Wind Architecture Studio 2016

// WIND ARCHITECTURE _MASTERS OF ARCHITECTURE STUDIO 05 2016 SEMESTER 2 _MICHAEL MACK 584812

// A.01.00 - CONTENTS // A.01.00 - CONTENTS // A.01.01 - INTRODUCTION // A.01.02 - PRECURSORS > A.01.02a_PERFORMATIVE ARCHITECTURE STUDIO 2011 // A.01.02 - PRECURSORS > A.01.02b_MOVIE TASK 1: ”THE BUBBLE” // A.02.01 - DESIGNING FOR USERS // A.02.02- PROTOTYPING > A.02.02a_SKETCH01 : ARDUINO | SENSORS > A.02.02b_SKETCH02 : KINECT | GRASSHOPPER | FIREFLY | ARDUINO // A.03.00 - KITE WORKSHOP | PETER LYNN > A.03.01_DESIGN > A.03.02_MATERIALITY > A.03.03_CONSTRUCTION+REFINEMENT > A.03.04_AFTERWORD

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// A.01.01 - INTRODUCTION

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// A.01.02 - PRECURSORS > A.01.02a_PERFORMATIVE ARCHITECTURE STUDIO 2011 The first experience of inflatables was underwhelming. The inflated structure from the Performative Architecture Studio 2011, while large and still a feat of making, felt relatively lacking some significant aspects. Personally, the most engaging aspects of the structure itself was the process of inflation as it writhed and bulged on the floor, the act of climbing into the structure itself, and its eventual collapse and deflation.

It was later revealed that the white surfaces were used as a screen for the projection of an agentbased artwork which changed with the number of people within the structure. Users could also use a lamp to ‘agitate’ the structure which would react to the users by switching through a series of states.

This certainly added a degree of interaction that was lacking in many modern day inflatable projects. In the past, inflatables were used by groups such as Ant Farm and Archigram as a way to protest the rise of modernism, and as a way to critique architecture. Yet nowadays, inflatable architecture has devolved into pavilions, and extravagant light displays.

FAR LEFT // PERFORMATIVE ARCHITECTURE STUDIO 2011 STRUCTURE LEFT (TOP TO BOTTOM) // HOT AIR - THE FLYING MAST CONNECTOR - MMW SILVER BEAN - ANISH KAPOOR INFLATABLE PAVILION - BIG

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// A.01.02 - PRECURSORS > A.01.02b_MOVIE TASK 1: ”THE BUBBLE” Using collective footage from everyone, the studio was tasked with creating a short movie highlighting our experience of the structure. I took this as an opportunity to highlight the two actions of crawling through the hole into the structure, and directly interacting with the surface of the material through touch. As well as highlighting the qualities of reflection brought about by the clear plastic.

The result was “The Bubble”, a short horror movie trailer featuring short clips and fast cuts to emphasise the disorientating act of climbing into the structure. The music and background rustling and gasping sounds crescendo to a variety of quick, dizzying pans. The trailer ends with an extended clip looking through the structure letting the lines of reflective light dance in front of the camera, obscuring and blurring vision inside.

In reflection, the use of colour grading, audio, and video composition techniques quite successfully enhanced the impact of the experience I was trying to convey. Having zero movie making knowledge but a little animation experience, this was a good opportunity to gain some skills with Adobe After Effects and Adobe Audition which will prove to be useful as the semester progresses.

RIGHT // STILLS FROM “THE BUBBLE”

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// A.02.01 - DESIGNING FOR USERS

As technology has evolved, so too has the role of the architect. No longer are architects confined to the medium of pen and paper. The narrative of architecture that was once told through intricate detailing and spatial arrangement has expanded into the realms of speculative filmmaking and the creation of virtual realities. These new forms of representation are changing the landscape of how users experience architecture.

Yet, through other digital mediums, technologies such as virtual and augmented realities are exploring other ways for users to interact with design. ‘Augmented City’ (2010), a short movie by Keiichi Matsuda explores a city in which the physical and virtual are combined into a single, continuous whole. While in the video game industry, virtual reality technology provides users with fully immersive gaming environments to build and destroy. By actively relying on feedback between the user and the interface, it is easy to imagine how immersion and engagement with the user can be achieved much more easily than with static, non-responsive design.

The first part of this project seeks to test different technologies and their integration with one another to provide a form of feedback between the user and the design. It will then endeavour to explore different ways these technologies can be incorporated into a larger scale project in order to engage with users to compliment, or even enhance the user experience.

RIGHT // KEIICHI MATSUDA - AUGMENTED CITY 3D

// A.02.02- PROTOTYPING > A.02.02a_SKETCH01 : ARDUINO | SENSORS For the first prototyping task, I wanted to begin exploring the incorporation of interactivity into the project. Prior to the studio, I had briefly learnt the basics of Arduino allowing me to turn an LED light on and off. I decided that this would once again be a good opportunity to gain some skills in both Arduino coding and electronics which could potentially benefit my proposal.

The prototype made used an ultrasonic distance sensor to read the distance from the sensor, and write a voltage to the DC motor allowing for variable speed. If the user was a certain distance from the sensor, a buzzer would play Ride of the Valkyries.

This same script was later adapted to power a servo and stepper motor, as well as using light and sound sensors in similar manners. However, being able to read and write information within the Arduino is only the first step.

TOP RIGHT // PSEUDOCODE FOR READING AND WRITING IN ARDUINO BOTTOM RIGHT // ARDUINO SETUP WITH ULTRASONIC DISTANCE SENSOR AND DC MOTOR WITH 3D PRINTED FAN

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// LOOP START

// READ DISTANCE (cm) (ULTRASONIC DISTANCE SENSOR)

// CONDITION 1 DISTANCE < 90.00cm TRUE

FALSE

// CONDITION 2 DISTANCE < 100.00cm

FALSE

// CONDITION 3 DISTANCE > 100.00cm

TRUE

// REMAP DISTANCE TO MOTOR SPEED (0, 90, 60, 255)

// SET TO MAX MOTOR SPEED (255)

// WRITE MOTOR SPEED

// WRITE MOTOR SPEED // WRITE HIGH VALUE TO BUZZER PIN

// WRITE TO CONSOLE “OUT OF RANGE”

// READ KINECT SKELETAL TRACKER

// TRACK TRIGGER BOXES TO USER WIRE MODEL

// ASSIGN HITBOX TO USERSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; HANDS

// WAIT FOR HITBOX REGISTRATION (LEFT HAND TO TRIGGER)

// WAIT FOR HITBOX REGISTRATION (RIGHT HAND TO TRIGGER)

TRUE FALSE

TRUE

// DURATION > ASSIGNED TIME VALUE FOR TRIGGER

// DURATION > ASSIGNED TIME VALUE FOR TRIGGER

TRUE FALSE

FALSE

TRUE

// USER HITBOX FOLLOWING TRIGGER BOX PATH

// USER HITBOX FOLLOWING TRIGGER BOX PATH

TRUE

TRUE AND // WRITE TRUE TO FIREFLY + ARDUINO

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FALSE

// A.02.02 - PROTOTYPING > A.02.02b_SKETCH02 :

KINECT | GRASSHOPPER | FIREFLY | ARDUINO The next task involved linking the Xbox Kinect through Rhino and Grasshopper in order to send a signal to the Arduino. I was quite comfortable in the Grasshopper environment, so being able to script in this interface gave me a bit more freedom. The Kinect has an inbuilt skeletal tracker which can be read through a plugin for Grasshopper called Firefly. The skeletal tracker identifies points on the skeleton which can be read by Grasshopper. The Firefly plugin also contains the ability to read and write to Arduino, as well as Processing which will be explored later.

In this example, utilising the points created by the Kinect, it is possible to then track both hit boxes and trigger boxes to the user’s skeletal model. Hit boxes were attached to the model’s hands, while triggers were placed 300mm in front of the model.

The script first detected when the model’s hands were within the trigger box. When this was satisfied, the script then detected if the model’s hands had remained in the trigger box for more than half a second. This prevents any ‘accidental’ triggering. Lastly, the script detects if the hit boxes for the hands had followed a path of moving away from the user. The script had effectively detected a ‘push’ motion.

Upon completion, the script would output a boolean value of ‘True’ which could be used by Arduino.

This sketch effectively meant that I could incorporate gesturing, as well as positional tracking into the project using a Kinect. To further expand on this, the next step may be looking into OpenCV which features a number of algorithms that are used to detect faces and human actions through a number of scripting languages.

TOP LEFT // PSEUDOCODE FOR SKELETAL TRACKING WITH KINECT BOTTOM LEFT // SKELETAL TRACKING READ AND WRITING IN RHINO AND GRASSHOPPER LEFT // HIT BOX SETUP WITH USER MODEL - 15 -

// A.03.00 - KITE WORKSHOP | PETER LYNN Taking a break from prototyping, the studio partook in a workshop with kite-maker, engineer, and inventor, Peter Lynn.The objective of the workshop was not only to learn how to make his design for a single skin, single line (SSSL) kite, but to distill the underlying design process behind using wind.

// A.03.00 - KITES > A.03.01_DESIGN “For a kite to fly on a single line, it must, as the most basic condition, have some way to detect which way is up.”

- Peter Lynn A fundamental understanding of how kites stay in the air is vital in its transposition into other further designs. The primary forces acting on the kite, and by extension any flying object, are the weight of the kite due to gravity, the tension of the tethering line which can be broken into horizontal and vertical components, and the aerodynamic force which is broken into the two components lift and drag. Without a proper engineering background, it is difficult to properly utilise the aerodynamic force equations.

However, many key points can still be extracted; Firstly, for a kite to maintain stable flight, the sum of all the forces must equal zero. For design, this means that the weight has to be sufficiently low enough for lift to occur, and vice versa. Secondly, for the kite to be angled upwards so it can be affected by the wind, the center of mass of the kite must lie below where the center of pressure is. Thirdly, the weight to area ratio is not linear, therefore kites will not ‘scale’, meaning that larger kites will be heavier relative to the amount of aerodynamic force they generate.

The rest of the design of the kite is reliant on prototyping and Peter’s personal experience. The design we were making had been iterated over three years, and many of the changes made were small centimeter adjustments in order to optimise the kite. The symmetricalness of any design however, is paramount to its success.

A number of a number of measures need to be taken into account in order to minimise errors in both the material and construction process.

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P(PRESSURE) = 0.5 p V2 L(LIFT) = 0.5 V2 A p CL D(DRAG)= 0.5 V2 A p CD θ(ANGLE OF ATTACK) = L / D WHERE: V = WIND VELOCITY (m/s) A = AREA OF KITE (m2) p = DENSITY OF AIR

(APPROX 1.229kg/m3) CL = COEFFICIENT OF LIFT

(APPROX 1.0 units) CD = COEFFICIENT OF DRAG

(APPROX 1.0 units) ABOVE// EQUATIONS FOR FORCES RIGHT // DIAGRAM OF FORCES ON KITE

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STRETCH

RIGID

RIGID

STRETCH

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// A.03.00 - KITES > A.03.02_MATERIALITY Ripstop nylon is a reinforced nylon fabric which is highly resistant to rips and tears. Thicker threads are woven at regular intervals into the fabric in a cross-hatch which reinforces the material. The ripstop nylon used for kitemaking comes in various weights, and is also coated to give it zero porosity, meaning that no air or water can pass through.

While these properties make it ideal for kite and wind based applications, there are still several issues with the use of this material.

For example, the cross-hatch weaving of the threads is rarely exactly perpendicular resulting in asymmetry in the fabric itself. In addition, while ripstop nylon is strong along the weave of the fabric, it has a significant stretch diagonal to the cross-hatch pattern, exacerbating the issue of inconsistent weaving.

In order to deal with these inconsistencies, kite patterns must be nested and rotated carefully on the material. This is to orient the strength of the material due to the weave in the correct direction. With further application of this material in other designs, consideration needs to be made if the design consists of multiple panels of this material over a large span of area.

The orientation of the material will have to be considered to reduce the amount of stretch in areas where it is unfavourable.

TOP // PETER LYNN DEMONSTRATING NESTING AND HOT KNIFE CUTTING BOTTOM LEFT // DIAGRAM SHOWING RIGID AND STRETCH ORIENTATIONS BOTTOM RIGHT // NESTING TO OPTIMISE RIGIDITY IN KITE - 21 -

// A.03.00 - KITES > A.03.03_CONSTRUCTION+REFINEMENT

The actual construction process was hindered mostly by sewing skill. Due to the stretching issue of the material, there were several cases where an area of stretchier material is being sewn onto a one with less. This caused a number of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;registrationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; problems with mismatched lengths of materials during the sewing process.

Pinning was also not advised as it created a number of holes in the fabric which were not ideal. Even with optimal nesting, there may still be cases where mismatched weaves of material need to be sewn together, and this needs to be identified and compensated for in the process.

With regards to the bridles, their design for SSSL kites is quite simple. As a base point, the bridles need to all be the same length in order to even out the wind pressure to the fabric.

The length of each bridle can then be adjusted to compensate for any errors in the kite construction. Similar methods can be adapted to multi-line kites by identifying appropriate tethering points and allowing for adjustments to be made after initial testing.

RIGHT // MATERIAL COMPENSATION IN SEWING BOTTOM RIGHT // BRIDLE ADJUSTMENT

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// A.03.00 - KITES > A.03.04_AFTERWORD The kite workshop identified a number of issues that may develop in further designs. Due to a lack of experience and knowledge in the development of single skin, single line kites, it is difficult to develop this specific mode of kite to any significant extent.

Ram air kites could provide a potential avenue for exploration.

Most of the limitations of ram air kites revolve around the geometry and design. Aspects such as long appendages, or large flat surfaces should generally be avoided due to airflow within the kiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s structure causing instability. However, ram air kites and similar designs can also be inflated mechanically allowing for a much more consistent envirnonment for prototyping or even as a final outcome.

The next step is to begin geometry testing, and identify certain characteristics of different geometries that could potentially be favourable or unfavourable.

// A.03.00 - KITES > A.03.05a_SKETCH 03:

UNITY | ANDROID SDK | VIRTUAL REALITY The studio was again tasked with generating a movie based on the footage from the workshop. However, there was a lack of footage which could be utilised to form a decent narrative which I felt properly captured the essence of the design process. Instead, I decided to explore different representation methods which eventuated into a virtual reality test through the Unity game engine.

A virtual model could be built which stores a number of trigger points that can be interacted with either through motion sensors or through an augmented reality system using a mobile device or tablet camera. A UI could then be developed which would open animations or videos showing aspects of the design which could not be ordinarily seen. In addition, this could also be adapted to show drone or 360 footage if applicable.

For this, I got three tools properly working. Firstly, the camera in the game engine responds to the gyroscope in the mobile device in order to move the camera around. Secondly, a UI is tracked to the screen in the form of a Google cardboard to single viewer button toggle. Lastly, a single plane which reads the input from the rear camera of the phone and uses them as a surface texture.

While rudimentary in appearance, this opens potential for a number of different applications, and can easily be combined with any of the previous prototypes to develop a sequence of interactive events. The next step in development for these ideas however, is understanding when and how data should be read and written, and what potential unique opportunities are open integrating this technology with inflatable design.

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[PLACEHOLDER IMAGES]

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Temporary Resource Dump: http://www.mmw.no/connector/ http://www.flyingmast.com/?tag=inflatable-structures http://www.phaidon.com/resource/anishkapoor-p452.jpg http://www.archdaily.com/791253/big-designed-inflatable-pavilion-lights-uproskilde-festival https://vimeo.com/166807261 http://www.peterlynnhimself.com/Why_Kites_Dont_Fly.php