AIR
Architecture Design Studio: Air ABPL30048
Zheng Angela Li 514486
Content Part A. EOI I: CASE FOR INNOVATION A.1. Architecture as a Discourse A.2. Computational Architecture A.3. Parametric Modelling A.4 Algorithmic Explorations A.5 Conclusion/ Learning Outcomes
Introduction My name is Angela, third year Environment student study architecture. I have a Chinese bachground origin, and I came to Australia since I was in the age of fifteen. Probably starting from that time, I sort of determined my future field of study. I was very amazed when looking at fascinating buildings. However, when I really got into University of Melbourne, I just realised how diffcult it could be. The spatial experience was far more touchable to me than what I used to expecting from this displine. Uni life is not easy, and I hope everybody could have a wonderful time in the final year.
1.0 Architecture as discourse
From the previous two years of study experience in this profession, I was informed or educated that being an architect is to learn a bit of everything comparing to engineers, for instance, they know one thing very well. It seems to me that designing an outstanding building is not a simple mixture of a little bit of arts, a bit of symbolized signs and spatial experience inside the building. Rather, to me, architecture is a hybrid of the above. Some may argue, why they are different, and I will tell that their differences arose from their essence. In my viewpoints, the designing process is somehow like a chemical reaction. A chemical reaction differs from a physical one: The starting and ending materials of a physical change are the same, even though they may look different, but in a chemical reaction a new substance will be made. Several substances (material, structure, design ideas and etc.) are restricted by a number of factors (technological developement), under certain conditions (social, cultural and political contexts) and through special treatments (including computation or fabrication approaches); the final products will be produced. However, the products are not buildings themselves; instead the overall reaction shares a lot of similarities of the process of generating modern architectures.
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Son- O-House Son en Breugel, the Netherland Architect: NOX
Son-O-House,
NOX’s project for building a recreational and educational pavilion is in Son en Breugel, the Netherlands. The project is dedicated as one of the most successful cases in exploring the digital design and fabrication techniques. What is interesting was that the conceptual design and analogue processes intertwined so closely. According to Ander Chaszar, the revolution brought from this case study was a kind of ‘material computation’ which can offer the designers an alternative gateway to ‘emergent behavior’ and ‘evolutionary forms’.
Designers were inspired to focus on the visitors’ movement paths and modeled with paper strips twisted and slitted forming various configuration. The development of such concept required the consideration on spatial volume which covered by those ‘path’ strips. The geometric skin was thus generated by digital tools with both mathematical and physical calculations, such as the bending and surface tension forces exerted on outer materials. The analogue analysis was achieved through modeling and displaying the magnitude of bending movements in various rib elements.
These highly craft- oriented approaches are now being discussed under the rubric of ‘emergence’. When it comes to constructing the pavilion, architects collaborated with engineers with the aid of computing information and depicted the profiles of those intersecting ribs as located them precisely in the final framework. Manipulation of the project’s components in digital presentation form is very beneficial in both precision and ability to capture and convey detailed information.
Arc
By learning from this case study, I realised that two approaches, they are craft- oriented and digital presentation respectively, both are contributing and convey designers' intention of the project. Similarly to a chemical reaction, handcrafted- orientation is like a molecular movement or pattern which is not be seen. However, digital techniques enable the whole situation of changing is under control precisely and very specific. The advantage of digitalization emerged to make architects know their perceptions better and quantitative and qualititive deternine the building's responce to the landscape, to the social and psynological effects for the people in use.
Blobwall, a modular system, which is made from a lightweight honeycomb material, and was built up by four hundred large recyclable plastic ‘blobs’ which the design was for a single brick. The way that Greg Lynn and his students prepared, programmed and finally assembled was quiet impressive. First of all, preparing files for each brick and transferring into brick geometry into a Maya animation file, and then exported those data into rhino files. Additionally, using algorithm to determine and program a tool path in order to instruct a robotic arm and generated CNC code for cutting of bricks with a 6-axis robot. Blobwall SCI-Arc Gallery Los Angeles, California,
chitect: Greg Lynn
1. We began with Maya 3D polygon surfaces + Rhino NURBS brick file.
2.The NURBS brick was imported into Maya, then repositioned accordingly.
3. Each individual brick was exported and repositioned back to Rhino.
The most impressive part of the project is the organisation of those blobs in three dimentional space. Architectu mathematical formulas and kept experimenting the new material properties, which has brought a lot of challen or even the curvy surface, architects have successfully conveyed others how his thoughts have formulated and glance. This very straightforward way of expressing spaital occupation interested me and I, kind of, rise a desir of a building, and make it breathable and communicable to its users.
The designer Greg Lynn was famous for his approach on computer-aided design to produce irregular biomorphic architectural forms resulting from integration of calculus into architectural theory
FORM has experimented with five initial prototype shapes, including the igloo, s-curve and u-curve, and the possibilities within these shapes are also highly variable Each of the ‘Blob’ units is custom-shaped using a 3D robotic arm developed by the Los Angeles firm Machineous which creates individual, tri-lobed, hollow forms
ure, this time intergrated nges. To me, through the shape drew attention in the first re of experimenting the facade
‘The meaning of architecture was therefore not single, authoritarian and closed, but multiple, democratic and open.’
The meaning behind this quotation, I understand this as discourse is another way of saying diversity. The idea of hybrid does not mean superficially put things together to customize people’s tastes, but to challenge theirs.
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2.0 Computing in Architecture
he last few decades, computation design approach which facilitates generates great number opportunities for drawings, ing works and other types of ctices. Like CAD, computered design software, this kind computation method reminded mass production somehow. ough some of the works, rather some of them were inspired by r formal practices they pasted me of the ideas, in which does not ourage creativity. By contrast, rks of imagination are filled in the king process in computerization. ties or processes that are ready med in the designer’s mind, and n entered or manipulated in the mputer system. As mentioned, m my own perceptions, designing uilding is a prolonged process requires changing continuously.
Catalyst
Digital modeling and fabrication technologies are acting like catalysts in a designing process. They, as tools, are not about to changing the final outcomes, rather, to accelerate, or in a more architectural way of saying to fasten the tension between design conception and advanced structure performance.
In terms of computational process, firm UNStudio has so far devoted much to the industry and dealing with shorten the distance of a high- complexity programming conception oven other parameters which also have made what a building really embodied. Coresponding to a dialogue with its urban setting, building's function, the initial impression of the form, UNStudio has sugguseted flexibility of computation also created and changed the way people understand a building.
The Rubber Mat, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 1997 The Rubber Mat project is a model of inhabiting property values, rent, density, business growth and green space growth. It comprised four mats, in which each of the mats embodied the suitable moving in space and in time. The design crew had this computational thinking, at the early stage of the designing, they input algorithms and diagrams into programming process and organized and instrumentalised abstract geometries to reveal the concept of ‘deep planning’ and to assimilate the complexity of contemporary architecture.
Along their way, the manipulating and accumulating advanced technologies and strategies in UNStudio’s daily practice have evolved into ‘Knowledge Platforms’. The key function of the Knowledge Platform is to act as a dynamic hinge between practice and research, which is playing a similar role of a computerizational model generated from the concept to the building. The platform- project was characterized to allow the interactive and effective cross- fertilization of research innovations being utilized in the future design approaches. In later of UNStudio’ s works, the platforms evaluate new concepts and techniques in its most specific and broadest sense, such as tools, software, thinking and design models, together brought the various parameters to define a project. In addition, the Platforms have operated on a number of non-geometric parameters: social, economic, political and material, among others.
Personally, I supported UNStudio's views on taking three approaches to obtain the meaning of a building at every time they commerce to build one. Material, Program and Parameters, there is no doubt that these three criteria are essential when designing a building. The diagram on the right top seems to enhance the effect of intergreting, hybriding and communicativity. Since architecture is designed for people who use them, designers may sometimes struggle with how to make it look simple but manipulate it hard.The Rubber Mat have made it in which architects introduced the 'Knowledge Platforms' by transforming the theoritical exploration to practice and also transforming professional minds to the public.
Burnham Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago, 2009
The temporary pavilion is made up with three identical openings that support a very straightforward horizontal surface and structure so as to achieve a desire for a formal, axial and visual relation to the downtown Chicago. Such untangible connection between the pavillion and the environment is something inspired me that I would like to embody in the gateway project later in the semester. According to Kalay’s paper, it is being considered that the digital design process is a process to confront uncertainties and create analytical and creative thinking constrained by many limits imposed. In this case, the Burnham Pavilion in Chicago is influenced by two economic and material constraints: ‘a structural system that is required to be essentially post and beam, and the repetition of the form of the openings in the surfaces.’ Manipulating visual programming aimed at instrumentalising the parameters intuitively to fit in its specificity. Therefore, the solution to that is to create holes within simple and parallelogram frames to the main structure and being duplicated and rotated to direct vistas diagonally upwards. Such experiment serves not only a tool solving problems, but also deeply in root encouraged the designers’ logical thinking to expand and upgrade.
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3.0 Parametric Modelling
Parametric modelling, according to Woodbury,is something about change. It requires the buildling components could be adapted to context for quite a long time. It has been mentioned by him that patterning are very good tool for thinking and using parametric design. At this stage, I get a better understanding on how the digital approaches provide a generic solution for solving new complexity, in addition to that parametric modelling is kind of the upstream of the general computation. Based on my opinion, it is believed that parametric modelling has some advantages that some common software may not acquire like its smooth clarity, flexibility of changing the variables and so on. In the reading, a spreadsheet has been given as an example for directly illustrating the data flow and CADecisions calculated by algorithms.
Arnhem Central station, the Netherlands, 1996- 2014 The project has been a drive of innovation since its beginning more than ten years ago. It was the genesis of early concepts such as the V- model and the Deep Planning Principle, and continues to drive innovation in the practice; therefore it encompasses many of the UNStudio’s working approaches. It is worthy to mentioning specifically that its roof paneling system through which the woven pattern has evolved and worked altogether on structural, material and economic parameters. The tool it used is the programming language in Rhinocerosemphasis was placed on the relationships of the panels to develop a pattern that constrained by mould size, anchor locations and geometric efficiencies and so on. ‘Programmed objects acting as abstractions of the panels contain methods that autonomously create boundaries, check for geometric optimisation (ruled, cylindrical, flat), create anchor points, annotate and extract data.’ Not so hard to see that computation’s primary potential is its flexibility to communicate information between computation and humans across multiple declines via associative data.
Serpentine Pavilion London, 2002 Architects: Toyo Ito/ CecilBalmond
Serpentine
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Pavillion
is cture which was or the Serpentine gramme in London's , and now it has been in southern France. re has made it so n extremely complex d spreading all cross in fact derived from ough manipulating ng programs, the has formed chaotic berous triangles and whose transparency s presented a given y repeated motion'.
According to Balmond himself, there are two questions when they first proposed this building, one is based on the structural thinking about how the floors are to swelling up and supporting the roof and the other would be how would the random cross line composed on the flat floor stand up themselves and supported only by exterior wall. In achiving it, they found a geometric algorithm formed by a rectangular or squared plane, and by drawing lines following the edge lines going across the plane at a certain angle.The angle is defined by drawing a line in a certain ratio between the different sides of the plane.
Some are primary for load bearing, some will serve as bracings to secondary and the rest will be a binding motif of the random across the surface of the box typology.� The innovation reminded me a lot about geometrical patterning and supporting ribs functioned not just in the consideration of aesthtics, but also as a medium communicating with the load bearing elements, as well as the nature including lights . vegetation , which made the building a active entity can breathe in that sense.
Algorithm Exploration
Through the early exploration of grasshopper, it has provided such a pathway of quickly finding out where your project has been going wrong and comparing to the pannelling tool we learned in the first year creativity on manipulating various knowns is encouraged. For example, the surface box I modelled digitally on the left included multiple commands to change each individual's orientation, size, repetition and so on which on the real construction site; models are able to push the progresses even further without wasting unnecessary costs and time.