Chinmay_4-6 - Atlas of Novel Tectonics

5/ Variety (Difference) Vs Variation (Self-similarity)

• Repetition in multiple models is necessary to make selections, while to study variation, repetition in single element is necessary.
• The logic of repetition can be applied regardless of content as per Edgar Allan Poe’s theory of composition.
• By the method of repetition patterns are formed, which becomes an essential part of the overall scheme. 
• This states that a single element in architecture will not reveal the organizational possibilities than greater quantities.
• For example, the Michael Schumacher World Champion tower in Dubai by LAVA Architects is based on the geometric laws of snowflakes, in order to obtain an efficient/minimal structure, A series of reflective fins generates the vertical dynamic and gives the building a constantly changing appearance. The fins track the sun, control , control the solar shading and dissolve the rationality of the plan into a continuously evolving building volume.The facade's continuous surface enables curvature with a lot of repetition and the potential for standardization in the building process.

6/ Part to Whole relationships

• Instead of top-down hierarchy which deals with most of the modernist projects, the author suggests a methodology that involves both top-down and bottom-up logics operating in a feedback loop.
• The author states that, hierarchy, in this case is not about power structures but all about material organization. These emergent organizations become legible as whole-whole relationships.

Chinmay_2&3 - Atlas of Novel Tectonics

2/ Difference in Kind / Difference in Degree

• The author used the analogy of the games of chess and go, from Gilles Deleuze to illustrate the difference between classical architecture and their work. Classical architecture has its own clear and fixed identity, like chess elements. Author’s work operates at times like a Go, where each element’s meaning only exist in the contextual relationships with other elements.
• No distinction between ornament and structure.
• The Astana Railway Station in Kazakhstan by Lava Architects represents the similar qualities of difference in degree. The same material is used for the structure as well as aesthetic in varying degree as per the requirements.

3/ The Unformed Generic Form Acquiring Content

• The author says Leonardo da Vinci’s use of stain indicates the emerging possibilities of programs and compositions out of an unspecific form. These compositions occupy the space between the abstract and the concrete. Like Leonardo da Vinci, the authors also start their work from the middle, projecting material into a diagrammatic field.

4/ Similar and Difference

• Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s analogy of a racehorse being closer to greyhound, and a draft horse being close to an ox. Even though they look different they are similar in the level of the performance.
• Elements in a self-similar structure behave differently even they look similar.

Bartels _ Ahamed ( Civilist Store, Berlin)

Bartels _ Ahamed (Deep Decoration by Nina Rappaport)

Bartels _ Ahamed (Deep Decoration by Nina Rappaport)

Deep decoration is a term by Architectural Critic and Curator Nina Rappaport to express a new way of thinking about the relationship between structure, form and aesthetics in architecture.

It is the thoughtful and well-articulated use of patterns and geometry that results in a harmonious relationship between structure, form and aesthetics and not adorning a structure with dissimilar elements.

Sources of inspirations for decoration can be drawn from nature through geometry in the form of fractals, tessellations and structural or growth algorithms.

Deep decoration in architecture is expressed in a unified relationship in function and form that is between structure (bones) and skin (façade).

Deep decoration as an ideal is achieved when structure and skin are one element.

Deep decoration in the form of fractals or tessellations may be used to subdivide interior spaces in many variations to create new spatial effects.

 Deep decoration can also be expressed in the form of an exoskeleton when the structure is expressed more outwardly than the skin such as the body of an arthropod.

Building: TOD’S Omotesando Building Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Total area: 2,448.84 m2

Architect: Toyo Ito & Associates

General contractor: Takenaka Corporation

Structural Engineer: OAK Inc.

Mechanical Engineer: ES Associates Co., Ltd.

Lighting Engineer: Lightdesign Inc.

Manufacturers (furniture): Modar s.r.l.

Fixtures and fittings (shop): Garde U.S. P CO., Ltd.

Image 1

Source: http://www.bustler.net/images/news2/toyo_ito_2013_pritzker_10.jpg

Copyright: Nacasa & Partners Inc.

Image 2

Source: http://c1038.r38.cf3.rackcdn.com/group1/building1552/media/041209_7.jpg

Copyright: Photo © Edmund Sumner

Image 3

Source: http://c1038.r38.cf3.rackcdn.com/group1/building1552/media/concept%201.jpg

Copyright: TIAA

Kate_ Toys ‘R’ Us store

Arus_Djordje_Laurian "Andreas Murkudis Concept Store" 1

Arus_Djordje_Laurian "Andreas Murkudis Concept Store" 2

Husni_Awais_Zeeshan, Gestalten Space

About:

Gestalten specializes in developing content for aficionados of cutting-edge visual culture worldwide. For us, visual culture is the output resulting from the interrelationship of design, art, architecture, photography, and other visual disciplines with each other as well as other areas such as popular culture and music.

Gestalten Space:

• Conceived as an outlet to materialize the world that Gestalten publishes and brings life.
• Gestalten Space opened its doors in its home city Berlin in April 2011. Previously it was only an exhibition gallery in the same space.
• At Gestalten, they present their comprehensive collection of books that they have published to date—both new, as well as coveted, hard-to-find archive titles but also present a striking selection of handpicked and thematically-arranged products by the designers and artists that they have presented through publications.
• Doubling as a platform for exchanging ideas and further enriching and fostering emerging creative processes at the nexus of design and art, the gallery offers an engaging program of exhibitions, lectures, and surprise events.

Arus_Djordje_Laurian "Body Matters", Greg Lynn

-Curvilinearity signifies the principled deformation of a line while organizing many disparate elements continuously
-The gesture maintains openness though and attention to the particular characteristics of the disparate elements which constitute it and give the continues shape its particular curvilinear form
-The abstract forces of their constituent, disparate elements and the retroaction unity by which those points are placed into a relation are expressed along a continuous line
-The gradual dispersal of constituent points in some gesture invites more open readings where the gradual condensation and alignment of elements leads of a greater degrees of unity and closure

Building: China Wood Sculpture Museum
http://www.i-mad.com/#works_details?wtid=4&id=31

Awais Lodhi_Design Intelligence

• Postmodernism, de-constructivism, minimalism and super-modernism are now more historical than contemporary concerns.
• There is now a “A hunt for the next big thing” as the “practice” of architecture is “undergoing remarkable transformation”.
• Institutions, Individuals in the profession, termed as “spotters” are now obsolete and lost in the “tealeaves” and fail to look beyond.
• If sought after, “Signs of a trend already affecting the practice of architecture have begun to appear”.
• This trend is largely driven by a new relationship between “thinking” and “doing” in architecture with the emergence of the knowledge-based economy is now bringing forth “new forms of architectural practice”.
• According to Speaks, Martin Heidegger in his latter writings highlighted technology’s impact on philosophy and on thinking in general.
• For Heidegger, Computation and Cybernetics marked the end or completion of philosophy as metaphysics and anticipated the return of a more “fundamental thinking in abeyance by philosophy.
• But, philosophy throughout history has itself has refused to confront a fundamental question, “what is thinking?”
• Philosophy engaged in “non-essential thinking”, called metaphysics, which sought rational meanings for regulation, which was then, for Heidegger replaced by Science which in the contemporary period provided the essential truth.
• Deleuze in following consorted that, philosophy should not concern itself with discovering and representing metaphysical truths.
• According to Deleuze, every philosopher generated a “plane of emmanence”, a paradigm.
• According to Michael Speaks, for Deleuze, there were three forms of thinking which produced distinct products.
• For Deleuze, Thinking is “pragmatic constructivism” and opposed to calculative thinking, because it inhibits more experimental thinking that produces the “as yet-unthought”.
• Deleuze in Spinoza, differentiate between, for his well known, “plan” and “plane” which resultantly show distinction between metaphysical and experimental thinking.
• Work of Deleuze has however been used, his “plan”, “plane” and “fold”, moreover exploited by creating new metaphysical vanguards.
• Such, exploitation according to Michael Speaks have covered the “more planar significance” of Deleuze’s words and call for more experimental endeavors.
• Speaks, Differentiates between pragmatic methodology and the continental theorists and practitioners.
• Similar to Deleuze’s “plan” and “plane”, Drucker draws distinction between problem solving and innovation.
• Major shifts in the use of prototyping where prototyping was not any longer used to prototype a product for mockups but, where the innovations take place through thinking with and through the prototypes. Hence “the prototypes themselves driving the innovation process”- Michael Schrage (MIT Media Lab Professor).

“for the party is moving to another venue” says Michael Speaks, hinting the great paradigm shift in designerly knowing is already taking place.

Image: The programmed wall - Gramazio & Kohler

Chinmay_Mizan (Analysis of Buchhandlung, Modulor)

Seun_Xochitl_Anna, Fiona Bennett Shop

Mizan_Other Geometries | John Rajchman

• We perceive form from our everyday experience of geometry.
• With the advancement of computer technology Non-Euclidean geometries (double curved) are easily to be recognized.
• The idea of form and functions in Euclidean geometries are differ from the Non-Euclidean geometries.
• ‘Other geometries’ required a different way of thinking  that don’t fit the Euclidean model.
• In orthogonal form, points are fixed and the result is predetermined with a system, but in curvilinear form points are generated through diagram and it becomes less predictable and more plastic.

Greg Lynn, Kleiburg Housing
Location: Amsterdam, 2007
http://glform.com/buildings/transformation-of-the-kleiburg-block

Chinmay_1 - Atlas of Novel Tectonics

1/ Fineness

- Architecture is not a single thing but it deals with multiple models, surfaces and materials operating at different scales.

- Fineness in architecture means the right balance between the material geometry and force.

- Example of Glass sponge structure as fineness, which is also known as the Venus flower basket found in Deep Ocean.

- These are Marine sponges with bio glass fibre skeletons. Their structure is cage like with diagonal members as well. In addition the structure is reinforced by spiral-ribs that prevent the structure from collapsing. These glass fibres are produced at very low temperature and can withstand immense pressure at 10-1000 metres deep under water.  

- The same fineness in structure can be found in Swiss Re headquarters, London by Foster + Partners. The structure has diagonal grid members which resembles to the glass sponge.

- The structure of the building is light with minimum use of material and attaining the maximum stability, just like the structure of glass sponge.

- The cylindrical shape reduces the wind load on the building same as the glass sponge in deep sea. 

Xochitl_Anna "Animate form", Greg Lynn

• Animation implies the evolution of form and its shaping forces, while motion implies movement and action
• Design space conceived as an environment of force and motion
• The forms of a dynamically conceived architecture may be shaped in association with the virtual motion and force
• Topology allows for not just the incorporation of a single moment but rather a multiplicity of vectors, and therefore, a multiplicity of times, in a single continuous surface

• Contemporary animation and special-effects software are just now being introduced as tools for design rather than as devices for rendering, visualization and imaging
• Animate design is defined by the co-presence of motion and force at the moment of formal conception

Topology (from the Greek τόπος, “place”, and λόγος, “study”) is a major area of mathematics concerned with the most basic properties of space, such as connectedness. Topology studies properties that are preserved under continuous deformations, including stretching and bending, but not tearing or gluing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology

Möbius strips, which have only one surface and one edge, are a kind of object studied in topology.




A three-dimensional depiction of a thickened trefoil knot, the simplest non-trivial knot

Admirant Entrance Building, 2010 The Netherlands, Massimiliano Fuksas Architects

http://www.fuksas.it/#/progetti/0506/

KateShelegon_Leap in the Void

http://www.dezeen.com/2011/05/05/une-architecture-at-the-mobile-art-pavilion-byzaha-hadid/

Zeeshan Zaheer (The Genetic Algorithm in Architecture)

Highlights from the Article by Manuel De Landa

• Software of evolutionary processes.
• Study of genes and transfer of genes to their offspring
• Argument: Can revolutionary process replace design? Still deliberate design is crucial component. Algorithm searched need to be sufficiently rich for the evolutionary results to be truly surprising.
• Sequence of operation points must be given in at which spontaneous mutations may occur.
• Difference of intensity spontaneously tends to cancel itself out and in the process; it drives fluxes of matter and energy. Which eventually derives the form out!
• After all, the original model must be endowed with mutation points at just the right places and much creativity will need to be exercised to link ornamental and structural elements in just the right way.
• Topological thinking as third element of the genesis of form.
• Iterations of Vertebrate species : Phylum Chordata and “Tetrapod Limb”

Genetic Metamorphosis

• Linear : extensive (length, areas, volumes)
• Non-linear: intensive (temperature, pressure or speed) which cannot be subdivided.
• Euclidean and Non-Euclidean geometry, using flat spaces and curved spaces. 

 

Project Type: Showrom Building
Client: Leonardo
Design Agecy: 3deluxe
Specs: Commercil Building
Covered area: 2500 sqm
Footprint: 1600 sqm (building only)

Reference:


http://joabusch.com/wp-content/JQN.joabusch.com/PORTFOLIO%20Sites/Leonardo%20Page/LEINARDO%20GlasCube%20-%20Portfolio%20Homepage.swf

Oluwaseun_Readings(In a contemporary mood)

Guggenheim museum bilbao by Frank Ghery 

(http://architecturalmoleskine.blogspot.de/2012/08/f-gehry-guggenheim-museum-bilbao.html)

• To be an innovative architect today, or rather to be an architect of today and to teach students of architecture to "get with" today, architecture must relinquish its nostalgic modernity and get contemporary.
• Contemporaneity lies in this excess desire and in the wish to give modernity a "new look"
• Modernism was good; the contemporary has good fashion sense.
• The contemporary is not synonymous with existing in or representing the present's essence and differs fundamentally from Zeitgeist.
• To become contemporary is an ambition that requires the identification and activation of the field of exhibit-able architectural effect.
• The bests effects are special effects and contemporary lies on them.
• Neo modern pragmatism cannot generate a contemporary project.

Kaohsiun Port Terminal by Reiser and Umemoto. (Photo: Bustler( 13th Dec, 2010) <> http://www.bustler.net/index.php/article/kaohsiung_port_terminal_by_reiser_umemoto/(visited 18 March,2013)

SaM_Welcome

The task of this semester is the design of a store and exhibition space for collector’s items in Berlin.
















The main lineage of exploration in this studio investigates how intensive forces, including solar radiation, weather systems, acoustic forces and wind pressures can be used as means of formation for architectural bodies. Using parametric tools in combination with simulation software results in opportunities to observe the behavior of architectural bodies under ecological pressure
















The architectural body, the launching pad for the investigations in the studio, is comprised by a toystore which is situated as an infill between two buildings in the urban texture of Berlin.

The studio focuses on the use of a contemporary language that includes concepts of architectural discourse. Two differentiating planes of thought form the basis for this semester: Intensive and extensive systems.
















The first complex describes conditions in constant flux, gradually changing phenomena such as weather systems, maritime currents, solar radiation etc. all of this phenomena can be described as intensive forces. Extensive forces on the other hand are constant in their actual representation, they are measurable, eidetic, reduceable and divisible, such as a buildings, components, or the parts of any machine. In this extent the studio deals with both concepts in this project. On the one side the project is massively influenced by ecological pressures, on the other hand components adapt in a parametric fashion to this pressures.
















The studio is driven by the desire to find a differentiated, alternative approach to surface population techniques mainly applying a twofold method oscillating between tactics of component accumulation and massing.
The component driven investigation is in particular informed by environmental pressures. These pressures serve as a testing bed for the behavior of architectural bodies and their economy of form. In this extent the design of the individual component proves to be crucial, as the simplicity of the components forms the trajectories of the universal, complex, reaction triggering the surface population and the effectivity of the design.

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