Handout: Digital Formations, Subdivision Constitutional (2007-08)

Formative Techniques Martin Tamke

Center for IT og Arkitektur

Dumene Comploi, Studio Lynn, Die Angewandte (Vienna)

Workshop:

Subdivision Constitutional Within a series of Workshops conducted by the Royal Academy of Fine arts School of Architecture Center for IT and Architecture, Department 7 and Brennan Buck (Die Angewandte Vienna/Studio Greg Lynn) That is my dream. To infect the soft with the hard. The liminal with the crystalline. The virtual with the real. The clever with the stupid.

Maurice Nio – Infect the soft 2002

Tools

3D-Modelling Tool Maya, Rapid Prototype Printer, Lasercutter

Participants 20 Students from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts School of Architectures Department and members of MAD Architects China The group will be subdivided in teams of 4 or 5.

Formative Techniques Martin Tamke

Center for IT og Arkitektur

Schedule Friday Nov. 26 (9.30-16h) : Maya introduction, Handout of preparational reading Friday Nov 2, 11.00h Occupation ( room, setup of desks etc.)

14.30h: Introduction: graphical pattern, architectural ornament and organization; as well as how subdivision surface modeling is used in practice and academia Handout of Assignment One 16.00h Opening MAD in China (DAC) Saturday Nov 3, 9.30: 11.00h Occupation ( room, setup of desks etc.)

Desk Crits 14.00h afternoon lecture with Eva Louise Nielsen (Textile De signer/Copenhagen) on Patternmaking Sunday Nov 4: Desk Crits 17.00h PinUp produce drawings showing organization at 3 scales (the individual frame, groups of frames and overall) as well as connection and some sort of navigational hierarchy. Then combine into the three groups, each with a set number of volumes at different sizes and an atmospheric and formal language Monday Nov 5 (7pm): Desk Crits Lecture by Riken Yamamoto at DAC Tuesday Nov 6: x 3d prints of 3d organization, begin developing construction techniques for 1cbm 15.00h Intermediate Crit With external crits (MAD architects) Opening of ArchiTronic event at DAC (7pm) Wednesday Nov 7: Start of production of large scale installation (samples) Lecture by MAD architects (7pm) Saturday Nov 10: Finish construction of the installation 13.00h Final Discussion With CITA / krydsrum / MAPT / 3xN

Formative Techniques Martin Tamke

Center for IT og Arkitektur

A Question of Organisation

Intent: Pattern and Ornament are usually defined as two dimensional means, whereas structure is a self related three dimensional phenomenon. Still every structure inhabits elements of pattern and the two dimensional pattern can be used as an informant for a spatial structure.

Pattern Pattern is a graphical device that organizes regions, borders, colors and textures in 2 dimensions. Two references we will use are the graphic art of Chris Ware and these Tajik Bridal Veils from Documenta 12.

Graphic Work of Chris Ware Ware organizes multiple linear routes through the page, with nested hierarchies and loops. Sets of frames are arranged in groups by color, size or boundary but those boundaries are often crossed (by arrows or text) or subsumed (the frame is eliminated) and groups are linked across the page by color or size (for instance the four black squares on the right.)

Similarly, the Tajik bridal veils organize pattern into clear regions, or blocks, but frequently break down the borders between regions by letting the pattern continue from one region to the next (diamond shapes on the right.) Motifs and color also connect separate regions. In this sense, both examples use pattern to organizational effect.

Tajik Bridal Veils from Documenta 12 Pleadsform threedimensional structure in knitted surface

Ornament is an architectural system that gives decoration and meaning to structure.

To follow Karsten Harries’ argument, Bavarian Rococo, as the last great period style before modernism, built up ornament in such excess that it lost it’s connection to

Formative Techniques Martin Tamke

Center for IT og Arkitektur

structure and function. It lost its link to the column, cornice or frame and became an autonomous set of elements. This loss of function, according to Harries, allowed ornament to be rejected by modernism as unnecessary and irrelevant. In later times the lack of ornament was tried to be subsidized by the focus on material as sole carrier of structure, detail, surface feel and beauty relating to human scale.

The revival of interest in ornament today is directly linked to it’s synthesis with form (topological surfaces, structural elements, skin systems) ie. the way it organizes architectural material.

This organisational talent is in itself scale less. An operation on an multiple scale and dimensions is possible and seems due to construction and manufacturing techniques more and more plausible.

How can a space be structured, when curvilinear connections become valid? What kind of borders can be established within these systems? What is the understanding of repetition and series in a parametric system?

Structural ornament in subdivision surface technique in 2003by Martin Tamke

Exhibition The models produced should be on display within DAC. The exhibition will last till the beginning of December and will be organised by the DAC in collaboration with the students from the workshop and CITA.

Interior Space modelled with Subdivision Surface Technology by Gage Clemenceau Architects (NYC USA)

Readings •

Karsten Harries - The Bavarian Rococo Church – Between Faith and Aestheticism, Yale University Press New Haven and London, Chapter:9: The Case Against Ornament Page 246 – 250; published in http://www.tucottbus.de/BTU/Fak2/TheoArch/D_A_T_A/Architektur/20.Jhdt/HarriesKarsten /the-bavarian-rococo-church.htm

•

Farshid Moussavi and Michael Kubo - The Function of Ornament – Harvard University Graduate School of Design 2006

• •

Maurice Nio - Infect the Soft, 2002 ; www.Mediamatic.net Greg Lynn Architectural Curvelininearity - The Folded the Pliant and the Supple; AD 3-4 1993, p 30- 37

Formative Techniques Martin Tamke

Center for IT og Arkitektur

Tools –inspirational and intuitive Formerly communication tools for architects tended to be easily accessible, as pen and paper, allowing their users to generate a big variety of expressions, solely based on their individual skills and aims of expression. Today’s CAD tools, as main drawing instrument for the profession, seem to have limited the expression of architecture instead of liberating them. The focus on 2d-CAD drawings, Photoshop collages and the lack of physical models narrows the spatial expression.

Architects constant quest for new tools and expressions is the guiding idea for the workshop. We will introduce intuitive form driving tools in combination with rapid prototyping technology to evaluate the digital output due to physical models. The digital tools will allow the participants to generate shapes and structure - intended to solve complex architectural questions given to the workshop participants.

Subdivision Surface Technique and Minimal Surface logic Advanced modelling techniques allow a new understanding of form. In here the shift from an Euclidean (=orthogonal organized) space towards a fully double curved room are just a few mouse clicks away. The smoothing of uniform B-Splines is transposed to topological surfaces, which rely on underlying surfaces and volumes. This parametric dependency gives way for an easy access to topological change and to the establishment of new relationships in surfaces. Their interplay follows the rules of minimal surfaces, allowing access to the most efficient connection of topologies - hardly possible in conventional NURBS Surface logic. Operations as twist, mirroring and repetition, as the creation of arrays and the fusion of surfaces allow the organization of complex patterns and spaces.

Celso Costas - Costas minimal surface discovered 1982 – first new surface to be discovered within 100 years

The workshop will investigate the spatial structural potential of subdivision surface geometry.

Rather than consider the design model as an infinitely precise assembly of finished elements, sub-divisive thinking affords an alternative conception of the role of the digital model in design - the precision is directly contingent upon the medium of output. Whether it is a rendering, a 3d-print, or the building itself, the model is subdivided and tessellated relative to the necessary precision of the output problem at hand. The subdivision surface geometries allows for a progressive refinement of features relative to a primitive relational network of functional parts. The project pushes for absolute continuity of surface conditions while simultaneously allowing extreme recursion of modular difference. (quote from Ruy Klein NYC, USA)

Martin Zangerl, Studio Lynn, Die Angewandte (Vienna)

The parametric nature of subdivision surfaces allows for endless iterations and detailing, giving an answer to contemporary demand to overcome the simplistic and uniform appearances of surfaces generated in contemporary digital tools. These tools mimic existing topologies known from traditional techniques, instead of exploring the new realm of surfaces and constitutional relationships offered by digital means. .

Digital tools not solely allow the access to new spatial relationships in digital space, but as well to their making. We are at a critical point in history, wherein the accessibility of digital manufacturing tools allows for a new understanding of architectural production.

Tools allow not only the intuitive handling of complex surfaces and spatiality, but furthermore the transformation of geometry data into surfaces, which are ready to be produced by means of digital machinery.

Formative Techniques Martin Tamke

Center for IT og Arkitektur

Product Step1: Small Scale - Rapid Prototyping Plaster Print models Step 2: Large scale - Lasercut models The workshop addresses questions of spatial organization as well as digital fabrication, as it will especially examine the shortcut between spatial and formal richness and the direct translation into an architectural size, using 2D fabrication techniques.

Thus the first step of the workshop will be presented in drawings and a Rapid Prototyping model, showing concept and structure.

Whereas the second step will deal with the translation of a specific topic, which occurred within the first phase of the workshop into a architectural size, represented in a structure, which covers 1cbm of space in a total. Herein sspatial impact, atmosphere, and transfer can be discussed.

Florencia Pita – Installation at SciArc – Pulse Tendril Formations

The workshop Subdivision Form will be conducted by Martin Tamke (CITA) and Brennan Buck (Die Angewandte / Vienna).

Brennan Buck studied at Cornell University and UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). After working for Neil M. Denari in LA he became design instructor at the Studio of Greg Lynn at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna. In additionn, his work includes upcoming exhibitions at the Portikus Gallery in Frankfurt and the Sliver Gallery in Vienna. His short film ‘Giant Robot’ appeared at the Silver Lake Festival at Los Angeles. He is a founding member of the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Network, between the Angewandte, the ETH at Zurich, the University of Kassel and the University of Innsbruck.