ARCHITECTURE STUDIO AIR Semerster 1 2013

Steven Andy Cheng Shin LI LIONG546528

PAST EXPERIENCE

My name is Steven Andy Cheng Shin LI LIONG but you can call me Andy. I am from Mau-ritius and currently studying my second year of architecture.

My previous experience with CAD programs was last year during the studio water and also in virtual environments where I use rhino tin my design. Yet, I am still a very beginner in this software and would like to extend my knowledge. This makes studio air perfect for me with the introduction of grasshopper. I also intend to learn revit which I believe is also a great software.

I think I am not a very creative person. Maybe I just need a something to stimulate my creativity and I think CAD programs are good stimulator. Trying and practicing is also the beat way to get work done and the more you work the more you enhance your creativity. I was struggling in the Virtual Environments studio at the beginning in trying to create some forms derived from natural processes but the use of Rhino really helped me to design and create an artefact. In addition, CAD programs make the fabrication of the artefact possible.

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CASE FOR INNOVATION

DESIGN APPROACH

DESIGN PROPOSAL

ARCHITECTURE AS A DISCOURSE COMPUTING IN ARCHITECTUREPARAMETRIC MODELLING

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ARCHITECTURE AS A DISCOURSE 2

“Digital technologies are changing architectural practices in ways that few were able to anticipate just a decade ago”

- Branko Kolarevic

“The implications are vast, as architecture is recasting itself, becoming in part an experimental investigation of topological geometries, partly a computational orchestration of robotic material production and partly a generative, kinematic, sculpting of space”

- Peter Zellner

Architects today are not only the traditional artist who design building facades or the social worker who defines the urban experience. Richard Williams said that ‘Works of Architecture frame our lives; we inhabit them; they define our movement through cities; they moralise and discipline, or attempt to.’ He also stated that architecture is as much as philosophical, social or professional realm as it is a material one. Yet, architects are today even more than that with the development of digital technologies in the field of architecture.

Kolarevic, Branko, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing (New York; London: Spon Press, 2003) Suggested start with pp. 3-62

Williams, Richard (2005). ‘Architecture and Visual Culture’, in Exploring Visual Culture: Definitions, Concepts, Contexts, ed. by Matthew Rampley (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 102-116

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[ ARCHITECTURE AS A DISCOURSE ]CASE FOR INNOVATION

The new role of Architects with Technonology as a new Stimulus

“It is the digitally based convergence of representation and production processes that represents the most important opportunity for a profound transformation of the profession and by, extension the entire building industry.” - Branko Kolarevic

He also added that the digital technology as an enabling apparatus integrates conception and production in ways that are unprecedented since the medieval times of master builders where masons and carpenters design and build themselves the buildings of that time prior to the period of Renaissance. Architects are today able to provide all the details for the construction process of a building while also distributing all the information to other parties within the building industry, acting like a control tower. Branko Kolarevic further added that by digitally producing, communicating and controlling exchanged between the different parties, architects have a central, key role in the construction of buildings like the medieval master builders.

Yet, do architects have the overall control of the construction process? More importantly, do they have the knowledge or are they capable of controlling every aspect of the construction process? They certainly have a central role in the building industry as well as a crucial place in the construction phase today but architects are neither engineers nor masons. They simply have more control over the building process but not the whole control of it. They have a broad knowledge in every aspect in the industry but do not master every one of them.

“Architects are jack of all trades but master of none” With new means of conception and production, the product of the digital zeitgeist, the complex, curvilinear surfaces and their corresponding are transforming cultures, societies and economies. Branko argued that while technology enabled them to break the monotony of the orthogonal and the linear, an unknown geometry also emerged. Architects and their works are changing the norms of beauty and function as Eero Saarinen acknowledged that the new forms derived from new advances in the building technology are purely aesthetic driven. Architects are writing a new history and creating new concepts about aesthetics. Branko stated that the new architectural thinking is ignoring the conventions of style and aesthetics.

Ali Kriscenski (2008), http://inhabitat.com/anti-smog-architecture-a-catalyst-for-cleaner-air-in-paris/

Lance Hoosey (2013), http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2013/03/19/why-architects-must-lead-sustainable-design

As the world become more aware of the crucial importance of sustainability, the built environment can play an important role in promoting such concepts. Since architecture has the ability to transform cultures and reform social norms, its practitioners can act as leaders and role models, educators and social reformers. An architect has today the responsibility to tell and advise his client what and how to makes a building energy efficient, non-polluting and thus sustainable. Since the built environment has a great visual impact and can reflect a philosophy, architects must create awareness among the public through their designs. In 2006, the American Institute of Architects wisely adopted Architecture 2030’s “2030 Challenge,” an initiative seeking carbon neutrality in the industry by 2030.We believe we must alter our profession’s actions,” the AIA 2030 Commitment says, “and encourage our clients and the entire design and construction industry to join with us to change the course of the planet’s future.” (Lance Hosey, 2013)

Fig 1. Anti-Smog Project

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Anti-Smog is a parasite project in Paris dedicated to promote the last innovations of sustainable developments in urban areas in terms of housing and transport. The project aims at inventing a new architecture able to disasphyxiate the area in which Paris is already set up. It consists of reducing atmospheric pollution of the area by capturing the CO2 and thus improving the quality of air. In addition, the Anti-Smog is in osmosis with its surroundings and is an architecture that interats completely with its context that is climatic, chemical, kinetic or social to better reduce our ecological print in urban area. The building offers recreational areas for the city such as gardens, pools, galleries, and commerce while the Wind Tower produces enough energy for the entire neighbourhood. Moreover, the tower adjust itself to a specific parameter which is the direction of the dominating wind. Such design technology will be discussed later in the paramatric modelling chapter.

Besides this the building is a museum and a learning centre on renewable energies. Ali Kriscenski (2008) describes the prototype as more than just an example as sustainable design. She stated that Callebaut’s ‘Anti Smog: An Innovation Centre in Sustainable Development’ is a catalyst for cleaner air.

Fig 2. Anti-Smog Project

Fig 1 & 2. Anti-Smog Tower project designed by Vincent Callebaut Architectures

http://vincent.callebaut.org/page1-img-ourcq.html

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“Some architects are exploring the spatial reals of non-Euclidean geometries, and some are basing their spatial investigations on topology, a branch of mathematics..” - Branko Kolarevic

With new design approaches such as parametric modelling and biological morphogenesis, architects are not artists anymore but rather a mathematician or scientist who design equations using parameters. Architects do not focus in the form making but on the relationships and interconnections between objects or parametric equations which define the resulting geometry. (Branko Kolarevic, 2003) Woodburry (2010) even said that to be able to master the new technological skills together with the new approaches developed, it requires architects to be part designer, part computer, part scientist and part mathematician.Some architectural projects were even named after their topological origins such as: The Mobius House (1995) and The Torus House (2001)

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Kolarevic, Branko, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing (New York; London: Spon Press, 2003) Suggested start with pp. 3-62

Woodbury, Robert (2010). Elements of Parametric Design (London: Routledge) pp. 7-48

Halldóra Arnardóttir, Javier S. Merina, http://storiesofhouses.blogspot.com.au/2006/09/mbius-house-in-amsterdam-by-ben-van.html

Fig 3, 4 & 5, http://www.unstudio.com/projects/mobius-house

Fig 3. Mobius House concept drawing

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Diagram of 24 hours of living

The scheme to convey these features was found in the Möbius band, a diagram studied by the astrologist and mathematician, August Ferdinand Möbius (1790-1868). By taking a rectangular strip of paper and marking its corners, A -superior- and B -inferior- in one side, and C -superior- and D -inferior- on the other, the Möbius band is constructed by twisting and joining corners A with D, and B with C. The result is a strip of twisted paper, joined to form a loop which produces a one-sided surface in a continuous curve. It is a figure-of-eight without left or right, beginning or end.

By giving the Möbius band a spatial quality, the architect has designed a house that integrates the programme seamlessly, both in terms of circulation and structure. Movement through this concrete loop traces the pattern of one's day activities. Arranged over in three levels, the loop includes two studies (one on either side of the house for the respective professions), three bedrooms, a meeting room and kitchen, storage and living room and a greenhouse on the top, all intertwined during a complex voyage in time.With its low and elongated outlines, the house provides a link between the different features of its surroundings. By stretching the building's form in an extreme way and through an extensive use of glass walls, the house is able to incorporate aspects of the landscape. From inside the house, it is as if the inhabitant is taking a walk in the countryside.

The perception of movement is reinforced by the changing positions of the two main materials used for the house, glass and concrete, which overlap each other and switch places. As the loop turns inside out, the exterior concrete shell becomes interior furniture - such as tables and stairs - and the glass facades turn into inside partition walls.The contortions and twists in the house go beyond the mathematical diagram. They refer to a movement that has moulded a new way of life as a consequence of using electronic devices at work. Ben van Berkel has managed to give an additional meaning to the diagram of the Möbius band, where its new symbolic value - characterised by the blurred limits between working and living - corresponds to the clients' way of life. (halldóra arnardóttir)

Moreover the spatial concept of the Mobius House was used for further experimentation to be later implemented in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. This is the typical approach where precedents are used for inspiration.

Fig 4. Mobius House concept drawing Fig 5. Mobius House by UNStudio