flux
a strategy for instant tectonics & soft space-frame Ege Acar
Kemal Arda Alkin
Qing Li
Salih Ege Savci
AA Design Research Lab Spyropoulos Studio
flux
a strategy for instant tectonics & soft space-frame Architectural Association Design Research Lab Theodore Spyropoulos Studio Team Ege Acar Kemal Arda Alkin Qing Li Salih Ege Savci
Assistant Tutors Mustafa El-Sayed Aleksandar Bursac
London 2018 - 2020
Table of Content
Preface Introduction Studio Brief
p.6
Design Thesis Statement Research Case Studies
p.12
Initial Research Growth Based System Design Voxel Based Digital Space Simulation Behaviour Based Systems
p.78
Unit Design Initial Prototypes Geometry Transformation Prototype
p.86
Unit Behaviour Mobility Connection Shape Change
p.112
Unit Cluster Self Assembly Clustering Pattern Re-orientation
p.156
Unit Organization & Population 3D Structure Scale Reconfiguration
p.214
Appendix
p.260
Introduction Everything is momentarily shifting in today’s world. Digital Revolution lead technology to grow exponentially altering devices and methods in every aspect. All components of daily life are ever-changing in capability thus modifying our habits. Our phones, computers, cars, and tools become smart, equipped with artificial intelligence, enhanced in skills accomplishing more each day. Today, our methodology of thinking, applying and producing change with each new machine. Through new mediums of communications and devices of a limitlessly evolving cluster of systems, technology directly made us the component of an irrevocably growing world of networks. As we change our tools, they reflect on us to change us and how we operate. A continuously adjusting environment with infinitely many possible conditions demands its unique spatial organization to perform the needs of our time. In this ever-shifting territories, architecture remains static, inflexible and restricted. It has to begin to have a novel conversation with post-human and the emerging technology of the Digital Age to answer instant time-dependent requirements. The way architecture operates must change as its subject, human, and its environment is in constant change. A new methodology for architecture that delivers solutions is essential. Our spaces need to be adaptive to be efficient and evolving in the shared ecology of nature, human and technology to participate. Architecture must situate itself to lead contemporary scenarios. Our team proposal is a model for architecture that thinks, learns, communicates, makes decisions and evolves through time. Model is a reconfigurable, collaborative, mobile architectural system with its components having the capacity to move, adapt, organize, reorient and change states due to needs as active and inactive modes. It is a research framework to create the space for the future nature-human settings and scenarios that is time dependent. The main idea is to create a model that can be constructed and deconstructed dependent on the specific requirements at any given time. With the ability to rebuild comes the potential of a time-based scattered space that can be rearticulated. Space is triggered by the data received and stimulated by it changing its phases, location, form, volume and condition. Architecture becomes liquid and solid when necessary, changes in between stable and unstable modes when it should perform each. Architecture must be interactive, responding, behaving, adapting as an organism in its ecology. Ever-changing unstable circumstances has to have many alternative solutions to meet infinitely many scenarios for the infinitely many possible futures.
Studio Brief Studio considers architecture as infrastructure, and technology as culture. Architecture is proposed as an active participant in the city; city is an interface and a laboratory for experimentation. Ecology includes nature, human and machine within its context where all communicate and coexist. Human and machine must have a responsive and engaging dialogue within this context. Meaningful interactions must be constructed between all. Relationships of architecture are explored to define new organizational models for future scenarios. The new architectural model consists actors with agency to enable new possiblities where all communicate. This architectural system is a functional whole with intelligence, an organization with self-aware evolving participants. In this ecology of interactive things, real-time data must feed the model in the process for efficient and accurate performance. Data of the ecology translates into action with active participants; human and machine where nature sets the context. The aim of the research is to further explore what future infrastructure must be grounded upon within ever-changing ecologies to reach novel communicative and behavioral solutions spaces.
Relevant Research
Infrastructure Research Port Automation 5 Points of Port Automation
Air terminals in the present life could be considered as the fundamental node for transportation. These colossal spaces that had been held for open transportation are surprisingly perplexing. They have numerous degrees of security and numerous duties to keep travelers prosperity and travel securely. They got fortified by the most elevated tech for the robotization and control frameworks to manage plane arrivals and taking offs. These guidelines and conventions had been created in the course of the last two hundred years and consistently been in charge of the most significant truth “the human life�. That is the reason it ought to be the most mind-boggling office, they should be hundred percent productive and everything ought to be without mixup if there is a misstep about the correspondence between two planes they can result as a fiasco.
1 | Automated Equipment Ease of functioning for facilities Consistency Stability
2 | Equipment Control Systems Information for decision making Equipment identification Integration of different parts
3 | Terminal Control Tower Advanced Analytics Coordination Management Optimization
4 | Human-Machine Interactions Experience Judgement Guidance
5| Interactions with Port Community Data Exchange Efficiency Colloboration
14
flux
Port 4.0 | AI - Dynamic Scheduling - Optimization
A
B
C
D
A: Real-time Terminal Planning Forecasting ships’ arrival times for terminals B: Remote Crane Maintenance Reducing total machine usage time while increasing availability of critical port assets C: Yard Planning Analysing and modelling container placement for adjusting speed and rerouting D: Gate Demand Planning Consumer behaviour prediction to organize gate arrivals
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Infrastructure Research Port Automation Case Study | Qingdao Port, China
Fully Automated
Effective & Optimized Decisions
Fastest in unloading a ship
Each crane handles more than 30 container per hour
Changes After Automation of the Port
Labour Cost
16
Efficiency
Worker Number to Unload One Ship
flux
Operation Process
1 2
4 3 f ig. 1
AI
4
Truck Route Optimization
3
Placement of Containers
2
Container Movement
Locating Corners of Container
1
Large Computing System Consisted of Server Rooms
fig. 1
Laser Scanning for Positioning
AADRL Studio Spyropoulos
Robotic Cranes
Container Tracking
Driverless Trucks
17
Infrastructure Research Airports | General Information Usage Atlanta Hartsfield–Jackson International Airport (ATL)
Atlanta City Center
500 m
100 million Passenger per Year
2 km
=
x20 Total Population
Ethiopia
Vietnam
200 km
Total Population
200 km
Total Population
Issue of Flexibility
18
New York | 7 Airports
Vancouver | 6 Airports
London | 6 Airports
Los Angeles | 5 Airports
Seattle | 5 Airports
Melbourne | 4 Airports
Paris | 4 Airports
Moscow | 4 Airports
Tokyo | 4 Airports
Stockholm | 6 Airports
Miami | 4 Airports
Boston | 4 Airports
flux
Design Principles
Airfield Design
Air Traffic Management
Configuration of Passenger Building
Ground Access
Wind Coverage
Air Traffic Flow
Design Standards
Parking
Airport Layouts
Colloborative Decision-Making
Baggage Handling
Automated People Movers
Runway Lenght & Geometry
Airspace Structure
Movement Manipulation
Taxiways
Survelliance
Passageways
Aprons
Navigation
Waiting Areas
Capacity
Fuel Management Airfield Design
Management
Airport
Management Administrative Aviation Operations
Human Resources
Public Communications
Finance
Planning
Environmental Commercial
Passengers
Security
fig. 1
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Infrastructure Research Airports | Dynamic Programming Flight Routing Algorithm Optimal Flight Path Search
Flight courses have been made in different ways, before, it used to be determined by PCs that can just anticipate the outcome for a while, these machines were as large as a 150 meter square space and required numerous individuals to continually hold the upkeep of the PC and once the outcome for what’s to come is set up they can’t change the future courses any more, until PCs with all the more preparing force were assembled. These new age PCs could process more than more established forms and could work with constant information. This changed the world we know for eternity. Ongoing information handling advanced all through time and frameworks like face acknowledgment, unique mark sensors, and a lot increasingly complex frameworks begin to create and be a piece of our life. On account of the time-sensitive calculations going through the PCs right now, every data could be broken down from cameras or screen and could be moved into continuous information streams which at that point could be worked by high preparing force PCs and makes astute basic decision making frameworks, with truly elevated prediction and accuracy rates.
20
flux
AADRL Studio Spyropoulos
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Infrastructure Research Traffic Control System Case Study: Marlin Traffic Light Control Systems Counter Built-In
AI Integrated Automator
Working Model Internal State Reward
Action
Observation
Goal ( Savings in Delays)
Action
Much the same as the air terminals or ports, land transportation currently likewise profits by these ongoing information frameworks. Traffic cameras or GPS frameworks could find a huge number of people area, regardless of whether they are isolated or amassed for a busy time and could make alternative travels for you that could spare your time on the grounds. These traffic light frameworks got educated from a call focus and tells different zones traffic lights with the continuous information, for instance, if there is aggregation in a way, it comprehends it from the high number of people or vehicles and afterward as opposed to proposing an alternate elective it builds the green light length which results as quickly and increasingly fast development in specific territories and hinders the unused zones of the city for that occasion or time.
Environment
Observation (Queue Lenghths)
22
flux
Goal ( Savings in Delays)
Working Process Analysing
Data Mapping
Problem Solving
Signal Received
Action Environment
Observation (Queue Lenghths)
Working Model
%25
Total Travel Time
%40
Reduction in Delays
AADRL Studio Spyropoulos
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Robotic Research Intelligent Logistics Sorting System Amazon Warehouse Overall System Design This is an intelligent system which is based on the mode and the site environment, by using the positioning navigation, path planning and intelligent scheduling scheme of the sorting robot as well as the intelligent control system of the automatic sorting robot to classifiy and transport products accurately.
Movement & Steering The sorting robot differential steering system uses electronic control technology to drive the motor directly through the control signal to achieve the steering of the robot.
Robot position quantified diagram
Four-wheel robot structure 24
Steering Motion Model
The two driving wheels in the middle of the robot have the function of driving and steering, and the four front and rear universal wheels play a supporting balance. The sorting robot can rotate around any point on the axis of the drive wheel. The linear motion and steering motion of the robot are achieved by controlling the different speeds or steering of the two drive wheels. flux
Structure
1—drive motor (two); 2—universal wheel (four); 3—smart camera; 4—drive wheel (two);
6—lifting electric cylinder assembly; 7—bracket; 8—signal processor; 9—wireless router; 10—battery; 11—radio frequency card reading module; 12—sorting robot controller; 13—emergency stop device; 14—obstacle avoidance signal sensor (two);
Task FLow & Robot Movement Route
Robot standby zone
Take products from entrance according to the order
charge area
Robot Charging area
Calculate the route and move to des�na�on
Arrive at the des�na�on and complete sor�ng
Products to be sorted Judge ba�ery residual current
AADRL Studio Spyropoulos
Products Extrance Coordinate points
Products Exit
Rasterize the ground space. Each intersection is the turning point of the robot. At these intersections, the robot will judge the direction of motion based on the information entered. Then arrive at the set destination. In the process of robot movement, when two or more robots meet, the intelligent control system will calculate the motion sequence of the robot.
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Thesis Statement
1 Space Frame Structures
1 Space Frame Structures
“The remarkable rigidity and economy of three-dimensional space structures have long been realized, but only during the last decade have they begun to come into widespread architectural use. In an age of standardization and prefabrication, their simplicity of manufacture, ease of transportation, and speed of erection are sufficient recommendation. Even more important, however, the ratio of weight to area covered can be greatly reduced through their use, and they allow the construction of long-span structures with a far smaller number of intermediate supports.”1 John Borrego, (1968)
1 Borrego, John. Space Grid Structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Pr., 1968
2 Spatial Structures
2 Spatial Structures
Timber has strength in tension and compression but it can be used in limited lengths and cross-section. The spans were limited with timber use because of the joints when it is used for three-dimensional structures. The construction was heavy with the materials given nature. Timber use became probematic to use in longer spanning structures by its nature. The Industrial Revolution brought wider production of iron and steel. These materials allowed the construction of lighter and higher structures. They also enabled greater height to be built. The material’s structural behavior and its limits of strength were in examination. Possibilities of the uses were researched, and new techniques were found through new models.1 After the industrialization, an increasing demand for long-span structures came. Iron and steel gave way for rapid, strong and efficient constructions of of bridges, factories, stations. They defined the core material for largescale infrastructures. New structural forms and larger spans were reached by the different uses of the materials. All these lead to a variety of truss configurations and three- dimensional grids.
1 Borrego, John. Space Grid Structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Pr., 1968
1.1 Space Frame As Space Enclosure
Space grid assemblies are unit-based modular structural formations. Modular building construction is highly efficient by its design, assembly and production of pieces. Whole built environment and infrastructures had changed as a new material created its own market; new production methods, factories, timeline, lifespan, articulation and application, forms and configurations, tectonic language.1 Space frames are light, three-dimensional, strong, mass-produced modular structures. Alexander Graham Bell was one of the earliest inventor-developer of space frames / space grids. He experimented with space trusses with the units of octahedral and tetrahedral shapes.2 Architects always seek new methods to find solutions for space enclosure. With Industrial Revolution, a search for efficient and adaptable space had begun. Long-span structures became highly useful for companies, factories and also public buildings. Space grid structures gave way to create these as enclosed spaces with the new material in use; steel. Architects and engineers use space grid structures to design new forms, new spaces and solutions due to their diversity and flexibility.3 “A space frame is a structure system assembled of linear elements so arranged that forces are transferred in a three-dimensional manner. In some cases, the constituent element may be two-dimensional. Macroscopically a space frame often takes the form of a flat or curved surface.” 4
1 Chilton, John. Space Grid Structures. Oxford: Architectural Press, 2000 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Lan, Tien T. “Space Frame Structures” Structural Engineering Handbook. Edited by Wai-Fah Chen.
Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press LLC, 1999.
1 Space Frame Structures
1.2 Advantages Of Space Frames
1 - Space frames are lightweight. 2 - The load transfer mechanism works as axial—tension or compression. 3 - They are mostly constructed with steel or aluminum, decreasing the weight of the whole. 4 - They are mass produced with the industrialized methods of production in the factories. 5 - Their size and shapes are precise and standardized. 6 - Their transportation is easy and assembly is fast at construction site. 7 - Space frame’s cost is considerably low. 8 - Despite its lightness, the structures are rigid with space frame due to their three-dimensional character
2 Spatial Structures
2 Spatial Structures
2.0 Le Ricolais’s Ideal ; ‘Zero Weight, Infinite Span’
“Structure and space are indivisible” Georges Robert Le Ricolais Space grid systems were advancing as architects explored new designs for units and how they are assembled during 190xs. New aesthetic relations within the modular system of space frame were constructed. Material and its application were researched for new solutions of space. Changing structural variants and solutions directly affected space formation. “The art of making light structure is to use heavy members” states Georges Robert Le Ricolais. His idea of the space frame was to reach ‘zero weight and infinite span’ . His researches on geometrical patterns and structural behaviors of materials and their distribution aims to research the natural forms which he thinks are mechanically more efficient than the ones built by humans. His works were based on achieving what nature achieved. He researched for the efficiency and strength/durability of natural patterns by humans but he also seeks to search and reach the behavior of it with looking at biological structures for the man-made materialistic model of it.
2.1 Hybrid System In Duality Researches On Stability and Materials In Le Ricolais’s Structures
Ricolais identified his structures as coexisting two systems of opposite characteristics; “you combine two elements that are not necessarily the same – in some way they may even be opposites – so that they become compatible.” His idea is based on the coexistence of two different forms that can work together and efficiently depend on each other in a combined effort. His research was based on structural morphology defined by tensional integrity of natural structures. These systems are efficient because they carry more than one feature, so different fetures help each other to perform. Two different systems working as a hybrid makes up a cooperative system where the different characteristics on different materials work for the benefit of the system at the same time and help each other in these objects.
2 Spatial Structures
2.2 Automorphic ; Dichotomy And Mutuality
Le Ricolais uses a peripheral membrane, in his structural objects, as a minimal tensile surface for the loading conditions. The skeletal core in these objects are optimal compressive frames for the loading transferred by the spicules from the membrane; and the potential energy created by the load of the membrane is a balanced strain energy of the supporting core. The fact that both forms, the core and the surface, are in the poised balance known as equilibrium or harmony, caused Le Ricolais to say that ‘their beauty and rigor are an amazing incentive’, and to note that the two forms relate in a hierarchical chain of load transferrals. He names this context as “automorphic”.
1 Architecture As Infrastructure
1.0 Infrastructure As Space
“Man has to learn to recognize the complexity of everything. He has to learn to cooperate; he has to learn to accept the collective effort. He has to learn to work in a team. He has to learn to work as part of a whole in which he is an essential member of the whole, in which if the slightest little detail would not work—that if in one big engine one little bolt would be missing— the whole engine wouldn’t go.”1 Konrad Wachsmann Konrad Wachsmann’s statement for human here is valid for the future architectural framework. Architecture must learn to recognize the complex ecology it works in, it has to cooperate and work collectively. It has to know what to do under certain circumstances, sense the whole picture to analyze what is best to do as an individual, and should adapt for the complex system to continue functioning. Architecture must take part as a combination of systems to offer more than a space, as it is everything. Today’s architecture fails to answer shifting time-based conditions and needs. To be integrated within the complexity and dynamism of the urban space, architecture must be constructed as an infrastructure, a network of many systems interwoven. Today, All Is Behavior.2 Infrastructure ; 1: the system of public works of a country, state, or region also : the resources (such as personnel, buildings, or equipment) required for an activity
1 “Configurations Of The New World.” Aspen no. 1, item 7: Configurations of the New World, n.d. http://www.ubu. com/aspen/aspen1/configurations.html. 2 “Design Research Lab, Behavioural Complexity Jury Booklet.” Spyropoulos Studio, 2016.
2: the underlying foundation or basic framework (as of a system or organization)”1 Infrastructure’s role must be to be apparent in the today’s scene of architecture, events. And infrastructure serves more than what a fixed spatial physicality offers in an ever-changing context. The model must resemble the features of the territory where it has to perform in. Infrastructure is more than space, and architecture is more than space as it is a chain of systems integrated. Infrastructure is a whole bundle of services needed for a complete model of space-forming agenda to work. Therefore, one of the infrastructure’s products is space, but in order for the space to function, the system has to be fed with cooperative systems, linked to it to keep it updated and aware within the complex and ever-changing circumstances. The environment for architecture to perform as an infrastructure system is a one with dynamism, time-based functional changes, and temporality. Urban scene has unpredictable parameters. For a space of transformations with countless inputs and outputs, the infrastructural system has to be ready to adapt for any need under any circumstances. The chaotic ecology of the city must be integrated with an infrastructural model that is between stability and instability so it remains flexible. 1.1 Soft-System The city can be explained as Sanford Kwinter’s definition of the earth, a ‘soft system’, ‘the spectacular integrating engine’2 ;“A system is soft when it is flexible, adaptable, and evolving, when it is complex, and maintained by a dense network of active information or feedback loops, or, put in a general way, when a system is able to sustain a certain quotient of sensitive, quasi-random flow.”3
1 “Infrastructure.” Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ infrastructure. 2 anford Kwinter, “Soft Systems,” in Culture Lab, ed. Brian Boignon, Princeton Architecture Press, 1993. 3 Ibid.
3 Konrad Wachsmann, US Aircraft Hangar
Konrad Wachsmann, US Aircraft Hangar, 1951
â€œâ€Ślarge and voluminous but displays very little mass, and indeed its canopy over-sails the substructure elements in what looks like a remarkable, gravity defying cantilever.â€? Konrad Wachsmann was appointed in 1959 to develop a space grid system for large span aircraft hangars, for the United States Air Force. Great flexibility in construction, geometry and building type was demanded. The components should be demountable and reusable with the same or other configurations. The brief demanded a structural system to be developed for very large hangars. The principles of industrialized production methods were used for the research of the model. Standardized elements were used for the structure. The purpose was to permit a geometrical system that permitted combinations of every possible construction with flexible design purposes. It had to be easily dismountable, and able to be re-used without any waste of material when used in different combinations for different structures. The system had to permit the greatest number of varieties for combinations but minimum number of universal standard joints. At any time, the parts were to be changeable with other parts, so throughout the whole system, nonstandard forms were avoided in the design of the structural model.
3.0 Mass Production
For Wachsmann, the total industrialization of building would help new forms of architecture to emerge. His idea of the advantage of industrialization was ‘its ability to turn out high-quality products in massive quantities, each one identical to the next’ . Mass production gave way to produce harmoniously fitting parts and connectors – a modular system all defined and spread in specific coordinates in space. The method is precise and refined. Prefabrication in the factory required a new method for the materials’ assembly that would join individual elements in a financially and functionally efficient way. For Wachsmann, the keypoint of industrialization was the invention of joints that realized the structures and made it possible. This massive production and assembly method bear a new scope of spatial definition. The space by its technique of construction became dynamic and open, as it was once obstructed with many load supporting columns. A network of identical structural variants with a lighter and thinner material created the space free than ever. It is with the help of the new joints and tubes and their strenght when assembled that enabled the enormous cantilevering hangar possible. Wachsmann’s space truss uses simple, linear elements to cover space in three dimensions. The space truss is effectively a spatial plate made out of discrete elements; it carefully differentiates loads into tensile and compressive forces, and distributes these throughout the entire assembly.
3 Konrad Wachsmann, US Aircraft Hangar
3.3 Universal Growth
The whole structure formed with just two kinds of components; a joint and a connector for them. This continual system has the potential for infinite formal expansion, that has the capacity to grow infinitely as adding joints is the only necessity for continuation. Space formation became open to changes. With joints enabling local attraction possibilities, the whole and the relationships between spaces became variable. The smallest piece affected the whole. The system with the potential of infinite growth and expasion also have the potential to locally differentiate as the joints helped the same material system to continue with different angles at different parts of the structures.
4 Space Grid Geometries And Growth Patterns
4 Space Grid Geometries And Growth Patterns
Form-finding with various joining methods are used to reach new spatial structures with the use of different joints and connectors, leading to different spaces. The geometry and joints used in the systems make up different structural and architectural systems. Pattenrs differ and lead to different spatial qualities. Space frame structures can be created with different joints and geometrical logics where growth differentiates with the pattern it generates with different combinational-joining rules and orders, changin the spatial formation when it is a three-dimensional growth.
4.0 Octahedron - Tetrahedron
“Nature’s simplest structural system in the universe is the tetrahedron. The regular tetrahedron does not fill all-space by itself. The octahedron and tetrahedron complement one another to fill all space. Together they produce the simplest, most powerful structural system in the universe.” Richard Buckminster Fuller The name Octet Truss derives from the octahedron-tetrahedron geometry formed by the lines linking the centres of spheres packed together in a continuum so that each sphere is surrounded by twelve more in close contact. following his study of the closest packing of spheres, developed the Octet Truss system. This space grid is of ‘nodeless’ construction as the X-shaped ends of the members allow them to be bolted directly to each other at the intersections without the use of a separate node component.
4 Space Grid Geometries And Growth Patterns
4.2 Lattice Structures
“A latticed structure is a structure system in the form of a network of elements (as opposed to a continuous surface). Rolled, extruded or fabricated sections comprise the member elements. Another characteristic of latticed structural system is that their load-carrying mechanism is three dimensional in nature.” “The major characteristic of grid construction is the omni-directional spreading of the load as opposed to the linear transfer of the load in an ordinary framing system. Since such load transfer is mainly by bending, for larger spans, the bending stiffness is increased most efficiently by going to a double layer system.”
5 Expo ’67 Montreal, Canada
5.0 Boyd Auger’s Gyroton
“The art of structure is “knowing how and where to locate the voids” Robert Le Ricolais, 1973 The Gyrotron is formed by two lattice structures, ‘the Pyramid’ with 217 feet height and ‘the Volcano’ smaller. Space frame with aluminum tubes were forming the inclined walls- roofs of the structure so the void could be formed without any structural elements obstructing the ride that was installed in the Pyramid and the Volcano. The void in the space frame structures were isolated form the outside conditions so there would be a special ride with sounds, lights, and installations could take place that stimulated the senses of the riders on the basket. The two lattice structures enabled the necessary structural organiation to create a free void in the center of the structures. They were connected by a space frame bridge where the ride continued from the Pyramid to the Volcano structure. The ability to grow three-dimensional enabled them to build an outer threedimensional grid as the aluminum tubes were able to be joined threedimensional. The interior space organization, the void, was built by this technologically advanced structural system and the use of the system. Different voids can be organized with this easily joining, rearticulatable installation of space frame grids. Space does not only have to be created in a linear planar forms with space frames; it can be formed with inclined surfaces, curvaceous surfaces, depending on the joining and the dimensions of the tubes used to connect joints, thus giving a new sense of space and experience in 1967’s Expo.
5.1 Man And His World – Man The Explorer – Man The Producer
These are also another space frame exhibition structures in EXPO ’67. The structure allows a multiplicity of building shapes and sizes. The structure’s nested truncated slabs were used for roofs, floors and walls.
6 Mobile And Dynamic Structures
6 Emilio Pinero, Transformative Grid Structure - The Theater
Emilio Pinero had designed transportable space structures that were easy to relocate and assemble. The space that is defined by static heavy materials would become transportable and easy to configure on site. The space can travel around and be assembled/opened some place else making the space mobile. Scissor systems would allow his structures to change in volume and area directly differing the space that is formed, making architecture shifting its boundaries. and the space formed underneath the grid structure.
1 Architecture As Infrastructure
The new approach to infrastructure needs to be coordinated to function within the layered and kinetic system of the field with nonlinear interrelationships. Infrastructure must propose a process based organizational network to cope with dynamic ecology of interacting things. It must work on a balance between stability and instability, integrated with an entirely nonlinear space of correlations and continuous interaction, and be one itself.1 “- equilibrium of space – seethes with structure, events, and life, and holding the entire planet up. The system one might say is driven by its very softness, its capacity to move to differentiate internally, to absorb, transform and exchange information with its surroundings, to develop complex interdependent sub – and super-systems…”2
1.2 Infrastructure As A Soft-System Complexity of today’s space needs a system as complex as the environment it will interact with and coexist in. The infrastructure must anticipate transformations in the zone of dynamic layers of conditions. Local and global control systems embedded in the system must stimulate change in the system. While everything is in relation with everything, maintaining functionality.
1 Sanford Kwinter, “Soft Systems,” in Culture Lab, ed. Brian Boignon, Princeton Architecture Press, 1993. 2 Ibid.
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2 Culture Through Technology And Architecture
2 Culture Through Technology And Architecture
“Architecture is a cultural ingredient. Present culture combines different kinds of space understanding. Without an updated and connected global culture, a space cannot be anymore a place to coagulate the environment and make it function. Beyond its culture and tradition, sometimes there is a need to innovate something in order to activate and resuscitate. … architecture continually writes new expressions in city space, negotiating with tradition, arguing and reconstructing fragments of urban life.”1 Architecture is at the centre of its era it is born in. It is incessantly reformed by the ever-changing culture of technology as all parameters it is designed around are constantly fluctuating. When the ingredients of culture changes, the understanding and the needs of space reforms. In order for architecture to function in the era it is constructed in as beneficial as possible, it has to be fed and thought in the culture it is designed for and in. If it does not respond to the time by challenging and advancing it, then space will not envision the future. Architecture must anticipate future for successful spatial strategies. Culture ; “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations”2 Today’s culture is shifting in relation with emergent technology. As new digital-technological inventions change how we operate in the world, our habits, methods of accomplishing things and how we think constantly modify. Our understanding of the world shifts as we accomplish to create new methodologies, mediums and results with our enhanced tools.
1 Mihaila, Marina. “City Architecture as Cultural Ingredient.” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 149 (2014): 565–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.08.211 2 “Culture.” Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture.
“Culture is not composed of elements which can be disassembled and recomposed: culture has to be lived. Cultures mature and sediment slowly as they become fused into the context and continuity of tradition.”1 (Pallasmaa, 2007, pp.131) Culture is interrelated with the advancements in every field that are developed through technology. It is not open to sudden changes, it is an evolutionary time-dependent process. As our knowledge transform, the tools we use to learn and create knowledge also changes, affecting one another. It is a collective process where knowledge is accumulated to bear new solutions for contemporary novel processes, fed by all fields. Kevin Kelly points out; “As we change our tools, our tools come back to change us. As fast as we remake our tools, we remake ourselves. We are co-evolving with our technology, and so we have become deeply dependent on it. We are now symbiotic with technology. Our invention altered us.” 2 Our devices are attached to us, linked to our minds, changing our performances, expanding our senses and skills. Innovating us, the makers of the culture, collaboratively which reflects back to change us individually, the subject of culture. Our environment becomes the reflection that shows how culture changes, our built environment is the mirror to reflect to us as it reshapes constantly, again to reshape us inevitably. Our minds get modified on creating our environment, thus our built environment change. Culture feeds from enhancing collective formation of methods and knowledge, thus enabling what can be succeeded with them, always updated. Processes and their outcomes change as the new tools install novel features in the processes. Our environment is directly affected by how it gets fabricated on today’s circumstances. The space of the city is always reforming. Technology changes how our built environment is designed, formed, fabricated, structured 1 Canizaro, Vincent B. Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. 2 Kelly, Kevin. “Quiet Babylon.” Domesticated Cyborgs – Kevin Kelly, n.d. http://quietbabylon.com/2010/ domesticated-cyborgs-kevin-kelly/.
3 Information Age
3 Information Age
‘A true architecture of our time will have to redefine itself and expand its means. Many areas outside traditional building will enter the realm of architecture, as architecture and “architects” will have to enter new fields. All are architects. Everything is architecture.’1 Hans Hollein, 1966 Architecture must be participative, interactive, adaptive and communicative. As different demands come from the consumer, architecture must be dynamic to provide what it provides spatially. This enables space to provide today’s user to be an active actor in truly functional space and participate in creating today’s three-dimensional interface. Today’s consumer needs with a space that has its share from altered perception due technology. Tradition and habit we are bound with belongs to the way we interact with things, socially, physically and digitally. Our activities, accomplishments and inventions depend on the collective information which keeps on growing, and enhancing affecting one another which changes the culture we are influenced, affect and also get affected by. Emerging technology does not only change how machines operate, they directly affect how we as humans enhance our daily skills of using new machines updated, operating better than before, evolve in achievements. The user of today’s space needs more than what is delivered with finite architecture.
1 Lucarelli, Fosco, Sami, and Francesca. “Hans Hollein's Alles Ist Architektur (1968).” SOCKS, February 10, 2018. http://socks-studio.com/2013/08/13/hans-holleins-alles-ist-architektur-1968/.
Architecture must interact with other areas of to redefine itself as it must become functional and novel in an environment of rapid changes, temporary-time-based needs, adaptive features, momentary uses, transformable circumstances and technological and scientific foundations which can be implemented for architecture to achieve meaningful, beneficial unique, and successful uses for today’s consumer with more-than-ever different needs where he can reach, do, sense, achieve, demand so much than ever. Expanded body and mind needs the expanded reformulated space. Architecture must expand its meaning, purpose, methods and intelligence.
4 Event And Space In The Real Time-Based Urban Context
4 Event And Space In The Real Time-Based Urban Context
Architecture needs a new approach to urban dynamics. The proposal will serve more than a spatial performance, and beyond spatiality, it must provide a reconstructive communicative system based on time-dependent events. Temporality in this context of rapid changes is a crucial notion to answer for. As an adaptive system, under rapid changes of conditions, the infrastructural system must recognize how to change its response through data changes of a territory. The reidentification of space only can occur by defining a behavioural space-system and connecting it to other systems in urban context around to feed it necessary information, as the space that is aimed to construct would achieve specifics of the needs of that context at the given time. The features of the space ire based on the event, reason of use and user, and time-based environmental conditions. The infrastructure must give way to articulate space based on these parameters. Today, we build spaces and leave them to cease to be used after they have been used for a period of time. Urban notions cannot handle unsustainable models of architecture to occupy limited amount of spaces for single use for limited purposes. Architectural model must provide various functions and events to be held by the model using the same urban void to be constructed on if needed. Sustainable method for the citizen’s space would be to be able to be reused for different events and needs at different times, building up a new memory-space in the urban context. Architecture becomes the spatial event of transformation.
5 Mobility; Fluidity Of Space
5 Mobility; Fluidity Of Space
“Architecture, traditionally, is the anti-fluid, or rather it is a primary form of resistance to the flux and flow of air and water, creating fixed points in their turbulence. In a similar way, architecture has always aimed at providing a refuge—‘shelter from the storm’—from a sea of changes continuously occurring in the intertwined human and natural worlds.”1 Lebbeus Woods, Fluid Space Today, architecture presents the finite. Lack of transformative behaviour in architectural strategies prevents space to become an active participant. If architecture is the reflection of events in the space, it needs to be enabled to become the action of physical transformation itself. It has to gain the ability to move, to change. A strategy with movable structures can give space mobile characteristic. Mobility can provide a temporality of space occupation. An architectural framework based on a timeline would create areas in the urban context that can be occupied from time to time in case of necessity. Therefore, infrastructure can enable different uses and experiences on different times. It has to embody ‘fluid’ characteristics. Mobility does not only help relocation physically, it provides the emergence of behavioural complexity of interactions on the field of communication and participation. Infrastructures today are always static in their frozen state. Space with physical immobility cannot resolve infinitely many problems of the future. The structural basis of future space must adjust and have a notion of change. The memory of city scape differs the perception of space. A field of infinitely many possibilities for future city can hold sustainability by freely moving ‘space’ in different areas of the city, and in global scale. Pieces of spatial infrastructure wholly moving from location to location, from time to time; an organism-like structural 1 “FLUID SPACE.” LEBBEUS WOODS, June 28, 2009.https://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/ fluid-space/.
machinic being appears and disappears in the city as space. Mobility participates in the formation of new hubs in the city that can be constructed and deconstructed as transportable volumetric interface, today’s cultural space.
6 Adaptive And Reorganizable Spatial Strategies
6 Adaptive And Reorganizable Spatial Strategies
‘Architecture is a living, evolving thing’1 John Frazer The finite and fixed methods that defined architecture as precise space are now insufficient. Architecture must leave its incapability of changing. It must engage in complex information-rich environments of urban context and city to serve as a behavioral multi-scalar adaptive structure locally and globally. It must play as a form of physical and computational interaction. The behavioral ecology of the city with buildings, humans, and nature must host the infinite possibilities of constructive operations of the new architecture as infrastructure. ‘… design as an activity should not limit itself solely to descriptive forms but rather use casual and circular relationships to identify generative qualities that will continuously redefine and evolve the design system itself. This is a process of continual formation rather than a state of fixed form.’2 Theodore Sypropolous
1 Frazer, John. An Evolutionary Architecture. London: Architectural Association, 1995. 2 Spyropolous, Theo. “CONSTRUCTING ADAPTIVE ECOLOGIES : TOWARDS A BEHAVIOURAL MODEL FOR ARCHITECTURE.” saj. Serbian Architectural Journal, June 1, 2013. http://saj.rs/wp-content/ uploads/2016/11/SAJ 2013-02-T-Spyropoulos.pdf.
The instrumentality of infrastructure’s sub-systems comes from its ability to reorganize. Architecture must have behavioural features. It must have the capacity to learn, organize itself, understand and sense itself and the world. Organization of the model must enable generative behaviours. Architecture can only be adaptive and evolving if it exhibited life-like features that provide conversational interaction between its entities. The system has to perform relationships between each other and outside agents to continuously understand and learn to evolve and remain achieving adaptive features. Reorganization of space depends on interacting units and agents that develop intelligence through communication between systems, under given goaloriented rules to exhibit experience and feedback based responsive behaviour to adapt and perform most successfully. It has to process the knowledge of the territory, get stimulated by the data of space. Role of the space must include change through self-organizing spatial structures. The architecture of this is not bound by one alternative but infinite possibilities of constructive operations. Structural variants must have partial and wholly organized rule-based responses for short-term and long-term adaptive formations. Architectural model must have the abilities to change any parameters of space through time momentarily and temporally intervene and physically form needed space through intelligent operations within its communicative network. The ability to build and deconstruct itself gives the whole system autonomy and agency.
7 Structures of Autonomy, Agency & Intelligence In The Urban Context
7 Structures of Autonomy, Agency & Intelligence In The Urban Context
“Nonlinear systems are known primarily for their capacity to change in indeterminate ways over time, continually manifesting new properties; forms, and patterns. These systems, even when not organically based, are increasingly assimilated with, and described by, the processes of life.”1 Sanford Kwinter
1 Sanford Kwinter, “Soft Systems,” in Culture Lab, ed. Brian Boignon, Princeton Architecture Press, 1993.
7.1 Autonomy
Autonomy : “1: the quality or state of being self-governing especially : the right of self-government 2 : self-directing freedom and especially moral independence personal autonomy 3: a self-governing state”1 For architecture to survive in ever-changing environments, its organization must consist of communicative agents. It is important to state that any static system with inflexible members is bound to remain its stable existance. For the model to be adaptive, it needs to have self-consciousness and self-government. Therefore, agents within the system must have recognize their stance in the world, and how they situate in it. These machinic-units must seek to explore, realize their territory and also be aware of other both locally and globally positioned units for the organization of collaboration. The collective mind formed by all minds of units that are interconnected within the network creates the system that establishes the communication of autonomous individuals as one ‘hive mind’2.
1 “Autonomy.” Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ autonomy. 1 Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: the New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
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Autonomous sub-systems in the network leads to complex relationships between all units in flexible regions to develop complex and adaptive strategies to reach collective goals by individual actions performed in groups. Continuous interaction amongst them will keep the agents learn and know from each other. A behavioral model is the only way for future adaptive architecture to survive. Autonomy of individuals leads to behavioral complexity from simple interactions1. László Moholy-Nagy once observed, ‘design is not a profession but an attitude [...] thinking in complex relationships’2 For architecture to embed these features, autonomous entities with agency must take part in the system. Walter Grey’s mechanical creatures, ‘machinae speculatrices, teaches us how simple interconnected systems can adapt through learning’3. As a neurophysiologist, cybernetician and robotician, he explored how free-ranging machines can build up intelligence through interaction due to their behavioral features and performances. His work demonstrated how simple organisms can exhibit non-linear relations4. His autonomous tortoises explored the environment actively, persistently, systematically, as most animals do5. Robots began ‘flickering, twittering and jigging like a clumsy narcissus’6, when they were obscured by a mirror, a result of self-awareness. This behavior argued Walter Grey, is a proof that rich connections between small number of brain cells produces very rich behaviors via environmental stimulants7. The purpose of having individiual free-ranging autonomous units is to collect experience, feedback, memory, and evolving skills continously from singular units to use it for them to operate in the complex nonlinear environments and survive as a whole system made up of simple parts. 1 Spyropolous, Theo. “CONSTRUCTING ADAPTIVE ECOLOGIES : TOWARDS A BEHAVIOURAL MODEL FOR ARCHITECTURE.” saj. Serbian Architectural Journal, June 1, 2013. http://saj.rs/wp-content/ uploads/2016/11/SAJ-2013-02-T-Spyropoulos.pdf. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 O'Connell, Sanjida. “What the Tortoise Taught Us.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, December 7, 2000. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/dec/07/robots. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid.
Therefore, the architectural model is to have autonomous variants performing for the processes of life to occur amongst the behavioral network.
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7.1 Collective Agency And Swarm Behaviour
“Assemblage in its very basic description, is gathering of simultaneously operating parts. De Landa principally furthers definition of an Assemblage as “parts that are fitted together are not uniform either in nature or in origin, and that the assemblage actively links these parts together by establishing relations between them.”1 Architecture forms by smaller parts and is constituted by the togetherness of all components creating a whole. Emergence of patterns of behaviors are created in these relations. ‘De Landa draws attention to the fact that for an assemblage to exist within framework of Deleuze and Guattari, it needs to manifest decomposability and irreducibility’2 In the urban context, buildings, humans, transportation systems are in continuous interaction as complex mechanisms. They are always linked, responding or triggering each other. Therefore, it is important how to set rules of sensing the surrounding and also know about the global scale while being aware of the local stimulants for this self-conscious architectural swarms forming the collective mind. According to Pask, as inhabitants of its system are dynamic, architectural designs are obliged to propose dynamic rather than static presences.3 Autonomous real-time movement is essential to reserve dynamism in architecture, and get rid of stale patterns of behavior in it. “…architectural designs should have rules for evolution built into them if their growth is to be healthy rather than cancerous. In other words, a responsible architect must be concerned with evolutionary properties; he cannot merely stand back and observe evolution as something that happens to his structures.”4 1 Manuel De Landa, Assemblage Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 2. 2 Ibid. 3 Gordon Pask, 'The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics', Architectural Design, issue No 7/6, (September 1969): 494. 4 Ibid.
stand back and observe evolution as something that happens to his structures.”1 Architecture shows potential to introduce self-organization for urban structures. Cities are capable of becoming representations of adaptive ideas while growing and transforming. This can only be achieved if a social and ecological system is constituted in the urban context with the ‘swarm intelligence’ is installed in the mind of the population of architectural variants, to constructing the agency of the whole system with simple autonomous parts as it forms the fundamentals of the behavioral model of architecture. With the help of behavioral networks, architecture can construct evolving, generative relationships and our built environment can be a participant in the development of adaptive space through feedback. For the system to evolve, it has to have systemic processes that enables evolving individuals throughout the architectural model. Aspects of play and interaction – conversation – to create new forms of knowledge Negotiation between units of the architectural structure proposes a feature of triggering, warning the neighbour pieces to operate them fort he purposes of the whole. For a system to survive it needs to learn from the obstacles to perform better, feedback to remain ready for an instant change, and options of behaviour to choose from in order to overcome changes in the environment and function as a group. It has to understand the whole structure of the infrastructure to decide what the individual role in the swarm is.
1 Gordon Pask, ‘The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics’, Architectural Design, issue No 7/6, (September 1969): 494.
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7.3 Human And Machine Coexistence
Autonomy and agency in the architectural model does not only gain these features for the units but also give access for the human participants to perform so. A responsive system of organism-like units behaves as an active participant in the whole system of human and machine with both sides featuring behavior. Hence, both sides benefit from each other’s behavioral framework; both sides receive data and also give it. These two collaborator groups depend on each other to form the whole infrastructure, and if one side of the system fails to function, whole infrastructure becomes meaningless to exist. Infrastructure is a whole with the user, without human participation, the machine-human collaboration to keep the integrated systems of infrastructure alive would cease to exist. The model gives agency and autonomy for the human participants as well as it exhibits it in all of its units. Human and machine alter each other’s capacities and skills, differing the outcome if the whole system was made up of only by one of the sides. Co-operation means coexisting. human and machine are the core partners. To co-operate, collaborate, one to enhance the other’s skills, lead to novel products when two collaborate, both benefiting from the other’s existence and peformace ; a mutual persistent relationship; without the other participant no sides can be productive dependent on each other the autonomy of individuals. When Doulas Engelbart built the computer that is the most familiar for us, he believed that they should be optimized for human needs, communication and collaboration. For him, ‘computer should augment rather than replace the human intellect’1. The idea was to have a new conversation and series of activities formed by the union of human and machine agents. He called it ‘augment the human intellect’2. The model suggests to create a new form of skillful partnership both enhancing and providing each other to work better than they do alone. 1 Fisher, Adam. “How Doug Engelbart Pulled off the Mother of All Demos.” Wired. Conde Nast, December 8, 2018. https://www.wired.com/story/how-doug-engelbart-pulled-off-the-mother-of-all-demos/. 2 Ibid.
Cedric Price’s Fun Palace is one of the most important examples for collaboratio of both parties. Fun Palace is a space to get changed for different needs of the user’s everyday. The user intervenes the spatial configurations on daily basis, the infrastructure is deformable, changeable. User gets to manipulate the installed spatial structures to use them as they wish, the building provides the necessary fundamental system that can be altered, and the space becomes a meaningful participatory instrument when it is lively, used, and active by its adaptive state. Stanley Mathews describes the project “as socially interactive architecture, the Fun Palace integrated concepts of technological interchangeability with social participation and improvisation as innovative and egalitarian alternatives to traditional free time and education, giving back to the working classes a sense of agency and creativity.”1 Infrastructure enables the interaction between the human and the machine, the user and the space. But here, machines have behaviors, too, like an organism that is alive. The actors together form the infrastructure to function and exhibit actions for the system to respond, so then the whole behavioral model of architecture begins its complex decision-making processes resembling life with countless interactions in nonlinear patterns to emerge intelligence through experience, learning, feedback and updating. The field hosts the conversation, social structure here depends on the conversation leading the whole infrastructure to work. Environment becomes the machine itself; architecture is the combination of the human and the infrastructure that is in constant communication, coexisting. Territory including the human and the infrastructure is a complete machine as Nick Dalton stated once as; “‘A house is a machine for living in...’ Le Corbusier (1923) ‘But I thought that all that functional stuff had been refuted. Buildings aren’t machines.’ Student ‘You haven’t understood. The building isn’t the machine. Space is the machine.’ Nick Dalton, Computer Programmer at University College London (1994)”2 1 Stanley Mathews, "The Fun Palace as Virtual Architecture: Cedric Price and the Practices of Indeterminacy," Journal of Architectural Education (1984-) 59, no. 3 (2006): 39. 2 See in preface: Bill Hillier, Space Is the Machine: A Configurational Theory of Architecture (London: Space Syntax, 2015)
8 Flexible Spaceframe, Framing Space
8 Flexible Spaceframe, Framing Space
Future space must have flexible space strategies that are supported by digital and computerized tools for optimizations. The new system must bring up conversation between human and machine systems to create a new one consisted by both and dependent on both. The new architectural framework must be a behaviour-based model for new behavioural fields in the city. Infrastructure to moderate a system of behaviour in the dynamics of city must have the capacity to engage human and machine systems to augment both party’s skills. Anti-typology ; Decomposable Space Today’s technology provides the fundamentals of a system that does not necessarily need to be fixed and finite. Typology based and limited solutions for spaces are now obsolete; transformative spatial organizations must be designed to achieve reorganizable urban fragments in the city. Therefore, a new module-based architecture must provide shape-shifting potentials for adapting, efficiency and sustainability within the ever-changing momentary cityscape. Transitive Mobile Space ; Designing The Void The model shall present spatial transformative and transitive approach to space; anticipate and understand the needs of the space via user and environmental stimuli. It must understand its function, location, duties and capacities in a communication network to make decisions. It must be ready for instant and temporary changes. It is a system with active and non-active states for stable and transformative phases of the organization of units. It must have the skills to change form, trigger other neighbour units of the change that is needed to take part, and promise a conscious to form for the spatial reconfiguration purposes.
from a two-dimensional swarm of independent units, perform collaborative procedures and processes to create a collective whole and serve the purposes of infinite functional space with volume height, level changing where void and solid are always negotiating through finding the architectural equivalent of user needs. Autonomous Individuality And Collective Whole The three-dimensional space as we know it is no more relevant. Now space is a transportable, mobile and autonomous entity with the features of motion in an ever-changing ecology. Infrastructures create their own way of behaviour in the city, it is a behavioural zone.It can morph, and change, it can stay and keep static. Features of New Space “… the theory of linear graphs possesses a considerable instrumental value in the design of buildings where extremely complex circulation problems must be solved – hospitals, airports, stadiums, factories, theatres, and exhibitions… Flexible architecture, which has been hailed so often, could become a reality if this architecture of transformations could be realized with the aid of the geometry of transformations, i.e., this ‘rubber’ architecture would be expressed in a ‘rubber’ geometry.”1 J.D. Bernal Transformative unit means a transformative whole. Demountable structures are built by rule-based organizations of expanding-shrinking units. The unit is a hybrid of soft and rigid materials help the whole infrastructure gain a whole that resembles its smallest unit’s features. Material behaviour is the core of all performance and function of the unit. The variety of rigidity levels helps the system continue its ‘soft’ features. It can morph, and change, it can stay and keep static. Mechanisms of interconnected and interrelated communicative networks feed each other for evolutionary features. Self-conscious and selflearning capacities of singular modules create a whole brain fort he system to operate infinitely many units in unison, under rule-based dynamic and intelligent control system. The architectural model learns, adapts, survives and functions.
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8 Flexible Spaceframe, Framing Space
Sense Of Space Constantly redefining territories and boundaries in the urban context must have a new urban catalyst. Self-conscious fields must be created that operates between the fluidity of reorganizable units and the rigidity of tectonic-static form. Performative architecture where human and machine coexist and participate to augment each other is the novel method to reach the new interface of inhabiting, shelter, constructing boundaries, communicative ecology of everything interacting. The system includes the human and the machine in its core as active players. Without human participation, it is nothing but a dull system. Socially, physically and digitally connective space is formed by the connective systems, and communicative networks. The cityscape with the collective memory of space will be in new conversations with technology, culture and infrastructure. The new architecture and future scape will serve as the most fundamental catalyst for novel scenarios and human-machine ecologies.
Statement A Behaviour Based Responsive Architectural System Key Objectives After explorations on generative growth systems and the researching on the project’s purposes; the physical correspondence of design’s objectives are studied. Three dimensionality as a first layer for constructing the geometry is later combined with specific behaviours and transformation abilitites. F
L
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Flux is a strategy for an adaptive space frame system. It is a new universal system with intelligence to create iterative space. Units are a hybrid of soft and rigid pieces working in unison, where they perform together for mobility and transformation purposes. Flux differs from permanent and heavy infrastructure. It is a deployable lightweight, time and scenario based prototypical model. It has the ability to realize shifting conditions of need and environment to adapt. Each space frame cell is a self-aware, autonomous and communicative mobile member where collaboration of multiple units lead achieving goals of creating space for different scenarios. The system builds the needed space itself for uncertain futures. It constructs and deconstructs itself. Complex parameters of the environment are used to form space that is flexible in articulation to create the customizable enclosure and space. We designed the joint as a component to gain transformation within the unit, to achieve a reconfigurable space frame cell . We propose a system that provides rigidity and flexibility where these two states negotiate to form the needed space with a collaborative performance where roles are shared within a community of modular communicative network of units working in greater wholes.
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1 | Behavior Based Performance
4 | Mobile & Connective
7 | Time Based [seeded] Performance
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2 | Hybridization of Soft & Rigid States
3 | Adaptive & Transformative
5 | Autonomous & Self-Aware
6 | Self-Assembly in Structuring
8 | Re-orientation by Local Triggering
9 | Swarming
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Initial Research
Growth Based System Design Growth Scales Unit Scale
Local Scale
Global Scale At this level of research agenda, the exploration of a system design is created through determining a geometric class with its states. The overall system is constituted from three different scales of exploration; unit, cluster and population. The decision making process implemented on the states via certain rules of connection shows distinct capacities and behaviour of growing. This generative approach shows and forms a specific understanding of iterative digital growth processes which helps building knowledge of design characteristics for future phases of the project. Continuity and connectivity are the primary concerns on creating the rule set for the larger scales. By analyzing the patterns of the rule set, transformation possibilities are investigated. Lastly, the transmission to global scale has been made on the evaluation of random generated vector fields; which exists as a fourth dimension of effectiveness for the end result.
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Growth Based System Design Combination Matrix of Unit States Combination Rule 90°
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Combination Matrix of Unit States 24 Clusters Movement | Direction + Movement Axis Change
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Voxel Based Digital Space Simulation Basic Aggregation Random Seed: 4 Start State: E Iteration No: 5 Number of Elements: 47
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Random Seed: 2 Start State: E Iteration No: 5 Number of Elements: 52
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Ruled Aggregation Random Seed: 3 Start State: B Iteration No: 27 Number of Elements: 63
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Geometric Search Initial Prototypes Adding 3rd Dimension After explorations on generative growth systems and the researching on the project’s purposes; the physical correspondence of design’s objectives are studied. Three dimensionality as a first layer for constructing the geometry is later combined with specific behaviours and transformation abilitites. Unit transformation depends upon two axes of movement, two-sided rotatable arms and pivots joints in these four arms. these arms, the unit can grow and contract within its very own bounding box and pivot in any direction that it requires. Likewise, the joints at the top and end hub makes it simpler for our unit to form a closed wheel like structure for closed unit mobility. Spring behaviour is entirely fascinating because this action lined up with our unit impeccably. Correlation between the movement and the pressure of the springs conflicts with one another which results as an ideal harmony.
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Geometric Search Initial Prototypes Transformations
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Geometric Search Initial Prototypes SImplified Models
Simplified versions of the physical models are created to observe possibility of transforming in multiple numbers of units. A “softness” of the system in large numbers is aimed tobe achieved by the negotiation of space in between the connected units. The flexibility and adaptiveness of models are maintained while accomplishing an eventual rigidity in the system. This sort of “delicate” movement that we obtained by this design was an extremely one of a kind and free conduct. Although the delicate quality and the versatility limits were incredibly high, it does not have the basic trustworthiness and solid configurative components. That is the reason we have chosen to build its structural elements for load bearing. while attempting to discover the clustering strategies, we perceived that our unit could be amassed like bits of four or six components and these six pieces could turn into a bigger octahedron. This was entirely astounding system for collaborative and synergistic behaviour. since every hub doesn’t need to act alone rather, they go about as a solitary body.
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GEOMETRY | formal investigation Geometry Formal Investigation Geometry Representation Unit
transformationOctahedron depends upon two axes 6ofNodes movement, two-sided rotatable arms and pivots joints in these four arms. these arms, the unit can grow and contract within its very own bounding box and pivot in any direction that it requires. Likewise, the joints at the top and end hub makes it simpler for our unit to form a closed wheel like structure for closed unit mobility. Octahedron is a polyhedron with eight faces, twelve edges, and six vertices. The term is most commonly used to refer to the regular octahedron, a Platonic solid composed of eight equilateral triangles, four of which meet at each vertex. But in our project 4 of the edges are removed in order for other edges to rotate freely to from open or closed states.
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Transformation Analysis Unit Model
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Transformation Analysis Unit Model
Our geometries most clear capacity is its growing and contracting capacity, envision three-pivot that has been framed inside the octahedron x ,y and z and if this hub length between the edges of the unit are summarized we can see that the all-out entirety is rarely changing, in light of the fact that when one of them is contracting two of them are extending, this is the thing that we call expand-shrink behavior. This act is inspected with 15-degree edge distinction and it could be exhibited as these diagrams.
15 °
30 °
60 °
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Digital Simulation
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Transformation Analysis Single Axis Free Rotation
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Transformation Analysis Two Axis Free Rotation
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Transformation Selected Model Two Axis Free Rotation
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Unit Design Integrated Model
The research process for the geometric behaviour potentials, lastly comes to an end of proving the influence of node design for the unit. Actuation from the nodes, liberates the octahedron’s inner volume and provide a flexibility in overall transformation capabilities.
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Axis of movement
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Mobility Rule Set
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Lowest State Mid-Level State Limit State
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Expanding Limits
3rd Step | Rotation
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4th Step | Displacement
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Direction State | Orientation
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Possible Positions
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Mobility 2D Simulation Shortest Path Between 2 Given Points
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Mobility 3D Simulation Displacement States on Shortest Distance Between 2 Points Distance
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Mobility Model 1.0 Displacement on Symmetry Axis Based on Center of Gravity
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Mobility Model 2.0 Actuation Logic Based on Piston Principles
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Mobility Model 2.0 Analysis
Linear actuators have been utilized in this model to build the unit ability to extend and contract in various ways, we utilized both bi-direct actuators and ordinary actuators for testing and therefore we see that the incitation in the majority of the arms makes geometries multifaceted nature increment definitely which results from lower accuracy and higher complexity which troubles after these outcomes we expelled the actuators and utilized in non-expandable ,strong state arms for our unit.
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Mobility Model 3.0 Two Axis Free Rotation of Individual and Pair Branches
As our exploration proceeds with we attempted and failed with various materials and shapes to augment our mobility, reconfigurability and connection capacity. This is the last phase of our unit that we chose to have the most enhanced structure for these angles that has been recorded. Rotatable arms up to 90 degrees and the capacity of expand and shrink work fine, notwithstanding, the issue of control and accuracy should even now be improved for unit clustering strategies.
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Mobility 3D Simulation Single Unit Mobility
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Mobility Model 4.0 Less Actuation After observing the transformation behaviour’s potentials, mobility principles of the unit is determined. The goal here is to leave the interior of the unit free of mechanisms. Addition of springs on the edges of the unit gives the ability to move without any parts obstructing the habitation. This model enables the desired transformation while reducing the amount of actuation when compared to former models.
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Unit Design Final Model
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Mobility And Structure Models Finalized Unit Interaction
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Connection 3D Simulation Connection from Single Branch
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Connection Clustering Multi Unit Performance
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Clustering Potentials Impulsive Behaviour Pulling and Pushing Between Units
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Clustering Adaptive Behaviour
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Clustering Strategy Repetitive Growth Geometric Potentials
We perceived that the octahedron shape has an exceptional state when the angle between arms reaches a specific edge, they could frame four bunch packs or six group packs. Four group packs are valuable for vertical conditions ,but six cluster shapes structure a similar octahedron shape, the main distinction is its measurements when six of these octahedron frames the resultant geometry. This example is extremely significant because we could see social availability which results in similar standards where we can make and show aggregate behavior with its very own small fractures.
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Cluster Models Reaggregation
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Cluster Models Unit Transfer
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Space Making Curvelinear Arrangement Potentials Resolution Difference Our ideal desire of space-making is clearly by reducing the redundancy on the structure so that why we started to create aggregation rules and iterations. Lastly to sort out the idea of deformation on the system we tested the aggregations of our units under their self weight with different numbers of clusters. As a result of our research and simulations, we initiated to bring in emergence to the system of our proposal. We codified and set the rules of the unit after our observations realising the constraints and limits of its own.
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Cluster Performance Individual and Collective Responses
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Full Grid Deformations Spacemaking By Transformative Choreography
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Full Grid Deformations Spacemaking By Transformative Choreography
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Full Grid Deformations Spacemaking By Transformative Choreography
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Organization And Population
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Behavioural Performance Singular And Collective
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Cluster Performance Behavioural Transformation
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Cluster Performance Deformation Catalogue We started investigating space transformation possibilities and what sort of effects may its own behaviour can bring into the system. For these reasons the abstraction of spring particles is introduced for each unit which restrains the branch dimensions but transforms the geometry according to different criterias tested on them. Different formation types, attractor locations and anchor points are all resulted in attributing to distinct outcomes by giving distinct rest lengths to the units. Later on detecting the most efficient connection both for the units design and clusters performance is catalogued on different dimensions of full grid arrangements to construct a better understanding of clusters transformation and deformation capabilities. We started with simple neighbour conditions and assigning expand shrink and steady behaviours on different patterns. Pattern creation is later tested by integrating different enacting mechanism as the idea of inputting spaces as field creators on assigning different rest lengths to different units. At certain points, the system managed to open up the closer distanced units to the input areas by deciding on which connections to unlock and lock.
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Cluster Performance Non-Uniform Aggregation Creation
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Rule-Based System Space-Making
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System Population 3D Printed Model
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We furthermore think the research can continue to develop by a system of surface to be integrated with our system to reach other spaces with full boundaries. With this system, the infrastructure can perform differently and have a lifting performance all by itself, also create other spaces with boundaries where needed. This surface would create habitable units.
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APPENDIX
“Autonomy.” Merriam-Webster. dictionary/autonomy.
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Borrego, John. Space Grid Structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Pr., 1968. Canizaro, Vincent B. Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. “Configurations Of The New World.” Aspen no. 1, item 7: Configurations of the New World, n.d. http:// www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen1/configurations.html. “Culture.” Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ culture.
Dewidar, Khaled M., Ruby Morcos, Mostafa Refat, and Nada M. Mohsen. “The Engineering Principles of Biological Forms vs. Classical Architectural Engineering,” n.d. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282503086_The_Engineering_Principles_of_Biological_Forms_vs_Classical_Architectural_Engineering. Fisher, Adam. “How Doug Engelbart Pulled off the Mother of All Demos.” Wired. Conde Nast, December 8, 2018. https://www.wired.com/story/how-doug-engelbart-pulled-off-the-mother-of-all-demos/.
FJELD, PER OLAF. LOUIS I. KAHN: the Nordic Latitudes. S.l.: UNIV OF ARKANSAS PRESS, 2019. “FLUID SPACE.” LEBBEUS WOODS, com/2009/06/28/fluid-space/.
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28,
2009.
https://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.
Frazer, John. An Evolutionary Architecture. London: Architectural Association, 1995. Gordon Pask, ‘The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics’, in Architectural Design, September issue No 7/6, London: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, (1969): 494-6. Hillier, Bill. Space Is the Machine: A Configurational Theory of Architecture. London: Space Syntax, 2015.
http://www.ardamis.com/, Ardamis.com |. “Robert Le Ricolais’s Tensegrity Models – ‘The Art of Structure Is Where to Put the Holes’.” Dataisnature RSS, n.d. https://www.dataisnature.com/?p=2053. “Infrastructure.” Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. https://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/infrastructure.
Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: the New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Kelly, Kevin. “Quiet Babylon.” Domesticated Cyborgs – Kevin Kelly, n.d. http://quietbabylon.com/2010/ domesticated-cyborgs-kevin-kelly/.
McCleary, Peter. Robert Le Ricolais’ Search for the “Indestructible Idea”. Lotus 99, n.d. Landa, Manuel De. Assemblage Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.
Lan, Tien T. “Space Frame Structures” Structural Engineering Handbook. Edited by Wai-Fah Chen. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press LLC, 1999. Le Ricolais, Robert. The Things Themselves Are Lying, and So Are Their Images, 1973. Lucarelli, Fosco, Sami, and Francesca. “Hans Hollein’s Alles Ist Architektur (1968).” SOCKS, February 10, 2018. http://socks-studio.com/2013/08/13/hans-holleins-alles-ist-architektur-1968/. Mihaila, Marina. “City Architecture as Cultural Ingredient.” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences149 (2014): 565–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.08.211.
Motro, René. “Robert Le Ricolais (1894–1977) ‘Father of Spatial Structures.’” International Journal of Space Structures 22, no. 4 (2007): 233–38. https://doi. org/10.1260/026635107783133834. O’Connell, Sanjida. “What the Tortoise Taught Us.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, December 7, 2000. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/dec/07/robots. Pallasmaa, J. (2007). Pallasmaa_Tradition And Modernity The Feasibility of Regional Architecture In Post-Modern. In V. B. Canizaro, Architectural Regionalism : Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, And Tradition (Pp. 129-141). New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Popko, Edward S. Divided Spheres: Geodesics and the Orderly Subdivision of the Sphere. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2012. Sanford Kwinter, “Soft Systems,” in Culture Lab, ed. Brian Boignon, Princeton Architecture 1993.
Press,
Wachsmann, Konrad. The Turning Point Of Building : Structure And Desing. New York: Reinhold, 1961. Watson, V. On the Matter and Intelligence of the Architectural Model: Arthur Schopenhauer’s Psychophysiological Theory of Architecture and Konrad Wachsmann’s Design of a Space Structure. ARENA Journal of Architectural Research. 2017; 2(1): 1. DOI: https://doi. org/10.5334/ajar.22
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Our Tutors Theodore Spyropoulos Mostafa El-Sayed Aleksandar Bursac
Our Phase1 Helpers Meysam Ehsanian Eda Esen Angelina Kozhevnikova Hazel Ozrenk
Structural Consultant AKT II
Friends Emre Erdogan