STUDIO AIR APBL30048
2016 Tutor: Manuel Muehlbauer
ELISABETH VAN ROOSENDAEL
front cover image: https://sweetartt.wordpress.com/tag/dance/
CONTENTS Introduction
p.5
Part A A.1 Design Futuring A.2 Design Computation A.3 Composition/Generation Conclusion
p.6-9 p.10-13 p.14-15 p.16-17
INTRODUCTION A life long fascination with science and a continued interest in art has always morphed into a natural affinity for design. Currently I am in the final year phase of the Bachelor of Environments architecture major. I approach design from a haptic point of view knowing that sight is not the primary sense. Initially I thought that it was just my artistic intuition that informed such a design approach. However, through research I have come to understand that sight is scientifically proven to not be the primary human sense. It is difficult to describe then what my design process actually is if it’s not a consciously visual driven process. The idea of what type of consciousness is that is informing the designs I've created thus far I find fascinating. However, the impact on the consciousness of the users of my designs I find just as intriguing. Thus, in order to further develop the initial haptic formulated design I have been interested in I have chosen to look towards environmental psychology to develop interestingly appropriate, to site and use, architecture. Recently, I undertook a beginner course in Revit to help translate my architectural ideas into a documented format that would be highly readable in order to construct such designs. I felt that the medium was restrictive for conveying the haptic DNA of my designs but I appreciate the interdisciplinary collaborative potential of the workable models it can create. Hence, in light of the creative restriction of dynamic form Revit generates I am interested to gain insight as to how the expansively dynamic algorithmic designs created through Grasshopper can inform the consciousness of designers and the users of such architectural space.
DESIGN FUTURING Architecture has always evolved with the philosophy of the times. It took on a reductionist approach with the enlightenment. A utilitarian functionalist mantra of form following function mutated through the tectonic cultural shift of the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, a plethora of different socio-cultural paradigms exploded with different senses of materiality and form in the post modern era. The issues of sustainability in contemporary times highlights the impact and influence architecture has on the global balance of resources and social justice, which has brought about a new consciousness of the impact architecture has on the environment. However, whilst architecture experiences the limitations of society on a global scale it is an academic discipline focussed on improving it’s intellectual pursuit. It appears that this is where it can become unstuck in moving forward with the real socio-cultural needs of the people it is supposed to be creating spaces for. Patrick Schumacher outlined in 2011 that architecture is a system of communications that naturally improves upon itself1. He was predicting that drawing would shift into the discipline of scripting. If architecture was simply just an insular self evolving discipline this would be true. The mechanics of the system would just simply improve. However, what we experience as architecture is not the mechanics of it’s generation it’s what it actually generates. The materiality of the composition is always experienced on an environmental psychological level whereby the entire evolutionary sensorial system of human being absorbs information and decides on wether it is to the benefit of a person or not. Technically it could be said that the environment is merely communicating with a person and this is not far from Schumacher referring to architecture as a system of communications. However, there is no reference to the drawing process moving into a more psychologically conscious process that forms a space that communicates appropriately to the sensorial system of human beings, the actual users of architectural space. Perhaps because not all architecture gets built ad thus it doesn’t appear dramatically important as to the actual real life impact architecture will have. A most notable post modern case of this disengagement from the totality of reality is the work of Archigram and the plug in city. For whilst the design incorporated the notion of architecture being a flexible system it did not think of the negative impact it would have on the health of the physical environment or it’s users. It was simply paper architecture that prompted the idea that space should not be static like classical forms that it should have throw away components. Furthermore, the concept of Archigram did not consider wether 1
Patrik Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture - A New Framework for Architecture, Chichester: Wiley, 2011 p.1
or not the idea of continual change and a structure designed to not maintain but only change spatial identity would have on it’s users. The impact of structural material aesthetics and the throw away components were not thought of for such realities are not necessary to the lines of communication within the discipline of architecture at that point in time. Thus whilst the Archigram paradigm appeared like a futuristic apparition it faded into the future like an intellectual relic from a historical era, Archigram was design for the future as it communicated a framework that improved upon the present mechanics of static architectural forms just like scripting proposes an improved method of designing from drawing. However, the future is just like the present and the past for human beings. Our sensorial issues of how we experience environments are only improved through desirable environmental factors beings harnessed through designed spaces. This is the real communication architecture generates; it is not the self-improving system of architectural practice that is the testament of architectural growth is the improved sensorial communication architecture has with it’s spatial users. Thus there is a call for the future of design to incorporate all types of education to utilise all human knowledge in the design process in order to expand upon and create functional design intelligence2.
Archigram Plug in City3 2 3
Tony Fry, Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice, Oxford: Berg, 2008
http://www.archdaily.com/399329/ad-classics-the-plug-in-city-peter-cook-archigram/ 51d71b74e8e44ed538000023-ad-classics-the-plug-in-city-peter-cook-archigram-image
Interestingly, a founder of the modern movement in architecture Frank Lloyd Wright understood the gravitas of the spatial communication architecture has with it’s users and took inspiration from external fields of knowledge and perspectives like evolutionary biology. Thus he perceived that human space should be an organic formulation that resides within the landscape in order to enable the users experience to be a positive sense of life through the evolutionary communication space has with human beings. The open and compressive spaces and framing of views in the Falling Water House 1937 can be likened to the natural preference people have for such spaces as defined by Jay Appleton through prospect-refuge theory4 developed in the field of environmental psychology. Henceforth, as architecture seeks to improves it’s capacity of communication it can only move into the future like it has done in the past through effectively communicating with the human sensorial system in a way that is supportive of our natural spatial preferences created through evolutionary processes. It would seem unwise and lacking in foresight to think that design moving into the future is simply a mechanical evolution. The future is not shaped like Descartes mechanistic universe. We are not seperate egos. The fabric of societies environments and the sensorial systems of the people that inhabit them are inextricably linked. This link cannot be denied and cut off from a communication system that forms spaces for people. The future of design in architecture should aim at generating and working with the consciousness of human reality that we communicate with all we come into contact with, and acknowledge that our systems of communication never exist in a seperate reality. Architecture technically has never been about drawing a space it has always aimed at forming a space for human existence. Thus the future of architectural design, no matter the design tools used to achieve the outline of space, would be to build and improve upon our understanding of how best to form desirable space for human existence. For it has been noted that speculative design has the ability to redefine our relationship with reality5. However, if the relationship with reality is to evolve into a positive change of communications the language of communications, the very nature as to how energies between human beings and their environment interact, should be the guiding and negating force that expresses how these designs will exist. It has been asserted that through digital design organic designs can be generated through interpreting site and 4 5
Jay Appleton, The Experience of Landscape, London: John Wiley, 1975
Dunne, Anthony & Raby, Fiona (2013) Speculative Everything: Design Fiction, and Social Dreaming (MIT Press) pp. 1-9, 33-45
conditions in a natural way to create a natural form in architectural designs6. However, Frank Lloyd Wright without the aid of digital design was able to realise organic designs. Thus what appears to emerge for the future of design is going beyond what Wright was able to achieve and being able to create designs knowing how they interact not just with the ecological environment but with the people that inhabit spatially conscious designs.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Falling Water7
6
Rivka Oxman and Robert Oxman, Theories of the Digital in Architecture, London; New York: Routledge, 2014, p.8 7
http://archiinside.com/fallingwater/
DESIGN COMPUTATION It has been suggested that digital design in architecture will dramatically change practice through producing highly complex detailed software models as noted by Kolarevic8. Architecture has gone through information revolutions before but they have not altered the consciousness of architecture. For through the second world war design documentation in architecture required more than plans sections and elevations by the US army and so post war detailed documentation became standard practice. However, this could be perceived merely as a growth of an already established behaviour to visually document designs in detail to enable an ease of construction. For whilst Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao utilised digital design tools in order to realise a complex and abstract curve form there was nothing in the design process that was a breakaway behaviour. The design was documented for construction just like all architectural designs previous had been documented. There was nothing new in terms of scope of practice in this situation. Furthermore, whilst this behaviour is not a digression in the architectural trajectory it is an addition to the culture of architecture. The level and range of new forms that can be incorporated into the visual language of architecture to a great leap of growth through the uptake of digital design tools was phenomenal.
Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao9
8
Branko Kolarevic, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing, London: Spon Press, 2003 9
http://www.archdaily.com/author/samuel-medina
Sketches of Frank Gehry For the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao10
“the computer is a tool, not a partner – an instrument for catching the curve, not for inventing it” 11 Frank Gehry For whilst the digital design tools document the hand drawn concept it enabled a complex design to be comprehended and constructed. The computation was the catalyst for the “experimental”12 design to be incorporated into normal architectural practice. 10http://hyperallergic.com/74228/frank-gehry-appreciates-the-patronage-of-benevolent-dictators/ 11http://hyperallergic.com/74228/frank-gehry-appreciates-the-patronage-of-benevolent-dictators/ 12Rivka
Oxman and Robert Oxman, p.2
However, methods of finding structurally sound forms for abstract designs is not a new experience through digital design tools. For in Gaudis design of his masterpiece of the Colònia Gßel church he utilised the reverse hanging of chains for form finding. He did not use preconceived architectural elements for structures he developed an external method that delivered the structure of his design for him. The reverse hanging of chains was like an analogue computer. The behaviour of employing an external method to compute an appropriate structural form for design is in line with Gehry utilising digital technologies to help fabricate his architectural model for Bilbao. The only real difference between the two is that the digital design model could produce greater digital representations of details for the use of construction. The analogue reverse hanging method may have produced the form of the structural component of the architecture but drawings still had to be drafted for the communication of design for the buildings construction process. Furthermore, the digitisation computing models, unlike the analogue method of Gaudis form finding, opens up a pandoras box of new types of forms that can be produced and generated as architecture. A plethora of various forms and materials can be designed through the various form generation methods in digitisations methods. Additionally, the digital models are capable of informing the manufacturing of construction materials unlike analogue methods of form computation. This changes the design process of architecture whereby the architect becomes capable of taking on a master builder type role that is not passive to external methods of construction available. On the other hand, the model enables for a communicative process between designers and consultants to help refine design solutions to create the initial design intent in light of construction and materiality and spatial issues. The model is capable of being more than a one stroke wonder - it is a dynamic layered model that embodies the interactive and refinement of communicative expression between and within designers. An issue with such a process is that whilst architects can become master builders in the management of the model they can also become obsolete in the sense that an engineer through the use of digital design technologies can take over a process and merely incorporate an architect as a designer consultant.
However, the change of the design process in practice through computation digital or analogue does not change the scope of practice of architecture. For the conscious awareness of what is being formulated and knowing how that will likely effect the experience of human beings remains out of scope. Brady 2013 suggests that computation in design enables a sharing of knowledge - of
consciousness13. However, whilst computation of design enables a more dynamic design process it does not generate a more consciously aware and informed design practice in terms of what effect architecture actually infuses into the consciousness of it’s users. It is the role of the architect to involve expertise that can interpret information about an architectural design to generate a desirable exchange of information in a design. The computation of design enables more people to be involved in informing the design process14. Thus it seems computation of architecture has the potential to realise the evolution of consciousness in spatial design.
“1/15-sized reproduction of Gaudí’s hanging model for the Colònia Güell church found in the Museum of the cathedral”15
“The hyperboloid is just one of the ruled structures Gaudí used in his structure”16
13Brady
Peters, Computation Works: The Building of Algorithmic Thought. Architectural Design, 83, 2, pp. 08-15, 2013 14
Yehuda E. Kalay, Architecture’s New Media: Principles, Theories, and Methods of ComputerAided Design, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004, p13 15https://formfindinglab.wordpress.com/tag/hanging-chain/ 16ibid
COMPOSITION/GENERATION Architecture through the Vitruvian lens seeks to visualise symmetry. It designs to literally represent the paradigm in architecture plan. The shift in architecture in modern times sought to express that form could follow function not just replicate and impose the qualities of the design philosophy. However, if design is about communication then there have to be communicative tools incorporated into the design process in order for the architectural idea and it’s language to be comprehended. Interestingly, in contemporary times there are polar opposite architectural compositions generated by digital design methods. For prepackaged construction elements in design software programs can generate restrictive expressions that are not formed by design paradigms but through the ease of design tools. The architectural communication in such designs is almost not apparent as they only reflect the ability of digital technologies to generates constructed space with ease. Such creations in the digital realm are not an evolved future for architecture for it would be like thinking literature could grow if it could just choose between pre packaged sentences of basic expressions. Such a thought of digression is just not in line with what is though of as progression for the future. Thus in the field of architecture whilst there are digital design tools that can create such restrictive expression there are also means through which elaborate expressions of design approaches can be realise. Interestingly, this does not mean that restrictive design rules cannot be incorporated to generate complex expressions. However, the restrictive rules incorporated into the mediums capable of complex expressions are more like the linguistic rules of grammar that govern the expression of a language rather than prepackaged sentences of expression. An example of how design restrictions like rules of grammar can create complex expression is embodies in the design of Hadid and Schumacher algorithmic interpretations of Palladios design rubric. The design highlights that digital generation in architecture still relies upon design rules but these rules are mediums for complex aesthetics to express themselves. The rules are like the veins that enable the creative blood to pump through. Thus in digital generation there still exists a conscious formula like driven approach in order to develop a design. However, whilst this means that the architectural design process has not entirely mutated from it’s fundamental design DNA that drives formula driven spatial formations it highlights that it is rules that can be the foundations of creative forms. For without a set of rules to apply to the design medium of parametric design no design could be created as commands are necessary to instruct the design generation medium to produce form.
An interesting contrast example of how a lack of rules in the use of digital design tools can impede creation is indicative in the potential use of Revit software. For the Software provides the designer with prepackaged architectural elements. An architectural configuration can be structurally sound but mindlessly composed without any design paradigm applied. No concept is required to produce an architectural composition. As a result the digital generative process through software like Revit can generate bleached spatial designs devoid of creativity.
Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher generative design of Palladian rules17
International style promoted by Revit to improve “work flow�18 17https://www.yatzer.com/andrea-palladio-and-zaha-hadid-architects 18https://www.omniplan.me/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/revit-arch-design.jpg
CONCLUSION The digitisation of architectural generation leaves room for highly expressive communications of spatial design and forms that are devoid of architectural communication. However, in this space of expressive freedom the meaning of the language been spoken is still not completely understood. For whilst aspects of a designs impact on the physical environment and it’s building performance can be measured and tested to the site, the ability to predict the type of use the impact of spatial aesthetics and configurations has human beings is still not incorporated into the design process. What this means is whilst the design tools of architecture is expanded upon through the digitisation of the design process the level of self awareness in architecture is still in part dwelling in the abyss of the unknown. For when new forms are generated and no scientific analysis exists to predict how it will impact on human behaviour. It is difficult to state that the proliferation of architectural expression embodied in the potential of digital composition, especially through parametric design, is an evolution in the consciousness of architecture. Even though the computation of designs in the digital realm creates models that change the design and construction process it does not engender a new understanding of how architecture actually effects human behaviour and consciousness. There are steps forward in the realm of environmental psychology to help architecture realise consciousness of the impact they have on human behaviour. However, digitisation of design, in the context of economic influences desiring greater work efficiency, appears to promote a focus on improving the mechanics of how architectural forms are designed and constructed based on user function and site impact rather than the overall interaction and impact it has on users in the context of site. Henceforth, there is a blind spot in the digital realm of architecture generations as there’s a lack of consciousness and communicative skills in architecture itself. In order to move forward in reality and build upon the importance of good architectural design the digital generation of architecture has to incorporate the knowledge of it’s impact on human behaviour in it’s models and know how to generate conscious architectural expressions. Architectural language has to acknowledge and work with the natural biological language human beings experience in an environment. For tactile experiences in space deeply influence biological survival instincts in human behaviour19. Thus if human beings already have a biological language that creates a behavioural response to it’s surrounding environment surely this inescapable language should be deciphered and incorporated as a means of communication in architecture. 19
Christopher N. Henry http://www.archdaily.com/186499/tactile-architecture-does-it-matter 2011
Conversely, whilst contemporary architecture touches on this reality of harnessing the inherent biological language of human beings and thus environmental preferences of people in biophilic design it does not seek to completely incorporate the biological language generated through the evolutionary heritage of environmental interactions of human beings. Historically the Russian school of Constructivism believed that experience of space generated knowledge. However, such philosophies in architecture have been set aside for what appears to be the more important objective of construction efficiency and expressive designs. But if a design does not have consciousness of the effect of the impact it’s aesthetic expressions will have on it’s spatial user is it truly expressive or just simply imbued with expressive intent? For open plans in modern designs assumed that they would foster a greater sense of productivity in workplaces, however research has proved that this design does not have it’s desired effect on human behaviour20. Additionally, the minimalist surfaces of modern designs could impede the intelligence of it’s uses as it fails to incorporate organised complexity that fosters human brain growth and health21. Henceforth, architecture should seek to harness consciousness of all aspects its design has on user and site through the computation process in the digital realm if it is to improve upon its communicative expressions of the architectural language.
20Nikos 21
Salingaros http://www.archdaily.com/450972/is-the-open-plan-bad-for-us 2015
Michael Mehaffy and Nikos A. Salingaros http://www.metropolismag.com/Point-of-View/ February-2012/Science-for-Designers-Intelligence-and-the-Information-Environment/ 2012