HERMIONE H I N E S 2 0 1 8 1
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Table of Contents Part A: Conceptualisation - 4 A1. Design Futuring - 8 A2. Design Computation - 16 A3. Composition/Generation - 22 A4. Conclusion - 28 A5. Learning Outcomes - 29 Appendix - Algorithmic Sketchbook - 30
3
Conceptualisation
4
5
I
ntroduction
My name is Hermione, and I am studying in my third year of the Bachelor of Environments at the University of Melbourne, majoring in Architecture. My architectural education has thus far encompassed an interdisciplinary practice; having been drawn to architecture that aspires to represent, influence and define our social realities. I have always been interested in how the practice of architectures may exist as a point of praxis between pragmatic function and intellectual abstraction. I am not only engrossed with the way in which architecture embraces the necessary interaction between myriad disciplines, but also how the ostensibly contradictory, yet inherently connected requirements of construction and concept articulate with one another. I have experience in digital tools and computer-generated modelling through Rhinoceros and digital theory through my work for the subject ‘Digital Design and Fabrication’. I was able to digitally model and fabricate a wearable, complex and evocative form that conceptually explored inherent aspects of human nature. I came to appreciate the accuracy and efficiency of digital fabrication, yet also understand the ongoing importance of manual labor, including drawing and model making, in 6
order to remain in touch with a sense of spatiality and experience. Studio Air thus marks my first steps into the realm of scripting through Grasshopper, which presents for me the application of the program in form conceptualisation. I am eager to gain skills in a technology that is currently at the forefront of architecture, while also exploring such a program with unlimited potential. My greatest passions in life collide and coexist in the pluripotent nature of architectural practice; the importance of visual art, technological advancements, social justice, and environmental sustainability as avenues for communication within societies through meaningful spaces. For me, architecture represents a unique language that includes various methods of representation, and thus I believe that architecture should exist as a means of creating responses from users in order to construct better spaces to live in.
‘Distorted Reflections’, design for ‘Digital Design and Fabrication’ 2017
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A1. D esign Futuring As design is inherently connected with the future, there is a need to recognize the “possibility for design as a practice and objectified agency”1, suggesting a liberation in how designers may view architecture as a system. Fostering this, Schumacher offers the notion that architecture could be perceived as a “autopoietic system”2 within which buildings lead to cross-communicative outcomes such that they have access outside the realm of architecture, as well as acting within the discipline as diverse points of reference. This ignites for me the notion of how radical architecture is conceived, noticed, determined. As further suggested by Schumacher3, completion of buildings and their incidence within the macro level of omnipotent and ongoing discourse is infrequent and often trivial in the context of architectural communication networks. I thus believe in an importance of design futuring to not only attempt to touch people that directly experience the outcome of the architecture, but attempt to reach myriad individuals and groups well beyond the micro scope (in the haphazard event that the designer transgresses the status quo). In order to design with this in mind, it may be useful to think about the word ‘radical’ that seems to frequently describe, perhaps, a ‘noticed’ design. With the aim of achieving a method of design, a notion about design, or a design that is deemed radical, is to contribute to discourse in order to change the
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1. Fry, Tony, Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice, (Oxford: Berg, 2008), p. 1–16 2. Schumacher, Patrik, The Autopoiesis of Architecture: A New Framework for Architecture (Chichester: Wiley, 2011), p. 1-28 3. Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture: A New Framework for Architecture, p. 1-28
discourse, creating an architecture worth discussing. In the words of Dunne4 , a socially engaged design acts as a catalyst for “inspiration, reflection, highbrow entertainment, aesthetic explorations, speculation about possible futures”, the expansive list goes on, yet touches on the importance of designers, in my case a designer aided by the computer, to consider the importance of ‘critical design’. This strongly resonates with the fact that design is not about solving problems such as those suggested by Fry concerning the anthropocentric mode of worldly habitation that has led to a “defuturing condition of unsustainability”5 . It would be impossible then to believe that technology may alone be capable of solving perceived ‘design problems’, firstly for the reason that designers should add to the pluralism of ideology and values that drive design6, as well as the fact that the computer should act more as a compass instead of a blueprint7 within which the generation of iterations may continuously unlock something within the designer, such that their proposal may suggest something that resonates with what it means to be human. Designers must strive to use the language of design to close to gap between reality and a different idea of reality insinuated to by the design proposal.8
4. Dunne, Anthony, Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything: Design Fiction, and Social Dreaming (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013), p. 1-9, 33-45 5. Fry, Tony. Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice, p. 1–16 6. Dunne, Raby, p. 1-9, 33-45. 7. Dunne, Raby, p. 1-9, 33-45. 8. Skylar Tibbits, Design to Self-Assembly, Architectural Design, 82.2 (2012), p 22-27 9
C ase study 01. Project: Messe Basel New Hall Architect: Herzog & de Meuron Date: 2013 Location: Basel, Switzerland Contributing to the notion of how technology interacts with design in practice, the focus of this firm is on process and finding the "right tool...to make the concept work".1 The Digital Technology Group within Herzog & de Meuron is progressive; they are not restricted to any particular technique, as they “do not try to copy [them]selves”.2 Each of their projects reflects its own concept, and thus the tools are specifically developed to reflect strategy.3 This radical way of designing allows for diverse declarations to what could be, while offering alternatives that emphasise limitations within existing, ever-changing, emergent normalities. Their buildings are considered database systems, as each geometry and material configuration is so prudently planned using computational tools that the architectural idea is realised to generate high quality performance.4 I believe that this allows for a scepticism that is necessary in translating critical thought into materiality. The ‘Messe Basel New Hall’ displays responsiveness; the street level façade reacts to the movement of people, while varying transparencies from the exterior articulated bands tactically produce views, an
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1. Brady Peters, Realising the Architectural Idea: Computational Design at Herzog & De Meuron, Architectural Design, 83.2, (2013), p. 56-61 2. Peters, p. 59 3. Peters, p56-61 4.Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture: A New Framework for Architecture, p. 1-28 .
instruction of natural light and an openness from the interior, while reducing the scale of the building to its surroundings.5 The project enlivens public urban life in the Messeplatz and the broader Kleinbasel district through the replacement of former outmoded halls with flexible exhibition spaces, and new public space. Further, the two upper exhibition levels are offset from each other allowing them to respond to unique urban conditions.6 These elements display the importance of architecture as a system of communications or a cohesive discursive practice, whereby the functional achievements of the design address previous underlying problems to be addressed. Jacques Herzog intimated that their conceptual approach allows them to create architecture that is free from a ‘style’ and instead create structures that ride on individual premises.7 I reflect on Dunne’s perception that the moment we “part with our money is the moment… reality is created”8 and the similar notion from Fry that “whenever we bring something into being we also 5. Peters, p56-61 6. Peters, p56-61 7. Peters, p56-61 8. Dunne, Raby, p. 1-9, 33-45.
destroy something” 9; the necessary nature of destruction for its ability to lead to an entity or structure acting beyond its mere function as material or immaterial object. Something built, will inevitably become worn and altered from as a result of time; not only in a physical sense of the elements eroding a structure, but also the way the time implies a change in value of an object or idea. Herzog and De Meuron, understand that there is a need to raise awareness for issues that are not already well known, an operation that requires learning from the past while forming techniques that resonate with the contexts of the present.10 As the firm develops their own feedback tools necessary to create refined design iterations,11 they are work at the conceptual and functional levels of designs.
9. Fry, Tony. Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice, p. 1–16 10. Dunne, Raby, p. 1-9, 33-45. 11. Peters, p56-61
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C ase study 02. Project: Logic Matter Architect: Skylar Tibbits Date: 2010 Location: Camberidge
In order to engage with the egotistical nature of humans and our autodestructive modes wreaking devastation on the natural earth, another kind of future implores its own articulation. An alternative vision acknowledging the demand for discovering increasingly efficient techniques within the construction industry that may compliment the rising power of design software and digital fabrication.1 The ‘Logic Matter’ project displays how modern processes of production may be newly devised by examining biological systems that create increased complexity in structures and information capacity, specifically through self-assembly.2 ‘Logic Matter’ embeds digital logic in displaying how a system of programmable parts can carry their own assembly instructions. The 1. Tibbits, p 22-27 2. Tibbits, p 22-27
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series of tetrahedron-based geometries are assembled by the user and only allow the placement of a new unit in the properly computed positioned based on the user’s previous moves.3 Each move implies a new state of redundancy because each computation results in a single output; as the system grows these redundant units interconnect, allowing for the system to also selfreplicate by reading its own blueprint.4 The multi-scale assembly system that fuses digital and physical worlds, goes beyond the implications of ‘play’ in design. The creates a new playground that embraces hybridised processes that, I believe may more thoroughly explore what i have termed the ‘liminal space’, or the transitional stages of progress to pass through thresholds that may relieve current difficulties of construction including energy consumption and material wastage. The ‘liminal space’, encompasses the zone between the reality and the impossible,5 arriving at a new process of directly 3. Tibbits, p 22-27 4. Tibbits, p 22-27 5. Dunne, Raby, p. 1-9, 33-45.
implanting assembly information into raw materials that assemble themselves, emulating precise biological processes such as cell replication.6 This fiercely perceptive process of designing with forces and material properties, produces adaptable design required to confront the issues within our world, through the structures’ ability to self-repair for durability, reproduction and modification for new structures.7 There is vast importance the project was built because it displays how there is a real potential for scalability, vigour, and redundancy in passive assembly. New theories of simple, algorithmic assembly sequences that drive discrete programmable parts that, when assembled may switch between states depending on the instructions or relationship to an external condition. 6. Tibbits, p 22-27 7. Tibbits, p 22-27
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Further, these systems have ‘muscles’ that may be driven by passive energy sources. Yet I believe that the error correction component that ensures that these structures are not prone to constant failure through building with interconnectedness8, will be the element that will continue to create appreciation. This process potentially renders Randolph Hester’s notion9 that people should not only have more control in determining the form of the environments in which they desire to live, but that this way of life should enhance the environment in general. In using this process, there is potential for not only design decisions to be placed back into the hands of designers, but also that such designs can reveal the material nature of objects. This sits in contrast
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8. Tibbits, p 22-27 9. Fry, Tony. Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice, p. 1–16
to how often, design is reduced to appearance, rendering invisible the designing of the materiality or operability. This project raises future questions, such as the challenge of producing the will to rally technologies at the scale needed to create genuine difference.10 However there is increased awareness of structures that need to be more precise and adaptable that consume less energy. This may resolve future crises through creating structures that may become flexible or rigid, or that use forces such as gravity to become inhabitable, to survive large scale problems. 10. Fry, Tony. Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice, p. 1–16
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A2.
D esign Computation
An issue that must be addressed before bringing computational processes into design, is that computation exists as valuable tool, and not as a replacement of the creativity that gives the practice of architecture its integrity. The seeming unbridled creativity that comes to mind for many when considering computation as a way of realizing complex form, may be an idealistic vision. In reality and in a purist view of creativity, computation may create a disconnectedness between the quality created by manual labor, as described by Frazer when he posited that "design computation is…remote from the real business of creative design".1 .
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1. John Frazer, The generation of virtual protopes for performance optimization. In The architecture co-laboratory: Game Set and Match II: on computer games, advanced geometries, and digital technologies (Episode Publishers. 2006), p. 208-212).
There exists a difference in the way people may use creativity in design vs. computational processes. Kelay2 suggests ‘puzzle making’ as a processes of design generation, whereby the designer may understand the requirements of a problem through its evolving clarity, to implement a necessarily exploratory nature in finding the solution. This contrasts with a need to frame tasks precisely when computational processes are involved in order to avoid the exploitation of relying on the scripting of algorithms as a sole medium 2. Yehuda Kalay. Architecture’s New Media: Principles, Theories, and Methods of Computer-Aided Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), pp. 5-25
for
research-based
experimental
design.3
Instead, computing can be used to redefine architecture, from its historically rigid tendencies, as a non-linear process of “new structuralism” that integrates emerging theories, methods and technology, to bridge the gap between optimization of structural designs and the enrichment of the architectural concept.4 It may be within the parameters of the computer to determine for example, how distinct fragments of an architectural problem interconnect or proliferate to produce greater intricacy.5 It is then up to the designer to implement circulatory communication from design, back to oneself, through the computer. This may become a source of insight in evaluating whether it is the solution or initial goals of the design that require adjusting.6 The place of the digital is not just a stylistic tool that creates complexity for free, yet perhaps it could be used to explore detailing that does honour to craft for example. In my opinion, there may be greater emphasis placed on how computation shapes the individual as a designer, and perhaps not so much the intricacies of the design. In this view, in my own work I may explore the computation approach as understanding systems that only the computer could derive, creating a symbiotic relationship with the product, and on a broader scale between the formulation of design processes and developing technologies.7 3. Rivka Oxman, and Robert Oxman, eds. Theories of the Digital in Architecture (London; New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 1–10 4. Oxman, Rivka and Robert Oxman, New Structuralism: Design, Engineering and Architectural Technologies, Architectural Design, 80.4 (2010), p 12-23 5. Oxman, Oxman, eds. Theories of the Digital in Architecture, p. 1–10 6. Kalay. p 5-25 7.Oxman, Oxman, eds. Theories of the Digital in Architecture, p. 1–10
I do not believe that the tool of computation is not inherently bad or good, but control is required in order to protect the next generation of digital explorers who will use the digital medium as a self-liberation tool. I believe that the significance of creativity that comes from computation is that there are various methods of translating new types of processes whether these may be machine computation or physical computation, where material properties become part of a structure.
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C ase study 01.
Project: Prototype for a Chaise Lounge Architect: MPrototype for a Chaise Lounge Date: 2009 Location: , Museum of Science, Boston, Massachusetts
Neri Oxman described how Mediated Matter Group has inverted the sequence of the design process so that materiality became a generative driver for their designs.1 Their inspiration raises the hybrid of the two concepts, the first being the ‘derive’ coined by Guy Debord in the 1950s, who argued that there is value in designing space of experience; through an unplanned journey one can understand the networks of material and immaterial matter.2 The second, the ‘rhizome’, that in a natural sense describes an underground horizontal root system that when separated to pieces can give rise to a new plant of the same kind, but also in the 1970s was developed as a philosophical concept by Gilles Deleuze supporting a non-hierarchical “horizontal image of thought, design and social collaboration”.3 The overarching concept was that of sustainable networks found in nature that may be used to design products and tools, from the social space of the ‘derive’ to the biological, natural space. ‘Beast’ demonstrates the merging of
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1. Neri Oxman, Networks Understanding Networks, Pt. 12 (MIT Media Lab, 2011), https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=x4F0bdr9It0 2. Oxman, Networks Understanding Networks 3. Oxman, Networks Understanding Networks
these concepts, to consider how biological systems translate into design. It is possible to learn from nature in its capability to generate complex structures of multifunctional composites that may adapt to their varying external conditions.4 The shape of matter is linked to the influence of force acting upon it; ‘Beast’ is made from continuous surface and its material has regions of high and low stiffness that change in density, thickness and distribution as a function response to the different loadings of the body.5 Thus the network of a process is in fact embodied in the network of the product. 4. Neri Oxman, Structuring Materiality: Design Fabrication of Heterogeneous Materials, Architectural Design, 80.4 (2010), p. 78-85 5. Oxman, Structuring Materiality, p. 78-85
In contrast to preceding architectural theories of modern design that were based on design assembly of separate resolutions for singular functions, which is now deemed somewhat nominal and more wasteful,6 ‘Beast’ explores biological principles of substance variation and material distribution that may have significant advancements for architectural and construction industries. This is relevant for not only the design of products and technologies, but the way we fashion the tools and machines that assist us in making these products to reduce energy inputs, lessen wastage and save material quality.7 Computer-aided design (CAD) has offered the designer a simple management of shapes,8 which have often been incoherent with their physical fabrication as “drawings [in this case computer iterations]…are a different medium than the buildings they represent”.9 Neri Oxman’s declaration that “one is imposed in the environment, and the other creates it. One is designed for nature the other is designed by her”10, there is a profound sense that designers should explore innovations within nature related to structuring materials that follow evolution’s scale-free and time dependant design process. Function > Form, must exist as the new approach to material-based design computation.
6. Oxman, Structuring Materiality, p. 78-85 7. Oxman, Structuring Materiality, p. 78-85 8. Branko Kolarevic, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing (New York; London: Spon Press, 2003) p. 3-62 9. Kalay. p 5-25 10. Oxman, Networks Understanding Networks
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C ase study 02.
Project: ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion Architect: ICD/ITKE Date: 2010 Location: The University of Stuttgart
Design computation offers the incorporation of physical properties and behavior of materials as generative catalysts in the design process.1 An advantage of computational design explored through the ICD/ITKE Research Pavillion, is that elements within computational design can be defined by behaviour as opposed to geometric shape or individual parts (being that case for many design projects). As a result, multifaceted congregations may be derived from the interaction between these elements and external information.2 As a result, there is a creation of the varying performance capabilities and alterations of
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1. Moritz Fleischmann, Jan Knippers, Julian Lienhard, Achim Menges and Simon Schleicher, Material Behaviour: Embedding Physical Properties in Computational Design Processes, Architectural Design, 82.2 (2012), p44-51 2. Oxman, Structuring Materiality, p. 78-85
a material behavior,3 that were critical in vernacular architecture with the optimal utilisation of characteristics of raw materials. The Research Pavilion is based on the material behaviour of elastic bending in plywood, and explores the potential for innovation adaptability and structural soundness in bending-active structures through tension forces within the system operating together.4 This was done through computational processes that simulated physical properties and behaviours of the material, integrated them as parametric data to measure extent of elasticity in the plywood, then outputted conceivable variations.5 The manufacturing and assembly logics were included in the computational process, which displays the progress from traditional craftsmanship methods that required skill in 3. Fleischmann and others, p44-51 4. Fleischmann and others, p44-51 5. Fleischmann and others, p44-51
managing unclear problems, to current designers who must formulate explicit, well-defined descriptions.6 The Pavilion was then manufactured by a robot with material behaviour driving the mode of construction on site.7 In a similar vein to the adaptability that exists within biomimicry, the project combined its skin and structure as a mono-material. The prime function of the bending behaviour was not to predefine the shape, but instead delineate the behavioural mechanisms that spatially facilitate the network of forces, such that the material behaviour itself computes the shape of the pavilion.8 The array of various constraints further describes the benefits of an exploratory, inclusive design process in search for new possibilities in computational form generation. This sits in contrast to the rigid process of traditional form finding methods where a set of goals were resolved with no further reduction.9 The focus on computational design as a tool to discover material behaviour allows for the revealing of performative capabilities. There may be a drift back toward truly integrating the construction process, that was prolific prior to the Renaissance,10 and a state towards which many contemporary practitioners of digital architectural design wish to return.
6. Fleischmann and others, p44-51 7. Fleischmann and others, p44-51 8. Fleischmann and others, p44-51 9. Kalay. p 5-25 10. Kalay. p 5-25 21
A3. C omposition/Generation
Compositional devices have been used over time to indicate often, symmetry and balance within composition in order to display the respect and fairness that the governmental bodies driving the projects demand. Such projects as Claude Nicolas Ledoux's proposals for a House of Pleasure in Paris and for an Oikéma in the ideal city of Chaux are renowned for their overtly phallic plans which suggest the place of women during the 18th century, and an ambivalence between monarchy and democracy.1 Comparably, The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building competed in 1991 by Kenzo Tange uses a an omnipotent compositional device when meeting the imposing requirement of the structure within the brief . Even down to the scale of Le Corbusier’s ‘modulor man’, there was a scaling system within which the units would compose the form of his buildings. It is evident that across these designs, what informs the compositions are political and ideological agendas to exude a sense of poise, or abstract and cryptic notions that are formed by seemingly arbitrary processes that result in what could be. Generation in design offers an alternative in
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1. Paulette Singley, The Anamorphic Phallus within Ledoux’s Dismembered Plan of Chaux, Journal of Architectural Education, 46.3 (1993), p. 176-188
its sophistication through the impact of emergence, where the matrix of different parameters may be linked to create a resultant form. What informs generation is mostly related to artistic exercises that may produce certain visual qualities that we may find desirable. Part of algorithmic design is about experimentation and understanding of qualities that are created through parameters. A caution when undertaking parametric design may be the fact that art, design and creativity, over time encapsulate the wisdom of our culture and communicate value in conceiving abstract thought. Art has been closely related to our search for meaning, yet there have been recent shifts that allow for post-modernist art to act as an esoteric critique, poking fun at the real meaning inside art. The digital realm of parametric design,
provides us an opportunity to generate outcomes that resonate with some level of complexity of real life situations,2 or perhaps encapsulate what it is to be human in contemporary wisdom. There is an opportunity within algorithmic thinking to capture order from chaos, or perhaps chaos from order, in a functional sense and create moments of unexpectedness in a script that will create a set of responses to an entrenched condition. In this way of using the computer to process information through an algorithm, indeed computation enhances the intellect and skills of the designer.3
2. Brady Peters. ‘Computation Works: The Building of Algorithmic Thought’, Architectural Design, 83.2, (2013) p. 08-15 3. Brady, p. 08-15
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C ase study 01.
Project: Nine Bridges Golf Resort Architect: Shigeru Ban Date: 2009 Location: Yeoju, South Korea
Before the evolution of CAD software used by designers in the mid 1990s,1 design was focused on industrialised and orthogonal composition. The development saw radically opposite creations of non-regular, “blobby� forms,2 yet suffered when it came to construction due to the expenses and difficulties of the meticulous, physical realising of curvilinear forms with the limited technologies available at the time. The next phase resided in drawing algorithms that could take the defining properties of a component as input parameters and output them as variations in models. There arise issues in needing the skills for this scripting procedure, such as attaining the correct parameters for individual variants, and difficulties in conceptualizing the problem to find a precise definition. Yet, the algorithm that exists within parametric modelling is considerably easier to handle in contrast to a large set of drawings, as well a constantly being updatable. It is evident that the effort of manual labour does not merely disappear with parametric modeling, but is altered to a higher level of abstraction in programming. Parametric design requires digitally controlled
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1. Fabian Scheurer, Materialising Architectural Design, 80.4 (2010), p. 86-93 2. Brady, p. 08-15
Complexity,
(CNC) fabrication tools that allow for production of components, like those that were used for Shigeru Ban’s, Nine Bridges Golf Resort, Yeoju, South Korea, 2009. Yet issues arise in cost of manufacturing large structures, as well as the knowledge required to run the tools that translate design to production, let alone the fact that often these tools have to be specifically developed as they depend on the nature of the design in its shape, quality, materiality and assembly sequences.3 It may become critical in the future for designers to design for the fabrication method,4 to limit wastage of product and energy. Meaning in architecture may be constructed as an encounter 3. 4
between the structure and the people;5 the tactile and experiential quality of design may be achieved through design tools, but one must know how the choice of tools may impact space that, for example promotes synchronistic moments for surprise. In the ‘Nine bridges Golf Resort’, the canopy of woven timber girders that also create the slender columns, demonstrates to me the degree to which computation has the capacity to simulate the structure of building and the experiences of meaning. In my research I was unsuccessful in finding poignant information as to why the parametric design method was utilised in order to express something of the human spirit within the Golf Resort. Although I do not believe that this is necessary in every project, there remains a danger in scripting that “if the celebration of skills is allowed to divert from the real design objectives, then scripting degenerates to become an isolate craft rather than developing into an integrated art form”.6 For us to move forward, we must get to the nexus where we can bring something like machine learning with notions of generative design to recognise the complexity of issues that we face in the world today.
5. Brady, p. 08-15 6. Brady, p. 08-15
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C ase study 02.
Project: White Noise Architect: Soma Architecture Date: 2010 Location: Salzburg, Austria
Algorithmic thinking is useful if the designer can decipher the results of the algorithm, and have the skills to adjust it to explore new possibilities. Progressing even further into the interactive, parametric, virtual environment, the ‘Karamba’ plug-in has been developed to predict the behaviour of structures under external loads in order to enable the smooth flow of information between structural and geometric models.1
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1. Preisinger Clemens, Linking Structure and Parametric Geometry, Architectural Design, 83.2, (2013), p118-113
‘White Noise’ is a mobile pavilion for cultural events, that is made from straight aluminium rods of equal length arranged in ostensibly chaotic way, yet in fact sit on parallel planes and are connected through cylindrical studs, form the load baring structure. The number of connections between elements varies depending on their tilt to form the arch.2 The optimisation task involved choosing the element position to increase structural integrity under loads at a minim overall weight.3 This displays a huge value in Karamba, because, in the nature of parametric modeling, it instantly responds to alteration of input parameters helping to understand structural mechanisms of designs. 2. Clemens, p118-113 3. Clemens, p118-113
The Karamba components in the script of ‘White Noise’ add physical meaning to the optimised parametric geometry, which resolves potential issues that could arise from the absence in the virtual world of real life deflection, natural vibration, and forces.4 There is thus a bridging of the gap between possible issues that arise when physical protyping is introduced into the design process. In the upcoming technologies that demand an integration of engineering and architecture, Karamba may be used for the new generation of designers to apply properties of the real world normally hidden in parametric modeling to create more responsive designs. Indeed, it is when architects have adequate knowledge of algorithmic thinking to apply it in an unconscious way that computation can become a genuine method for design .
4. Brady, p. 08-15
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A4.
C onclusion
Architecture is the envelope for expression, comfort and clarity. Parametric design presents an opportunity in innovation in the shift from analogue to digital practice in design. The precedents explored in Part A demonstrate the ongoing discourse surrounding the paradigm shift that currently moves in the direction of structures becoming utterly allied with context. The innovation may lie in the ability to envisage designs that transcend time and space through existing beyond static confines, thus the realising of typologies is unrestricted and efficient. The worth and growth of architecture within the current environment is beginning to catalyse the flexibility necessary for a sustainable future in both confined and broad spheres of construct.
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A5.
L earning Outcomes My understanding of design and architecture as a discipline in relation to computing, has been inverted. Before a deeper experimentation with parametric tools of grasshopper is conducted, there is often the stigma surrounding algorithmic designing that it creates complex iterations for the sake of creation. What must be understood however, is that these tools are only restrictive in our ignorance and in fact serves to enrich the design process. Algorithmic thinking permits one to confront design problems through systems that gradually vary in functionality. I was able to catch a glimpse of the relationship between machine and organism, and assembly and growth and now have a thirst to discover further implications of scripting in design for my workflow. Thinking in terms of sets, lists and interconnected elements is a new language for me, but one that I believe is necessary for budding designers who wish to create work to enhance and save nature.
The course so far has allowed me to understand the worth of mindful choice to preserve the stability between the designer and the digital. I realise now that my past design of the Second Skin could have benefited from plug ins such as Karamba as in its creation I experienced issues with the effect of gravity on materiality in the physical design phase. Further, I now have an understanding of the shift in thinking required when embracing this mode of design, and in my Second Skin project there could have been many more iterations of the final product with greater control of Grasshopper.
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A6.
Appendix -Algorithmic Sketches
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B ibliography A., Robert and Frank C. Keil, Definition of ‘Algorithm’ in Wilson, eds (1999). The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (London: MIT Press), pp. 11, 12 Clemens Geometry,
Preisinger, Linking Structure Architectural Design, 83.2,
and Parametric (2013), p118-113
Dunne, Anthony, Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything: Design Fiction, and Social Dreaming 1-9, 33-45 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013) . Fabian Architectural
Scheurer, Design,
Materialising 80.4 (2010),
p.
Complexity, 86-93
Fleischmann, Moritz, Jan Knippers, Julian Lienhard, Achim Menges and Simon Schleicher, Material Behaviour: Embedding Physical Properties in Computational Design Processes, Architectural Design, 82.2 (2012), p44-51 Frazer, John, The generation of virtual protopes for performance optimization. In The architecture co-laboratory: Game Set and Match II: on computer games, advanced geometries, and digital technologies (Episode Publishers. 2006), p. 208-212). Fry, Ethics
Tony, and New
Design Practic
Futuring: 1–16 (Oxford:
Sustainability, Berg, 2008)
Kalay, Yehuda. Architecture’s New Media: Principles, Theories, and Methods of Com-puter-Aided Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), pp. 5-25 Kolarevic, Branko, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing (New York; London: Spon Press, 2003) p. 3-62 Oxman, Rivka and Robert Oxman, eds (2014). Theories of the Digital in Architecture (London; New York: Routledge), pp. 1–10 Oxman, Rivka and Robert Oxman, New Structuralism: Design, Engineering and Architectural Technolo-gies, Architectural Design, 80.4 (2010), p 12-23
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Oxman, Neri, Structuring Materiality: Design Fabrication of Heterogeneous Materials, Architectural Design, 80.4 (2010), p. 78-85 Oxman, Neri, Networks Understanding Networks, Pt. 12 (MIT Media Lab, 2011), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4F0bdr9It0 Peters, Brady . ‘Computation Works: The Building of Algorithmic Thought’, Architectural Design, 83.2, (2013) p. 08-15 Schumacher, Patrik, The Autopoiesis of Architecture: A New Framework for Architecture (Chichester: Wiley, 2011), pp. 1-28 Singley, Paulette, The Anamorphic Phallus within Ledoux’s Dismembered Plan of Chaux, Journal of Architectural Education, 46.3 (1993), p. 176-188 Tibbits, Architectural
Skylar, Design,
Design 82.2
to (2012),
Self-Assembly, p 22-27
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