SEOW CASSANDRA 759925 JOURNAL B by Cassandra Seow

STUDIO AIR PART B JOURNAL Cassandra Seow Yie Fang 759925 Finn Warnock, 2017 Semester 1

CONTENT B. CRITERIA DESIGN B.1 RESEARCH FIELDS

B.2 CASE STUDY 1.0

B.3 CASE STUDY 2.0

B.4 TECHNIQUE: DEVELOPMENT

B.5 TECHNIQUE: PROTOTYPE

B.6 TECHNIQUE: PROPOSAL

B.7 LEARNING OBJECTIVES & OUTCOMES

B.8 APPENDIX - ALGORITHMIC SKETCHES

REFERENCES

CRITERIA DESIGN

B.1

RESEARCH FIELDS

TESSELLATION Voussoir Cloud

by Iwamotoscott Architecture Tessellation is the tiling of a plane using one or more geometric shapes with no overlaps and gaps. And in this case the Voussoir Cloud, ultralight wooden petals are carved and made to make this amazing structure. With the work of Frei Otto and Antonio Gaudi, their concept of exploring the structural paradigm of pure compression using an ultra light system was their main driving force. The overall design and placement of the structure in the gallery was limited by the entry soffit and two long gallery walls. With this being said, the vaults rely on each other and three walls to retain the structure. The context of the place has largely influenced how the structure is built, and because of this, the edges of the structure will be more dense looking. Also, computational hanging chain models and form finding programs are used to find out the vaul shape based on compression.

Delaunay tessellation maximizes the minimum angles in the triangles, which impacts on the structurality. For example greater petal density at connections, bases and vault connections and a looser arrangement of petals at the upper vault. In terms of fabrication, a total of 4 different types of petals were created because the difference of each petal arose from the dependency upon its adjacent voids. To manage this, a computational script was developed for Rhino that plans the petal edge curvature. After all the stuff was digitally modelled, it was sent to laser cut and then constructed in a very specific order. The one thing about tessellation that appeals to me the most is the fact that the absence of gaps between tiles kind of limits the surface and will create amazing forms.

GEOMETRY SG2012 - GRIDSHELL by MATSYS

In 2012, Matsys Design Studio participated in the annual Smart Geometry conrefence held in Troy, NY. The main focus of this Gridshell is the design and construction by using only straight wood members bent along geodesic lines on a relaxed surface. A gridshell is a structure which derives its strength from its double curvature and is constructed of a grid or lattice. The wooden planks are connected with Stainless Steel bolts that fixes them together and also aids in movement. With the help of parametric tools like Grasshopper, Kangaroo and Karamba, the design was developed and analyzed to maximise architectural presence at the space and minimize material wastage. The use of parametric tools increases the accuracy and amount of material needed. As timber has different bending qualities and limits, the use of these programs can help in a way that one would need to use less materials to build prototypes that are most likely to fail. As if one is really building the real prototype through these programs.

Instead of coming up with a concept or design proposal, they have carefully researched and understood the capabilities of the material, which in this case, timber. Then, it was tested through trial and error to see how far the limits can be pushed. Also, a feedback loop was designed between the parametric geometric model and a structural model which allows for a smooth workflow that integrated geometry, structures, and material performance.

B.2

CASE STUDY 1.0

b.2.1

ADDING VARIABLE PIPE + CHANGE IN PARAMETERS

ADDING VARIABLE PIPE + CHANGE IN INPUT CURVES

iterations

LUNCHBOX PLUG-IN

b.2.1

CHANGE IN PARAMETER

RS + INPUT CURVES

iterations

b.2.1

iterations

CHANGE IN INPUT GEOMETRY + PARAMETERS

b.2.1

Taking inspiration from the geodesic dome, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve tried to create a structure that can combine both gridshell and dome. With multiple of these intersecting one another, it could create an interesting pattern in which it can overlap one another

With the Lunchbox Plug-in, I got to create this overlapping triangular panels, which also looks like a sailboat. The pattern on the surface of this can be furthered explored in different scales and how it interact with different curved surfaces

SUCCESSFUL SPECIES

By twisting and turning the input geometry, I have got this very elegant looking structure, and probably can be built to be a pavillion. This self-supporting structure symbolises lightness and connectivity. The top part looks a little like a shelter too.

Similar to the iteration above, by expanding and contracting the input curve allows me to create different forms of gridshells. This can potentially be another pavilion too, and when cast under sunlight it will create interesting shadows from different views.

B.3

CASE STUDY 2.0

CANTON TOWER by IBA Architects, Mark Hemel & Barbara Kuit Geometry plays a big part in the architecture world, and in this case, parametric architecture. Simple geometry such as basic lines, curves and shapes can be altered to become very beautiful things, especially when combined with parametric design. For example, repetition of geometry and different placement of it can create a very unique space. Like the Canton Tower, it is a sereies of circles that vary in diameter and connected by repeated lines, then twisted and turnt. But to create such a delicate looking building, accuracy and calculation should be taken into note, and this is where parametric design comes in. The Canton Tower’s hyperboloid structure is made by two ellipses and rotated relatice to another. The tightening of one of the ellipse forms a “waist” shape and densifies the material halfway up the tower.

To design this complex geometrical tower was not an easy job but it was made possible due to a paramatric software tht generates geometrial and structural model based on a set of variable parameters and lint that data to the drafting software. The twisting motion that resulted the unique shape was used as a base for the structural wireframe.

REVERSE ENGINEERING

BASE CURVE Curves for the tower are drawn, and the top circle is shifted to the Z direction to get the height for the tower

DIVIDE CURVE + LINE Both circles are divided into equal segments and lines are created to connect points

DIVIDE CURVE The lines are divided into points to create the circular levels inside the tower

INTERPOLATE CURVE Points created from the previous step are used to form circular curves inside

BOUNDARY SURFACES Circular curves inside are used to create boundary surfaces

PIPE + BREP All the lines and curves are turned into pipe with fixed radius and all joined together to become a single BREP

B4. TECHNIQUE DEVELOPMENT

MATRIX OF ITERATION

CHANGE IN DIVISION OF CURVES

CHANGE IN INPUT GEOMETRY

CHANGE IN DIVISION OF CURVES

DELETION OF BOUNDARY SURFACES

CHANGE IN INPUT GEOMETRY

DIV

VISION OF LINES

OFFSET POINTS + CONES

CHANGE IN INPUT GEOMETRY

CHANGE IN PIPE THICKNESS

OFFSET CURVES

OFFSET POINTS + CYLINDERS

OFFSET POINTS + CONES

CHANGE IN INPUT GEOMETRY

LUNCHBOX DIAMOND GRID

MATRIX OF ITERATION

LUNCHBOX GRID + EXTRUSION

LUNCHBOX HEXAGON GRID + EXTRUSION

WAFFLE GRID

CHANGE IN INPUT CURVE

CHANGE I CURVE + S

LUNCHBOX PANEL + EXTRUSION

WAFFLE GRID

IN INPUT SURFACE

LUNCHBOX DIAMOND PANEL + EXTRUSION

WAFFLE GRID

CHANGE IN INPUT CURVE + THICKEN PIPE

LUNCHBOX HEXAGON PANEL + EXTRUSION

WAFFLE GRID

VORONOI FRAME

MATRIX OF ITERATION

VORONOI 3D + WEAVERBIRD LOOP

LUNCHBOX PANEL + SPACEFRAME

VORONOI 3D + WEAVERBIRD LOOP

SPACEFRAME

VORONOI 3D + WEAVERBIRD MESH WINDOW

VORONOI 3D + SIERPINSKI TRIANGLES

SPACEFRAME + LOFTED SURFACE

VORONOI 3D + CULL

OFFSET SURFACE + LUNCHBOX DIAMOND PANEL

OFFSET POINTS + SPHERES

VORONOI GRID + EXTRUSION IN Z

VORONOI 3D + CHANGE IN INPUT CURVE

MATRIX OF ITERATION

CHANGE IN INPUT CURVE + CHANGE IN GRAPH PARAMETERS

SELECTION CRITERIA LIGHTING Lighting plays a very important role in terms of creating the vibe of the room and how it makes the users feel. Ideal lighting effect would be bright for exhibitions and dimmer when there are performances and dances, and only focus the light at the main attention

FLEXIBILITY Flexibility in terms of the use of material, which is timber. Based on how well it can be bent or twister to create desired effects without it breaking apart.

LIGHTING FLEXIBILITY AMBIENCE CONSTRUCTAB

AMBIENCE EFFECT This relies mostly on the design and form itself. For example, if the ceiling is closer to the ground, a person will feel more restricted and would want to move away, and vice versa. Preferably higher ground to ceiling height ratio at places near the window. The desired effect is to be grand, elegant and formal.

CONSTRUCTABILITY Constructability in terms of how easy it is to build and how fluid are the connections. The more complex the design, the more thought it has to be put in to think of connections and stability.

LIGHTING FLEXIBILITY AMBIENCE CONSTRUCTABI

BILITY

ILITY

6/10 9/10 4/10 10/10

8/10 4/10 6/10 4/10

LIGHTING FLEXIBILITY AMBIENCE CONSTRUCTABILITY

7/10 9/10 7/10 8/10

8/10 8/10 7/10 10/10

B.5

PROTOTYPES

INDIVIDUAL PROTOTYPE PROTOTYPE 1

For my individual prototype, I have chose to explore more about the waffle grid. This brings in both concepts of geometry and sectioning. The whole design is first built digitally on grasshopper and then unrolled to be laser cut. With the help of parametric design softwares, it allowed me to create more accurate slots for the pieces of wood to be intersected with each other. Because the slots are the thickness of the material itself, it basically self supports its own, and without using any sort of glue or tape.

Regarding the form of the prototype, I wanted to test out the curvature of the long wood pieces. For example, at spots where the curve is steeper, the cut of the slits will be longer to allow better stability when intersected. How this prototype has affected my groupwork in the coming slides are in the terms of a rigid framework. The small pieces of MDF are the main support to carry the long strips of MDF. With this being tested, the other test now is to see if this waffle grid will work in twisted strips instead of planar ones.

Main framing and support member that holds long strips together

Long strips that can be varied in design and form

Assemble starting from middle 2 strips

4 strips coming together when there is enough support members

group PROTOTYPE COMBINATION OF GEOMETRY, SECTIONING, TESSELATION

WAFFLE GRID

TIMBER KIRFING

Mainly used for framing and structural purposes, and how the installation is going to be hung from the ceiling.

To test the twisting and bendability of timber, contributes to the main form of our design.

(Cassandra Seow)

(Sze Ming Tan)

CONNECTION LIGHTING

(Chung Tung Tse)

We mostly looked into how paperback panels can be connected through other smaller panels, and different patterns on the panel can create different lighting effects.

PAPERBACK STRIP

CONNECTIONS

The paperback is slotted into a customised 3D printed framing, and it is all hung to the ceiling by a series of bolts and hooks

PROTOTYPE 1 Material: Paper

However, there is a downside to this form. As paper is a very flexible material, the end product tends to be a little bit messy and chaotic, which is not the design we were looking for. Eventhough it can look aesthetically beautiful, the reasoning behind The main reasoning behind why the form is like the form did not really relate to the context or that is due to the slots in the perspex framing. the function of the site and also did not meet By slotting the paper strips from the top left the selection criterias. slit to the bottom right slit, the middle of the paper will result in twists and bends which Therefore, these even strips of paper are then transformed to different sizes and we decided makes each strip so unique. test out another material in Prototype 2. For our first prototype, we took the easist material that we can use and which also meets our criterias of flexibility and bendability, which is paper. Long strips of paper were cut and then twisted to create the form.

LIGHTING EFFECTS

PROTOTYPE 2 Material: Paperback Timber

For our 2nd prototype, the design was first digitally made in Grasshopper, to make a more accurate design in terms of connections and form. Paperback was used for this prototype. It has similar properties to paper but it has limitations in terms of twisting and bending as it depends on the grain of the timber.

The problem that we had for this prototype is the overlapping connection between the paperback strips itself. Unlike paper, the overlapping of these stirips will push the frame away due to the pressure exerted It was solved by manually cutting slits so the top strip can intersect the bottom strip.

Using the same concept as the first prototype, we slot the paperback into the slits and because it has restrictions in bending, the resulting form came out differently. The form was more dynamic and less chaotic, and looked similar to our digital model.

With this being said, we are quite happy with this result, but still it looked chaotic, but better than the paper ones. Therefore, we are thinking to implement a specific order to which the strips can follow and flow through the slots so it will look more in order.

LIGHTING EFFECTS

B.6

TECHNIQUE: PROPOSAL

SITE ANALYSIS SITE MAP (1:2500)

W Hotel Melbourne

Basicaly, the brief for our project is to build a ceiling installation for the ballroom of W Hotel that is to be built in 2020. The hotel is located at 435 Collins Street, in between William Street and Queen Street. The surounding facilities for the building at the moment are banks, nightclubs, offices and many more, which accomodates a different type of people from different fields. And for the ballroom itsel, we main uses for it are formal events such as exhibitions, weddings and formals. Therefore, the direction of our design is towards being grand, elegant, but also dynamic at the same time. To approach our design, we have taken a few criterias into note: 1. ROADS & CONTOUR of the surrounding building - The Hoddle Grid around the building has interesting contours and terrains. And with that, we have chosen to implement the contours onto the overall form of our design. For instance, the RED parts are places with higher ground, with ORANGE, GOLD and YELLOW following accordingly. The red parts will be where the ceiling dips down towards the ground, with the other colors following to dip gradually. The yellow parts (near windows) are to represent flat surfaces as that is Flinders Street, and facing the Yarra River, going accordingly to the view from the window.

2. FUNCTION of the ballroom - As said above, the main functions for the ballroom is weddings, exhibitions and formal events. With places with high uses such as the STAND and SEATINGS, the ceiling will dip lower to push people to that area. For the WINDOW area, there wont be any dips down as to not block the city view. 3. OVERALL LIGHTING EFFECT - The lighting of the ballroom is very important for the users. Our design aims to create different effects on different event, to not make it overly bright or dim.

INITIAL PROPOSED PLAN

Our design all starts from a grid, where we took inspiration from the waffle grid to create the overall form and structural framing. Then, as we were experimenting with loads of twisting and bending of timber, we created the second form which uses large strips of timber intertwined with each other to create like a DNA like structure. But, a downside to that is, there werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t any reasoning behind the design in terms of flow and how it relates to the context of the site and Melbourne. Also, it could be quite messy and probably hard to build in the sense that timber will rot over time and the intersections between the timber strips might not be as stable. Therefore, we have concluded with our final form which is long strips of timber across the ceiling, In terms of flow and fluidity, the strips start and end from the stand, to make it the focal point of the entire installation. People will look at the installation and it will guide them on how to look at it, which is they will follow the long strips and end their focus point towards the stand. Also. the other idea for the plan is where the strips converge to the circle in the middle which represents the main focal point.

SITE ANALYSIS 1. ROADS / CONTOUR

ING

STR

LLI

STR

T T

AM LLI

STR

T KE

STR

E UE

STR

RED - Higher ground level ORANGE - Medium slope GOLD - Low slope YELLOW - Flat surface

2. FUNCTION

3. PROPOSED LIGHTING LAYOUT

PROPOSAL

SECTIO

ON A

ON B

B.7 LEARNING OBJECTIVES & OUTCOMES

OBJECTIVE 1 - INTERROGATING A BRIEF

The brief for this part was pretty interesting in a way that we were required to look into other aspects such as ambience, acoustics, aesthetics, people connections and many more. It was more of a “live” brief rather than a “dead” brief. It has allowed me to expand my design possibilities to potentials. With the help of digital technologies, it was much easier to find relevant information that you could not find on site.

OBJECTIVE 2 - GENERATING A VARIETY

With the use of grasshopper and what we have to do for this task which is the itreration matrix, I can say that I have familiarized myself with Grasshopper after creating more than 100 iterations throughout the process. It reallt allowed me to explore and push my design limits lie never before. Each step through the iteration somehow connects to one another. Within that fixed parameters, the limitation in a way forces one to design and push their limits.

OBJECTIVE 3 - 3D MEDIA SKILLS

From manually making models since the start of university, I was never aware of 3D modelling softwares where you can design the whole model digitally and just print it out, which is much more efficient and accurate. Throughout this assessment I’ve created so many models in a faster way with laser cutting and many more.

OBJECTIVE 4 - ARCHITECTURE & ATMOSPHERE

For our design proposal, one of the main problems were the scale, as these large strips of timber may cause an undesired effect in a ballroom. We have taken that into note and will look into detail for Part C. Even so, our physical prototype turned out pretty well, it’s just that when it comes to reality there will be a lot of problems such as connections, joint and constructability.

OBJECTIVE 5 - MAKING A PROPOSAL

Throughout this whole task, my team mates and I have failed a couple of times in terms of coming out with a proposal. Because to come up with a proposal, all the problems should be resolved and for us, there were some unresolved ones, which resulted in a proposal that could have been much better

OBJECTIVE 6 - ANALYSING PROJECTS

Without precedents or past projects, we would not have known where or how we should start. I feel that the case studies under each research fields are very helpful in a way that it made me fully understand how a parametric model actually works. The reverse engineer task was also very helpful too, in a way that it improved my grashopper skills and also both top-down & bottom-up approach.

OBJECTIVE 7 - UNDERSTANDING COMPUTATION

In the process of actually computing our structure, it was pretty complex as it was a lot of twisting and bending of timber. We needed to understand the math and logic behind to make it work.

OBJECTIVE 8 - PERSONALIZED REPERTOIRE

I can strongly relate to this because at the start, I did not really like to understand the math and logic behind the model but I loved to make it aesthetically stunning. So for my personal repertoire, I use very simple geometry to create 3D surface and then my creativity starts from there.

B.8 APPENDIX - ALGORITHIMIC SKETCHES

LUNCHBOX PLUGIN

EVALUATE SURFACE + SCALING

LUNCHBOX PLUG IN

REFERENCES Designbuild.network.com, Canton Tower, <http://www.designbuild-network. com/projects/guangzhou-tv-tower/>, accessed 15 April 2017 Iwamoto Scott Architecture, Vossoir Cloud, <http://www.iwamotoscott.com/ VOUSSOIR-CLOUD>, accessed 15 April 2017 MATSYS, “SG2012 Gridshell”, <http://matsysdesign.com/2012/04/13/sg2012gridshell/>, accessed 4 April 2017 Pamela Buxton, Iwamoto Scott Architecture’S Vossoir Cloud, (2008), < http:// www.bdonline.co.uk/iwamoto-scott-architecture%E2%80%99s-voussoircloud/3127520.article> Wikipedia, Canton Tower, (2017), Tower#Structure_and_construction>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_