AIR
Architecture Design Studio: Air ABPL30048
Zheng Angela Li 514486
BMW Welt
Architect: Coop Himmelb(l)au
Introduction Who am I?
My name is Angela, third year Environment student study architecture. I have a Chinese bachground origin, and I came to Australia since I was in the age of fifteen. Probably starting from that time, I sort of determined my future field of study. I was very amazed when looking at fascinating buildings. However, when I really got into University of Melbourne, I just realised how diffcult it could be. The spatial experience was far more touchable to me than what I used to expecting from this displine. Uni life is not easy, and I hope everybody could have a wonderful time in the final year.
1.0 Architecture as a discourse
1.1 Precedents
Son- O-House Son en Breugel, the Netherland Architect: NOX
Right Interior view of the completed pavilion framing and skin
Bottom The analogue computing process with bent/twisted paper models of pathways
Son-O-House, NOX’s project for building a recreational and educational pavilion is in Son en Breugel, the Netherlands. The project is dedicated as one of the most successful cases in exploring the digital design and fabrication techniques. What is interesting was that the conceptual design and analogue processes intertwined so closely. According to Ander Chaszar, the revolution brought from this case study was a kind of ‘material computation’ which can offer the designers an alternative gateway to ‘emergent behavior’ and ‘evolutionary forms’ Designers were inspired to focus on the visitors’ movement paths and modeled with paper strips twisted and slitted forming various configuration. The development of such concept required the consideration on spatial volume which covered by those ‘path’ strips. The geometric skin was thus generated by digital tools with both mathematical and physical calculations, such as the bending and surface tension forces exerted on outer materials. The analogue analysis was achieved through modeling and displaying the magnitude of bending movements in various rib elements.
These highly craft- oriented approaches are now being discussed under the rubric of ‘emergence’. When it comes to constructing the pavilion, architects collaborated with engineers with the aid of computing information and depicted the profiles of those intersecting ribs as located them precisely in the final framework. Manipulation of the project’s components in digital presentation form is very beneficial in both precision and ability to capture and convey detailed information.
Blobwall SCI-Arc Gallery Los Angeles, California, Architect: Greg Lynn
Blobwall, a modular system, which is made from a lightweight
Up Part of the vector drawing file produced by digital model showing the arrangement of ribs, profils and joists
Left Rendered digital model of the pavilion
honeycomb material, and was built up by four hundred large recyclable plastic ‘blobs’ which the design was for a single brick. The way that Greg Lynn and his students prepared, programmed and finally assembled was quiet impressive. First of all, preparing files for each brick and transferring into brick geometry into a Maya animation file, and then exported those data into rhino files. Additionally, using algorithm to determine and program a tool path in order to instruct a robotic arm and generated CNC code for cutting of bricks with a 6-axis robot.
The designer Greg Lynn was famous for his approach on computeraided design to produce irregular, biomorphic architectural forms resulting from integration of calculus into architectural theory. FORM has experimented with five initial prototype shapes, including the igloo, s-curve and u-curve, and the possibilities within these shapes are also highly variable. Each of the ‘Blob’ units is custom-shaped using a 3D robotic arm developed by the Los Angeles firm Machineous which creates individual, tri-lobed, hollow forms. 1. We began with Maya 3D polygon surfaces + Rhino NURBS brick file.
2.The NURBS brick was imported into Maya, then repositioned accordingly.
3. Each individual brick was exported and repositioned back to Rhino.