AdvancedDesign | Postgraduate Porgram | thesis project | From entropy to turbulence

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We would like to thank all tutors of Advanced Design Master, mr Stavros Vergopoulos, mr Anastasios Tellios, mr Dimitris Gourdoukis for their valuable contribution to our project.

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///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////Index:

Concept Production//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////6 Design Tools//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////20 Design Methodology////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////28 Materiality/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////48 Models////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////56

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scenario The main theme and the title of our project is designing for the anthropocene age, passing from entropy to turblulence.

The starting point of the project and its main background is the anthopocene age where human’s interventions on the environment have started being totally obvious through their dramatic implications.

This point of view although trying to be less anthropocentric, is in fact the opposite as it proposes human to be the main cause of all planet climatological and environmental changes. What dramatizes the antropocene age theory is that it looks no more at nature as a passive picturesque element, but rather as an energetic transactive element.

With these lens we choose to see the city of Thessaloniki and especially its main intense element, the seafront and the relationship of the urban with the naturaal element. This relation is characterized as entropic. The sea line is a total unmoveable frontier, never changing and never reacting to neither the urban nor the natural element. No matter what forces are evokinginside the urban tissue there is no obvious connection to the main natural element of the city.

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Advanced Design: Innovation and Transdisciplinarity in Architectural Design 2016-2017 research agenda: transMythologies

team: Gkerliotou Vaia, Ravanidou Nora

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Our investigation has to do with the analysis of those elements that posses turbulent capacities and that can create an energetic and mutable element confrontic the entropic relation that the city has now with the sea.

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THESIS

/ Designing for the Anthropocene Age from entropy to turbulence

AD:ITAD / Post-Graduate Master in Architecture Advanced Design: Innovation and Transdisciplinarity in Architectural Design 2015-2016 research agenda: transMythologies

: certainty of a system

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Entropy is the force that turns every system to its equilibrium point and it indicates the measure of disruption or disorder or randomness in a system. So the number of these main ways of disorder is called entropy. If one probability is 100% possible the amount of information is small, and great information is what can provoke an uncertain event. So seeking for a great amount of information near the seafront in order to create not an entropic but a turbulent, mutative intervention, we were placed in the area of Karabournaki which is one of the least touched and totaly undesigned part of the seacoast of the city.

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In this area we can point that many uses are found that have nothing to do with the rest of the city or the urban life. There are uses as swimming, fishing and it also seves as a refuggee for people trying to avoid the rythms and the noise and of the city.

Furthermore there are some private spaces such as some dwellings and a bar restaurant.

Having these uses in mind we created a diagram showing the level of public or private character for every different spot and after allocating them to the materiality of the place which consists of three basic elements, sand, cement and water and we noticed that natural soil and sand usually offers land to the private uses and artificial ground to the more public ones.

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_ drainage and wind Seeking further for elements that can create the turbulent mutative relation with the sea we started focusing on the natural constraints of the area. So we mapped the drainage system of the region and the second very strong element of the seafront, unseen but totally present, the wind.

We mapped the drainage system with ďŹ eld lines following the elevations of the terrains and the wind in a larger scale with satelite measuerements of every 3 hours in a day in terms of direction and strength.

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Having as main goal to maintain the users and uses of the area, the next step was to ďŹ nd a system that will be constantly in turbulence, that will provoke constant sections to the entropic seafront and that will also reinforce the way people tend to use this speciďŹ c area.

Having analysed natural elements, a natural ecosystem that uses both rain-water and sea-water and also serves as a natural corbon dioxide absorber came as one main solution and an algaeculture project started taking place as a starting point of a project in constant evolution. Furthermore Algae is a natural puryfying element for both sea water and air pollution, an so it reinforced the scenario of reuse of a new rennovated clean sea environment.

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Having designed the drainage system, we could isolate the last drainage points where rain waters meet the sea level. Around these points we design a system that uses isocurves of certain radius that define smaller or larger regions. By controling the radius of these isocurves we can notice that we can create different typologies that can serve multiple algaeculture species’ cultivation. Furthermore, different area points also provide alternative typologies that can serve many uses.

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In a large scale different radius definition results in a multiple isocurve system of space distribution for the whole shore. In terms of algaeculture production, at this first design level, the differentiation of the radius value results from the differentiation of carbon dioxide exposure cause by the urban environment.

At this first phase only natural chemical constraints define the distribution of space at first design level.

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The second level of the design is the placement of some paths and volumes around these isocurves. Here the main contraint is what we call the “threshold” of the volume, or else the proportion of the surface that we are willing to create depending on the algae spieces and also on the future use of the algaculture ponds. So mapping the different thresholds we can create small or spacious paths, ponds or even open air space typologies and also containers for coastal vegetation.

Using also models to map these capacities, there came to be different typologies for micro or macro algae cultivation and more capacities came out in terms of extra coastal vegetation.

So what we noticed is that we could create a middle part ecosystem between sea and the city that can rehabilitate the region, collect all present uses of the area, and create new spaces for decontamination of the city. A middle zone not totally artificial neither natural, that wil change in different time phases and that can grow partially and constantly revisit the seafront and the relation of the urban public with the sea.

The system could accept further edit in order to have more control on extra spaces we wanted to create, independently of the starting point of the algaeculture project. So by setting extra points of interest, and matching the isocurve design method accordingly, we could add extra volume and spaces that could serve as passages or natural terrasses.

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_Redesign the project in terms of urban constraints An extra analysis of the urban tissue showed some areas that are more intensly exposed to carbon dioxide and given the fact that carbon dioxide velocity at normal temperature is 375m/ sec we mapped these regions in order to place more properly the algea species. Furthermore we noticed that the area has got some main points where the seawalk is corrupted by the urban tissue and also there are many uncanny deadends and some limits that strongly deďŹ ne private uses.

So we redesigned the project in terms of urban constraints.

The drainage was set in a canvas of points refraining 3 m from each other in order to have a more right and controlable scale.

The last point of the drainage were in some parts very distant because of the terrain elevation, so in some cases the 2 or 3 last points were selected.

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The next step was the deďŹ nition of dierent regions in order to have some passages in the corrupted sea promenade spots, and some regions for micro and macro algaeculture. Micro algae species were placed in multiple small ponds in order to avoid being mixed, because these kind of spicies need privacy to sustain their diversity. Coastal Vegetation was arranged as middle part between algae and open air terrains or passages.

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The isocurve-system for space distribution followed in the design process. The isocurves, were set in terms of the private spaces existing in the urban tissue, so radius becomes smaller when we come close to a private dwelling or a private space.

Thresholds of the ďŹ nal volumes where set in order to create suďŹƒcient passages and some open air terrains.

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wind simulation

wind point simulations: wind was ďŹ rst simulated with a point moving using certain parameters as winds’ strength, direction, upward-downward movement and type of turn. This simulation was only used to parametrise wind forces but was ďŹ nally not used to the design methodology due to its point-focal approach.

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_zoomed area | canopies The part of the main masterplan concept was here over and after that we came to investigate a more zoomed area in order to evolve the materiality of the place. In the zoomed area the ďŹ rst step was to simulate the wind strength and movement around the main volume. So by simulating the wind blowing from the sea to the city, as was spoted in the ďŹ rst wind maps, we used as outlines the spots where the wind was more intense. By creating a volumetric simulation of the wind we used some sections as main guidelines to create some elements of protection. The sections used where at the points of diversity in the wind diagrams.

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These elements where redisigned with diverse density depending on the urban tissue. So they become more dense in the areas where seafront meets public spaces, and the become lower in front of the private dwellings and spaces in order not to disrupt their view, and higher the more distant they become from the seashore.

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Concerning the materiality of the intervention, every different part is divided in 3 regions, one floating, one standing in the sand and the middle part using some support elements that are immersed in the sand. The whole structure consists of a metallic supported knitted thin frame, molded into an extra coating made of resin and stuffed with soil and sand in order to grow coastal vegetation diversities. The materiality of the intervention was thought in terms of the main concept, as a middle part. So it was thought not as something completely natural, neither as something totally artificial, but rather as a middle materiality zone, a compressor of natural and artificial material that constitutes a separate urban area, with its one identity, an “other” space that could have in the future a recreational use.

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_Timelapse Furthermore those diverisities can auto redesign the whole coastline in future time. Algae after their lifetime become into a dry and thick layer suitable for creating platforms on the site calling for new user occupations like fishing. This thick layer can stack above the resin structure and in connection with the sand and other nature materials become a middle layer mix of nature ingredients and artificial elements. This middle zone create another ecosystem between natural and artificial which in future can host new intruder’s /users to re-occupate the site in an unthinkable way. This constant rearrangement of materiality in the site calls for different users in future.

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So ďŹ nally, the intervention is designed as a ever changing envornment, cerating a turbulent landscape that redesigns the entropic relationships of the seafront, by proposing a constant rearrangement of uses and functions. Reacting with the sea and the water becomes an ďŹ eld of many probabilities, serving at start an ecological purpose and after that creating a new landscape of users and uses.

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_masterplan model the main masterplan model is based on the ďŹ nal diagram of the volumes generated by the isocurve system and the threshold of the surfaces creating paths, terrases and ponds.

The technique used was mixed. The main volumes of the algaculture project were produced with 3d printing layering techique at Cube printer using PLA material. The rest of the terrain and buildings were sculpter on wood of 30x60x5 centimeters using CNC miling machine. Finally the sea was represented with liquid glass in order to create a blur edge at the points where sea meats land.

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_diagram models During the design process, diagram models were produced in order to explore the structural typologies and the capacities of the morphology that was designed.

By there models came up some ideas for the materiality of these structures and also for the dierent uses they could combine. So, we proceeded to design them as paths, as terasses and ponds and also as empty structures that could accumulate soil and sand for coastal vegetation.

These models were all produced using 3d printing layering tecnique at Cube printer with PLA material.

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TYPOLOGY 1 //the passage //coastal vegetation accumulator

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TYPOLOGY 2 //closed pond - macroalgae cultivation //empty structure with coastal vegetation

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TYPOLOGY 3 //open pond - algae cultivation // small multiple ponds - microalgae cultivation - avoidance of sensitive species intermix and overkilling

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_zoomed structure with vegetation and canopies models The last phase of the models’ production was the creation of a 3d analogus to the final morphology of the project. At this final phase of the design our aim was to produce the full morphology using nature (coastal vegetation and algae cultivation) as a strong visible element. So we represented both main structure and vegetation at two zoomed scaled models where the canopies were also attached.

These models were all produced using 3d printing layering tecnique at Cube printer with PLA material.

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