Taichung Convention Center

The project is a proposal for a convention center which continuously merges the architecture and the landscape in order to create an eco-friendly light-play experience. The layers are composed of pleated skin system that is clear on one side in order to allow light inside the space. These layers create an interesting light spectacle at night from outside and at a daytime from inside.

http://www.archdaily.com/36534/taichung-convention-center-mad-architects/

Infinity Bench by CARL FREDRIK SVENSTEDT

The rings are serial, concentric hoops, like the layers of an onion, cut from less than 3.4 m² of flat furniture-grade plywood using CNC technology.

http://archrecord.construction.com/features/interviews/0909johnhart/0909johnhart.asp

Carbon nanotube (CNTs) are long molecules that are seamless cylinders of carbon atoms...CNTs can self-organize into a "forest". If we look at the properties of materials like this one at the nanoscale and inform the design of its use at the macroscale, different types of spaces and surfaces than what we know might begin to emerge...

Festival of Lights

The London Design Festival presents a series of projects interested in lighting effects. Perhaps these projects can inspire you to improve on your lampshades.

http://www.dezeen.com/2009/09/25/in-praise-of-shadows-at-the-va/

The Material Essence

This last project of translation - from the organic three dimensional object (a fruit or vegetable in most cases) to digital realm of Rhino and back into the physical world again in the form of plywood - causes us to examine the nature of the material we work in. For example, when working with plywood we may observe the laminations of the wood, the direction of the grain, and the hardness of the wood. In this exhibition, the installations look at corn and wheat and the material possibilities of these products in innovative ways. The use of wheat to hold up dishes reveals new opportunities for what is normally only seen as an edible item, not as structural. How might we look at the materials we use for our translations in new ways? Are we resisting the material by making it perform in these strange ways, or simply experimenting and innovating?

today and tomorrow

http://www.jerzygoliszewski.com/Jerzy_Goliszewski_En/Portfolio/strony/Dimensional_works.html


This installation brings back memories of 2a and the paper folding project. "nodes and creases", glad that is over, but cant say we didn't learn something from it.
The artist, Jerzy Goliszewski looks into the structures of nature to create the patterns, and a quote from the site which I think offers the best description of the project intentions:
"the common sight of a cracked layer of paint or peeling plaster shows the passage of time which transforms the original shapes, giving them a completely new look.
The work refers to the mirror which, as the fairy tale tells, broke into pieces distortioning the world and making it hideous and absurd."
This is pretty much what we have been doing, distorting our perception of an object/image using our fancy computer tools to create.

Stalled Building Project

The project tries to give answers to old question of what to do with old projects that are being decommissioned. The one of the solutions was the usage of green design ideas in order to bring new life to dieing projects. The renderings and the ideas seem to be very interesting and intriguing, although the practical implementation of the project seems to be questionable. For example, the rendering proposes a continuous building process, living building literally, which seems to acquire a great deal of energy consumption.

CNC Tool Path

Developed based on CNC tool path responsive surface milling – cut paths respond to local curvature and allow for surface milling with overlayed surface patterning.

Rhino Math

Ever wanted to define a curve or surface by equation, not just by points?

Rhino Math is a small plugin that allows you to create a surface or curve from an equation. It came in very useful when I needed a loft path based on the deformation of a water wave. The plugin computes all the basic operations(+,-,x,/) as well as exponents, logarithms and trig functions. It also has the ability to use user-definable variables.

Download:
http://www.rhino3.de/_develop/__v3_plugins/math/

Library of interesting equations to use:
http://www.rhino3.de/_develop/__v3_plugins/math/library.shtml

RhinoCam

Maybe some of you know about this, but I thought it would be useful to try before milling the surfaces. RhinoCam is a plug-in for machining and they have a free demo version that is supposed to be fully functional (except for you wouldn't be able to actually process it). Follow the link for demo...

http://www.mecsoft.com/rhinocam.shtml

Terrain Vague

I re read Ignasi De Sola Morales Rubio article on Terrain Vague. This article had much more relevance to what has happened academically this week. While blogging remained speculative and slightly unnecessary, I took leisure in kicking back and enjoying this text.

He starts off the the essay with a comparison through the medium of photography and relating how artists see our city, through traditional means of composition, have found a new paradigm.

Terrain Vague is a French term which has several different connotations when spoken in the English language. It refers to accumulation and juxtaposition of experiencing the city. Its translation is closest to 'questionably vacant urban spaces'. These spaces exist outside the city's effective circuits & structures.

This article reminds us of the messy realism that we exists in. We become strangers to ourselves, and as society changes infinitly faster than we can comrephend it, we become more nomadic and disconnected.

Pike Loop

The sculptural brick was is constructed by a robot which is mounted on a flatbed in order

to allow it to manuver around the installation.

The installation will take up to 4 weeks and it will be open for the public to view the process. The idea was to create a structural piece of art using high level of technology in order to create a script, using which the robot arm would place more than 7000 brings with extreme accuracy. The robotinc arm is the same arm that is used by many acr manufacturers in order to assamble automobiles. It seems like the idea that they are trying to pursue is full integration of technology into construction process. It has worked with cars, hence the next step is to use it on construction sites. In my opinion, the technology is still at a very early stage, and it is pushing the accuracy limits of building process to its extremes.

http://www.dezeen.com/2009/09/16/pike-loop-by-gramazio-kohler/

Robot Constructs Oscillating Wall

Swiss Architects Gramazio and Kohler have employed the services of one R-O-B the robot to construct their Pike Loop -- an oscillating brick wall that will be erected along Pike street in New York. This is clearly a relationship between man and his technology that possesses an extraordinary level of potential and a reformation of our understanding of building technologies.

http://www.dezeen.com/2009/09/16/pike-loop-by-gramazio-kohler/

Parametric modeling as a tool for design, not as a final goal.

http://matsysdesign.com/2009/06/25/flux-architecture-in-a-parametric-landscape/

The FLUX: Architecture in a Parametric Landscape exhibition at CCA Architecture/MEDIAlab in San Francisco uses parametric modeling to define an expandable exhibition system. A “complex set of relationships defined by its formal, performative, and fabrication constraints” control a series of ribs that can be expanded by changing the parameters fed into the scripts. In this way the data, in this case student projects, creates a map of itself, separating into eight “digital practices: Stacked Aggregates, Modular Assemblages, Pixelated Fields, Cellular Clusters, Serial Iterations, Woven Meshes, Material Systems, and Emergent Environments.”

By exploiting the technology as a tool to create space, MEDIAlab goes beyond using parametric modeling as a simple representation of data and explores spatial complexities and flows created by the data.

Cairo Sound Inspired Tabletop

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/tabletop-terrain.html
Daniel Dendra from anOtherArchitect, produced a tea table that was inspired by the sound recordings of Cairo’s streets. From the recordings, he generated CNC-milling patterns that created complex joints for carpentry. The underside of the table was purely inspired by the acoustics of the city of Cairo, and the complex surface flushes with a base that was curved opposite of the surface.

Both pieces can serve as a table or a noise map of Cairo.

Charles Walker on Digital Fabrication

Charles Walker an instructor at the Architectural Association will be giving a talk at the upcoming Digital Architecture London Conference. He will be discussing his works with Zaha Hadid as well as his annual summer pavilion and his digital fabrication processes.

http://www.digital-architecture.org/london/2009/charles-walker/

The Fourth Dimension

This artist installation by Danish artist Tommy Stockel - "from here to there and back again" - makes physical the ideas of disintegration and integration. While designboom blog describes the work as "rotting or disintegrating," it is actually impossible to determine in which direction the work is progressing - it is either integrating itself or disintegrating apart - without introducing the fourth dimension - that of time. As in the question of crowds or bodies, it is the introduction of a sequentiality to the picture that reveals the nature of that relationship between local elements. In a digitally fabricated production, that index of the relationships between parts that is produced may remain incomplete without some temporal indication of the sequence(s) of events.

Futuristic Food Production

Philips Designs have developed a device that produces prototypes of potential food items based on the consumer's nutritional needs. It is kind of like a 3D printer for food, or a mini-farm.

http://www.dezeen.com/2009/09/08/food-probe-by-philips-design/

The Termite Pavilion

The first ever 3D scan of a termite mound scaled up to a human scale. The architects and the engineers worked together in selecting a central section of a termite mound and recreated the mound in a larger scale for people to walk in and experiance the space. The mound is built in sections using cross laminated timber, which was the safest and the cheapest material to build the mound with. The result is a set of laminated organic forms that make the installation.

http://www.dezeen.com/2009/09/05/the-termite-pavilion-at-pestival/

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/extreme-environments.html

Within the environment of Antarctica, the application and use of "supermaterials" becomes vital. Here we see the example of a low-tech, hand-stitched tent. The opportunities supplied by extreme environments for the creation by necessity of new materials is fertile ground for the application of digital fabrication.

http://www.futurefeeder.com/2005/11/bio-paper-for-printing-organs/

Printing organs? What!
I can barely 3d print a 5.5" x 5.5" x 1" model...

Digital_Architecture

http://www.digital-architecture.org/london/

This site has some very relevant projects to what we are doing in the class but on a much grander scale...

Space in Books

A recent graduate of the Bartlett School of Architecture, Johan Hybschmann did a project were he varied a mix of ornate technical detailing and abstract ideas that dealt with simulation, reproductions, and spatial perception.

The above image is a blank sketchbook that has been laser cut with precision representing a 90 minute shot of Russian Ark a film by Alexander Sokurov. It’s a new way of looking at the ideas being experienced in a new dimension in a book that it is to read about it.

Johan writes that:
The book is made from layered silhouettes with inbuilt distorted perspectives that are laser-cut into the individual pages of a standard sketchbook. There is a drawing for each page, and these are all cut separately: turning the page, loading up a new drawing and cutting, page by page.

In Hybschmann’s “Replicating a Replica” he created two buildings that occupy the same place at the same time, interlocking and separating visually and spatially. It’s just another example of Johann’s approach to seeing architecture, how it is comprehended when built, and how to make it more complicated and interesting at the same time.

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/book-of-space.html

Gaudi Stool

http://www.dezeen.com/2009/09/02/gaudi-stool-by-studio-geenen/

This is an interesting combination of materials and a usage of Gaudi's structural ideas in order to create a very light weight chair. The structure of the chair is composed of polyamide, which is reinforces and cove red on top with a carbon-fiber laminates. The carbon fiber resist the compressive forces from top and the structure underneath resist the tensile forces caused by the carbon laminate. The structure of the chair was designed after a series of tests borrowed from Gaudi, who used gravity and weights in order to determine perfect structural system for his church designes. The chair weights a little more than 2 Lb and has very low production cost due to very high tech design solutions.

Found Functions

http://www.nikkigraziano.com/foundfunctions/index.html

The artist behind this is also a mathematician who looks into nature to find the patterns.

This in depth study of the shapes found in nature which can be then related to mathematical functions is similar to the current mapping project.

Procedural Destruction for the Gaming World

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/procedural-destruction-and-algorithmic.html


At the 2001 SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles, CA, Yoav Parish and Pascal Muller presented the mathematical city, they used an algorithmic approach for modeling a city topology that is realistic and is expected to appear within the next decade. Chris Delay, a game designer, was inspired by Parish and Muller, to develop Subversion, which is his latest project that is based upon generated cities for the gaming world. Delay started designing cities without the help of artists, and became one of the most expensive projects in game design to build a city from polygons and road layouts.

Marco Cobetta’s Structure, also into designing cities in the gaming world, created a basic engine to generate cities similar to games such as Grand Theft Auto 4, and at a cheaper rate. Corbetta takes his city design a step higher than others by making these cities procedurally destructible. It’ll be the next step that instead of running through walls of infamous iconic buildings, gamers will be able to destroy cities as if it’s the real thing.

Then the future question is what will the effects be once the gaming world has become completely interactive with violence?

base26: Word mapping

http://toxi.co.uk/p5/base26/

base26 is a small java project that maps 4-letter words in 4 dimensions (time, x, y and z.)

More importantly, it maps data in an unexpected way that produces connections between otherwise unrelated words. Words that use the same letters, or letters alphabetically close to each other become clustered in space. A wireframe surface surrounds each cluster and points out the relationship.

While base26 strips the words of their regular meaning and indexes them based on the order of the alphabet alone, interesting relationships are found if the original meanings are considered. For instance the words ICON and IDOL are grouped very closely together. While the two words' meanings relate, the spellings are different due to each word's etymology.

These sorts of relationships are what make mapping words this way interesting.

On another note, this seems very related to our first project.

Oil Rocks' Logic of Accumulation

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/oil-rocks.html

BldgBlog describes the fascinating "offshore metropolis" of partially abandoned oil extraction infrastructure in the Caspian Sea named Oil Rock. The facilities are designed for both working and living on site and stretch for miles and miles in the form of points and polylines extending across the sea. The continuing additions to the complex over its lifetime recalls Stan Allen's "algebraic" architectural archetype wherein building blocks accumulate toward an "indeterminate whole" with the main focus on local relationships between parts.