Kristian Tagliavento
STUDIOAIR Architecture Design Studio 3: AIR ABPL30048 Semester 1 2012 University of Melbourne Bachelor of Environments Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning
01 Discourse in Architecture •• German Pavilion, Barcelona by Mies van der Rohe •• Parc de la Villette, Paris by Bernard Tschumi •• Yas Marina Hotel, Abu Dhabi by Asymptote 05 Architecture’s New Media • Architecture v Engineering • Biomimicry in Architecture 07 Computation in Architecture • Vitra Fire Station, Weil am Rhein by Zaha Hadid • National Library, Astana by Bjarke Ingels Group • Denmark Pavilion, Shanghai by Bjarke Ingels Group 10 Topology in Architecture • Mobius Strip 11 Scripting in Architecture • Pavilion, Romania • Veronoi Diagram
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German Pavilion, Barcelona ARCHITECT: LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE. 1929 Constructed to showcase the renaissance in German design at the International Exposition in Barcelona, the German Pavilion evokes what is essentially the cornerstone to the simplified ideal of 20th century Modernism. The simplicity in understanding and utilizing geometric forms and materials provides for the distribution of spaces for habitation and order - it therefore served a formal function. This very notion was to underpin the prevailing discourse of Modernism as an architectural and social style. Mies understood his building as a inhabitable sculpture, defined by a conjunction of horizontal and vertical planes. Working on from the formulaic grid system which had been used to achieve a sense of volume, weightlessness and openness through blurred spatial organisation and intuitive circulation - framed views would induce movement where the interior becomes exterior and the exterior become interior. source: www.archdaily.com/109135/ad-classics-barcelona-pavilion-mies-van-der-rohe/
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Parc de la Villette, Paris ARCHITECT: BERNARD TSCHUMI. 1987 Evoking what is truly characterised as a Deconstructivist portrayal of urban life, Tschumi’s rendition of the Parc de la Villette in the French Capital is seen to be withdrawn from the normal, traditionalist mind-set that the French had been accustomed to in the decades leading into the urban rejuvenation experienced in the late 20th century. This was indeed conceived in stark contrast to Europe’s predisposed Modernism discourse - order, rationality and function. Tschumi succeeded in producing a fragmented, dystopian architecture that had been likened to the Soviet Constructivists of the early 20th century - manipulation of what is known to be architecture to form a controlled chaos. Tschumi’s overall goal was to induce exploration, movement and interaction either quite literally or ambiguously. Therefore, Tschumi’s park was organised spatially to enable a user defined interactive experience within the context. 03
source: www.archdaily.com/ 92321/ad-classics-parc-de-la-villette-bernard-tschumi/
The Yas Marina Hotel, Abu Dhabi ARCHITECT: ASYMPTOTE. 2009 Characterised by a curvilinear form, acting as a canopy constructed of steel with pivoting glass panels over the adjacent towers and connecting bridge structures, the Yas Marina Hotel embodies the aesthetics and forms associated with speed, movement, and spectacle to the artistry and geometries forming the basis of Islamic Art and Craft traditions. The notion underpinning this elaborate scheme is that of digital innovation which in turn informs the predisposed nature of contemporary architecture. The emergence of new digital methods, defining parameters in architecture has been seen to alter the general discourse informing architecture in the 21st century. This new practise has been utilised in the digital and technological fabrication of sculptural architecture. Understanding parameters as a discourse dictates a new awareness in the field of architecture - providing a tool for innovation, adapted to analyse and respond to both an environmental solution and the design intent without compromise to the performance of either criteria.
source: www.archdaily.com/ 43336/the-yas-hotel-asymptote/ 04
Architecture’s New Media: Architecture v Engineering ARCHITECTURE V ENGINEERING Understanding how the profession has developed and evolved from it’s preliminary understandings, from initially evoking the meticulous artistry of the stonemasons and craftworkers through the onset of the Renaissance paradigm shift which simultaneously facilitated the idealization of architecture as a profession. Stemming from the readings of Kalay and Kolarevic in conjunction with the notions of established in the lecture series regarding the concepts of architecture v engineering and computation v computerisation; several implications can be analyzed from this discourse, primarily in the case of architecture v engineering. Prior to the evolution of the profession: buildings were constructed not planned. Leon Battista Alberti through the use of representative language in architecture, helped establish the architectural paradigm as a profession, therefore coming to symbolise the separation of the concept from it’s construction. Ultimately as architectural discourse evolved, the gap between architecture and engineering as professions continued to widen. With the development of new technologies of digitalization in architecture towards the end of the twentieth century, the discourse once again altered. The ideals of parametric and performative architecture as a means of generating new, innovative and responsive designs enabled architects to began to utilise digital technology, logically, to recombine the concept to its construction and to therefore challenge the preconceptions of how spaces should be designed within a set form or function.
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sources: Yehuda E. Kalay, Architecture’s New Media : Principles, Theories, and Methods of Computer-Aided Design Kolarevic, Branko, Architecture in the05 Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing
Architecture’s New Media: Biomimicry in Architecture BIOMIMICRY IN ARCHITECTURE “For the first time perhaps, architectural design might be aligned with neither formalism nor rationalism but with intelligent form and traceable creativity” Michael Pawlyn in Biomimicry in Architecture. The concept of Biomimicry informs the process of applying biological and genetic structures as a means to inform the architectural ingenuiety - when programmed and scripted using parametric and generative design process, the outcomes will develop the notions of environmental and social performance criteria. Therefore, exponents of the discourse such as Michael Pawlyn suggest that biomimicry can be utilised as a process whereby current twenty-first problems are solved using innovative biological informed solutions. The examples developed by Grimshaw Architects - the Eden Project and Exploration Architecture - the Sahara Forest Project highlight the extent of at which pervasive architectural problems can be viewed, analysed and solved by implementing new, rational and innovation digital techniques of parametrics in conjunction with biological and genetic algorithms to inform the implementation of sustainable architecture. Therefore, it can be stated that biological forms, processes and deemed to be sustainable on the heavily on the components of the
by logically and innovativley mimicking the functional basis of systems to produce sustainable solutions,t hese examples are basis of exercising efficiency, both of space and material, relying biomes geometrics shapes to be clad in high performance ETFE.
sources: http://www.exploration-architecture.com http://grimshaw-architects.com/project/
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Vitra Fire Station, Weil am Rhein ARCHITECT: ZAHA HADID. 1993 Zaha Hadid’s first realized project provided the precedent and analysis for most of her later work in the new millennium. Revolutionizing the prevailing discourse of the era with her own blend of dynamism with that of technological innovation in materiality and engineering; the Vitra Fire Station is articulated through deconstructivist notions imbedded within the ideals of an evolutionary paradigm known as New Structuralism. New Structuralism as discourse evidently informed the development of the technological advancements in digitalization particularly, parametric and performative architecture which was seen to respond to the growing environmental and social needs of the population in the new millennium. Furthermore as with parametric and performative design, Zaha Hadid utilized artwork and other informative means to inform the relationships and evoke spatial form and arrangements for occupation - connecting context in the form of landscape with the seemingly instable architecture that has been known to inform the discourse.
source: www.archdaily.com/ad-classics-vitra-fire-station/
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National Gallery, Astana ARCHITECT: BJARKE INGELS GROUP. 2009 Developed from the geometric and mathematical notion of a Mobius Strip; the National Gallery in Astana evokes the very substance of parametric and performative digitalization that informs the transition in architectural discourse. Utilizing innovative technologies and extensive mathematical analysis, BIG successfully responds to the performative design implications primarily schematics, connectivity within spatial arrangements, hierarchical configurations as well as environmental and social ideals involving views and performance in terms of formal organization, function and awareness. Furthermore the Möbius form can be contextualised as social symbol: “The clarity of the circle, the courtyard of the rotunda, the gateway of the arch and the soft silhouette of the yurt are combined to create a new national monument appearing local and universal, contemporary and timeless, unique and archetypal at the same time.” Bjarke Ingels. source: http://www.archdaily.com/33238/national-library-in-astana-kazakhstan-big/
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Danish Pavilion, Shanghai ARCHITECT: BJARKE INGELS GROUP. 2010 The pavilion represents the essence of the Danish urban environment - how spaces are occupied, by whom and for whom, and what defines a space for habitation, whether it is social arrangement or spatial organization. BIG succeeded in structuring and applying a form inspired by the Mobius Strip to the urban scale by informing the parameters of the context, determining how and why the site and the building will be utilized as a public venue in order to respond to the issues of environmental and social performance criteria inherent within the discourse of parametric and generative design notions. The architecture represents the sustainable outcome of social performance. It is necessary to understand that the representation of the structure evokes a transformation of surface geometries in response to functionality. This promotes the notion that a better quality of social living can be achieved through sustainable, and constructive adaptations from digital, parametric technology. 09
source: http://www.archdaily.com/ 57922/denmark-pavilion-shanghai-expo-2010-big/
Topological Transformations Topology is the intensive mathematical notion concerning the properties of geometries that are preserved under continuous deformation. This definition is serviceable in the contemporary context of architecture as a discourse. Examples including OMA’s CCTV Tower in Beijing (2002), UNStudio’s Burnham Pavilion in Chicago (2009) and Snohetta’s MaxLab (2012) exhibit the specific topological transformation known as a Mobius Strip. The Mobius Strip is determined to be a geometric surface with only one side and only one boundary component. Mathematical concepts including these are becoming increasingly useful and applicable to the architectural discourse. Parametrics, scripting and programming using digital technologies enables architects to ascertain new and innovative design outcome through the utilisation of extensive mathematical and geometric formulae as a means of creating new geometries which were not previously conceivable to develop a new architectural scheme. 10
Scripting: Architecture PROJECT: PAVILION , ROMANIA. 2011 The temporary pavilion is fabricated from tessellating voronoi geometries used to represent a Mรถbius structure; the object, through its tectonic characteristics, attempts to make legible the new discourse which is defined by computational architecture and thus becomes a showcase for the design processes empowered by digital technology. Specifically, the advanced utilisation of parametric design techniques such as Grasshopper to inform the extent of design production and fabrication. This approach ensures that the process was to be controlled from exact geometry generation adapted from known mathematical algorithms to piece together the assembly from fabrication in a logical manner. This construction experiment provides an insight into the means of parametric iterations, in response to topological transformations of geometries at various phases of the process. The result was a resolved social experiment pertaining to the performance of parametric modelling on the urban environment. 11 source: http://www.a-ngine.com/2011/06/clj02-za11-pavilion.html
Scripting: Voronoi Diagram The Voronoi Diagram is a mathematical algorithm derived from the tessellation of non-standard geometries informed by the principles of topological transformations. This mathematical notion can be explored further by applying the established ideas of the Mรถbius strip and the concepts involved with biomimicry to adapt and inform the innovation of certain parametric representations to challenge and redefine how architects understand the limitations of spatial organization as defined by a space. This new discourse in contemporary architecture can be utilized as a proliferation of known constraints to be applied to new contexts under unknown variables to inform and facilitate the innovation of new representative structures. The application of topologically transformed geometry to formulate the Mรถbius strip in coordination with the use of patterns constituted from the voronoi diagram, could be generated, developed and defined to implement as a working scheme for the Wyndham City Gateway Project, Such forms can be explored as a performative tool to achieve efficiency in materiality through fabrication, resulting in environmental and social cohesion through architecture. source: http://matsysdesign.com/tag/voronoi/
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