Reinventing Materiality in Augmented Modular Modeling System

Image shows the internal hardware and a full assembled Glume Module

Glume explores a unique area of augmented building materials by combining a discrete internal structure with a soft and organic material quality to relax the rigidity of structure and form in previous tangible building block approaches.

Glume is envisioned as a tool for constructing and manipulating models, visualizations and simulations of organically based three dimensional data sets.
The Glume system consists of soft and translucent augmented modules, which communicate capacitively to their neighbors to determine a network topology and are responsive to human touch.
An individual Glume module consists of six silicone bulbs connected to a central ‘nucleus’ containing a custom PCB and a 3.8v 1.5mAh lithium polymer battery. The silicone skin of each bulb has been cast in Smooth-On® Sorta-Clear 40, a translucent silicone rubber. The hollow castings were made from molds modeled in Autocad and then ‘printed’ using a 3D starch printer. The bulbs are embedded with Softee® Protein Styling Hairgel chosen for its optical clarity and conductive characteristics. The combination of the thin silicone shell and the embedded gel provides the tactile effect that each bulb will retain the shape as sculpted in place by the user.
Glume occupies a unique space among digitally augmented building materials.Its a tangible 3D modeling and visualization medium, based on translucent soft silicone modules, which provides display and data manipulation capabilities by combining an internal digitally discrete structure with soft material affordances.

Monika Szawioła, Akriti Sood, Michał Piasecki

Rejecting Materiality [compounding Virtuality with Artificiality: VACH proposal]

The definition of what senses are, due to the differing understandings of what a sense is, can not be well defined. Nevertheless, can be said that a sense is a faculty to by which out-side stimuli are perceived. This is the nervous system codifying all the information perceived by the so-called senses in electrical-chemical impulses and sends this electrical-chemical information to the brain, which decodifies this information through a process called transduction. In this moment our consciousness —and the whole body — just believes in what the brain is decoding, if there is mixed or missing information (Mental disorder, drugs, etc) our consciousness just understands it as correct and keeps going on. Only in extreme situations the brain decides to shutdown the system and then becomes a faint. Taking advantage of this consciousness-confidence on brain’s decodings is possible to hack the perception bringing up on-will real illusions.

For instance, Let’s take the so-called sense of the sight for this proposal. In order to have information about the depth and of course the location of objects in the surrounding space, sight is a compound of two images which are overlapped by the brain, which in turn gives to our perception just a constructed image with depth information. So what is there and what is not, is more about what the brain decodes as reality than the reality in it-self.

Now, let’s take three interesting matters into this idea of hacking the perception to develop the proposal which in fact is a compound of ideas. First let’s take the example of the immaterial museum developed by AMID, please go to the link or check the Verb Natures Boogazine of ACTAR, second the Materialization of Virtual reality and at last but not a least the Physical materialization of artificial environments.

...:::Virtual Materialization:::...

Virtual Reality is getting more real than ever. It’s not a thing of the future, or only available at a few laboratories. In the digital architecture world, virtual reality is pushing the boundaries of what is space and how we perceive it. Through simulation and immersion, we can feel a sense of actually being within a virtually constructed space.

Videogames are a good example in which we can actually feel for a moment that we are in a specific space, be it a sports stadium or through the streets of the archifamous San Andreas (Grand Theft Auto). In a way, we feel immersed.

One of the most powerful advantages of this is the possibility of not having to construct physically a building, for as long as it is available in a virtual environment, and as long as people can interact with it, the experience is achieved, at least partially. Architecture is moving towards this kind of practice made possible by digital technologies. Nowadays we can explore space and our relation to it without any physical or economic constraints, as long as we have the means to do it.

Virtual reality is changing the ways with which we approach the design and building processes. For example, Arup Acoustics, a company that offers acoustic consulting services since 1980, has deviced the SoundLab. It’s a small room where one can experience the acoustic characteristics of any space, built or unbuilt. With the SoundLab we can have a 3D auralitazion of a space, the equivalent of a 3D visual rendering. The impact of this is seen clearly in the way in which clients and designers now can incorporate these acoustical considerations in the early stages of the process. It reinforces the need for particular shape or material, providing the designer more freedom to experiment with complex geometries and materials. It takes the virtual reality to the next level, it’s the making real of the virtual.

...:::Artificial Materialization (also media interaction):::...

Virtual environments redefine the traditional conception of space references, working with a self referential and elusive presence defined by media interaction.

The interface of complex systems in digital architecture can be explained at three levels: ambiance, story and metaphor.

Ambiance is achieved in an artificial black volume, a non existing space, an artificial organism with a controlled climatic stage. It provides the user with sophisticated communication tools to have a fluid experience and includes the design of navigation systems to facilitate orientation, visual, tactile and auditory sensors, gps, radio antennas, microphones, etc.

The story is usually based on models of perceptions, cognition and behavior of human experience. This structured experience provides the user with the capacity to shape their experiences and spaces in a multi modal interactive environment (touch, movement, sound, light, etc).

Metaphor is the structure of the experiential journey. The metaphoric and conceptual foundation for the creation of virtual environments is usually based on the relationship man-physical object environment. The methodology of design interface using virtual symbolic images usually represents recognizable functional, representative and symbolic environments.

The virtual systems of creating artificial ambiances require a deep understanding of the invisible architectural experiences available to be constructed in the realm of fantasy. The creation of unpredictable impermanent architecture using digital technology reformulates the complex systems of perception to be explored in human experience.

..:::Proposal:::...

Imagine that when the user goes into the building —which can no longer be called building, let’s call it the Virtual-Artificial-Computer Hybrid. VACH from now on— The user gets a pair of glasses and a patch connected to the VACH,—the immaterial building project only proposes the patch connection— so the VACH and the user are connected interchanging information of location, temperature, heartbeats, what is the user watching, the height of the user, who is near the user, mini-GPS, etc. ,—much more further will be the implant of a micro-chip directly to the brain and connect this brain with the city not just with a single VACH—

Now, coordinated by the VACH the user receives on one eye the actual artificial environment while the other eye receives the virtual reality; this will become in a compound image of a real-virtual, artificial-hypernatural, reality. So the VACH will be allowed to give extra information of the reality, and also the artificial environment will be allowed to be incomplete—in a way— because the VACH will found the way to complete the perception-reality of the user using a combination of the real and the un-real. The boundaries between the real and the virtual will be so blured that the (re)materialization of the architecture will be a reject of the materializacion to acomplish a compound between the Virtuality with the Reality. Finally the VACH will ask the user..."(to) show you the world in my eyes"

[GO TO:Maite Bravo blog]
[GO TO:Javier Raya blog]
[GO TO:Luis Odiaga blog]

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.

POWER GLASS-light and electricity

The ideas of sustainability, self-sufficiency and energy saving are nowadays in the basic vocabulary of current architectural production world-wide. However, one of the greatest problems architects face when using photovoltaic panels is the formation of building facades, as the specific form of these extremely useful elements affects radically the design process. The launching of new materials gives way to the better integration of sustainability and energy saving in everyday architecture. One good example is Power Glass, produced by XsunX, which makes it possible to manufacture windows that generate electricity and still allow 70 percent of light to pass through.

Power Glass is made using amorphous silicon, the non-crystalline form of silicon that can be deposited in a very thin film and remains flexible. If we are going to compare the non-crystalline silicon and the crystalline silicon we see that the crystalline silicon used in conventional solar cells is a thousand times thicker, requiring more silicon. And crystalline silicon must be deposited on a rigid substrate that can withstand high manufacturing temperatures. The applications of amorphous silicon thus far have been primarily in liquid-crystal displays and thin-film transistors; its photovoltaic applications have been limited by its relatively low power-producing efficiency compared to crystalline silicon.

XsunX company is using a cassette system that allows high-volume production of thin films with low risk of contamination. Solar cells are applied in a thin layer - about 0.2 microns thick - onto large rolls of supporting material. The process happens at 150 °C, low enough to use plastic or polyester substrate. Multiple cassettes or film are processed simultaneously and the result is rolls of photovoltaic film. The flexible film is then applied, like low-e coating, to the surface of a multi-plane window. The film allows edge-to-edge coverage. This system makes the entire window an active energy conversation area.

Of course there are other materials that are aiming to perform the same function, like Scheuten Solar’s product. This product is consisting of opaque solar cells in glazing, separated by clear spaces, but it is resulted in visible mosaic or stripes, actually changing the way light enters the building. Power Glass- on the other hand- looks more like tinted solar glass, without a pattern. It blocks 30 percent of the incoming light, uniformly across the window opening.

What encourages Power Glass to fly economically is that it doesn’t only look like a tinted glass, but it works like one and at the same time produces electricity. The primary electrical energy cost of a large building is air-conditioning (A/C) and lighting. Using Power Glass to transform 4-5 % of the solar energy into electricity instead of using conventional tinted glass, the lighting and the A/C load decreases. So the annual energy consumption in a building that would normally be huge is much smaller having Power Glass performing both functions.

Links:

http://www.xsunx.com/advanced-celldesign.htm

http://www.hollandtrade.com/vko/zoeken/showbouwsteen.asp?bstnum=1464

http://www.scheutensolarsystems.nl/

Biotech and new materiality

We have been through the Age of Electricity, the Machine Age, the Space Age and the Information Age. We continue to celebrate and salivate over the digital tools and the new materials that other have developed for us, but nothing has prepared us for the fundamental changes that are emerging around us. Our age is an age of molecular manipulation, where entirely new form of life are being designed and created. Old distinction between natural and artificial are not longer certain.
Our is an age where we are able to alter the fundamental properties of matter to create an entirely new class of material and devises that are designed at the molecular, and ever subatomic level. This is where nanotechnology intersect with bioengineering, in a field known nanobiotechnology. Some materials, such us polymer scaffolds, provide a porous infrastructure for growing living tissue. Such material and devise introduce fresh possibilities for thinking about the bodily integration of architecture, and they posit exiting opportunities r thinking about architecture as a new form of life.
However, the most immediate evidence of the impact nanotechnology will have on our architecture and our cities, is furnished by the material product that are currently being developed for application.

The Technicolor Brain

The new biotechnologies are being applied in many fields of research. Researchers in Harvard are using illuminating neurons with nearly 100 different colors so as to manage map the human brain. Such a map could help scientists understand not only the early development of the human brain but also some diseases such as autism and schizophrenia.

Saving Memories

Stem-cell transplants have been used so as to improve the injured memory of mice. This can be helpful at illnesses such as Alzheimer's.

Decoding the Human Eye

Artificial retinas that approximate the normal human vision are now in research. These can later be used so as to help blind patients and eventually this kind of technology can be used to send visual information down the optic nerve. Moreover an artificial cornea could be a more effective treatment for the eye damage.

A Better Artificial Skin

Skin cells genetically engineered so as to be resistant to bacteria can not only reduce the likeliness of inflections, but also improve the survival chances among burnt victims.

Brain Cells Fused with Computer Chip

European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together. The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.

First complete DNA transplant

After cloning and mutations scientists have transformed a bacteria species into another species. It was done by transplanting a complete set of DNA of a bacteria species and gives a possibility for constructing synthetic life in the coming future.


http://www.yeadon.net/yeadon/support/projects/0511/Year2050.pdf
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/6
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/35

What might these advancements be, and where will they lead us? What are the future material, techniques, and devices that will yield new forms of architecture and new urban environment?

reinventing materiality with augmented skins

Performative architecture understood as responsive systems demands a departure from traditional notion of material towards an augmented composite.
The responsive environments usually consists of a skin able to react to different conditions, both from surroundings and from virtual environment. This type of environment might be called an augmented one, because it is a physical one, upgraded with a system capable of computation, which is a direct connection to virtual. The skin therefore needs to consist of resizable structure and actuators.
One of the examples of augmented skin design might be a HybGrid, a project by Sylvia Felipe and Jordi Truco, done at Emergent Technologies Program at Architectural Association. HybGrid is “a layered grid-shell with uniform grid layout made from elastic members becomes globally defined through local manipulations of actuators that regulate the distance between the members of the layered lattices”.
The Hybgrid uses the logic of “elastic deformation”. This kind of deformation is present in natural structures. It enables the adaptivity potential while the strength of the structure, driven by the continuity of the material remains in place. The logic is obtained by composing elastic fiber-composites with actuators. The fiber-composites are arranged into two-layer, prefabricated strips, which contain a certain amount of inertia. The actuators, placed between the layers, provide connection of the skin to the especially dedicated software. Therefore they augment the skin by providing constant possibility for reshaping it.
The form-finding process of HybGrid is a continuous in 4d one, like other examples that we describe underneath. What make it quite specific is that it is a fully predesigned one and that the interaction with the user can only occur via the interface. There are no sensors that can trigger the actuators to perform a certain action, like in a Muscle NSA for example, where the interaction is possible in two ways: not only via software interface but also via performance in the physical.

The Aegis Hyposurface is an art/architecture tool that connecting information systems with the form to produce dynamically surfaces. Aegis is perhaps the world's first such dynamic screen. The Junction would be the first permanent site for a Hyposurface that is already in development for exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Paris from December to March 2003.This project has a potential to translate into form different medium- a digital input (keyboard, movement sensor) can give any psyhical output (a wave) In this Aegis has potential beyond that of a screen to being a fully 'architectural' (social, physical) interface, where activity (sound, movement, light etc) translates into form. It’s a curtain of steel mesh mounted on computer-controlled pistons. Through Aegis digital systems are extended into social space creating the potential for an architecture of reciprocity, reacting to and with the activity of people. One finds oneself, and others, within the architecture. The project was designed to show events that are happening inside the theater. The collaborative effort between dECOi, RMIT’s Burry, and leading researchers in solid geometry and electronics.
A user interface will permit the operating system to be used directly by The Junction. This will allow The Junction to use the Hyposurface in a variety of different ways - as an Internet-activated screen linked to a web cam, as a sound-board to the nightclub events, as a drawing-board for aspiring graphicists.
The Aegis Hyposurface is a huge sketchpad ,it is a 3-dimensional absorptive medium that allows all manner of graphic and sketching. The artists of the new medium will be the physical bodies of The Junction mingling with the distant minds of the Internet.

Monika Szawioła, Akriti Sood, Michał Piasecki

BA2: (Re)Inventing Materiality - ETFE (Tefzel): Beijing & beyond

Skin or structure? What is so remarkable about the use of EFTE (Tefzel) in the Beijing Olympics Swimming Stadium (the Watercube) by Arups and Australian Architects Peddle Thorp Walker (PTW), is the ability of the material to act as a primary structural element, lightweight skin, green material, fire resistant and remain faithful to the design intent all at the same time.

Contemporary architectural material expression could be seen as a homogenisation of surface and structure, all folding together. The play of materiality seen in the work of late post modernist architects that separated skin & structure, wall and roof, has generally disappeared. The challenge for EFTE is to act in all of the above and adapt for variations on the building (there are 7 variations of bubble forms), including as a roof without change in material or appearance (and to withstand snow loads).

Using the metaphor of the soap bubble structure (explored originally by Frei Otto and rediscovered by Irish Professors of Physics at Trinity College, Weaire and Phelan) the building consists of an inflated cavity structure of bubbles 3.6m thick into a space frame structure 177m x 1771m x 31m high. The skin is inflated, such that the tensile strength of the bubble enables it to resist the loads on the building. Previously EFTE has been used in nuclear power plants, space technology & underwater, but owing to its translucent appearance and high strength (10x stronger than other fluropolymers) was the appropriate choice for Beijing.

2-4mm thick sheets of EFTE is ‘tailored’ like clothing to the bubble profile (possibly computer controlled laser cut which would give this material great potential for non standard geometry applications), inflated and continually kept under pressure to keep the bubble shape. The material has excellent insulative properties, the ability to resist temperature extremes (considering China has a temperature of -30C in winter) and readily admits daylight, so that it saves on both lighting (55% saving) and heating (30% saving) requirements. Nothing in the company websites comments on the environmental impact of the material manufacture.

BA2: (Re)Inventing Materiality

BA2 was launched yesterday. All the groups have to submit a post on the dualistic theme of "(re)inventing materiality", until the 2nd of November (Friday). Remember that labels for the post are "BA2: (re)inventing materiality" + "your group number".

RESEARCH PAPER: Abstract - 13th of November

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RESEARCH PAPER

1. Description

Today, current state of digital technologies demonstrate that computers can interfere in almost all aspects/dimensions of the architectural discipline. As a result, there's a wide variety of topics that can be studied from the point of view of the digital, in fields like:
• design processes;
• construction and fabrication;
• sustainability;
• material development;
• monographic studies;
• building practices;
• architectural theory;
• design themes; - (...)

In this context, the completion of the Seminar is achieved by writing an original research paper on a specific theme, related with the integration of digital technologies in architecture. This final work consists in an opportunity to develop a more in-depth research on a specific subject that might interest you as a group. Each paper should make evidence about the particular interference of digital technologies in the selected research topic. Historical references, case-studies research, comparitive analysis, specialists' opinions, direct contact with the sources... are some of the procedures/techniques that you should follow to address and frame your essay.

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2. Presentation

This essay should have a length of 3000 words (without counting bibliographic references, footnotes, etc), and must be conveniently illustrated with images. The development of this work must be presented to the instructor, who will discuss with you its evolution.

Until the 5th of November, each group must submitt in the blog an abstract of their paper, by filling the online form. This abstract will be reviewed to help the further development of the full paper.

For the final review, you will submit your paper in 2 ways:

• full version as a written document, following the formatting guidelines;

• short version as an illustrated post in the blog, that will serve as the basis for a 5 minute group presentation to the class, in the review day.

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3. Calendar

• October, 22

_CLASS: Introduction to the Research Paper Work

• November, 2 (friday)

_CLASS: Discussion with the groups

• November, 11

_DEADLINE: Submission of Abstracts

• November, 19

_CLASS: Discussion with the groups

• December, 3

_CLASS: Discussion with the groups

• December,17

_FINAL REVIEW

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BA2: (Re)Inventing Materiality - ETFE (Tefzel): Beijing & beyond

Computing in digital architecture

Computing has revolutionized architecture, raising deep philosophical issues that are forcing a paradigm shift in the profession. Computers enable interactive design and analysis, giving designers immediate feed back on the spatial configurations. Computer technology is the latest step in this progression, adding ‘virtuality’ as another dimension to the architect's drawings. Further, computers initiate the development of extraordinarily complex building systems, expanding the possibilities to building interface. Technological advances have helped to manifest these explorations in ever-increasing fidelity, adding dimensions and influencing the way in which the design process is conducted.

Design as a process requires not just the conception and development of design ideas at an individual level, but also the more important aspect of communication and effective expression. Computing has developed a domain where in such reproduction can be made extremely precise or rather ‘super’ precise (beyond reality). CAD tools are increasing their expressive and geometric power to enable a design process in which the computer model can be used throughout the whole design process for realizing the design.

The computer-aided design of buildings is concerned with the creation of three-dimensional objects in space. Two-dimensional drawings are inadequate in fully conveying the conceptual ideas of spatial arrangements. 3-D physical models and virtual prototypes at various scales and levels are important which allow spatial experience and analysis.

Relying on computer generating techniques, we can also obtain multiple architectural manifestations in terms of form, space, structure and materials. Parametric design hence continues to optimize performance of architecture within a more expansive social-economic system. For architectural design, in a time when standard geometric forms almost have been used up by masters, the emergency of computer generating techniques enhance the architects' creative imagination ability and expedite the design process.


The “Kunsthaus Graz” designed by Peter Cook and Colin Fournier, characterized geometrically by its blob-like form is a non-Euclidean object such that cannot be designed and represented by means of conventional plans, sections and elevations. The form of the building has more to do with the ‘strength of the inevitable’, than with aesthetic rhetoric. The development of the form did not arise out of the definition of algorithms and computational methods that automate the generation of architectural form alone, but automated generative approach was the direction for its moving. 3-D models were generated for different aspects such as structure, cladding systems, ventilation and development of the material. The development of an enclosure without recognizable roofs, walls and floors depended on the manipulation of digital 3-D surfaces. The Kunsthaus Graz was designed through a process of deformation of a digital model of a sphere.

Just as with the sketches, physical models are vehicles for developing and assessing design proposals. The role of physical modeling is significant in the evolution of design and as a medium of human interaction. Digital technology has reached a level of embeddedness in architecture at which it is possible and feasible for designers to express design intentions directly without being distracted from the project.

BA1:List of Posts

Here is the list of the posts related to the BA1 assignment, published until now (Saturday, 20) in the blog. If there is any incorrection, please comment about it.

G01: "Dynamic & Flux of Edios"
G02: "Complex Geometries and Our Body"
G03: "Complex Geometries, Different Technologies"
G04: "Complex Geometry: TheVeryMany"
G05: "Gaudi: Nature Complexity"
G06: "Complex Geometry: Reinventing the Paradigm"
G07: "How has Gehry’s Architecture Evolved in the IAC Building?"
G08: missing
G09: "Swarm Intelligence / Architecture"
G10: "Complex Geometry – Geometry of the Void"
G11: "Variable Dynamic Spaces"
G12: "Performative Architecture as Complex Geometry in 4D"
G13: "Computing Complexity"
G14: "Complex Geometry, Algorithmic Computation, and Neri Oxman"
G15: "Artifitial Trees"
G16: >> There is no title <<
G17: "The form of the inFORmation age"
G18: "The New Museum of Nuragic and Contemporary Art"
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swarm intelligence/architecture

Swarm Intelligence

Swarm Intelligence (SI) is an Artificial Intelligence technique involving the study of collective behaviour in decentralized systems.

Such systems are made up by a population of simple agents interacting locally with one other and with their environment. Although there is typically no centralized control dictating the behaviour of the agents, local interactions among the agents often cause a global pattern to emerge. Examples of systems like this can be found in nature, including ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, honey bees, bacteria, and many more.

In contrast to the top-down organization that characterizes many human endeavors, many social species achieve their communal goals using a purely bottom-up approach with no central command-and-control structure.

Swarm technology is proving useful in a wide range of applications including robotics and nanotechnology, molecular biology and medicine, traffic and crowd control, military tactics, and even interactive art. (Particle Swarm Optimization and Ant Colony Optimization)

SI models have many features in common with Evolutionary Algorithms.

The algorithm

Craig Reynolds first compiled the classic flocking algorithm in 1986 in a project simulating the way that birds and other flocking, herding, and schooling animals behave. He called his computer- simulated agents Boids-a contraction of birds and droids. The basic flocking model consists of three simple steering behaviors which describe how an individual boid maneuvers based on the positions and velocities its nearby flockmates:

separation diagram - separation: steer to avoid crowding local flockmates

alignment diagram - alignment: steer towards the average heading of local flockmates

cohesion diagram - cohesion: steer to move toward the average position of local flockmates

Swarm Architecture

The complexity in our cities is the human interaction, this can be related with the interaction of thousands of different species in the nature. Swarm architecture feeds on data derived from social transactions. Swarm architecture is a true transarchitecture since it builds new transaction spaces, which are at the same time emotive, transactive, interactive and collaborative.

When we look at an urban environment from the point of view of Swarm Architecture we no longer see isolated objects, instead we see objects which have a relation with each other. Swarm-based urban planning is an intriguing and very dynamic design game. It is really challenging for the designer to find the rules that generate excitement in the cities.

http://www.red3d.com/cwr/

http://www.swarmintelligence.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_intelligence

http://www.sce.carleton.ca/netmanage/tony/swarm.html

http://www.terraswarm.com/traffic_primer/bpp/index.html

http://www.vergenet.net/~conrad/boids/

http://interactivearchitectures.blogspot.com/2007/07/emergent-forms-self-organizing.html

http://www.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=407c2973-51f6-4d55-8c7f-99e60e1f818a&lang=en

G09 Alessio Carta / Vagia Pandou / Krystian Kwiecinski

The FORM of the inFORMation age.

Complex Geometries and forms have always been a part of the living world. As we moved ahead generation by generation technology and its use in our lives grew stronger, from birth to death and even in design methods and techniques.

The information age has taken over and brought along various challenges. From conceptualising to modelling, and then developing and constructing them has its own levels of difficulty. But the breed of architecture of digitally driven processes and fabrication gives birth to highly dynamic transformations, geometries and structures.

New possibilities in computing technology are gradually advancing the architectural planning process. Boldly curving, graceful and futuristic buildings, such as Frank O. Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, or Bernhard Franken’s BMW Bubble for the IAA 1999 were regarded until recently as unrealizable. The planning process as well as production of
these freely – formed bodies demand from all involved a new approach to working one that departs radically from the old-on-stone production method.

The innovations start at the design process. Frank O. Gehry saw his forms first produced as traditional handmade models, which were then digitized by 3D scan; thus the computer-supported planning process began for Gehry after considering the form. Bernhard Franken, the architect for the BMW Bubble, 1999, and the BMW Dynaform for the IAA 2001, first produced on initial geometry using a computer-controlled design method which determined the final form for the entire building. He then used software uncommon to the architectural field, to assist in the design. The digital workflow not only redefined the working method of the planning team but also gave a new interpretation to the rolls of the architects and engineers.

To conclude, complex geometries and dynaform were and are a part of our past and future and their transition through time is the most remarkable feature of their existence.

Complex Geometry, Algorithmic Computation, and Neri Oxman

A leading idea of experimental architecture, and possibly a future characteristic of the field, is the idea of agent based modelling. This is the dynamic computed demonstration of actions, such as human habits or traffic patterns. Projects, evolving from such mapping, can be seen as a systematic whole from multiple perspectives, and a pattern of relationships can be developed based upon the model or program created by the architect. Custom made digital machines are being created to follow parametric design in a more precise and dynamic fashion.

Where precision and objectivity formlise fluidity in form, and enable collating (scanning), computing and creating (physically) data, digital media also allow for editing options and mutations in the evolution process itself. In this respect, where modernism reflected on the idea of refusing superficiality, digital technologies facilitate inclusion of every modifying parameter, hence ushering in a new paradigm of design more complex and yet accurate. Recent overlaps & cross overs in modes of knowledge, aim to derive new meanings from composite understandings, hence expanding the domain of digital technology.

A culmination of ideologies in architecture can lead to programs which demonstrate the true complexity of a project’s situation in an aesthetically pleasing manifestation. Writing individual scripts with respect to a project, instead of using a program for every project, creates individual solutions, most of which result in a fluid, complex geometric result.

Examples of this type of work can be seen with Neri Oxman (MIT), mentioned in the Neal Leach lecture from October 11th. Much of her work with materialecology demonstrates the idea of using algorithms and computer programs to progress the idea of architecture.




Links
http://www.materialecology.com/
http://www.smartgeometry.org/
http://span.vox.com/library/posts/tags/conference/
http://www.fab.fh-wiesbaden.de/index.php?id=120
http://www.community-intelligence.com/blogs/public/

Complexity in geometry can be discovered in nature, human body, music, as well as in architecture. Though it is assumed that complex architectural structures are a result of last century’s technological evolution , complex manifolds have also been used formerly. Gaudi, was forming complex geometry structures in Sagrada Familia 100 years ago . Another example of non computer aided yet complex design, was Philips Co Pavillion designed by Iannis Xenakis and Le Corbusier, for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.

In October 1956 Le Corbusier's sketches for the pavillion were entrusted to Iannis Xenakis, who was charged to translate them through mathematics. At the time Xenakis was working in his musical composition “Metastasis” which itself was strongly influenced by Le Corbusier's proportional scale arising out of the Fibonacci series and its association with the golden section.He transformed the graphical musical sketches of Metastasis into architectural schemes for designing the shape of Philips Pavilion .He made this through techniques, often exalted by the use of the computer, that associated the graphic construction (to compose as in writing a score) with the sonorous performance (to compose as in producing a sonorous result).The structure was a series of conjoined hyperbolic parabaloids-curved planes mathematically generated entirely from straight lines. The development of this idea into architectural form passed through a compositional process in which it is difficult to say if the mathematical structure precedes or proceeds from the architectural image.

“With the aid of electronic computers the composer becomes a sort of pilot ... sailing in the space of sound, across sonic constellations and galaxies ..." Iannis Xenakis

We can say that this is a unique compositional event which signifies that at the basis of some architectural events - perhaps those celebrating most the process of transformation of an idea from pure abstraction to factual object - were those concepts whose development is possible through the intervention of the mathematics because:

“... some relationships between music and architecture are very easy to intuit in a confused way, delicate to specify and to define, and it is not impossible to have doubts about them, because what is aesthetic is uncertain. But they seemed to me resounding. It is clear that music and architecture are both arts that don't need to imitate things; they are arts in which matter and form have relate more intimately than anywhere else; one and the other address general sensibility. Both admit repetition, an omnipotent tool; both apply to the physical effects of size and intensity, by means of which they can astonish the senses and the mind, even to annihilation. Finally, their respective nature permits an abundance of combinations and regular developments that connect or compare them with geometry and analysis.”

Xenakis's final statement at the end of his long and detailed discussion of the Philips Pavilion is:

“For the time being only cement lies at the origin of the new architecture. It prepares the bed in which the plastic materials of tomorrow will form a river rich in forms and volumes, figures that are found not only in the biological entities but above all in the most abstract mathematics.”

The New Museum of Nuragic and Contemporary Art

The project that we have decided to choose is the “Nuragic and Contemporary Art Museum”, a building that displays a complex geometrical form, typical of Zaha Hadid’s architecture.

The new museum is like a coralline concretion, empty inside, hard and porous in the external surface, able to accommodate, in a continuous osmotic exchange with the external atmosphere, all the cultural activities in a lively and changing environment.

The building reconfigures an entire stretch of the seafront at Cagliari. The plastic nature of the new museum represents a mark of regeneration for the landscape of the gulf of Cagliari. With the interweaving of its sinuous built elements expresses the desire to found the new Museum on the interaction between the exhibits (related to Nuragic and contemporary art) and the movement of the users-visitors.

The circulation of the visitors models the internal space; that erosion forms a great cavity inside the building and articulates the volume in a succession of open space for exhibition, place of aggregation and occasion for installation of contemporary art.

The flows of the circulation, the contemporary and Nuragic exhibition and the public path crossing the building, create the fluid structure of the volume, allowing a variety of uses and configurations. The vertical and oblique elements of circulation create also zones of interference and turbulence, that form a visual continuity between the different part of the building.

Such spaces, visible from a variety of viewpoints, display the perceptive and the aesthetic dialogue between the contemporary and the Nuragic art. The inner cavity allows the genesis of two continuous skins, one contained within the other: the “external skin” of the facade system and the “inner skin”, which is equipped with a flexible serial system of anchorage and electrification, that can support surfaces/walls for installations or video projections

Artificial Trees-3.11

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Artificial Trees-3.11

Nearly Trees?