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 Salma Metawa Spring 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: Salma Metawa Student ID: 900152223
Š The American University in Cairo (AUC), May 2019
Salma Metawa Architecture Student
Hello, my name is Salma Metawa. I’m 20 years old. I was born on 01/03/1998 and raised in the United Arab Emirates (aka Dubai for most people). However, I actually lived in a small peaceful town that borders Oman that has none of Dubai’s glitz and glamour but is beautiful in it’s own way. It’s known as the garden city of UAE as has a lot of green areas; it’s also called the capital of happiness. From this peaceful city, I moved, when I was 17, to Cairo. I had just graduated from high school and had no idea where my life was heading. My parents had always wanted to move back to Egypt when I finished school since they thought it would be better for my 2 brothers and I. However, that move was really hard for me.
I’m an architecture major and I’m not really sure whether it’s my calling. This was also another aspect of my life that isn’t going my way since I moved here. I tried declaring architecture (which is the hardest major to declare in AUC) and surprisingly I got in. I thought that I could do well if I work hard like I did in school but slowly I lost the motivation and interest as I felt like this truly isn’t the right path for me and It’s something that doesn’t make me feel fulfilled at all. It has been a tough 4 years specially that architecture is extremely demanding and competitive. You always have to put it above everything else. To get away from all of this, I decided to study more (I’m a nerd at heart) which is why I’m minoring in psychology. Which is somehing that I actually enjoy and it helped me a lot in my major. I started loving incorporating Psychology and Biology in my designs.
Our inspiration from nature was fire ants. They have an amazing ability to adapt differenlty according to their environment.
01 Stage 1: Inspiration from Nature
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3 Viscocity: “Elastic Truss Structure� Behaves like a liquid under large amounts of stress and like a solid to protect the center.
ARCH 473/3522 - Spring 2019
Salma Metawa
4 As an experiment for viscocity, I did an experiment with water and cornstarch . The mixture creates a visco-elastic material that behaves as both a solid and a liquid at different times. When pressure is applied the mixture starts to solidfy and when there is no pressure the mixture acts like a liquid. This experiment was a real life example of how the ant’s bodies behave. The cornstarch particles would come together and trap the water particles in between them thus creating a more solid texture. When the force is removed the particles relax and become more porus. This helped me think about how ants connect and get loose as neede. The picture on the left is for inspiration for a bio-facade that responds to tempreture and shrinks and expands in reaction. The idea of a porus responsive facade started to become important in the project.
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In this stage we started developing parameters inspired by our natural phenomenon and costumizing the form in response to our site.
02 Stage 2: Capturing Mobility
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Context The site’s context is one of the courtyards in AUC. It is surrounded by zig-zag shaped buildings which makes responsive design harder. However, it has many advantage points. The first is that it’s easily accessible from the bridge and from multiple enterances in the ground floor. The courtyard is more quite than the courtyards in SSE building. However, some design courses large scale models take place there throughout the semester. I think thatit would be ideal to place our building there due to these two main factors. The coutyard is well shaded and has a good wind tunnel. However, it’s empty of trees which makes it more sunny during miday. Wind direction might also largely affect how good the wind is on site. Somedays itmight be too windy while other days there might be wind at all. I used the site’s access points: the bridge and the ground floor enterance as my starting points. I think that easy accessibility is a crucial component in the extension. The courtyard is somewhat smaller than other courtyardswhich makes it more challanging in design. I tried to leave a freeway empty for the common way people walk through the courtyard.
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10 For the form generation, I was inspired by the ants’ form and visco-elastic behaviour. As the pressure increases on the ant formation the more curved and rigid their form becomes. The less pressure their is the more loose and flowy they the become. The parallel to the pressure applied on the ant formation is the building’s density. Since architecture studios tend to be crowded I wanted to create different experiences between the high dense and low dense areas. The more curved form allows for more height and light to enter the space. On the other hand the more flowy curves create a lower height and more cozy environment.
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13 Form Concept Generation
My initial idea was to make the building “stuck onto� the surrounding buildings as fire ants stick to and adapt to their surroundings. The initial idea also included an open facade that was inspired by the idea that the porosity of the fire ant groups when they use their viscous ability toadapt to their environement.
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Description of photo in a couple of lines, including explanation and/or references
03 Stage 3: Patterns of Mobility
20 Communication In order to keep their visco elastic behaviour intact, antshave to have great communication. Their communication in from the highest to the lowest order. In other words, the communication happens from the outer ants which respond to the environement to the most inner ant (the queen ant) in order to make sure that she is safe. Since viscoelasticity responds in a two-way manner, I thought that my facade should also be resposive from both the inside and outside. Another main mechanisim that helps the ants communicate is how they move. The ants are always linking and unlinking their feet together- sort of always moving over and under each other in order to maintain the viscoelastic properties. Therefore the shape shifting mehcanisim isinspired by this sliding effect. A big problem that we face in the architecture department is that the labs are always either too hot or too cold. Depending on the weather outside and the need of the user insidethe facade would close up or open more to create a better environment.
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25 Shape shifting Module - Rectangular panels driven from the context.
The rectangular shape shifting mechanisim is driven by both the context and the ants’visco-elastic behaviour. The rectangular panels allow for a wide range of oppennes and thus can accommodate different changes throughout the day and throughout different spaces in the building. The panels slide under each other which allows for maximum opennes or it can slide slightly in order to let in the neseccary light/heat/wind.
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Biblography
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https://www.amdro.com/learn/fire-ants/understanding-a-fire-ant-colony https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3061603/ https://qz.com/1029975/fire-ants-can-build-complex-towers-to-get-out-of-trouble/ https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/three-simple-rules-guide-fire-ants-building-towers
ŠAll rights reserved, American University in Cairo (AUC) May 2019