiple cultural institutions including Western State College of Colorado USA, Universidad Polytecnica Spain and TU Delft Netherlands. Janjaap Ruijssenaars has been teaching at the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam and is currently Professor at the Royal Academy of Dutch Architects in the Netherlands.

The most fascinating part of his design process is that he works with the client to find the ‘right’ question, as he explains in this issue of ISSUU:

… it all really starts with asking a question about the past. When I graduated as an architect, I asked my father Hans Ruijssenaars, also an architect, what makes all architects the same. He was quiet for a minute and then said – gravity. Everything falls down to Earth. So my Floating bed seems like a product of the future, but what it really does is refute all other architectural buildings or objects that do actually fall down.

My other project, the Landscape House, a 3D printed building, didn’t really begin with “let’s make a futuristic house that is going to be 3D printed”. It started with the question: can a building be like a landscape? I think this can only be done if the building is continuous and it doesn’t have a beginning or an ending. If you zoom out of the planet Earth you see that there is no difference between one landscape and another. It is all one connected rising and falling structure. We use the 3D printing technique which proved to be the most elegant way to do it. But the design was about something that has always been there – continuity. – Janjaap Ruijssenaars.

The Floating bed uses magnets in the floor and in the bed base to push each other away causing the bed to ‘float’. It seems so Futuristic but so surreal that I had to investigate this guy. I think its important that we remember the client and the client’s question. It’s not about style or designing for a particular aesthetic effect. It’s about purpose and innovation, a modern Futurism.