STUDIO AIR SEMESTER 1, 2015 ANNA PETROU
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CONTENTS 5 INTRODUCTION 5 ABOUT ME 7 PART A: CONCEPTUALISATION 8 DESIGN FUTURING 15 DESIGN COMPUTATION 21 COMPOSITION/ GENERATION 27 CONCLUSION 27 LEARNING OUTCOMES 29 APPENDIX: ALGORITHMIC SKETCHES 31 IMAGE SOURCES 31 REFERENCES
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INTRODUCTION
ABOUT ME My name is Anna Petrou and I am in my final year of my Bachelor of Environments with a major in Architecture. My interests lay primarily in digital design and fabrication as a result of a very enjoyable semester doing Virtual Environments in first year. I have found in my years at Melbourne University that my most exciting and successful designs result from integrating a strong compositional concept with extensive experimentation. I have always enjoyed translating these formative ideas into digital and analoque images for presentation and the pride you feel when you see your ideas resolved into a coherent presentation. My most rewarding design experience was in first year when I learnt to use Rhino in Virtual Environments to design and build a dynamic, wearable sculpture intended to express personal space. This particular design got a lot of interest online, garnering over 130 thousand notes since I originally posted it on my personal blog. This experience gave me a lot of confidence in my abilities as a designer and has taught me the importance of designing with confidence and commitment.
fig 1: VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS DYNAMIC SCULPTURE
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“It is necessary to unlearn space in order to embody space. It is necessary to unlearn how we see in order to see with our bodies. It is necessary to unlearn knowledge of our body in three dimensions in order to recover the real dimensionality of our body.� -Olafur Eliasson
PART A: CONCEPTUALISATION
FigS3-5. ONE WAY COLOUR TUNNEL BY OLAFUR ELIASSON
DESIGN FUTURING
ONE WAY COLOUR TUNNEL BY OLAFUR ELIASSON 2007 Eliasson’s One War Colour Tunnel, an installation designed as part of an exhibition entitled “Take Your Time”, is a formal arrangement of light and space which creates an immersive experience for the viewer which evokes a visceral and emotional response.1 The exhibition was made 1 Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson (2015) <http://www.mca.com.au/collection/ exhibition/528-take-your-time-olafureliasson/ > [accessed 4 March 2015].
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up of various immersive spaces and sculptures, a style typical of Eliasson. Eliasson’s work relies on a similar draw as that of natural phenomena. Eliasson’s Weather Project (2003) was a transformation of a large room in the Tate London into a sunset. This aspect of biomimicry - although highly abstracted - is reminiscent of the contemporary mood in design. Nature is increasingly referenced by designers of everything from buildings to paper cups. We are realising that
nature can teach us many thing about how to design practical and environmentally positive object, but we often forget how nature can move and inspire us. Eliasson reminds us of this. In Eliassonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s projects we see the emotional potential possible in architecture. Eliasson works with many of the elements important in architectural design - space, form, light, structure, composition. I often think that modern architecture lacks an emotional dimension and a sense of fun. One Way Colour Tunnel is an example of how fun can be elegantly incorporated
into a building. Eliasson presents us with new possibilities in how we think about architecture. His innovations - although used in the name of art - could be applied to modern buildings and contribute to a new language of architecture.
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LOUIS KAHN’S NATIONAL ASSEMBLY BUILDING Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Building in Dhaka, built 1962-75, is an effortless synthesis of various architectural traditions which forms a completely new vocabulary of architecture. By the 1960s, Modernism was the prevailing design tradition, but this meant it was being critiqued by leading architects. It seems that Kahn, albeit unwittingly, was one of these critics. The concept of the International Style which was a central tenet of Modernism didn’t allow for patriotism or reference to historic precedent. In many projects Kahn was able to synthesise the Rationalist aspects of Modernism with references to traditional architecture and nationalist sentiment. This can be interpreted as early Post-Modernism. The National Assembly Building embodies an idealised view of government and institution in a post-colonial Asia where each country is trying to reestablish a national identity. The building is strikingly monumental, conveying a sense of the strength and importance of the new government. The planning reflects Kahn’s concepts of order and rationalism, but also makes reference to eastern spiritualism. The plan is reminiscent of a cosmic diagram but also in its circularity reminds us of Mughal architecture. Kahn draws from the monumentality of Mughal tombs and reinterprets it to convey a certain stability and strength in the form. The relevance of this, of
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course, is that Bangladesh is a Muslim nation possinly descended from the Mughal empire. The structural rationalism of the building adds to its sense of gravity. The play of light adds to its sense of spiritual significance. It is this synthesis which makes this a revolutionary project. This project is still relevant and will remain relevant not because of these cultural associations but because it inspires an emotional response in its viewers. It does this in an innovative way which is different to most emotive buildings (ie. churches and places of worship) in both form and feeling. Kahn’s design reflects a world where government is as important to people as spirituality, and proposes an architectural vernacular which can express modern spirituality with restraint and elegance. It acts as an alternative to traditional civic buildings by allowing it to act as a monument rather than a simple administrative centre. This building is still in use today as the parliamentary centre of Bangladesh. The building remains culturally important to the people of Bangladesh as a symbol of national pride which conveys a sense of the nation.
fig6. national assembly building in dhaka, louis kahn, 1962-75
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LEFT TO RIGHT: FIG7. INSIDE THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY BUILDING FIG8. THE BUILDING ACCROSS THE LAKE FIG9. VIEW TO THE GARDENS
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DESIGN COMPUTATION Computers already play an important role in modern design practice. Computer aided design (CAD) is now standard in the industry and it is continuously presenting designers with new capabilities and possibilities. As these tools become more a more ubiqitous in the industry, design processes are changing. Recently we are seeing an increase in parametric and algorithmic thinking in architecture. CAD allows us to synthesise increasingly complex and layered information into rational forms as computers become more and more capable of calculating complex data. CAD is therefore allowing us to find forms using complex mathematical algorithms rather than from the traditional sketch. In doing so we are able to create forms which would otherwise be too complex and time consuming to be feasable.1 Computation presents us with a new paradigm in architecture - like the Modernists, todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s architects are rejecting historical precedent and tradition in favour of experimentation and form finding without the constraints imposed by the arbitrary rules of preceding architectural languages.2
1 Oxman, Rivka and Robert Oxman, eds (2014). Theories of the Digital in Architecture (London; New York: Routledge), pp. 1â&#x20AC;&#x201C;10 2 Kolarevic, Branko, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing (New York; London: Spon Press, 2003) p. 4
fig10. icd research pavilion 2013-14
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INSTITUTE FOR COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN (ICD) RESEARCH PAVILION 2013-14
This research institute based at the University of Stuttgart annually constructs a pavilion using computational techniques. These pavilions do not simply rely upon computer programs for documentation and representation, but actually use them to generate the form, manufacture the components and build the structure. They tend to use biomimetic research to inspire their designs.1 The 2013-14 pavilion used biomimicry, taking cues from the potato beetle to understand how nature constructs shells and developed this into a building system through digital exploration. The researchers and students then built the pavilion using experimental robotics.2 The researchers were able to ultimately create a visually interesting structure which is innovative not only in its form but also in its mode of design and construction. These designers have used computation to its best advantage by integrating designing with making. We could even connect their design with Kalay’s concept of craftsmanship wherein the builder used to “construct” the building rather than simply “plan” it3, for even if this design was “planned”, it was planned by being “constructed” in the virtual environment provided by the computer. The use of computational design and fabrication together has given the researchers the opportunity to create new construction methods. In this builing each component was made by taking two frames and rotating them in relation to each other and a string on a spool using robots, thus arriving at these woven units visible in the 1 Institute of Computational Design, ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 201314 (2015) <http://icd.uni-stuttgart. de/?p=11187> [accessed 17 March 2015]. 2 Institute of Computational Design, ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 2013 -14 (2014) <https://vimeo.com/98783849> [accessed 17 March 2015]. 3 Kalay, Yehuda E. (2004). Architecture’s New Media: Principles, Theories, and Methods of Computer-Aided Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)
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figs11-13. icd pavilion 2013-14
drawings. The final form is almost emergent from the form of each component and the rules of how they can interlock. It is increasingly popular to think about tectonics of materials. ICD has designed their own tectonic in this design rather than working in the frameworks of traditional structural tectonics such as stud frames or mass construction. The material is very interesting - lightweight and tensile but also relatively stiff. In this case, the architect is truly engaged with structure and materiality rather than just form. This indicates a shift in architectural practice which accompanies
these developments in computation.4
4 Oxman, Rivka and Robert Oxman, eds (2014). Theories of the Digital in Architecture (London; New York: Routledge)
fig14. icd pavilion generative diagrams
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figs15-18. mcr cave house 2005
MCR CAVE HOUSE 2005
This house is an example of a design which uses a computerised design process, but not a computational one. I have chosen to show this house in contrast to the pavilions of ICD to distinguish what makes their practice so innovative and exciting. It also indicates that although interesting designs can be acheived using traditional design and construction methods, these designs arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t at the same level
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of innovation as computationally generated ones may be. Perhaps with a computational process MCR could have moved away from traditional building technologies and the house could have been even more complex. The cave house has an unconventional form. Many rooms and spaces are not orthoganal and the ceiling is fractured into a complex, many faceted geometry. Although it would have been
possible to use parametric techniques to find infinite possibilities for this ceiling, MCR were restricted to maybe only a few, as they designed it and then subsequently computerised it. Here is where we see the opportunities of computation design. With tools like Grasshopper, we are given far more scope from which to chose. The upshot of this however is that perhaps the final product is less “designed” and more
selected from a range of options. This raises the question: if a designer doesn’t draw something with her own hands (or mouse, perhaps), is the design still her own? If it is the product of a computer program she designed to generate it then perhaps yes.
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COMPOSITION/GENERATION Architectural practice has for many years been one of composition - architects assemble various parts to arrive at the final building form. This is particularly visible in classicism - architects would use a Vitruvian toolkit to assemble a building which included all the necessary elements. For the last 100 years, architects have been increasingly interested in form making. The Soviet Constructivists were the first to prefer pure form over representation. This translated into the Bauhaus. Although architects have been interested in generation for the last hundred years, it has not been a focus or a widespread practice. Most modern architects still worked with Euclidean shapes and did not venture into the plastic realm.1 With computers, architects can use algorithms and scripting to generate forms without knowing for certain what they are trying to create. Drawing limited architects to what they could conceive with their own minds. Now an architect can input a set of parameters into an algorithm and choose a suitable output. Forms are generated before they are even conceived. Composition is a limited approach to design while generation is boundless. Although using computation to generate form can have its own limitations, it also has its marked advantages.
1 Kolarevic, Branko, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing (New York; London: Spon Press, 2003)
FIG19. foster + partners smithsonian institution
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SPACE BLOCK HANOI 1999-2003 KOJIMA LABORATORY IN CONJUNCTION WITH TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE, MAGARIBUCHI LABORATORY AND MAMBO ARCHITECTS In 1994 Kojima Laboratory began development on the Basic Space Block (BSB), these being arrangements of three to five cubes used to find and define arrangements of space three dimensionally. In 1999, the Hanoi government wanted to redevelop an old area of Hanoi with high density, low emission housing.1 Kojima et al. used the BSB units in conjunction with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to find an arrangement of space when designing an experimental project to answer this brief. The aim of this project was to design a high porosity building with a maximum of airflow but also a maximum of privacy for the building’s inhabitants, the theory being that if people feel they have no privacy, they are likely to keep their windows and curtains closed and not take advantage of the breezes which the high porosity design would give them. The high porosity of the building means that it remains cooler naturally in the Hanoi climate, therefore eliminating the need for air conditioning.2
computational techniques, a method which was very innovative for the time. CFD is the use of a computer algorithm to analyse problems with fluid flows - in the case of Space Block Hanoi this “fluid” was air. Using BSB, Kojima et al. digitally generated hundreds of configurations and ran these through the CFD program to find the arrangements with optimal airflow but maximum privacy. The program would show a graphic with more red if the airflow was low and less if the airflow was high. The architect sat and looked at these images and was then presented with the best levels of porosity. The program behaved somewhat morphogenetically, generating and “breeding” solutions to find the optimum result. Kojima is explicit that while the program worked architects had little input, they simply waited for it to output the best possible solution. Using scripting, Kojima linked the form of the building to its performance, making this an example of using performative parameters to create an optimum solution.3
To acheive these goals, Kojima et al. turned to 1 Kazuhiro Kojima, ‘Crafting Space: Generative Processes of Architectural Configurations’, Architectural Design, 84.5, (2014), 38-45, in <http://onlinelibrary.wiley. com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/doi/10.1002/ ad.1806/abstract> [accessed 17 March 2015] 2 Ibid.
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3 Oxman, Rivka and Robert Oxman, eds (2014). Theories of the Digital in Architecture (London; New York: Routledge), pp. 1–10
Top to bottom: fig20. porous space model fig21. space blocks FIG22. finished apartment from the SPACE BLOCK HANOI PROJECT
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fig23. foster + Partners Smithsonian institution
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FOSTER + PARTNERS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 2007 Brady Peters, an architect from Foster + Partners’ Specialist Modelling Group, wrote the program which was used to generate the form for this roof. The program was constantly ammended during the design process to respond to different issues the designers encountered. The program allowed the architects to test various solutions and acoustically and visually. It also allowed them to envision structural solutions allowing them to construct the canopy.1 Here we can see the advantages of using generative software in that it offers an integrated design process where various aspects of the design can be tested in a single model. Using a program to design this canopy would have allowed architects to enter various paradigms (ie. number of divisions in X and Y directions, maximum and minimum roof heights etc.) and look at the different possibilities presented by each. The relative simplicity of the demands in this project (structural stability, water tightness, protection) meant that form could take precedence.
1 Peters, Brady. (2013) ‘Computation Works: The Building of Algorithmic Thought’, Architectural Design, 83, 2, pp. 08-15
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CONCLUSION Algorithmic and computational design presents designers with thousands of new opportunities but also considerable challenges. With it we can find new forms and structures but these innovative ideas will often be met with a lot of opposition from clients, contractors and various stakeholders. It is never easy to convince people to trust new technologies, especially when older ones are as heavily entrenched as the construction industry. People have become accustomed to rectilinear, stud framed buildings over hundreds of years - I am not sure how enthusiastic people will be to move forward from these traditions. Few people want to invest in the unfamiliar. Part A reminded me of a long standing fascination with the world’s complexity and connectedness. This complexity is evident everywhere in nature, and I would like to reference this in my design. It is important to consider nature for inspiration because all things in nature somehow work together perfectly to acheive a balance - this is important to any functioning system. A building is a system and could benefit from lessons of balance. It might be interesting to design a material tectonic rather than generating an arbitrary form. I am especially excited to break away from orthogonality and minimalism this semester.
LEARNING OUTCOMES At the start of this course my knowledge about what computational design meant was limited. One important distinction I have made is that between composition and generation. Generating forms is, to me, the most original way to design. It creates inflinite possibilities for what a building can be. Algorithmic and parametric design are tools which can be employed to help architects to generate forms. This course has opened my eyes to this new direction in architecture where designers are also programmers. Our technical expertise needs to be broader than ever. My new knowledge of Grasshopper is particularly valuable. I have designed things in Rhino which would have been far easier with the help of some of Grasshopper’s scripts. In this way I have learnt the advantage of scripting.
FROM THE AUTHOR’S SKETCHBOOK
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SKETCH01: Made in Grasshopper, this sketch was produced by arraying points on a lofted surface and generating pentagons around the points. The pentagons were randomly moved in the Z direction to create this textured form.
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SKETCH02: A similar technique produced this technique, but with circles instead of pentagons. The circles are also random.
APPENDIX: ALGORITHMIC SKETCHES
THESE SKETCHES ALLOWED ME TO GENERATE DESIGNS WHICH COULD BE EASILY MANIPULATED AFTER BEING DRAWN. THIS IS EXCITING AFTER PAINSTAKINGLY DRAWING LINE BY LINE, EVEN ON COMPUTER - ONLY TO FIND EVERYTHING NEEDS TO CHANGE BECAUSE YOU WANT TO FIX ONE ELEMENT. CONCEPTUALISATION 29
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IMAGE SOURCES
REFERENCES
FIG1. Virtual Environments 2012
Institute of Computational Design, ICD/ ITKE Research Pavilion 2013-14 (2015) <http://icd.uni-stuttgart.de/?p=11187> [accessed 17 March 2015].
FIG2. https://www.nowness.com/story/elemental FIG3. http://www.domusweb.it/en/ n e w s / 2 010 / 0 3 / 0 8 / o l a f u r- e l i a s s o n - s o l o exhibition-at-mca-sidney.html FIG4. http://www.mca.com.au/collection/ exhibition/528-take-your-time-olafur-eliasson/ FIG5. See fig2 FIG6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatiyo_ S an g s a d _ Bh ab an # /m e di a / F il e:N at i o n al _ Assembly_of_Bangladesh,_ Jatiyo_Sangsad_ Bhaban,_2008,_5.JPG FIG7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatiyo_ Sangsad_Bhaban#/media/File:Sangshad_inside. jpg FIG8. http://www.yatzer.com/louis-kahn-thepower-of-architecture FIG9. See fig8 FIGS10-14. http://icd.uni-stuttgart.de/?p=11187 FIGS15-18. MCR FIG19. FOSTER + PARTNERS FIGS20-22. Kazuhiro Kojima, ‘Crafting Space: Generative Processes of Architectural Configurations’, Architectural Design, 84.5, (2014), 38-45, in <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com. ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/doi/10.1002/ad.1806/ abstract> [accessed 17 March 2015]
Institute of Computational Design, ICD/ ITKE Research Pavilion 2013 -14 (2014) <https://vimeo.com/98783849> [accessed 17 March 2015]. Kalay, Yehuda E. (2004). Architecture’s New Media: Principles, Theories, and Methods of Computer-Aided Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) Kazuhiro Kojima, ‘Crafting Space: Generative Processes of Architectural Configurations’, Architectural Design, 84.5, (2014), 3845, in <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezp. lib.unimelb.edu.au/doi/10.1002/ad.1806/ abstract> [accessed 17 March 2015] Kolarevic, Branko, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing (New York; London: Spon Press, 2003) Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson (2015) <http://www. mca.com.au/collection/exhibition/528-takeyour-time-olafur-eliasson/ > [accessed 4 March 2015]. Oxman, Rivka and Robert Oxman, eds (2014). Theories of the Digital in Architecture (London; New York: Routledge), pp. 1–10 Peters, Brady. (2013) ‘Computation Works: The Building of Algorithmic Thought’, Architectural Design, 83, 2, pp. 08-15
FIG23. http://www.fosterandpartners.com/ projects/smithsonian-institution/
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