STUDIO AIR 2016, SEMESTER 1, Finnian Warnock Jintao Huo, 634015
Table of Contents Introduction   Part A Conceptualisation  
A.1. Design futuring A.2. Design Computation A.3. Composition/Generation A.4. Conclusion A.5. Learning outcomes A.6. Appendix - Algorithmic Sketches
Introduction My name is Jintao Huo, I am a third year architecture student. I come from China and choose this major because my family is working on civil works, this makes me choosing a major which is related to building. From my personal understanding, digital architecture is using computer as a tool in order to assist us to design. The word digital means that all data we created is number or symbol in computer, we use these numbers and symbols to build complex building projects in computer before we build them in real world. For the convenience of design process, few softwares are invented, like SketchUp, Revit and Rhino. I am not very good at computer tools, I used SketchUp before, but it is not enough for now. Rhino and grasshopper are the main tools that we need to learn in this semester, Rhino is a more complex and useful tool, people use this tool commonly in their design works. So it is important for us to use it well. However, the tasks need to be done in semester ae not easy, I will work hard and try to work out some good designs.
A.1 Design Futuring I want to analysis design futuring from two different aspects. Firstly, future design should be able to relate to sustainability. Sustainability is hot spot word in recent year, because of the bad condition of environment and human’s requirements, more people are asking designer to design more sustainable houses.1 Secondly, from economic aspect, people don’t want to waste their money, if designer can design their house basic
on their old ones, it will be much cheaper. Comparing to other aspects of design futuring like science fiction, I prefer these two aspects more, because they are real in our world.
BanQ Restaurant: Dan Gallagher 2008, Boston
FIG.1 Interior space of BanQ with blue light
BanQ restaurant1 in Boston which is designed by Dan Gallagher is one of my favorite sustainable design. The main material used for this restaurant is wood, curve wood boards are placed one above another and created waves. The first impression of this restaurant for me is natural. It is correct that creating nature doesn’t mean sustainability, but when we walk into a building it gives a fantastic natural feeling, it makes people feel like they are stay in forest or sea, the information carries out by this building is sustainable. This could be seem as one way to achieve sustainability. Dan Gallagher creates such a natural space by using wood, the columns with different sizes made by wood boards are standing inside space , when people eat here, they feel like they are having a camping in forest. However, when we look at the housetop, a different feeling is created by the waves. Waves all have a smooth pattern which is created by the different heights. The pattern of wave gives people an illusion, people might think the waves are moving, it completely lets us feel
FIG.2 Interior space of BanQ with yellow light
that we are sit under sea. When we open blue lights, this feeling is much strong. Furthermore, if we have an overall view of whole space, we will find that Dan creates a grotto, too. The pattern of wave and columns look like stalactite in grotto. When the air is wet inside building, we will have a strong feeling that we are stay in a grotto. As a conclusion, BanQ Restaurant creates three different natural environments by using its amazing design. People could swap the environment by changing light or view. This gives me an inspiration of how to achieve sustainability by using design. People always talk about sustainability of future design, this building gives me a brand new method to achieve sustainability rather than jut putting plants into building. This could be an important method for future design.
Red Diamond: Chiasmus Partners, 2008, Beijing
There are many old buildings around us, they are still good to use but not good to fit into the environment around or the function of these buildings are no longer useful. What should we do with these buildings? Should we just destroy them and build new buildings? Red Diamond in Beijing which is designed by Chiasmus Partners gives good answers for these questions. Red diamond was a former factory before, but now people don’t need it anymore. Normally, people will remove it and re-build a new one. But Chiasmus Partners change it from an old former factory to a new fashion dance center and theatre.
FIG. 3 Old building
The transformation is not that complex, Chiasmus Partners covers the exterior of the existing building with a faceted shell made of evenly-spaced steel tubing. Many parts of the original building are remained in place like the front door, this tells others about the history of this building.2 The interior space of Red Diamond is reshaped to a dance center with performance hall, a practice hall and a saloon. (FIG. 5) The area in front of Red diamond is used as an open space and a bar is located in front of this open area.
FIG. 4 front view of Red diamond
This project shows a possible result for future design when we meet old buildings. Comparing to remove the old one, we can reshape it and let it become the one we want. Due to the WW2 and economic development after war, there were many buildings built, but now most of them are replaced by new buildings, it is a kind of waste. In the future, we are facing more old buildings, we can screen the good ones and reshape them from both appearance and inner space arrangement. This will absolutely bring economic advantages and historical values. FIG. 5 Interior view of Red Diamond
A.2 Design Computation Design computation is the most effective way to encourage design for all designers since 21th century. Why people would like to use computer? Issa (2010) says: “Computer, by their nature, are superb analytical engines. If correctly programmed, they can follow a line of reasoning to its logical conclusion. They will never tired, never make silly arithmetical mistakes, and will gladly search through and correlate facts buried in the endless heaps of information they can store. They will do all that quickly and repeatedly, by following a set of instructions called a program, which tells them in minute detail how to manipulate the electrical impulses in their circuits. They can present the results of these manipulations in the form most suitable for human comprehension – even in dynamically changing images and sounds.”3 But the lack of computer is obvious, it is weak at creative abilities and intuition. Therefore, it is a tool which is used to represent and liberate designers’ creative ability in an effective way. However, the development of computation has three different phases. We are currently experiencing the third phase after “Folding” and
“Non-Standard”. In this phase, it is “more easily accommodated the recognition of computational processes and the emerging technologies of materialization.” (Oxman, Rivka and Robert Oxman 2014) Furthermore, as the main part of design computation and this semester’s study, parametric design should be described. It is emerged from late in post-Folding phase. It is a brand new form of digital design thinking. Oxman and Rivka (2014) say: “parametric design thinking focuses upon a logic of associative and dependency relationship between objects and their parts-and- whole relationships.”4 In this part, I want to describe two precedents from two different aspects. Firstly, computer helps to break through the limitation vision like the form of building, many amazing buildings are designed. Secondly, computer is also smart at many aspects like physics acoustics and surrounding environment. It helps designer to achieve their design target much easier.
Museo Soumaya: Fernando Romero, 2011, Mexico City
Museo Soumaya which is designed by Fermando Romero locates at Mexico City. It is a good example to show how computer tools are used to break through the limitation of building form. Museo Soumaya rises up 150 feet, it is encased in glimmering aluminum. The façade is covered by a skin which is consisted by 16000 hexagonal tiles of mirrored steel, they are used to reflect sunlight. The structure is top-heavy, almost threatening to tip itself over. Both big ends are connected by a slender middle part, this creates a graceful curve. 5
FIG.6 The facade of Museo Soumaya from front view
Computer tools play a very important role in designing this building. The cure’s angle is tested thousands times in order to get the best. This cure should be able to support the top part and make sure that all hexagonal tiles are laid on a flat surface. It is also need to create an acceptable cure angle which must create good inner space for people to use. Concluding all these requirements, it is impossible to do all the calculation by human brain. However, computer tools are used to do all these calculation for human. As mentioned before, basic on computer’s nature, they will not make mistakes on calculations, even the calculation is huge in this project, but computers are doing well. We are also able to change the data we want in order to see the outcome. These outcomes we have tested provide the final and the best one for us to use. That is what design computation brings to us.
FIG.7 The facade of Museo Soumaya from back view
FIG.8 Close view of hexagonal tile
As a conclusion, design computation allows us to do those designs which people can only dream about before. The ability of calculation and accuracy of computer helps us to make a model in computer before we start to build it in real world. The computer tools release the burden of designer and help them to design those buildings with irregular forms.
Guangzhou Opera House: Zaha Hadid,2010, Guangzhou
Guangzhou Opera House locates in Guangzhou, it is designed by Zaha Hadid. The house sits in perfect harmony with its riverside location. Its unique twin-boulder design enhances the city by opening it to the Pearl River. The form of this building is designed logically. In the opera room (FIG 10), the sound could be maximized by the building. Therefore, it is hard to match the outside façade and function of inner space, but Guangzhou Opera House works well at this. It has a fashion and irregular form but at same time, its inner rooms satisfy their functions (opera room is an example).6 Again, computer tools helps designer to calculate data from many aspects, it is not just the parameter of the façade or form but also included the acoustics, these elements affect the final form of design. Therefore, from my understanding, computer helps us to find the balance between the function of inner spaces and the form of the building.
FIG. 9 Exterior view of Guangzhou Opera House
One more thing that computer helps us about is marching surrounding environment and design today. Accounting to Kalay, “architecture design is an activity that deals, in equal measures, with externally imposed constraints (e.g. site conditions, climate, functionality, cost, building codes, and so forth) and the internally drawn inspirations.” Computer helps us with most elements from the list, it is why we encourge to use design computation. FIG.10 Interior view of Guangzhou Opera House
FIG.11 Exterior view of Guangzhou Opera House in night
A.3 Composition/ Generation Currently, architecture is experiencing the shift from composition to generation. It leads a huge change of architectural process and brings both advantages and disadvantages to architecture. Before all, the definition of composition and generation are needed to describe. Composition means the traditional way of architecture design, architects design their projects include thinking, modelling, sketching, manually. Generation is a new way of design, it means the computational way of designing. The form of design is generated by a number of data, the outcomes will be created basic on these data and the designer choose the most appropriate one to use. Comparing these two deign methods, many differences are obvious. I would like to say, both methods have their own advantages and shortcomings, so it is hard to say which one is better, but tend to generation is unstoppable, so I would like to have a brief and critical discussion about generation.
The concepts about “computerization” and “computation” are needed to explain. “Most architects now use computers, but usually to simply digitize existing procedures with entities or processes that are preconceived in the mind of design” this mode is named computerization.7 However, computation is different. Sean Ahlquist and Achim Menges say: “computation is the processing of information and interactions between elements which constitute a specific environment; it provides a framework for negotiating the influencing, with the capacity to generate complex, order, form and structure.” Whatever, the generation here is more about computation.8 No one has question that generation brings huge benefits to design, but we all still in the development period of design computation, therefore the immature points are obvious, too. I will discuss two projects in this week to show some shortcomings in computational design.
Heydar Aliyev Center: Zaha Hadid, 2013, Baku
FIG.12 Exterior view of Heydar Aliyev Center including plaza
Heydar Aliyev Center which is designed by Zaha Hadid locates at Baku the capital city of Azerbaijan. It is one of the master work of Zaha Hadid and also the most important landmark of Baku. The basic concept of this design is fluidity, the designer wants the idea of continuation runs through whole project including both interior and exterior. The connection between interior and exterior is also related to continuation, this creates a strong feeling of fluidity. The appearance of this project shows fluidity absolutely. Whole appearance looks like flowing water and gives feeling of moving. The interior space uses the concrete structure combined with space
frame system is used to achieve large-scale column-free spaces, this allows users feel fluidity inside the building.9 However, the computation is used a lot in this project. The most obvious part is the building skin. For the target of achieving continuation, a board range of different functions, construction logics and technical systems had to be brought together to create the envelope. Computation allows the continuous control and communication of these complexities among the numerous project participants. No matter how well computation works in this project, the shortcomings that computation brings to this project is obvi-
ous, too. Brady says: “architects are increasingly experimenting with computation to simulate building performance, to incorporate performance analysis and knowledge about material, tectonics and parameters of production machinery in their design drawing.” The word “increasingly” shows the ability of showing performance by computer is immature. The analyzing of performance relies on human intellect, computation can’t do these things independently. Even, the new computational tools will work better, but it is still a shortcoming in current period.
FIG.13 Exterior view of Heydar Aliyev Center
Furthermore, the computation tool works weak to analysis surrounding environment from large scale, it is also weak to combine design target and traditional culture. From the picture (FIG.14), a feeling of unharmonious comes to me. Even the designer works well on fit this building to surrounding environment by creating the plaza, but if we look from a bigger scale, this building is strange, it looks like a UFO stands on rye. Another problem of combination of local culture is obvious, too. Because computation has no appreciation of beauty and understanding of local culture, all it does is following the logic of design tool, therefore the outcome might be strange. So, it always need human intellect to make some changes in order to let people feeling acceptable.
FIG.14 Exterior view of project from city scale
Subdivision Columns: Michael Hansmeyer, 2010
FIG. 15 Four orignal colums of subdivision
Michael Hansmeyer’s Subdivision Columns is another example that I want to use. These columns are productions of computational design process rather than designing them directly. Columns are combined by permutation and permutation could be created by changing parameter. This project could be seem as one of the representations of generation. Furthermore, this project shows that design computation has no limitation, the outcomes are unexpected, but sometimes they really surprise us, like the columns. The most interesting point of generation for me is that it creates something that we can’t even dream about, that gives infinite possibilities for our design.10 However, this project successes at fabrication of the model. But this gives me a question, is it easy or possible to fabricate all algorithm designs? The answer is no. Basic on current technology of material right now, many algorithm designs can’t be fabricated. Our computer doesn’t consider about the material very
much, it only follows the logics and create something through logics. So the outcome might be out of human knowledge, therefore the fabrication could be seen as a shortcoming of generation. There is no question that these columns are beautiful, their form and texture give us infinite reveries. But it is real art? From my understanding, my answer is no. What art is? Art is something that created by human and carried human emotion or will. Computer is not human, it has no emotion and will. All outcomes only created by data and logics of process. As a conclusion, generation can’t really help us to create real art according to culture, this could be said as another shortcoming.
FIG.16 Subdivision coloums exhibitation
FIG.17 Detail texture of columns
A.4 Conclusion As a conclusion of Part A. There are mainly three parts are discussed: design futuring, design computation and composition/generation. In the part of design futuring, two possible future designs are discussed. One of them is the design about sustainability. We all know that sustainability will be the main concept the in future, BanQ restaurant helps us have a brief understanding of one aspect of sustainability. The Red Diamond shows us another kind of future design, it shows how we reshape the old building to a new one. It gives us an economic way of design which is very useful. In the part of design computation, two projects are described to show how computation assists us at many ways. Museo Soumaya shows that computer can help us with the complex calculations and simulation. Guangzhou Opera House shows that computation could not only help us at appearance but also interior design, like acoustics. In the part of compotation/generation, two projects are selected to show what the shortcomings of generation. Heydar Aliyev Center shows that computation is not that strong at working on building performance. It is also weak at combining design and surrounding environment from large scale. Subdivision Columns shows that computation works follow by computational logics, it has no idea about human culture and emotion, therefore, the outcomes can’t be called as “real art”
A.5 Learning outcome Before I started this subject, even I already designed many times at computer, I thought that is computation, but after I have the understanding of computation, I find that the designs I learnt before can only be called “computerization�. However, the algorithmic thinking I learnt in last few weeks reshapes my understanding and my process of design. But, computation is not 100%, if we know the shortcomings of it, we might can do something to overcome them, this is what I get from the topic Composition/Generation. We are going to future, therefore the understanding of tends of future design is another point that I get from learning of these weeks.
A.6 Appendix- Algorithmic Sketches
I would like to choose this example is because, it is the box form of a Mobius circle. It shows that same geometry can be reformed to many different shapes in order to get unexpected outcomes.
Similar to last example, this time I reform the Mobius circle to straight line form and once again create box to the divided points. It shows that similar method could get different outcomes if the basic geometries are different.
Reference 1, Fry, Tony (2008). Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice (Oxford: Berg), pp. 1–16 2, Dezeen Magazine, “Red Diamond by Chiasmus Partners” ,2009 < http://www. dezeen.com/2009/10/26/red-diamond-by-chiasmus-partners/> 3, Issa, Rajaa ‘Essential Mathematics for Computational Design’, Second Edition, Robert McNeel and associates, pp 1 4, Oxman, Rivka and Robert Oxman, eds (2014). Theories of the Digital in Architecture (London; New York: Routledge), pp. 3 5, Dezeen Magazine, “Museo soumaya by Free fernando romero enterprise”, 2011 < http:// www.dezeen.com/2011/04/28/museo-soumaya-by-free-fernando-romero-enterprise/> 6,Dezeen Magazine, “Guangzhou Opera House by Zaha Hadid Architects”, 2011 < http:// www.dezeen.com/2011/02/25/guangzhou-opera-house-by-zaha-hadid-architects/> 7, Peters, Brady. (2013) ‘Computation Works: The Building of Algorithmic Thought’, Architectural Design, 83, 2, pp. 08-15 8, Sean Ahlquist and Achim Menges, Computation Design Thinking, John Wieley & Sons (Chichester), 2011 9, Archdaily, “Heydar Aliyev Center / Zaha Hadid Architects”, 2013 < http://www. archdaily.com/448774/heydar-aliyev-center-zaha-hadid-architects> 10, Hansmeyer Michael. “Subdivided Columns - A New Order”, 2010 < http:// www.michael-hansmeyer.com/projects/columns_info.html>
Image Reference 1-2 , John Horner, 2009, “BanQ / Office dA”, Photograph, viewed 01/08/2015, < http://www.archdaily.com/42581/banq-office-da> 3-5, Jenny Hung, 2009, “Red Diamond by Chiasmus Partners”, Photograph, viewed 01/08/2015, < http://www.dezeen.com/2009/10/26/red-diamond-by-chiasmus-partners/> 6-8, Unknown, 2011, “Museo soumaya by Free fernando romero enterprise”, Photograph, viewed 07/08/2015, < http://www.dezeen.com/2011/04/28/museo-soumaya-by-free-fernando-romero-enterprise/> 9-11, Unnknown, 2011, “Guangzhou Opera House by Zaha Hadid Architects”, Photograph, viewed 07/08/2015, < http://www.dezeen.com/2011/02/25/guangzhou-opera-house-by-zaha-hadid-architects/> 12-14, Hufton and Crow, 2013, “Heydar Aliyev Center / Zaha Hadid Architects”, Photograph, viewed 13/08/2015, < http://www.archdaily.com/448774/heydar-aliyev-center-zaha-hadid-architects> 15-17, Hansmeyer Michael, 2010, “Subdivided Columns - A New Order”, Photograph, viewed 13/08/2015, < http://www.michael-hansmeyer.com/projects/columns_info.html>