Lisa Cumming Works 2012

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- selected works twentytwelve lisacumming@gmail.com www.lisacumming.com +44 (0) 7570 243 155

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my name is Recently graduated from the Architectural Association’s Design Research Lab. I like knowledge . Learning everything about everything is what motivates me – from graphic design to hacking my iPhone, Freddie Mercury to Buckminster Fuller, mylar foils to local timber fabrication. I am a blog junkie and information addict. Enclosed is a selection of work that has kept me occupied for the last little while.

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Enjoy.


hello - 5 -


5 hello

8 extended works

emergent urbanism

Cloud10 10

technology

Material Footprints 24

urban

Common Ground 30

42 sample works

residential process

Pocket Houset 44

education

Conditional Collision 48

fabrication

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Shadow Projection 54

text

Complex Discourse 60

prefabrication

Hardwick Smith House 78

detailing Transport Centre 84


contents

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EXTENDED WORKS


DDEDNETXE SSKROW - 9 -


The spine of the cloud is corridor of connection


2012

Cloud10 Masters research at the Design Research Lab, Architectural Association in collaboration with fellow students Jorge Mendez, Drew Merkle, Nada Taryam SupervisorTheodore Spyropoulos

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category5


Based in Antarctica, Cloud10 is a collaborative response to heavy architecture. Cloud10 is an animated model of selfadaptive and environmentally-responsive behaviour. This airborne, inflatable architecture employs certain systemic redundancies and seeks stability in mobility and migration. As we make increasingly intellectual and instantaneous demands of our technology, we could (and should) demand more from our architecture; an architecture that is not predetermined in composition or organisation but rapidly responds to a number of conditions, operating within a system of parameters and employs an efficiency in materiality modelled off nature itself. What we demand is an architecture of lightness: where mass is air.

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organisation


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Flexibility of the inhabitable zooidal chambers hosts a flexible programme


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ZOOID the singular unit


D

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MECHANICS


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control CONTROL


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2010

material footprints Workshop at the Design Research Lab, Architectural Association in collaboration with fellow students Jorge Mendez, Drew Merkle, Nada Taryam SupervisorMarta MalĂŠ- Alemany

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“Man is prone to seek novelty in his environment and, having foun


An investigation of social interaction as a means of input into a fabrication system. Explored across several output devices such as a drawing machine, realtime cnc machine and material deformation frame, all of which are operated using the iPhone’s accelerometer. The iPhone, used for its attractive accessibility and intuitive interface, is used as the hardware interface between the user and the network of iPhones that collaborate to generate a single output; drawing, form or deformation.

nd a novel situation, to learn how to control it.� Gordon Pask, 1971 - 27 -



4 MACHINE ONE

MACHINE TWO th et or a.x, ient th atio eta.y n ,

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one

two

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Aerial map of Wellington CIty site


2008

common ground Thesis research toward the Bachelor of Architecture at Victoria University Wellington SupervisorsJohn Grey & Mark Southcombe

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“It is not that we should change in order to live within architecture, but architecture has to react to our movements, feelings,moods, emotions, so that we want to live within it.� - Coop Himmelb(l)au At the core of community is social interaction- the ability to communicate and collaborate with others in order to affiliate and thus form connection. What this project poses is an experimental investigation into how architecture might better provide for social interaction within a currently disconnected urban community. Our closest and most permeable environment within New Zealand culture is the home. As a collection of spaces commissioned to facilitate a desired programme, the home, this inquiry argues has advice to offer on how to better facilitate such social interactions. By establishing what devices a home uses to foster various social programmes and behaviours, this research explores how such information might translate into the urban public realm and manifest in a responsive design proposal.

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existing community market programmatics

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STUDIES


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SOCIAL PODS


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SAMPLE WORK


EELPMAS KKROW - 43 -


A house. A house. Defined, according to my ‘house’, it is the scenario in which I dwell. The place to which I resort, in which I hibernate. In which I create, simmer the day’s energies and my day’s stories into small memoirs that hang off my walls. Remind me, remind me. To keep my stories alive is to keep my significance out of question. I exist, I belong, I influence. These stories boil down, however, only to remind me of the energies once experienced via sensual trigger rather than convey the energy itself to the observer. I lose the chaos. Then, cannot the house resolve from these energies, these memories, these neurological pulses that sustain my parasitic mind? I’m finding stories and drawing from them their chaos in so that they may inform an opportunist’s architecture.


2007

pocket house

Undergraduate student research investigating a process based means of domestic resolution at Victoria University Wellington SupervisorPeter Wood

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A city, according to the implemented masterplan developed by Studio Three can be determined by the transitions that constitute it. Using established mapping exercises to identify these transitions, signalled areas for potential development within the dispersed industrial zone, Trekantsområdet. Broken into three categories: the Rigid, the Rhythmic, the Response. The Rigid is the constant in the equation, the grid or matrix upon which all other layers occur and are coordinates to e.g. Landscape. The Rhythm consists of a predictable and controllable flux which creates public space, but not domain. It is the consistent pulse of the Land Body e.g. Infrastructure The Response is when and by which the “Urbscape” is activated. Finding the gaps and inconsistencies in the rhythms and rigidities creates space for transition and therefore, public domain [public space that is made interactive by the user-groups initiative].


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conditional collision Undergraduate research that develops a Master Plan and public intervention at The Royal Danish Acadmey of Fine Arts and Architecture SupervisorFlemming Overgaard

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2009

shadow projection Professional research undertaken in collaboration with Mark Southcombe that sought to use design aesthetic as a means for research production With Victoria University Wellington

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Design research is something of interest to both academic and professional alike as it forms a threshold between these two architectural positions. Drawing from novel subjects of investigation in order to pose new design solutions is nothing new but to research through the act of design is something with seemingly underexplored potential. Using shade and shadow as the point of departure, Shadow Projection propounds a framework for research through design in order to explore the potential of this means of investigation against a tangible design product. Posing an architectural problem – the need for a sunshade to be retrofitted to an innercity apartment building- provided a clear intention for an architectural solution for which a research framework could be established. A matrix of design iterations set premise for exploration, reflection and reinterpretation, a set of, what became critical processes in propelling the research forwards. A figure ground image derived from existing shadow was reiterated against varying design and production techniques.

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Neri Oxman’s Beast patterining system


Abstract The architectural discourse, as any, is subject to evolution and has over the last decade seen a significant shift in terminology. An obsession, like many other disciplines, with contemporary scientific research, architecture has adopted biogenetic terminology to articulate proposed architectural conditions and relationships. However, this adoption has undergone little translation and is applied in various manners in various discourses, rendering the architectural meaning or relevance vague, non-specific or codified. This paper argues that the relevance of such terminologies lies in their ability to specify, contextualise and critically discuss the work they are sign for.

2011

comple discourse complex the adoption of scientific semiotics into the architectural language.

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defy/ine complexity


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introduction Fundamental to an architectural discourse is the language used to discuss it. Though architecture is a discipline that primarily communicates via drawing and model, language has been instrumental in its ability to contextualise, specify and critically discuss both motive and implication of a proposal. Contemporarily, evolution of the manner in which architects are designing emergent systems, responsive to their environmental conditions has seen the adoption of scientific semiotics, in particular ‘complexity’, representative of adaptive behaviours and ecological constituents that are desired by such proposals. This adoption however, has undergone little translation, resulting in the use of pure scientific terminology coded with its own signification, to articulate and discuss purely architectural conditions that operate at an entirely different scale, performative function and materiality. While semiotics do not define architecture itself and have arguably little ramification for a design system itself, they form a construct that enables reflective and projective discourse, affirming architecture as a continually evolving and self-critical entity. Thus, as the topic of discussion evolves and translates according to its social contextualisation, so must the language that is used to articulate it. In taking such action to define the architectural notion of complexity thus provides a currently absent framework with which to objectively evaluate the translation and effectiveness of complexity as a generative design strategy. Complexity, as understood within its scientific context can be extrapolated as a condition of three criteria: multiplicity, local rules and global behaviour. It is these critera that have become key systematic logic systems in pursuing complexity in design are illustrated by the experimental works of Neri Oxman, Biothing and Karl Chu, respectively. Their research will here be critically explored in terms of objectives, process and experimental results (materialised or not) in order to extrapolate the methods and ramifications of architectural adoption of multiplicity and, agent and global behaviour. This paper examines the topical scientific semiotic, ‘complexity’ by - 61 -


way of case study. Defining complexity within its scientific construct and extrapolating the key objectives that have been architecturally endorsed, will elicit where definition and specificity in the adoption of the term is lacking and how responsibility for the making clear of such critical lapses might be delegated, recognising that refinement of the architectural language is not limited to theoreticians but practitioners, researchers and historians alike. Complexity Complex behaviour, within complexity science is a system constituted of multiple agents, unaware of their greater environment that dynamically interact according to local rules, producing global behaviours that are unpredictable or indeterminable from the interactions between these individual constituent elements.1 These interactions allow for a sort of evolutionary adaptation and immediate responsiveness to the system’s environment. Such integrated action is attractive to the architectural discipline seeking to divorce from the static, heavy nature of the contemporary built environment so as to foster a more fluid, information-rich and responsive environment, more conducive to the technology enabled lifestyles we lead. Architects have studied naturally occurring complex systems for inspiration as to how such rule-based systems might be applied and what their design limitations might be. Problematically however, while their properties are incredibly attractive to the design of emergent architectural systems, the ability to demonstrate examples of complex behaviour is much stronger than in fact our capacity to explain it. “Architecture has frequently drawn inspiration from nature- from its forms and structures, and, most recently, from the inner logic of its morphological processes. It is therefore necessary to be clear as to where architecture is literally considered as part of nature, where there are analogies or metaphors, and where nature is a source of inspiration.� 3 If complexity theory is to be employed within architecture as a systematic approach to generating bottom-up design constructs that operate beyond the notion of a metaphor and engages with a materialised, environment-specific adaptation, a certain degree of clarity in objective needs to be elicited, attested by clear selection of semiology. If the language used to discuss the exemplified complexity cannot further decode its nature, then the discourse is at a loss for the productive development of an architecturally specific semiotic construct- necessary to enable specific, critical discussion rather than all-encompassing concepts.


Evolving Definitions “The community, as much as the individual, is bound to its language. A language cannot therefore be treated simply as a form of contract […].”4 The term complexity means one thing within the scientific realm and must mean something different, or at the very least transposed into the architectural realm due to the differentiation between the disciplines. Complexity as a sign5 is composed of a signal (sound pattern) and signification (the concept). When many significations are assigned to a single sign, the semiotic construct becomes redundant in its objective function to articulate instead, becoming burdened with subjectivity. Linguistics is an adaptive system that must and does respond to its social context, it cannot ignore its previous construct or semiology, as this has shaped its contemporary adaptation and signification, carrying with it embedded meaning. So for a semiotic once rooted in scientific discourse to now carry architectural signification means that an explicit translation or adaptation must occur within the social construct so only necessary past meaning is carried over into the new signification. Contemporary, Patrik Schumacher is committed to defining parameters of the architectural discourse as universal construct from which global motives and ramifications can be both extrapolated and conjectured. “The theory of architectural autopoiesis argues that it is not only possible to describe architecture as a cohesive entity from the outside, but that architecture is as a system of communications has itself maintained and strengthened its cohesiveness by means of architectural theory, and can be expected to do so in the future.”6 His document, The Autopoiesis of Architecture implies that architecture is a self-correcting, re-aligning organism that continually updates itself, employing communication systems as its means of cohesiveness. However, if this is to be managed through theoretical discourse, the autopoietic constituents that allow enable this are practitioners, theorists and historians, actively engaged with such a discourse. While this document makes attempt to propose a universal communication order based upon reflections of the recent parametric phase of architectural experimentation, it could be argued that, in his attempt for disambiguation, Schumacher excludes from this treatise any shades of grey. Such a move disables open cogitation by offering a framework that is deterministic and prescribed in nature thus, counterproductive to tangential and explorative discussion. It is these notions of linguistic indeterminacy that are paramount during terminological infancy in order to maintain experimentation and discursive proposals that come about as a response to possible signification. - 63 -


Oxman uses complexity as a means of form finding


Architectural Complexity Multiplicity Oxman has a self-confessed infatuation with form finding. Nature as precedent, she begins her experimentation from a sense of material ecology. Describing herself as a designer of processes not form, to foster a fabricated integration as opposed to the modernist practice of differentiated distribution that assigned material to function. “Nature authors not forms but processes to think about form. Recipes that mix material and environment together and it is due to those mixtures and those relationship that form arises.”7 From the point of view that nature knows how to organise matter8, Oxman sees the designer as an editor of constraints, enabled by a computational process. Her work advocates propagation of sametype agents, or ‘material molecules’ in a singular material that changes its properties according to local conditions such as, pressure point here, structural support there, thus generating a complex yet integrated piece of design. And while such objectives are seemingly understood when presented to an audience, her work is still publicly elusively described as “a complex recipe of design, science, art, and environmentalism, and it’s often hard to tell where one field ends and the other picks up.”9 Therefore, in looking to her work we see if we can extrapolate some of the complex qualities of multiplicity she is communicating, such as adaptation. Yet adaptation, when reviewed in her Chaise Lounge, Beast, for example exhibits a one-off moment of response, and does not deal with material flux or continual adaptation that her descriptions of living materiality implore. Rather, it is development of a higher resolution of material application. What might be better terminology then is material integration, giving better insight into what her environment is, which in most cases is the human body thus indicative of scale also and clarify what her multiplicity of agents are and the nature of their adaptive properties. They are in fact static agents by scientific standards yet are described as producing “living-synthetics constructions”10 which seems counter descriptive to their fabricated state and more a descriptive notions of complex amalgamations of interdisciplinary fascinations. - 65 -



Within the architectural discipline, Oxman’s work is perceivably situated as an event of complexity- where it determines an architectural event at the scale of the agent, manifesting at the level of fabrication. Such scale of architectural event establishes agent specific or, in the case of Beast, cell specific parameters of thickness, density, cell size and colour. It is a propagated event occurring over a large population of cells to produce an integrated output, in this case, the chaise lounge. Local Rules Similarly to Oxman, Biothing applies agent based logic approach to design, assigning these agents specific tasks in order to become environmentally responsive according to the parameters of their speed, mass and responsive capacity.11 With a focus on the simple relationships developed between the agents developed in the programming of their alignment, cohesion and separation properties, they form subsequent rules of behaviour and an enriched process of local information sharing. It is propositioned that from simple but enriched relationships, a novel global complexity is attainable. "[…] these data interconnect contextual parameters or parameters specific to construction to allow for the increasing complexity and adaptability of constructed environments and consequently they can change the quality and nature of designs."12 Unlike Oxman, Biothing is disinterested in the agents themselves and more concerned with the relationships between the components and consequent processes that develop the global complexity of the design system, procuring an environmentally responsive agent system that is programmable in its behaviour and indeterminate in its materialisation. Biothing’s ability to address how complexity is generated in a project is intelligible and clear, based upon the bio-natural influences prevalent in contemporary emergent discourse: “[…] in which the individual agents work in concert with their “host” environments and in collaboration with other simple agents towards greater complexity […] according to self-regulating patterns that are found in natural systems.”13 - 67 -



However, the scale at what this complex agency is operating is underdetailed and evasive of addressing how the agent system might materialise, eluding to the notion that Biothing’s focus is directed toward how computational processes might enable constructing agent behaviours rather than on their architectural contextualization. Such a conjecture is arguably substantiated when reviewing the representation of projects such as Agentware 2009, articulated by renderings of the computational processes and three-dimensional prints of the resultant forms, a captured moment of the running algorithm. Similarly to Oxman’s work, Biothing’s projects situate as an eventbased complexity. Operating at a systemic level, the event is instigated by the programming of the agent system, manifesting as a behavioural response to a given environment. Notably, the complexity lies in the programmable response of the system to its context but what remains to be constructively discussed is how such complexity can be objectively evaluated. Such a discussion is by no means limited to the work of Biothing rather, a conversation that is necessary across the emergent design discourse. Global Behaviour The evaluation of complexity is also a notion that perplexes genetic architecture pioneer, Karl Chu14. The practice of defining architectural concepts seems to be synonymous with Chu’s work, exemplified by one of his recent presentations in Brooklyn, New York where the majority of his twenty-minute presentation attempted to elicit what architecture is, reasoning that architecture has always been perceived in line with the way that the universe is perceived, be that from a theological view point or more contemporarily, biotechnological. Chu contests that the perception of architecture is built upon John Wheeler’s proposed construct of the world as being made up of BITs, small units of information and accordingly, genetic architecture is evolved by the relationship between units of information that provide foundation for the bodyplan, structure and organs, much like the homeogene in biology. Complexity as a rich live-feed of such homeogenetic information - 69 -



is what forms the global brain15 and consequently fashions the architecture of information: “At the end of the day, I’m talking about architecture as a […] computing system.”16 Such a system thrives off the accumulation and processing of homeogenetic data. Yet this very data cannot be extrapolated from his work. Where Oxman and Biothing develop an event based, environment specific agent system, Chu employs a deliberate lack of contextualisation. Perceivably, that which is of greater importance to Chu is that such homeogenetic data- or agents of information- exist and the explication of global conditions that are produced from their interactions. Unsurprisingly then, what Chu aims to enable is a discussion of global theorem: notions of worlds of complexity that operate at a level of virtuality rather than materialised events of complexity and consequently, (similarly to Schumacher) how such notions might redefine the discipline and its parameters. Symptomatically, the poster children for his work, such as X-Phylum and Phylox become just that- graphic indexes that no more delineate these global concepts than they decode his written work. Similarly, his texts sit parallel to his computational work, neither referencing the other. Subsequently, his work is neither contextualised nor contextualises, permanently situating it within a discourse of virtuality that is, perceivably, exactly where Chu contests the influence of complexity is currently able to extend. Analogous to the work of Schumacher then, what Chu is proposing is a global theorem. While addressing the nature of global conditions arising from the employment of genetically inspired design systems the greater agenda is to determine and publicly discuss the encompassing parameters and constituents of complexity design. Once such guidelines are elucidated for the world of complexity within architecture, a framework for the discussion of the events of complexity is in place, better enabling an evaluation of their relevance and ramifications. - 71 -



Evaluating Architectural Complexity The provision of a semiological defining framework that outlines the parameters, constituent of complexity not only postulates a platform to discuss complexity as a condition but also enables differentiation between complexity as a set of objectives, processes and outcomes. Such differentiation provides basis for a comparative evaluation such as performative efficiency, material distribution, local behaviours etc that is otherwise not possible should complexity continue to be discussed in metaphorical or undefined terms. Two possible methods of definition present themselves: that complexity is rendered a subjective field of design that should be dealt with on a case by case method, tasking the designer with the responsibility of defining the ‘complexity’ within their project, abdicating an attempt to corporately define complexity. Alternatively, aligned with Schumacher’s suggestion that architecture has maintained itself as a universal construct of communication and signification in the past and will continue to do so in the future, it could be assumed that with critical debate and a evaluation of complex systems would present a universal definition of the condition. This paper in fact proposes that both these approaches are taken. As earlier discussed, the fact that obscurity exists and is voiced by accomplished advocates in the practice is indicative of a degree of infancy of the complexity condition. For such reasoning that predetermination is is both damaging and limiting to the discourse, excluding what may seem tangential trajectories that in fact enable further clarification. Secondly, time is required to allow such perceptions of design strategies and their contextualisation in order to establish how they withstand the scrutiny of a global audience and successors. Whether it be a process of elimination or affirmation of what does and does not define complexity is subordinate to the necessary articulation of a designer’s clear objectives and processes in pursuit of complexity. The signification is then representative of a universal scope of complexity, discussed in terms of objectives, processes and materialised outputs.

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Such definition then better allows for the evaluation of complexity within a defined and understood scope of discourse, mediating between universal notions of complexity theory and specific exposition of particular instances.

Conclusion This paper has conjectured that language is a critical construct used to contextualise an architectural trajectory. Noting a recent shift in architectural influence that is biogenetically situated complexity, it is proposed that the architectural language must evolve in accordance with that shift in order to assimilate the scientific semiotic more specifically and constructively into the architectural discourse. Such complex systems are derived from the interaction of a multiplicity of agents, programmed with simple and locally responsive rules that present global behaviours. In evaluating such conditions within the works of Oxman, Biothing and Chu, three architectural conditions were ascertained that present systems that situate as either event ascribed complexity or worlds of complexity. In formally defining a linguistic construct for architectural complexity that is reflective of the hierarchy and systems that constitute this area of genetic design, a more constructive platform for the evaluation of such systems is enabled. The recommended approach for determining such a linguistic construct employs two methods; first a universal approach that is illustrated by Schumacher’s efforts to define the architectural entity, consequently providing an articulated global focus. Secondly and most importantly, a nondeterministic approach that allows for discrepancy and contestation while such a discourse remains in its architectural infancy that presents a scope or degrees of complexity, represented by the notion of event based complexity. Finally, such definition is a task not to be singularly delegated rather, is the responsibility of theoretician, practitioner and historian alike in order to determine a holistic and objective scope of signification.

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Endnotes 1 Johnson, Steven. Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. Scribner, 2001. p19 2 Kwinter, Sanford. Far From Equilibrium; Essays on Technology and Design Culture. Davidson, Cynthia (ed.). Barcelona: Actar, 2007. 3 Frazer, John. ‘A Natural Model for Architecture’ and ‘New Tools’ in An Evolutionary Architecture. London: Architectural Association, 1995. p10. 4 Saussure, Ferdinand de., Course in General Linguistics. Open Court Publishing, 1986. p71. 5 Ibid. p66 6 Schumacher, Patrik. The Autopoiesis of Architecture: A New Framework for Architecture. Vol. 1. Wiltshire: Wiley, 2011. p29. 7 Poptech. Neri Oxman: On Designing Form. Web. 12 Mar. 2011. <http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=txl4QR0GDnU> 8 Ibid. 9 Ortved, John. Neri Oxman. Web. 25 Mar. 2011. <http://www.interviewmagazine. com/art/neri-oxman/> 10 Ibid. 11Migayrou, Frédéric. in Andrasek, Alisa. Biothing. HYX Editions, 2009. p23. 12 Andrasek, Alisa. Biothing. HYX Editions, 2009. p127. 13 Migayrou, Frédéric. in Andrasek, Alisa. Biothing. HYX Editions, 2009. p24-25. 14 Chu, Karl. Facebook: Karl Chu. Web. 24 Mar. 2011. <https://www.facebook.com/ shwelin?ref=ts> 15 GSAPP. Institute for Genetic Architecture. Web. 30 Mar. 2011. <http://www.arch.columbia.edu/workpage/work/labs/institute-genetic-architecture> 16 TEDxBrooklyn. TEDxBrooklyn- Karl Chu. Web. 15 Mar. 2011. <http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=_5uDWFSeypM&NR=1>

Images List Oxman, Neri. Beast. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://web.media.mit.edu/~neri/site/projects/beast/beast.html> Oxman, Neri. Beast. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://web.media.mit.edu/~neri/site/projects/beast/beast.html> ‘Agentware’ Biothing. Biothing. Web. 31.Mar.2011. <http://www.biothing.org/?cat=6> ‘Agentware’ Biothing. Biothing. Web. 31.Mar.2011. <http://www.biothing.org/?cat=6> ‘Phylox’ Metaxy. Genetic Architecture. Web. 23 Mar. 2011. <http://www.metaxy.com/phylox. html>


References Andrasek, Alisa. Biothing. HYX Editions, 2009. Biothing. Biothing: Repository of Computation Design. Web. 20 Mar. 2011. < http:// www.biothing.org/> Chu, Karl. ‘The Future of Genetic Architecture’ in Volume. n.1, 2005. pp54-55 Chu, Karl. ‘Genetic Space: hourglass of the Demiurge’ in Architectural Design. NovDec v68. n11-12. 1998. pp68-73 Frazer, John. ‘A Natural Model for Architecture’ and ‘New Tools’ in An Evolutionary Architecture. London: Architectural Association, 1995. pp 9-64. GSAPP. Institute for Genetic Architecture. Web. 30 Mar. 2011. <http://www.arch.columbia.edu/workpage/work/labs/institute-genetic-architecture> Johnson, Steven. Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. Scribner, 2001. Kuhn, Thomas. Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago University Press, 1970. Kwinter, Sanford. Far From Equilibrium; Essays on Technology and Design Culture. Davidson, Cynthia (ed.). Barcelona: Actar, 2007. Kwinter, Sanford. ‘Soft Systems’ in Culture Lab 1. Boignon, Brian (ed.). New York, 1996. pp 207-228. Metaxy. Genetic Architecture. Web. 23 Mar. 2011. < http://www.metaxy.com/> Ortved, John. Neri Oxman. Web. 25 Mar. 2011. <http://www.interviewmagazine.com/ art/neri-oxman/> Oxman, Neri. Neri Oxman. Web. 31 Mar.2011. <http://web.media.mit.edu/~neri/site/ index.html> Poptech. Neri Oxman: On Designing Form. Web. 12 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=txl4QR0GDnU> Saussure, Ferdinand de., Course in General Linguistics. Open Court Publishing, 1986. Schumacher, Patrik. The Autopoiesis of Architecture: A New Framework for Architecture. Vol. 1. Wiltshire: Wiley, 2011. Silvetti, Jorge. ‘The Muses are not Amused’ in The New Architectural Pragmatism’. University of Minnesota Press, 2007. pp176- 198. Spuybroke, Lars. Architecture of Variation. Thames & Hudson, 2009. TEDxBrooklyn. TEDxBrooklyn- Karl Chu. Web. 15 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=_5uDWFSeypM&NR=1>

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2010

hardwick smith house Funded research that developed a prefabrication system in response to the lack of design choices associated with Prefabrication in New Zealand. Research was undertaken on behalf of/ in collaboration with Mark Southcombe, funded by Victoria University Wellington.

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LAB TESTS


B S

Hardwick Smith House was initially designed for a Taranki based client, using traditional construction methods. Chosen as a case study house, it was then reconsidered as a prefabricated residence. The prefabrication system is one of Mark Southcombe’s recent design interests that I assisted in the development of with rigorous physical and digital investigations. A double skinned, jigsaw panel system intended to equip the architect with an efficient, lightweight yet structurally sound system that allows more design freedom than current New Zealand options allow. The panel design underwent a twelve month development process at varying scales including a full size fabrication run that was structurally tested at the Victoria University of Wellington’s hydraulic testing facility, performing well beyond expectation. It is due to be exhibited at the inaugural Kiwi Prefab Exhibtion, 2012.

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v

2010

Transport Centre detailing Detailing exercise for a predominantely glass reinforced plastic envelope. The complexity of the system is in the coordination of clean and efficient junctions at the multiple folds of the building envelope that still imbue the dynamism that the building bids to express.

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Detail Three page 4

Detail One page 4


Detail Five page 5

Detail Four page 5

Detail Two page 6

Lisa Cumming Transport Testing Centr

client Danish Transport D


THANK YOU


KKNAHT UUOY - 89 -



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