Design Studio Air 2012 Final Journal Hans-Christian Bäcker by Hans-Christian Bäcker

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ 2012 JOURNAL HANS-CHRISTIAN BÄCKER _ 591286

CONTENT SPREAD 1.0 _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

1.1 _ Week 1 _ Introduction Previous Work Favourite Architecture

2 3 5

1.2 _ Week 2 _ Computing in Architecture

1.3 _ Week 3 _ Parametric Modelling

2.0 _ CUT CASE STUDY

2.1 _ Week 4 _ Cut Case Study 1.0

2.2 _ Week 5 _ Cut Case Study 2.0

2.3 _ Week 6 _ Matrix

2.4 _ Week 7 _ Final Technique

3.0 _ EXPRESSION OF INTEREST 3.1 _ Week 8 _ Expression of Interest Presentation

4.0 _ THE GATEWAY PROJECT

20 21

4.1 _ Mid-Semester Break _ Further Development

4.2 _ Week 9 _ Structure

4.3 _ Week 10 _ Elements

4.4 _ Week 11 _ Shape

4.5 _ Week 12 _ Final Presentation

4.6 _ Final Analysis

1.0 CASE FOR INNOVATION

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

1.1

WEEK 1

_ INTRODUCTION

Hey all, My name is Hans-Christian BĂ¤cker, normally called Chris, and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a 22 years old third year architecture student from the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m in Melbourne for this one semester as part of an exchange program and really look forward to see how architecture is taught here in Australia, as well as to exchange my knowledge from Germany and to learn from other students from all over the world. I have learned to work with programs like Rhino and Rhino Membrane since the beginning of my studies and fortunately already got the chance to realise a digitally designed project in the last semester, which I will talk more about on the next pages, but never worked with Grasshopper or any other parametric design program so far. So finally the reason why I decided to join design studio air was basicly the wish to enlarge my skills in digital design, which means in this case particularly learning grasshopper and making my first experiences with parametric architecture.

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1.1

WEEK 1

_ PREVIOUS WORK

MASIPHUMELELE SOUTH AFRICA Before I arrived in Melbourne I spent some months in South Africa, doing some social work and realising an architectural project, that I designed with a friend of mine in the last semester. I already did a few design courses in Germany, but I don’t want to bore you with never ending drawings of different little projects, so I will just focus on presenting this last project I did in South Africa, which is admittedly not very complex, but nevertheless the one I’m most proud of, the most similar one to what we do this semester and of course my first project I truly realised. As you can see it is all about a little membrane construction, which I designed and calculated using Rhino Membrane. The “building” beneath is a normal shipping container with about 12 x 2,4 x 2,6 meters, which was simply converted to a kindergarden in the township “Waterworks” in Grabouw, near Cape Town. The local community lettered this kindergarden with the name “Masiphumele”, which is Xhosa, one of the major tribal languages in this particular area, and could roughly be translated with “Let’s always proceed!” or “Let’s never give up!”... A sentence we had to remember very often in the following months... Unfortunately, this tinny container heated up to 60°C in summer, so our idea was to provide it with a cheap and sustainable shading roof, that shouldn’t only cool down the container, but should also create some shaded space in front of it for the children to play. This project was part of the “Ukuqala” aid-project from the University of Stuttgart, in which our group of 22 students spent half a year collecting funds, to then build a house for aids orphans in a South African Village of Hope, as well as the mentioned township-kindergarden project, which was only made by a friend of mine and me, while the rest of the group worked on the house. The final design consisted of 6 fields with 4,20 x 4,20m, from which the 3 in the back completely covered the container, while the 3 in the front provided the shaded open space.

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1.1

WEEK 1

_ PREVIOUS WORK

MASIPHUMELELE SOUTH AFRICA The relatively simple 4-point membranes hang between alternating high and low columns to create a stiff, threedimensionally doublecurved surface. Each membrane consists of 5 individual pieces, which all have a precisely calculated bending in their connection line to create exactly the wanted doublecurved form when stitched together. While constructions like this are normally made out of steel with flexibly mounted columns and cables to transmit the tension, we had to develop our own cheap and regionally adapted “Low-Tech” version here. The membranes are made out of recycled vinyl-billboards that we got for free from a local company, while the concreted columns consisted of regionally common pinewood-trees. Our individual connection details are completely made out of cheap standart parts you can get in every hardware store. Credits for the invention of the details mainly go to my colleague Florian Kaiser, while I was mainly responsible for all the membrane calculating stuff... To be honest, right from day one nothing really worked out like we planned it before and we had to improvise and change our plans nearly every day because the ground where we had to dig 1.5m deep to concrete our poles appeared to be just pure stone and noone seemed to care about precise dates for material deliveries in South Africa. Of course the trees we used as poles appeared not even close to being straight when they arrived, the recycled membrane-material unpredictably refused to be welded together and to top it all, some bolshie local officials didn’t want to give us a building permission although it was an aid project... That was all a really tough lesson for just two young students without any experience in realising projects, but in the end it worked out perfectly and turned out to be more successfull than we ever imagined, because we seemed to motivate more and more other people in the region to help and for example after just 4 weeks somebody sponsored a whole playground right in front of our kindergarden...

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PICTURES: http://icd.uni-stuttgart.de/?p=6553 (25/07/12)

1.1

WEEK 1

_ FAVOURITE ARCHITECTURE

UNI STUTTGART ICD/ITKE RESEARCH PAVILION 2011 This wonderful pavillion on the campus of the University of Stuttgart is a project I am very familiar with, not only because it is a project of my university and because I used sitting inside there in nearly every sunny summer-midday, but also because it was developped by some good friends of mine and because I was involved personally in building it. Like the project I realised with a friend of mine in South Africa, the University of Stuttgart does a great job here, supporting students in developping innovative projects and giving them the chance to indeed realise their first projects after just a few semesters of study. So when I mention this project here as one of my favourite architectural projects, then I’m not only talking about this one particular pavillion, but also about all the other projects of this kind the University of Stuttgart does. Generally, the projects I mention here as my favourite architectural projects are more thought as an example of a special way of doing architecture than as just a description of one project I like. I could for example have also mentioned the ICD/ITKE research pavillion from the year before, but I will also talk about this in a later chapter about parametric modelling. First of all, I am a big fan of computational design and love the complex, well formed geometry this project generates. The inner room it creates looks absolutely amazing from inside and is very comfortable to sit in, especially in summer when you are searching for a place to have lunch outside with your friends without having to sit in the pure sun. But besides the aesthetical appearance and the fact that this project is completely developped and built by students, the concept that makes it such an amazing role project for computional design and architecture in general is in my eyes, that it doesn’t only focus on aesthetics and doing something special, but is based on the idea of adapting some of the endless intelligent principles that nature shows us. Today, architects are always searching for new ideas to create itelligent and effective structures. But in fact, we already have thousands of these perfectly optimised systems around us, we just have to use them. And this is what this project is trying to do. It adapts to the biological structure of the sand dollar, whose plate skeleton morphology makes it possible to create a very effective, stabil structure using only 6.5mm thin plywood sheets, which were also used in the pavillion of 2010 I will later speak about. This doesn’t only make it a very lightweight structure which is incredibly easy to assemble, disassemble and to transport, but also makes it extremely cheap and effective in material use. The precisely calculated, individual plates, which are all formed basing on the transmission of mechanical stress, have been completely produced with the university’s robotic system. With the knowledge from this design studio, I hope I will be perfectly prepared to also take part in the next research pavillion project as soon as I return back to the University of Stuttgart.

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

PICTURES: http://pds.exblog.jp/pds/1/200710/31/51/d0079151_3173226.jpg (25/07/12) http://akanedou.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/002.jpg?w=710&h=472 (25/07/12) http://c214210.r10.cf3.rackcdn.com/files/projects/17866/images/500:w/D1_2.jpg (25/07/12) http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2476/3603622613_5086175f88_b.jpg (25/07/12) http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7019/6788693331_742408201a_b.jpg (25/07/12)

1.1

WEEK 1

_ FAVOURITE ARCHITECTURE

BRUDER KLAUS CHAPEL, WACHENDORF This project just stands representative for nearly all the work done by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, one of my worldwide favourite architects. Here I could also mention projects like the amazing Columba museum in Cologne, Germany, or the Therme Vals in Switzerland, but as you will notice I am a big fan of all these small and rather unknown projects, which often show a special sense of innovativeness and architectural expression because they are not limited to so many requirements and regulations. The little chapel was build from 2005 to 2007 in Wachendorf-Mechernich, Germany, and is in my opinion despite its size one of the greatest masterpieces of Peter Zumthor. I already visited all of his projects in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Britain, Italy and Norway because his incredibly sensitive feeling for architecture and the expression of materials and atmospheres is very inspiring to me. So although I’m not a religious person and normally not a big fan of chirchy buildings, standing inside this little tower was probably the most impressive architectural experience I ever made. The whole project was build by the commune of Wachendorf themselves, in close partnership with the architect. They first built a tent-like construction out of spruce wood trunks, which was then surrounded by the outer hull made out of traditional rammed concrete. After that, they indeed kept a fire burning inside for three weeks to dry the trunks and to relieve them from the concrete, so that all that was left in the end was the pure concrete with the stamp of the trunks and a slightly burned colour, giving the interior an incredible atmosphere. The little holes that were necessary for the connection of the outer with the inner form work for the concrete were closed with 350 mouth-blown glass-spheres, providing the interior with a wonderful atmospheric lighting when the sun shines on them. There’s no altar or other decoration iside, it’s just the room itself causing an indescribable feeling to everyone standing inside there. But it’s not only this amazing material creation inside that is fascinating me so much, it’s also the outer look of the beautiful rammed concrete, which got a very special sand-like pattern because of different local sands that have been mixed into it. And the appearence of this minimalistic, pure block as lonely tower in the wide landscape is absolutely astonishing. As soon as you see it from far away, you immediately get the feeling you have to go there... Now sorry for enthusing so much about this building, but I can only recommend everyone coming to Germany to visit this in my opinion very genius little piece of architecture.

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

PICTURES: http://pages.uoregon.edu/kimball/images/1851-CrystalPalace0025.jpg (01/08/12) http://whyevolutionistrue.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/02-guggenheim-museum-bilbao-spain-1.jpg (01/08/12) http://www.bauintern-hausbau.de/files/plan_mit_zirkel.jpg (01/08/12)

1.2

WEEK 2

_ COMPUTING IN ARCHITECTURE

ARCHITECTURE’S NEW MEDIA Architecture has always been an evolving field. From century to century, humans change, societies change, technologies change... And so does the architecture we live in. Changes in our societies and the way we see our environment led to different styles and understandings of architecture. Again and again, new materials are discovered and new technologies developped, broadening our horizon and giving us new possibilities to produce architecture in a way we could have never imagined before. The last of these milestones in architectural development before the invention of computational design was the industrial revolution, where new materials like steel and iron opened completely new possibilities of architectural approaches. Suddenly huge bridges out of steel made it possible to overdrew wide rivers and buildings like the Crystal Palace in London changed the way people thought about architecture. But not only new materials change the development of architecture, at the same time new technologies and methods to design are constantly evolving the way architects are approaching their designs, the criteria they can focus on and the way they are interacting with their environment. Now we are facing a new age in the history of architecture, where the invention of computer aided design gives us the opportunity to design an nearly endless variety of completely new forms like we could have never imagined before, supported by the discovery of new materials that make these new designs possible to be realised. To be honest I don’t really like to talk about Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum and don’t want to go too much into detail because I personally don’t like this project and because it is possibly the first thing everyone mentions within this context, but still the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is probably the most well known example for this new kind of architecture, where the use of new materials like Titan and revolutionary freeform-programs like CATIA made it possible to create a whole new range of individual forms that would have nearly been impossible to realise before. The use of computer aided design programs didn’t only revolutionise the process of drawing for every architect, making their work way quicker, easier and more precise, no it also changed the way architects can interact with their environment. Especially in these days, where the work of architects is more than ever before based on the collaboration with different experts and companies involved in the building progress, the use of these modern programs enables an incredibly quick and unproblematic exchange between different participants in the designing and building process, while the possibility of creating photorealistic illustrations made it way easier for non-architects to understand the idea of the architect’s design.

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

PICTURES: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_lMDI9DXjQM4/S-6lgPzfk7I/AAAAAAAAGTg/W9g9JB_WZRk/s1600/060823_036_Dokumentation_Ralphfeiner_006_PR.jpg (01/08/12) http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_lMDI9DXjQM4/S-6lNw-f2WI/AAAAAAAAGTc/jovIyy4VdJA/s1600/060823_036_BaustelleOhneGeruest_DK_006_PR.jpg (01/08/12) http://www.scientifica.ch/assets/gallery/medien/_resampled/resizedimage300203-GramazioKohlerLondon2011600.jpg (01/08/12)

1.2

WEEK 2

_ COMPUTING IN ARCHITECTURE

ARCHITECTURE’S NEW MEDIA Additionally, the intervention of computer aided design suddenly enables completely new possibilities of architectural manifacturing, for example making it possible to quickly produce perfectly precise elements with a computer controlled robot instead of having to find complicated solutions for slowly producig these elements by hand. A good example for this new kind of computational manifacturing is the Vineyard Gantenbein by Gramazio&Kohler in Fläsch, Switzerland, where a computer aided roboter was used to automatically arrange bricks in precisely calculated angles to produce a cellular automation in the wall, constantly changing while you are moving past it and providing the interior with interesting illuminations.To be honest this is not really something special today and in the meantime nearly everyone seems to be doing something like this but I saw a presentation by Gramazio&Kohler about this project in my first Semester as an Architecture student and at this time, this was really something fascinating me and perfectly showing the new possibilities in manifacturing digital architecture brings us. But pobably the most important innovation computer aided design brought us is the chance to finally optimise architectural structures in terms of material efficiency, energy efficiency, force transmission and so on. Computational design didn’t only bring us tools to design new forms, but also to evaluate them and to develop them out of intelligent structural relationships, to analyse forces, get rid of unnecessary elements and find out the most resistant and material efficiant structre that is possible- Or to even find completely new, revolutionary ways to create efficient structures like in the Uni Stuttgart Research Pavillion of 2010, which I will talk more about later. And in my opinion, exactly this is the great strength in computional design. This is what can make computational architecture better than what we did before and what really gives it an undeniable right to exist. For me, everything else is just another “style”, another short period of excitement about some new look, that will dissappear one day as quickly as it came up. Coming back to the industrial revolution, buildings like the once celebrated Crystal Pallace disappeared like all the other outcomes from different architectural styles that were once celebrated as the new kind of architecture. But the developments in building new, effective structures for bridges and other constructions are still important until today. So for me, this is where the future of digital architecture will be decided. Buildings like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao that are only made for looking futuristic might disappear one day like all the other styles we’ve seen so far. But the new technologies facilitating in optimising our structural way of building will never lose its importance. Even if a lot of these innovative research projects like those from the University of Stuttgart, which i mentioned in other chapters of this journal, seem to be mainly restricted to pavillions and other rather small projects today, using evaluating programms and developing architecture out of intelligent and optimised structural systems seems to gain more and more of importance today. If we increase using digital architecture as a tool to make more efficient and sustainable architecture, then I am sure digital design will more and more become an essential part of future architecture. But if we keep using it mainly for producing futuristic blobs, then this will never be more than just another temporary style...

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

PICTURES: httpwww.detail.deuploadspics441_734_500.jpg (08/08/12) http://metalshutterhouses.com/content/images/centrepompidou-metz%20in%20progress.jpg (08/08/12) http://www.baublatt.ch/sites/baublatt.ch/files/content/images/slideshow/10centre-pompidou-metz.jpg (08/08/12) https://www.dlubal.de/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/centre_gpm.png (08/08/12)

1.3

WEEK 3

_ PARAMETRIC MODELLING

CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU, METZ When it comes to parametric modelling, first of all I want to talk about a very beautiful but at the same time very questionable parametric project, the Centre Pompidou in Metz by Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines. The project was build until May 2010 as a museum of modern and contemporary arts in Metz, France, and was supposed to embody the ideas of its counterpart, the Pompidou arts centre in Paris: Generosity and openness to all forms of arts and expressions. The reason why I decided to mention it in this context of parametric modelling is of course the stunning parametric freeform roofconstruction. The roof basicly appears as a 90 meters wide freeformed hexagon carried by only four “poles”, which seamlessly grow out of the roof structure and become smaller towards the ground. It is covered with an incredible intelligent white fibreglass membrane and a coating of teflon, which keeps the roof clean, protects it from direct sunlight and looks completely transparent at night. I have to admit that the sophisticated appearance of this roof looks absolutely amazing and doesn’t only create wonderful open spaces inside, but also perfectly embodys the art it contains. Additionally, the use of these new, intelligent and multifunctional covermaterials is a wonderful role model for future projects of this kind. The parametrical structure of the roof consists of an irregular, three dimensionally doublecurved geometry completely made out of glued laminated timber with curves and counter-curves forming hexagonal units that all in all build the pattern of a huge Chinese hat. It is said that the architect once found such a Chinese hat on the street and immediately knew that this has to be the form of his design for the Centre Pompidou. So together with his french collegue Jean de Gastines, they started trying to achieve this form using parametrical software. But exactly this is the process, how designing with parametrical software shouldn’t be done in my opinion. The architects were so sure about their idea of how this building should look like in the end, that they didn’t care enough about optimising the structure and developing the form out of structural and metrial-based aspects. Together with the fact that both architects obviously didn’t have enough experience with parametrical designing and the way it could be realised, in the end this project failed in many aspects. As a professor at our university who knows the involved architects personally once told us, they designed the individual wooden pieces of their structure, but didn’t really know how to produce them efficiently, so in the end they had to cut out every piece from huge, massive pieces of wood and wasted ridiculous amounts of material, which also made the project incredibly expensive. Additionally, the structure was obviously not calculated strong enough, because in the first winter after a few months the roof already collapsed and had about a 2m wide hole in it. This raises the question, whether you should use parametric design with might and main if you don’t know how to realise it propperly...

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

PICTURES: http://icd.uni-stuttgart.de/?p=4458 (08/08/12) http://www.detail.de/uploads/pics/674_750_500.jpg (08/08/12)

1.3

WEEK 3

_ PARAMETRIC MODELLING

ICD/ITKE RESEARCH PAVILLION 2010, STUTTGART This project just stands representative for all the work that is done by the Institute of Computional Design and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design at the University of Stuttgart. I could have also talked about the research pavillion from 2011 here, but I already spoke enough about this project in the first part of this journal about my favourite architectural projects. Although it is just a very small project, this research pavillion suits perfectly to be compared with the other parametrical project I talked about, the Centre Pompidou in Metz, because it starts with the same approach to build a parametrical freeform construction completely made out of wood, but ends in just the opposite result in terms of material efficiency and other aspects by perfecting everything in which the other project failed so tragically. In fact, the reason for this difference in the success of building an effective parametrical construction starts with the way both projects were designed and the way parametrical operations have been used within the designing process. While Shigeru Ban started with the aesthetical idea of a Chinese hat, that always determined the way the Centre Pompidou should look like in the end and just used parametrical software to find a way of realising the aesthetical appearcence he and Jean de Gastines wanted to achieve with the material they wanted to use, the Research Pavillion in Stuttgart started with the material and the revolutionary construction principle they wanted to test, without havig an idea of how the exact form of the pavillion would look like in the end. The whole construction basicly consists of a bending-active structure of only 6.5mm thin, elastically-bent birch plywood strips, that all have a slightly different, precisely calculated form and were all robotically manufactured. The different bendings of the plywood strips in exactly this connection stregthen each other mutually and enable the very efficient use of the extremely thin material while still remaining a very strong and flexible structure. The computational design model is completely based on combining the material behavioral characteristics with parametric principles. The relevant parametric dependencies have all been developed through a large number of physical experiments about the material characteristics of the used thin plywood strips. Of course this project could easily be criticized because it is just a small pavillion without a special usage concept, because of the huge effort that has to be done to develop such a structure and to robotically manufacture the individual parts, or because it is hard to make such a structure waterproof, but in my opinion this project is still a wonderful role model in how parametric design should be used... As a tool to create not only aesthetical and flexible, but also effective, optimized structures in terms like material efficiency and all the other important architectural themes we should care about instead of just trying to make â&#x20AC;&#x153;beautifulâ&#x20AC;? blobs without any sense.

2.0 CUT CASE STUDY

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

PICTURES: http://icd.uni-stuttgart.de/?p=6553 (15/08/12)

2.1

WEEK 4

_ CUT CASE STUDY 1.0

EXPERIENCE SO FAR As I mentioned before, I already made some experiences with digital architecture in my previous semesters at the University of Stuttgart and have always been a fan of it, although the experiences I made so far with this kind of architecture have mainly been restricted to very small projects with rather a research intention at our university than having a huge public intention. I never used particular parametric programs so far and was very excited at the beginning to make my first experiences with it, so since I am only here as an exchange student for one semester, my focus has always been on learning Grasshopper and gaining some serious skills I can later use when coming back to the University of Stuttgart. Therefor I really spent a lot of time on learning Grasshopper on a level beyond of the material we get from the university, watched endless tutorials in the internet and tried to teach myself on a trial and error- basis by just starting to develop my own definitions, defining the problems and trying to solve them. At the beginning I have to admit that it seemed hard for me to really get into this program on a level beyond of just copying the components someone tells me in a tutorial, but as soon as you really spend some time on creating your own things you quickly realise that Grasshopper is pretty easy to use when you just develop your definitions logically and think about what you want to get, which components you need for that, and then what these components need, what the next components need and so on...

GROUP ARGUMENT The field of interest our group decided to focus on is biomimicry, because as I mentioned before when I was talking about the biomimicry pavillion of the University of Stuttgart as one of my favourite architectural projects, architects are always searching for innovative, optimised principles to create effective structures in terms of force transmission, material efficiency and so on, to deal with special climatic conditions or other difficult architectural contexts. But in fact we already have all these perfectly optimised structures around us, the difficult task is just to find the right one and to adapt the principles nature gives us to the corresponding architectural context. Because we want our project to be more than just a random piece of art and because we want to develop it out of some intelligent system that makes our project special in some way, we thought biomimicry is a good point to start with. Additionally, Wyndham marks the beginning of the Great Ocean Road, which makes our project not only a Gateway to Wyndham but also the gateway to this wonderful experience of nature on the Great Ocen Road and therefor we think biomimicry with its unique connection to nature is probably the best technique to use.

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

PICTURES: http://www.archicentral.com/minister-of-municipal-affairs-agriculture-building-doha-qatar-aesthetics-architects-go-group-13374/ (22/08/12)

2.1

WEEK 4

_ CUT CASE STUDY 1.0

MINISTER OF MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS & AGRICULTURE BUILDING, QUATAR The Minister of Municipal Affairs & Agriculture building in Qatar, better known as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;cactus buildingâ&#x20AC;?, is famous for its ability to adapt to the dessert climate of the region. Therefore it imitates the perfect protection system of a cactus. Particularly the cactus building is a great example of biomimicry in architecture because of its facade system. The optimised shape of the building and the hundreds of smart shades on the outside that open and close depending on the strength and direction of the sun always provide a perfect climate inside to brave the very strong dessert climate in Quatar. The cactus is a great example of vegetation that is able to adapt really well to extremely hot climatic conditions. So here the designers used the advantages of this already perfectly optimised system developed by nature to create a building that has similar properties and provides comfortable conditions all day, independent from the intensity of the sun.

create circle

copy and scale circles

loft circles

divide surface

attach sunscreen to points

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

PICTURES: http://www.archdaily.com/192699/shadow-pavilion-ply-architecture/ (22/08/12)

2.1

WEEK 4

_ CUT CASE STUDY 1.0

SHADOW PAVILION, MICHIGAN The Shadow Pavilion in the Botanical Gardens of the University of Michigan by “PLY Architecture” is a very interesting biomimicry project because of its intelligent self-supporting structure, which is based on the arrangement of flowers and leaves. This phenomenon is called phyllotaxis: the arrangement of leaves along the plant stem. This phenomenon is not very common, which is probably the reason why a lot of people first don’t recognize it as a biomimicry project, but what makes it even more innovative and impressive. Additionally, besides the self-supporting system this pavilion is special because of the second function of its cones: The cones are not only structural but they are also exaggerating the different natural elements like sunlight, wind, sound and moisture. The sunlight gets exaggerated because of the reflecting properties of the material it is made of, the wind blowing through the cones produces a noise which implicates a stronger wind then it actually is, the same thing goes for sound as the outside sounds seem to be louder then it really is, and last but not least the moisture is exaggerated because of the sound it makes when it falls on all the different cones.

create curve and offset divide curves

rotate curves and attach circles to the points

loft inner and outer circles

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

PICTURES: http://www.orgone-design.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Mangal-City-Chimera-3.jpg (22/08/12) http://datastorage02.maggioli.it/data/docs/www.architetti.com/Chimera%20-%20Mangal%20City1.jpg (22/08/12) http://www.greendiary.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mangal-city-spiraling-skysrapers-1_92N9t_11446.jpg (22/08/12) http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/mangal-ed021.jpg (22/08/12)

2.2

WEEK 5

_ CUT CASE STUDY 2.0

MANGAL CITY, LONDON To be honest, the first reason why we decided to take this project as our cut case study 2.0 is because we wanted to have a real challenge with rebuilding a project like this in Grasshopper to test out the limits of our newly gained skills and to have a motivation for further increasing them. But despite its very interesting design and the many complex shapes it containes, the not yet realised Mangal City design from Design Team Chimera also has a lot of other characteristics that make it a very interesting biomimicry project. Focusing on the characteristics of flexibility and adaptability, the spiraling skyscraper structure is modeled after the complex ecosystems of by Mangrove trees. The project is an urban ecological system composed of modular pod capsules that shift to adapt to environmental and contextual conditions by referring to the complex geometry and intelligent organizing principles borrowed from nature, such as branching and phyllotaxis The project provides different spaces through a logic of cellular aggregation, embedding neighboring relationships at different scales, and is also the ground reference of the urban housing massing negotiation.

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

2.2

WEEK 5

_ CUT CASE STUDY 2.0

REBUILDING OF MANGAL CITY Actually the rebuilding of the Mangal City project appeared to be way easier in the end than we expected it to be. As I already mentioned, we chose this project as the biggest possible challenge for rebuilding a biomimicry project in grasshopper and havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been sure in the beginning how far we would come, but we still wanted to give it a try. Our first step was simply creating the three rotated basic shapes in rhino, consisting of a curved vertical line as the basis of what will later be the trunk of our building and the four framelines of our freeformed surface as the basis of our fassade, as well as the framelines for our little modules we wanted to attach later. The shape of these lines could of course have been easily created in Grasshopper to make it perfectly parametric but we decided that it should be enough for this particular task to just recreate them quickly in Rhino. Then after adding the actual surface to our framelines in Grasshopper, we divided the surface and trunk-line with the same amout of vertical divisions and added connection-lines between all points on one horizontal level of the surface and the appropriate point on the trunk line. Now we only had to use the pipe component with a realistic radius on the trunk-line, loft the connection-lines and offset the lofted surfaces together with the fassade-surface in the right directions to give them some material thickness. Probably the most difficult think here was that we had to use the Path-Mapper component a few times and some Graft- and Simplify- components to make sure the connection lines are added between the right points and the lofts added between the right lines. Then we only had to move our modules to each point on the surface, cull out a few of them to create the upper right corner without attached modules, orient the moved modules with the normal vectors of the surface and there it was... our at least quite similar rebuilding of the Mangal City project. The only problems we had was that for some reason we couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t trim the perforation into our surface and when we first tried to cull out the upper right corner with an image sampler, it was very hard to find out the connection between image and culled out points on the surface.

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

2.3

WEEK 6

_ CUT CASE STUDY 2.0

MATRIX

MODULE VARIATIONS >

Since we didn’t expect this to later be the startig point of our design when we decided to rebuild the Mangal City building, the difficult task for us was now to develop different variations by varying the shape and size of surfaces and modules to make it more our personal design than just a similar rebuilding of the original project and to find a shape that satisfies our own design-ideas without completely losing the connection to the cut case study. First we simplified the original, double-curved shape of the mangal surfaces and explored some more random variations of the surfaces like differentiating each [B], creating one surface all around [C] and playing around with scale using simple number sliders [D]. Then we started shifting away from the the dominant vertical direction of the Mangal City design to a more horizontal direction and slowly decreased the amount of srfaces [E-G}. The aim was basicly to not only simplify the structure and to move away from the original building, but also to give it a more and more dynamic shape that fits better into its highway environment. Durig this process we developped the idea that our sculpture could overhang the road so that drivers could not only enjoy the design as an object from far away but that it would actually influence their experience of driving the road. For the modules we tried out shapes ranging from organic [1-2] to angular [3-6], from smaller [1, 3, 5] to larger [2, 4, 6] and with different densities. We found out that we prefer a rather organic shape [1] because it fits best to the fluent curves of the surface and played around with the length of the modules until we found one that has enough ‘length’ to define itself but doesn’t dominate the overall design. From stage [F] onwards we skipped the modules on top of the surfaces because the ones on top seem to be useless later when they can’t be seen by the drivers. All in all our matrix was more a step by step development from the original building towards the attributes we considered as important for our design, so in our opinion, in the end we came up with a quite satisfyig shape that is not only something completely individual and simple enough to build, but that particularly provides the best feeling of dynamics to fit in our highway-environment and that gives us the best opportuities to create interesting effects for the drivers.

Individuality, Simplicity, dynamics, effect on the drivers...

< SURFACE VARIATIONS

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

2.4

WEEK 7

_ CUT CASE STUDY 2.0

FINAL TECHNIQUE AND MODEL BUILDING The outcomes of our matrix-research finally brought us to a shape reminding more of a bridge or something like a single leaf than the mangal tree shape we started with. It appears to be way more dynamic now and more suitable for the environment it is supposed to be placed in later. The modules are still organic but now better dimensioned to provide a more consistent appearance with the surface and placed more carefully to make sure they don’t interfer with each other and provide the optimal light and shadow pattern on the street. To rationalise the doublecurved surface we wrote a simple definition that divides the surface into an adaptable amount of subsurfaces, exploded those into their individual components and created new planar triangles between their edgepoints, so that we now have a surface consistent of a lot of planar triangles instead of a complicated doublecurved surface. But because the model was still too complex to build by hand in this short amount of time, we decided together with Finn to 3D print it and therefor started to create a printable 3D file in rhino. Unfortunately this appeared to be way more difficult than we thought it would be because the whole file has to be only one completely closed surface and even one little point where two surfaces or lines don’t end up perfectly keeps the whole shape from being joined or trimmed correctly. Then all you have is the notice that it is not one closed mesh yet and you don’t have any clue which of the thousand little connection points could be the problem, not to mention the fact that the problem often lies in just a thousandth cm. So in the end we spent at least the same amount of time on creating and fixing our rhinofile than others did with completely building a model by hand. And to top it all, when our model was supposed to be picked up one day before the presentation, the fablab told us they lost it, which meant that they had to print it again for about 8 hours and that we couldn’t pick it up before the presentation day. So all in all we had a lot of trouble with priting this model but still the outcome was absolutely amazing and I am still impressed how a machine can rebuild such a complex shape in such a precise way...

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ CASE FOR INNOVATION

PICTURES: http://www.archdaily.com/270592/al-bahar-towers-responsive-facade-aedas/ (19/09/12)

2.4

WEEK 7

_ CUT CASE STUDY 2.0

FURTHER RESEARCH After looking critically at the outcome of our final technique, we realised that although it still looks like something adapted from nature, we slightly moved away from the biomimicry interest because the concept of biomimicry is not just to immitate shapes from nature but to use intelligent systems from nature to make a building more suitable in its particular context and since our project doesn’t really have special requirements like climatic conditions or other themes we have to face for this piece of art, it seems very hard for us to find a really useful biomimicry system for our particular context. Our interest for this project now focuses more on the affect it has on drivers passing by and therefor it seems more suitable for us to move into a direction of responsive or kinetic elements creating different expressions through different environmental influences. That doesn’t mean that we completely restart our design, but that we start developing our attached modules from the good looking but in this case not really effective modules we adapted from the Mangal City project to something more complex and more useful for our design approach. A good example for such modules making it possible to for example create different light expressions and shading patterns on the street at different times of day are the so called “mashrabiya”-modules used in the Al Bahar Towers Responsive Facade from Aedas Architects. Basicly these modules consist of an itelligent structure of folding triangles that can be opened or closed in different extents, making it possible to always control the amount of light coming through and the appearance of the fassade from an open pattern to a completely closed structure. In this case the modules are controlled by a computer system adapting to the position of the sun at different times of day, but we are sure the structure could also be moved by a huge variety of other, more simple systems, like for example the force of the wind.

3.0 EXPRESSION OF INTEREST

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ EXPRESSION OF INTEREST

3.1

WEEK 8

_ EXPRESSION OF INTEREST PRESENTATION

PRESENTATION AND FEEDBACK Fortunately the mid semester presentation was quite successfull for us because we got a lot of very helpful feedback on how to continue with our design and how to present it in the end. First of all, the panel liked the approach to base our design on creating an interesting shape that enbodies the dynamics of its environment and overspans the road to create interesting light and shadow effects for the drivers passing by. Furthermore, they supported us in the idea to develop more into a kinetic and responsive direction from now on to create even more interesting and changing effects based on different environmental influences. Elements could for example be moved by the wind produced by different cars passing by in different speeds, so that the impression of every driver is influenced by the cars in front of him or another factor could for instance be the intensity of the sun, giving us the possibility to influence the mood of people passing by every day by providing a rather closed, shaded impression when people go to work in the morning and a very appealing, sunny impression when they come back in the afternoon. Another important point was that we have to develop an intelligent static system now that would make it possible to realise this project without losing the aesthetical appearance because of a huge visible construction. A good idea is for example to try whether we can develop it into a self-supportive structure without any additional construction. And although our model came out quite well in the end, we still got some usefull tips on how to improve it for the end presentation, like using different materials for a more interesting look and a thicker groundplate to improve the quality of its appearance.

4.0 THE GATEWAY

PROJECT

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ THE GATEWAY PROJECT

PICTURES: http://images.whereilive.com.au/images/uploads/2010/05/31/d5531ae50ee97c4e05b608beaffb1a12_resized.jpg (10/10/12) Studio Air Site Photos from the LMS

4.1

MID-SEMESTER BREAK

_ FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

DESIGN IDEA AND INTEGRATION INTO THE SITE After the Mid-Semester Presentation, we spent some time on thinking about how we want to go on with our design and in which direction we want it to go. Looking at our project so far and the feedback we got from the panel it was quite obvious for us that we have to concentrate on two points now: Creating an intelligent selfsupportive structure to make sure our project can be built without any other distracting and expensive construction, as well as developing a simple and effective responsive element to strengthen our idea of creating an interesting experience for the driver in interaction with our gateway. In order to achieve this we decided to focus on developing our systems completely independent from the appearance it will later have. So far we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any specific imagination in which direction we want to go and wanted to keep all possibilities open for us without being limited by specific aesthetical ideas, so we decided to not even think about the shape and design of our project so far. The precise shape should later develop out of the structures we have. The only thing we already started with besides our conceptional research was the analysis of the site. So since our idea was to build a gateway over the street, we first had to decide which one it would be. And because this is a gateway to Wyndham, it was pretty obvious for us that is has to be the middle road leading into Wyndham. Then looking at this road a little bit closer, we decided that the best point to put our gateway would be near the middle of its curvature, at the beginning of the hill, where it can still be seen from all the other roads without being too close to anything distracting.

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ THE GATEWAY PROJECT

PICTURES: http://icd.uni-stuttgart.de/?p=6553 (17/10/12)

4.2

WEEK 9

_ STRUCTURE

THE SELFSUPPORTIVE STRUCTURE This is where it starts getting intesresting. Since one of the most important points in our Mid-Semester feedback was that we should think about how exactly our project would be built, we decided to come back to our biomimicry idea and to use it for creating a cheap and effective selfsupportive structure. Therefore we did a lot of research on different selfsupportive projects like the Shadow Pavillion in Michigan and the Research Pavillion in Stuttgart that we already talked about before and used their intelligent principles to create our own effective structure. In the end we decided to use a similar system to the one in Stuttgart, but with a constant hexagonal grid. Hexagons are generally extremely effective because of their joining points where always 3 hexagons come together in one point and strengthen each other in all directions. This allows a very effective force transmission and sets the basis for a selfsupportive structure. Normally the problem with hexagons is that you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t apply them to every freeformed surface because 6 points on such a surface are never planar, but here the intelligent principle of the sand dollar seashell solves this problem by dividing the modules into in our case 6 planar surfaces that adapt to the different heights of the points and are connected by one hexagonal planar surface in the middle. The outgrowing shape of the modules in combination with their closed double-structure provides the construction with even more strength and facilitates big openings in the middle of the module, which will become important for us later. Another thing we improved in comparison to the system from Stuttgart is the joining system. While the team there used a simple fingerjoint system that is absolutely perfect for their pressure-based shape, we decided to use angled joints istead, which are more effective for the transmission of tension forces and will later give us more freedom in the design of our shape. Now we had the basis to write a Grasshopper definition that applies this systems to every freeformed surface we create and sets the foundation for our later design.

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ THE GATEWAY PROJECT

PICTURES: http://blog.nicgranleese.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/IMG_0034.jpg (24/10/12)

4.3

WEEK 10

_ ELEMENTS

THE RESPONSIVE ELEMENTS Since we already mentioned in the Mid-Semester presentation that biomimicry alone can not completely satisfy our idea to create different impressions for the drivers passing through, we now additionally focused on a more responsive approach to develop the elements attached to our structure modules. The idea was to have opening elements that respond to the sun, the wind or cars passing by to not only create different opened and closed impressions of our structure, but to also create an interesting, always changing light-shadow-pattern on the street. We had to make sure that these elements are as simple as possible as well as cheap and easy to build. Therefore we investigated a lot of different variations to find the most effective and most appropriate one. We had elements opening when the sun is shining on them because of a special high-tech material that is getting shorter in the sun, but of course that was too expensive and too complicated for such a project; we had inflatable elements blown up by some gas expanding in the sun or blown up by the wind, but they didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t provide the impression we wanted to achieve; we had elements based on a lid and several rotating elements, all responding to the wind. But most of them were not effective enough in terms of their moving abilities or the different lightsituations they would produce. But the funny thing is that the final idea came us when we were driving to the uni, past the RMIT Design Hub Buildig. It is probably the most simple solution you can imagine: just a thin round plate rotating along an axis, providing a completely open appearance when they are parallel to the light from the sun and completely closed when they are perpendicular to the sun. In case of the RMIT building they are made out of glass and moved mechanical, in our case they would just be thin and lightweight aluminiumplates with about 40cm of radius, attached at the bottom of our modules and turned by the wind of the cars, so that they produce an opening and closing wave-movement through the whole structure with every car passing by. Additionally, the aluminiumplates have a small curvature to make them even more effective for catching the wind.

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ THE GATEWAY PROJECT

4.4

WEEK 11

_ SHAPE

FINAL SHAPE DESIGN AND MODEL BUILDING Finally, The last thing we thought about was the actual shape of our gateway project. After we knew we have an effective selfsupportive structure, allowing us to build our gateway out of only 6 to 10mm thin plywood and making it a cheap, affordabe project despite its size, with a simple responsive system that is cheap and easy to build as well, but still provides the interesting impression we wanted to achieve, now it was time to design the actual appearance of our gateway. But although our Grasshopper definition gave us a nearly endless freedom in creating our shape with the developed structure, there were still a lot of things to be careful about. Creating a freeformed surface with a hexagonal structure is the one thing, but making sure it is really selfsupportive without any points of weakness is the other thing. Therefore the main point you have to be careful about is that the force is transmitted correctly from module to module at every point, so that in the end the force is always transmitted correctly into the ground . Since I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a professional program to check my results, I spoke to some friends of mine who already developed the mentioned Research Pavillion in Stuttgart and have enough experience in detecting the weak points in a self-supportive structure. I had to make some little changes to my shape a few times but in the end we were all pretty confident that this should be a working self-supportive shape. But lookig at the final shape, there were still a lot of other aspects playing a role in its design-idea. The long and dynamic tunnel-like shape obviously emerges out of the fact that you need a certain length to create a considerable affect to the driver passing through and adapts to the speed and dynamic movement of the highway, as well as the flat landscape surrounding it. Since we are playing with sun and shadow, the long and closed side follows the way of the sun, while the short and open side creates some variation and provides a framed view on the garden fields next to it. If you want to, you can also see the idea of a wave swapping over the street in it or just a stretched variation of the mid-semester shape it developed from... In the end, everybody can see something different in it. But the only thing that is important is that it makes people think about it...

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ THE GATEWAY PROJECT

4.5

WEEK 12

_ FINAL PRESENTATION

FINAL PRESENTATION AND FEEDBACK Fortunately the design of our project developed quite successful in the last weeks, giving us the chance to start producing very early and to prepare nearly everything we wanted for the final presentation. The only thing we couldn’t get rendered in time was an animation of our moving elements and the impression of the drivers passing through. Maybe that would have made it more easy to understand the impression we want to create with our technique. But nevertheless, the presentation was quite successful again and we got a lot of good criticism about how we could have improved this project. The main criticism was that our gateway- design was not really site-specific and not identifying with wyndham. I can totally understand this point because a gateway project should always be something representative for its city and we already knew that this is a point where our project can easily be criticised, but to be honest we couldn’t find anything really unique about Wyndham that would have given us the chance to create a design which couldn’t be built anywhere else and we saw the purpose of this design studio rather in developing something interesting with Grasshopper than really focusing on the Wyndham project. Another comprehensible critique from the panel was that we moved away too far from the original idea of creating a biomimicry project, but this is also something we can live with because to slightly move away from our biomimicry origins was a decision we already made in the Mid-Semester presentation, when we realised that biomimicry can’t satisfy all the aspects we wanted to integrate in our design and after all I think that it was the right decision to include a responsive part in our project in addition to the structural biomimicry aspect to strengthen our idea of creating different experiences for the drivers and to add some variation to our project.

DESIGN STUDIO AIR _ THE GATEWAY PROJECT

4.6

FINAL ANALYSIS

REFLECTION AND FURTHER DEVELOPMENT If we would have more time to go on with this project, the next step would definitely be to further optimise the shape of our structure and to make it as effective as possible. Since we didn’t have a lot of time to create the actual shape of our project in the end, I am sure that there are still a lot of points where you could further optimise the force transmission and minimise the used material to make it an even more examplary project in terms of material efficiency and the creation of new effective building structures. It would be very interesting to really calculate how thick the used material would have to be, how much material you would need and for how much money you could actually build this project. On the other side, we could probably develop even more efficient elements and make some tests about how much wind such elements really need to produce an interesting movement. Additionally, I would be really interested weather you could take the idea of rotating elements using the wind of cars even a step further to develop approaches for creating energy from cars passing by, although this would be a whole new topic you could work on for years and would probably require completely different approaches in a completely different scale than what we are dealing with so far. But all in all I have to say that I am very satisfied with the outcomes of our project because I think in the end we fulfilled everything we wanted to achieve in the beginning and because I am convinced that besides the fact that we showed a good example of how you can use innovative systems for building cheap and effective structures, we also created an interesting gateway project for Wyndham-City, that would not only attract visitors and exhilarate the passing drivers every day, but also create an impressive landmark the City could identify with. Lookig back at this semester, although I didn’t really like the project itself because I missed the architectural standard in it I am really glad that I chose this Design Studio because I think that I have gained some serious skills in parametric design that will be very useful when I return back to the University of Stuttgart. In Stuttgart we also have courses like that but they are rather additional side subjects that you often don’t have time for so I think it is really great that the University of Melbourne is offering such a variety of different architectural approaches in the main design studios.