STUDIO AIR
Kai LIN 825663 Tutor: Chelle(Xuyou) Yang 2018 Semester 1
Figure 1: “ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion in 2012” 1
Figure 2, “Parametric Patterns”, 2009
Table of Contents A.0 Introduction about myself A.1 Design futuring A.1.1 Precedent 1. the Philip Pavilion A.1.2 Precedent 2. Los Angeles Rams Stadium A.2 Design Computation A.2.1 Precedent 3. ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion in 2012 A.2.2 Precedent 4. Mesh Mould
A.3 Composition/Generation
A.3.1 Precedent 5. Esker House
A.3.2 Precedent 6. Prototype of ultra-thin concrete roof by ZTH Zurich
A.4 Conclusion
A.5 Learning outcomes A.6 Appendix- Algorithmic sketches A.7 References
INTRODUCTION: My name is Kai Lin. My English name in high school was Frank. I actually prefer people call me ‘Frank’, BUT Kai is my real name. My family immigrated to Australia in 2013 and I did my high school study in Ivanhoe grammar school. I am a 20 years old third year architecture student who love listening to music and play video games. But studying architecture is one of my best decisions, despite it is really difficult to me. My dream is to become a leader of a famous architecture team. When I was applying the course of university, most of my friends were choosing commerce or science. I was the only one who interested in Architecture. Although I did not study any subjects relates to arts or design in high school, I clearly understood the creative and curiosity are two of my top character strengths. There are some very fancy ideas in my brain but I realized I must keep studying and keeping climbing in the case to represent all those ideas to the world! I was not well prepared to take Studio: Air in year 2, because I am not good at the digital design and expressing my ideas logically, but now I am ready to go! I accept all challenges from the Studio of Air!
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DESIGN FUTURING:
Can design slow defuturing? Human centeredness is critically accelerating the destruction of our planet. With the world population rapidly increasing and the technology rapidly developing, humans require enormous resources that extracted from our planet. We human being unwittingly increasing the conditions of unsustainability and our future is actually start disappearing from our existence. The result of human activities destructively impacted the planet’s climatic and ecological system. However, does anyone want to sacrifice our future to sustain the excesses of present? (1Tony, Fry, ‘Design
design, ‘Creation’ and ‘destruction’. When we use renewable resource from our planet, the design can be called ‘creation’, otherwise, it is ‘destruction’. As the figure 3 shows, the green terrace is a kind of strategy to against the defuturing conditions. Nowadays, sustainable design can be a chance for us to slow the defuturing and reject all ‘doom sayings’.
Futuring: Sustainability’, Ethics and New Practice (Oxford: Berg), 745.2— dc22.(2008) pp. 1–16 (p.2)) Obviously ‘NO’.
We human can slightly influence the situation through sustainable designs. Design can be defined as ‘the act of creation’ and it include every artificial thing. However, nowadays design as an anthro-directive action, and lots of designer design an object from aesthetical aspects without thinking about the materiality and sustainability. Human has displaced the ‘invisible hand of god’.(2 Fry, p.3) Therefore I believe the sustainable design can deaccelerate the defuturing. The state of the world and the state of the design need to be brought together, thus we have to consider our design in response the environmental conditions. Although the environmental problem is critical now, we humans do not have a real sense of it and the damage Figure 3: “Bosco Verticale”, 2014 that humans have done to our planet need almost 200 years to recover.(3Fry, p.5) There are two kinds of
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PHILIPS PAVILION LE CORBUSIER AND XENAKIS The 1958 World’s Fair in Brussel was the first World’s Fair held since the end of World War II, the concept behind the Expo was to celebrate the rejuvenation of civilization from the destruction of war through the use of technology. The Philips Electronics Company decided to step away from displaying commercial goods and instead create a unique experience for the thousands of people that would be attending the Expo. Thus they commit the final commission of the pavilion to Le Corbusier’s office. However, Le Corbusier replied, “I will not make a pavilion for you but an Electronic Poem and a vessel containing the poem; light, color image, rhythm and sound joined together in an organic synthesis”. Le Corbusier toke the task of developing the interior design of the pavilion and the developing of experiences the pavilion bring to all visitors and he left the exterior design of the pavilion to Lannis Xenakis, whom was also trained as an experimental composer and thusly would also create the transitional music that guided you into the formal space of organized sound1. (Oscar, Lopez. ‘AD Classics:
Figure 4, “ structure of Philips Pavilion”, Archidaily
Expo ‘58 + Philips Pavilion / Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis’, Archidaily, (25 Aug 2011), Accessed 15 Mar 2018, <https://www.archdaily.com/157658/ad-classicsexpo-58-philips-pavilion-le-corbusier-and-iannis-xenakis/> ISSN 0719-8884)
Lannis Xenakis designed the avant-garde exterior of the pavilion with the team of engineers and team of artists. The technique devised for designing and constructing the pavilion made it became significant. Hyperbolic paraboloids had recently been taken from the math and science during 1950s. The initial concept was from hyperbolic paraboloids which is a radical design at that time. By using the flexibility of hyperbolic paraboloids, Xenakis deigned the exterior of the Philip pavilion by combining nine forms of hyperbolic paraboloids. The first step of construction process was to build up the ribs and the pre-stressed wires as the primary structure of the pavilion. The second step was to build up the formwork for concrete as the figure 4 shows. The third step was to form the pavilion by pouring concrete. The exterior of the pavilion was designed by using digital design method. The interior was designed by Le Corbusier. There is an 8 minutes visual and musical experience by walking from the entrance to the exit as the figure 5 is lining out the interior space of the pavilion. Le Corbusier developed a series of stories to enhance the connection between the architectural design and the sensorial experiences. The resulting Poem Electronique along with the pavilion, was the first electronic-spatial environment to combine architecture, film, light and music to a total experience made to functions in time and space2.( Lopez, ‘AD Classics: Expo ‘58 + Philips Pavilion / Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis’)
The Philip pavilion was demolished on January 1959. However, it inspired many architects about the new thinking of combining design with engineering and arts. Furthermore, the idea of hyperbolic paraboloid transferred to minimal surface and thin concrete roof structure and then largely influence the architectural design thinking in the later many decades.
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Figure 5, “ interior of Philips Pavilion”, Archidaily
Figure 6, “the Philips Pavilion”
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LOS ANGELES RAMS STADIUM HKS ARCHITECTURE
The Los Angeles Rams Stadium was designed by HKS architects by largely using digital software to help them deal with the complexity of the design and it will be built in 2019-2020. The stadium has a retractable roof which is comprised of approximately 70000 unique panels with over 500000 square feet of surface area. These panels are uniquely articulated and cut to specification using a 3-axis CNC-coined die-punch machine and fabricated from titanium anodized aluminum. The panels comprising the tessellated flat triangles and these panels are shop-fabricated and pre-assembled into mega-panels as figure 7 shows. The largely using unique pre-fabricated panels is pretty radical in architectural design and it also confront a big challenge while constructing the building. The second key component of the building is the 3D printed fixation. Both the exterior envelope’s aluminum panels and the hypothetical node connections are discussed in terms of the challenges and constraints unique to their respective geometry, fabrication process and performance criteria.1(ACHIM, MENGES. BOB, SHEIL. RUAIRI, GLYNN. MARILENA, SKAVARA. ‘Fabricate Rethinking Design And Construction’, UCLpress (2017) p36-43.)
The effectiveness and the performance of workflow was significantly improved by using visual programming approaches such as grasshopper. The designer can easily play with the design outcomes by changing the instructions of ‘program’ in computer and then the computer will precisely and faultlessly work out the representation of the new design. However, the key obstacle of using digital design methods relates to the communication and connectivity between designer and fabricator. Rather than rely on over 75,000 individual 2D drawings to dimensionally describe each panel, a text-based file format containing all dimensional criteria was adopted. Through adequate file nomenclature, tokenization and formatting, the fabricator could automate the translation of these files directly into machine instruction.2 (Menges, Sheil, Glynn &Skavara, p38)) The method that the designers used are critically reduced the rate of errors while communicating with fabricators. The graphical diagrams and representational drawings are not the primary way to convey information anymore. The Los Angeles Rams stadium is showing the beauty of digital design and leading the architectural design into a digital world.
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CONCEPTUALISATION 9 Figure 7, “Los Angeles Rams stadium”.
DESIGN COMPUTATION: In many cutting edge architectural schools, the practice of designing had become both digital and experimental.1 (Rivka, Oxmanand, Robert, Oxman, eds, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Theories of the Digital in Architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ,London; New York: Routledge, (2014), pp.5 )The digital design tools have been rapidly developing
during the last decade. Those digital form generators significantly affected the design process of architecture. The design becomes the thinking of architectural generation through the logic of the algorithm, thus performance-oriented designing are able to generate in digital tools by deconstructing the materiality and the logic of morphogenesis. Therefore the possibility of the design approaches are largely increased. As the figure 8 shows, it is a example of computational design project. The complexity of the design is pretty high and it demonstrated the advantage of computational design. The Parametric design is one of new forms of the logic of digital design thinking. It significantly widened the range of conceivable and achievable geometries by enhancing the geometric relationships and increasing the multiplicity of the variation of the geometrics. 2 (Oxmanand & Oxman, p3)The computation contributed large number of advantages on the new modern architectural design.
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Figure 8, “ENPC computational design prohect”, 2016
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ICD/ITKE RESEARCH PAVILION IN 2012 The ICD/ITKE research pavilion 2012 is an interdisciplinary project which was inspired by investigating the natural creature, the Lobster’s exoskeleton. By analyzing the lobster’s exoskeleton in detail, the designer chose to use fibre-reinforced composite material as the main material to build up the pavilion. This strategy re-defined architecture as a material practice and it characterized the new architecture of transparency and materiality. The overall design was generated by the computational tools and fabricated by the robot. By using the form generation methods, the computational simulations and robotic manufacturing, it allows the pavilion to have a high performance structure by analyzing the numerous variations. The other important point of designing this pavilion is minimal use of material. The layer of fibre and the arrangement was optimized through a gradient-based methods. The figure 9 indicates all integrations what used to design the pavilion. The pavilion was fabricated on the site with weather-proofing shelter and the fabrication time was 130 hours which is pretty quick. Although the span of the pavilion is 7.67 meter and the area of the pavilion is 29 square meters, the weight of the only about 320 kilograms. Therefore the digital design is bringing us the new vision of architecture.(Achim, Menges ‘ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 2012’, ‘institute for computational design and construction’, the university of Stuttgart, 2012, Accessed 15 March 2018, http://icd.uni-stuttgart.de/?p=8807)
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Figure 9, “The design integration of ICD pavilion in 2012”
Figure 10, “ICD/ITKE research pavilion 2012”
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Figure 11, “Mesh Mould”, ETH zurich. 14
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MESH MOULD ETH ZURICH In conventional product of reinforce concrete structures, the formwork is to retain the fluid concrete until it harden towards the final shape. However, the formwork we normally use was much degraded and generally regularly be placed on the site. Formwork can be an important factor that influence the construction waste and the production cost. Mesh Mould”, developed by researchers at ETH Zurich in 2016. It represents the potential of digital technology by generating the efficient and sustainable production of steel formwork with computational design and robot to precisely fabricate the formwork. The research of ‘Mesh Mould’ allows us to design any shape of loadbearing concrete walls or columns without a traditional formwork with lower production cost. Because ‘mesh mould’ can take both of the roles of formwork and reinforcement. The definition of the ‘Mesh mould’ is ‘focuses on the translation of the structurally weak polymer-based extrusion process into a fully load-bearing construction system’ 1
(Sabrina,Santos. ‘Amazing Robotically Fabricated Mesh Revolutionizes How Concrete is Formed and Reinforced’, ArchDaily. 02 Aug 2016. Accessed 15 Mar 2018. <https://www.archdaily.com/792079/amazing-robotically-fabricated-meshrevolutionizes-how-concrete-is-formed-and-reinforced/> ISSN 0719-8884)
The digital design tools such as grasshoppers widened the range of conceivable and achievable geometries and then the creation of ‘Mesh Mould’ allowed designers to achieve more and more performance-oriented designs.
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A.3 COMPOSITION/GENERATION During the 1990s, the computation and digital modelling tools were significantly shift from two dimensions to three dimensions. The complex 3D models was buildable in software since that time. By further developing those 3D modelling tools by applying material capacities, external environmental influences and forces. Simultaneously, the architectural design was starting to shift from ‘Composition’ to ‘Generation’. The design becomes the thinking of architecture generation through the logic of the algorithm. The parametric design was created by using a continuous logic of morphogenesis, and then the representation of design changed from static to dynamic. 1(BRANKO, KOLAREVIC, ‘Digital Morphogenesis and computational architectures’, 2000, p17. ) And it can create infinite possibilities of design outcomes by following the variations in the algorithmic procedures. The parametric design is one of many new digital design methods derived by new technology. Those computational methods can easily overcome those insoluble problem to the ancient design method. The complexity of a design can be translated to algorithmic language and then the computer would simplify that into logical thing step by step. Thus the possibility of design outcomes are largely improved and the infinitely variable potentialities as well. 2 (Kolarevic, p18) However, the design became easier to designers, but not fabricators. ‘Mass customization’ on materials is one of challenges of computational design and high requirement of hardware of fabrication is one of restrictions in practice of digital design. Therefore remaining coherent with the material, fabrication and construction constraints is the critical task for ‘Generation’.
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Figure 12, “transition”
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Esker house/ Plasma studio: The Esker house is a compositional residential building with the digitally designed roof and first floor on top of the exist house from 1960s. The split level and the roof was composited by timber and steel. The steel as the primary structure material to carry all loads and directly transfer to the foundation without pressuring the exist house and the timbers are more likely to use as secondary structure material and decorative material. The Plasma Studio designed the overall split level in digital software with the central concept of ‘soft’ and ‘fluid’ morphology.1(‘Esker house
/ Plasma Studio’ ArchDaily. 11 Feb 2009. Accessed 15 Mar 2018. <https://www. archdaily.com/11957/esker-house-plasma-studio/> ISSN 0719-8884) The unique
stratified morphology and construction system started off from projecting each step of the external staircase. And then the timber frames on steels connected to the timber staircase to achieve the consistency and it gives visitors a sense of continuously and fluidly transforming. This can be simulated in the plug-in software ‘Grasshopper’. The computational process and technologies of materialization occurred the continuous logic of morphogenesis and materiality in generative processes. By following the continuous logic of algorithm, the morphogenesis can be transformed. Thus the roof can have infinite variable forms. And then the designer chose one of the best performance forms as the final design. They took the principle of pitched timber roof system as the overall geometric behavior, thus the design is pretty stable.
Figure 13, “transformation of the roof of the Esker House”
Figure 14, “the structure of the roof”
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Figure 15, “the staircase of the roof of the Esker House”
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Construction prototype for ultra thin concrete roof, ETH Zurich This ultra-thin concrete roof was just a prototype which was made in 2017 and the novel ‘cable-net fabric formwork’ was tested and it will be applied on an actual construction project, Hilo Penthouse in 2018. The average thickness of the concrete roof is 5 cm and the edge of the roof is about 12 cm thick.1 (‘Construction prototype for ultrathin concrete roof’ ETH Zurich, 12 Oct 2017. Accessed 15 March 2018. https://www. ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2017/10/innovative-construction. html )The break-ground innovation of the method is that they are
able to build up a complex concrete structure by using less material and they are able to recycle all the tensioned steel cables after use which is very sustainable. The other advantage of the design is that builders can still work under the roof while the roof is hardening. The overall structure of the formwork is shown on figure . The designers used digital software to generate the net and bounced the 2 dimensional net up to a 3 dimensional shape and the material they chose was the tensioned steel cables. The advantage of using computational software to model the net is that the algorithms can ensure the forces are properly distributed across each steel cable. The cable-net fabric formwork has to be calculated very precisely, otherwise the roof will under the risk of collapsing. As Diederik Veenendaal and Philippe block demonstrated that ‘by carefully designing the cable net and its topology, and calculating and controlling the pre-stressing forces, it is possible to form a wide range of anticlastic shapes, beyond those of the hyperbolic paraboloid’.1 ( Diederik, Veenendaal, Philippe, Block,’ Design process for prototype concrete shells using a hybrid cable-net and fabric formwork’, 2013, p39-50. )Thus we can see the potential of the cable-net fabric formwork. However, it is non-conceivable if there is no computation by digital software.
Figure 16, “ the analytical drawing of the Ultta-thin roof”
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Figure 17, “the prototype of ultra-thin concrete roof”
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A.4. CONCLUSION: Today, digital design becomes more and more common in architectural territory. Thus the design approaches and design outcomes becomes more and more pluralized. When most of designers are indulging the beautiful and complex designs what created by digital design tools, lesser people are actually considering about the functionality of the design and whether the material use sustainable or not. Nowadays, humans are in a critical situation about defuturing. Therefore my intended design approach will definitely response to the environmental conditions. Obviously, I will use computational tools to support my design as it needs precise calculation to distribute the forces on the design. The ideal of using digital modeler is to use the logic of the algorithm to generate the best performative design. Through investigating the morphogenesis and materiality to find out the most sustainable material for my design. Using the highly innovative digital technology to minimize the material waste was inspired by the ‘ultrathin concrete roof’ and the ‘Mesh Mould’. If I am designing the bike shelter for New Student Precinct, I will definitely let all people who use the shelter and surrounding environment get benefited the most and then minimize the damage to our planet.
A.5. LEARNING OUTCOMES: In the past three weeks, my knowledge of the history and the influence of the digital design has grown immensely. I realize the conceivability of the digital design is much higher than conventional design and it can easily solve some problems what seems insoluble in conventional design, because of the computational system. However, the human’s future is in a critical situation now. Designers cannot simply purse the fancy out look of a design, but more design in response to our environmental conditions and the planet. As my precedent in A.3 indicated the innovative digital technology can actually reduce the material waste and the design can be developed simultaneously. Therefore, if I want to improve my past design, I would prefer to use digital design tools to model and evaluate my design and then do a lot material test to find the most sustainable one to apply on my design.
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A.6. APPENDIX- ALGORITHMIC SKETCHES:
Figure 18, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Algorithmic sketchesâ&#x20AC;?
These two examples can both be fabricated and assembled in reality. They are easily generated in Grasshopper within a series of the logic of algorithms, but they are very complex if we use conventional design methods to generate them. The most important point is that i can simply change the overall shape by change any variable value which was introduced as the continuous logic of morphengenesis. Thus the best performative design can be found by changing a few values, not re-design or re-draw everything to get. The top one is a tower which is composed by two series of rotating curves and the bottom one is the sphere which was decomposed from surface to curves to points. These practices are not very complex but they inspired me about the theory of the digital design and the advantages of digital design. The third example is related to the cable-net fabric formwork, and the sketch i did is simplified from complex shape. However, it made me uderstand the theory of cable-net fabric formwork a little bit more, and it may be helpful for my case study B. CONCEPTUALISATION 23
REFERENCES • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
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Achim, Menges ‘ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 2012’, ‘institute for computational design and construction’, the university of Stuttgart, 2012, Accessed 15 March 2018, http://icd.uni-stuttgart.de/?p=8807 ACHIM, MENGES, ‘COMPUTATIONAL MORPHOGENESIS’: Integral Form Generation and Materialization Processes, p726-744 ACHIM, MENGES. BOB, SHEIL. RUAIRI, GLYNN. MARILENA, SKAVARA. ‘Fabricate Rethinking Design And Construction’, UCLpress (2017) p36-43. Anthony, Dunne & Fiona, Raby ‘Speculative Everything: Design Fiction, and Social Dreaming’ (MIT Press) (2013) pp. 1-9, 33-45 BRANKO, KOLAREVIC, ‘Digital Morphogenesis and computational architectures’, 2000, p7. ‘Construction prototype for ultra-thin concrete roof’ ETH Zurich, 12 Oct 2017. Accessed 15 March 2018. https:// www.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2017/10/innovative-construction.html Diederik, Veenendaal, Philippe, Block,’ Design process for prototype concrete shells using a hybrid cable-net and fabric formwork’, 2013, p39-50. ‘Esker house / Plasma Studio’ ArchDaily. 11 Feb 2009. Accessed 15 Mar 2018. <https://www. archdaily.com/11957/esker-house-plasma-studio/> ISSN 0719-8884 Jerome, Frumar, ‘Computation and Material Practice in Architecture’: Intersecting Intention and Execution during Design Development, School of Architecture of RMIT University, Melbourne, August 2011, p1-188. Natalina Lopez. ‘HKS-Designed L.A. Stadium Will Be the Largest in the NFL’. ArchDaily.( 27 Nov 2016). Accessed 15 Mar 2018. <https://www.archdaily.com/800073/hks-designed-la-stadium-will-be-the-largest-in-the-nfl/> ISSN 0719-8884 Oscar, Lopez. ‘AD Classics: Expo ‘58 + Philips Pavilion / Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis’, Archidaily, (25 Aug 2011), Accessed 15 Mar 2018, <https://www.archdaily.com/157658/ad-classics-expo-58-philips-pavilion-le-corbusier-and-iannis-xenakis/> ISSN 0719-8884 Rivka, Oxmanand, Robert, Oxman, eds, ‘Theories of the Digital in Architecture’ (London; New York: Routledge), (2014), pp. 1–10 Sabrina,Santos. ‘Amazing Robotically Fabricated Mesh Revolutionizes How Concrete is Formed and Reinforced’, ArchDaily. 02 Aug 2016. Accessed 15 Mar 2018. <https://www.archdaily.com/792079/amazing-roboticallyfabricated-mesh-revolutionizes-how-concrete-is-formed-and-reinforced/> ISSN 0719-8884 Tony, Fry, ‘Design Futuring: Sustainability’, Ethics and New Practice (Oxford: Berg), 745.2— dc22.(2008) pp. 1–16 (p.2)
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