REJECTING MATERIALITY In-forming Forms

SEMINAR:
Digital Technologies In Architecture: Principles and Applications.
Master in Advanced Architecture
IaaC - Institut d’Arquitecura Avanzada de Catalunya
FPC –Fundació Politécnica de Catalunya

JAVIER OLMEDA javiolmeda@gmail.com
MAITE BRAVO maite.bravo@iaac.net
LUIS ODIAGA luis_odiaga@terra.com.pe

Final Paper
12. 17. 2007

REJECTING MATERIALITY
In-forming Forms

ABSTRACT:
In recent years, we have seen the integration of various media through the digitalization of information. The means by which we perceive and process it has given us the ability understand and deal with it in new ways, as more data is being digitalized, i.e. sounds, images, and texts. In this paper, we will first discuss several of the reasons for which digital information in general, and interaction in particular, has affected the very meaning of architecture, and how, from the early attempts using the computer as a tool for making plans and elevations, the computer has become the principal tool to generate and develop architecture embedded with concepts like chaos, uncertainty, interactivity, and feedback loops.
We use the example of the reacTABLE, a table-top electro-acoustical instrument based on tangible interfaces as a reference for introducing not just visual interaction but one which also includes tactile as well as aural concerns. We then proceed to analyze a specific case in architecture, R&Sie(n)’s Dusty Relief/ B_mu in Bangkok, which explore similar concepts.

KEYWORDS:
informational, Tangible User Interfaces, multi-sensorial, responsive environments




1. The Digit-all environment

1.1 INTERFACE DESIGN: Current Developments

The development of a theoretical framework for innovative computational environments to relate digital and design processes are of extreme importance for contemporary architecture, given the evident shift occurring in the fields of research, education and practice related to the emergence of digital architecture.

In the book ‘Pervasive Computing’, Malcolm McCullough (2004) questions the current practice of interface design, citing the ‘desktop computer’ as an interface now 20 years old that needs and has potential for new possibilities. He challenges professionals to look beyond the current interface operations to stimulate new relations. Architecture should embrace the possibilities of interactive design as a way of embodying user participation and locatedness. Embedded computing technologies are becoming increasingly more prevalent; embedded systems need to be dynamic in their interaction, with their environment, with their users and each other ‘...for architecture’s new digital layer to be effective, it must be able to accumulate in unpredictable ways. Pervasive computing must be extensible and it must help make physical places adaptable.” (1)

Manuel de Landa points out that “…the general consensus is that interfaces must become more intelligent to be able to guide users in the tapping of computer resources, both the informational wealth of the Internet, as well as the resources of ever more elaborate software applications”. (2)


1.2 USER-MEDIA INTERFACES

Some recent technological advancements related to the user-media interface are challenging the boundaries between user and media. This boundary as a mediator between the user and the media seems critical in the shaping and the formulation of responses.

The key in the development of digital processes to enhance the practice of architecture is in the tool with which the various tasks involved have been represented, enabled or enhanced using computer technology. The digital representation of architectural entities and the digital manipulation of those entities have provided alternate means to produce architecture. Drawing, modeling, performance simulation, design collaboration, construction management and building fabrication are now routinely performed using computer-based technology.

Advances in computing based on the study of natural processes such as biology, genetic evolution and emergence, now suggest that the elusive nature of creative architectural thought can be articulated and further applied in a technologically mediated environment. The future of digital processes rests on the ability of computer-mediated environments to facilitate the creation of architectural designs created so that digital thinking becomes indeed architectural thinking.

“CATIA provides a way for me to get closer to the craft," said Frank Gehry referring to the software that was implemented in his practice. "In the past, there were many layers between my rough sketch and the final building, and the feeling of the design could get lost before it reached the craftsman. It feels like I've been speaking a foreign language, and now, all of a sudden, the craftsman understands me. Flat drawings of curved surfaces can be beautiful, but they are deceptive; with CATIA you can see how to build it." (Paris, May 2001)

Figure 1: CATIA Software screenshot (Image: www.transcat.de)


1.2.1 Updating Architecture

Over the last century vast conceptual and spatial transformations have developed in relation to the introduction of computer graphics, but architectural representation has remained somewhat constant from the traditional architectural representation generated based on the conventional Renaissance models. How do contemporary models of communication, mass production, distribution and imaging can and will influence the conception and production of architecture?

The ability to generate construction information directly from design information is arguably one the most profound defining aspects of contemporary architecture. The close relationship that once existed between architecture and construction re-emerges as an unintended but fortunate outcome of the new digital processes of production (CAD, CAM, and CAE). As constructability becomes a direct function of digitizing information, what new instruments of practice are needed to take advantage of the opportunities unveiled by the digital modes of production?

The question remains: will architects be able to use innovative ways of dealing with digital interfaces in order to explore space with such an intuitive approach? Furthermore, will digital technology change the way architects practice architecture and most importantly, will digital technology shape the future of architecture in the twenty-first century?



1.3 EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

A variety of emerging technologies are appearing in different fields that can be used as referential to the development of digital interfaces in architecture. The multi-touch computer screen may herald the end of the point-and-click mouse with no keyboard interface. Conceived as a transparent drafting table with multiple-touch sensors, it allows the user to input data using fingers, two hands or even multiple users to manipulate data simultaneously, redefining completely the interaction user-media. The importance of this systems lies in data visualization and graphics tools, it will make better use of the data, mapping, mesh applications and manipulation of 3D models. This technology represents a very active field of research that may change completely the relationship user-media in the near future.

Figure 2: Multi-touch computer screen. (Image: http://www.tecnovideoblog.it)

2. Case Studies

2.1 THE REACTABLE

A few years ago, a small group of people was conceiving new ways of upgrading the means of playing music. The purpose was to create a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop, tangible multi-touch interface, capable of expressing aural terms visually and interactively. Since 2002, the reacTABLE is being developed by a team led by Sergi Jordà at the Music Technology Group in the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. The principal aim of it was “to create a tangible electronic musical instrument that allows expressive collaborative live performances for professional musicians without the limits of many screen-based interfaces for electronic music”. (Figure 1)


Figure 3: Four hands interacting with the reacTABLE (Image: www.infovis.net)

2.1.2 How it works

This instrument is based on another software synthesizer named FMOL, developed between 1997 and 2002. An interesting interface emerged by rendering aural information visually, enabling the simultaneous control of another set of parameters in order to understand different effects in real time. Thus “the screen behaves simultaneously as an output and as an input, as both representation and control.”

The reacTable is conceived as a round table, as there is no leading voice or privileged point-of-view. Instead, it is an arena or field in which a set of operations may happen. The musical act is converted in an interactive event between instrument and instrumentalist, which rather than playing notes, use objects that represent components with specific functions (generators, filters, modulators, and controllers). These objects affect each other either by proximity or type, enabling the manipulation of infinite combinations. As a result, music turns into a highly dynamical inter-responsive environment.

This intuitive approach demonstrates that creativity, when related with expressiveness and freedom, becomes important in any complex or free enough interaction process, such as the ones in which the paths to a goal are open or when the goal itself is open.


Figure 4: The reacTABLE diagram. (Image: Jordá, S. http://mtg.upf.es/reactable)

If this kind of technology can be employed to generate music in visual and tactile terms, then it raises questions about how architects may be able to find innovative ways of dealing with similar interfaces in order to explore space not with a visual approach, but with such intuitive ones. As a result, some architects are becoming aware of these phenomena, and are already experimenting with inter-relationships and events and leaving behind static built forms.


2.2 INTERACTION REVISED

The anthropocentric worldview is the believe in the human being as the center of knowledge, and by extension the center of the whole reality. Due to this approach and because of the digital context there is a misunderstanding of the term “interaction”. Now on, is well known that the interaction between technology and the users is an everyday fact. Nevertheless, the term interaction cannot be restrained just to the relation between humans and other things.

The relation between the different components of an eco-system, let’s say the symbiotic relation between a flower and a bee, —while the first gives food supplies to the second, the flying source serves as a flexible bond in the pollination, this is the transfer of pollen grains— is in fact an “interaction” —there is an effect on the two components of the system—. While the flower gets its reproductive need of transporting the pollen in order to pollinate another flower, the bee gets the food resources that the colony needs. In this very simple example we find the basis of what is called “interaction”. Interaction cannot be referred only as the actual situation of getting a response from a “responsive environment” when moving hands, or walking nears the system. Interaction is not only restrained to the human-computer system, in fact we can find interaction almost in all the living systems that surround us.




2.2.1 The B_mu Project

Despite the digital technologies are developed in order to satisfy the needs of the “demand”, is possible to achieve newer ways of reinforcing or illustrate some interaction which is actually happening in our surroundings. Let’s take as an example the “Dusty Relief / B_mu” project of R&Sie(n) in Bangkok. In this type of city the interaction of the ghostly emergence of “breeding dust” is a very close fact to many other cities where the contamination is over the healthy limits for the population; for instance Mexico City, Manhattan or Lima, are cities where there is a very close relation between the amount of contamination and the everyday life. There is of course a “deep-interaction” between the lounges of people and the carburetors of the engines. Due the impossibility of watching people’s lounges and the “amount-of-interaction” it can be said that is a kind-of hidden interaction, but which is of course happening.

The B_mu project reveals this interaction. The project is a museum which embraces a re-think of the “white-cube” and the influence of the context in the work of art. The white cube is the gallery space, this is the most neutral and empty place where all the works of art can find a place to be exhibited, the need of re-think this kind of space deals with the concern of the artists and curators to expose the work of art in it’s own context, like the graffiti on the streets deserves to be exposed in the streets as a manifestation of the urban culture; nevertheless, when a piece-of-art is needed to be exposed, the experience have led the work-art to be exposed in the gallery [white cube] subtracting it from its own context and putting it into a neutral, empty one.



Figure 5: A model showing a cloud of electrostatically charged pollution. (Image: Verb Natures, Barcelona: Actar)

While the City of Bangkok got this illuminated-dusty identity flowing around the B_mu museum deals with two matters in one proposal which tries to solve the problem of the white cube as reference in a specific context and the white cube as an aseptic space to exhibit the de-contextualized work of art. “Interaction” is the keyword here. The project was developed in the basis that the dust can be attracted to an electro statically-charged surface in order to get a imprint of the levels of contamination and dust that are flowing around the sky of Bangkok, this means a reveal of the context in which the project is placed. This imprint is a look-like fur made of dust, which is able to become a reference in the context where it is developed. Here, “interaction” is not about a human interacting with a responsive environment, but the building interacting with the environment and getting an imprint of it.


Figure 6: B_mu section and elevation. (Image: Verb Natures. Barcelona: Actar)



3. Conclusion

We have explored the development and involvement of digital media regarding interactivity
Digital technologies are expanding and re-defining the concept of materiality, as in-formation is increasingly being used as a primary source for new material formations. In addition, our relationship with virtual environments is offering endless possibilities in the conception and design processes, to the point where the simulacrum seems all the more real.

We have also seen how tabletop interface instruments function as an example of how digital media enables multi-parametric and shared control, allowing complex interactions to emerge. Architects are becoming increasingly aware of this and are looking for innovative ways to incorporate this kind of technology into their designs.

As an outcome, the role of architects is changing, as it is leaving behind traditional notions based on a highly specialized, isolated discipline. Nowadays the role of the architect is similar to that of an orchestrator of unfixed data-driven processes. They are, along scientists, engineers, and artists, being an integral component of the expanded inter-digital field, where information is not fixed but is in a constant state of flux. The share of information and multidisciplinary approach to architecture needs to become even more drastic, this is to include different approaches to the way interaction is understood and to incorporate in the design process richer elements; this may be the reveal or an imprint of the different systems which surround us avoiding the anthropocentric world view.

In the bright future the relation between the process of design and the interaction between the building and its interlocutors will be achieved in just one step, this is a whole interaction which is able to lead to a design and a designed-interactive object. This may become in a reformulation of what is understood as architecture and maybe even the name will change to express the new-powerful condition of being an architect.







References

Constanza, E., Kaltenbrunner , M., and O’Modhrain, S. (2004): “Object Design Considerations for Tangible Musical Interfaces”. In Proceedings of the COST287-ConGAS Symposium on Gesture Interfaces for Multimedia Systems, Leeds (UK).

DE LANDA, M. (2002): Meshworks, Hierarchies and Interfaces.

EISENMAN, P. (1990-2004): Written into the void: Selected Writings, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

FERRÉ, A., KUBO, M., PRAT, R., et. al. (2005) Verb Natures, Actar Boogazine. Barcelona: Actar.

JORDÀ, S., GEIGER, G., Alonso, M., and Kaltenbrunner , M. (2007): “The reacTable: Exploring the Synergy between Live Music Performance and Tabletop Tangible Interfaces”. In Proceedings of the first international conference on "Tangible and Embedded Interaction" (TEI07). Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

McCOLLOUGH, H. (2004): On Digital Ground, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.

Oosterhuis, K. (2006) “Swarm Architecture II”, Natures VERB Boogazine, Barcelona, Actar.

Emergent Design Process

Genetic Algorithm as Digital Design Tool

As architecture enters the new era of digital representation, geometrical theories and processes are being implemented, tested, and pushed to their limits. Recent theories of form in architecture have focused on computational methods of formal exploration and expression. From topological geometry and hyper surfaces to blobs and folds, there is a clear tendency to seek and explore formal properties as sources of ordering systems. For the last two decades, designers have been concerned with the use of computational mechanisms for the exploration of formal systems. These practices have attempted to readdress formal issues using new techniques and methods. Computational tools are central protagonists in this exploration.

Automated computer algorithms that generate previously unimagined and even undetermined virtual architecture strive to translate the expression of design ideas as perceived by designers. Algorithmic architecture involves the designation of software programs to generate space and form from the rule-based logic inherent in architectural programs. Instead of direct programming, the codification of design intention using scripting languages available in 3D packages (i.e. Maya Embedded Language MEL, 3DMaxScript, and Form Z 4.0) can build consistency, structure, coherency, traceability, and intelligence into computerized 3D form. This research paper investigates and explores genetic algorithms and computational methods that would encapsulate the processes that lead to the generation of logical and meaningful architectural form.

Tradition Revised

Throughout the history of architecture, the application of materials has played a very important role in the design process of a building. Some architects think of materials at the very first stages of conceptual design and others wait until the final part to decide on the architectural palette of the project. Architecture has always been linked to society in a strong way since it is the only activity where users actually experience the product in three dimensions. Materiality, form, rhythm, balance, scale, proportion and spatial perception are some of the elements that are perceived by the user and this experience causes reactions and conclusions.

Earlier Architecture and Construction were based on practical experience, but several factors such as structural analysis and design, information, telecommunication, technology, etc, have improved building materials and design processes. Several of these affect the architectural appearance of buildings, although not all changes in architecture can be explained by technical progress. So what are the advantages of using new materials against traditional materials?, Is there more merit in handcrafting a brick instead of fabricating it with a CNC machine?

We find ourselves in a point where most of this releases as good or innovative as they may be, are not available for most countries, we also find that traditional materials are being processed, revised and reconsidered in order to make them more efficient, technology is giving way to benefit this processes. Are the new computer-based design techniques and the new designs leaning towards a complete new architecture that requires new materials for its development?
Parallel to the progress in materials sciences, the technology of construction and manufacturing of building materials have also evolved tremendously. The different architectural styles have been developed by a sum or technical development and ideas or architects. The ambition or architects along with the requirements of the clients, has provoked a technological development as in terms of design as in materials for construction.

Traditional materials such as timber and bricks along with 19TH century materials such as concrete (as we know it today, because a similar mixture named lime mortar had been used from the 4000 b.C.century) find their application in new architecture. As a matter of fact such materials are much favored by individual architects and some groups or architects. Traditional materials have been perfected: new types and composites of materials developed.

The so called new architecture, complex geometries and material evolution do not exclude the conventional material that has been used forever in construction, such as concrete, timber and bricks. The research has addition new components, new processes that evolved the way in which this materials has been used in the last years.

The Reform of Architecture through the Use of Digital Technologies

TECH IS MORE?

TECH IS MORE?
Minimalism in the new age of Architecture and Digital Technologies


ABSTRACT:

If less is more… is tech more?
In the age of new technologies, new materials and media, a new architecture-digital architecture- emerges, redefining space, function and form. The use of new technologies such as CAD (Computer Aided Design) or CAM (Computer Aided Manufacture), make easier the process of producing an architectural project and set the foundations for new concepts, new forms and new architectural volumes.
If Mies van der Rohe used the phrase “less is more” to describe his aesthetic tactics of flattening and emphasizing a building's frame, eliminating interior walls and adopting an open plan, and reducing the structure to a strong, transparent, elegant skin, then could we say that tech (as in technologies) is more, in the sense that in the contemporary time digital architecture could actually produce the same aesthetics, using these new technologies, but reconciliated to its time? And can digital technologies contribute to the creation of a new more abstract and complex minimalism?



KEYWORDS:
minimalism; digital technologies; complexity; new architecture;

Nanotechnologies and Architecture

The biggest plans for the future of our built environment are actually very, very small. The eight billion dollar per year nanotechnology industry has already begun to transform our buildings and how we use them; if its potential becomes reality, it could transform our world in ways undreamed of.

Nanotechnology has the potential to radically alter our built environment and how we live. It is potentially the most transformative technology we have ever faced, generating more research and debate than nuclear weapons, space travel, computers or any of the other technologies that have shaped our lives.

It brings with it enormous questions, concerns and consequences. It raises hopes and fears in every aspect of our lives—social, economic, cultural, political, and spiritual. Yet its potential to transform our built environment remains largely unexplored. What, for instance, is the future of building if each of us possesses thermoprotectant skins that shelter us from the elements? How do we interact with our environment, and with each other, if walls and roofs become paper-thin, permeable, or even invisible?

Nanotechnology, the ability to manipulate matter at the scale of less than one billionth of a meter, has the potential to transform the built environment in ways almost unimaginable today. Nanotechnology is already employed in the manufacture of everyday items from sunscreen to clothing, and its introduction to architecture is not far behind. On the near horizon, it may take building enclosure materials (coatings, panels and insulation) to dramatic new levels of performance in terms of energy, light, security and intelligence.

Even these first steps into the world of nanotechnology could dramatically alter the nature of building enclosure and the way our buildings relate to environment and user. At midhorizon, the development of carbon nanotubes and other breakthrough materials could radically alter building design and performance. The entire distinction between structure and skin, for example, could disappear as ultra light, super-strong materials functioning as both structural skeleton and enclosing skin are developed.

The biggest changes to shake up architecture in a long time may have their origins in the very, very small. Nanotechnology, the understanding and control of matter at a scale of one- to one hundred-billionths of a meter, is bringing incredible changes to the materials and processes of building. How ready we are to embrace them could make a big differencein the future of architectural practice.

Already, this new science of the small has brought to market self-cleaning windows, smogeating concrete and toxin-sniffing nanosensors. Three hundred nanoengineered products are commercially available; $32 billion worth of them were sold last year, with sales expected to top $1 trillion by 2015. But these off-the-shelf advances offer only a taste of what's incubating in the world's nanotech labs today. There, work is under way on nanocomposites thin as glass, yet capable of supporting entire buildings, and photosynthetic coatings that can make any building surface a source of free energy.

EMERGENT FORM: History, Tools and Practitioners

ABSTRACT:

Emergence: The way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity.

Currently there seems to be a trend in architecture leading towards the development of complex systems based upon biology, engineering and complex geometries. Within this style there are different methods used to generate form such as algorithms, proximity variables, angle analysis, and biomimicry. This method which we will investigate is described as Emergent Architecture.

This idea has evolved considerably since the original idea of L- systems and biometric form was discovered over 50 years ago. There have been a variety of methods used to investigate this topic. The most prevalent of these methods was created by a group called the Emergent Design Group based out of MIT. They have mixed people from different disciplines to develop a toolbox that creates form which responds to its environment and other influences of the world that it is part of.

For architects this field of study offers the possibility of form that is more a product of its environmnet and purpose than that which could be created with specific intention. Emergent shape relates to the nature and necessity of form, such as the way an ant colony will create a complex geometry simply by functioning. Or the phenomenon of water in which hydrogen and oxygen which are not especially interesting in themselves nor do they
possess any physical properties that are similar to water. But when combined they form an extremely interesting and essential compound.

"Key to the work is the phenomenon of emergence which offers insight into the way
apparently isolated bodies, particles, or systems exhibit group behavior in coherent, but unexpected, patterns. The animated beauty of emergent organizations, such as in swarms or hives, points to a range of real architectural potentials where components are always linked and always exchanging information, and above all, where architectural wholes exceed the sum of their parts." ⁽¹⁾

KEYWORDS:

Emergent Form, Generative Processes, Evolutionary Algorithms

You can download PDF presentation from the link.

Ubiquitus Culture in Architecture

ABSTRACT:
This paper describes the idea of ubiquitous computing and particularly its applications in architecture through different examples that explores these applications in different scales. After following many steps computing nowadays is escaping from the conditions of a single object,( the p.c) to expand in physical space, in our environment. The concept of post-desktop models together with human-computer interaction is what Mark Weiser called "The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing"the era that we have already entered. Starting from the scale of a single floor or a façade, we then analyse one of the first architectural examples of interaction the Kunsthaus to finish with the description of the u- city(u=ubiquitous)in the city of Incheron (South Corea) one of the latest and few examples of this notion that is already under construction.After checking the different systems that these examples are using we introduce three reconsiderations that emerge from the tendency of ubiquity: the notion of “situations”as developed in architecture after the first definition that the situationists implied, the idea of memory in the frame of new type of storing information in the buildings and the notion of controlling systems and privacy especially when referring to a whole city.

Keywords: ubiquitous computing, interaction, controlling system, interactive surface, Kaunsthaus, u-city, memory

HYPERBODIES: Complex Adaptive Dynamic Multi-Agent Systems (CADMAS) as Self-Sufficient Sustainable Environments of Inhabitance (SS SEI)

ABSTRACT:
Considering the question of sustainability and not only focusing in bio-climatic matters, a way of approaching this problem would be generating Complex Dynamic Adaptive Multi-Agent Systems (CADMAS) as environments of inhabitance. Not only because of the properties and characteristics mentioned in the paper of adaptive systems; able to shift and automatically adapt to their environmental conditions as represented in the work of Kas Oosterhuis. but also as a potential to grow by auto-re-generating processes. The much referenced term of ‘hyperbody’ used typically to describe a situation between the digital and the real, we feel is perhaps better suited to a concept of self sufficient sustainability, based on the CADMAS principal. This is the basis of sustainability in terms of self-sufficiency defined as ‘auto-poiesis’ (Maruyama 1963). The paper develops principals of this ‘hyperbody’ and through discussion of Complex Adaptive, Emergent, Auto-Reproductive and Auto-Organizational Systems, suggests principals for how a new kind of sustainable architecture might be derived.

ADVANCED DESIGN PROCESSES

ADVANCED DESIGN PROCESSES
New technologies new solutions

ABSTRACT:

Following some examples of contemporary architecture like (examples), we realize that the integration of industrial processes, new digital software’s, manufacturing tools and automated machines are helping in the exercise of architecture in terms of design process and the actual construction of architecture. Frank Ghery’s Der Neue Zollhof buildings in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he used CNC machines to generate forms in order to make pre cast concrete component for the realization of the project. It’s unfeasible to number exactly how many engineering processes are being used these days on the manufacture of industrial products from bottles, tires, to cloths, cars and so on, furthermore impossible to count the amount of automated machines used in each industrial process. Since we notice that some architects are using machines or manufacturing processes to generate architecture and also the majority is using the same machines, consequently we found attractive to study different machines or processes in order to question it from an architectural point of view trying to obtain benefits for the exercise of architecture. Therefore we are going to look at 4D CAD, PET blowing process and Vulcanization process.

KEYWORDS: Design processes, technologies, 4D CAD, 3D modeling, vertical extension, Vulcanization, PET blowing, rubber, form, recycle, machines;

Slide presentation here

FORMS AND TECTONICS OF EMERGENT ARCHITECTURE

FORMS AND TECTONICS OF EMERGENT ARCHITECTURE
An Educated Guess based upon study of Emergent Cellular Aggregations.


ABSTRACT:
The basis of this Research Paper thus is exploring the Idea of Emergence in Architecture by virtue of its Forms and Tectonics. The Research attempts to do an analogous reading between Emergence in Architecture and Emergence of Microscopic Biological systems. The objective of the research is not about the Biological Accuracy but about finding out Morphogenetic Principles those represents the Efficiency, Flexibility and Robustness present in them. The first part of the research elaborates the idea of Emergence in Architecture with help of few writings and works by Architect Tom Wiscombe while the later part studies Emergence of Cellular Aggregations with examples of Slime Mould and Lichen. The Research concludes by the Architectonic Principles observed in those Systems.

KEYWORDS:
Emergence, Bottom-up Method, Cellular Aggregation, Self Similar, Slime Mould, Lichen.

Final Presentation

The Final Presentation will take place at IAAC's Lecture Hall, starting at 4pm. Guest jury include:
- Marta Malé-Alemany
_Architect, MArch, Principal at ReD, IAAC Professor
- Mauro Costa
_Architect, MArch, PhD Candidate (Bionic Architecture) at ESARQ-UIC
- Miguel Carreiro
_Architect, Project Architect at Enric Ruiz Geli / Cloud9 office in Barcelona


Each group will have 6 minutes to present the class an overview of their research paper, with the support of 8 images projected in a powerpoint.
Here is tentative schedule:

_16:00 - INTRO
_16:15 - Presentations 01, 02, 03, 04
_16:45 - Discussion
_17:00 - Presentations 05, 06, 07, 08
_17:30 - Discussion
_17:45 - Break
_18:00 - Presentations 09, 10, 11, 12
_18:30 - Discussion
_18:45 - Presentations 13, 14, 15, 16
_19:00 - Discussion
_19:45 - Presentations 17, 18
_20.00 - Discussion
_20:15 - END

Research Papers - Submission List

Here is the list of Research Papers and related information (8 images + blog post) submitted until now. If there is any incorrection, please comment about it.
_
G01: "Rejecting Materiality. In-Forming Forms"
paper:_y__images:_5__blog:___
_
G02: "Advanced Design Processes"
paper:_y__images:_y__blog:_y__
_
G03: "Mass-Customization and the PreFab House"
paper:_y__images:_y__blog:_y__
_
G04: "Emergent Form. History, Tools and Practicioners."
paper:___images:_y__blog:_y__
_
G05: "Nanotechnologies and Architecture"
paper:___images:_y__blog:_y
_
G06: "Forms and Tectonics of Emergent Architecture"
paper:_y__images:_y__blog:__y_
_
G07: "Tradition Revised"
paper:_y__images:_y__blog:___
_
G08: "Emergent Design Process"
paper:___images:_y__blog:___
_
G09: "DNArch"
paper:_Y__images:_Y__blog:_Y__
_
G10: "Clouds in the Bottles"
paper:_Y__images:_Y__blog:_Y__
_
G11: "Tech is More?"
paper:_y__images:_y__blog:_y__
_
G12: "Collective Intelligence in the Process of Real-Time Environment Reprogramming"
paper:_y__images:_y__blog:_y_
_
G13: "Ubiquitius Culture in Architecture"
paper:_n__images:_y__blog:_y
_
G14: "The Relationship between Design and Engineering"
paper:_y__images:_y__blog:_y__
_
G15: "Hyperbodies: CADMAS as SS SEI"
paper:___images:___blog:__incomplete_(1 image only)
_
G16: "Digital Technologie's Implementation on Urban Design"
paper:_y__images:_y__blog:_y__
_
G17: "Coherence and Chronology in Digital Design Manifestation"
paper:___images:___blog:_incomplete__
_
G18: "The Reform of Architecture Through the Use of Digital Technologies"
paper:_y__images:___blog:___
_

Coherence and Chronology in Digital Design Manifestation

ABSTRACT

Today architects take advantage of great possibilities using computational design tools in order to design, model, generate and develop three dimensional models using CAD software, scipts and mathematical algorithms. Still, the greatest challenge is to think about new technologies in order to fabricate 3D design structures on a realistic scale.

For example the idea of “parameters” has impregnated the digital world. Today it is possible to find design products and prototypes that respond directly to a set of parameters that have been planed out or developed to fit a specific need.

Robert Aish has archived the most impressive works in this field.

François Roche of R&Sie architects attempts seeking a form of a dialogue with it that is entropic and organic. In his project I’ve heard about… his idea was to create an urban structure growing out of itsself. The project brings together an interesting amount of emergent digital tools.

William Gibson founded the term “cyberspace” in his novel Neuromancer. He used this new term for environments, made possible by the networking of computers, where characters inhabited virtually. Marcos Novak took Gibson’s description as the starting point for his own theoretical and artistic explorations. He defines the term of “liquid architectures in cyberspace” to include new attitudes toward the organization of information. While mapping three-dimensional algorithmic composition onto cyberspace he composes variations of information, another as a three dimensional shape.

The movement toward digital building simulation will re-instill the understanding that architects indeed play a vital, central, and pivotal role in the design and construction processes. “Building Information Modeling” systems organize the information surrounding a building project in one or more databases. Using this technology, the architect does not directly make drawings, but enters information in these databases using a variety of means.

The age of digital Design and digital building simulation is an emergent discussion in actual architecture debates.

Digital Technologies’ implementation on urban design

ABSTRACT

Investigation of the changes of urban design taking place as a result of pervasive digital technology. Specifically, how digital technologies can change the way of designing and maintaining the urban space, the placement and reception of information about the city, the process of buying and selling , the way people meet in the city and finally the movements.

The approach of the research will be the analysis of example projects , analysis of prospects and analysis of developed technological systems (such as Wireless Communication, Location Awareness, Displays and Location Specific Information.)

Based on the analysis of the examples, we will try to respond to the following questions.
Will our use of the city change as media and communication technologies enters everyday life?
Are these new technologies going to change the city image and how?
Will the use of digital technologies in urban design improve the liveability of the city?
Who will benefit from this process and how?

PRESENTATION

You can download the final 8 slide presentation of our paper here

The Relationship between Design and Engineering

ABSTRACT:

Digital Technology, or binary controlled ways of processing and storing data, provides for a common conversion of various problems into a single mode of operation. These were previously managed by separate consultancies, requiring laborious management and organizational investment. In other words, digital technology forms a common platform where many issues can be related to each other and be resolved using a common language, enabling a more diverse view. Both literally and metaphorically, the conversion of all languages into 0s and 1s allows for such an interaction.

The Finite Element Method has been developed over the second half of the last century and is being utilized with the emerging digital technologies in the analysis of many aspects of the design world. Programs such as AnSys and Abaqus are software based on the finite element method (FEM) applied to simulate many engineering issues ranging from the very basic to complicated non-linear questions. They are technologies that have been developed for the last 20 years and are ever changing to meet the engineering needs of today. This research will look into FEM as well as how it is used with the Abaqus software suite.

The suite consists of Abaqus/Standard, Abaqus/Explicit, and Abaqus/CAE. Abaqus Standard is applied to static, low-speed dynamic, or steady-state transport analisis; while Abaqus/Explicit may be applied to those portions of the analysis where high-speed, nonlinear, transient response dominates the solution. Using Abaqus CAE one can create geometry, import CAD models for meshing or integrate geometry - based meshes that do not have associated CAD geometry. Abaqus/CAE also offers comprehensive visualization options which enable users to interpret and communicate the results of any Abaqus analysis.

The software is used by engineers working in fields of aerospace, defense, automotive & transportation, industrial design, such as furniture and packaging (including both the design and the production process), high-tech, industrial equipment, service industry, shipbuilding, power process & petroleum industry, life sciences, and most certainly, in the field of architecture and construction. The program is quite limitless in its scope.

The broad range of uses of the FEM based software presents a notable point of integration between fields. One analysis of a field, such as industrial design, can raise questions in any number of other fields. With so many options of use the suite allows for an open dialogue between design fields, in a way becoming a tool of translation between the different domains of design and engineering. This exchange between different fields can create more efficient, safer and better overall designs in each of the involved fields.

This paper will make an in depth investigation of the Finite Element Method as well as how it is being used with software interfaces. The aim of the paper is to establish a dialogue between engineers and designers, with the objective of giving designers the basic information about the method and the technology so as to have more in productive conversations with engineers.

G03: mass-customisation & the prefabricated house

Is it possible to find a solution in which everyone can generate their own custom prefabricated house?
As more advanced levels of digital technology are incorporated into housing design, we will begin to see a prefabricated house that is truly unique. Through the utilization of mass-production and digital fabrication techniques, a customised prefabricated house could be entirely unique, designed specifically for an occupants needs. In turn this offers personalized, unique and affordable house that would be available to the general public, making architecture more accessible.

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE IN THE PROCESS OF REAL-TIME ENVIRONEMENT REPROGRAMMING

William J. Mitchell claims that we are already living in the first century of “after dematerialization era”, but the paper’s aim is to prove, that we might enter it only after moving contemporary performative architecture design process from the realm of the negotiation between possible and real to the negotiation of virtual and real (Pierre Levy).
The inquiry begins with both research on contemporary architectural practices that experiment with performative environments and a look at different modes of production, developed by emerging web-enabled collective intelligence.
ONL, Hyperbody Research Group, Decoi and RAMTV are taken as examples of architectural practices. The vocabulary and ways of theorizing the attempts of creating a responsive environment, as well as specific design strategies and means of augmenting the physical structure are at the area of interest. The design strategies are examined against Pierre Levy’s idea of virtual, that bears the possibility of actualization and possible that bears the possibility of realization. Relation to materiality and inquiry into materials being currently developed is another area of study in the context of the tangibles environment.
Regarding the means of production developed by the collective intelligence, peer producing and prosumerizm are of particular interest in the inquiry. The paper looks at the platforms of communication used in different communities, depending on the final production outcome. Also questions about possibilities for applying particular mean of production for creation of tangibles are asked.
The conclusion is introduced in a form of a manifesto for collective intelligence in the process of real time environment reprogramming. Design strategies “against the program” and “pro reprogramming” are sketched in the context of augmented spatial environments.

DNArch

ABSTRACT:
Deoxyribonucleic acid, or as it is mostly known DNA, is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms. Scientists have not only managed to translate this code, but also to manipulate it. Cell characteristics and functions can now be altered, only by inputting different genes in their genetic code.
This scientific revolution could become an important tool in architectural processes, as well. Genetic architecture does not focus only on the organic biomorphic forms, but also on the ways Nature develops itself. Genetic manipulated bio-materials have already been developed and could be introduced in building structures. Moreover, architects like Alberto T. Estévez, are visioning the “living building” which consists of alive elements and finally recreates the environment. Synthetic Biology has already started investigating the development of artificial life-like cells, which can evolve and be self-reproduced and self-maintained. These alive bricks are potential to become the “bricks” of the new architecture organisms…

'Clouds in the Bottles'

ABSTRACT:

Ever since there was a desire to design invisible…
Considering philosophy of phenomenology, beginning from Merleau Ponty and his ‘Phenomenology of Perception’, ending on Steven Holl and his way of understanding architecture, we could think of architecture dealing with the phenomenological approach, with spaces generated simply by phenomena – any observable occurrences. Defining space by smell, light and sound could create a wide range of potential directions, in which architecture could aim in the near future.
The new, potential approach to contemporary architecture could be compressed in the void. Amplifying its geometrical and spatial characteristics by emphasizing the already existing there phenomena, could create infinite design possibilities. It provides potential for designing spaces that on the one hand would be strictly defined, but on the other hand would play with the weaknesses of human perception and use it to create illusion of immateriality. Furthermore there appears a question how to balance defining and limiting space with its immaterial aspect.
Architecture operating with phenomena would add new qualities to the traditional approach, offering spaces that could be freely penetrated, entered and left without having to cross any physical barrier.
Moreover, considering recent development of nanotechnologies, mobile and wireless technologies, geographical information systems, sensors and long-range interaction systems and digital technologies, we could think of creating that kind of space by constructing those phenomena artificially. New available materials, which one of physical features has been reduced, provide undiscovered possibilities of implementation into the design process.
Architecture of the void, offering its physical no-existence and sensor experiences is a challenge for both designers and users, creating infinite design possibilities and opening wide spectrum of new spatial qualities.

Research Paper

0.proto-manifesto

The basic assupmtion is that if you continue to read this paper you will remain in the same environment (quite likely shifting your position just a little bit). The paper, together with the abstract has ...... words, which means that average reader (with english as a second language) is going to read it in .......h...........m. If you are in the metro carriage or waiting for a plane, you will most likely have to leave before finishing, but if you are at home, for .......h ........m you are likely to enjoy the calmness of your living room or your studio.
The Wikipedia gets reedited ....... times an hour and there are approximately ....... active contributors. It means that it will get reedited ..... times while you are reading. With time your house, which we will from now call the tangible environment, will gain the ability of re-edition. The re-edition will take place basing on similar ethics as Wikiedia re-edition does. Your current house will be a momentous outcome of the constant process of re-edition executed by collective inteligence.
Let us see if it could really happen.

1. Vitrual and possible
Virtual is the condition with no predefined solutions. It is what one might do but no neccesseary will given any cicrumstances. …
2.1 tangible environment

The idea is to use a physical objects (sometimes even tools we use every day) in order to interact with computers. This concept means that using technologies like computer vision, tracking devices, touch screens etc. the system is able to know how the user is manipulating a collection of physical objects, and then it is able to translate these actions into events in the computer interface. There's a basic paper you should read in order to understand this concept. The author is one of the TUI parents (Hiroshi Ishii).

We see the physical space as the tangible environment. Architecture that is entireliy physical is the tangible environemnt, but for architecture that is partially physical, the tangible environment is just one side of it. Maybe even one atom (the rest are the bits). The tangible environement augmented with technology is now called the performative architecture.

2.2 performative

(ONL) Performative architecture it is performance what moves the attention away from the static object and towards a complex and dynamic plane of relations. It is a effects that transforming culture, architecture is becoming a cultural production. In the Performative Architecture technology and culture aren’t separate elements, becoming integrated and reacting on each others.


2.3 platform

The platform is the communication space between real and possible or virtual. The interface is the mean of communication with a device capable of computing.
The final platform of communication is always the pre-designed software that processes the inputs. Different proposals vary depending on the source of the input.
When exhibited at Centre Pompidou, Muscle NSA reacted to people waling by it. The exhibition visitors could also reprogram it’s configuration on the screen, literally connected to it. Two of the input gathering methods were applied, the tracing one (physical) and the on-the-site interface (software interface based, but not enabled by the web).
In Decoi’s wall the singer that performs in front of it is an actuator at the same time. The platform recieves the tracing input only.
“Negotiate my Boundary!” has different levels to which the idea of the performative is applied. One of them is the skin. The performance of the skin is pre-set for every user, depending on two factors. One of them is the visibility from the other side, the other is the ability to go through the skin. The skin opens and closes in real-time depending on user’s position. It is another example of the tracing input.
The other performative system in RAMTV’ proposal is “the genotype”. “what is refered to as one household is treated as something other than a single genotype, or even a combination of several other genotypes”. The momentous state of the genotype is an outcome of two factors: the pre-designed location (that depends on the site access, sun exposure etc.) and the “stock-exchange” negotiation process. The actual form of the genotype (and therefore a household) is an outcome of a carefully researched web-based community interface that enables the mass-customization by fulfilling indyvidual needs. The input comes from the web interface, but the actual negotiation takes place only within the limits of the pre-set matrix of 1 meter cubes.

conclusion:
The negotiation process in RAMTV design is a try to enable the bottom-up reconfiguration of the tangible environement. The negotiation borders are however pre-designed to fit in the 1 meter grid. They remain pre-designed. It turns out that for contemporary performative architecture platforms, no matter wheather the input comes from on-the-site interface, web interface or tracing, connects the real with the possible only.

3. How we became cyborgs

While reading “Me++” you have the feeling that every part of our everyday life (or rather every kind of the network) is transforming from static, “bulky” form towards the portable form attached to the body or at least being very close to it. Both blocks of ice in a drink and communication became personal. Mitchell claims that by this process we witness the dawn of dematerialization era, where information will be fully relifed from the place.
While wraping our body with both tangible and virtual networks, we become cyborgs. It is an interation of the post-human idea, but, at this point we already understand that there is no need to “literally take carbon to zero”.
Architecture might be one of the disciplines that still remain in the realm of bulky, improgrammable devices. Architecture, as we understand it today, remains in the realm of the before dematerialization era, therefore being niedostosowana to needs of contemporary cyborgs. Architecture need to understand the cyborg condition and recreate the design process focusing on the enabled-by-the-cyborg possibilities. Architecture needs an update.


4.2 Prosumerism and customer centricity

In customer centricity approach companies decide on the basis and customers get to choose more detailed settings of the product they are planning to purchase. This kind of approach was introduced my many companies already. The customization available on Dell’s or Apple’s websites, famous Nike trainers that can change colors, M&M platform for inscribing your girlfriend nickname on the candy and ONL’s Variomatic all bare the same quality of the possible only. Customers get to decide between the already fully pre-designed products. The promise of mass customization in therefore limited only to the pre-designed solution, which makes the array of available products more diverse than in a traditional producer-consumer relation, but still far away from truly personally suited product.
In 2003 Don Tapscott coined the term prosumerism in order to describe how “the gap between producers and consumers is blurring. Tapscott and Williams give the Second Life as an example of the community where prosumerism is leading marketing force. The participants create goods of any kind, using only their creativity in order to sell them for Linded dollars, which are worth real money. Interesting issue is, that the regulations which need to rise when any kind of commerce enters the scene, are created mostly in a bottom-up manner, pretty much in a way like Wikipedia society erases the spoilers of it’s content form their rows. Second Life not only enables, but demands the creativity of it’s users in order to maintain and grow, but it is a fully virtual environment.
Prosumerism is possible also in regard of the tangibles. Customers not only answer to the limited set of questions regarding the future product. The self-organize to create their own products. One of the examples is how prosumers hacked into the I-pods. The I-pod hack is available on the net, and while you install it, the I-pod functions are much wider – the Podzilla can be installed also and I-pod becomes the pocket Linux environment. Companies, as usual in regard of the new collective intelligence in action, can try to fight with those attempts, or can use it for their purposes.
If we can think about performative architecture as the code of behavior, then we can hack the code. If we would hack the ONL Muscle tower and reprogram it, we would act like prosumers. The question is if Muscle would then bare the quality of negotiation between real and virtual, not only possible?


here are some other thoughts on the subject:

Analysis of the existing mode of collective intelligence in action of production intangibles:
The information technologies revolution have radically introduced many new context, like social, economical or political one. A question to be answered is wheather it has introduced the new spatial context. “To find something out, or to get something done in the city, you now have a choice. You can navigate the brick-and-mortar half in a time-honoured way, or increasingly, you can switch to its electronic twin.” (Mitchel) But the electonic twin is not merely a mirrored condition of the physical. It provides new possibilities of communication, interaction and production. The swarm egzisting in the electronic twin is now beeing referd to as collective intelligence. The inteligence that is capable of introducing it’s own paradigmatic shift on a scale of the industrial age or a information technologies revolution. It already delivered new means of production, among which peer production and prosumerizm are of our particular interest.

peer producing:
Several examples prove that peer producing works outside of the realm of software design, but Paul Diguid[1] points out that there has to be certain rules fulfilled in order for it to work in a specific environment. First rule indicated by Diguid is “peer production projects constantly change. What is flawed today may be flawless tomorrow”. Wales himself provides an answer to that, claiming that content on Wikipedia goes through “Dariwnian process of evolution”. An article at Wikipedia is changed in average twenty times during it’s editing procedure. The quality does nor rise lineary, but rather evolves in an evolutionary manner, while article reciving inputs form people with different backgorunds. Wales therefore puts the constant flux of information as an positive factor of final input shaping.
It is the purest form of producing goods and services. In many communities, the work is voluntary and nonmonetary. Wikipedia is an example of peer production where people may join to community and create information base. The reason is that people becoming a part of community because they want, they may decied in what part they may share with their knowlage - self-selection . .The big companies might learn how to use the potential of theirs workers – “ People just self-select to do project where they have expertise and intrest”
[1] Paul Diguid, „Limits of Self-organisation: Peer production and laws of quality”

About the Materiality:-

Role Of Computers
It is a commonly held fallacy that a computer is a thing or a tool such as a hammer or a jigsaw. Many thinkers have clarified before that the computer is anenvironment which contains thousands of tools. A computer is a place where one finds all sorts of magical materials and means to play and produce.
Within a short space of time the computer has become a widely accepted feature of architecture, both in the design process and in the everyday operation of buildings, and we are constantly aware that the computer's introductions into architecture will eventually have farreaching
consequences. After all, the current revolution is not just about the computer as a tool but about its role and effect on the form of architecture and thinking

The digital revolution is affecting not only the way we produce drawings, but also the way we think about architecture. Such expressionistic, neo-baroque forms would have been unthinkable without higher technology, which allows for customization at a massive scale.

Following are the three different ways Architects conceive a design work in soft materials:



1. Working with Solids completely bounded by planar surfaces.

Eisenman’s work, well until the last couple of years, has been concerned with solid geometry and transformations of solid geometry. His transformationtechniques included subjecting solids to the logic of surface deformations such as Bezier curves. His Columbus Convention Center is a good examplefor this.

2. Polynomial Surfaces (Splines)

Clues to Gehry’s imagination (Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and Bard College, Annandale,USA, 2003) are evident in his recent sketches where one finds a field of flowing and complexlyinterwoven curves with no definiteboundary definition. Compare these to his earlier sketches where the boundary conditions and tectonic are much more Euclidean and physical (for brevity purposes, illustrations could not be included here). Gehry now thinks in splines. For his purposes, Gehry quite extensively uses CATIA’s surface modeling module.

3. Blobs (Isomorphic Polysurfaces)Popularized by Greg Lynn (1998), blobs were originally developed for the study of complex molecules. The parameters that define blobs are such things as mutual gravity (weight), extent ofinfluence (threshold) and form type (ellipsoid etcetera). At the level of imagination, these modalities of definition lead to works that are distinctly different from solids or surfaces.Greg Lynn’s work is imagined in Blobs but defined and constructed using Solids. His first built work, Korean Presbytarian Church, is much more exciting as an idea than as a built reality from this viewpoint. However, it is perhaps the first to use and popularizethe softerial, Blob. In a way, Blobs were his medium.

Imagining, defining and constructing with softerials becomes definitely more exciting, rewarding and lucrative activity. In such a world, softerials play a more major role than does brick-and-mortar architecture. Once the difference between mediumand building vanishes, medium becomes the material out of which buildings are made. Solids, surfaces and blobs are three softerials that have begun to transform the way we imagine, defineand build a world that really matters.

Entropic and organic structures by François Roche

François Roche was born in 1961 in Paris,. He obtained his architecture degree from UPA n° 3 in Versailles in 1987. His partner Stéphanie Lavaux was born in 1966 in La Réunion, and she left the French National Fine Arts Schooll (ENSBA) in 1990.
The exipbition catalogue explained that “The architecture of R&Sie François Roche/ Stéphanie Lavaux is inseperable from the environment; one might speak of a kind of furtive architecture. In his projects François Roche attempts to refrain from radically modifying the territory,sseking a form of a dialogue with it that is entropic and organic. He is currently undertaking a critical experiment with new morphing technologies to prompt architectural “scenarios” of cartographic distortion, substituition, and territorial mutations.
Although R&Sie has not done much sctual building until now, their ideas and influence have been of considerable importance.

R&Sie architects: http://www.new-territories.com/

1. “Terra Incognita”

One of their latest work is called “Terra Incognita”.
http://www.new-territories.com/terraincognita2.htm

HOW FLATNESS IS REVERSABLE / Terra incognita is an island which only recently appeared in the Antarctic continent, as a result of climatic global warming and the subsequent merging of ices. Here, the ice white albino penguin can be also be found. Their differences of color produce their rejection from the penguin colony. In the icy winter wind, their loneliness become the main factor of their progressive freezing and their upredictable death.
In their homepage…. They state that
“Our installation unfolded as a series of surfaces on 200m2 , made from honeycomb aluminium. Its form was generated using a parametric script, and was manufactured by controlling milling water jets through the computational script. The single surface was then stretched and sheared by counterweights consisting of different volumes of water that represent different volumes of melted Antarctic ice. Amidst this unstable balance stood a robotic albino penguin whose only gesture was the occasional blinking of an eyelid. More the water in the counter balances is evaporating itself in the climate condition of the indoor Museum, more the artificial and aluminium island is re-defining its own flatness.

This process is talking about the instability, indeterminism of the biotopes. It's talking how the the warming of the climate is deeply introducing conditions of uncertainty ness.
The Odyssey is the story in three steps ;
- the report on the real situation of Antarctica
- the scanning of the territories emerging from the melting of the snow
- a re-development of the process of instability in two place / the Tate and the Mam”

Click here in order to see the movie done on this project:
http://www.new-territories.com/terra%20essai%208.mov

2.“I have heard about

“I have heard about…”is considered to be a flat, fat, urban growing experiment.
http://www.new-territories.com/I

R&Sie state that “I’ve heard about something that builds up only through multiple, heterogeneous and contradictory scenarios, something that rejects even the idea of a possible prediction about its form of growth or future typology.
Something shapeless grafted onto existing tissue, something that needs no vanishing point to justify itself but instead welcomes a quivering existence immersed in a real-time vibratory state, here and now.
Tangled, intertwined, it seems to be a city, or rather a fragment of a city.
Its inhabitants are immunized because they are both vectors and protectors of this complexity.
The multiplicity of its interwoven experiences and forms is matched by the apparent simplicity of its mechanisms.
The urban form no longer depends on the arbitrary decisions or control over its emergence exercised by a few, but rather the ensemble of its individual contingencies. It simultaneously subsumes premises, consequences and the ensemble of induced perturbations, in a ceaseless interaction. Its laws are consubstantial with the place itself, with no work of memory.
Many different stimuli have contributed to the emergence of “I’ve heard about,” and they are continually reloaded. Its existence is inextricably linked to the end of the grand narratives, the objective recognition of climatic changes, a suspicion of all morality (even ecological), to the vibration of social phenomena and the urgent need to renew the democratic mechanisms. Fiction is its reality principle: What you have before your eyes conforms to the truth of the urban condition of “I’ve heard about”.
What moral law or social contract could extract us from this reality, prevent us from living there or protect us from it? No, the residence protocol of “I’ve heard about” cannot cancel the risk of being in this world. The inhabitants draw sustenance from the present, with no time lag. The form of the territorial structure draws its sustenance directly from the present time.

Made of invaginations and knotted geometries, life forms are embedded within it. Its growth is artificial and synthetic, owing nothing to chaos and the formlessness of nature. It is based on very real processes that generate the raw materials and operating modes of its evolution.
The public sphere is everywhere, like a pulsating organism driven by postulates that are mutually contradictory and nonetheless true. The rumours and scenarios that carry the seeds of its future mutations negotiate with the vibratory time of new territories.
It is impossible to name all the elements “I’ve heard about” comprises or to perceive it in its totality, because it belongs to the many, the multitude. Only fragments can be extracted from it.
The world is terrifying when it’s intelligible, when it clings to some semblance of predictability, when it seeks to preserve a false coherence. In “I’ve heard about,” it is what is not there that defines it, that guarantees its readability, its social and territorial fragility and its indetermination.”

In order to see the movie done by R&Sie on this project click here:
http://www.new-territories.com/videos/film_robot/film_robot.htm

Emergent Form

1.1Emergent Form-definition and purpose

Looking at the definition of emergent form we can find it related to all different kinds of fields and sciences, from computation to design biology and mathematics.

Emergent phenomena are the result of interactions between elements of a system over time, often being unexpected results of simple interactions between simple components. An emergent property or behavior is shown when a number of simple agents operate in an environment, forming complex behaviors as a system, that the things themselves do not have. For instance, consider water (H₂0): hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) are extremely light gaseous substances at room temperature, while water, the effect of their combination, is a heavy liquid. Liquidity is therefore one of the emergent properties of the system of hydrogen/oxygen. There is nothing about the property of liquidity- its wetness, hydraulic dynamics, Brownian motion, and potential for heat exchange- that can be predicted by examining the properties of either H or O.

When it comes to architecture, such kind of processes are used to create forms based on structural pattern formation and emergent behavior. This way of production is part of a larger contemporary movement in architecture referred to by Detlef Mertins in 2004 as ‘Bioconstructivism’, where biology, mathematics, and engineering combine to produce an architecture characterized by its variability and performance. This is not something unknown in nature of course. Nature is filled with variation and complexity that architecture has only started to explore. There are differences between architecture and biology as in nature it is all about iteration, mutation, and feedback through fitness testing, in order to produce both elegant and durable species and formations, but it is exactly the study of the process of random mutation and natural selection in nature that provides a model for how a dynamic feedback between excesses and efficiencies can create innovation and elegance in design process.

Another part of this research is called Biomimicry, also known as Bionics. By that we mean the use of methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology. The transfer of technology between life forms and synthetic constructs is desirable because evolutionary pressure typically forces natural systems to become highly efficient as well as formally elegant. Biomimetics can be relavent to architecture in terms of design, systems, and processes and can refer to both morphological and behavioral characteristics.

1.2 Tools

These kind of generative processes are carried out through the use of evolutionary algorithms. The regeneration of complex formal and behavioral patterns exhibited by organisms in the laboratory have been enabled by non-linear dynamics and computation using both generative and analytical algorithms and design techniques. Such algorithms have been applied to an ever increasing variety of design domains, for which they have achieved human competitive results on small design problems. In order to improve the applicability of such systems, fundamental research must be undertaken to discover how to construct increasingly more sophisticated designs. Many different design tools and software have been developed during the past years in aid of this study. A great proportion of them are the outcome of the research carried out in the Emergent Design Group of MIT, such as Gener8, Weaver, Agency, germZ and Moss. Also one can find the widely used Top Solid and Generative Components, and other ones such as Rhinoscript, Max script, Mel scripting, Perl and Processing.

One of the most commonly used software is GENR8. Genr8 is a plug-in for Alias/WavefrontMonday, December 3, 2007s 3D design tool Maya and it was developed by the Emergent Design Group at MIT in 2001. The Emergent Design Group was an interdisciplinary group that developed new ideas in architecture by bringing together researchers in Artificial Intelligence and architects. The purpose of this innovative surface design tool was to provide architects with access to creative surface design by giving them influence over generative processes. As they explain, a generative process is the activity of iteratively executing some encoding that creates and then modifies an artifact. So, during creating this tool they chose the thing that was most intriguing and of use to architects, which is modeling cellular growth interacting with an environment. GENR8 is an design tool that combines many different kinds of powerful growth languages with evolutionary search. The software combines 3D map L-systems that are extended to an abstract physical environment with Grammatical Evolution. Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) typically adapt 'on-line' but GENR8 is designed to accommodate the back and forth control exchange between user and tool during on-line evolutionary adaptation. Users may interrupt, intervene and then resume GENR8. This allows for interactive design evaluation and computational multi-criteria search. The investigative software is written in C++ as a plug-in to Alias|Wavefront Maya.The technical power beneath GENR8 has more than one implications: evolutionary search and HEMLS (Hemberg Extended Map L-Systems). A HEMLS, the generative process, is interpreted by GENR8 to generate a surface. GENR8 uses evolutionary search to discover its own HEMLS that adaptively evolve towards surfaces with features the user has specified.

Mel Scripting on the other hand is a Maya Embedded scripting language that is used to simplify tasks in Autodesk's 3D Graphics Software Maya. Through Mel one can achieve most tasks that can be done through Maya's GUI, as well as certain other that GUI doesn’t offer. MEL gives the opportunity to accelerate complicated or repetitive tasks and it also allows users to redistribute a specific set of commands with others.

2.1 Emergent Form Practitioners

The people that are behind much of this research are not only researching form its self but all of the social economic and environmentally conscious branches of emergent culture that are part of what is emerging from the newly possible fields of practice in engineering, building technology and construction. Peter Testa, Tom Wescombe and Martin Hemberg are just some of the architects/engineers/computer programmers/economists/etc. that are starting to drive this part of architecture that is being called emergent.

Peter Testa is a researcher in the field of emergent design, not only as part of the emergent design group but as a practicing architect. Currently he is working on a carbon skin, solid state tower that would be the lightest and strongest building of its type. This building is currently more of a design theory rather than an actual design proposal at this point but potentially has the ability to create a shift in the way that building technology and material manufacturing is currently recognized and used. He is proposing that this building could be completely manufactured on site with essentially the use of two materials and the robots to actually do the construction. This process would entail the use of wood, which is readily available from renewable forests and carbon fiber, which would be quite expensive (but less so in this process) and he claims that the high costs of carbon fiber would be offset enough by the use of wood and the manufacturing process to make this project not only feasible but cheap in comparison to a similar building constructed using traditional building techniques. This process is described as having robots on site which essentially lay in wood and weave/cure an interwoven surface of carbon fiber over the wood, similar to the way that a hockey stick or a ladder is made. This practice would be cheap, efficient and most of all environmentally friendly.

Martin hemberg is a bioengineer and scientist interested in the organization of biological systems. He has recently published a paper on the properties of scholastic genetic oscillators in which the chemical master equation is used as a starting point in an investigation into the difference in a time series between the chemical master equation and the stochastic differential equation. Martin Hemberg is essentially the architect who designed the program GENR8 as his masters thesis at the imperial college of London in association with MIT and the architectural association this program is based on the ideals of evolving plant structures and behaves as if it were growing a surface that strives for optimization an efficiency, similar to a plant. This type of thinking and this type of influence has rarely been seen in the past as part of the architecture and building community. This view on architecture has the potential and seems to be heading in the direction of creating the possibility for super efficient, strong and lightweight building skins. Plus the idea that this type of system will not only be seen in radical and rare buildings but in and increasing number of buildings that are more along the lines of an average project.

Tom Wescombe in a way is combining the ideas of both Hemberg and Testa and implementing them in a more technical engineering based approach which utilizes the type of research that hemberg dose with the implementation more similar to that of Testa. He has developed a computer program that can look at the various forces acting on a system and can reduce the system to be the most efficient yet stable system possible. This results in unique unconventional systems that would be impossible to produce without the advent of computer aided manufacturing. He bases his theory around the idea of emergence its self(the name of his firm as well as the name of is theory) that with the sum of many parts there can be a whole that would otherwise have been impossible. This theory also revolves around the idea of bioengineering and the discovery of the mathematical systems put in place that are able to create the forms that are only found in nature(for now).

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

http://projects.csail.mit.edu/emergentDesign/genr8/index.html

http://projects.csail.mit.edu/emergentDesign/genr8/hemberg_chap8.pdf

FORMS AND TECTONICS OF CELLULAR AGGREGATION

“The idea that innovation weather scientific, technological or architectural is a by product of artistic chance or a result of singular genius is Anachronistic. Complex theory revels that innovation- the creation of the new – is the direct result of Bottom-up evolutionary process. Architecture is just beginning to engage the concept” * says Architect Tom Wiscombe whose practice (http://www.emergentarchitecture.com/) essentially engages the idea of evolutionary or emergent design. Tom along with Peter Testa and Marcelo Spina instructed spring studio 06 at Sci-Arc whose title was
‘On Forms and Tectonics of Cellular Aggregation’, the objective of the studio was to explore the generative procedures, tectonic and special qualities and constructive and assembly processes necessary to produce and deploy emergent forms of cellular aggregation.

Taking this as our springing point we would like to conduct the research under the same title but in a theoretical way rather than in an applied way. The objective of our research will be finding ‘Cellular Aggregations’ that exist in nature and representing their forms and tectonics by virtue of diagrams. For example ‘Slime Mould’ which shows characteristics of both animal-like and plant-like behavioral patterns. The research therefore can involve the morphological study of the cellular patterns of the slime mould in regards to the physiological changes. However the aim of the research will not be about the biological accuracy but about diagrammatically representing the flexibility, efficiency and robustness present in these systems.
The research will do a simultaneous reading between, the first aspect dealing with the nature and understanding of emergent practice in architecture and the second aspect essentially dealing with the study and analysis of few cellular aggregations present in nature. With this research we are hoping to find some principals which can be algorithmically coded to derive at some surprising end results.






PART I (TO BE ELABORATED IN MORE DETAIL)

EMERGENCE: THE IDEA OF EMERGENCE - EMERGENCE TALKS ABOUT THE COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR OF A SYSTEM OF ORGANIZATION WHERE THE WHOLE IS DIFFERENT THAN THE PARTS AND EXHIBITS BEHAVIORS AND PROPERTIES WHICH ARE NOT PREDICTABLE BY THE OBSERVATION OF THE PARTS. EMERGENCE EXISTS IN NATURE IN MACRO AS WELL AS IN MICRO BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS FOR EXMAPLE ANT COLONIES, FLOCKING OF BIRDS, BEE SWARMING OR SLIME MOULD SHOWS THE EMERGENT BEHAVIOR.
STEVE JOHNSON IN HIS BOOK EMERGENCE TALKS ABOUT 5 SIMPLE RULES WHICH AN ANT FOLLOWS IN THE SWARM BEHAVIOR

1. MORE IS DIFFERENT
2. IGNORANCE IS USEFUL
3. ENCOURAGE RANDOM NUMBERS
4. LOOK FOR PATTERNS IN THE SIGNS
5. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR NEIGHBOURS

THIS SHOW THAT THE EMERGENT SYSTEMS ESSENTIALLY INCORPORTAE PRINCIPLES OF SELF ORGANIZATION, STYGMERGY, FLEXIBILITY AND ROBUSTNESS.
ARCHITECTURE HAS JUST STARTED UNDERSTANDING IDEA OF EMERGENCE WITH ITS BOTTOM UP APPROACH AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE TOP DOWN APPROACH. THE BOTTOM UP APPROCH INVOLVES CELLULAR ORGANIZATION WHERE EACH CELL CAN BE CONNECTED TO THE NEIGHBOURING CELL BY MEANS OF MATHAMATICAL PRINCIPALS DERIVED FROM LOGICS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. THIS INDUCES FLEXIBILITY WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION. WHAT DOES IDEA OF FLEXIBILITY AND ROBUSTNESS MEAN TO ARCHITECTURE? EACH ELEMENT HAS THE POSSIBILITY T ADAPT TO THE CHANGES IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD AND RECONSTRUCT ITSELF. OBJECTS ARE LINKED WITH OTHER OBJECTS BY RELATION. THESE RELATIONS CAN BE LOGICAL OR GEOMETRICAL. THE SELF ASSEMBLAGE OF CELLULAR AGGREGATION CAN PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE ARTIFICIAL SYSTEMS FOR EXAMPLE ARTIFICIAL RESOURCE DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS SUCH AS TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM OR UTILITY GRID. AS OF NOW WHICH DEPENDS UPON TOP DOWN DESIGN PARADIGM LAID BY BEST ANALYTIC METHOD AVAILABLE. MODIFICATIONS ARE MADE IN ADHOC MANNER. TOP DOWN MANAGEMENT APPROCH TO COMPLEX SYSTEM BECOMES MEANINGLESS. SO IT BECOMES IMPORTANT TO STUDY THE IDEA OF EMERGENCE AND THEREFORE CELLURAL AGGREGATION. THE MORPHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES BEHIND THEM.
ONE EXAMPLE IS OF SLIME MOULD.





PART II (EXAMPLE OF CELLULAR AGGREGATIONS SLIME MOULD, LICHEN/ EXAMPLE OF CELLULAR GROWTH SMOLUSCAN SHELL)

SLIME MOULD: DESCRIBING SLIME MOULD BY ITS MORPHOGENESIS AND DETAILING OUT THE PARADIGMS BEHIND ITS SWARM BEHAVIOR.
HOW CAN IT BE USED IN DIFFERENT FIELDS? A GOOD EXAMPLE IS SLIMEBOT (ROBOTICS)
ANOTHER EXAMPLE IS OF ‘LICHEN’ COLONIES OF SYMBIOTIC ALGAE AND FUNGI WHICH GROW ON THE ROCKS FORMING INTERESTING AND INTRICATE GROWTH PATTERNS. THEIR MORPHOGENESIS CAN BE STUDIED BAED ON THE AVAILABLE LITERATURE.

IMAGE OF LICHEN ON ROCK FORMATIONS

history UNWIRED

Developed in 2005, this project was a first-ever mix of mobile video, animation, audio, and Bluetooth locative technologies in the tourism sector. The tour takes visitors around the neighbourhood of Castello, guided by the voices of Venetian citizens who depict a particularly local experience of art and craft, history and folklore, public and private spaces.

Their philosophy is to develop "content-driven technology". That is, instead of creating filler for new technology, they are developing innovative stories and adapting the technology to those stories. Thus they have formed a relationship with Dell, Motorola and MIT Media Lab that allows them to develop software and features in Smartphones that arise from storytelling needs and human interaction with mobile media.

●Bluetooth: they are using this location sensing ability of bluetooth beacons to trigger interactive art along the course and to reward prudent exploration of private spaces. The plot, path, and tone of the content evolves according to individual’s footsteps.

●AGPS (Assisted Global Positioning System): they have developed several location-specific "media clouds" along the bustling, Via Garibaldi, a key point in the tale of Castello's evolution after World War II. AGPS available on 3G phone networks can sense the general location of the walker and load a sound-video collage as they move down the street. (this feature was only modelled for the 2005 experiment)

●Flash-Video: They are using the sophisticated web browsers on these phones to display Flash content and seemlessly link to video content.

●Thermachromics: They have installed two interactive art pieces along the course that activate in the presence of bluetooth. Panels in the facade of an abandoned greenhouse have been covered with black, thermachromic ink. When walkers pass by the greenhouse a circuit is tripped by bluetooth in the devices and the panels are heated to reveal a growing plant form in the facade. Also they coated hanging laundry with thermachromic ink, and wires in the laundry heat up to reveal the outline of the landscape you are viewing

Venice has a lot of “surface tension.” The place looks like a movie set and many tourists marvel at the rich history and intimate details of its monuments. However overcrowding has taken some of the magic from Venice’s main monuments (500.000 tourist in 1960 and approximately 14 million tourist in 2003.) History Unwired will use mapping and multimedia as a Trojan Horse to give some depth to these wonders and lead tourists to encounter with unexplored monuments, historical figures, and neighbourhoods.

Bibliography

1. Feuer, Alan. "To Venetians' Sorrow, the Sightseers Come in Battalions" New York Times. June 10, 2004, p D1.

2. Venice Card website. Venice Card is a service of the Comune di Venezia designed to consolidate cultural and practical offerings. http://www.venicecard.it/itinerari/itinerari_ita.jsp

3. La Biennale website. http://www.labiennale.org/it/news/arte

4. Jason Spingarn-Koff. Museum Tour: Walk This Way http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,42152,00.htm
http://mit.edu/frontiers/english/tour.html demo

We found different examples in which we detect the fusion of translated signals applied in architecture. Different kind of sensors convert a signal from one form of energy to another, from one form of information to another, enabling the whole system to become interactive.

Son-O-House
The Son-O-House, is a public pavilion that is both an architectural and a sound installation that allows people to not just hear sound in a musical structure, but also to participate in the composition of the sound…This permanent installation creates an interaction between the sound, the architecture and the visitors. To create the specific experience the architects collaborated with Edwin van der Heide, an artist who continuously experiments with the sound, exploring the creation of interacting and learning environments. The particular system of sounds is based on moiré effects of interference of closely related frequencies. 23 sensors are positioned at strategic spots to indirectly influence the music.These sensors detect the presence, activity and the approximate location of the visitors. The particular information is analyzed and quantified,in a growing database and is used to control the nature of the sound. Therefore the visitors are challenged to re-interpret their relationship with the environment. As a visitor one does not influence the sound directly, which is so often the case, one influences the real-time composition itself that generates the sounds. In this way the sound environment of the Son-O-House is in continuous evolution. The score is an evolutionary memoryscape that develops with the traced behavior of the actual bodies in the space.

Galleria West Shopping Centre in Seoul, Korea - 2002-2004
Designed by Ben van Berkel from UN Studio architects and Arup Lighting, the Galleria West has a perpetually changing, light-reactive and computer-programmable facade that behaves like a giant video screen.
The shopping centre’s façade works like a large low-res television, with each LED fixture acting as one pixel. It is the control system that converts and transmits data to the 40,000-square-foot screen that most sets this project apart. “This is the first time the user doesn't need lighting programming skills,” explains Van der Heide. “You can create animations using any software that you are comfortable with, and just upload it to a server. Once the data on the server is converted into a proprietary protocol based on TCP/IP, it then travels over 32 DMX lines (or universes), which control 512 channels each, to deliver the many commands that 'dress' the façade. The system can also be connected to and programmed wirelessly from a laptop on the street, for example.” [1]
The facade is made up of 4330 glass disks, each 850mm in diameter, that were treated with a special iridescent foil, which causes constant changes. The disks are programmed to generate up to 16 millions colors, showing astounding displays in every imaginable shade. Beneath each one is a polyester dichroic light filter creating a range of colors that change depending on the position of the sun. The filter separates the different wavelengths of light, absorbing some and reflecting others depending on the angle at which it hits. Also fitted behind the glass discs are LED fittings that come into their own at night, and are programmed to emit a sequence of colors and patterns between sunset and sunrise.
The building makes a complete transformation during the day and evening. The colour of the façade changes, depending on the position of the sun and the viewing position. During the day, it reflects the subtleties of natural light on the dichroic glass discs. At other times the building can even become a giant billboard, its pixels feeding text or images around the entire external structure. At night a special lighting scheme illuminates the discs by reflecting the dynamics of the weather conditions that happened during the day.

references:
http://www.unstudio.com/projects/year/2004/1/141
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=453&storycode=3051692
http://www.arup.com/netherlands/newsitem.cfm?pageid=6693
http://www.archlighting.com/industry-news.asp?sectionID=1312&articleID=454081

[1] http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=453&storycode=3051692

Smart floors
One of the surfaces that by nature the human have more interaction with is the floor. Gravity keep us in direct contact with it, this is why Robert J. Orr and Gregory D. Abowd think on why not to do it an interactive surface or "smart floor". Their main goal was two of the most important one on Ubiquitous Computing: identifying and locating a user.
The way this smart floor works, is having measurements cells located on each corner of the floor tile, each tile have 3 tiles resting on it. Each one of this systems working together can measure the force of the user's foot (ground reaction force, GRF) as the user walks around the space and this information can be storage on a system trough a network to have it like a signature of each individual user, so that way the user can be recognized by the system just by matching the information. Once the system recognize the user, tracking this individual becomes really easy.

Intelligent bathrooms
On March 30 of 2005, two large companies of Japan, Yamato House and TOTO have meet together to create a user interactive system called "the intelligent rest room". With the main goal of family health, integrating intelligent devices into a normal bathroom space.
The idea of this integration is to have more control over human body health care by adding measurement sensors all around the bathroom space and objects, measuring sugar levels, blood pressure, body fat percent and weight.
All this daily analysis can be send to the family computer or even to the doctor's office trough a wireless network, once in the computer software health analysis that comes with the system, will analyze this results and advices on health care, diet or exercises to do. All this results will be displayed on a digital screen located on the bathrooms wall, at the same time this information is storage for medical history.

Research Beginings on the Finite Element Method

Specifically, the Finite Element Method or Finite Element Analysis is a system to take a complex problem and separate it into parts. From these smaller parts you can derive approximate solutions of each element and then combine the solutions and begin to a form an overall solution for the problem. The overall accuracy of FEA depends on the number of elements the problem was divided into, the assumptions made about the individual elements to derive a mathematical solution, and how the isolated elements were amalgamated into a coherent result.

Depending on the complexity of the problem there are steps for the finite method to follow so as to achieve the desired result, the more complex the problem, the more steps in the method. It is important to remember that much of finite element method can be defined in simple one-dimensional or two dimensional mechanical physics if the elements are divided properly1.

The first step is Idealization, or taking the problem and reducing the entire system into a simplified, physics model. In other words, taking the question and relating it to an already developed system of physics and mathematics.

The second step is Finite Element Discretization, decomposing the question into the required amount of elements to gain an accurate solution. Essentially this part is taking the mathematical or physics model that is used to represent the question and partitioning it into separate, more manageble parts.

Local Approximation or the Discrete Solution is the the third step. This is the mathematical portion of solving the individual parts by the sum of their forces (in mechanical physics models).

The final step is the Amalgamtion. This is taking all of the individual solutions and forming them into a single cohesive, overall solution. In other words, this is the assembly of all of the parts to answer the question.

It is important to note that there is a give and take relationship between step one and two as well as step two and three. If the mathematical model assumed to represent a part of the question is incorrect than the entire solution will also be incorrect, therefore it is important to be extremely precise in the suppositions made from step one to step two. On the other hand it is not always possible to know the specific amount of parts you need and the FE discretization step might need to be returned to on multiple occasions to gather the correct information needed. There is a certain amount of “guess and check” involved with the finite element method to gain a faithful solution.



FEM opens wide range of possibilities for architects and designers to analyze their projects before realization. Using softwares based on FEM one can predict how particular form will work and behave considering loads impact. One of the softwares based on the FEM is Abaqus.
Abaqus suite consist of Abaqus/Standard, Abaqus/Explicit, Abaqus/CAE. Abaqus Standard is applied to static, low-speed dynamic, or steady-state transport analisis; while Abaqus/Explicit may be applied to those portions of the analysis where high-speed, nonlinear, transient response dominates the solution. Using Abaqus CAE one can create geometry, import CAD models for meshing or integrate geometry – based meshes that don’t have associated CAD geometry.

The software is used by engeneers working in fields of aerospace & defense, automotive & transportation, industrial design such as furniture and packaging (including both the design and the production process), high-tech, industrial equipment, services industry, shipbuilding, power process & petroleum industry, life sciences, and of course in the field of architecture and construction.

The process of analysis using the Abaqus software is divided in three parts:
Phase 1 preprocessor, phase 2 processor, phase 3 postprocessor. All phases are described below.


Phase 1 preprocessor
The object of the preprocessor is to define the discrete model.
First the geometry which one wants to analyze, prepared in 3d (imported from other software as .stl or .igs file, or created in Abaqus) is simplified to the physical model. To get the discrete model one has to defined all the data such as mesh definition, material data, loads for the physical model. Those decisions influent on the precision and time taken for calculations of the part 2.
Finally one gets the input file (.inp) - text file - which contains the numerical description of the model.

The model is defined by:
ß geometry: defined by mesh based on the finite elements
Library of Abaqus let the user choose from 200-300 kinds of elements which will create the mesh from the analyzed surface. It is possible to change the size and amount of elements, it means the density of the mesh.

ß element section properties: complement information about geometry

ß material data

ß loads and boundary conditions

Two typical loads are: the concentrated load ( force [N] ) which defines the force impact on particular point of the mesh and the distribution load (pressure [Pa] ) which defines the pressure on the area of the mesh.

Boudary conditions define degrees of freedom for the geometry. Each point of the geometry has six degrees of freedom – three transitions and three rotations, considering x, y ,z axis.

ß kind of analysis : static (in Abaqus/Standard )or dynamic (in Abaqus/Explicit)


Phase 2 processor
It is the phase of calculations based on the input file. Adequate procedures are activated and the task is accomplished.
The program informs user of any problem or mistake of the input file. Some typical mistakes are “comma” instead of “dot” or “o” instead of “zero”.
Considering the complexity of the analysis the processor phase can take from few seconds up to several hours.
Outcome of the processor is described as text file or binary file.

Phase 3 postprocessor
That is the final part. It transforms the result of calculations into visual file such as pictures or animation. Abaqus/CAE also offers comprehensive visualization options which enable users to interpret and communicate the results of any Abaqus analysis.
The postprocessor part is really important considering communication between engineer and architect or designer, and communication between them and the client.

Gehry Production House

The Gehry Technologies is a consulting group composed of architects and engineers, experienced over the years for advanced geometric constructability and construction processes gained across a wide range of projects at all stages of development, from schematic design through engineering and construction administration. It provides knowledge required to make the application of advanced Digital Project tools and integrated process methodologies for the architectural projects and construction.

Design Processes

Parametric Design: The design processes of the Gehry technologies start from the digitizing the design concepts and making parametric models for the same. Digital Project is built on Dassault Systèmes parametric-associative V5 design technology. These models can be reconfigured as per requirements and can be modified at various stages of the growth of the design configuration. The design issues are carefully handled as at no stage the conversion from informal design inputs to the formal outcome is the main idea is compromised. The parametric models are efficient in their data structure which are the outcome of a systematic approach and can also provide turnkey model solutions directly to the client.








Geometry Solutions: The complex geometries and non linearity are the components of the architecture of the digital age. And to formally put forward the geometrical expression which clearly states the design intentions and analyses is the primary prerogative for the successful completion of the project. Developing geometric solutions for designs, both as pre-rationalized geometric system and the post-rationalization of complex designs into constructible form are the underlying principles of these solutions and how these vary between different projects makes the task a little less normal.









Constructability Assessment: The process of fabrication of the complex geometries precisely for the construction process is a tedious job. For this the constructability assessment deals with the analyses, reports and information about the constructional components of the project so that the design solutions can be realized with in the project parameters. Materials, formwork, design complexities and fabrication processes are looked into with critical guidance for the projects’ achievement.









Visualization and Simulation : 3D visualization of the project at various stages of construction and design act as a guiding tool for design managers and engineers on site.

Construction Simulation: A wide variety of building process (4D) simulation techniques, including construction sequencing and assembly make the construction process easier.
Visualization: Rendering, fly-through animation and other visual representation support is available as a service to end-user and project teams.
Visual Analysis: These are techniques such as Clash Detection and Dynamic Sectioning which allow users to systematically analyze, coordinate and track the resolution of design conflicts.









Kowledge Capture : is the process of capturing the trends and patterns for automation, repetition or customized development of reusable components ranging from schematic to very detailed design components. This helps in increasing the efficiency of the projects. Optimization helps bringing the costs of the project down.










Tools Development (R&D): As the project goes on the need for specific software tools such as macros, plugins are needed on top of the existing tools for a particular operation. This could vary from special modeling, analysis, project automation or data interoperability tools. This acts as an automatic research and development exercise which gives you the edge over others and helps to perform tasks better. Collaboration with experts from the software fields makes this a bilateral process leading to better tools.




www.gehrytechnologies.com

Recombinant Architecture

Recombinant Architecture examines the deep cultural impact of biotechnologies, including genetic, genomic and transgenic engineering, on the architectural imagination. Recombinant architecture is multiple, and Benjamin Bratton divides it into three different indexes:

a. Algorithmic Bio-morphology, the conception of architectonic forms in the image of genetic, biomorphic corporeality (architecture as physiognomic index of the posthuman),
b. Post bodies, the deliberate fashioning of recombinant bodily forms (genomic entities in the image of architecture) and
c. Genomic spatial systems, the application of artificial biomaterials in the construction of the built environment (architecture as the result of genomic design) - from bodies to buildings and back again.


Algorithmic Bio-morphology
the conception of architectonic forms in the image of genetic, biomorphic corporeality
(architecture as physiognomic index of the posthuman).

Genetic architecture elaborates the epistemic centrality of a now genomically self-concious body as a methological index of structural investigation. The genetic body is considered to name and contain multiple and incongruous animate forms to be given architectural expansion. Each one of those is a figurative principle that could be used so as to extend purely biological processes into more comprehensive bio-technical systems.

According to Karl Chu: "Genetic space is the domain of the set of possible worlds generated and mitigated by the machinic phylum over time. This is the zone of emission radiating out from the decompression of reality, a supercritical explosion of genetic algorithms latent with the capacity to exfoliate out into genetic space. This is not a passive receptacle but an active evolutionary space endowed with dynamical properties and behavior of the epigenetic landscape." In his theory of hyperzoic space, laws of physics that ordinate the play between genotype, phenotype and environment, are themselves evolving, and are condensations of multiple manifest and virtual modulations of genetic-algorithmic enunciation.

Greg Lynn’s Embryological House is considered by Benjamin Bratton “likely the most publicly appreciated genetic architectural project”. It re-imagines dwelling according to genetic form as a first principle of iterative animation. The House adjust itself, reacts and anticipates sunlight and environmental variables according to data received. Bratton believes that not only the Embryological House, but also Genetic Architecture itself, remain beholden to traditional architectural problematics. The House is a genetic metaphor in architecture and although there have been used bodily forms and human morphologies, it remains allegorical of genetic processes. As he comments about it: “It is undecided whether Embryological House is yet genetic architecture, or rather still architecture about genetics.”


Post bodies
the deliberate fashioning of recombinant bodily forms
(genomic entities in the image of architecture).

Recombinant architecture looks to the figure of the artificially designed body (genomically, surgically or otherwise realized) as a cyborgian measure of both structure and inhabitant, while genetic architecture infers or applies genetic grammars into the moment of creating formal architecture. The body is the first architecture: the
habitat that precedes habitation. Architecture looks toward the body for its telos, its image of unified singularity, its continuous historicity. “The condition of embodiment and its material poetics of scale, temperature, solidity and pliability, reproducibility and singularity have located the horizon of design from Vitrivius to Virilio.” (Benjamin Bratton)

Bodies are now imaged as genomic territories, as cities of DNA events, due to the fact that they are sliced into component subvariables and statistical predispositions. Bodies could be considered not only as the first architecture, but also as the first digital architecture. DNA is a binary code which produces forms, the bodily forms produced are themselves architectonic in the highest order. Like all the other naturally occurring architectures these genomic manifestations are incredibly perfect as they are and available modifications.

Bodies could be considered as machines, and machines as bodies, therefore they can be used for new design practices and modifications. A spatial example could be the ear-mouse, in 1995 Dr. Joseph Vacanti, a transplant Surgeon at Harvard, who cultured a human working ear under the skin of a mouse, which was then removed, without harming the mouse. Additionally, the extreme body modification and plastic surgeries could be considered as “a deliberate renovation of the first habitat (of the Self), and of the public production of performative space (of the singular Other)” (Benjamin Bratton). Although in the fields of primary mechanics the ultramodern Body is a highly recombinant form, the ultimate realization of genomic digital auto-fabrication, it is unlikely to happen for legal and ethical reasons.

Recombinant architecture understands the primary figure of bio-materiality, the body, as itself an architectural event, therefore re-designs the built environment both as and with artificially derived biomaterials. ”As ever, buildings become bodies only as bodies become buildings”. Because of the fact that it looks at architecture as genetic bodies, it look at genetic bodies as architecture.


Genomic spatial systems
The application of artificial biomaterials in the construction of the built environment
(architecture as the result of genomic design)

Every day growing database of structural biomaterials, genetic and genomically designed fabric systems, is nowadays widely being explored and finds a lot of applications in medicine, agriculture, military and even conceptual art. At the same time the application of genetic material engineering to the design of physical habitats quite often collapses literal gaps between body and architecture.

First conclusion for creating a durable human habitats might be just a replacement of traditional materials with new artificial biomaterials in the formation of traditional forms, spaces, and programs (box, room, dwelling, house.) But some architects are not satisfied with 'biomorphic chairs,' nor even chairs made of genomically designed materials and try to redefine the shape of the architecture created out of biomaterials. As for example Benjamin H. Bratton from SCI_Arc is describing in his article “The Premise of Recombinant Architecture: One” that “recombinant architecture” gives the premise “ to explode the sitting-machine into new bodies of spatial narrative, new modes of habitat-circuit, new questions, and not just new answers. This redefinition of program 'from the DNA out' will undoubtedly result in several recognizable forms. Buildings, like bodies, have membranes, and the vocabularies of 'skin' should only become more pronounced. Buildings, like bodies, have orifices, and the materialities of interiorization/ exteriorization should likewise become further pronounced, even as bodily-programmatic conventions based on them (kitchen/ bathroom, for example) mutate beyond recognition.”

But the form of architecture based on biomaterials is most probably going to be an outcome of the way this materials will be used which will be based on their specific characteristics. So far biotechnology research is mostly focused on medicine and agriculture which is due to interest of science on fulfilling the fundamental needs of humanity. As a result most of nowadays money is putted on modifications of native plants into improved food crops and findings for miracle drugs. This industries are hopping to have the fastest benefits. That might be a reason why there is so far no specific research in finding biomaterials which could be applied in the construction of human habitats.

http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0304/msg00011.html
http://www.rizoma.net/interna.php?id=151&secao=anarquitextura

Technology molding existing materials

In this search for the impact technology has had in recent history towards traditional materials, we have found that three materials in specific have been the most extensively used in construction throughout the world: concrete, bricks and wood are the most representative and the most used.

“Concrete, the solid that forms at room temperature from mixing a grey powder (mainly Portland cement) with water and aggregates, is the most widely used material on Earth. Current estimates of world cement manufacture are around 1.7 billion tons/year, enough to produce well over 6 cu km) of concrete per year or at least 1 cu m) per person. The demand is rising: conservative estimates predict a cement demand of 3.5 to 5 billion tons/year in 2050.”[1]

By this assumption, we know for a fact, that concrete is one of the materials which needs priority in its relation with technologies, for improvement in its performance, capabilities, possibilities, and relation with the environment. So in order to improve this product, there have been a series of advances and appliances that have made concrete more useful and advanced than never before.

Basically what we know is that concrete advances happen in some specific areas:

-Material performance (structural)
-Material innovation (mixing with other materials to define new uses or new applications)
-Material Impact(environment)

We have several examples in which concrete receives new treatments which allow it to perform in ways we have never seen before:

-Light Transmitting Concrete
-Concrete as a Display

-Bendable Concrete

In addition to this specific applications to concrete, we have a number of additives and chemicals which specifically engineered, can solve problems in construction that can be directly linked to the architectural project, we were very interested in a specific building, which was conceived by Zaha Hadid, the Science Centre Wolfsburg in Wolfsburg, Germany, and solved in its engineering by AKT. What becomes really interesting is that the concrete design and pouring where specifically designed to solve the complexity of the project.

Volumetrically, the building is structured in such a way that it maintains a large degree of transparency and porosity on the ground since the main volume, the exhibition-scope, is raised thus covering an outdoor public plaza with a variety of commercial and cultural functions which reside in the structural concrete cones.

An artificial crate like landscape is developed inside the open exhibition space allowing diagonal views to the different levels of the exhibition-scope, while volumes, which protrude, accommodate other functions of the science center. A glazed public wormhole-like extension of the existing bridge flows through the building allowing views to and from the exhibition space.

The building consists of a basement car park out of which rise 10 reinforced concrete cones, flaring out to support the main exhibition space, two stories above. Each cone is of a different geometric shape, and they all change shape as they rise. Four of the cones continue through the exhibition concourse to support the steel framed, metal-clad roof. The cone walls are inclined up to 45°, which blurs the boundaries between walls and floors.

AKT treated the whole bulging as a single entity, and then analyze it for gravity loads, thermal loads and shrinkage in one model. Although the basic construction method is traditional, the engineer specified concrete with a self compacting admixture for the cone walls and parts of the course slab. There were two main reasons, the height of the pours and the inclination of some walls. The external walls of the cones are only 300mm thick, and since are heavily reinforced they had to use a self compacting admixture gels because it would have been impossible to use a traditional poker to compact the concrete.
Since the structure was designed as a single entity, ad the cones and slab are so dependent on each other for support, the whole structure had to be propped until the entire concourse slab had been poured.

http://www.zaha-hadid.com/

http://www.concretecentre.com/

[1] Concrete, New and Improved, by Prof. Franz-Josef Ulm, adapted from a speech at MIT Family Weekend, Oct. 13, 2006. http://cee.mit.edu/index.pl?id=20581

mit instant house project

The instant house project, developed by Marcel Botha and Lawrence D. Sass for MIT ‘s Department of Architecture, studies how to digital design and fabrication can be utilized within an urgent housing environment. Specifically designed as a relief effort for natural disaster areas, refugee camps or any other improvised emergency human habitat, they propose of a system that is both rapidly deployable and scalable, while fostering a large degree of individuality within the newly rebuilt community.

Botha and Sass intend to create an atypical solution in large quantities for emergency, transitional and developing contexts, while giving personal ownership to the end user, through generative computational methods and CNC fabrication techniques. The Instant House ships as a flat packed structure ready for implementation. A generative system that mechanizes the interaction between user, designer and fabrication, attempts to effectively deploy customized dwellings without incurring a cost premium. It is not intended that the process proliferates cosmetic change, but more importantly structural and spatial variation.

Past examples of generative methods have tended to produce house designs as spaces and forms only. The instant house combines concepts of prefabricated low cost design systems with those based on shape and a system for digital fabrication. The Instant House process produces a customized, habitable mono-material plywood structure. Various joint types that sustain their assembly through friction connect each component of the system, eliminating the need for nails, screws or glues. The process is divided into five stages; shape design, design development, evaluation, fabrication and construction.

metropolis magazine - living for tomorrow
the instant house
Kolarevic, B:2003, Architecture in the Digital Age – Design and Manufacturing, Spon
Press, New York.

REJECTING MATERIALITY: IN-FORMING FORMS

DTA Group 01 Javier Olmeda, Maite Bravo, Luis Odiaga

PAPER OUTLINE – DEC 2/07

5 QUESTIONS:
WHAT
WHY
FOR WHOM
HOW
WHEN

1. WHAT: [Objective of research] Can architects able to use novel (innovative) ways of dealing with digital interfaces in order to explore space with such intuitive approach?

2. WHY: Conception and development of innovative design processes interfaces.

3. FOR WHOM: Architects, artists, digital tech, people dealing with responsive environments.

4. HOW: [Methodology]

a. Study of REACT table as the development process to identify needs, processes and solutions.
i. Interview with creators (if possible);
ii. Explanation of REACT table in terms of structure, functionality, complexity;
iii. Experiential interaction with table to understand processes and to gain insight on creative/individual input.

b. Research of 3 projects that incorporate tangibles as method of design to identify:
i. Inputs/outputs to determine variables: Logic.
ii. Systems of combinations: Media.
iii. Outputs: Final reaction/effect.

Projects suggested:
a. Reaction pollution
b. Enric Ruiz (Cloud 9) IM Museum
c. ????
d. Electronics/Technology: Interview to Victor Vina to identify;
i. sensors available to be used in architecture,
ii. amount of energy required,
iii. input/outputs.

5. WHEN: Digital era today.

6. Conclusion:

a. Interactivity, re-contextualize in actual terms; era of consume- becomes productive, society of service- not products. Architecture as multi-sensorial experience? Will digital media be able to modify concepts of spaces? Open doors to acknowledge human experiences (sound, light) and energy efficiencies/interactivity with the natural world?

b. End of architecture as we understand it, disappearance as an activity, transforming into modifiable surfaces and platforms of design; cut/paste architect; master-builder as organizer of processes and delegates; architect will orchestrate several layers of information/ fields with a general knowledge (NOT specific driven).

c. CONS; Reliability on technology ignores/ left out, utopian ideal that technology can solve problems of humanity; will it change quality of life? Pride on human knowledge and technology? Will robotics, genetics, etc resolve .GOD-like humans? Can tech produce better architecture? Sustainability of programmable surfaces, Dialogue between logic/intuition driven? Emotional side of architecture?

HYPERBODIES: Complex Adaptive Dynamic Multi-Agent Systems (CADMAS) as Self-Sufficient Sustainable Environments of Inhabitance (SS SEI)

Draft outline and Progress

INTRODUCTION:

SELF SUFFICIENT SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTS OF INHANTANCE (S-SSEI)
The argument of building sustainability could be simply defined as the act of producing buildings that can be maintained in their environments indefinitely. The various studies produced as a result of the visible signs that are highlighting stains that the increases in human population and energy consumption are placing on the environment. The visible effects (global warming and increased natural disasters said to be attributed to global warming), resulting global research and political summits, discussions and agreements, suggest that sustainability should be central to future architectural strategies. It is not the intention of this research to outline those discussions or pass judgment on aims of governments, developments or architects in their achievement (or not) of sustainable goals. Discussions about new forms of architecture must however consider sustainability as integral to proposed processes, theories and strategies, for them to be applicable to future. This paper attempts to search for new approaches to sustainability utilizing more dynamic approaches to the environment.

How sustainability is achieved in current approaches to sustainable design is however somewhere between science and intuitive knowledge. It could be argued that technological systems holds the greatest potential for 'bridging' this gap and creating buildings that are more intelligent and responsive to their environments. Intelligent facade systems (such as Jean Nouvel's Arab Institute, Sir Norman Foster's Reichstag museum) achieve a basic level of interactivity between building and environment, but only on a basic 'single interface' level. There is a programmed input (track the sun) and single output (move to block the sun). In terms of the complexity of interface systems, these examples are simple and do not allow for any future adaptability, interaction between whole, parts, other systems and .


COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS (CAS)

Characteristics
• Auto-Organisation
• Auto-Reproduction (genetic re-coding)

Key Examples
• Kas Oosterhuis

Kas Oosterhuis understands architecture projects as hyperbodies in terms of communication and responsive actions, so that he defines swarm architecture as the one that is feed on data generated by social transactions. This kind of architecture could be understood as a hive mind of new transformation economy and also has the capability to react in real time. For Oostehuis architecture becomes the science of fluid dynamic structures and environments running in real time. He tries to come up with researching projects that explore practical possibilities by using parametric and genetic design principles to build real and physical inhabitance. This collaborative work based on parametric and associative tools makes buildings pro-active hyperbodies shaped as prototypes for fluid and dynamic structures to achieve environments in real time. Auto-organization by establishing feedback relationships between people and buildings is one idea that seems to be in Kas work. Nonetheless the auto-re-production and self-sufficiency in terms of sustainability is something missing in his buildings. In our opinion linking both auto-organization and auto-re-production would be a right choice to generate CADMAS (Complex Adaptive Dynamic Multi-Agent Systems) that can be used to figured out some sustainable and responsive strategies to build contemporary inhabitance.


Technologies
• Embedded Systems or Ubiquitous Computing
• MIT Media Lab


= HYPERBODIES:
(Other definitions of Hyperbodies)
(The goal of what we are researching here)
To combine the ideas of CAS, Auto reproducing and organizational systems, that can be seen in the work of Kas Oosterhuis and other architects, but focusing on new ways of producing sustainable solutions (of program and usage) rather than simple bio-climatic systems.

'Clouds in the bottles'

Refernces:
- ‘Phenomenology of Perception’ Merleau Ponty
- ‘Being Digital’ Nicholas Negroponte
- ‘Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture’ Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto     Perez-Gomez
- ‘Anchoring’ Steven Holl
- ‘Quantum City’ Ayssar Arida
- ‘Interactive Architecture’ Kas Oosterhuis

Examples
-diller scofidio, the blur building

The Blur Building is a project for the Swiss Expo 2002 on Lake Neuchatel. The lightweight tensegrity structure measures 300 feet wide by 200 feet deep by 75 feet high. However the primary building material is indigenous to the site, water.
It is one of the first examples of architecture of atmosphere and looking for the nature of the space.
Diller Scofidio created the final form of the project by using water vapor. Thanks to it they achieve a building structure, which is visible, and have specific shape, but on the other hand you can go through it, it is man-made very dense fog.
When you enter the fog mass, visual and acoustic references are deleted, you only walk through an optical "white-out" and the "white-noise".

- research for invisible materials by Dr. Ulf Leonhardt at Scotland's St. Andrews University

Dr. Ulf Leonhardt at Scotland's St. Andrews University has recently published two papers concerning the potential realization of invisibility using modern MetaMaterials. He looks for a new class of ordered nanocomposites that exhibit exceptional properties not readily observed in nature. These properties arise from qualitatively new response functions that are: not observed in the constituent materials and result from the inclusion of artificially fabricated, extrinsic, low dimensional inhomogeneities.
According to Dr. Leonhardt, the key to achieving invisibility lies in creating transparent materials capable of bending light around objects hidden behind them. While seemingly far-fetched, light-bending phenomena such as hot road mirages or water refractions occur naturally.

- ‘Atomic: full of love, full of wonder’ by Nike Savvas

Nike Savvas made this sculpture/installation “Atomic: full of love, full of wonder”, which is a room filled with colored polystyrene balls, suspended with nylon wires. There’re some industrial fans too, which blow from time to time, and make the whole installation wobble.
That is an interesting example of an art installation which is focused on the micro elements of materials. Nike Savvas presents a zoom into structure of every physicall object and shows relationship between atoms.

-Printable solar cells
Ludger Hovestadt, a professor for architecture and CAAD at ETHZ, looking through the technological development of the "information society", described how the granularity of objects is becoming smaller and smaller, until today matter can be investigated and described at sub-atomic scale. "The Big Zoom" as he called it, gives us an understanding of the materials available to us which has led us to reconstructing objects from their most fundamental parts. We can build our environment from atomic scales upwards developing new smart, responsive and communicative material constructs. "No longer are objects or processes the constituting elements of a building. Now they are described as technical networks of communicating nodes, which balance themselves in contrived patterns."
An example of Nano materials providing base materials for new technologies, is ’spray on’ solar collection material that is capable of capturing energy in the infra red spectrum, developed by University of Toronto. "Printable" solar cells are coated with a common ingredient used in toothpaste and suntan lotion and are able to produce electricity from direct sunlight as well as low-light and indoor lighting. They are manufactured with a process similar to inject printing.
Considering current solar technology, perhaps one day we could print onto virtually any other material, mixing previously unlike material combinations, to generate sustainable power supplies in the most unlikely of scenarios.
With the ability to rapidly create our environment as and when we need it, Ludger suggests that "We are going towards the end of devices and instead the construction of devices by print processes."
Considering the near future of architectural practice and the freedom it will provide for artists, architects and designers will have possibility to generate their own technology and suprising applications from microscopic up to the architectural scales.
characterize it and describe it. In this kind of geometry it is very hard to define spaces for people without any decisive obstructions.
This is one of the most important roles for contemporary computation and digital tools…how to find that kind of spaces and make it somehow visible, how to define it. One of the possible ways would be to use new materials, that can offer illusion of immateriality- materials that on the one hand are still physical, but from a level of perception become immaterial; their physical structure is fine enough to make them be perceived as invisible.
That kind of architecture would have no physical barriers, but would be open by his physical no-existence, being a challenge for designers and receivers as well.
It has also another important aspect of designing process. The space created in this way is not strictly being related the people, but to the atmosphere of place. The creation process could involve climate or different temperatures, being independent from human activity.

-hypersolid
As Kas Oosterhuis mentioned in his book “ Interactive architecture", recently there has been discovered in laboratory conditions a material called hypersolid, which is invisible and has got the ability to penetrate one another. If it becomes possible to create hypersolid in normal conditions, that would open infinite possibilities for applying it into architectural scale.

BA4: On the Research Paper

The last Blog Assigment is an opportunity to do some web-research for you final paper. Considering each group themes, you may investigate and illustrate a part of your paper (an example/case-study, theoretical background, ...) and create a post with that.
The deadline is the usal friday before the class, which is the next 30th of November.
Have a good work!
_
Please spread the word!
_

Contour Crafting

Description:
Contour Crafting (CC) is a computer-automated construction technology, invented and developed at USC by Behrokh Khoshnevis Professor, University of Southern California to deliver rapid production, ease of use, significant reduction of waste, and other substantial cost savings. Not only will CC have a significant impact on the point of delivery, but the whole support structure will be similarly affected by the technology. We anticipate substantial revenues for a wide variety of direct users of the technology and its suppliers. In addition to the enormous economic potential, CC has been designed to deliver improved quality of life, superior safety, and beneficial environmental impact. In this sense, CC will enable the construction of custom-designed, low-cost housing with a level of quality heretofore unobtainable. Further, safety elements inherent in the process will significantly reduce the rate of on-the-job injuries that are so prevalent in the construction industry today, thereby lowering the costs of litigation, insurance, and medical treatment, to say nothing of saving lives. The environmental impact will also be significant through energy savings for construction and the near-elimination of waste product. In the long run, CC will revolutionize the construction industry.

Technology:
The CC Technology: CC is a hybrid fabrication method that combines an extrusion process for forming object surfaces and a filling process to build the object core in layered fashion. The extrusion nozzle used to create structural elements has multiple outlets, one for each side, and others for the inner (core) of a wall structure. Each side orifice has an adjacent trowel. As the material is extruded, the traversal of the trowels creates smooth (2 micron has been achieved) outer and top surfaces on each layer. The nozzle can be deflected to create non-orthogonal surfaces such as domes and vaults. Co-extrusion of multiple materials is also possible. For example, plaster as the outer surface material and concrete as the core structural material may be co-extruded by the CC nozzle.

Conclusion:
Counter crafting is a mass customizinging technology that reduces the cost of construction and also production time. Interested part of this technology is it has a different goal of mass customizing in the sence of mass urban or rural housing sectors. On the other hand most of the available mass customization procedures are cost worthy and industrial production. This counter crafting is on site mass customization system that is really cheap in total. Counter crafting works on very simple logics of building construction where as the other mass customizers deals with complex computer generated design solutionns andmateriality.
Whereas in the use of counter crafting it has a limitation on materials and design complexsities although the goal is different from the traditionla mass customization system and CC has huge potentialities but this simple technology still not proved on the field of construction and architecture.

Designing People

There are many different ways of understanding term mass-customization. The first and the obvious one would be an issue of adjusting the material goods to our needs and preferences. Nowadays it tends to be one of the most developed and examined problems concerning mass production.
However we could look at this problem from different perspective, changing the approach and searching for new possibilities. According to the recent biotechnological progress, the adjustable part, in terms of mass customization, can be a man, not his surrounding or background. This phenomenon was studied by Francis Fukuyama in his famous publication called ‘Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnological Revolution’. He argues that as a result of biomedical advances, we are facing the possibility of a future in which our humanity itself will be altered beyond recognition. He states that in the near future it will be possible to manipulate human DNA in order to achieve all the most desirable characteristics in one person. Fukuyama examines influence of genomes on human behaviors, based on innovative technological researches. He claims that our existence is determined by genes, which have the biggest potential for shaping our everyday life.
Medicine already uses differentiated technologies to prevent from diseases and eliminate psychological deviations. Curing children with ADHD is an example of adjusting people to the existing social norms. ADHD is psycho-physical system, inextricably related to human behavior, rather than simple being a disease. Thus, this kind of intervention changes their character is being in order that they fulfill social expectation being politically correct.
We slowly achieve the point in which biotechnology allows us to ‘design’ people. Fukuyama considers problems of creating children’s genomes by their parents, already before their birth. On one hand controlling what was previously impossible and unpredictable (in that case human DNA) could be the greatest achievement of our decade of mass-customization; however it also brings up lots of anxieties and fear. Considering in a large scale, could lead to enormous problems, like dehumanization and gradual lost and disappearance what is generally being perceived as human, meaning diversity, individuality and personality.
Paradoxically mass-customization, understood in such a way, doesn’t aim to non-standardization. Contrary what could appear as a result is homogenous world full of ‘ideal’ desirable people. This stage Fukuyama considers as ‘Posthuman Era’.

References:
-‘Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnological Revolution’ Francis Fukuyama
-http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200602/000020060206A0002705.php
-http://genomeathome.stanford.edu/
-http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/21/3/325

Architecture as a Product

Mass Customisation is the principle of producing custom made items to individual unique requirements at similar prices to off-the-shelf, mass produced alternatives.

Gilmore and Pine have identified three different types of customisation and its interesting to see how the definition of the mass customisation can be changed to reflect the various possibilities.

1. Adaptive Customisation - where one standard, but customisable, product is designed so that users can alter it themselves. This strategy is described as being appropriate when the customers want the product to perform in different ways on different occasions, and available technology makes it possible for them to customise the product easily on their own. It is the product itself, rather than the provider, that interacts with customers. Example : the adjustable office chair.
   "Mass Customisation is enabling a customer to decide the exact specification of a product or service at or after the time of purchase, and have that product or service supplied to them at a price close to that for an ordinary mass produced alternative".
2. Cosmetic customisation - where a standard product is presented differently to different customers. The cosmetic approach is appropriate when customers use a product the same way and differ only in how they want it presented. Rather than being customised or customisable, the standard offering is packaged specially for each customer. For example, the product may be displayed differently, its attributes and benefits advertised in different ways, or the customer's name may be placed on each item. This type of customisation is sometimes called 'personalisation'.
   "Mass Customisation is enabling a customer to decide the exact specification or personal attributes of a product or service, at or after the time of purchase, and have that product or service supplied to them at a price close to that for an ordinary mass produced alternative".
3. Transparent customisation - This applies where the company provides individual customers with unique goods or services without letting them know explicitly that those products and services have been customised for them. The transparent approach is appropriate when customers' specific needs are predictable or can easily be deduced, and especially when customers do not want to state their needs repeatedly. Transparent customisers observe customers' behaviour without direct interaction and then inconspicuously customise their offerings within a standard package.
   "Mass Customisation is enabling a customer to decide the exact specification or personal attributes of a product or service, at or after the time of purchase, and have that product or service supplied to them at a price close to that for an ordinary mass produced alternative, or have this exact requirement supplied using the vendor's knowledge of the individual customer's needs".

Computerization profoundly impacted all aspects of design. It has transformed design processes, design economics. It allows collaboration and better interaction between designers and other professional, helping them to visualise better, finding many alternatives, options and solutions, in parallel to picking up problems sooner. It also allows communicating design ideas more effectively, making them more easy to visualise and comprehend by not only industry but by the end users (silent designer) themselves. While the implication on product design has been widely examined, the implications on architecture still stand debatable.

Can architecture be sold as a product? A product far beyond just the sizes, colour and texture.

Links:

http://www.strategichorizons.com/mass.html
http://www.klingmann.com/pdf/ArchitectureasaProduct.pdf

Additional Book References:

Some additional books, suggested by the contents of the abstracts:
_
- The Prefabricated Home by Colin Davies
- What Every Engineer Should Know About Finite Element Analysis (What Every Engineer Should Know) by John Brauer
- What Every Engineer Should Know About Computational Techniques of Finite Element Analysis (What Every Engineer Should Know)by Louis Komzsik

In the Architectural Design magazines you may find several interesting issues addressing your research topics like:
- Collective Intelligence in Design: New Forms of Distributed Practice and Design (Architectural Design) by Christopher Hight and Chris Perry
- Programming Cultures: Architecture, Art and Science in the Age of Software Development by Mike Silver
- 4dsocial: Interactive Design Environments (Architectural Design) by Lucy Bullivant
- Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design (Architectural Design) by Michael Hensel, Achim Menges, and Michael Weinstock
- Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies by Michael Hensel, Achim Menges, and Michael Weinstock

Next Class: ABSTRACTS DISCUSSION

In the next class (Monday, 19) we will discuss the abstracts submitted to help the further development of the research paper.
_
For this purpose, each group is going to read his abstract to the class, which will serve as a starting point for a 5-10 min. colective discussion about it. The idea is to get the maximum feed-back, pointing out to the specific critical issues of each group's text.
Good work!

PS: please spread this message.
_

BA3: List of Posts

Here is the list of the posts related to the BA3 assignment, published until now (Sunday, Nov. 18th) in the blog. If there is any incorrection, please comment about it.
_
G01: "Mass Customization and Prefab Architecture"
G02: "Rules of a Game or Satisfaction of Needs?"
G03: "Prefab Housing in the Digital Age"
G04: "Architecture, Virtuality, User Manipulated Spaces"
G05: "Useful + Agreeable"
G06: "Made for You"
G07: "Housing as Mass Customization"
G08: "Architecture as Product"
G09: "Personalized Medicine"
G10: "Designing People" G11: missing
G12: "Prosumerism vs. Customer Centricity"
G13: "A New Epoch has Begun..."
G14: "Architectural Glazing Technologies: Customizing for the Masses in Practice"
G15: "BA3: Kas Oosterhuis interactive environment at Utrecht"
G16: "User Manufacturing: apoc, ponoko, fab@home"
G17: "Architects on EBay!!!!!!"
G18: "Web-Site/Web-House"

_

Rules of a Game or Satisfaction of Needs?

Mass customization is now kind of a fashion term in the industries, witch is used to persuade the customers selling them the idea that the product they are getting is unique but the question is it unique? Comes to our minds do to the fact that is the same product but with an additive component such as texts, colors, parts, etc, trying to make it call a distinctive product.

In the industry of golf exist the idea of mass customization do to the fact that each person has different capacities to perform a golf swing, for example a six years old girl will perform a natural movement because of her flexibility and also because the muscles are in fact growing and in the phase of memorizing movements, but in order to do this she would not be able to perform the swing if the weight, the size, the shaft, and so on are not suitable for her age, size, strength etc. If we get to explain every golf swing in terms of people’s size, strength, rotation, age, etc, we get to find billions of different golf swings so do to this fact the golf clubs industry generate a pre-fabrication process in order to satisfy as many as possible needs in terms of golf swings. So this process is trying to get the golf clubs unique because the golf swing is unique for every golf player, but it’s all about the mass production of components like shafts, heads and grips, but in the unity of this different components you get to make a golf club suitable for your golf swing.

In the same way, the Smart car develop this idea of customizing your car but its again in the mass production of components that you get to buy a “unique” car. In terms of design we don’t see the uniqueness of the car because it is just the colors or the graphics what gives the car a differentiation from one to another.

By crossing this two examples of pseudo mass customization we find more attractive the fact that in the joint of different components you can find the real uniqueness of a product to satisfy the different needs of people but applying this to architecture and more specific to the development of housing end in a prefabrication process were people gets to pick the different components of their house in order to get a exclusive one, but does it really response to customization? Then what is the meaning of customization? Is it about giving some regulation to a game or really trying to satisfy the needs of each different way of living?

Housing as mass customization

Google images, Casas GEO Ixtapaluca

Isadora Hastings, Ixtapaluca

Low income housing, Mexico City

In countries like Mexico where the mass production of living is a must due to the enormous demand of the population, mass customization has become a real solution.

In front of the absence of planning and construction of the public space, in addition to the constant demand of the government for getting more and more land for building living properties for the increasing demand of the population; the public space has started to disappear. Almost all the land surrounding the city area that used to be designated for agriculture or even as a protected area is condemned to be urbanized.

This phenomenon has developed the mass customization in living, real state companies have adopted this kind of solution creating kilometric rows of identical houses without any urban equipment, far away of any idea of the appropriation of the public space ignoring the needs of its inhabitants.

But this idea of mass customization disappear as the time goes by, any individual transforms it’s own living space into a constant changing space, the original idea of the constructor of using one solution for everyone eventually turns to be a serial of individual changes not controlled by anyone that at the ends suits the same necessities but transform the urban space in a more inhospitable space.

So is this idea of mass customization for the masses is really a good idea?

It could be for other countries, the development of a project allowing small changes that suit every client that can be controlled from the beginning by the architect is a good idea, but what happens when the budget is limited and the main idea is to give a home to thousands of people that do not have the opportunity to reach something better; this kind of solutions end up being ghettos.

These spaces where people are isolated from the rest of the city, where the idea of individualism or quality living disappears, become the result of a non-stopping mass customization development where real estate companies can make a lot of money by cutting expenses and repeating the same solution again and again, no matter the climate, or the close environment, it is like a “copy-paste” phenomena, where the final result can be seen long before the construction starts.

So when it comes to peoples homes, the result in the living quality is not as a good idea as it first seemed.We might think either way, but the reality is that this phenomena gives a lot of people the opportunity of acquiring a house, and by this fact, they might trigger a personal influence over their homes, which gives them the opportunity to at least differentiate themselves from the people next to them. We just think that the approach that has been taken towards this kind of mass customization, must be revaluated in order to give the city and its people quality living spaces which can merge with the urban mesh, rather than just neglect it, and to give the opportunity to the owners as to really feel as part of the process.

Bibliography

Hastings, Isadora
"De la auto-construcción a la vivienda en serie"
Arquine International Architecture and Design Magazine
# 35 spring 2006 pp. 4-8

Architects on EBay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Information age has impacted every aspect of design. Not only has it changed design processes and design economies but it has also widened the scope of people along the design group. CAD software has given helped people to interact better in terms of distinct design environments and now designers are no longer the select group but other professionals from various fields are also collaborating handsomely in the efforts. These new processes are instrumental in working out various design solutions and options making the inputs more efficient and creating an intelligent environment that can guide and inform the design process. And due to these innovations the customers are also being given a say in the outcome of the product. CAD and CAM systems enable design by consumers. This enables the customers to interact and also take part in the manufacturing process and also alter the core product.

Mass Customization in architecture hasn’t been that prolific (thank god!!!) as compared to other fields. Buildings are more complex structures and customization can only occur at a very in tangible scale. The components of buildings such as glazing, doors, closets etc. are some examples that have been made to order. A popular example of mass customization in architecture is the Skylights from AGC, Waterboro. It has an object-oriented design approach to designing and manufacturing custom skylights. It allows technicians to import geometry generated by the architects, build upon this model, and generate a complete model of the skylight or curtain-wall parametrically in 3D.
The same model, after several post-processing steps, is used directly for computer numerical control (CNC) manufacturing of frame members and for the CNC cutting of custom glass sheets. Builders and individual homeowners can now also design their own glazings by giving parameters online.

But the question now arises till what point does mass customization let the users or consumers make design decisions. Mass customization could change the way designers design, as specific inputs will have to be put in for it to function as a custom made product. Mass customization in architecture is finding its ground but it will be kept to a very limited scale. Architects wont be too happy to see people changing the way he or she perceived the building. Modern era was the age for prototyping buildings, but in the age of digital technologies it will be more related to for e.g. Gehryism : making structural members of various on going Gehry design projects and making new design solutions out of those only. And where different elements of design could form a part of an architects vocabulary and be used only in his design solutions: could be called copyrighted customization where the designer has the final say. Otherwise it wont be too long before architects are found listed on EBay.

http://www.architectureweek.com/2005/0420/tools_2-2.html
http://www.architectureweek.com/cgi-bin/wlk?http://www.archsky.com

prosumerism vs. customer centricity

In customer centricity approach companies decide on the basis and customers get to choose more detailed settings of the product they are planning to purchase. This kind of approach was introduced my many companies already. The customization available on Dell’s or Apple’s websites, famous Nike trainers that can change colors, M&M platform for inscribing your girlfriend nickname on the candy and ONL’s Variomatic all bare the same quality of the possible only. Customers get to decide between the already fully pre-designed products. The promise of mass customization in therefore limited only to the pre-designed solution, which makes the array of available products more diverse than in a traditional producer-consumer relation, but still far away from truly personally suited product.
In 2003 Don Tapscott coined the term prosumerism in order to describe how “the gap between producers and consumers is blurring. Tapscott and Williams give the Second Life as an example of the community where prosumerism is leading marketing force. The participants create goods of any kind, using only their creativity in order to sell them for Linded dollars, which are worth real money. Interesting issue is, that the regulations which need to rise when any kind of commerce enters the scene, are created mostly in a bottom-up manner, pretty much in a way like Wikipedia society erases the spoilers of it’s content form their rows. Second Life not only enables, but demands the creativity of it’s users in order to maintain and grow, but it is a fully virtual environment.
Prosumerism is possible also in regard of the tangibles. Customers not only answer to the limited set of questions regarding the future product. The self-organize to create their own products. One of the examples is how prosumers hacked into the I-pods. The I-pod hack is available on the net, and while you install it, the I-pod functions are much wider – the Podzilla can be installed also and I-pod becomes the pocket Linux environment. Companies, as usual in regard of the new collective intelligence in action, can try to fight with those attempts, or can use it for their purposes.
If we can think about performative architecture as the code of behavior, then we can hack the code. If we would hack the ONL Muscle tower and reprogram it, we would act like prosumers. The question is if Muscle would then bare the quality of negotiation between real and virtual, not only possible?

Useful + Agreeable

If a Porsche 911 Turbo were a house, what kind of house would it be? Or if a Wilson Triad titanium tennis racket were a house, what would it be? How would it use state of the art technology, advanced engineering, on-board computer components and premium materials to outperform the other houses? We tend not to think of houses in the same light as consumer goods, but at least one firm of forwarding thinking architects is pushing the product.

Oliver Lang and Cynthia Wilson, partners in Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture (LWPAC), an avant-garde Vancouver firm, are currently in the final stages of research and development on a concept they call PAC Hous(e)ing. If they have their way, house buyers will soon be asking these same questions - beginning to think of houses as products and purchasing components of the architects' system which they can then customize.

The digital age, Lang and Wilson suggest, allows us both the ability to customize as did craftsmen in the agrarian age and the low unit cost associated with mass production of the industrial age. Previously, choice and mass production were seemingly at odds with each other. But, using computer technology and robotic production, we can now have the best of both worlds. The term for this is mass customization - and it has already proven popular in other sectors. Levi's custom fit jeans and Swatch watches are among the many popular and profitable examples of mass customization in contemporary design goods - the way of the future according to LWPAC.

LWPAC's answer to the malaise in the housing market, PAC Hous(e)ing, represents not a fanciful vision of a future house, but the logical next step for an industry catching up with the other smaller products such as computers, cell phones and running shoes.
The inevitable first question "what will they look like?" is somewhat beside the point. A central feature of PAC Hous(e)ing and mass customization in general, is that the appearance will evolve out of the process of determining an individual's needs. The computer generated images which LWPAC has produced suggest an appearance influenced by the smooth colorful curves and sleek hard edges more typical of the electronics industry than house construction.

The connection to electronics is more than skin deep. Traditional house designs do not adequately respond to the growing need for many computers and electronics devices within the home. PAC Hous(e)ing is being designed to encase the wiring of our growing list of gadgets much like a stereo or computer casing does on a small scale. Individual users' needs can be met by plugging everything from fridges to televisions, computers to lighting into the wall and connecting and communicating with the rest of the house and to mobile communication devices as well. Continuing the theme, the walls themselves are plugged into one another to add or subtract spaces and to reconfigure the homes at will.

More significant than the particular aesthetics are the materials being proposed. The materials of the future - thermal plastics, glass, steel and recyclable plastics - all begin in a liquid state and can be poured to fit a wide variety of customizable molds.

PAC Hous(e)ing is not a house style, but rather a system by which owners will be allowed to essentially design their own homes. Individual components can be chosen by the customer to be assembled and configured as they choose. Rather than purchasing a completed house with a set layout and size, the PAC Hous(e)ing concept is infinitely adaptable. If a family's or individual's space needs change, additional components can be purchased to dock onto the existing structure to add more space, windows or doors. Groups of PAC houses can be attached to each other in a multi-unit cluster to fit more units onto a given property in dense urban areas.

The name "PAC", is also a play on the word pack. The system which can be assembled and re-configured easily can also be packed up and transported when we move. Lang and Wilson have lived in Barcelona, Berlin, New York and Vancouver in the past ten years - a degree of mobility not uncommon in our global era. In theory they could have taken their home with them.

Link
http://www.usefulandagreeable.com/lwpac.html
Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture - www.lwpac.com

Architectural Glazing Technologies: Customizing for the Masses in Practice.

How do you pretension a cable-supported skylight with over 41,000 pounds of pressure to provide the required structural support? You talk to Architectural Glazing Technologies, a design and manufacturing firm in Waterboro, Maine, USA. They have worked with the likes of Gehry and Rafael Vinoly, but also work with anyone who needs to do anything with glass from a simple window wall to the answer of the fore-mentioned question. They are an innovative firm who are willing to take big risks in design and manufacturing.

There contributions to the idea of mass customization include an online program where you can design and get a price quote almost instantaneously for a skylight. E-Skylight is a system where you can design any number of combinations of skylights using standardized pieces, from a 12 sided polygon with 15 degrees of pitch to 12 pyramid skylights with 45 degrees of pitch. Then they will give you the plans, sections, data sheets and a price quote for the project, all for free and the entire process of designing one skylight from beginning to end takes less than 10 minutes.

This idea of quick, thorough design straight to the manufactured product epitomizes mass customization. For mass customization to be a successful endeavour there must be seamless flow from idea, to design, to manufacturing, to construction. If there are glitches in the process the system breaks down, becoming more akin to customized production, and therefore slower and more expensive. E-skylight is a system which embodies this idea of a multitude of design options based on mass produced, simplified pieces. The modular system of the production of aluminium supports in the case of e-skylight creates possibilities for individual, inexpensive designs; mass customization.

Mass customization is an idea being driven more by the industry than academics. It’s frequently observed that radical innovations and research work being conducted outside school. This is primarily because task involves huge investment and technical expertise. Working under strict prescribed conditions as per law, licensing such ideas and getting patents also required meticulous work. More over it has evolved from the popular idea of mass-production, which now is being enriched. In a way, to understand modularity in terms of parameters reveals possible alterations that can generate customized iterations. The idea is viable commercially and suits consumer needs.

Digital technology, both is design and data processing has enabled mass customisation, primarily by introducing parametric-city for control in simulation which has completely removed the need for prototypes (hence removing labour cost while still maintaining standards). Simulation being the key to this process, interface comes as a close second most important aspect in allowing this mass-customization process to be accepted by masses. User friendly interface enables commercial success which is of prime importance to continue interest in this philosophy. Advertising strategies combined with digi-tech have generated some pretty interesting interfaces which are more fun to use than even the final product. Another cruicial part for the whole process to succeed is to interpret a product or design in components (physical parameters). While the more complicated and technical parts of the product may remain the same, the modifications can be in areas of user requirements and tastes.

ttp://www.emachineshop.com/

http://www.paulkrush.com/2007/02/03/3d-mass-customization-configuration-tools-in-real-time-using-actionscript-in-flash/

http://genometri.com/DIY/

http://www.bigbluesaw.com/saw/

http://www.threadless.com/?streetteam=FTP69

http://www.crowdspirit.com/

MADE FOR YOU

“YOU CAN HAVE ANY COLOUR YOU LIKE AS LONG AS ITS BLACK”
THIS WAS THE MOST USED PARADIGM OF THE LAST CENTURY WHICH WAS DOMINATED BY THE IDEA OF MASS PRODUCTION. THE IDEA OF MASS PRODUCTION WHICH IMPLIED AFFORDABILITY AND STANDERDIZATION ON ONE HAND DENIED SOCIAL AND CULTURAL HETEROGINIETY ON THE OTHER. ALTHOUGH SOME ATTEMPTS WERE MADE TO OFFER PERSONAL CHOICE BUT FAILED SPECTACULARLY. ‘FOR EXAMPLE IN 1940 WALTER GROPIUS DEVELOPED FACTORY BASED MASS PRODUCTION SYSTEM TO OFFER HIGHLY CUSTOMIZABLE HOMES ’THE PACKAGED HOUSE’. THE IDEA WAS TO MEET CLIENT’S DESIRE FOR INDIVIDUALITY AND PLEASURE OF PERSONAL CHOICE BY PROVISION OF INTERCHANGABLE PARTS. HOWEVER HE SOON REALIZED THAT IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO OFFER PERSONAL CHOICE WITH THEIR SYSTEM AND THE FACTORY WHICH WAS BUILT TO PRODUCE 10,000 HOUSES / YEAR CLOSED BEFORE MANUFACTURING EVEN 200.’ (A+U) TODAY MORE THAN HALF CENTURY LATER THE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES OFFER US FLEXIBLE AND AGILE SOLUTIONS OF CUSTOMIZATION COMPARED TO INFLEXIBLE SYSTEM OF MASS PRODUCTION. THE USE OF CAD-CAE-CAM TECHNOLOGIES NOT ONLY OFFER CUSTOMIZATION AT EVERY LEVEL (DESIGN/ENGINEERING/MANUFACTURING) BUT ALSO SMOOTH TRANSITION BETWEEN EACH OF THEM. THE DETAILS OF THIS NEW PRODUCTION SYSTEM CAN BE FOUND OUT IN CASE STUDIES OF NIKEID, DELL OR TOYOTA. ALL OF THEM OFFER THE CONSUMER; NUMEROUS CHOICES OF THE PARTS TO SELECT FROM AND TO CREATE A PRODUCT BEST SUITED TO HIS IDENTITY. THUS THE PARADIGM OF THIS CENTURY IS NOT ‘LESS IS MORE’ BUT ‘LESS IS BORE AND MORE IS DIFFERENT’
THE IDEA OF CUSTOMIZATION IN ARCHITECTURE MEANS ‘ONE BUILDING ONE DETAIL’. THE SIMULTANEOUS DEVELOPMENT IN THE FIELD OF DIGITAL VISUALIZATION AND DIGITAL FABRICATION MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR ARCHITECTS ACTUALIZE THE TECTONICS OF NEW TERRIOTORIES. THE EXAMPLES CAN BE SEEN IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORKS OF FRANK GHERRY, KAS OOSTERHUIS, FUKSSAS AND MORE. WHERE EARLIER ATTEMPTS OF CUSTOMIZATION FAILED BECAUSE OF BEING ECONOMICALLY UNSUSTAINABLE, THE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES ALLOWED PRODUCTION OF CUSTOMIZED PRODUCTS WITH THE SAME ASSEMBLY LINE. FOR EXAMPLE IN THE MILLING PROCESS WHERE VARIATION IN DESIGNS IS OBTAINED BY CHANGING THE MILLING TOOLS OR MILLING PARAMETERS. THE OTHER IMPORTANT ASPECT ABOUT DIGITALLY CUSTOMIZED PRODUCTS IS THEIR PRECISION AND CONTROLLING THE WASTEAGE. THE PRODUCTS CAN BE SEEN AS A SET OF INFORMATION AND THEREFORE CAN BE CONTROLLED AND MANIPULATED BEFORE PRODUCTION OR IN SOME CASEES DURING THE PROCESS OF PRODUCTION. TO CONCLUDE THE IDEA OF CUSTOMIZATION BRINGS UNIQUENESS TO THE DESIGN AND THEREFORE SHOULD BE SEEN AS A DESIGN TOOL IN ORDER TO OPTIMIZE ITS LIMITS.
Interesting article to read here: http://www.di.net/articles/archive/2054/

"A new epoch has begun..."

“A new epoch has begun . . .
We must create the mass-produced spirit.
The spirit of living in mass-construction homes.
The spirit of conceiving mass-produced homes.”
Le Corbusier, 1923

In the 1940s, Walter Gropius and Konrad Wachsmann developed a factory based on mass-production system, to manufacture highly customizable homes – the Packaged House. Gropius wrote, “It is by the provision of interchangeable parts that (we) can meet the public’s desire for individuality and offer the client the pleasure of personal choice and initiative without jettisoning aesthetic unity.” The effort failed spectacularly. The aim was to produce 10,000 houses per year, but by the time the company was closed, less than 200 had been manufactured.[1]
Now, more than a half century later, digital technologies make it possible to replace both inefficient labor-intensive site production as well as inflexible mass-production with agile mass-customization, enabling formal and technological possibilities.
Greg Lynn’s Embryological House Project (2000), is one of the contemporary projects that mark the intercept of architecture and mass-customization.
“The Embryologic Houses can be described as a strategy for the invention of domestic space that engages contemporary issues of brand identity and variation, customization and continuity, flexible manufacturing and assembly and, most importantly, an unapologetic investment in the contemporary beauty and voluptuous aesthetics of undulating surfaces rendered vividly in iridescent and opalescent colours. They employ a rigorous system of geometrical limits that liberate models of endless variations. Addressing brand identity and variation allows “recognition and novelty” and “design innovation and experimentation”[2]
To both design innovation and experimentation, many of the variations in the Embryologic houses come from an adaptation to contingencies of lifestyle, site, climate, construction methods, materials, spatial effects, functional needs and special aesthetic affects.[5]
The biologic borrowings shape a certain mode of contemporary architecture as a more naturalistic mode of production, and introduce a new internal history of architecture. “There is no ideal or original Embryologic house. Everyone is perfect in its mutations.”[3] The variation occurs in the relationship between the generic envelope and a fixed collection of elements, “marking a shift from a modernist, mechanical technique to a more vital, evolving, biological model of embryological design and construction”[4,6]
[1] http://www.architectureweek.com/2004/0818/building_2-2.html
[2,3,4]Lynn, Greg. “Greg Lynn: Embryological Houses,” AD “Contemporary Processes
in Architecture”, London: John Wiley & Son, 2000: 26-35.
[5,6] http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2100/467/1/Burns_Greg+Lynn.pdf

Architecture, Virtuality, User Manipulated Spaces

When thinking about virtuality and architecture, virtuality or virtual objects in architectural case should be questioned. Because if virtuality is only kept as an idea in imagination, it describes a potential that is actually impossible to come true. Virtuality in architecture however, has the opportunity to go beyond these boundaries, as it starts to describe “existence” in virtuality, as we can see examples like “Liquid Architecture” and “Trans Architecture”.

With the effect of information technologies, today’s architecture isn’t only described by form-function relationship. Interaction, interface and the idea of creating living surfaces forces architecture to change constantly. Now, form and function don’t have to stable. Information isn’t only replying the “how” question of materials anymore, it is an indispensable part.

The combination of architecture and virtuality takes materials beyond their physical properties, giving them except from “touch” also changeability and fluidity.

Interactive architecture can be changed by the user. One of the example is “Hyper surfaces” which are liquid architecture applications (media layers) that are attached to architectural object’s topographic surfaces. Ron Arad designed the borders of a space by screens at his “lo-rez-dolores-tabula-rasa” design. Borders aren’t only working as limits, describers, surroundings, they are also moving structures, getting closer, going far away, giving reactions, enriching experiences as information surfaces like Decoi’s hypersurface application “Aegis Hypersurface”.

Another example can be Oosterhuis’s “Muscle Body” project. At this project, the object is designed as a whole architectural body. It reacts in different ways depending on the user’s body movements (the user is placed inside the design) with the help of vir-tool software. This introduces users to a constant movement experience.

Material property isn’t the only thing that is changing. All these developments effect the design time and tools used by the designer: digital design technologies, parametric design tools, productive systems that are based on structural grammar, diagram based information collection systems, evolutionist systems that are annotating genetic algorithms, animation techniques combining design and production and personally developed mass production integrated systems are commonly used.

New technologies let users experience multiple dimensions of artifacts whose objectivity can be changed. This situation makes the aim more important than the result; is the aim idea a temporary or variable representation or the design of a consistent object that has rules and laws? Remembering Goethe’s words: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it”.

MASS COSTUMIZATION AND PREFAB ARCHITECTURE

The relevance of single family housing in architecture has been at the center of discussion for centuries. Architects seem to underestimate the importance of this topic in their practices, but still today, housing represents the largest segment of the construction industry worldwide. Can architects take advantage of the globalization and mass customization phenomena today and try to work in conjunction with manufacturers to promote relevant architecture, sustainable building practices and creative urban solutions? Or is mass customization in danger to create homogenization of cities, repetition and complete disregard of local conditions and culture? Furthermore, will mass produced architecture become another object of consumption?

When we think about mass customization in contemporary society, we are usually referring to parts or components fitting a specific arrangement with very sophisticated features. But imagine that instead of ordering a “custom hybrid car” we could shop on line placing an order for an entire house, walking thru the building in a virtual space, choosing the layout, finishes, appliances, furniture and paying with our credit cards?

Prefab housing has been under development for decades and it is now gaining popularity because of its capacity to address urgent problems: reduction of construction waste by the efficient use of materials, rapid assembly time, factory controlled construction techniques, energy-efficient materials, flexible designs developed with advanced digital technologies, and even some sustainable features. Sophisticated minimalist designs have been developed by several companies nowadays in response to a young generation accustomed to high end design in their ipods, laptops and smart cars. What is most interesting about the design of contemporary prefab housing is the concept of living small and efficiently, a trend already started by the “smart car” for a generation of environmental-conscious customers.

Many companies are now operating internationally offering customized houses in response to a growing market demand. When ordering a house from “Weehouse”, it is now possible to choose from the siding colour to finishes and appliances. Other companies, such as LV homes are now offering kits with partial structures that can be completed and customized by the owners, a sort of “open end” design. Another interesting development is the microcompact home, a tiny micro compact home that can be used alone or inserted into a "tree" mega structure, made out of high steel poles arranged in a cylindrical formation around an open central shaft. The footprint on this concept is just 12m-sq, to allow the villages to be built among tall, mature trees, and the rooftop of each house becomes a deck for the one above it creating a green roof opportunity.
Although many current prefab projects seem underdeveloped and overpriced, they are opening a dialog and expanding the notions of what housing can or should be. Many discussions for architects are related to the meaning of architecture in contemporary society and the relevance of architectural practices in response to quickly shifting markets and globalization. Is architecture becoming a “good”, another consumption object, and a disposable element that can be ordered to fit? Or should architects embrace this trend and try to contribute with innovative designs to address issues of mass production, new digital and construction technologies, cultural diversity and sustainable practices? The dialog is now open for discussion.

User manufacturing: apoc, ponoko, fab@home

The relatively new and fascinating prospects of using mass customization in architectural practice seem to find their forerunner to the “user manufacturing” processes. New infrastructure is enabling consumers to become instant designers and manufacturers. User manufacturing is enabled by three basic technologies: (a) Easy-to-operate design software that allows users to transfer their ideas into a design format. (b) Design repositories where users upload, search, and share designs with other users. (c) Easy-to-access flexible manufacturing technology. New rapid manufacturing technologies ("fabbing") realize the process of translating any 3-D data files into physical products - in a desktop scale. Combining this technology with recent web technologies we arrive at a radical new way to provide customized products skipping the entire line of product development, central manufacturing and transporting. To define better this process of mass customization, three examples will be briefly examined.

1. 'a-poc'
'a-poc' is based upon miyake's design concept, a piece of cloth, is a unique suggestion for everyday life, which goes far beyond the boundaries of fashion.It is made using an industrial knitting or weaving machine programed by a computer. This process creates continuous tubes of fabric within which lie both shape and pattern.The customer cuts sleeves and skirts exactly to the length he wants. 'a-poc' is made in a sequence in which thread literally goes into a machine and re-emerges as a piece of clothing, an accessory, or even a chair. This interactive new method not only reduces leftover fabric, but also permits the wearers to participate in the final step of the design of their clothing: they determine the final shape of the product.
Mass production and custom-made clothing, seemingly opposing ideas, become compatible with each other through the wizardry of technology and the fire of imagination.

2. ponoko
For most companies, product design and development is a long process of trial and error, involving, among other things, in-house designers, committees, timed product releases, and, ultimately, customer feedback. Until a product sells, or if it doesn't sell, it takes up costly shelf space in either stores or warehouses.
But by letting individuals dream up, make, and then sell unique products on demand, Ponoko
is attempting to eliminate the product-development wing. Ultimately, it hopes to eliminate the need for a centralized manufacturing plant as well, by recruiting a large enough community of digital manufacturers--people scattered around the world who have 3-D printers, CNC routers, and laser cutters. Moving the site of production as close as possible to the point of purchase will reduce the need for long-distance shipping.

3. Fab@Home
Creativity is a uniquely human trait, but Lipson is driven by the idea of allowing machines to do design and manufacturing for us. Lipson has now created the fab-home machine for anyone to build for a cost of around 2000 euro. Pushing the boundaries beyond simple shapes, Lipson has made a working battery, an electrically-activated polymer muscle and a touch sensor by printing different layers of material. The possibilities are limited by what you can extrude from interchangeable cartridges - quick-hardening plastic is the favourite, but the machine can also handle and layer plaster, Play-Doh, silicone, wax and metals or mixtures with a low melting point such as solder (made of tin and lead). Some users have found chocolate, cheese and cake icing (which may also be used as a temporary soluble support material for hollow structures) rewarding too.

If you make a conventional part in manufacturing, you either machine away a block of material or form the part in a mould. And as any manufacturer will confirm, 'tooling up' is incredibly expensive. Rapid manufacturing techniques use digital data to make the part additively, laying down layers of material which do not need a mould.If these technologies take off, it may spark a new industrial revolution.
"In 1975, people were soldering together Altair 8800 computers - that's where RepRap and Fab@Home are now. The Apple II came out in 1977, the BBC Micro and IBM PC in 1981, and then the world was never the same," says Bowyer. "I think that within 10 years private individuals will be able to make for themselves virtually any manufactured product that is today sold by industry. I sometimes wonder if politicians realise that the entire basis of the human economy is about to undergo the biggest change since the invention of money."
In that case, fabbing won't just break the mould - it will throw it away entirely.

Personalized Medicine

Mass customization is the use of flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom output. Those systems combine the low unit costs of mass production processes with the flexibility of individual customization.

After the successful assembly of the human genome, five years ago, mass customization became possible in the medicine production also, that is personalized medicine. Personalized medicine refers to using information about a person's genetic makeup to tailor strategies for the detection, treatment, or prevention of disease. The human DNA code is a combination of 3 billion letters, this “instruction book” is 99,9% identical between two humans. This 0.1 percent holds clues to the variations among humans in susceptibility to disease. Its discovery sheds new light on the biological basis of disease, which in turn provides new targets for therapies and new options for prevention.

The first application of personalized medicine is Pharmacogenetics, which is the study of inter-individual variations in DNA sequence related to drug response. Science now allows researchers to predict the probability of a drug response based on a person's genetic makeup. It's about getting the right dose of the right drug to the right patient at the right time.

Apart from creating better medication choices and safer dosing options, personalized medicine can offer tests for genes involved in susceptibility to serious diseases, such as breast cancer. By 2010, it is likely that predictive genetic tests will be available for as many as a dozen common conditions, enabling individuals to take preventive steps to reduce their risks of developing disorders. Due to the continuing technological development it is likely that each of us will be able to have our genomes sequenced using microchip technology. That information can then be used to guide prescribing patterns and develop a lifelong plan of health maintenance customized to our unique genetic profiles.

Additionally, HP Labs has used its inkjet technology to make a micro-needle drug patch. These patches contain 400 cylindrical reservoirs connected to a micro-needle. This system is fuelled by a low-power battery and controlled by an embedded microchip that is programmed to heat up any given reservoir to deliver a specific drug. The array is scalable, and it can be designed to contain tens or even hundreds of reservoirs, depending on its intended therapeutic use. Moreover, the patches may be customized to the patient’s needs, or even tiny sensors embedded in a patch could detect when medication is needed and automatically deliver it.




http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19365/page2/
file:///C:/iaac%20works/digital%20tech/CA00078.htm
file:///C:/iaac%20works/digital%20tech/605_genomics.html
file:///C:/iaac%20works/digital%20tech/Personalized_medicine.htm
http://www.pwc.com/techforecast/pdfs/pharmaco-wb-x.pdf
http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/news/2007/03/72860
http://www.mlnm.com/about/personalized/index.asp

prefab housing in the digital age

The housing markets today are saturated with cheap affordable houses that are indistinguishable from each other. The idea of customizing your home to your particular needs or tastes does not go beyond the color of the exterior wall and the height of the hedges outside. Mass customisation in architecture, particularly housing, can currently be divided into four broad categories:

Mobile Home - Manufactured off-site, transported to the site in a largely completed state, minimal on-site labour.
Kit Home - Kit manufactured and packaged off-site assembled on-site.
Modular Home - Building designed using pre-existing modular products/systems, built on-site using modular/prefab components and "standard" materials.
Custom Home - Custom designed, custom-built on-site from "standard" materials, on-site labour-intensive.

However, mass customization of the prefab home is only now gaining momentum as a solution for housing in all markets.
Even though the prefabricated home has been around for a while it’s been slow to produce a popular home for the masses. After the Second World War there was a general effort to design, fabricate and sell homes as if they were automobiles. The Lustron home in the U.S. became a popular solution to housing with its aluminum house, and before that Matti Saarinen with his Futuro home, but their intention was plagued by high production costs and low demand. These were all moving in the same direction, but how customizable were these homes? How did they respond to their owners needs?

Recently, however, modern architects are experimenting more often with prefabrication as a means to deliver well-design and mass produced CUSTOM homes. Werner Aisslinger’s LOFTCUBE is basically a mobile home that is built off-site and later on transported and placed in any setting. Its exterior paneling is interchangeable, and there is a choice of different enclosures, and various distribution schemes. Its portability which relies on its cube shape, and size to be transported, is also the reason it is not as customizable for masses.
The Quon modular home however utilizes interchangeable spaces that connect to each other and can be arranged adapted to the owners needs. These modular cubes consisting of a living, bathroom, master bedroom, and kitchen are built off-site transported by truck and placed by crane in the desired configuration. The transportability of this house (fits into a average container) and its rapid production make it an innovative solution as a customized home. They do become homogenous after they are stack one beside the other.

In essence the idea of buying your home by parts is as customizable as you can get in the housing market, but the architects from System prove to take it one step beyond with their BURST house. Creating custom houses parting from a structural frame, cut on a CNC machine, transported to the site and assembled simply. Then applying the distinct configurations to allow sunlight and ventilation in, making the house environmentally passive. The façade of the house is designed to fit the owners tastes. In the end the house responds to a prefabricated construction system using cnc milling, responds to environmental concearns and is unique at the same time. This intention of a customizable home that meets today’s global requirements using todays technology gives an idea of the direction of the prefab home and its incursion into mass customization.

Web-site/web-house.

Web-site/web-house looks carefully at a very new issue in design which is called ‘mass-customization’: how can we make objects – in this case houses – that are designed as for an individual, but have the pricing of a mass-product? Generally the answers that are given to this question are purely of a technological nature. Web-site/web-house investigates new ways to use technology and mass-media. There is a strong political sense behind it: How can we deal with the forces of globalization (which are often forces of atomization and individualization) and re-organize them as positive and contributing to social fabric?”(Lars Spuybroek).

The issue of the “customer” (subject who personalizes a industrial product) was achieved thanks to “The Web of life” from Fritjof Capra (0), Ulrich Beck’s essays about “Individualization, Globalization and Politic” (1), Bart Lootsma’s “Synopse: Jenseits des Standards” (2) and “New subjectivity: architecture between Communication and Information” from Antonino Saggio (3). After studying contemporary research that have treated these issues – like Nox, Greg Lynn, Oosterhuis, RAMTV (4) – as well as the most interesting brands who already customize products through the web - such as Nike, Acumins, Levis (5) - the focus of the research was set: the goal is to connect people and to make the housing-process more comfortable, affordable and highly customizable.

The www is the best place for such a design. An abstract world where customers can operate, build and destroy, cluster, share, and most important, see what their actions cause to other people.

An endless space (6) in which the houses are thought of as a model, or clusters of a model, that the customers can personalize and transform like a living organism, until a state of equilibrium in the pattern before the industrial production.

Web-site is a virtual-atmospheric site to where people can cluster and create communities. The virtual site is intended as a tool that improves the communication between the designer and the customer.

Visiting the web-site, the customer selects the Web-house [house-model to personalize] from a catalogue referred to existing house-types. Then people can modify, playing the housing-machine interface, their own house-model based on a path [an organizational centre line that concentrates all activities along a spline and that builds the topological geometry and program above them].

Thus, the customers can connect to neighbor houses, making agencies and creating new typologies. Each house-model is thought as a whole living organism made of a web of relations between his parts.

Once a cluster of customers is done and the internal equilibrium [both programmatically and socially] is found-the models, and their relations, are frozen and the virtual whole is ready to transform in the real one.

The city Frankfurt (GE) is re-mapped selecting high identity areas where the cluster can look for the site to build between a range of free-sites proposed.

Once the site is individuated, the geometrical information is sent to the factory. Then, using C.A.M.- non-standard sandwich panels are manufactured. In order to reduce the milling cost, a re-modeling strategy [per repetitions in the forms] in each house and between different houses of the cluster is used. Thus optimizing the form without loosing information of its geometry.

All these strategies together [sharing site and space, co-manufacturing panels] decrease the cost, improve the relative budget of each customer and build the social relations between future neighbors.

In order to optimize the cost and stress the potential of the C.A.M. technology, we designed a special system of UHPC [Ultra High Performance Concrete] sandwich panels consisting in two structural skins [internal and external]. The shape of panel is structural and aesthetic at the same time.

Re-cycling. Finally, the design was put under stress checking the flexibility of each produced house. Since each house is unique [personalized and part of a social and topological cluster], the aim was to understand how the houses might be re-cycled. More precisely, how the houses and the clusters can transform if a crisis occurs [a dweller leaves or a house is transformed] and what happens to the cluster both geometrically and programmatically.

The results show some limits of the personalization process due to the extreme determinacy of the form. For instance, a “rapid” re-customization process is possible just if the old customer is similar to the new one, otherwise a geometrical transformation of the house [and of course the cluster] is needed.

Reference:

(0) Capra Fritjof, The web of life, Doubleday-Anchor Book, New York 1996

(1) http://www.archplus.net/archiv_ausgaben.php?show=158

(2) http://architettura.supereva.com/coffeebreak/20040718/index_en.htm

(3) Greg Lynn 1998-99, Embryological House, http://www.glform.com/
Nox 1999, Offtheroad_5speed, http://www.noxarch.com
Kas Oosterhuis 2002, Variomatic, http://www.oosterhuis.nl
RAMTV, 2002, Negotiate my boundary!, http://www.ramtv.org/

(4) NikeID, http://nikeid.nike.com/
Acumins spa, http://www.acumins.com

(5) Levi's, http://eu.levi.com/

(6) Hatje Cantz 2001, Frederick J. Kiesler Endless Space, Dieter Bogner and Peter Noever editors.

Abstracts List

Abstracts submitted until now:

12.11.07
G06: "Forms and Tectonics of Cellular Aggregation"
G12: "Collective intelligence in the process of real-time environment reprogramming"
G07: "Tradition Revised"
G10: "Clouds in the Bottles"
G18: "Zaha Hadid"
G01: "Rejecting Materiality: In-Forming Forms"
13.11.07
G03: "Mass Customization and the Prefab House"
G14: "The Abaqus Unified FEA application in the field of architecture and industrial design."
G05: "Nanotechnology and Architecture"
G02: "Advanced Design Processes"
G09: "Bio-materiality"
G15: "HYPERBODIES: Complex Adaptive Dynamic Multi-Agent Systems as Self-Sustainable Environments of Inhabitance."
G04: "Emergent Form"
G13: "Ubiquitius Computing"
G17: "Coherence and Chronology in Digital Design Manifestation"
14.11.2007
G08: "Scripting: Emergent Design Process"
15.11.2007
G16: "Digital Technologies's Implementation on Urbanism"
G11: "Tech is More? (UnStudio Design Models)"

_
The 3 groups missing should submit their abstract using the Form as soon as possible!
The submission order is the sequence that we will follow to discuss the papers next week.
_

BA3: List of Posts

The list of posts submitted to the BA3 assignment, will be published here. If there is any incorrection, please comment about it.


Deadline is Friday 16th.
As usual, labels should be "Your group Number" + "BA3: Mass-Customization / Non-Standardization" label, which is already created.
_