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Angela Yeung

Student No.: 639042 Semester 1/ 2013 Group 5

virtual EnvironmEnts

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NThe process of designing my lantern began with an inves-tigation of various naturally occuring patterns. Natural pat-terns have been used to derive the basic form of the lantern because they already contain complex rules systems (i.e. al-gorithms). They are based on repetition; thus, significantly simplifies the process of algorithm extraction. Lastly, natu-ral patterns contains ‘moments of transformation’ which can be translated into design and material concepts (Loh 2013).

Analytical drawings were used as a medium to extract the simpliest form from the pattern. This involved adopting dif-ferent ways of observing and analysing the pattern in mul-tiple spatial scales instead of just drawing what you can see at a glance. Four analytical drawings dipicting movement, symmetry or balance were drawn through a recipe. The rec-ipes were a set of rules which described the drawing in the simpliest terms. Through simple, underlying rules, complex patterns can often be generated - with many of these oc-curing in nature.

Ball (2012) explores pattern formation in nature through “simple, local interactions between many components of a system”. The local interactions amongst neighbouring com-ponents creates the pattern through self-organisation and emergence. The rules used to generate these patterns are often mathematical in nature and govern their formation. Some examples which he provided included animal mark-ings, sand dunes and the geometric rock formations of Fin-gal’s Cave. Other interesting emergent patterns and behav-iours that he mentioned include the structure of beehives, the swarming behaviour of fish and birds, vein structure in leaves, foam bubbles and the orderly arrangement of flow-er petals. These served as inspirations to my chosen pattern: the romanesco broccoli.

Poling (1987) provided explanation on Kandisky’s approach to analytical drawings, which guided me through my own drawings. Poling described three stages in the process which resulted in an analytical drawing as the end product. The first stage of analyti-cal approach advanced by Kandisky was to generalise the picture into one simple overall form. Secondly, ten-sion and focal points were represented through vari-ous line weight and styles. The last stage is to further abstract the lines in the most articulate manner.

Aranda and Lasch (2006) explored patterns which often occur in nature that arise due to local interac-tions (emergent patterns) and determined algorithms which governs their formation.


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G As mentioned previously, the pattern that I chose was the romanesco broccoli/ roman cauliflower. It is a vari-ant form of the cauliflower and light green in colour. Its fractal formation give rise to self similarity and an amazing global effect that can be classified as emer-gence. This pattern is dicated by the ultimate rule of nature: the Fibonacci sequence. This, in turn, is an algo-rithm for spiraling (Aranda, Lasch 2006).

The analytical drawing that was later chosen to be used as a foundation of the final lantern represented movement. Repetition of shape represents movement (Loh 2013). As instructed by Kandisky, I found a sim-ple overall form in my pattern and the packing tech-nique described by Aranda, Lasch was used during stage one. The focal point in the stage two drawing is the centre of the Romanesco broccoli. Emphasis was placed on the focal point through the spiraling tech-nique. The last and final stage required further abstrac-tion and simplification. The geometry of the triangles were further abstracted into “arrow-head” shapes. The tension is represented by the decrease in size of each individual shape; this drew attention to the focal point. Therefore, the spiral was unecessary.

Recipe:

1_Divide square into 7 sections with lines inter-secting in the middle of the square.2_Draw 7 spiral arms from the centre of the page. 3_Draw 4 arrow-head shapes on each arm of the spiral. Starting from the outside, each consecu-tive one is decreasing in size. Rotate each consec-utive base shape to the left relative to the previ-ous one.

The main concepts of the recipe are: spiraling, scaling and rotating.

Stage one Stage two Stage three

The Romanesco Broccoli

“Algorithms can be used to describe and simulate cer-tain natural phenomena in the world” (Aranda, Lasch 2006)


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Blossoming Dubai Dubai TowersUtzone Centre wall lamp

British National wildflower Centre

Swanston Academic Building RmIT

The Blossoming Dubai (Petra Archi-tects) and Dubai Towers (TVS) serve as inspiration for the form of the clay model. These structures have a natu-ral process-based design with organic, asymmetrical & curvilinear forms.

The Utzone Centre wall lamp (Doro-thy Jensen) and the British National wildflower Centre (Ian Simpson Archi-tects) has inspired the design of paper emerging form model. The Swanston Academic Building RmIT (Lygons) is an example of complex generative pat-terning. Further inspiration for the pa-per model and panelling pattern has been drawn from it.


This model emerged from analytical drawing and the recipe. All three concepts (spiraling, rotating and scaling) were used during the making of this paper model. Scaling is evident through the decreasing size of individual modules. The local rotation of each module results in a global spiraling effect. This emergent property has been carried through from the naturally occurring pattern to the analytical drawing and finally the paper model.

The formation process behind the “emerging form free from base” paper model uses simple commands like move, copy, scale, mirror, rotate and extrude. Refering to week two’s lecture (Loh 2013) and Ball (2012), these commands are called ‘moments of transforma-tion’. The paper model has been digitised in Rhino 5 with the same commands.

Emerging form: paper model Emerging form: digitised model

“through simple, local interactions be-tween many components of a system, a form of physical computation gives rise to self-organisation and emergent structures and behaviours” (Ball 2012)

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my recipe involves three main concepts: rotating, scal-ing and spiraling. I rotated (revolved) the base shape (a triangle) on its vertical axis to form a cone. Another reason for this is because the Romanesco has a similar conical form. The spiralling effect is emulated by the curvature at the ends of the lantern and will also be evident in the panels. Scaling will be represented by the panels.

Inspiration has been drawn from both the Dubai Tower and Blossoming Dubai tower as the clay model’s form takes a similar organic and curvilinear form.

01_Revolve base shape (triangle) around vertical axis to mimic the shape of a Romanesco

02_Join shapes at base 03_Bend ends to emulate spiraling 04_Hands as context

Emerging form: clay model


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The reference images of the desired lighting effect is of the Light well, the Norte Dame Du Haut and a paper lamp by Hulda Jónsdóttir. The Light well produces direct light and the Notre Dame Du Haut produces diffused light . The diffused lighting ef-fect is much more softer and subtle than direct lights. However, it de-emphasises the corner and edges of the structure. Direct light helps to give an illusion of sharper edges. This is the lighting ef-fect that I will aim to achieve my lantern as I like the proportion of brightness to shadows diffused light provides, and also the sharp edges from di-rect light.

Notre Dame Du Haut, RonchampLight well

A sucessful integration of the two different types of lighting effects is shown by a lamp designed by Hulda Jónsdóttir.

The paper emerging form model will essentially be become the 3D panels of my lantern. Therefore, the lighting effect can be achieved by the strategical positioning of the LED lights relative to the open-ing in the 3D panels. The diagram on the left shows that if the LED is placed further from the opening, the light produced will be diffused. However, if it was to be placed close to the opening, there will be direct light.

Lamp by Hulda Jónsdóttir

Emerging form: paper model Emerging form: Rhino model Customised 3D panel


Proposed design solution


A design process begun with a word of warning: do not ‘over-complicate’ the digital model. If only I had clearly understood the message and heeded the warning! At the beginning of this module, I misinterpreted the word ‘over-complicated’ as having too many different types of panels on the model, or having a form that was so complicated that it was undevel-opable. However, the true intention of the message was to represent the model with as less information as possible in the digital environment. This was made evident in Lost in Pa-rameter Space (Scheurer, Stehling 2011).

In Lost in Parameter Space by Scheurer and Stehling, abstrac-tion and reduction were explored (2011). Abstraction is the development of a model with as little information as possible while still being about the describe the properties of an object without ambiguity. On the other hand, reduction is finding another way of representing data to achieve optimal use of resources such as memory and disk space. The key difference between the two is that abstraction permanently removes re-dundancies, while reduction temporarily removes redundan-cies. The digital model produced in this module is an example of abstraction and reduction. when first feeding information into Rhino 5, abstraction takes place, and to refine the model, reduction must occur. Abstraction occurred during the pan-ellising of the lantern’s basic form as I selected to only cre-ate surfaces and deselected mesh forms, solids and edges. An example where unnecessary information was retained in the digitisation process occurred during the transformation of lines to plans. Lines were used to make flat planes for cus-tomised panels and were forgotten to be deleted before the lantern was panellised. This resulted in redundant informa-tion in the model. Furthermore, one can say that Kandisky’s 3 stages of analytical drawings is the analogue version of the 3D modelling after abstraction and significant reduction.

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During week four’s lecture, Dr Alex Selenitsch identified five types of composition methods: single gesture, assemblage, interference patterns, the pun and resolution. The most rel-evant composition stragegies in regards to designing my lantern are the single gesture and assemblage approach. The single gesture strategy aims to only have one outcome. Simi-larly, the process of designing the lantern may have many different formations; however, there will only be one final design. Another composition strategy that is implemented in my design is the assemblage strategy. It is the collabora-tion of a whole lot of disparate parts with mixed scale and medium. From the analytical drawings, paper model and clay model, an extraction of all the ideas and forms must be made in order to produce the final lantern design.

Thomas Heatherwick is an architect and he gave a speech on his designs on TED talk. The Seed Cathedral is a particularly good example of how Heatherwick uses design to create a spatial effect. The building was made up of “optical hairs”, which enabled the whole building to move with the wind.

“A model, by definition, is always an ab-straction of reality.” (Scheurer, Stehling 2011)


Digitisation process

01_ Took reference pictures of the clay model in orthographic view (i.e. front and top view).

02_Cropped the photos so as to have the ends of the model touch the edge of the photo.

03_Imported photos into digital environment using the ‘Picture Frame’ command. Photos were scaled up until the they were 90cm in length.

04_ Traced four profile curves which delineates the sihouette of the model.

05_Adjusted the height of two profile curves in order to prevent the lofted surface from twisting in on itself.

06_A series of contours were generated from the profile curves using the ‘Csec’ command.

07_Transformed the contour lines into surfaces using the ‘Loft’ command.

08_Used the ‘Cage Edit’ command to adjust minor imperfections.

By producing contours by tracing profile curves, I was able to make the ends of the lantern very sharp (my original intention) in Rhino, which I was not able to achieve with the clay model. Although minor refinements had to be made, this contouring technique was very successful for transferring this particular clay model into the digital realm.

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Eden Project Education Centre Vm House

Evocative and contemporary architec-tural designs provided inspiration for the lantern design. The Eden Project Education Centre’s roofing system is generated from a natural pattern: phyl-lotaxis. Phyllotaxis is essentially an al-gorithm for modelling plant growth. The use of triangular pyramid skylight with a decreasing height offset from the centre of the building has inspired the scaling arrangements of the lan-tern’s 3D panels.

The aesthetic appeal of the Vm House is largely attributed to its facade of sharp, triangular balconies. The offset of the spikes differ and is reminiscent of the point attractor function in Rhino 5. In-spiration has also been drawn from The height offsets of the spikes.

Eden Project Education Centre in the United Kingdom by Grimshaw Architects (2005) & Vm House in Denmark by JSD Architects (2005)

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CUSTOm PANEL DE-SIGN CONCERNING LIGHTING EFFECT

Tight grid: 40 x 20 grid+ maintains shape of original form - difficult to construct- low structural integrity

Normal grid: 12 x 12 grid+ maintains shape of original form to a certain degree + resonably easy to construct+ optimal structural integrity

Loose grid: 10 x 5 grid+ very easy to construct- low structural integrity- loss of organic and curvilinear form

Fixed- low aesthetic quality- no exploration of scaling- no variance in lighting effect

Point attractor: offset greatest on the left

+ variance in lighting effect+ influenced by precedents+ most relevent to design pattern and recipe

Curve attractor: offset greatest at centre

+ variance in lighting effect+ explores concept of scaling in the recipe

- too open- difficult to unroll- weakens structural integrity of lan-tern due to too many openings

+ produces the desired lighting effect+ high constructibility+ influenced by precedents- too many openings

+ produces the desired lighting effect + reasonable constructibility+ influenced by precedents- too many openings


CHOSEN ATTRIBUTES

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The design concept and form shown previously was in fact an entirely new approach to the task from module three. During weeks one to five (module one and two), I had been working with a very different concept derived from an another clay model. The entire form of the original proposed lantern formed a spiral that wrapped around both arms. This concept was abandoned due to its overly flat form and weak con-nections to the recipe. However, I gained invaluable knowledge from making the prototypes of this model, which has ultimately led to the design and construction decisions of my final lantern.

The four prototypes tested:01_structural integrity and constructability02_lighting effect03_material properties

Improvements for design/future prototypes:

01_Too two-dimensionalThe spiral form has a very small cross-sectional area. This led to the redesigning of the lantern’s form.02_Larger tabs The larger tabs will make assemblying the panels togeth-er much easier. The tabs should also be less tapered to the centre as this makes them harder to fold.03_Use black 200gsm cardboardThis creates a starker contrast between light and shadow04_Use dashed cut lines instead of score linesThis allows each panel to be folded both ways.

white card black card white card light effect black card lightubing effect


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Two different types of panels have been used: the 2D tribasic panel and a 3D customised panel. The use of the tribasic panels were mainly due two purposes: to mini-mise the openings and to ensure that the panels were developable.

The 3D panels are arranged into 3 separate strips that wrap around

the lantern. The reason for this was to demonstate the spiralling con-cept in the recipe.

The 3D panels did not reach all the way to the ends of the lantern to ensure ease and comfort of hold-ing the lantern.

orthograhic view

perspective view

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we now enter a new phase: fabrication. In this module, we will now be bringing the lantern from the virtual realm back into the physical environment. Two full-size prototypes were constructed in this module, followed by the final lantern. Undeniably, there will be differences between the virtual and physical models. This is not necessarily a disadvantage as long as the designer realises this and knows how to use fabricating tools to his/her advantage. Hence, the two read-ings were very insightful as they provided knowledge on digital technology used by contemporary designers and consquences for the design.

The three major shifts in the use of digital technology as discussed in week eight’s lecture were software development, computer numerical technology and virtual stimulation and analysis. The shift of software development from two-dimen-sional digital representation to three-dimensional computer modelling and digi-tal fabrication is fairly recent. Before three-dimensional computer modelling was exploited in architectural design, buildings were not that different to hand-drawn designs. CAD (two-dimensional) softwares merely replaced pencils and rulers. In-novation truly broke into architecture with the use of three-dimensional model-ling (like Rhino), allowing architects to energise design thinking and expand the horizons of building forms and construction. In effect, this merged the design and making into one streamline process (Iwamoto 2009). This is what michael Speaks calls “digital intelligence”: “making becomes knowledge or intelligence creation. In this way thinking and doing, design and fabrication, and prototype and final design become blurred, interactive, and part of a non-linear means of innovation.” (Iwamoto 2009) However, like all technologies, there are still gaps between the two. This is where digital fabrication comes into play. Protoypes can be simply and efficiently achieved with CNC machines, laser cutters, water-jet cutters and etcetera.

The fabrication process and the digital model communicates in both ways. Infor-mation is fed to-and-forth, which will effect the lantern construction. The fabrica-tion process serves as a tool to find the gaps between design and making. Any errors found in the prototype can be amended in the digital model before the final lantern construction. This is called an upsteam-downstream process.

Architecture in the Digital Age by Branko Kolarevic explored various fabrication processes (2003). These included: the two-dimensional fabrication, additive fab-rication, subtractive fabrication and formative fabrication. Two dimensional fab-rication includes two-axis CNC cutters which only move in the x and y directions on the plane. 3D printing operates by means of the additive process. 3D models are made by layering power together. In essence, it is adding components to-gether to accumulate the overall object. Once the layering has been complete, a resin is sprayed into the object to solidify and bind the powder. The substractive system is based on milling. It takes material away to form the object. The CNC card cutter we are using for our lantern is a form of subtractive fabrication. The formative fabrication takes materials and manipulates it. Examples of possible manipulations include folding and bending.

The CNC card cutter provides many opportunities for the lantern design. It pro-duces precise panels that would otherwise be manually unachievable. It also al-lows folding, a form of manipulation through score lines. A constraint is that the score lines only allow the panels to fold cleanly in one direction. Although dashed cut lines allows folds on both both sides, it has slits for light to shine through, which detracts from the overall spatial effect of the lantern.



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Properties tested:

01_card thickness (200gsm vs 300gsm)02_line style (score lines vs dashed lines)03_assembly strategy

Adjustment to future prototype:

01_scale down the model by a half02_use another glue (not glue tape) 03_use score lines instead of dashed cut lines for folds04_use a force of 30 to cut 300gsm card05_build two strips at a time and then assemble the whole instead of building strip by strip

Cause of failure: model could not support its self weight

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The second full size prototype further ex-plored:

01_scale 02_material properties (adhesive) 03_assembly strategy04_lighting effect

01_scale 02_material properties (adhesive)

03_construction process 04_lighting effect

Alternations for final model:

01_scale prototype two by a factor of 1.4 (around 60cm) 02_unroll the two pointy ends vertically instead of horizontally

Causes of failure: 01_method of unrolling resulted in ends of lan-tern to be unable to be constructed decently02_inappropriate scale (too small)



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of the entire project and the key themes raised in The third Industrial Revolution (Rifkin, 2011) and a chapter by marble (1991) in the book Building the Future: Recasting Labor in Ar-chitecture (Bernstein, Deamer 2008).

Rifkin (2011) descibes the future of digital design and making. He argues that the shift in technology and way of thinking will trigger a new economic movement and political restructuring. This shift is referred to as the ‘third industrial revolution’ where he proposes that economies should function as a network of systems (much like a network of virtual information) rather than the top-down command (Rifkin 2011). Digital technolo-gy has definitely changed my view on design, making and the context of the built environment. It has opened a whole new world of design possibilities for me. Using BIm, NURBS and parametric modelling, I can potentially design unimaginable geometries and forms that I found near impossible to do in programs such as CAD softwares (e.g. AutoCAD). Rhino 5 has played a large role in making the design of my lantern become reality. without the software, I would have never thought of designing such an undescribable form. I found that technol-ogy has simplified making/ fabrication significantly.

marble (1991) addresses the advantages and disadvantages of risk and certainty in design and how the balance between the two has changed over a temportal scale due to technol-ogy advancemnents. Risk is included in all design processes that require humans (marble 1991). The entire design process of the lantern required a lot of risk-taking and “leaps of faith”. Prototypes were used to test these decisions which had risk factors. However, it was due to these risks taken, that the de-sign can be further refined, contributing to the final design. Also, this is where innovation and imagination of alternative outcomes occur. These alternative outcomes include material choices, panelling options or even the entire form.

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M4 interim