NERO CHENXUAN HE
2018 - 2019 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTURE
PORTFOLIO
Nero Chenxuan He Email: hexxx589@umn.edu Phone(US): 651-233-0229 Instagram: @nerohe Website: www.nerohe.com
Nero Chenxuan He is an architectural designer based in Los Angeles, California. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Architecture degree from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities School of Architecture. Born and raised in Beijing China, He studied aboard in Copenhagen and worked in Amsterdam, Minneapolis, and Beijing. He participated in several distinct projects from skyscraper to an airport in Zaha Hadid Architects. In 2018, He as main designer working with Dream the Combine was one of five finalists of the prestigious 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP) competition and won the final competition which allowed them to construct an architectural installation, Hide & Seek, in the courtyard of MoMA PS1. He is currently in the program of Masters of SCI-Arc.
2019 SPRING 2GBX DS 1201 2GBX GENERATIVE MORPH
CONTENT
008 Design Studio Introduction: Forms of Knowledge 010 Design Studio: Atrract
VS 4201 VISUAL STUDIES II 030 Visual Studies Introduction: Become the Internet 032 Visual Studies: Strange
STUDENT-LED CHARRETTE HOMELESSNESS CHARRETTE 044 Student-led Charrette Introduction: Homelessness Charrette 046 Homelessness Charrette: Plugin
2018 FALL 2GAX DS 1200 2GAX COMP MORPH 056 Design Studio Introduction: Make Believe 058 Workshop I Curisoity: Candy 064 Workshop II X-Ray Vision: Failures
HT 2201 THEORIES OF CONT ARC II 116 History and Theory Theories Introduction: About Architecture 118 History and Theory Essay: Unset
076 Workshop III Curisoity: Borrowed
VS 4200 VISUAL STUDIES I GR
HT 2200 THEORIES OF CONT ARC I
088 Visual Studies Introduction: Augmented Object
126 History and Theory Theories Introduction: Facts & Fictions
090 Visual Studies: Deform
128 History and Theory Essay: Encode
AS 3200 ADV MATERIAL/TECTONICS 100 Appled Studies Introduction: Envelop Evolution 102 Material / Tectonics: Deform
FORMS OF KNOWLEGE
Design Studio Forms of Knowledge Instructor Damjan Jovanovic Term Spring 2019 Team Nero He Xin Liu
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In the west, the word ‘library’ has an ambiguous etymology. It can mean ‘a collection of books’ and/or ‘the spaces that house a collection of books’. This ambiguity stems from the fact that libraries evolved out of private and exclusive collections of stored knowledge, either by individuals or religious institutions. Prior to Gutenberg’s printing press in 1440, books were manually transcribed and only accessible to a select elite. This meant extremely low literacy rates and, moreover, a high rate of political control over society. After the printing press though, the library, as a ‘temple of knowledge’, evolves into its modern form as a public institution where books are no longer chained, literally or metaphorically, to the space that houses them. Contemporary libraries, however, are complex structures that have defined cultural expectations and evolved to integrate an expanding array of media collections and spaces for civic and democratic exchange. Rather than the museum, the public library has a civic edge due to the range of public spaces. This has replaced the metaphor of the library as a “temple of knowledge” with the “living room of the city”.
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—— Excerpt from Spring 2019 DS 1201 - 2GBX GENERATIVE MORPH Syllabus
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Design Studio Forms of Knowledge Instructor Damjan Jovanovic Term Spring 2019 Team Nero He Xin Liu
ATTRACT The main challenge of creating a new library for the 21st Century lies in producing a new image of a building dedicated to preservation and dissemination of knowledge in the age of content. The idea of content implies a collapse of classically distinct ideas of medium and subject matter into an inherently malleable and diffuse new notion of a creative product that can exist in multiple states simultaneously without a
hierarchical precedence of either. This augmented library aggregation is a cloud of information attracted together. Shifting from the virtual into augmented space, the physical manifestation of the architecture becomes only one of many parallel realities: solid structure as a tangible interface; ambiguous hologram bashing for spatial configuration; virtual holographic as representations of information.
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Aggregation Catalog I Simple Geometries: Simple geometries are for generating occupiable and functional program space.
Aggregation Catalog I Bathroom Accessories: Bathroom accessories are here to create different platforms and furniture for human scale.
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ATTRACT
No Physic Volume Bashing: Aggregate four catalogs, the overall form of the library is bashed by randomly generating objects in a cuboid.
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ATTRACT
Aggregation Catalog III Machine Parts: Machine parts help to connect different objects from different catalog smoothly.
Aggregation Catalog IV Nature Objects: Nature objects are added to generate a higher resolution form of the aggregation.
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Axon in Site Drawing: The building seemly has its own life but also mimicking the sounding buildings which also act as a form of knowledge to the city.
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ATTRACT
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ATTRACT
3D Printed Faรงade: The hologram facade is 3D printed and vacuum formed with color change holographic paint sprayed on and UV spray on selected parts.
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3D Printed Volume Model without Faรงade: It shows the program performance which enhances the idea of no hierarchy but endless, directionless and edgeless space.
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ATTRACT
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ATTRACT
Library is such an institution where exists as a world within the world, mirroring and yet upsetting with what is outside. The architecture itself would be too loud to only act as a background, setoff for human activities. It is an aggregated living organ that has its own rhythm of motion. 23
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Architectural form is conventionally conceived in a dimensional space of idealized stasis, defined by fixed-point coordinates. A building generated by volume bashing is detached with designing through plan and section. However, plans and sections need to be produced as a communication tool.
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ATTRACT
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ATTRACT
By introducing the augmented hologram projecting into the real world, a new drawing technique needs to be executed to represent this new approach to architecture. In these plan drawings, one can read the embedded tangible structural volume and bashing holograms.
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Volume Massing Study Model: This model presents occupied surface on the building, however, the question is are you inside or outside when the hologram facade is on.
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CANDY
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BECOME THE INTERNET
Visual Studies Become the Internet Instructor Damjan Jovanovic Angelica Lorenzi Term Spring 2019 Designer Nero He
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VS 4201 - VISUAL STUDIES II
“
Content is an endless proliferation of objects and images without an original, with no regard to the referential, without an interest in the authentic. It is something like an endless landfill, accumulating to cover the last vestiges of modernity. Content infects, reprograms and makes obsolete classical modernist workflows based on clarification and abstraction. More importantly, content reprograms the cognitive and creative procedures of design, compelling us to construct new ones. It takes everything indiscriminately mixing between any genre and expression. It does not cohere, it does not explain, it does not want to be easy, clear or smart. Play is the only thing it responds to. The students utilize Platform Sandbox, a game-like software designed specifically for working with content. The source material from online archives, play with endless reconfigurations and produce an enormous amount of material. All material (images and videos) comes directly from the software, as raw, unfiltered expression.
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—— Excerpt from Spring 2019 VS 4201 - VISUAL STUDIES II Syllabus
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Visual Studies Become the Internet Instructor Damjan Jovanovic Angelica Lorenzi Term Spring 2019 Designer Nero He
STRANGE When giving a platform and been told to do whatever, logic in design is weakened but stimulating possibilities of creations. Using Platform Sandbox as a medium of design, designers are required to acknowledge what is given and what are the constraints of this software. Objects from different genres are directly imported in the same interface. By mixing and matching, transboundary objects miss
the sense of origin through completely removed color, texture, and scale. In this design study, the theme “ceremony� is given as a starting reference. Through changing the software setting in Unity, new textures including still and dynamic ones are applied to the objects to form a new strange language of itself. The range of items is countless. The result uncovers how easy it is to drown in the ocean of information.
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Following the traditional architectural design method, objects can still be arranged in plan and section view. The result maintains a restricted symmetrical form. But objects are still treated very much as objects without spatial quality.
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Platform Sandbox Interface: Through 3D volume bashing with a little accuracy, dynamic objects can be treated as various textures.
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STRANGE
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STRANGE
Final exhibition includes overwhelming images which also compiled in individual books. Overall students have produced 140GB of content: 30,000 images, 250 videos, and 53 Platform Sandbox apps. 39
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STRANGE
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The Final Book Named as “Become the Internet”: Images in the book are sorted through different methods of construction the objects.
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CANDY
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HOMELESSNESS CHARRETTE
Student-led Charrette Homelessness Charrette Advisor Damjan Jovanovic Term Spring 2019 Team Nero He Xin Liu
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HOMELESSNESS CHARRETTE
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Design as a human right, not a luxury or a privilege. It is in this spirit that we pay attention to some of the most pressing issues of our moment and our city Los Angeles: homelessness. Los Angeles is an epicenter of shiting urban planning and housing issues, with homelessness surging over 40% in the past ten years alone. In a four-day period, SCI-Arc came together as a community of designers to contribute to the body of thinking on tackling this issue. Taking on the intense, collaborative format known as a charrette — a problem-solving effort involving the transparency and voices of all stakeholders — all 506 SCI-Arc students came together to affirm that design’s responsibility to imagine and shape new futures can be and should be in service of everyone.
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—— Excerpt from THE HOMELESSNESS CHARRETTE Handbook
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HOMELESSNESS CHARRETTE
Student-led Charrette Homelessness Charrette Advisor Damjan Jovanovic Term Spring 2019 Team Nero He Xin Liu
PLUGIN The homeless shopping cart is a concentration of human daily essential products. One’s life is built around this compacted aggregation. Using the cart as a carrier, daily necessities have been ranked by the frequency of use and stacked accordingly in or attached to the cart. Most of the carts have resources that are attached to the cart, such as cardboard and thick clothes or blankets. Meanwhile, other items are mostly consumable or
replaceable based on daily needs. Here, we are exploring a new typology of a homeless shelter: a motivation-based supply depot. Users could replace their supplies and activate housing units using their mobile furniture which shaped like a cart to create and nurture their own community. Thus, homeless people are offered choices within certain guidelines.
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PLUGIN
SOCKS
SNACKS
WATER
FEMALE HYGIENE ITEMS
HYGIENE ITEMS
FIRST AID KIT
BLANKETS
TOYS
PILLOW
FOOD & FRUITS
GARBAGE BAGS
User Guide: Multiple options of daily items loaded into a transformable cart.
DOG SUPPLIES
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HOMELESSNESS CHARRETTE
A new type of dwelling that is in between of being homeless and housed is incubated. It is a new type of Airbnb with not only people moving but also their “mobile furniture� which is an epitome of their lifestyles moving with them. Users bring their lives to empty housing units and activate them with the idea of being part of the bigger community.
Moblie Furniture Unit Plugs Into A Housing Unit To Unlock The Door And Activate Electricity, Water, And Heat
Moblie Furniture Unit
Moblie Furniture Unit Plugin Track
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PLUGIN
Chris
SUGGESTION 1: STANDARD KIT
Linda
SUGGESTION 2: FEMALE KIT
Chris & Lulu
SUGGESTION 3: CHILDERN KIT
Chris & Bobby
SUGGESTION 4: DOG
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User Guide: Different combination of item packages for different use group.
HOMELESSNESS CHARRETTE
By not imposing a specific and limiting dwelling and habitation model, the wills and lifestyles of homeless people are respected. This model produces incremental options for homeless people to select, handing power to residents themselves to create a cooperative sharing system.
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PLUGIN
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HOMELESSNESS CHARRETTE
Plan of A Sharing Community: The community sited on top of retail stores in Downtown Los Angeles, especially occupying the abandoned space on Skid Road.
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BORROWED
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MAKE BELIEVE
Design Studio Make Believe Instructor Florencia Pita Marcelyn Gow Natasha Sandmeier Angelica Lorenzi M. Casey Rehm Term Fall 2018 Team Nero He Irvin Shaifa
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“
Make-believe — the action of pretending, feigning or imagining suggests that things may be quite different from how we perceive them to be if, only for a moment, we suspend disbelief. Contemporary cultural and political dilemmas regarding the status of ‘real’ and ‘fake’ permeate our daily interactions, whether mundane or extraordinary, and exert unprecedented pressure on architecture’ historical identity as the locus of the real. The stability and immutability of Vitruvian firmitas has effervesced into innumerous bits of data that congeal in myriad forms to comprise, describe and construct various aspects of our environment. Architecture is challenged to reimagine and make-believe; to invent the new stories that demand new forms, aesthetics and ways of being in the world. Through the design of architectures that respond to the question: “What if?”, we will perform acts of architectural duplicity that allow us to cut through the assumed real and discover the possibilities of the make-believe. Our focus is on the aesthetic dimension of architecture and the possible production of new modes of being in the world.
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—— Excerpt from Fall 2018 DS 1200 - 2GAX COMP MORPH Syllabus
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Design Studio Workshop I: Curisoity Instructor Marcelyn Gow Term Fall 2018 Team Nero He Irvin Shaifa
CANDY Taking the cabinet of curiosities or wunderkammer of the future as a point of departure, this workshop will operate under the premise that collecting and curation will increasingly become ineluctable facets of the way we produce architecture. Perusing the OED, one finds that curiosity is defined as: sb. 1. Carefulness, Scrupulousness, accuracy; undue niceness or subtlety. 2. Desire to know or learn; inquisitiveness. 3.
Scientific or artistic interest; connoisseurship. 10. A curious detail or feature. 1. Anything curious, rare or strange. Curio is defined as: sb. 1. An object of art valued as a curiosity or rarity. This project is aimed to create a bus stop by introducing photogrammetry software as a tool of design. Deformations have occurred. This form finding process generated mass and void for a bus stop with a builtin music hub.
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Though the photogrammetry software Agisoft, two parts from the Bradbury Buiding in Downtown Los Angeles have been scanned: a capital of one column at the entrance and a water pipe attached to the building with a plastic bag stuck to it. The placement of the combined printed object and gravity affect how the deformation occurs while pouring resin on top.
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Resin Dipped Test Model: After rescanning the piece, where resin gives the model a sheen creates holes to the model and add another layer of deformation.
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CANDY
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Design Studio Workshop II: X-Ray Vision Instructor Natasha Sandmeier Term Fall 2018 Team Nero He Irvin Shaifa
FAILURES Thomas Edison once said: “I have not failed, I have just found 10, 000 ways that won’t work.� Failure is enviable. But we learn from mistakes. Architectural histories and theories have forever focused on narratives of individual, stylistic or intellectual, cultural success. Architects have long sought to escape failure of all kinds. However, the history of modern architecture is based on the failure and still on repeat. All
movements and styles are eventually superseded by their successors. Even architectural competitions are failure generators hundreds of entries in the competition are losers while one single proposal is the winner. This is a narrative about an architect failing from the beginning till the end through the physical and digital struggle of designing architecture. Here, failing is celebrated.
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FAILURES
The story begins with an architect designed a formal piece in one parking lot of Downtown Los Angeles hoping to create a new icon of the city. However, nobody seems to bother the architectural he created. He failed.
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Personal and office Instagram with multiple posts for publication purpose 02:
Rhino model with unresolved meshes
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The Instagram story shows recent choreographed sketch 04:
ZBrush model with an ongoing remesh process 05:
YouTube video clip shows CNN news attacking the architecture piece 06:
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ArchDaily reports on Bad Architecture Design
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Los Angeles Times newspaper reports on the shocking design
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3D Collage Model: Layer thought process shows the revolution of the architecture also the ideology no one else seems to care. It critiqued a struggled architect troubled by the complex nature of architecture career and media bombing.
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The video montage explains the architect’s daily struggle and frustration of his unsuccessful architecture design. In the end, pathetically, the wad up sketch paper shaped just like his design. 70
FAILURES
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FAILURES
The narrative displays an exhibition setting in “Museum of Modern Failure� which display two images of the architecture in different phases, one 3D collage model contains his thought process, one video clip of the troubled architect, and the wad up trash in the clip. 73
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Film Set Photo: Objects displayed on the table are well curated to illustrate the hardship of being an architect
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Design Studio Workshop III: Curisoity Instructor Florencia Pita Term Fall 2018 Team Nero He Irvin Shaifa
BORROWED This project started with a process of digitally extracting pieces of façades at 10’ in height by variable lengths from selected buildings in Downtown Los Angeles using photogrammetry software. The selected buildings should exhibit diverse formal features, materialities, and textures. We will transform façade pieces into a series of curio objects whereby the objects can be understood both as a portion of
the original building from which they were extracted as well as a constituent of a new, redefined whole. A 22 story building for Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is created by coated and scanned a compound collection of curios. The verticality of a traditional tower has been interrupted by adding bigger objects and creating multiple cuts to shape and separate the tower.
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01-03: Façade Scaffolding Graphic Sign “100” Chimney (Caltrans District 7 Headquarters / Morphosis Architects) 04:
Parking Lot Ramp (One Santa Fe / Michael Maltzan Architecture)
05-06: Parking Lot Column Weller Court Entrance (Weller Court / Kajima Associates) 07:
Façade (Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center / Adrian Wilson Associates) 08:
Façade (United States Courthouse / SOM)
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Façade (Los Angeles County Hall of Records / Richard Neutra, Robert Alexander)
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Conceptual Faรงade Collage: Base layer includes traditional architectural elements to register human scale; other objects break the verticality of traditional tower design.
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Faรงade Scaffolding
Faรงade 07: Chimney
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Faรงade
06: Parking Lot Ramp
Conceptual Material Test: Different shades of grey gradient from bottom to the very top and ease into a transparent crystal cap.
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Facade
Parking Lot Column
Weller Court Entrance
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The tower can be dissected into five interlocked parts which somewhat follow the attached faรงade elements. Architecture as an object has the tendency of coming together also falling apart.
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Office Rental (Public Rental) 02: 02
Office and Open Patio (Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority)
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Data Center (Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority) 04:
Event and Exhibition Space (Public Free Access) 05:
Food Truck and Mobile Shop Space (Public Free Access) 03
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Color has been sprayed while the tower is both assembled and in pieces to enhance the ambiguous of part and whole. Golden and copper color applied to call out “objects� on the tower which is related to the program inside.
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Physical Model: Resin gives the model a in between matte and shiny texture.
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AUGMENTED OBJECT
Visual Studies Augmented Object Instructor M. Casey Rehm Andrea Cadioli Term Fall 2018 Team Nero He Gregory Kokkotis
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“
Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real-world are “augmented” by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory, and olfactory. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive (i.e. additive to the natural environment) or destructive (i.e. masking of the natural environment) and is seamlessly interwoven with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment. The understanding of an augmented object is associated with two layers of reality: the real view and the digital view. With a fixed target, digital reality could be easily morphed from time to time.
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—— Excerpt from Fall 2018 VS 4200 - VISUAL STUDIES I GR Syllabus
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Visual Studies Augmented Object Instructor M. Casey Rehm Andrea Cadioli Term Fall 2018 Team Nero He Gregory Kokkotis
DEFORM By scanning a flower, a digital point cloud is generated with a color which transfers into a closed mesh. Having the flower deformed in four different ways, the model of the augmented object is set up as a tracking target. Anaglyph 3D Images of the target is created alongside with the textured model assorted in a material library to create the augmented attachment. The final result is to slice the target into different
pieces and have the ability to explode and restore them on the created App. Each piece has the deformed texture of the object on its cut sides. The visual study allows a new genre of design method generated through a workflow that mixes both the human version and machine version.
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Point Cloud Model: Missing points are made up by generating the mesh.
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DEFORM
Anaglyph 3D Images: Target model contains four different deformations.
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3D Printed Model: Testing target model could be scanned by the App.
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DEFORM
Rendered Augmented Model: Designed exploded model performence.
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DEFORM
Robot arm filmed augmented object performance. From the front view, the assigned texture is matching up with the background. 97
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Background Texture Design: Through the scripted process, the texture is generated out of the scanned point could.
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ENVELOPE EVOLUTION
Applied Stuides Material / Tectonics Instructor Maxi Spina Randy Jefferson Term Fall 2018 Team Nero He Kristoffer Lund Gregory Kokkotis Lourenรงo Vaz Pinto
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AS 3200 - ADV MATERIAL/TECTONICS
“
In this research, a significant portion of the model from the precedent study is created. Such portion should delimit a metonymic fragment from a whole; that is, a fragment that is representative of the predominant tectonic issues present in the case study, including Envelope; Interiority; Structure; Attachment/Joinery System; Systems; etc. Due to the nature of the sectional object, where to position the clipping planes to need to be carefully considered in order to argue for the resulting section and profile, and the specific relationship between tectonics and spatial definition. Using such models, construction, fabrication and assembly methods aligned with the materials and their technical limitations utilized within building systems are constructed. Such analytical scrutiny should be commensurate with the scale of representation. These should aid in the understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the system and material tectonics supporting it. —— Excerpt from Fall 2018 AS 3200 - ADV MATERIAL/TECTONICS Syllabus
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AS 3200 - ADV MATERIAL/TECTONICS
Applied Stuides Material / Tectonics Instructor Maxi Spina Randy Jefferson Term Fall 2018 Team Nero He Kristoffer Lund Gregory Kokkotis Lourenรงo Vaz Pinto
CRYSTALLIZE The Trutec is an office building in Seoul, designed by Barkow and Leibinger. This project is known for the visual clarity of the faรงade, but also the tectonic complexity of this curtain wall. The clear geometry of these glass panels allows for the creation of sharp aesthetics, achieved through variation of shape and inclination. The aim of this exercise is to break down this amazingly resolved faรงade, by introducing a second skin
layer, which does not interfere with its geometrical complexity. In fact, the additional layer shapes a secondary layer of glazing, able to increase the ability of the curtain wall to better control interior temperatures. The success of this intervention lies in breaking down the original intention of the architect to concentrate all the functions of the curtain wall into one single layer.
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01: 02: 03: 04: 05:
Glass panel connection Three points connection Glass panel and floor plate connection 01
Stereoscopic four points connection Flat four points connection
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CRYSTALLIZE
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The secondary skin is made of glass panels supported on an aluminum frame. The frame duplicates the geometry of the existing faรงade and is attached to it. All the joints are placed on the orthogonal mullions and not the inclined CNC-cut frame of the diagonal glass panels, as the structural stability of the latter remains debatable. 108
CRYSTALLIZE
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CRYSTALLIZE
The success of this intervention lies in breaking down the original intention of the architect to concentrate all the functions of the curtain wall into one single layer. By separating the layers and assigning differen roles to them, we manage to use the interior glass facade purely for air and water sealing, while using the exterior one to control temperature and sunlight.
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Physical Model Sectional View: The double layered faรงade is attached to the floor plate which does not have any structural function.
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CRYSTALLIZE
Double Layered Faรงade Drawing: Faรงade created a fuzzy edge of the building which makes the architecture seems like hiding in the fog.
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Double Layered Faรงade Detail Drawing: In every stall, the glass planes on the second layer could open or close.
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ABOUT ARCHITECTURE
History and Theory About Architecture Instructor Erik Ghenoiu Term Spring 2019 Author Nero He
HT 2201 - THEORIES OF CONT ARC II
“
This course will examine in detail recent and historical texts on architecture, philosophy, literature, music, and art. Through these texts, a diversity of approaches to architectural theory and practice will be examined and interrogated within broader social, cultural, and historical contexts from the 1950s to the present. Through analysis of and critical writing about these texts as well as buildings and projects of the period, students will develop new vocabularies for contemporary architectural discourse. This course will trace a set of major themes that have defined much of architectural discourse since the Second World War. Some of these themes have emerged from within architecture, some from larger philosophical and cultural debates. Alongside this content, the course will analyze the writing of criticism and the essay form both through the readings and in the students’ own work for the course.
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—— Excerpt from HT 2200 - THEORIES OF CONT ARC I Syllabus
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History and Theory About Architecture Instructor Erik Ghenoiu Term Spring 2019 Author Nero He
UNSET After the Great Cultural Revolution in China, a huge cultural dislocation results in a misunderstanding of cultural values. In the architectural realm, Chinese architects become either too conservative only mirroring traditional elements or too westernized that has little to do with the local culture. There is no such a thing, at least in mainstream architectural studies, as Chinese formalism which is
considered as against Chinese culture. Why is that? As a nation embracing Romanticism, not appreciating formally beautiful architecture is very obscure. In this essay, dynamic form set up as a possible future for the new Chinese architectural culture, three different augments have been made to justify dynamic form as the Chinese formalism.
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FAILURES OF ARCHITECTURE
“Galaxy Soho” Digital image. Accessed May 4 2019. https://www.arthitectural.com/zaha-hadid-architects-galaxy-soho/.
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HT 2201 - THEORIES OF CONT ARC II
Architecture is always reflecting the civilization where it is located in. In China, people have always been zealous with an indigenous system of construction which celebrates the ingenuity of “making” retained its characteristics in all ages. From pavilions, terraces, to pagodas and towers, this obsession leads the form of architecture seems scripted that generated by the same cookie cutters set. Ironically, Chinese mainstream media applauses to this result as being loyal to the tradition. Although, modern China has been absorbing diverse architectural creations “breaking up the monotonous urban landscape, lending an identity to places which were villages only years before”, most of the “Chinese design philosophy” are westernized coated with oriental ideology. As one of the fastest developing countries, could a formalist architectural style be one possible representation of Chinese culture?
considered as flimsy once form is celebrated. However, put political propaganda aside, should China have its own formalism? If so, what it would be like?
When China officially formed as the People’s Republic of China, learning from Marxism was advocated by the government. People were diving into the idea of materialism and till now it is politically right to “holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness, are results of material interactions”. 1 It is on the opposite side of idealism. This fact leads modern Chinese architects including Shu Wang, Yung Ho Chang, and such to study materials as a base to design architecture. Form is never designed without the understanding of materials. Under the Marxist system, metaphysics is debased but dialectic is promoted. Logic is the word Chinese architects trying to seek through design process, and it is
Emotion is developing with dynamic form through traditional Chinese art. “East Asian writing on aesthetics is generally consistent in stating that the goal of ink and wash painting is not simply to reproduce the appearance of the subject, but capture its spirit. To paint a horse, theartist must understand its temperament better that its muscles and bone” which described the Chinese art ideology “意境 (artistic
1. Marxism." Wikipedia. March 10, 2019. Accessed March 12, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Marxism.
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UNSET
”Xu Beihong Exhibition.” Digital image. Accessed May 4, 2019. https://www.artranked.com/.
conception)” celebrating the combination of emotion and form. It is unutterable but could experience by being engaged with the painting.2 Traditional Chinese wash painting contains subjects has a dynamic characteristic as running river, horses, swimming fish, shrimps, and growing trees. While painting, brush is soaked by ink and been pressed or dabbed on Chinese art paper made by plant fibers which is strongly absorbable. The movement of the brush on the paper leave light and dark traces. A clear tendency of motion is expressed through the finished drawing. Some intended blank spaces of the paper are left out todisplay a contrast between emptiness and solidness, and also, give out a plot of space for imagination of the moving subject to land in their head. In the development of traditional Chinese wash painting, all form in any drawing is merely a slice in time based on the two dimensional representational limitation.
This is very similar with the way of what can be captured with one’s eyes of a moving subject. It can only be described as: one only see the very second of the moving subject. As Greg Lynn would argue, “Although form is thought in series and motion in these examples, movement is something that is added back to the object by the viewer.”3 The trace of the motion only exists in one’s head which is fudged by one’s brain which add another layer of ambiguity only can transmit through emotions.
2. “Ink Wash Painting.” Wikipedia. February 06, 2019. Accessed March 12, 2019. https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_wash_painting. 3. Lynn, Greg. Animate Form. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997.
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”Chinese Hieroglyphics. ” Digital image. Accessed May 4, 2019. blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_6313b5780101ejur.html.
A POSSIBLE FUTURE FOR CHINESE ARCHITECTURE: DYNAMIC FORM
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An unstable form can carry emotions in Chinese language. Comparing with western languages, Chinese language as one presentation of its culture which can be defined as strong on emotion but weak on logic, which is proved by the popularity of Confucianism and Taoism (that has little to do with logic) compares to unheeded Mohism (ancient Chinese philosophy of logic). Confucianism advocated emotion over logic which consolidated dictatorship, but in an ideal modern society where people have free wills, emotion is deeply related to selfconsciousness. The free expression of one’s self-consciousness is one’s basic human right. Ancient Chinese civilization adapted symbols which based on pictographs and ideograms to represent concepts. Later on, it develops into logographic writing systems. Colloquially, Chinese characters slowly morphed from drawings of forms to simplified square-worded calligraphy. Each of the character have dynamic meanings based on which context it has been used. Only when characters form a sentence, people can understand the meaning as a chunk also have the ability to read between lines. Emotion is able to convey through only written form without reading aloud in such a fluid context. Architecturally speaking, one space represents Chinese culture should be able to influence people emotionally by having the resistance of being logically analyzable. Thus, the traditional stabilized architecture cannot fulfill this criterion. No matter how complex one stabled form can be, it still holds one fixed expression as one Chinese character, ambiguous and lackluster. If we develop on design language to oppose the Wabi-Sabi oriental style which seeking for “discreteness, timelessness, and
fulfill this criterion. No matter how complex one stabled form can be, it still holds one fixed expression as one Chinese character, ambiguous and lackluster. If we develop on design language to oppose the Wabi-Sabi oriental style which seeking for “discreteness, timelessness, and fixity” but follow the “multiplicity, change, and development”, one dynamic space could be the character of itself, not only just a setoff for human activities, presenting an overarching motion and mood.4 4
Form is freed from its boundary through the need of emotion expressions. “Architecture remains as the last refuge for members of the flat-earth society. The relationships of structure to force and gravity are by definition multiple and interrelated, yet architects tend to reduce these issues to what is still held as a central truth: that buildings stand up vertically.”5 Greg Lynn expressed the dogmatic fact of mainstream architecture design which reflects a similar outcome with modern Chinese architecture. In Forbidden City, urban planning is based on the protection of the imperial family. The super gridded plots and unified street enhanced the dictatorship. All palaces are extruded rectangle with tile roof facing north based on study of I Ching, Yin Yang, and Feng Shui which holds the believe of the cosmos is under a dome and the earth is not only flat but squared (“天圆地方”). It contains the suppressed emotion of revering
4. Lynn, Greg. Animate Form. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. 5. Ibid.
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the sky and the earth but also limited by a false assumption and a strong representation of social class. As technology is developed enough, form could be freed to express emotional needs through architecture without the rigid rulesets. “In February 2016, China’s State Council announced that ‘weird architecture’ that is not economical, functional, aesthetically pleasing or environmentally friendly will be forbidden”.6 Weird architectures can be explained as those out of context that are not belong to Chinese culture. However, this culture is craving for a dynamic form to spread out emotions based on the representation of Chinese art, the development of Chinese language, and a new understanding of Chinese society. Instead of copying and following others blindly, China could intergrade Chinese culture into architectural design by introducing dynamic form to uncover its own Yayoi and Jomon.
6. “The Beginning of the End of China’s ‘Weird Architecture’.”The Economist. December 08, 2017. Accessed March 12, 2019.
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“ Harbin Opera House” Digital image. Accessed May 4 2019. http://www.huftonandcrow.com/projects/gallery/harbin-opera-house/.
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FACTS & FICTIONS
History and Theory Facts & Fictions Instructor Marcelyn Gow Tim Ivison Term Fall 2018 Author Nero He
HT 2200 - THEORIES OF CONT ARC I
“
The main objective of this seminar is to provide a platform for students to do work on the territory of contemporary architectural theory in the interest of formulating their current studio production as well as future professional agendas. Currently practice is in the process of being actively redefined by shifting political, social, technological, and ecological paradigms. Taking as a starting point Sigfried Giedion’s characterization of transitory facts (sporadic trends) and constituent facts (recurrent and cumulative tendencies) as decisive in the shaping of architectural history, we will examine the complex terrain defined by the recent shifting of paradigms and attempt to discern the difference between constituent and transitory facts – and fictions – that are actively shaping the contemporary moment. Acting as architectural entrepreneurs, we will identify niches for future action and innovation. The seminar will introduce several contemporary disciplinary themes through readings and project presentations.
”
—— Excerpt from HT 2200 - THEORIES OF CONT ARC I Syllabus
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History and Theory Facts & Fictions Instructor Marcelyn Gow Tim Ivison Term Fall 2018 Author Nero He
ENCODE One definition of “beauty� in modern society is whether this object is instagramable or not. People are too obsessed with social media which started a craze of designing for social media with eye attaching forms and colors. Meanwhile, in the practical architectural world, the design is always limited by building code. If we consider social media as a platform providing Big Data in order to collect and predict design ideas,
we could easily break the constraint of the building code and make architecture design options not far away from Big Data management. Design for social media is shallow, but design with social media provides a possibility for the new experimental field of architecture. Design architecture with social media is the revolution of building code.
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FAILURES OF ARCHITECTURE
“The Women” 2018 MoMA PS1 Installtion Openning. June 28, 2018.
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The most logical, functional, and effective way to design one architecture might be designed only for infrastructure which “refers to the fundamental facilities and systems serving a country, city, or other area”,1 “including the services and facilities necessary for its economy to function”.2 Put creativity and innovation aside, an architecture meets all basic requirement of a building code, “a set of rules that specify the standards for constructed objects”3, is the direct and most powerful response to fully embrace the idea above. If such a building code can be dissected into different computational logics draw from all kinds of social media to generate architectures directly respond to the current condition and fill in all requested needs, architectures could potentially step into a new era by meeting the notion of Smart City with instant feedback loops in order to create all possible solutions to introduce new lifestyle.
molding and setting up the fundamental rules of architectures and cities go into the hand of people in charge, state agencies, and architects. In such a scenario, when power centralized in one hand, parametric urbanism founds it a place to thrive. Beautiful as it is, in parametric urbanism, one architect (or an architecture group) acts as the one and only sliding bar to utilize the number in digital design software, no matter how logical the process is in terms of data and information selection, the result can still be the basis and narrow-minded. Jan Gehl, a Danish architect, has studied “the borderland between sociology, psychology, architecture, and planning”5 which later proposed “Making Cities for People”. He used the data collecting method that normally being used in the urban design industry to observe and analyze how people interact in the city which later on published in his book Life Between Buildings in 1971. More than 40 years later, data collecting becomes more and more accessible to architects through different types of social media. Now, architects have the opportunity to know what the new trends are, and could even predict possible lifestyles according to what APP has been used frequently and what type of image has been posted and reposted. Architects could impair big “A” architectures and truly design architectures for people with social media.
Building codes need to be challenged on the level of its adoption cycle and power concentration to adapt to the current high-speed egalitarian society. A traditional building code, as rigid as it is, may not fits appropriately to all situations and has an inevitable delay to keep up with new basic requests. Take California Building Standards Code as an example, the code adoption cycle is three years and “changes made to each edition are based off proposals made by state agencies”.4 Clearly, the power of
There is a fundamental difference between
1. Infrastructure | Define Infrastructure at Dictionary.com. 2. O’Sullivan, Arthur; Sheffrin, Steven M., Economics: Principles in Action (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2003), 474. 3. Wikipedia contributors, “Building code,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia. org/w/index.php?title=Building_code&oldid=871218434 (accessed December 18, 2018). 4. “Codes”. www.bsc.ca.gov. Retrieved 2017-05-25.
5. Paul Makovsky, Pedestrian Cities: An interview with Danish architect Jan Gehl on how public spaces work. in Metropolis Magazine August/September 2002, Retrieved 16 October 2010 Archived 4 April 2005 at the Wayback Machine.
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design architectures for social media and with social media. The current celebrated way is the former and the result is not optimistic. Social media has been used as a platform directs architects design through perspectives for photography use, most of the time associated with a change of scales, popping colors, forced perspectives, and visual juxtapositions, to accomplish the publication and advertisement purpose thus gain a better profit. The ability to produce perspective renderings with four cropped boundaries seemly communicates with clients better especially for those who do not read technical drawings. But when this method acts as an unwritten building code for successful architectures and has been overpublicized in architectural websites as ArchDaily and Dezeen, this overly emphasized “building code” leads to manufacturing distasteful architectures. Calabasas as “the world capital of social media”6 hoards a lot of architectures for social media. They are designed in such a way that “the semiotics of the architecture had to be conveyed through photographs and films rather than plans and sections”7 because “artist-residents actively branded the city’s lifestyle as part of building their own brands”8 and “the relationship between lifestyle and city branding was taken to a new level”9, the social media level. When screenshot becomes the new plan “the constructions are a monstrous version of the typical American suburbia”10.
They looks grandiose when the photographs are taken from the right angles but the plans are ugly, the volumes are out of proportions and the construction is cheap. The body culture reflects on the architecture.”11 Even worse, this phenomenon affects architects directly with or without the request of their clients. I relate to this notion from personal experience. After winning MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program in 2018, our team has constantly struggled with comparing our installation work to Museum of Ice Cream since our stationary glamour shots are not as photo friendly as pink rooms. Once there was even an option with intentional redundant colors adding onto the design just to fit the current trend. It is this endless loop: people using social media and architects design for social media until a trend dies out, drags the development and possibilities of architectures. Designing with social media is a better way to utilize this inevitable technological advancement to create future architectures. Designing a future architecture prototype to respond a current need is not the news. Amazon retail store has been evolved from the traditional retail store to create an in-store customer experience that allows vendors to demonstrate their own showcases instore therefore to promote a future sales model. Disney World was also supposed to be “an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are no emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems”12. The foresight and ongoing of
6. IAyr, Calabasas, 91302 (Yale University Press, 2018). 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid.
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“A machine for metropolitan bachelors...Delirius NY.” Rem Koolhaas “’Life in the Metropolis’ or ‘The Culture of Congestion”’, Fall 2004, http://www.ibiblio.org/istudio/r_koolhaas/reading_ koolhaas.htm.
architecture aspect above fit what a Smart City needs. At the same time, cellphone as a current technological advancement plays a big role in designing with social media. Although it was designed for private use, after it hooked up with the internet, all a sudden it becomes a tool to retrieve public communication and information. “If the first function of the city is proximity (to people, markets, goods, transport, information), the smart digital handset condenses the city itself into an extensible software and hardware platform”13. The accessibility of a cellphone truly makes “public and private” as “things of the past” to “privatized and publicized”14 on
a personal level. Nowadays, experiencing an architecture and a city can be classified into two parts: physical experience and digital phone experience. Map, bus schedule, reserve seats for movies, and apple pay, these APPs and many others determined the architecture or city is up to date or not. “The city as seen through the medium of that face oozes with living data to be touched and rewritten all over again. Interaction with this information is recursive; action taken with it on a micro level is itself new information that intern informs what everyone else sees on a macro level. In this recursion, the presence of the information, good or bad, can be directly disruptive to social behavior as people change their paths and decisions in the image of the actions and swerves of others they see indexed in their at-hand interfaces”.15 Because the APP service is repeatable, social media serves as a connector to generalize and classify a
13. Benjamin H. Bratton, iPhone City (John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 2009). 14. Calabasas, 91302 (Yale University Press, 2018). 15. Benjamin H. Bratton, iPhone City (John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 2009).
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’Museum Of Ice Cream MIiami, Fall 2004, https://tropicult.com/events/museum-of-ice-creammiami/.
personally customized data later bridge into the data cloud to analyze a current need and predict what could possibly happen architecturally to provide a better lifestyle. For example, the increasing needs for food delivery through APPs as Postmates and UberEat are at its peak. In this social media form, data as what is the popular restaurant choice, when the request for a certain restaurant is more active, what type of food package is easy to be damaged during delivery, average delivery time for each food delivery, etc. could be collected from the local user group. With this data analysis above, different proprietors could share a kitchen for food delivery base on the different time for the activeness of request. A future restaurant notion could be developed through the system that it frees most of the unused restaurant space to provide a better food delivery packaging program for several
restaurants while sharing one kitchen in the back of the house. A new lifestyle has been promoted from a spatial request through data generated with social media. Just as what Rem Koolhaas mentioned a seemly absurd scenario in his study of Downtown Athletic Club where men eating oysters in the locker room naked, the possibility for new programs is endless but intentional. WeChat architecture, Tinder architecture, YouTube architecture, and etc. could lead the next revolution of architecture. Collecting data from social media in architectural design could eliminate or reactive non-useable space. By computing collective database to form possible architectural solutions, all space should have the ability to be adapted and reused in order to fit in the fast respond mode, therefore, the idea of program metabolism can be introduced. One Wilshire, an
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office building located in downtown Los Angles, has been developed from almost exclusively occupied by law firms to become a hotspot for telecommunications. By 2013, One Wilshire was “one of the top three telecommunications centers in the world along with 60 Hudson Street in New York City and Telehouse in London”16 due to the need of high speed connected internet points. The change of One Wilshire shows the flexibility of architecture but also brought up the sale price to “$660 per square foot and it was the highest price ever paid for an office building in downtown Los Angeles”17. In this ideal model, space is not tagged by a certain program or even owned by a certain person or business group but only active by the need of its user. Architecture would only be reviewed as a space with fluid programs generated from the current need in social media.
accretions of architectural-scale components, arranged in Jenga-block configurations that stress the autonomy of parts”18. Undoubtedly, mathematical and computation design still provides some intermediate spaces that stimulate new programs which would only appear after the building is generated, just like unwrapping a Christmas gift full of good and bad surprises. “They are engaging with the worldas-it-is-becoming, not just with the world-as-itis” 19.The non-human process is mostly detached with what the general public is requested for now. However, the computational design has fuzzy edges that normally lead to a shapeless building which indicates a sense of ongoing growth that shares with the tendency of design with social media. With comparison, using data to generate new building codes seems more logical and self-explanatory. It introduces a new design notion without departure from current context which could also act as a buffer for the possible future of computational data architecture.
Design with social media is more approachable and appropriate for the current society than mathematical and computational design. In Gilles Retsin’s lecture, he illustrated his own interpretation of architectural history developing from the mass, surface, liquid surface, to point. And he predicted the next evolution which may or may not happening right now is data architecture. Throughout the work of computational architects as Casey Rehm and Gilles Retsin “the modular discreteness of individual bits of data is upsized to guide
16. Contributors, “One Wilshire,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/ index.php?title=One_Wilshire&oldid=873793159 (accessed December 19, 2018). 17. Ibid. 18 Marrikka Trotter, The discrete Charm of the Glitch (AD Discrete: Reappraising the Digital in Architecture, ed. Gilles Retsin London: Wiley, forthcoming 2019). 19 Ibid.
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“The house sits on three neatly landscaped acres. ” Elijah Chiland, “’Kim Kardashian and Kanye West spent $20M renovating the home they just moved into”’, April 2019, https://la.curbed.com/2018/1/5/16856656/ kim-kardashian-kanye-west-hidden-hills-house
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Architecture is increasingly made by logic, especially in the western architectural education system. Architects are trained to design with a clear sense of progressive reasons and provide all answers to questions. In such a mindset, building code serves as the perimeter of the basic logic. It is tedious but also performs as the key to all fundamental architectural design. However, design one architecture to meet all the code is merely enough to challenge the current society or evoke future possibilities. Utilizing people involved in popular culture as the main audience, by adapting data from social media, building code can be smarter and more flexible. It is just like an open-source government in which all documents are been collected and review immediately. Thus it accelerates the shift in architectural design focusing on people.
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DESIGN WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
“Hide and Seek” 2018 MoMA PS1 Installtion Colored Mirror Option. June 28, 2018.
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NERO CHENXUAN HE
Nero Chenxuan He’s Portfolio is a living document and as such, Nero Chenxuan He reserve the right to revise, add or delete information in this portfolio at any time. Therefore, changes to the Nero Chenxuan He’s Portfolio may be distributed after this initial posting. Regular Updates are available at www.nerohe.com.