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.

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

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

New materials/New technologies

Collage of mergent materials

On the verge of an environmental catastrophe, we are struggling to find ways to alter what we have caused by our habits. The impact caused by an uncountable number of acts made by the working habits of our profession, tend to directly deteriorate the environment, this occurring either due to the direct application of conventional materials or to indirect use in the production or transportation of these materials. In direct response to this issues, a great range of professionals have turned their eyes towards construction and architecture, in order to apply numerous inventions and the latest technologies right in the design phase, so their appliance can be directly reflected in the final product without having to be more expensive or more complicated than traditional materials.

Reciprocally, architects and designers find themselves with the eager need to look for new materials and appliances to solve the complexity of their designs which become the result of the use of new tools, and new needs, that conventional materials, can not, or will not solve in a satisfactory way, in hand with the appliance of new technologies to bring them alive. In the other hand, economic, environmental and social costs make this search more urgent and pressing to us.

Materials tend to evolve in all sorts of ways, basically, they deal with almost any imaginable way with designs, and they can be classified if this is possible in the next way:

-Materials which come from recycled materials
-Materials which come from natural renewable materials
-Materials which replace conventional materials
-Materials applied from other uses to construction
-Materials which interact with the user/environment/external influences
-Energy saving/Energy producing/Energy efficient materials
-Intelligent Materials

In the past century, architects have been witnesses to the changes that are happening in the world, mainly in matters of culture, globalization and technology. Sustainability is a big word nowadays and people from different professions are joining together on a common modus operandi to find a system of living that guarantees that the present society does not use more resources than it needs in order to not jeopardize the resources of the future generation.

If Auguste Perret was considered a pioneer in using concrete for architectural structures in the late 1800’s, maybe an architect using nanotechnology for building skins today will be considered a genius in the future.
The technological developments of recent decades are having a fundamental effect on the conditions for the production of architecture. They influence the way in which architecture is conceived and implemented.

Already known materials can be used in many different ways too if the digital era is incorporated to them.

New ways of using materials have opened a whole new world of possibilities. There is an example with the brick used by Gramazio & Kohler, in their projects, they combine an old and very well known material with a new designed method called "The Programmed Wall", where bricks are laid out in a predefined grid and are merely rotated around their centre points. There is a gap of two centimeters between each brick. The rotation of the stones allows them to control the width of these gaps, as well as applying a pattern over the whole of the façade, which constantly changes in appearance under the influence of the sunlight.

From the web page by Gramazio &Kohler

Additive fabrication in its simplest way could be described as three-dimensional printing. This particular fabrication technique produces no waste, since all materials are deposited where they are needed, making way to new technologies which can work along traditional building materials, making them more efficient in various ways.

From the web page by Gramazio &Kohler

In the end, the point is, there is a vast space for investigation and we don’t know for certain what new materials might be found and to what use they can be applied, so we find ourselves in the need of constant research, and interdisciplinary communication, in order to be able to apply, consider or even suggest new materials and new technological applications which can be directly used in our designs.

How has Gehry’s architecture evolved in the IAC building?

IAC Building, Frank Ghery, NYC.

http://www.arcspace.com/camera/mayer/ica/ica.html

As we all know, Frank Ghery is on of those architects who makes the most out of experimenting with new technologies, models and 3d fabrication as well as 1:1 models of façade sections, and mockups. In this way, we are able to say that his buildings are in the edge of exploiting technology in order to explore new materials, new shapes and more complex structural solutions. Gehry is so into digital technologies that he owns a company called “Gehry Technologies”, http://www.gehrytechnologies.com/index.html, devoted to the production, solution and execution of Ghery’s projects, as well as anybody else’s.

The tilted position of the columns make of this building a breakthrough in the design of Ghery’s buildings. In the beginning Ghery’s proposals where only about the evolvement façade, this is a complete evolution since the internal structure responds to the external shape, the unusual shape of the skeleton was solved by the use of reinforced concrete. It became more than merely a scenic façade. What makes this building more interesting, is that all the formal part of the design, became a result of a number of plastic studies, many created directly through the help of technology, which evolved into a structural façade that would have been much more expensive and very hard to solve without the help of these technologies, making the geometry, very complex, every panel in the façade was resolved in a different size.