2.0 Computing in Architecture
The Rubber Mat 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.
UNStudio, Knowledge Platforms interchange diagram, 2012
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. 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.
The organisation of the UNStudio Knowledge Platforms emphasises the interchange between the platforms themselves and with building and research projects.
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.
Burnham Pavilion
Millennium Park, Chicago, 2009
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 Rhinoceros- emphasis 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.