Junjie Guo Portfolio2015 by Junjie Guo

Junjie Guo SCI-Arc 2014-2015 M.Arch II

Type: Academic work, 2GBX, Generative Morphologies, SCI-Arc Project: EL BULLI CREATIVITY CAMPUS(Mid-Term, On-Going Project) Location: Girona, Spain Team: Junjie Guo | Polina Alexeeva | Charmaine Lam Role in Team: Digital Modeling / Processing Programming / Grasshopper Programming / Graphic Drawing Instructor: Casey Rehm European landscape is picturesque because it is highly domesticated, and our project site, Cala Montjoi (a vacation destination), is no exemption. Our developed site for the elBulli creativity campus is not about being biomimetic or the integration with nature, since the ostensibly natural site is actually synthetic and extremely curated. So the project aims to amplify the strictly synthetic by producing abstract architectural forms and geometries to the level of intricacy of nature, playing with the conflict between the production of object and the dissolution of it.

EL BULLI CREATIVITY CAMPUS

Laboratory Top View

Laboratory Plan

Laboratory Section

Library

Laboratory

Elements

(Mid-Term Project) EL BULLI CREATIVITY CAMPUS

Type: Academic work, 2GAX, Weird Contexturalism, SCI-Arc Project: Library Location: Copenhagen Team: Junjie Guo| Jiashu Zhang Role in Team: Major Conceptual Design / Digital Modeling / Grasshopper Programming / Graphic Drawing Instructor: Ramiro Diaz-Granados This project explores an redefinition of the real building, collecting and managing information of real building through manipulating images to create a confusion within the new model. And the contrast between new and original building generate a balance between these two buildings.

alpha images

building massings

fig.1 inner and outter shells fig.2 south elevation fig.3 west elevation fig.4 voxels fig.5 presentation video slit scan

fig.1 elevation slit scan fig.2 site and voxels

fig.1 section slit scan fig.2 building elements

The slit scan is a kind of photographic and cinematographic technique. Taking one slit from each movable slide, then combine them into one image. That is a slit scan image.

worm eyes animation slit scan image

main perspective view

Type: Academic work, VS, Exact Forms, SCI-Arc Software: Processing Team: Junjie Guo| Xiangtai Sun | Cunhao Li Role in Team: Major Conceptual Design / Java Scripting / Graphic Drawing Instructor: M.Casey Rehm In this project, we developed a digitally augmented miror which simultaneously transform the reflected reality of a space while conflating exterior perspectives and data. The mirror test the discrete boundaries of interior and exterior spatial experiences.

Type: Academic work, VS, Hidden in Plain Sight, SCI-Arc Team: Junjie Guo| Jiashu Zhang | Ruizi Qing Role in Team: Major Conceptual Design / Digital Modeling / Zbrush Texture Painting / Graphic Drawing Instructor: Elena Manferdini This project explores hyper-realistic geometry and camoufrlage. The aim of it is to speculate that contemporary surfaces have the ability to breed new sensations and seeks to extend the effective potential of surfaces, focusing on issues of material, chromatics and their relationship to relief.

Type: Academic work, AS Topics in Form-dependent Structures, Tensegrity, SCI-Arc Team: Junjie Guo| Cunhao Li | Hongyang Lin | Majeda Alhinai | Yunxin Hu Role in Team: Major Conceptual Design / Digital Modeling / Physical Modeling / Grasshopper Programming / Graphic Instructor: Stephen Lewis, Greg Otto This project explores a new method about how to use tensegrity system to build a hybrid structure system which contains menbrane structures, rigid structures and tensegrity structure. In those two projects, the structure systems are all formed by pure tension. We used metal rods, strings and menbranes to balance the tension generated from those metal rods. Also, basing on tensions, menbrance generate a natural curvy form.

f2+f3 (tension)

f3(tension) f3(tension)

f1(tension)

g+f1(tension)

f(compression)

Type: Academic work, ABS Advanced Building Systems, SCI-Arc Project: Library Location: Copenhagen Team: Junjie Guo| Cunhao Li | Hongyang Lin Role in Team: Major Conceptual Design / Digital Modeling / Grasshopper/Programming / Graphic Instructor: Ilaria Mazzoleni, Jeffrey Landreth For this project, we tried to use Ladybug and honeybee, plugins of grasshopper, to calculate solar radiation and daylight. Then basing on the radiation and daylight data, we using grasshopper to design the horizontal and vertical shade to minimize the sun radiation and in the meantime optimize the daylight which interior spaces accept.

Type: Academic work, AS Whole Dichotomy, SCI-Arc Project: Museum Team: Junjie Guo| Majeda Alhinai | Polina Alexeeva | Huijin Zheng | Jin Hee Kim Role in Team: Major Conceptual Design / Digital Modeling / Physical Modeling / Grasshopper Programming / Graphic Instructor: Marcelo Spina â&#x20AC;&#x153;With the exception of monuments, architecture requires space for inhabitation. If the term monolith is taken literally to suggest material solidity, monolithic architecture would be impossible by definition. However, we understand monolithic to signify monolith-like, and hence to confer a sense of solidity and homogeneity on objects that are not and could not be integrally solid and homogeneousâ&#x20AC;? ---Rodolfo Machado and Rudolph El-Khoury, Monolithic Architecture

Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion --- Fiber C

Internal Structure Bracing

Secondary Structure Panels

Primary Structure

Joints

Primary Structure I-beam

Secondary Structure Hollow Structural Section

Joints

Tertiary Structure Lattice Structure

Primary Structure, I-beam

Tertiary Structure, Lattice Structure

Joints Detail Drawing

Primary Structure -Steel Frame Structure Secondary Structure -Diagonal Bracing Tertiary Structure -FiberC Panels -Skin Structure

Water Barrier/Rainscreen

FiberC Panels Steel Joints

Type: Academic work, IDD, Tectonic Machines, SCI-Arc Junjie Guo Instructor: M.Casey Rehm, Ivan Bernal

IDD, Tectonic Machines

Does Architecture Need Architects to Explain Architecture Junjie Guo CS 2200 01-CS Theories of Cont Arch 2 Professor, Todd Gannon Assistant Teacher, Alex Maymind The relationship among authors, text and readers is parallel to the one among architects, architecture, and its occupants. Acknowledging this, a question can be raised, “whether architecture needs architects to explain its connotation, or should it address its own. Some people consider the architects’ explanations to be the true connotation of their architecture. In most cases, they place architects in the most privileged position to verbally define architecture. However, it should not always be the case. Architecture owns its connotation, and the connotation belongs to the public instead of being an existence of private property owned by someone or some organization. Moreover, as time goes by, the definition of architecture shifts with social, cognitive and economical changes in its settings. Architects’ intentions are not exactly the same as architecture’s definition, because of the lost information between the architect’s explanations and the architecture’s inconnotation. The chain of information is progressively losing and changing from the time when a design is initiated until the construction of a structure is finished. At the beginning, architects, like author, have tons of ambiguous ideas about what they are going to design or write. Once they begin to design or write, the information starts to deform. For authors, as what Barthes argues “the complexity of the connotations and experience that come from the author into the text are flattened when it arrives to the reader”, the connotations and experiences of the author are three-dimensional beings. During the process of writing, authors are trying to turn this three-dimensional being into a two dimensional manuscript. Once the text is finished what the reader gets is a two dimensional existence. In this processing, the original connotations and experience of the author are transformed. Furthermore, when the information is processed by the readers, the experience is reconstructed by them, losing its original intension from the authors. This process exists in a similar way in architecture. Architecture also has a process that architect try to turn his ambiguous ideas into two dimensional plans, elevations, sections or even three dimensional computer models. When a not-so-clearly-defined idea is turned into a precise model or plan, the thoughts of the architect are transformed. Moreover, based on various societies, circumstances, environments or even eras, various elements influence and constrain architecture in various ways. Gradually, the original connotation from the architect, and the privilege of the architect, is diminished. At the time architecture gets constructed, the architect has lost its privilege to verbally define architecture. Architecture is also influenced by politics, governments, religions, etc. Architects cannot ignore these elements. Unconsciously architects are even motivated by them, resulting in architects gradually diverging from their initial intentions for the design. So what the architect verbalizes is an ideal, ambiguous image, but not what architecture truly is. Language is never neutral and unbiased. Thus, the architects’ explanation is often subjective. With their intention and personality, it can influence, control, or even reconstruct others’ understandings. Language is also prescriptive. Some phrases are incorrect and illogical. Different social strata have their own languages, or have their preferred languages. So, when architects use their own explanations to address to others what their architecture is, they can rarely get their intended meaning across. Via language, an imprecise image about what the architect intend its architecture to be is imprinted in the viewer’s mind, interfering with what the viewer should generate via experiencing the architecture by his or her self. To quote what Wallace mentioned, “language is not science, they should be prescriptive, because language contains people’s characteristics, emotion, etc.” Following this logic, architects should not try to verbalize their architecture, but rather, allow the viewers to own their own interpretations. Architects explanation can be compared to standard written English, although it helps visitors understand architecture, but they do not truly understand, because every visitor or user has their own characteristics and emotion and their own background knowledge. Even without the explanation of architects, people can still be in the architecture to use their own emotion to recognize what kind of building it is, and what this building is capable of. It is a more intuitive and psychological way to understand the building instead of following architect’s logic, intention. The logic and intention of the architect can narrow the possibilities of the visitors’ understanding. Moreover, the explanation of an architect is an opinion that the architect wants other people to believe. The explanation is similar to the opinions of critics’. They construct their own logic based on their intentions in a way that could be conveyed to the audience. Architecture’s destination lies among the visitor, owner or other architects. Once architecture makes an appearance, it belongs to the people. Academically, architect’s role is to open up a new architectural possibility or a new architectural discussion. Architects should not explain their projects, because in that way they are giving an answer to an arcane question, which will destroy the question and also end the discussion. Moreover, the meaning of a discussion is to generate diverse opinions and reveal unforeseen possibilities. To keep the discussion running is beneficial for the academic development, while bringing up a preset explanation terminates the discussion. There is no precise answer to a question, so it is not necessary to explain to others or even convince others. As previously mentioned, architecture belongs to the people; it should have various explanations based on different cultures and in different eras. The architect who designs the architecture just belongs to his era. But architecture belongs to people in different eras. At this point, it is different from what Barthes said, “Researches must be done in the era of the writer, the sociological stance of the writer, the context in which the work was written.” Architecture’s connotation can change based on different people or time. It is not related to the architect as tightly as the relationship between author and text. Owner has his own interpretation about architecture. The visitor has

another. It becomes a public existence, not a private property, even although it physically belongs to someone or some organizations. At this point, the architect’s explanation of architecture becomes, at the best, one of many, which could all potentially be valuable. Consequently, architecture is similar to text. They are all created by an author or an architect, but they all slightly diverge from the original connotation that the author or architect intended for it, after a long process, which includes design, construction, reformation, etc. Eventually, it owns its own connotation, so it is unnecessary for architect to verbalize architecture to others. The lost information between architects and architecture lead to the mismatch between the explanations and the buildings; The subjectivity of the architect makes the explanation diverge from what architecture truly is; As time goes by, in various societies and distinctive cultural context, architecture’s connotation shifts, deforms and evolves. In the end, the architect’s intention and argument may not even be relevant. Bibliography Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author. 1-6. Foucault, Michel. Aesthetics Method and Epistemology. 206-222. Dave, Hickey. Air Guitar. 1-5. Stanley, Cavell. Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy. 73-96. David, Foster, Wallace. Authority and American Usage. 67-127. David, Foster, Wallace. Tense Present. 39-58.

Codex and Digital Scrambler Junjie Guo CS 2201 01-CS Theories Cont Arch1 Professor, Marcelyn Gow Assistant Teacher, Benjamin J. Smith Index Eisenman considers that index is one of the most interesting thing among, symbol, icon and itself. It is because symbol and icon are static and formal pictorial figures. However, an index has a physical and temporal relationship to its referents and it changes over time. He took footprints as an example to explain index’s definition. Footprints have the shoes shapes and also with the time goes by, it will fade and disappear. In every single moment, when the footprints are fading, it still an index of that moment. Why he mentioned the index? Because one of the major problematics of the post-structuralists era is the metaphysics of presence which means many of the formal and pictorial conventions are sedimented in the arts constitute. I think a major rule of designing is a kind of metaphysics of presence because it is static and everybody takes it for granted that a cup should be designed like the form of previous cup, a building should be designed by following contemporary trend or formal convention, they are all following the existed rules. To solve this problem, an index is a good way. It problematizes the metaphysics of presence by moving the art object toward a condition of pure presence. I think that means an index can get rid of the formal and pictorial conventions then generate a new pure presence with new characteristics. For example, he mentioned a building’s corner in his theory. That’s a coded index. It is an index, because it contains Tuscan column’s and Ionic column’s codes and people can trace to its former presence. After superposition, this two columns generate a new column, a new index which is called coded index. What problems index solves, this method helps designer to break up the formal and pictorial conventions, helps them jump out of the present designing rules like the rules of building designing. Using proportional codes and ordination codes to design buildings limits architects’ creativity and limits lots of unpredictable possibilities of building exterior mass and building interior spaces.

Emptying out Emptying out has two functions. The first is that it can empty out residual pictorial codes which are the latent formal information in objects that contain aesthetic information. Take Gordon Matta-Clark’s sawed house as an example, in that case, sawed house loses its original concept of a house, it breaks up people’s understandings of what a house looks like. In the meantime, it breaks up the concept of a family, or creat a new definition of what a family will look like.The family may not need to be an integer. It can be separated and can be more private. But emptying out is distinct from abstract, because abstract loses most of the original object’s information, but emptying out still contains parts of information about the original object. The sawed house is also an index. I think it is meaningful, because it breaks the conventional concept of an object and creates new possibilities, create a new definition of an object. For instance, Florencia Pita’s Taichung City Cultural Center. It breaks the notion that column, floors, walls are the code of architecture and it also builds up a new unpredictable appearance of a building. In its elevation, the roof is connected with the ground. Several domes incorporate with each other, then generate a new dome. The incorporated dome is a new index because while seeing the dome, people can find that the dome contains the physical information of those original domes. We can trace its former presence. In the meantime, it breaks the traditional notion of a dome which normally is severed for interior large space but now it severs for exterior space.

Code Peter Eisenman considers that through the introduction of digital manipulation, photographs no longer represent a truthful record or an index of presence, but when it can be digitally altered, it returns a code. I think this code is the process of manipulating the photographs. Just like using Photoshop to split an RGB image into Red, Green, Blue channels then using bitmap mode to manipulate every channel, finally combine those three channels together and generate a new image. This whole process is a code. Architecture is an index and a code. It has its own signs and its own physicality. It also has its own code. In classical code, it includes proportion and ordination, but these codes are not generative material because they are proscriptive and metaphysical. For example A-B-C -B-A relationship, it was used to denote the proportional relationship in plans and section. All notations are defined by geometric lines and those notations generate the spaces. Thickness of walls are ignored and the code and index are separated. That makes designer always following proportion and ordination, eventually, they cannot get rid of the limitation of those codes and become uncreative.

Superposition It is a good way to generate a new index or a new code. First of all, Eisenman mentioned three buildings, Luciano Laurana’s Palazzo Ducale in Urbino, Donato Bramante’s Santa Maria della pace in Rome and Filippo Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel in Florence. The Pazzi Chapel’s corner maintains previous architectural codes which only deal with positive integers like columns, capitals, pediments, all those elements still maintain its original materiality. However, in the case of the Palazzo Ducale, its corner is totally different, because its corner generated by intersecting two elevations, which are different from classical ordination, the spatial interval between two columns need to be maintained. Its two columns merge together then generate a new column, a new index, which inspires lots of designers. Nevertheless, it still not a coded index. A coded index is that two indexes with different codes merge together then generate a new index with a new code. The Santa Maria della Pace’s corner is a coded index. Donato Bramante merged two intersected columns into one. Moreover he incorporates Tuscan column code and Ionic column code. This incorporation changed two columns’ iconic information and their conventionally coded relationship then creates something unpredictable, startling. The merged corner is something between a code and a conventional index. That is Codex, a coded index. That helps people to discover the order of the original columns code and in the meantime generate a new order, a new code. It reforms an index that people have never seen and breaks up the original rules of classic building. Moreover it still maintains legible information of the previous codes and forms. I think this kind of method is significant for contemporary architecture design. It generates different kinds of complexity architecture forms. It exceeds information rather than reduces information. The world no longer can be explained by simple linear mathematics, it contains chaos, it is complex rather than simple, like various natural phenomenons, typhoon, volcano explosion, earthquake, fractals. They are not linear, static. They are dislocated, moving, changing. Coded index is a new way to create more variable architecture design, because existing codes and indexes are everywhere. We can easily get information to help us design, develop or improve our projects easily. For example, the project called DIFFICULT WHOLES: The One, The Several & The Multiple which is designed by Turki Ashrah instructed by Ramiro Diaz-Granados in Southern California Institute of Architecture. As the description, he said, “Concerning the positions of the parts, for instance, such an architecture encourages complex and contrapuntal rhythms over simple and single ones.The ‘difficult whole’ can include a diversity of directions as well. Concerning the number of parts in a whole, the two extremes - a single part and a multiplicity of parts - read as wholes most easily: the single part is itself a unity; and extreme multiplicity reads like a unity through a tendency of the parts to change scale, and to be perceived as an overall pattern or texture.”, I think the single part is the same as the index mention in Peter Eisenman’s theory and the contrapuntal rhythms, superposition, rotation, all of those digital technology to moving geometry position is a code. Actually what he is trying to do is trying to create a new coded index just like what Peter Eisenman did. The texture Turki Ashrah mentioned is the new effect on the building which is generated when incorporating all of those codex element. The consequence is always unpredictable and startling.

Reading and Writing Eisenman considers that a generative reading is significant for creative writing. Take the Palladian villa as an example, Andrea Palladio analysed his own project by using ideal proportional geometric. However, Eisenman considers that the villa is enveloped by a ideal square box and the villa can be divided into five parts, A-B-C-B-A. A represents circulation, B represents portico and C represents the main space. Seeing this as a virtual villa archetype, Eisenman discovers superposition, traces, imprints and compression, when he analysed the Palazzo Chiericati. If using a ideal proportional geometric to analyse this project will not obtain new methods of designing a building. But while using a new reading method like Eisenman’s, the Palazzo Chiericati looks like designed in a way that designer compressed different functions together. The front of the Palazzo contains stairs and portico, which means it is a combination of A and B. The rear part of the building also contains stairs and room, which is a combination of the “virtual villa’s” rear part. In this analysis process, Eisenman found traces and imprints of the A and B space in the front part of the Palazzo Chiericati. Also the compression of the main space shape, it is no longer an ideal square. It becomes horizontal rectangle, but not a central symmetry shape. By using the virtual villa as an archetype, Altes Museum can also be considered as a transformation of Palladian’s “virtual villa”. Firstly, the museum’s central main space is a big circle, a central symmetry shape and most importantly, it is located in the center of the whole building. Secondly, two rectangles just look like the B part of the “virtual villa”, but they are moved back a slightly. Every part of the spaces in the museum is related to each other, if seeing it as a transformation of the “virtual villa”. It is dynamic, if a part of it changes, the other part of the building will change as well. Those ideas, superposition, compression, traces, imprints help Eisenman finish his several project. The first one is the IBA Social Housing. He tried to us trace, imprint and superposition to develop the plan of the building. Then extrude it vertically. The second one is Guardiola House. In this project, Eisenman tried to use those methods not only horizontally, but also vertically. But unfortunately, the project cannot be traced to the former present which means that the building is not developed from an index, maybe it is just developed from a geometric I think. The last project is the City of Culture of Galicia. Because nowadays, the world is considered to be dynamic, changing, variable, but not static. Eisenman used codex, trace, imprint and superposition as designing methods and in the meantime, he developed the vertical part according to nucleotides, because he considers that there was a concurrent movement in the general condition of culture from a technological and mechanical explanation of the world to one that is more biological. I am totally agree

with Eisenman’s ideas. Using codex as a basic element, then using various methods to manipulate it, superposition, traces, imprint, etc. And most importantly, following biological explanation of the world, respect for the nature, understand that natural should not be explained by simple mathematics, because this kinds of method is dynamic, variable.Everybody’s design is different and hard to be the same. But for the reader, every project’s indexes helps them to trace the former presence of the building like the context of the city, event of the city and so on. Moreover, because of various design methods, the consequences will be unpredictable and creative, which is the current society needs. After reading Eisenman’s theory, I rethought what I did this semester. My project is also following the method of Eisenman’s digital scrambler. First of all, my exterior mass is generated from a local classical building’s outline. The outline can be a kind of index from which I can trace the appearance of the original classical building’s appearance. Using the front and side views of the classical buildings outline, I generate the mass. It’s totally different from the original building but contains some characteristics of the original building, in the meantime, it generates new characteristics because of the software process. I think those software process can be considered as digital scrambler. They also can be considered as computer technology codes which affect the index, then created exterior mass with special characteristics. To develop this exterior mass, I used several images from the classical building. Those images have been manipulated in Photoshop. I split the RGB image into separated color channels and then use bitmap mode to manipulate them. After manipulation, some of the images information is absent. At that moment, I think the images is become a codex, because the residual information of the image can still be traced to the original image information and in the meantime because of the manipulation of Photoshop, a code, this image becomes a codex. Let’s call them codex image. While I use codex image as a mask to extrude the exterior mass, it means that the codex image compresses with the exterior mass with another code that is 3D-coat extrude command. So the outcome is a complex codex. It contains, the outline of the original building, image residual information and hatch line, a complex combination. Then the voxels are also codexes. Different resolution of the voxels is the same as how much residual information of the image left. And by observing the voxel, people can trace the original image’s information. They are coded indexes, because the generative process is a grasshopper definition, a code. The site of the building is also a codex. I developed it by using the gray level of a image. Darker area of the image has stronger attractor forces to pull the site’s surface and whiter area means weaker attractor force to pull the site’s surface. After this process, an unpredictable shape comes out. I also use the gray level of an image to generate the window frames, in this case, darker and whiter area provides different value, from 0-1, I manipulate those numbers and use them to scale the section of the window frame. And after this process, the window frames show up the information of the original image. Bibliography Digital Scrambler------------------------------------------------------------------------------Peter Eisenman Difficult Wholes: The One, The Several & The Multiple-----------------------------------Turki Ashrah Taichung City Cultural Center---------------------------------------------------------------Website Adress http://www.suckerpunchdaily.com/2013/07/29/taichung-city-cultural-center-2