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

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/

complex geometry - geometry of the void

A term “complex geometry” is usually treated as a developed, sophisticated and parametric system, useful in creating new objects. In architecture it is generally related to physical structures and used as a good design tool. However, much more stimulating can be perceiving the same geometry as a void around us. Changing stereotypic point of view and looking at the same things in a different way, not through matter but inmatter, not through mass but through space in between, can open new possibilities and bring us new experience.
It seems to be necessary to use the same geometric system to describe both mass and void. We have to treat matter as well as inmater as complex structure. As well in mathematics as in philosophy we can find a lot of proves that there is no difference between them. For instance, Paradox of Zenon brings us another point of view, claiming that we can’t be sure if anything like physical being exists. That is why we should think about a void exactly like about the physical objects. We are supposed to measure it, to divide it, to explore it in the same way as we usually do with places strictly arranged by matter.
It allows us to discover new spaces, generate any kind of geometry, play with the whole surrounding, and with all the natural sources. For example in the void we can try to find new spaces generated only by the sun and shadow, noise and silence, by different smells. The only anxiety for architecture is to amplify feeling of that kind of space; to characterize it and to describe it extremely precisely. In this kind of geometry it is very hard to define spaces for people without any deceive obstructions.
In this way void can offer much more complicated and complex geometry, to be arranged without using any physical barriers, pure geometry.

G10 - Agata Kycia, Magda Osinska, Krzysztof Gornicki

Some sites with philophy, maths and new architecture, which devolop this subject
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes
http://mathworld.wolfram.com
http://hipercroquis.wordpress.com/

BA1: Announcement

Welcome to all the groups whose articles are already posted in the blog! Let's encourage the other teams to post their works until tomorrow night!
See all of you next monday - 4pm.
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Complex Geometry: Reinventing the Paradigm

With ‘mobius house’(torus house) the use of complex terminology started, the research going on for decades and the constant flux of digital information continuously tries to reinvent the logic between architecture and geometry. For some time after venturi’s complexity & contradiction in architecture architects tried to establish an analogy between complexity in program and its manifestation into architectural form. The advent of digital technologies (cad-cam) supported the process. Lot of conceptual models developed (blobs etc.)New terminologies evolved eventually like kinetics, supple, pliant etc.
Some architects used this to produce functional concepts. A new aesthetic of digitally manufactured spaces can be seen today .however architect like koolhaas uses it rarely.

Is FOA’s Yokohama Port Terminal a complex geometry? Is it complex just because we are not used to this kind of surfaces? Will we still consider it complexity when we see it in 2050, when maybe we all will know how to manage this kind of geometry with the help of better computer software? Is it more complex than some Venturi’s buildings or OMA’s Universal project just because our difficulty on drawing it on a paper? Is Ben van Berkel’s Moebius House complex because of its geometry or because of its program? What is complexity in geometry? Does geometry’s complexity depend on our ignorance about new technologies? Aren’t more interesting the shapes that follow complex programs than the free surfaces that respond only to a free game?

Maybe we are in the middle of a process, but something is happen in the new proposals of architecture. The fight between architectural process and architectural easthetic (form), come by the creation of new materials, lenguage, software, etc… and this is a dilema that with the time we will know for the final answers. The complexity of the shape is not new and the programs of the buildings are changing with the new needs of the people. There is the true; the competitibity and the demanding world are creating this kind of development in design and technologies.

To finish this, we can’t forgot that the function and the concept of one project and the column of the architecture. And if in the process during the time we lost this, we will lost, in my way of think, the meaning of being architects

http://www.tumbletruss.com/
http://www-viz.tamu.edu/faculty/ergun/research/topology/papers.html
http://latentutopias.steirischerbst.at/
http://materialsystems.org/
http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/yokohamaipt/
http://www.nlarchitects.nl/main.htmhttp://www.unstudio.com/projects/year/2000-http://www.philipbeesleyarchitect.com/
http://www.f-u-r.de/
http://www.asymptote.net/
http://www.glform.com/
http://www.xefirotarch.com/
http://www.noxarch.com/
http://www.reiser-umemoto.com/
http://tareknaga.8m.com/
http://www.biothing.org/
www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/rsc/algo_arch.html
http://www.mh-portfolio.com/
http://www.urbanao.com/
http://www.i-mad.com/

computing complexity

“vertical structure is overrated … it’ s just an expeditious way for architects to calculate force, to just calculate it in reference to a vertical column… A building should communicate in a more dynamic way in order to react to the people moving within it.”[1]
Until now, architects have understood movement as the travel of a moving eye in space and architecture, in both its realization and its conception, has been understood as static, fixed, ideal and inert. In architecture motion, dynamics and flows are typically expressed through symbolic views of static forms. Buildings have been constructed as static forms, and architecture has been conceived and designed based on symmetry and immobility.

Digital evolution introduces a new design method, which affects the whole architectural process, from concept to construction. Now, space can be highly plastic, flexible, and mutable in its dynamic evolution through motion and transformation. Form can not only be defined by its internal parameters, but can be also effected by a variety of other fluctuating external, invisible forces and gradients (f.e. gravity, wind, turbulence, magnetism, moving particles) that are used as abstract analogies (pedestrian and automotive movement, environmental forces, intensities of use and occupation in time).
Greg Lynn FORM, is one of the first architectural offices that integrated the computer in its design process in an increasingly innovative manner and has produced projects that challenge traditional design methods. Computer programs are the tools to investigate the design through animations and the moving section, and to represent the project both in 2D and 3D.The office views the incorporation of state of the art hardware and software as a set of tools to investigate architectural performance within the framework of theories based on performance parameters that are only now being theorized in architecture.
“Organic design is not just a style” Lynn says. “Design, architecture and life will continue to become more and more biological, not merely biomorphic. I look forward to the software that lets us design not just the shape but also the growth and behaviour of animate matter. Designers and architects will continue to proliferate as there is more and more need for design, as we get access to more matter through genetic and biological innovations.”[2]


[1] http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/greg_lynn.shtml

[2] http://www.iconeye.com/articles/20070823_42

http://framework.v2.nl/archive/archive/node/text/.xslt/nodenr-128267

Interfacing Realities: Lecture by Greg Lynn

http://framework.v2.nl/archive/archive/node/text/.xslt/nodenr-128267

http://www.basilisk.com/G/GREG_LYNN_FORM_760.html

(image above: Greg Lynn Embriological Housing

http://www.digischool.nl/ckv2/ckv3/kunstentechniek/lynn/greglynn.htm)

Gaudi: Nature Complexity

In the middle of the industrial revolution when the steam engine was the driving force of the moment and the vehicle which made possible the greatest advances known to man, the idea of a computer was nothing of what we know today- perhaps the Chinese Abacus being the closest in definition. When the humanist ideals and the explosion of modernism facilitated by the emergence of standardization, Man made it clear that he had to dominate and be above the landscape. His creation was the greatest achievement and the landscape its canvas. Antoni Gaudi, an architect who might have been ahead of his time, looked at nature find inspiration. He was able to create complex geometry without the technology that we have available today. And he did it just by observing.

Gaudi constantly used nature as his main inspiration; we can see it in the structures, colors and rhythms. The comparisons with animals and vegetables, the constant movement of its shapes, are present in his mature works. He looked how nature defies gravity, study its nature; the shapes of the cove or a mountain, how animals build their shelter and how they structured society. His perceptions about details made him produce unique pieces in the History of Architecture.

In addition, Gaudi designed a method to analyze structures by a hanging model. He designed the Colonia Guell Church with this innovative technique. He integrated the parabolic arch and hyperboloid structures, nature's organic shapes, and the fluidity of water into his architecture. Gaudi designed many of his structures upside down by hanging various weights on interconnected strings or chains, using gravity to calculate catenaries for a natural curved arch or vault. Gaudi spent ten years working on studies for the design, and developing this new method of structural calculation. The outline of the church was traced on a wooden board (1:10 scale), which was then placed on the ceiling of a small house next to the work site.
References

Complex Geometries and our body

Architecture is inevitably concerning associations. Many of those associations are geometric in nature or body where we can find a geometric expression.As a result of the search in complex geometries we conclude that the human being is searching for this phenomenon naturally in the way that we live in a constant relationship with the most complex structure ever developed the human body.Architecture is a visual art in which we experience three dimensional spaces. The art of a building is foremost concerned with form and with dividing and articulating space. A building should express their uniqueness and bring order and relation to its surrounding environment. As an example of what we mean, the D-tower is an articulate hybrid of diverse media, where architecture is a fraction of a well-built interactive organism a perfect analogy of the human body. The building is designed by NOX, where standard and non-standard geometries together make up a complex surface (computer generated) this surface is very similar to a body part, a heart constitution.A house like the human body, occupies a space but with occupants and time it will become a place. The visual beauty includes lines, shapes, and colours. Colour is used to accentuate its form and the material it is made from, as well as distinguishing its divisions of space. Rooms which are shaped differently with different materials reflect different qualities. We express feelings from an architectural form or a specific aspect of architecture. The external features of architecture communicate feelings and moods from one place to another. Our emotional feelings toward where we live can be incorporated in our architecture interacting with the environment. The awareness of our bodies can be related to the place where we live. There is a comparison of our bodies to our home.

GROUPS

These are the groups created for the assignments. Please check if yours is in the list. If not, please send me an email as soon as possible!

G01 Maite Bravo / Javier Olmeda / Luis Odiaga
G02 Vasco Portugal / Francisca Aroso / Marcelo de la Riva
G03 Pete Booth / Javier Perez / Jurgen Weiss
G04 Erik Thorson / Georgia Voudouri / Nazli LLgit Yucel
G05 Diego Camaro / Ki Hoon / Bianny Jasmin Poueriet
G06 Jordi Roses / Advait Potnis /Rafael Gutierrez
G07 Eugenio Adame / Mariana PAz / Rodrigo Avila
G08 Annie Goyal / Renu Gupta / Uday Ranjan Goswami
G09 Alessio Carta / Vagia Pandou / Krystian Kwiecinski
G10 Agata Kycia / Magda Osinska / Krzysztof Gomicki
G11 Asaduzzaman Rassel / Ramon Velazquez / Maria Papaloizou
G12 Monika Szawiola / Akriti Sood / Michal Piasecki
G13 Andrea Katsavra / Maria Eftychi / Higinio Llames
G14 Hermant Purohit / Dorota Kabala / Alex Harris
G15 Ben Howard / Eduardo Mayo / Peerabong Suntinanond
G16 Evangelia Vlachopoulou / Ismini Koronidi / Giorgos Machairas
G17 Rohan Khurana / Gabriel / Verrena Volger / Vikrant Sharma
G18 Stefania Sini / Michele Congiu / Anastasia Fragkoudi / Gabriele Pileri
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Note: After sending me the names of the persons in the group, an email will be sent to you informing that you are allowed to publish in the blog. Eventually you will have to sign-up for a google account (free) with your email and a selected password. Then, by log-in into the blog's address, you may publish and edit your posts. Good posting!

Complex Geometries, Different Technologies

Complex geometries in architecture may seem like an invention of the digital age, but for many years architects have been designing and constructing buildings that contain significant complex elements. Gaudi’s Sagrada Familiar demonstrates that complex forms could be created as early as 1882. Utzon’s world heritage listed Sydney Opera House, 1957 – 1973, is one of the most significant examples of organic architecture before the use of computers. Gehry’s Vitra Design Museum in 1990 eluded to the fluid forms that he wanted to create, but was unable calculate or realise, even with the very basic computational resources available to architects at the time.

As more developed countries become more capable of using complex geometries as an effective way to produce built structures. Developing countries are finding it harder to produce and reap the benefits of CAD and CAM technologies, due to the overall difficulty to adapt culturally to relying on machines and fear of the high costs these types of strategies can imply. An example of how this type of technology was mixed with a manual fabrication of space was with a student at IAAC drawing countless number of plans to be able to produce a design made digitally (center images, Contemporary Urban- Chris Lee Architects).
A catalyst of this type of technology would greatly benefit the social housing and customization of the built environment in either poverty stricken areas or even refugee camps. The Instant House proves to be an interesting take on the ongoing problem of housing in a limited time frame. Its use of prefabricated elements mixed with digitally modified and fabricated ones; make it a good example of the direction where this type of technology could be utilized in the third world.

In many ways, architecture as it enters the 21th Century, stands at a cusp. The development of new technologies of design and construction combined with the introduction of revolutionary new building materials means that many of the utopic dreams of the mid-20th Century dismissed then as fantasies can now be realised. Architects can design, and build, ever more complex forms, new typologies of buildings, radical structures.
In the last years, we can see the new buildings which are built by architects like NOX, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Herzog de Meuron which show us the next step of architecture. Now we can see the first future visions which are designed make such a big step into the future. The most of them are just in the moment only concepts which are published in the internet, but we can be sure some of them will be built.

links........
New territories, Welcome to the future, Building ideas, Fluent bodies, fluent times, fluent places, Omnispace,