VICTOR LUDESIGN STUDIO AIRTHE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

S E M E S T E R 2 2 0 1 5

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| 2 CONTENT

CONTENT 3 |

contents4 Introduction

Part A CONCEPTUALIZATION

6 A.1 Desgin Futuring

8 MAD: Beijing 2050

12 The Building on the Water

16 A.2 Design Computation

18 Sagrada Familia

20 New Terminal at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport

22 A.3 Composition/Generation

24 Centre Pompidou Metz

26 Galaxy SOHO Beijing

28 A.4 Conclusion

29 A.5 Learning Outcomes

30 A.6 Appendix

30 Algorithmic Sketches

32 Reference

34 Figures Table

| 4 INTRODUCTION

My name is Shuchen Lu. Actually my Medi-care card displays Shuchen “Victor” Lu.

Victor is my English name, which was selected randomly in an English class when I was in Year 7. I like its meaning so Victor has been with me for ten years.

I grew up with my grandparents in southwest part of China. There were a lot of mountains and rainy days in my memory. My grandfather was a hy-draulic engineer, who took charge of construc-tion cost estimation and design. I often played beside his desk, and that was the first time I touch and see design and construction drawings in my life. However, I never think about I would do a similar job to him until I migrated to Melbourne.

My family moved to Melbourne since 2011. And I initially planed to take a commerce degree in university, but I was surprised to found most of my classmates in high school and friends were in commerce degree when I looked around. I wanted to be different from them, then I took the way of architecture.

I have three points in my philosophy of architec-ture: a. To solve the problem with human living space takes all priority of architecture. Archi-tecture first of all has to solve and optimize the space utilizing. b. Architecture is solid history, so it has to reflect current aesthetics and social value. c. Architecture is an art of future. It faces to fu-ture and has to beyond present, where it stands on. Therefore, it could be seen that my projects on right hand side were very simple and linear (one was for Studio Water and another was Stu-dio Earth) . I used to think a crazy non-linear form makes nothing to architecture and I thought some of architects nowadays to create a form only because it is cool. Especially more and more unbelievable crazy form have being generated since computational design popularized.

But now, I changed my mind after taking Studio Air. I hope Studio Air could give me more inspira-tion and new idea.

12 3 4

1&2 Earth Studio project: Se-crete Pavilion

3&4 Water Studio project: Studly Park Boat House

INTRODUCTION 5 |

| 6 PART A

PART A CONCEPTUALIZATION A.1 DESIGN FUTURING

PART A 7 |

1 | 2 1. Figure 1 Floating Island Model of Beijing 2050

2. Figure 2 Photograph of The Building on the Water

| 8 PART AFigure 3 People’s Park of Beijing 2050

PART A 9 |

MAD:Beijing 2050

Beijing has been the capital city of China for over two hundred years. Since CCP established

People’s Republic of China on 1949, Beijing was con-structed as a communist capital, which fellow the example of former Soviet Union. A lots of grand build-ings, including a new Great Hall of the People and Tian’an Men Square, were to be built from scratch. Those architecture have strong flavour of communist ideology: grand, high and non-humanistic.

MAD released this imaginary proposal project, Beijing 2050, to state a beautiful vision for Beijing on the post-political period. As known, Beijing is currently struggling with air population, congestion due to large population. This proposal design a sustainable, natural friendly city to this large capital, which pro-vides people better living environments and sustain-able future.

Tian’an Men Square was built as the “red center” in this socialistic capital city for the political gather-

ing. It has bluestone blocks flooring as large as the size of fifty Macau without any trees. In MAD’s proj-ect, Tian’an Men Square will be covered with tresses, it looks like the Central Park in New York City. In the post-political age, China no longer need a place for political gathering, and the party do no need such a large square to emphasize their power. Tian’an Men Square changes into People’s Park to let more peo-ple to enjoy their urban life freely. Trees, which are treated as the natural air filler, will provide more fresh air to the capital to deal with air pollution. “In 2050, Tiananmen Square could be an urban space filled with life and the green heart in the center of Beijing “1. By reviewing the history of human urbanization, it was clearly that people initially would like moving into the concrete forest and then realized returning nature was the best way to continue human civiliza-tion. This case provides a new way for that.

| 10 PART A

Floating Island over the CBD

The CBD in Beijing was built according to a west-ern vision of modernization created in the last

century. MAD jumps ahead and create a new CBD centre for the post-western, post-industrial society. It could be predicated that the popula-tion of the capital city will not decrease. How should we solve the decreasing living space with increasing population? The Floating Island would be a option. It r ises up from ground and make a

horizontal connectivity in air on Beijing. The future of a city needs to be interrelated rather than a sea of individual buildings, which is striving to be taller than each others. People’s need is a com-plexity, and the Floating Island provide a solution to people to deal with multi-need in one place. It releases out a huge amount of energy to urban life and solve the current traffic congestion issue due to inefficient mobility with Beijing city.

Figure 4. Floating Island

PART A 11 |

Figure 5. Floating Island

| 12 PART A

THE BUILDING ON THE WATEROffice building of Shilian Chemical Factory, Jiangsu, China By Alvaro Siza

This is the first project Alvaro Siza made in China. As an architect, whose personal style is significantly obvious, Av-

aro Siza gives this factory architecture a poetic prospect--A white concreted building on a reflective pond.

Conventionally, chemical factory is a ugly and dirty place in our mind, especially, the chemical factories in some de-veloping countries like China, whose pollution abatement technology and regulation are insufficient. The image of those factories usually with some high chimneys, gray-brown smoke plume and polluted sewage. However, Alvaro Siza’s practice turned these over in the case.

The office is built on a discarded sewage pound. This is a example of re-utilizing of factory facility. Siza used streamline geometry as the form of the whole building to create a neat space. This project provides another possible view of factory

Figure 6. Bird View of the Building on the Water

Figure 7. The Building on the Water

PART A 13 |

Figure 7. The Building on the Water

| 14 PART A

PART A 15 |

architecture, which the factory could become such beauti-ful and make human and environment in harmony. The fac-tories is no longer a place, which is dirty and ugly, people do not to want to go. Nowadays, the population is still increas-ing and we are approaching to imitation of land carrying capacity . The industrial area finally will meet the urban area although people currently zone them away separately. The Building on the Water by Siza gives us a brand new solution for future, which lead the industrial area to be integrated into urban area harmoniously.

Figure 8. Top view of the Building on the Water

| 16 PART A

PART A CONCEPTUALIZATION A.2 Design Computation

PART A 17 |

1 | 2 1. Figure 9 Internal view of Sagrada familia

2. Figure 10 Terminal 3 at Shenzhen International Airport

| 18 PART A

SAGRADA FAMILIABY Antoni Gaudí

The death of Gaudi left so many regrets to world. Uncompleted Sagrada Familia was one

of these regrets.

1883, Antoni Gaudi took the charge of designing and constructing this minor basilica 2. As he said, God never gives us straight line. Therefore, Gaudi designed this church with a complicated three dimensional shape in hyperboles, parabolas and conoids etc. These advanced design resulted in the difficulty and delay in the real construction of this church.

Over one century, the construction of this building had been suspended to waiting for the construc-tion method and techniques available. Even so, people still can not replicate Gaudi’s fabulous idea.

Thanks to modern computation softwares, Gau-di’s imagination could be reverse engineered. Those software nowadays allow architects to investigate and understand the complexity of Gaudi’s design based on current built structure. Luckily, through years of effort, Sagrada Familia restarted to build and is planning to be finalized by 2026 3.

In addition to computational software reverse en-gineering. Modern 3D modelling and fabrication technology push the construction of this church into a new stage. 3D modelling allows architec-ture to do experiment with computer to find the proper form and structure of the towers. And 3D printing accelerates the process of construc-tion. Besides, parametric designing and BIM tools provides a opportunity for interdisciplinary col-laboration. These modern technology allows old master’s design to be shiny brightly.

Figure 11. Sagrada Familia

Figure 12

Figure 13

PART A 19 |

SAGRADA FAMILIABY Antoni Gaudí

| 20 PART A

NEW TERMINAL AT SHENZHEN BAO’AN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

The construction of new terminal at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport was the major

governmental projects of Shenzhen City 2010 4.

the computational software to optimize the sur-face mesh to minimize them into five major types, which decreases the cost of construction 6.

Shenzhen is located on Pearl River Delta, where is the modernist and most dynamic ar ea in south part of China. The prosperity of market and buss economical activities push the demand of air travel. Therefore, a large-scale terminal was call-ing to be here. However, Shenzhen is a city which lacks of basic energy of production. To balance the energy consumption of such a large-scale architecture and condition of the city is the key to deliver the design of this largest public architec-ture in Shenzhen.

FUKSAS Italy won the competition of the new terminal. They used computational software to estimate sunshine duration each day on this site. Over 3o,000 skylights were built on roof, which was estimated to save over 4,7200 kw/h electricity to this city 5. Meanwhile, the computational aid design avoids terminal to overheat by sun in the afternoon. In addition, free-form surface required high standard structural design, which would pushed the construction cost up. Architect utilized

Computer aided design nowadays help architect to not only find the form of architecture, but also figure out the structural problems.

Figure 14. 3D Perspective of N

ew Term

inal at Shenzhen Inter-national A

irport

Figure 15. Surface Construction

PART A 21 |

Figure 16. Internal Image of N

ew T

erminal

| 22 PART A

PART A CONCEPTUALIZATION A.3 Composition/Generation

PART A 23 |

1 | 2 1. Figure 17 Centre Pompidou Merz

2. Figure 18 Galaxy SOHO Beijing

| 24 PART A

CENTRE POMPIDOUMETZ

The first decentralised satellite of a french museum, the Centre Pompidou-Metz is a

masterpiece of contemporary architecture. The basic shape of this huge building is a hexagon, although abstract roof cover its real shape. It has over 8000 square meters rood cover, which was originated from traditional Chinese straw hat by Shigeru Ban 7.

Computational design played a significant role in this project. The major component of this build-ing are three cuboid exhibition halls. And the parametric design covers them with a free-form surface. The architect generated a single mesh unit with computer, and then flew these single unit onto the surface to get the mesh.

As know, timber is not prone to extremely bend. Computational design optimized the outcome of mesh, and classified different single units into one major types, which benefits to save the cost of construction. Meanwhile, computational design helped architect to deal with bending issue. It re-solved the whole mesh with many nodes, in order to fabricate each single mesh unite separately

Conceptualized by the architects Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines, with architect Philipp Gumuchdjian

Figure 19. Centre Pompidou Metz

PART A 25 |

and assembly them in site easily.

In this case, computational design not only gener-ated the form of the architecture, but also help architects to make the project to realize in reality easily. We could say that parametric design and 3D modelling are not a tool only for exploring geometry. They could be applied to manufacture stage to deal with fabrication issue.

Figure 20. 3D Modelling of CPMFigure 21. Timber Work of CPM

| 26 PART A

Ga

lax

y SO

HO

Be

ijing

Zaha Hadid

2011

Personally, Zaha’s projects initially make me bias parametric and computational design. It was

hard to love those large-scale curvaceous mon-sters. It could be questioned that what role archi-tect play as behind the computational design? Is only to select a beautiful result of the shapes computer generated? Galaxy SOHO Beijing was built with those questions 2011 in China.

China is in rapid development period in recent three decades. Westernization and moderniza-tion disorderly are spreading everywhere in China, especially in some mega-city. Those city became the experiment land to architects all over the world. Zaha Hadid is one of the hottest architects in Chinese market. The reason of popularity of her designs in some governments is some local rulers think they need such a distinctive landmark to show their power and special political aesthetics, while Zaha indeed is such an architect, who has strong personal style and characteristics.

For architecture itself, Galaxy SOHO is a good project. Aesthetically, it really remind people of the galaxy with its beautiful curvaceous form. Parametric design enables the 360-degree spatial fluency 8. It can not be achieved without mod-ern computational generation. Only parametric modelling could realized this unparalleled shape and form.

However, computer could not take all jobs from architect completely. When architects are eman-cipated from massive proposal drawings, they should move to other important work such as context analysis. Architecture reflects the social aesthetics and value, which were built up over the history. Therefore, architecture should closely relate to its context. Galaxy SOHO was built on Beijing, which has over 3,000 years history. Such a post-modern architecture looks incompatible to its surroundings. Computer does not know his-tory but architect does. If more context could be reflected on this huge project, it would be much better.

PART A 27 |

Figure 22. Galaxy SOHO Beijing

Figure 23. Urban Context of Galaxy SOHO

| 28 PART A

Part A CONCEPTUALIZATION

A.4 Conclusion

From the exploration of design futuring, it could be seen that human’s society is return to nature

because of the contradiction between dwin-dling land resources and expanding population. How to integrate modern civilization with nature harmoniously is the problem, which the designers and architects should consider.

Computation provides designers and architects more opportunity and possibility, while people still need to think about how make the design remain a human-oriented rather than the random result of computer generation like Galaxy SOHO, which was criticized in Part A.3. However, computa-tional design is still a good thing to lead design go towards future and further.

PART A 29 |

Part A CONCEPTUALIZATION

A.5 Learning outcomes

Before I stared this subject, all my design were initially generated with pen and paper. I often

generated my conceptual shape and form in mind and then draw them out on the paper and only use computer to model it because I need 3D rendered perspective.

Also, it could be said that I hate parametric de-sign before I took Studio Air because personally I do not like non-linear form and “crazy” stuff.

With theory learning in Part A, I realize the com-putational and parametric design is not only for “crazy” form and shape. They are very useful to assist design to move towards more efficiency, logic and convenience.

| 30 PART A

A.6 Appendix Algorithmic Sketches

MODELLING FOR CANTON TV TOWER

I used to try make a model of Canton TV Tower only by Rhinoceros, but I failed. The massive

mash surface is quite hard to draw one by one although the rule of their generation could be clearly identified.

With further learning of algorithmic sketches with Grasshooper, I found this work became quite easy to complete.

Firstly, just draw three circles in Rhinoceros as the control lines of the whole body. Then, use dived curve command to dived each circle into same segments. Lastly, just with Geodesic tag, a beauti-ful mesh could be generated.

This process is not quite complicated but it re-mains me to rethink the way and method the architecture I saw before to generated.

PART A 31 |

| 32 PART A

A.6 Appendix References1. ‘Beijing 2050’, MAD Architect, 2010, <http://www.i-mad.com/work/beijing-2050/?cid=4>[accessed 9th August 2015]

2. 3. Mamoou-Mani, Arthur, ‘Marc Burry, The Sagrada Familia and the SG11 Sound Responsive Wall’, WeWantToLearn.net, 2011, <http://www.achimmenges.net/?p=5173>[accessed 10th August 2015]

4. ‘Ten Costly Architecture in China’, China.com, 2011,< http://mili-tary.china.com/aerospace/domestic/11162375/20150115/19211492_all.html>[accessed 10th August 2015]

5. 'Misunderstood the Design of New Terminal', MyDrivers.com, 2013, < http://news.mydrivers.com/1/288/288275.htm> [accessed 11th August 2015]

6. Helbig, Thorsten and Kamp, Florian, New Terminal 3 for Shenzhen Bao’an Airport: a 1250m long structure (Knippers Helbig Advanced Engineering, 2011), pp.3-7

7. ‘Centre Pompidou-Metz / Shigeru Ban Architects’, ArchDaily, 2011, < http://www.archdaily.com/490141/centre-pompidou-metz-shigeru-ban-architects> [accessed 11th August 2015]

8. ‘Galaxy SOHO by Zah Hadid Architects’, Dezeen Magazine, 2012 <http://www.dezeen.com/2012/10/29/galaxy-soho-by-zaha-hadid-architects/>[accessed 11th August 2015]

PART A 33 |

A.6 Appendix Figures table

Figure 1. Floating Island Model of Beijing 2050<https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/71/4d/97/714d975b14ae805a95f74ad4c238f4f4.jpg>[assessed 10th August 2015]

Figure 2. Photograph of the Building on the Water< http://static3.uk.businessinsider.com/image/54cf90d5dd0895f54e8b45d> [assessed 10th August 2015]

Figure 3. People’s Park of Beiijing 2050 Figure 4. Floating Island Figure 5. Floating Island< http://www.i-mad.com/work/beijing-2050/?cid=4>[assessed 10th August 2015]

Figure 6. Bird View of the Building on the WaterFigure 7. The Building on the WaterFigure 8. Top view of the Building on the Water< http://static3.uk.businessinsider.com/image/54cf90d5dd0895f54e8b45d> [assessed 10th August 2015]

Figure 9. Internal view of Sagrada familia< http://gregannandale.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Barcelona-La-> [assessed 11th August 2015]

Figure 10. Terminal 3 at Shenzhen International Airport<http://www.fuksas.com/en/Projects/Shenzhen-Bao%E2%80%99an-International-Airport-Terminal-3-Shenzhen> [assessed 11th August 2015]

Figure 11. Sagrada FamiliaFigure 12. Sagrada FamiliaFigure 13. Sagrada FamiliaMamoou-Mani, Arthur, ‘Marc Burry, The Sagrada Familia and the SG11 Sound Responsive Wall’, WeWantToLearn.net, 2011, <http://www.achim-menges.net/?p=5173>[accessed 10th August

2015]

Figure 14. 3D Perspective of New Terminal at Shenzhen International Airport< airport/shenzhen_airport_01_fuksas_schiavel-lo_01.jpg>[accessed 10th August 2015]

Figure 15. Surface ConstructionHelbig, Thorsten and Kamp, Florian, New Terminal 3 for Shenzhen Bao’an Airport: a 1250m long structure (Knippers Helbig Advanced Engineering, 2011), pp.3-7

Figure 16. Internal Image of New Terminal< http://ideasgn.com/wp-content/up-loads/2013/12/Shenzhen-Airport-> [accessed 11th August 2015]

Figure 17. Centre Pompidou Merz< http://www.arup.com/~/media/Images/Projects/C/Centre_Pompidou_Metz/> [accessed 11th August 2015]

Figure 18. Galaxy SOHO Beijing< http://www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/galaxy-soho/>[accessed 11th August 2015]

Figure 19. Centre Pompidou Metz Figure 20. 3D Modelling of CPMFigure 21. Timber Work of CPM< http://www.arup.com/~/media/Images/Projects/C/Centre_Pompidou_Metz/> [accessed 11th August 2015]

Figure 22. Galaxy SOHO Beijing< http://www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/galaxy-soho/>[accessed 11th August 2015]

Figure 23. Urban Context of Galaxy SOHO< http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp-> [ac-cessed 12th August 2015]