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

Nearly Trees?

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Artificial Trees-3.11

Nearly Trees?

Artificial Trees-3.10

NEC - Go to enter



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Artificial Trees-3.8

Greg Lynn's processes use complex natural morphologies and geometries to inform and mutate the architecture and spatial dynamic.



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Artificial Trees-3.7

The duality between natural and artificial is no longer useful to understand the way of producing knowledge in our world. Instead of this, Enric Ruiz Geli´s proposals hybridize both categories to generate a non-artificial but also non-natural tree by using digital tools. The aim is to reach the advantages of natural and artificial matter by scripting instead of using metaphor as an argument.

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Artificial Trees-3.6

Complex Systems are those in which you cannot understand the information of each component by having a look at the whole stuff because each part contains additional hidden information that cannot be understood at first sight. Adaptive ones are able to react just to fit if the initial conditions change, so that Complex Adaptive Systems seems to be a very nice choice to develop projects.

Artificial Trees-3.5

Create your own ‘Digital tree’ by typing our URL in the box exists in the link


‘Tree’ is a translation program that reads algorithm and turn it into an artificial tree.




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Artificial Trees-3.4

Toyo Ito’s work is Tod’s building at Aoyama, Japan uses tree translations. The building facades are the ‘Elm tree’ silhouettes as a metaphor reflection of the existing trees on well-known Omotesando Avenue where it locates.



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Artificial Trees-3.3

Shape is not only a matter of design but also the result of acquiring meaning and establishing suitable relationships between parameters to organize properly the information. In this sense, scripting means a very powerful way to generate shape.

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Artificial Trees-3.2

‘L-systems’ is a system of mathematics that allows botanists, mathematicians and other professionals to formulate an understanding of natural (and repeating) geometries. Through Mandelbrot natural thing contain a mathematical logic. This logic can be applied to creating digital trees, enhanced through computational processes. Could this approach be applied to architecture?

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performative architecture as complex geometry in 4d

There are several emergent phenomena that make some designers and artists think about responsive environments which leads to a dynamics design process and prevents architecture to be always static. One of them is certainly the introduction of complex geometries both in design and manufacture process. There is a shift in the design process towards environments that are in fact more than responsive. From the participatory society there seems to appear a growing demand for collaborative strategies in spatial organization.

"Performative architecture", as defined by Kas Oosterhuis is yet at an early stage of developement, but the concept itself brings in enormous possibilities. Those are for the complex geometries constantly evolving in 4d.

Kas Oosterhuis is developing the research on programmable buildings both in professional and academic carrer. ONL studio and Hyperbody Research Group work collaboratively on projects like Muscle NSA. The design was exhibited in Paris at "Non-standard architectures" exhibition at Centre Pompidou.

Muscle NSA is not just a responsive system, but a pro-active one. Kas Oosterhuis describes it as "the prototype for an environment that is slightly out of control", meaning, that the goal of the instalation is to develop a "individual character" of the Muscle. ONL programmed the Muscle in a way that it doesn't neccesearly answers to the changing conditions in the same manner. It is said to have a "will of it's own". The "will" is obtained by the use of E-motive scripts, which analyze not only the input from potential users but also output generated by itself. The script that drives the actual spatial behaviour is therefore informed in real time by two sources, thanks to which it becames a negotiation between the spatial behaviour of the users and predefined behaviours scripted into the Muscle.

The Aegis Hyposurface was designed by deCOi Architects and received the Feidad (Far Eastern International Digital Architectural Design) Award 2001. It is interactive, dynamically reconfigrable 3D screen reacts in real time to surrounding. The Prototype consist out of about 1000 of these metal tiles. They are moved by “telescopic fingers” which reach a speed up to 60 km/h. This project continues to research at MIT’s Media Lab, announce fully kinetic and environmentally responsive architectural surfaces, responding to changes in for example climate.

G12: Akriti Sood, Monika Szawioła, Michał Piasecki

Artificial Trees-3.1

Mandelbrot created mathematical equations to provide define seemingly complex and random natural geometries. Through computational processes to produce a larger scale of patterning, Architects using L-Systems aim to look beyond the boundaries of literal representation of trees.

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Artificial Trees-2.1

scripting__________ NEC__________Mandelbrot ______________






_______MVRDV_________







___________mathematical patterns_________________ toyo ito







___________________________Greg Lynn









complex adaptive systems ___________________digital trees








_____________artificial trees







_____________________________Eric Ruiz-Geli________

Complex Geometry: Theverymany

THOUGHTS ON COMPLEX GEOMETRY

The potentials of the human mind are unlimited.

They have been proved through the centuries by the progress we humans have made in science.

The time has come though, that one of mans creations can actually produce the complex calculations men would need centuries to carry out. Computer science has managed to bring non-Euclidian geometries close to each one of us, and to make their use a part of our everyday life.

And of course, the more our tools expand, the more our thought flies towards the unknown and incomprehensible.

That’s exactly the way complex mathematic sequences and calculations have entered the contemporary fields of architecture. The progress of computers has allowed us to approach forms that some years ago seemed unbelievable to design. We can now produce a form from algorithmic sequences and we can actually create them. The human mind and hand is now merely the coordinator of the whole process that is carried out through specialized software. Thus, architects are asked to think in a different way, always using their digital tools from the very beginning of the concept.

Were this process is going to lead, we don’t know. Is there an end to it all, we cannot answer. All we can do is to learn the tools as well as possible, so as to control them better on the one hand, and to be able to use their potentials on the other hand.

“combinational processes”

Putting different input in one code or even the same input at different times can give us totally different outcomes

The person who programs the whole thing is supposed to have the actual control of things, but not even him can imagine the whole range of results.

Of course it demands huge software power for these procedures to be carried out. As computation proceeds and becomes more complex, technology must follow-or vice versa.

With the increasing use of scripting and automated processes complex systems and analytical processes are possible. For instance at the ever many there are many examples of the ability to use comparative algorithms to produce systems that are similar to those found in nature or in theory ones that build on them selves to increase complexity while still referring to certain consistencies through out this provides for structural systems that no longer relies on individual members but all the members as a whole building onto themselves.

This we believe is not only the future of architecture but of complex systems in general. This will be seen in geometries, physics, mechanics and of course structural dynamics. This site is mostly an experimental system of working in which geometries and scripts are presented and offered to be improved upon and used theoretically.

G04 Erik Thorson / Georgia Voudouri / Nazli ILgit Yucel

References:

Theverymany: http://www.theverymany.net/

Reconstructivisim: http://www.reconstructivism.net/

Visual Complexity: http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/