PART B. EOI IIdesign approach

From the list of topics provided, our group had decided to specialize in “Structure” as a starting point. We were interested in how the freeway art can be structurally stable on its own and have done some research looking at relevant precedents.

B.1 Design Focus

Precedent __British Library Roof

The British museum is a good example of the old and new mixed together. Foster proposed glazing the whole court which is about 6,100 square metres, making it the largest enclosed top-lit space in Europe. The Great court became the central focus in the museum enabling a fluid circulation. From there, people could choose to go to any gallery space. The unique triangulated glazed canopy of the great court is made up of intricate steel and 3312 panes of glass lattice-work which gives the impression that the roof floats above the neo-Greek circular reading room. The main idea behind the design was to give the user a different view with every step. As they make their way throughout the Great Court, a different vista can be seen.Engineers Buro Happold and steel and glass contractor Waagner-Biro worked along with Foster+Partners on this project using Relax.cpp. The latter is a development of analyo.c which was written specifically for this project. The program uses Alistair Day’s Dynamic Relaxation technique and makes no assumption of small rotations. Instead rotations are handled by a rotation matrix in which the rotation is stored as a vector with magnitude equal to one half the tangent of the rotation angle. (http://people.bath.ac.uk/abscjkw/Relax/)

Certain complications were encountered with this daring challenge. Firstly the reading room is not in the middle of the courtyard and although the heights of the buildings appear the same, they are not. Also, the reading room was weak and would not have been able to support the roof, so certain amendments have been made to strengthen the circular room. 20 column cylinders have been arranged around the reading room, concealed behind a stone cladding, to take the loads. The lattice steel shell forms both the primary structure and the framing for the glazing system, which is designed to maximise daylight and reduce solar gain.It was a planning requirement that the new roof was not visible behind the south front. Hence, the shell roof was formed as a toroid. The roof lattice consists of 6,000 individual members that fit together exactly. It was important that these steel members were manufactured with great precision. Radial elements span out from the reading room and are connected by two opposing spirals to form a lattice, resulting in no two steel members and glass panes being similar.

10 20 30 40 50

1.25

1.0

0.75

0.5

0.25

B.2 Case Study 1.0_British Library roof

For case study 1.0 we created a definition using grasshopper and the lunchbox plugin seeking to reverse engineer the steel and glass lattice-work of the british library roof.

Diagrams in the horizontal axis represent the number of grid divisions which output as triangular faces and those in the columnar arrangement represent the dilation of the parabolic profile which contributes towards the funnel-like shape.

Playing around with the parameters gives us different iterations. When we increase the grid divisions, the project becomes more complex. Another way of altering the design is to change the magnitude of the shape which is shown along the y-axis. At 0.25, one can barely regard the shape to be funnel-like.

Precedent_Beijing National Stadium

The main idea that they wanted to stick to throughout the whole process was to build something that will still be used after the Olympic Games. They wanted to design something that would still attract the public and perk up this part of Beijing. From afar, the project looks like a huge collective shape, like a vessel whose undulating rim echoes the rising and falling ramps for spectators inside the stadium. The building is round in shape and has a load bearing structure all around the building, which also gives the impression that it is penetrating the building at the top. From afar, the building has a clear-cut geometry and the overall configuration of lines seems rational. When one comes closer, huge separate components looking like a chaotic thicket of supports can be seen. The structure is overwhelming with beams and stairs all over the place.

Paths interlock, criss-cross horizontally, diagonally and vertically in a chaotic manner. The space surrounding the interior of the stadium is façade, structure, decoration and public space altogether.The real potential of the project lies in the fact that it is not a mere Olympic sports arena for one particular occasion; it is an urban site, linking the city outside and the interior of the stadium. The stadium looks complex but yet it is simple. It is purely structural, the façade is the structure. The structural elements mutually support each other and converge into a spatial grid-like formation, in which facades, stairs, bowl structure and roof are integrated. The make the roof waterproof, the spaces in the structure are filled with a translucent membrane.The bowl itself is homogenous and simple. The structure cannot be seen from inside to minimize distraction so that spectators can focus on the games. An acoustic ceiling hides the structure.

B.3 Case Study 2.0_Beijing National Stadium

A B

1

2

3

For Case Study 2.0, our group has chosen to study the Bejing National Stadium because it is completely structural, which is the direction that we are following. Compared to the British Library’s roof structure, this building is expressive and tedious. We have reverse engineered the Bird’s Nest using Grasshopper and ended up with a matrix whereby the x-axis demonstrates a different number of control points used and the y-axis illustrates how different positions of attractor points around the geometry modify the spread of the geodesic curves.

The most successful outcome according to me would be the last set of drawings because we got rid of the quite big gap in the south-east. Similar to Case Study 1.0, when increasing the control points from A to D, we notice that the structure becomes more complex and interesting. In A, we used 25 control points which makes the geodesic curves span more across the surface. In each step, the number of control points has been increased by 25 points and the outcome that ressembles the original project the most would be in D with 100 control points.

C D

The backstory_

B.4 Technique: Development

Based on the feedback obtained in the tutorials, we have tried to narrow down the topic “Structure” because it is quite broad. As a group we have chosen to explore into more detail “Aggregation”. Aggregation has connotations of growth as it represents elements coming together to make an overall form. An interesting idea would be to have a structure that would grow over time relative to the amount of trash dumped. We have used computation and parametric models to explore different forms of aggregations. Our exploration can be broken down into three parts. Fractal aggregation, Self organising Aggregation and Explicit Aggregation.

One of the greatest threats to the city of Wyndham is the negative stigma it is gaining due to the growing mountain of trash visible in the distance of our site. A recent newspaper article reveals the fear local residents have of the area becoming the waste capital of Victoria. This freeway art could be an opportunity to highlight the issues of excessive consumption and waste. It could have a positive impact on the mindset of people and might even encourage recycling. The freeway would be the ideal place to expose such a structure as it gives maximum exposure.

“The potential and the relevance of aggregate architectures lie in their ability to continuously adjust to system-external and system-internal parameters... Thus the investigation of potential architectural applications is both a relevant and unexplored branch of design research.”

Achim Menges

Inspired by the manufactured landscapes captured by Edward Burtynsky which express the atypical beauty in the aggregation of trash, our group has chosen to explore this as a technique for the design of the border crossing and gateway into Wyndham

Precedent_Edward Burtynsky, Oxford tyre pile

Precedent_Aranda Lasch, Morning Line

This precedent gives a good idea of the type of structure we want to achieve for the gateway and border crossing design. It is interesting how they used the same geometry to get 2D patterns sprawling on the floor and linking the two separate chunks together.

Fractal Aggregation_Matrix exploration

We were interested in the way fractals have been used as aggregate at different scales to realise an overall form.

Fractal Aggregation_prototypes

We made a various prototypes, exploring the method in diffirent ways but decided that it was not the technique we sought to persue.

Precedent_Achim Menges, Designed Particles Aggregations 02

We did a lot of research to find appropriate precedents in order to know what was achievable at our stage. This project by Achim Menges is an installation of recursive aggregates. The components interlock and are arranged in an interesting way. It focuses on the emission path, pouring speed and how time affected density.

Precedent_Karola Dierichs, Aggregate Architectures

Similarly, this project explores how aggregates can develop in their unrestrained form. It highlights how an aggregate system is composed of a loose arrangement of elements, whereby each part finds its own stable

position. This project is also an installation. So far there is no built project that employs aggregation as a base technique.

Self-organising Aggregation_Prototype

Self-organising Aggregation_Matrix exploration

Taking an element we created a recursive linework wich would interlock with other elements. The behavioural aspect of these elements could not however be modelled in grasshopper.

We dropped the identical elements from the same height, letting it adjust naturally to its surrounding components.

For experimentation purposes, we used a line attractor technique to predict the density of the aggregate elements along an emission path. The human acted like a robot to drop the elements in a systematic way.

Through these tests, we were able to make wall-like structures and arches.

Explicit Aggregation_Prototype

This prototype demonstrates how the elements are connected to each other and how they can grow out in any direction they want. Each circle has eight slits which means eight different directions for the components to follow. It is a method we came up digitally to express addition to a structure.

Here we are interested in the angles of connections and the paths these create. There are countless possibilities for the final structure depending where the joints are placed.

Explicit Aggregation_Prototype

This precedent is one we were particularly interested in studying in more detail. The Kokkugia research is closely related to the previous prototype we made because of the connections between each element. There are three prossibilities per element due to the number of branches the latter have.

We reverse-engineered the Kokkugia project and made a prototype to understand better how the connections work and how we would be able to use this method to develop our final design.

Explicit Aggregation_Matrix exploration

Based on a rule of connection, we were able to explicitly define the aggregation.

We then input a different geometry to generate greater flexibility in the resulting form. Instead of the three-legged element of the Kokkugia, we used a tripod-like geometry with four legs, extending the ways in which the final structure can be achieved.

Aggregation is thought to be relevant for our design because:

1. It has been inspired by local issues and is therefore contextually relevant

2. It has potential for growth, which symbolises the increasing waste from the city which we want to emphasize.

3. As it is on the forefront of design research it will contribute to contemporary architectural discourse.

4. By incorporating local issues, we are building on and contributing to existing discourse on the issue.

In conclusion, our technique would benefit the City of Wyndham as it is inspired by and addresses local issues. At this stage, we have explored our options and worked with a lot of prototypes because it is a better way of visualising what can be done and what is not achievable. For the first part of this project, we focused on enlarging the breadth of our design. We shall now choose a method and work in depth with it.

Our group is leaning towards the explicit aggregation because we are interested in the connection of the elements and also because self-organising aggregation has too many constraints attached. It requires a robotic technology that is hard to acquire and the process cannot be modelled digitally.

Conclusion