CECIL BALMOND SOBRE ARTE E CIÊNCIA

No sábado passado tive oportunidade de apresentar no Pavilhão Centro de Portugal em Coimbra o livro "Open Source" baseado na obra do engenheiro e arquitecto britânico Cecil Balmond, que resultou de uma exposição e encontro sobre a sua arte realizada no ano passado na Casa da Música do Porto pela Associação Circo de Ideias (dirigida pelo arquitecto Gonçalo Azevedo). Destaco do livro o final da enntrevista em que Cecil Balmond fala da profunda relação entre arte e ciência. Recordo que o tecto daquele Pavilhão é da sua autoria, a meias com Álvaro Siza Vieira, tal como a pála do Pavilhão de Portugal no Parque das Nações. Também é sua a bela Ponte Pedro e Inês em Coimbra (na figura, à noite), feita a meias com o engenheiro Adão da Fonseca:

HUO: Now, the very last question. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote this wonderful little book which is an advice to a young poet and I was wondering what would in 2010 be your advice to a young, architect, a young engineer or a young artist?

CB: (laughs) God! That is a tough one! I would say study comparative religion and it’s structures of thought. I could say what the world is missing in the world of design is an understanding of the overlap between art and science. Science is completely misunderstood and the humanities have rejected science and moved away and yet, the very source and the solutions for our planet will come from scientific rigors. I have totally passionately believed that the rigors of a science can inform an architecture and the synthesis of architecture can inform the analytical powers of science. I would say to architects, please go and understand science better, and I would say to engineers, please go and understand art properly better. Because interestingly, because when I was interviewing Mandelbrot for a program I did on the BBC, I asked him: «How did you came up with this idea of a fractal?» and he probably told you the same story. He shocked me, he said that: «I have to tell you, if I did not love art and painting I probably would never have thought about it!» Then he explained how that he had this somehow immersion in art and the solution to the mathematical problem that his great mathematician friend could not solve, who had put it at his desk. He suddenly felt and he can’t explain the geometry, but somehow, if you like, Mandelbrot was telling me personally that looking at a painting gave him a certain idea to find the unlocked secret of the fractal. A huge jump of believe, but actually I believe that. You know, I honestly take there is something widening your sphere. Fundamentally, art and science are not separate but they are absolutely feeding back into each other in strange ways. Embracing that holistic view, has to be the way forward, rather than any regimentation or compartmentalization, which I think have been the model of two thousand years. I think that is gone and going and will be gone forever in another twenty years. It will be a different system of thought."

(os sublinhados a bold são meus)