Student Portfolio
A R C H 4 7 3 / 3 5 2 2 - D I G I TA L D E S I G N S T U D I O A N D W O R K S H O P Farah Mohamed Nour Fall 2019
The American University in Cairo (AUC) School of Sciences and Engineering - Department of Architecture ARCH 473/3522 - Digital Design Studio and Workshop (Spring 2019) Student portfolio documenting samples of work submitted along the course, including research, experimentation, 3D modeling, digital fabrication, parametric design and modeling, physical model realisation and analysis. Student name: Farah Mohamed Nour Student ID: 900152436
Š The American University in Cairo (AUC), December 2019
Farah Mohamed Nour Architecture Student
The picture shows me posing for one of our light experiments with tubular forms, which you will get to see in chapter 02 of this story. It does not show the light effect fully, just glimpses of it, but I thought it is an interesting choice - the interplay of light, shadow, negative and positive in the background and the light droplets on my face and scarf were rather too interesting.. Now let me introduce myself, I am an architecture student, who is really passionate about architecture, the meanings that it embodies and the influence that space has on its inhabitors. The fact that we live most of our lives inside of man built spaces says something about the importance of architecture. Yet, it is constantly undermined by professionals and “consumers” of architecture, reduced and well, turned into a mere product that we are trying to sell
to everyone. It is understood how and why this has been the case for rather too long, but I am honestly not satisfied with the status quo and I aim to change it, how and when? I do not have a plan, but I know that this needs to change one step at a time, each designer taking one step at a time. I am generally interested to learn abut everything, explore my surroundings and analyze the deeper meanings behind things, or so I try to do. I am more interested in deep converstaions than small talks and always interested to learn more about people and how they see the world aound them. I am also interested in game thinking, was and now even more interested in algorthmic thinking after the course. This storybook shares my journey through physical/digital exploration, algorithms, development, research, translating meanings into physicality as much as I could. It was a rather enligthening journey, so I hope you enjoy every chapter of this story. The picture on the right is part of a collection designed by Karen Margolis called “Integrations”. I saw her work during one of the research phases in the course and was fascinated by it. The concept behind it is: interior moments frozen in time. Through damaging, adding and subtracting from different materials and colors, she aims to express an “interplay between neurotransmitters and chemicals in the brain, reveal underlying patterns of subjective conscious experiences.”
Sincerely,
SHELTER - What does it mean? What does it mean to be without SHELTER? For our first project, we were asked to design a mobile shelter for the homeless derived from a natural inpiration in one of 6 governerates of Egypt..
01 A Mobile Shelter for the Homeless
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A Shelter For the Homleless
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WHY SHELLS? It was rather interesting when looking at the life cycle of the creature living inside the shell, we could see interesting simaliries between the life and conditions of a homless person and the ones they aspire to be in. A shell hosts a very delicate creature that is protected by the hard shell. It grows out of them incrementally, adapts to their environment, it moves as they move because it is part of them and after their life time, is reused by other see creatures. As we researched, we thought that is exactly what a homless person would need, especially that we are designing a mobile shelter.
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A Shelter For the Homleless
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The shell exhibits behaviours that echo the needs of a homless person .. how can we translate these behaviours in terms of design? This becomes our interesting challenge..
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CONTEXT: SUEZ The reason why we chose Suez is because of its interesting historical background, and most importantly, it has the highest percentage of population living in informal settlements as opposed to other governerates, which expresses a need for housing.
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A Shelter For the Homleless
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I first started questioning what is a shelter, linguitically.. The definition was informative, but not quite inpsiring; then, I started thinking how can the home move, grow and adapt to its user? What would a homless person need? Accordingly, I started thinking about different modes of use, it can act as a place to stay, to sleep, as a source of income. The reason why this home should be multi-functional is because it is the homeless’s person gateway to world, through it, everything can happen. It it is designed to maximize their opportunities; then, it must expand its own possibilities.
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A Shelter For the Homleless
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Inspired by this incremental layered growth, I found these inpirations quite interesting .. should the home grow vertically, horizontally or in all directions? How will it grow? What would its structures be? What form would it take? I kept on exploring these questions for some time..
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A Shelter For the Homleless
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A Shelter For the Homleless
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Physical Exploration The idea of emination from a central point then spreading out in some way was quite interesting. The model brought some ideas into play ..
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The picture on the right soon became my main inspiration .. How about work with modules, where each of them is adjustable according the user’s needs .. each arm acts seperatelt creating a different configuration for user..
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Digital Exploration
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A Shelter For the Homleless
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Scissor Hinges as Structure
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Final Exploration/ Submission
As seen I chose to have fixed core with the adjustable structure embracing it to express the idea of the shell as an exoskelleton and also have part of the structure gixed and another part that is adjustable. However, this was reducing my idea to a simple skin. What it could have been instead is that these arms and interesting mesh and structure would create both the fixed and adjustable part, have a form generated boldly and solely out of the concept of emination and not have a traditional structure embraced by a skin. If I were to change this, I’d take much molder steps in terms of form and in terms of materiality and structure.
ARCH 473/3522 - Fall 2019
Farah Mohamed Nour
Then ...
02 The Blank Facade Canvas
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The Blank Facade Canvas
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TUBULAR FORMS
How do they behave in terms in illumination, solar radiation, view? Would playing with them produce different outcomes in terms of form, light, experience? Our exploration starts now.
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STRAWS AND A SKIN
Exploring how straws, an example of tubular forms can create a new wholistic form that people can interact with was the core of our exploration here. We decided to lasercut a skin to hold the straws together, one side individually, and another one as bundles that create explosing forms and then see what each of them created..
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The Blank Facade Canvas
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FEEDBACK
Think about the possibilities of creating a composition with the tubular forms without having to have the structure holding them as part of the composition. Experiment with different sizec and colored bottles. Explore the effects of certain parameters on light measured through the tubes.
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PREPARATION
We experimented with bottles, cups and straws. Inverted, half lenghth, full length, different forms, we tried to cexperiment with a larger set of paratmeters.
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The Blank Facade Canvas
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CONTROL SETTING ARCH 473/3522 - Fall 2019
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RESULTS
This was a a rather enjoyabe and insightful experience. As we worked, we kept making assumptions, some were validated and others were not, but we reached an understanding of the behaviour of these tubes and how it changes with different parameters. Portfolio
The Blank Facade Canvas
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FINAL EXPLORATION
Creating a complete facade, based on knowledge based on previously collected results. We divided the facade into 4 parts, each with a different function with different lux requirements and tried to meet each of them inforrmed by previous lux readings.
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The Blank Facade Canvas
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03 The Parametric Facade
42 My concept is the Movement of Order...
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The Parametric Facade
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A SOUTHERN ALL GLASS FACADE - BLOM BANK?
For our last project, we were asked to design a parametric facade for Blom Bank informed by the previous physical experimentation, but using digital experimentation this time. An all glass southern facade, with SE and SW orientation at the edges as well due to the curvature. The one benefit from its orientation is that the large void in its form is perfectly oriented (on purpose or not) to catch the NW winds. Thus, in my project, I wanted to capitalize on this orientation so that the facade would capture wind that would act as a perfect buffer during the summer time reducing the heart gain dramatically. However, during the winter time, it will close up and won’t capture the wind. The tubes acts as a perfect shading due to their length and their active response to the sun, which makes the facade interactive, alive and effective.
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The Parametric Facade
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THEN... We started physically experimenting with different materials and exploring the fulgurite effect and the material behavior in order to develop our conceptual inspirations.
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The Parametric Facade
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ARCH 473/3522 -- Fall 2019
Farah Mohamed Nour
ŠAll rights reserved, American University in Cairo (AUC) May 2019
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DAY EXPERINECE
The tubes move with sun, change their length and orientation as the sun moves, which brings the facade to life,. it is almost like a sun flower, but functioning inversly. As apposed to just having a glass facade, everything about it now moves and interacts
ARCH 473/3522 -- Fall 2019
Farah Mohamed Nour
ŠAll rights reserved, American University in Cairo (AUC) May 2019
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N I G H EXPERINECE
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The guiding rails of the tubes have pv cells built into them, which lights up and created projected interactive experiences at night.
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SOLAR RADIATION ANALYSIS AFTER APPLYING THE SKIN
The infleunce it had on the facade in terms of solar radiation is quite effective. However, more analysis in terms of daylight and wind could have completed the picture on how efficient the skin is functioning this is something to be further explored.
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Thank you for a very useful course & for iginiting my passion for algorithmic thinking
ARCH 473/3522 -- Fall 2019
Farah Mohamed Nour
Biblography
• • • • • •
http://www.treasuremountainmining.com/index.php?route=pavblog/blog&id=43 http://www.minresco.com/fulgurites/texas3.htm https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/fulgurites-when-lightning-strikes-sand-magic-is-formed https://www.mindat.org/gm/7747 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4964350/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4964350/
ŠAll rights reserved, American University in Cairo (AUC) May 2019