Beauty Comes In Waves

I S S U E : N AT U R A L P H E N O M E N O N

BEAUTY COMES IN

WAVES Summer 2017

WHAT

HOW

types of waves are in nature

waveforms are translated in design

Table of Contents

Table of Contents 02

Table of Contents

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What Is a Wave?

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Wave Definition

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It’s a Wave If

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Mechanical Waves vs.

Electromagnetic Waves

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The Anatomy of a Wave

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Wave Design

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Waves in Architecture

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Waves in Fashion

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Waves in Graphic Design

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What is a WAVE? W

e use the word wave in everyday conversation to refer to ocean, light, sound, or earthquake waves.

But what do all of these seemingly different phenomena have in common, and why is it important to understand the nature of waves? Let’s explore these topics.

Waves transmit the energy that topples buildings during an earthquake, energy that allows us to communicate in the modern world, and energy that allows for life on earth at all.

Our observations of the earth from space are also dependent on waves, those that are received by satellites. Thus, waves are a basic feature of the natural world and our ability to understand waves has resulted in many useful devices, cell phones, garage door openers, and microwave ovens, to name a few. With such a variety, what do all waves have in common? Ocean, light, sound, and earthquake waves share the characteristics contained in the scientific definition of wave.

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What is a Wave

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WAVE DEFINITION

Physics. a progressive disturbance propagated from point to point in a medium or space without progress or advance by the points themselves, as in the transmission of sound or light.

Wave Definition

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It’s a Wave If It’s a wave if: 1) energy moves from one place to another 2) matter doesn’t move from one place to another, for the most part.

For example, ocean waves ceaselessly arrive at the shore without piling up infinite amounts of water. The wave arrives, but the water doesn’t. We know that ocean waves carry energy because they are able to beat up and move objects at the shore. It takes a wave the same amount of energy to move a large boulder as it would for us to do the same, manually or with a bulldozer.

In understanding the earth, it’s useful to concentrate on two general classes of waves, mechanical and electromagnetic waves.

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It’s a Wave If

Electromagnetic waves Common types of electromagnetic waves include visible light, infrared, and ultraviolet radiation, among others. The transmission of electromagnetic waves does not require a medium and electromagnetic waves are able to travel through vacuums. Unlike mechanical waves such as sound, electromagnetic waves can travel successfully across the near emptiness of outer space. Thus humanity has been entertained for eons by the stars that light night skies.

The electromagnetic spectrum describes a wide range of different electromagnetic waves. Also called EM waves, these are a special type of wave that can travel without a medium. Unlike sound waves and water waves, electromagnetic waves don’t need a fluid, or a solid, or even air to help them travel from one place to another. EM waves can travel across the great vacuum of space, which is why we see light from distant stars and planets.

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Mechanical Waves vs. Electromagnetic Waves

Mechanical waves A mechanical wave is a wave that is a vibration in matter, transferring energy through a material. Not all waves are like this.

For example, electromagnetic waves such as visible light are not mechanical because they can travel through the vacuum of space to reach us from the sun. Mechanical waves include water waves, sound waves, earthquake waves, and many more.

Like all waves, those of the mechanical variety have peaks, or crests, and troughs. They also have a frequency, which is the number of waves that pass by per second, and a wavelength, which is the distance from one peak to the next, or one trough to the next.

To create a mechanical wave, some initial energy has to be put into it. This is the energy that will then be transferred by the wave. How you provide this energy depends on the medium and type of wave. For example, you could drop a stone in some water to create a water wave. You could also speak loudly to create a sound wave, or you might shake a Slinky up and down to create a wave in the Slinky.

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The Anatomy of a Wave

The Anatomy of a Wave

Shoulder

Least steep part of the wave

Lip

Top most port of the breaking wave

Peak

Highest point of wave

Crest

Unbroken part of the wave

Spray

The spray of water that can be seen as the water breaks

Trough

Lowest part of the wave

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Wave Design

WAVE DESIGN “

Nature does things so efficiently, so why not copy it?

”

­—Mario Romano

A

qua—a new, eighty-two-story apartment tower in the center of Chicago—is made of the same tough, brawny materials as most skyscrapers: metal, concrete, and lots of glass. But the architect, Jeanne Gang, a forty-five-year-old Chicagoan, has figured out a way to give it soft, silky lines, like draped fabric. She started with a fairly conventional rectangular glass slab, then transformed it by wrapping it on all four sides with wafer-thin, curving concrete balconies, describing a different shape on each floor.

Gang turned the façade into an undulating landscape of bending, flowing concrete, as if the wind were blowing ripples across the surface of the building. You know this tower is huge and solid, but it feels malleable, its exterior pulsing with a gentle rhythm.

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Waves in Architecture

WAVES IN ARCHITECTURE

Manila’s new “wavy” mixed-use tower opens in the city’s booming financial district Despite recent geopolitical tensions, The Philippines is

Designed by Brooklyn-based Carlos Arnaiz Architects

projected to have one of the fastest-growing economies

(CAZA), who also has an office in Manila, the 30-story

in the world, and one seeming indicator of that is the

tower was completed this month in the booming Boni-

increasing number of tall corporate towers—some with,

facio Financial District. The building also features three

uh, distinctive designs—that are sprouting up through-

floors of commercial retail and a rooftop restaurant.

out Metro Manila. Another one of those developments is

The building distinguishes itself by the “organic wave

the newly opened City Center Tower, a mixed-use build-

pattern” on its exterior facade, formed by a series of

ing that will house the Philippine headquarters for major

concentric circles that extend across the horizontal axes

tenants like Google, Filipino telecommunications giant

of each floor.

Globe Telecom, and American healthcare companies.

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‘Wave House’ architect translates nature’s forms into residential designs Romano is an adherent of parametricism, a design style that eschews right angles, repetitive flatness, and what the designer-builder calls “authoritarian” box-like structures. Instead, nature’s intricate geometry is replicated —not the natural world’s forms per se (a wave, a field of clouds)—but the behavior that those forms exhibit.

To create the 300 sheets of joined white aluminum that envelop the Wave House, Romano, 48, employed computer numeric control technology.The behavior of nature’s random forms (such as wave patterns) are distilled into algorithms, or mathematical rule sets. Parameters are then tweaked to create novel forms within a computer-aided design application.

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Waves in Archituecture

In Hamburg, a New Musical Landmark for a City With Plans HAMBURG, Germany—After a delay of six years and

about a tenfold increase in costs, a new classical music performance space here is preparing to open its doors.

The Elbphilharmonie, a glass-paneled building mounted atop a former warehouse, includes not just two concert halls but a four-star hotel, a restaurant and residential apartments.

On Nov. 4, a foyer carved out between the old and new buildings—called the Plaza—will open to the public, offering views from 121 feet above the Norderelbe River. The Elbphilharmonie, by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, rises 360 feet above the city like waves of quicksilver and overtakes the Radisson Blu Hotel as its tallest building.

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WAVES IN FASHION

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Waves in Fashion

Alena Akhmadullina Spring/ Summer 2016 Runway.

Alena Akhmadullina Set in a mythical underwater locale, Alena Akhmadullina’s Spring/ Summer 2016 collection proved that fashion is more than pretty dresses and expensive handbags but rather walking artwork. Inspired by Sadko, a medieval Russian epic and Hokusai’s The Great Wave of Kanagawa, Akhmadulina transformed satin, denim, fur and chiffon to look almost otherworldly. The collection’s dreamy color palette

Most unforgettable look of soft aquamarines, sea foam greens and navy blues was complimented by a few unexpected pops of scarlet and lemon.

The designer’s ability to create waves and foam out of denim and fur is truly nothing short of ingenious. This collection’s feminine silhouettes and wispy fabrics demonstrate the designer’s forward-thinking perspective making it unforgettable.

Akhmadullina brought Hokusai’s Great Wave to life in the form of several vibrant dresses. The graphic waves crashing on the transparent fabric draped on the décolletage’s of the models was duplicated on the hemline creating quite the illusion. Not since Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian inspired collection has there been such a natural merging of art and fashion.

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Waves in Fashion

Between the Lines Iris van Herpen called her new collection Between the Lines; and true to form, she crafted, engineered, manipulated, and brought to life designs that defy comparison to anything else in fashion today. But in order to understand the between part, it helps to start with the lines themselves.

Several of the 16 creations were permutations of a process whereby hand-casted transparent polyurethane (PU) was handpainted through injection molding. To get a sense of how much handwork must have been involved, the central dÊcolletage area of the opening look features 32 of these stylized lines—which could just as easily be called gills, blades, or tildes for added flourish. Applied to ultra-sheer silk tulle, they had the impact of body markings or else a patterned second skin. This has been a leitmotif for the Dutch designer, whose use of spiral and tessellation arrangements contributes to the time-transcendent aspect of her work.

But with this collection, she also applied the lines to a black silk gown making the reverse leap from museum-worthy to wearable. The jacket and coat boasting high-contrast white lines stood out, quite literally, for their curving sculpted projections that resembled airplane engines. But they, too, weren’t beyond the range of realistic, at least in relative terms. The black facets covering a jumpsuit reframed the body as a beautiful backdrop of negative space.

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WAVES IN GRAPHIC DESIGN

‘The Night Ocean’ ­—Paul La Farge Paul La Farge’s The Night Ocean (Penguin Press, Mar.) is a complex work of alternate literary history in which a contemporary man becomes obsessed with the nature of the relationship between early 20th century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Barlow, a teenage fan.

Darren Haggar, v-p art director at Penguin Press, hired Will Staehle, who owns the design studio Unusual Co. in Seattle, to do the cover. Haggar described the book, Staehle recalls, as “a tense mystery that had H.P. Lovecraft as a major story element.” Staehle found the premise intriguing. “Once I starting reading the manuscript,” he says, “the intrigue turned into something else: slight obsession, and some ongoing terror, as the book spun its lead character, Charlie, deeper into his downward spiral.”

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After finishing the novel, Staehle had a few immediate thoughts on the cover. “Darren was looking for something suspenseful, with a touch of evil,” he says.

“I began with some primarily typographical options—dripping-liquid lettering; heavier, wavier lettering; and some very thin cursive text.”

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Waves in Graphic Design

Designer Translates Nature’s Jagged Patterns Into Sound Waves It’s a natural human tendency to see patterns and forms in abstract landscapes–we think clouds look like animals and draw constellations in random smatterings of stars.

In her series “Sound Form Wave,” Ukrainian designer Anna Marinenko draws a fresh comparison between visualized sound waves and jaggedly oscillating patterns in our natural environments. Mountain ranges, cityscapes, far-off tree lines, jet streams, and speedboat wakes are juxtaposed with graphics that reconsider their shapes as sound frequencies. The effect is at first beautiful–because the images blend so well. And then, as your eye adjusts, the effect is slightly jarring.

We appreciate the doubletake on these images. Now we’d like to hear what these landscapes actually sound like–is there a conceptual noise piece in Marinenko’s future? We hope so.

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