Project 2b - Promiscuous Collisions

Project 2B - Promiscuous Collisions

Through the past week, I've been trying to hone my Grasshopper capabilities and apply them to our current project. The tutorial regarding attractor points assisted me most in this process.

The end goal of this exercise is to illustrate the motion of the soccer-kick's movement through dynamic patterning. My original pseudocode proceeded as so:
 1.) GRID/ARRAY sporadic hexagons
 2.) OFFSET perimeters based on <parameter>
 3.) BORDER with a boundary box
 4.) MORPH box onto surface

Now that I've made this, I realize a simpler option of using BRep components and arranging them across a surface. The only positive outcome of this long processing is the versatility and options I've allowed myself. Now to animate this...

Project 2A - Animation

Particle Flow

In this draft, I attempted to de-materialize the lofted surfaces. Future iterations will show effect of "peeling" the skin off the lattice wireframe.

Reversed

Architecture + Animation

Response to "Beyond Animation"
Burry, Mark. “Beyond Animation” Architecture + Animation - AD Vol. 71 - No. 2. Ed. Bob Fear. John Wiley & Sons, 2001.

There are at least two opportunities for animation to be used as part of the development and representation of ideas:   (1) firstly as architecture considered and represented through animated treatment of 'real buildings'; and   (2) secondly at a conceptual level where animation is used as a device in architectural design, most usually as part of an iterative design generation or as an evaluation procedure (7).

Burry advocates for animation to be a new front of architectural expression. He also cautions the downsides to animation, namely those that distort the actual reality of the subject's space and time. The reading continues to delineate the process in which a designer uses animation to depict change or Δ of the process, which is then tweened to become a fluid form / image.


Response to "Towards an Animated Architecture Against Architectural Animation"
Spiller, Neil. “Towards an Animated Architecture Against Architectural Animation” Architecture + Animation - AD Vol. 71 - No. 2. Ed. Bob Fear. John Wiley & Sons, 2001.

"Neil Spiller, best known for his evangelizing of new technologies and as an advocate of cyberspace, argues that an all-too-eager appropriation of animation software from other industries is leading architects to abandon a rigorous approach to architectural space in favor of a fetishisation of surface imagery" (3). This headline surprised me as we finally see a critic against animation!

Spiller mainly dislikes architectural animation due to their "diversion from the primary task of creating architectural space" (4). He finds that rather than the design becoming animate and dynamic, the design grounds to an object in space. Spiller claims that using an enigma as a tool suits architecture better than film theory.

The critique was very brusque and thoughtful. I lost it at the last sentence of the article.

Besides, an architect's personal touch is a critical marketing tool; to animate is often to dilute the difference between one architect and another. Something the Americans might like to consider.

Response to "Vigorous Environments"
Hensel, Michael and Sotama, Kivi. “Vigorous Environments.” Contemporary Techniques in Architecture - AD Vol. 72 No. 1. Ed. Ali Rahim. pages 34-42. John Wiley & Sons, 2001.

Eco-logic. The authors relate design to human interaction; because human activity and milieu is dynamic, discrete objects and processes become futile in present day(36). From the authors questions, they synthesize (1) the level of mediating exchange processes determines level of intervention, (2) design operations must be versioned and iterative, (3) interactivity between information and synergy determines performativity.

Performativity. The authors define this based on Elin Diamond's interpretation of performance: "to study performance is not to focus on complete forms, but to become aware of performance as itself a contested space" (37). 

Technology. Technology optimizes design and manufacturing. In this fashion, technology also serves to provide the infrastructure in which interaction can be facilitated. By incorporating technology into interventions, different effects are produced in the exchange between subject and milieu.

Project 2 - Virtual Projection

I originally intended a different study object, but who doesn't enjoy the kinetic energy behind a good free kick? I pulled a clip from a slow-motion video and broke it down frame-by-frame.

The image shows that the most interesting (i.e. energetic + slightly eccentric) movements come from the tips of the feet and swing of the hands. The elbows and head keep a steady sinuous datum that will ground the motion. Tracing the aforementioned points, we have this next image:

Adding some dimensions and lofts in Rhino, the form emerges:

Looks like a pony!
I chose to maintain the sharp, pointed edges in order to illustrate the movement's vivacity. We normally see the fluid motion of a well-placed kick, but little do we pay attention to the huge effort placed in the dynamics of such an action. You only realize the effort when you  pause halfway through the motion - it's quite difficult to stop!

Architecture from the Outside

Response to "Architecture from the Outside"
Grosz, Elizabeth. Architecture from the Outside. “The Future of Space: Towards and Architecture of Invention” pages 109-130. UMCP Architecture Library Stacks NA2500 .G76 2001.

Grosz introduces a missing element to our history of architecture:

Space itself, the very stuff of architectural reflection and production, requires and entails a mode of time, timeliness, or duration.

From that statement alone, the word "timeliness" stands out; Louis Kahn sought timelessness, so what does the author intend to describe here? The temporalization of space and time presents a new frontier for theoretical architecture that we can discover. Grosz advocates for this concept as another interpretation of time instead of the traditional, orderly progression of historical time. She claims that the futures of architecture and philosophy require reconsideration and openness to divergences. Grosz expresses this sentiment with her interpretation of Deleuze's writing.

According to Grosz via Deleuze, space is a "multiplicity that brings together the key characteristics of externality, simultaneity, contiguity or juxtaposition, differences of degree, and quantitative differentiations" (112). Duration is explained to be its animus: "It is continuous and virtual" (113). Grosz's literature review frames her argument of using the concept of time to design space. Namely, her citations of Bergson and Deleuze push for incorporating continuity and eliminating geometric division in conceptual design.

"The virtual is the realm of productivity, of functioning otherwise than its plan or blueprint, functioning in excess of design and intention" (130).


Response to "Versioning: Evolving Architectures"
Rocker, Ingeborg. Versioning: Evolutionary Techniques in Architecture - AD Vol. 72. Ed. SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli. “Versioning: Evolving Architectures - Dissolving Identities ‘Nothing is as Persistent as Change’” pages 10-17.

Rocker begins by denouncing Peter Eisenman's and Frank Gehry's design process: CAD as the finished product. 

Versioning suggests that architecture is an evolving and dissolving differential data-design that no longer simply 'exists' but rather 'becomes', as it becomes informed in and through the process's different/ciation.

Different configurations and parameters set by variables determine the extent of the version. Various versions may exist between those versions, leading to another level of differentiation. This process disintegrates the notion of "identity" as the design revolves more around the diffusing network of versions. "Different/ciation becomes that which must be thought, and that which cannot be thought, a continuous movement of life which possess its own internal dynamic, without fixed end, final essence, or final form" (17).

Project 1C - Revisit

I went back to the models / versions I showed last class and proceeded to reiterate them:

Green - Extended

Magenta - Extended

Red - Extended

Intended Printouts

Project 1C - Derivative Surface

(Figure 1) Base Surfaces

I began by exporting the colored surfaces from the matrix of Project 1B. The goal of this exercise is to manipulate this surface to "simultaneously express interpretations of line and contour so that the geometric properties of the surface can be translated."

(Figure 2) Simplify | Fold

I simplified the surface by reducing the number of control points (this reduces the complexity I need to maintain + workload on my computer later on). I proceeded by taking the control points and layering them over one another, which resulted in this folding gesture (Figure 2).

(Figure 3) Pattern Composition

Eventually, the curves will become dynamic once I put them through Grasshopper. Then, a texture will form from the forms' ever-changing curvatures (Figure 3).

Versioning: Evolutionary Techniques in Architecture

Response to "Inchoate"
Angélil, Marc. “Inchoate.” Inchoate: An Experiment in Architectural Education. Actar, 2003.

Inchoate. From the first sentence, I enjoy the approach that Angélil takes in attempting to bring architecture back to a nascent form, one in which all its standards and history becomes anew. He explicitly states "[Being] Inchoate is about the undoing of fixed categories" (Angélil 25). This statement is the perfect description to our abstracting of formalization + conceptualization. The notion furthers itself as ambiguity applies to the trajectories in which architecture develops. Angélil describes this with the divergence between Apollonian and Dionysian propensities; the former adds positivity with communal, agreed ways of thinking, while the latter promotes negativity with seemingly blaspheme themes.

Externalization. Angélil advocates the breaking of conformity where architects need to uproot the status quo. He defines "internationalization" as the acceptance of determined standards and following procedural order. This section goes into the factors of breaking molds and searching for deeper architectural insight.

First Category: "The primacy of visual appearances, ... architecture's delimitation occurs within the confines of an aesthetic order" (26).

Second Category: "The primacy of authorship, ... The notion of the architect as the sole agent of the work, while internalizing the processes of design refutes the possibility of conceiving architecture as a collective enterprise" (26).

Third Category: "The primacy of the object, ... This object fixation has not only led to the notion of the oeuvre as a complete entity, pure and undisrupted, but particularly excludes considerations of processes that contribute to the making of works" (27).

Experimentation. Angélil explains the scrutiny and risks that architectural design must take in order to progress in the field. We have seen many precedents as experiments and inquiries which lead to further research and hypotheses to test. Such case studies promote the theoretical aspect that we can explore today from our technology. Angélil discusses the technical, intellectual, and intuitive praxes and how they constitute the foundations of architecture. I summarize his [and my] thoughts with an analogy of us architecture students to children:

Children have no idea of rules and limitations. Their mindset is like they are put into a dark space and left to test their own boundaries. We push toward the edges to find the walls, and only then we can determine the perimeter. How we interact and make our way out of the space is left to our own creativity.

Response to "SHoP's Introduction"
SHoP Architects. “Introduction.” Versioning: Evolutionary Techniques in Architecture - AD Vol. 72- No. 5. John Wiley & Sons, 2002.

representation : modelling :: modelling : versioning

SHoP's idea of versioning attempts to break away from the system of horizontal integration toward a system in which "designers drive how space is conceived and constructed." Instead of a version as a derivation from a master prototype, SHoP re-defines a version as "a set of conditions organized into a menu or nomenclature capable of being configured to address particular design criteria" (SHoP 2). They consider the breaking of molds where originals and copies are irrelevant to the design process.

Response to "Connubial Reciprocities Surface and Space"
Ponce de Leon, Monica, and Tehrani, Nader. “Versioning: Connubial Reciprocities Surface and Space.” Versioning: Evolutionary Techniques in Architecture- AD Vol. 72- No. 5. John Wiley & Sons, 2002.

My first reaction to reading this article was consternation: what does it mean to be "connubial?" I then looked up the definition, which I provide below:

con·nu·bi·alkəˈn(y)o͞obēəl/ adjective

literary

1. of or relating to marriage or the relationship of husband and wife; conjugal.

Only after I looked up the definition did I understand Tehrani's implications of "reconciling space and surface." In his introduction, he appears to be attacking Herzog & de Meuron and Gehry's architecture. First, he calls H+dM's architecture as skins from "off-the-shelf planimetric and sectional relationships." Second, he considers Gehry's architecture as massive incoherent geometries, namely his Guggenheim Bilbao and Walt Disney Concert Hall (he did not explicitly state those projects, but "clad in metal panels" gave some very subtle hint). Those precedents provide his basis for eliminating the dichotomy between space and surface.

The dichotomy comes from the division between rationalism and empiricism. Tehrani explains that the rationalist mentality comes from the relationship between architecture's parts to its whole (the classical column), whereas the empirical mentality stems from expression and structural mechanics (Baroque era and Gaudi's works). 

Polyglotomy and Multiple Effects. Tehrani credits the current culture of construction to the developments of versioning. His examples of precedents from Borromini and Le Corbusier convey the notion that each similar move they make contributes to a different function in the project's structural and spatial integrity. "We search instead for the production of multiple effects - in the manner of a polyglot - where none is 'correct' but all may have primacy" (Ponce de Leon & Tehrani 8). The moves that architects make, namely Mies' decoration with I-Beams vs. Johnson's concealing of them, form polyglot conditions which allow for exploration and deviations of architectural practice.

Precision: Geometry and Patterning. Tehrani brings up the conflict of geometry between brick and concrete. Each have their purposes and distinct expressions so that one is not better than another. Their expression and success in beauty stems from the precision in which they are manipulated. Tehrani points out the divorce of some works: Kahn's brick patterns are independent from the building's structure; Dieste's expressions of skin and space are arbitrarily abstract. 

Coincidences: Programme, Structure, and Other Alibis. "Spatial construction and surfacial manipulation are construed as part and parcel of the same interdependent set of determinants. Without the surface, there is no space" (12).

Project 1B - Matrix

(Figure 1) Matrix of components in wireframe

(Figure 2) Rendered view of matrix

(Figure 3) Previous (02/25/14) Combination of components

(Figure 4) Simplified Actions

(Figure 5) Combination of components

Each component to the object is given a distinct color: green = top surface of hubcap, blue = face abutting the spoke, red = opposite side of spoke, magenta = outer rim. I mainly used control points and filleted curves to attain the desired surfaces. At first, I took inspiration and concepts from the discontinuity of arcsec functions, but later expounded to a more subjective approach. I began to explore how the curves would meet and bleed into one another.

(03/04/14) I revisited each part of the matrix and delved into how I could further the notion of wrapping space instead of surface. The most significant changes occurred with the blue and augmented pink components as I simplified my maneuvers (Figure 4). The culmination is shown in Figure 4.

Contemporary Techniques in Architecture

Response to "Prelude: Mapping the Question"
Pérez-Gòmes, Alberto, and Pelletier, Louise. “Prelude: Mapping the Question - The Perspective Hinge." Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge. MIT Press, 2000.

Translation vs. Transcription. The advancement of architectural representation stems from the transcription of the real world to architectural interpretation. The translation of the desired ideas and concepts become a watershed moment for which architecture is realized. This "perspectival hinge" is where our process in design begins. 

Architectural Meaning. The authors emphasize the historical importance of orthogonal drawings as the precursors to the more creative activity of construction. They accredit the power and significance of architectural icons to the masons of the era.

Theories of Vision | Natural Perspective

Response to "Contemporary Techniques in Architecture"
Rahim, Ali. “Potential Performative Effects,”Contemporary Techniques in Architecture." Vol. 72- No. 1. John Wiley & Sons, 2001.

Contemporary techniques themselves are effects of previous techniques that result in further cultural transformation through a complex system of feedback and evolution.

This quote from Rahim speaks directly to the latter part of Pérez-Gòmes' preface in which the new representations are repackaged, re-presented techniques. Rahim comments that the contemporary techniques lend themselves to the generation of new architecture. He elaborates by describing the intertwined depth between technology and cultural production: "Technology... is not efficiency-oriented practice measured by quantities but a qualitative set of relations that interact with cultural stimuli." In effect, a feedback loop develops and the bond of technology and cultural becomes ever more definite.

As he begins detailing his thoughts on architecture, Rahim explicitly states his aversion to a static stasis. He uses the example of the computer; all its acts are linear and predetermined. Instead, Rahim prefers the ability to allow room for development and flexibility in design. This delves into this week's exercise of matrical design where we explore the various configurations of our models

The static object that produces predetermined effects defines the real, whereas contemporary processes allow for exploration of the possibilities.

The purpose of the matrix is to allow temporal organizations and our fleshing-out of the iterative process (sounds just like ARCH401). 

Project 1A - Object

Object: Nissan 16"-Hubcap

(2011 Model)

Process

Finished Product

Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture

Response to "Skin and Bones"
Vidler, Anthony. “Skin and Bones - Folded Forms from Leibniz to Lynn” Warped Space. Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture. MIT Press, 2001.

The preface depicts Vidler as a theorist with nearly-congruent ideology to that of Greg Lynn. Like Lynn, he describes the Deconstructivist Movement as a reinterpretation and conceptualization of Bataille, which adds complexity through theory and digital manipulation. Instead of a blob, Vidler outlines his process in producing his warped spaces: modernism's psychological culture leading to distortions; and interpretations of intersecting media (intermediary art).

The House of Folds. Vidler begins this section by describing Gilles Deleuze's definition of a fold: "the fold [that joins the soul to the mind without division] is at once abstract, disseminated as a trait of all matter, and specific, embodied in objects and spaces..." (Vidler 218). With the abstraction of folding, Vidler then claims that contemporary architects are in constant mentality of making tangible a thought. To prove such claim, Vidler dissects Deleuze's ideology with his main influences: Gilles Leibniz and John Locke. 

Le  Maison Baroque

Four windows and a door line themselves along the ground floor;

second story floor has five openings, each hung through with a loosely falling curtain.

Vidler's claim relates to human perception and its expression. Leibniz's drawing of Le Maison Baroque exemplifies a Baroque House functioning in a similar fashion to the human mind. Leibniz symbolizes the lower floor as the grounded body transmitting knowledge - given by each of the five senses - to the soul in the level above. By nature, humans innately translate tangible information to knowledge; however, the converse of the process is difficult due to the endless number of folds (as explained in psychology by Koestler's bisociation of matrices in The Act of Creation).

Bisociation of Matrices

Two seemingly tangent ideas converge at a "fold"

With John Locke's view of the brain as a camera obscura, the mind is seen as a storage house for direct reflections of the world. Though this mentality seems limiting, Vidler explains that Leibniz asserts that such reflections provide a base to begin transformation and abstraction. The abstraction process would be conducted and diversified through folds of a screen over the reflection. Adding complexity and generating images from a trace arouses new ideas - another derivation of the term fold.

With Leibniz's and Locke's ideas, Vidler delves into the composition of Deleuze's theory. The creation of Deleuzian space matches Leibniz's Baroque House, but diverges by the more fluid and non-uniform nature of the space. Leibniz's spaces do not require a connection between the folded screen and its interiors, but  (Vidler 223). Deleuze's lack of connection distinguishes envelopes as independent entities from their contents. In the next section, Vidler elaborates upon the fold by returning to Le Maison Baroque:

The outside may have windows, but they open only to the outside; the inside is lit, but in such a way that nothing can be seen through the "orifices" that bring light in. Joining the two, as we have seen, is the fold, a device that both separates and brings together, even as it articulates divisions acting as invisible go-between and visible matter.

Animistic Architecture. Dubbed allegorical surrealism, the idea of surrealism in mathematics and architecture began post-WWII with Marcel Jean's project. "... Jean proposed a hallucinatory landscape of mathematically and anthropomorphically derived forms for a 'Plan of Reconstruction for a European Capital'" (225). The main characteristic to his plan was the inclusion of non-Euclidean forms to break the city grid's purity. Vidler claims that Jean's plans had set the complex and Deconstructivist nature of amorphous form today. 

Vidler praises Lynn's thoughts on architecture as "potential evolution to architectire if not the species; they seize on the metaphor nor to end monumentality but to change its formal nature" (226). Vidler entertains the notion of blobs as natural phenomena; that is, blobs are plays of natural permutations. He continues to justify his position by describing the example of Victor Hugo's Elephant of Bastille. The statue itself had the potential for human occupancy (fondly recounted by Gavroche in Hugo's  Les Misérables) though the elephant followed no precedent for a habitable structure.

In the conclusion of this chapter, Vidler points out that the act of folding is to join the material and immaterial. The trend of architecture he proposes is the imputation of animate life to inanimate animation (228), and that the process of the fold becomes the form. 

Project 1 - Object

Image: Durian

I only recently acquired the taste for this tropical tree fruit and decided I should try it again! More so, the spikes protruding from the husk replicate themselves across the surface of the shell. Something with so many parameters and conic surfaces will surely serve as a challenging exercise for this course!

Folds, Bodies & Blobs, Collected Essays

Response to "Probable Geometries"

Lynn, Greg. “Probable Geometries: The Architecture of Writing in Bodies,” Folds, Bodies & Blobs, Collected Essays. La Lettre Volée, 1998.

Greg Lynn opens by conveying a certain desire: architects need to write more. Lynn claims that the trend of architecture had followed Wigley's and Venturi's theories of geometric conflict. Through writing, or theorizing and conceptualizing into a communicable media, Lynn believes that architecture can break from its "exact geometries" and pure forms. He argues that designers should become more fluid and free like in writing.

Lynn outlines the Bataille and Hollier formula to architecture: "Eidetic forms are (1) exact in measure and contour, (2) visually fixed, (3) identically repeatable."

He continues to berate the classification of architectural and anti-architectural practices. Relating to behavioral studies, I found this classification particularly humorous as it points out some idiosyncrasies of architectural mundaneness, as depicted by HOK. To protest said mundaneness, current practice also lets designers coin new terms for the vague, such as "anexact." Lynn uses the phrase "anexact yet rigorous" to exemplify the advancement of the architectural field. His explanation of new terms sheds light onto the field today, especially as Lynn delves into stereology vs. orthographics.

Later in the paper, Lynn' begins to delve into rather profound developments of centuries past: Bernoulli's Discrete vs. Continuous: the Needle problem being described may be attributed to the "randomness" of probability. Histology and Stereometry: because ethics find that live dissection of human bodies is unethical, much of the information extracted must be extrapolated.

Overall, this paper served to describe the trend from the Modern movement to the Deconstructivist theories that have arisen from the late 90's. Lynn largely attributes them to the geometric conflicts and convergences from stereometric projection. In other words, as architects began to use sections and conceptualize new forms, probable geometries become the vehicle to new architecture.

Response to "Blob Tectonics"

Lynn, Greg. “Blob Tectonics, or Why Tectonics is Square and Topology is Groovy,” Folds, Bodies & Blobs, Collected Essays. La Lettre Volée, 1998.

Lynn uses blobs as a means to challenging traditional ways of comprehending tectonics. As the blob does not have a "discrete envelope," the entire blob is to be considered as wholly a continuous surface. Its dependence on contextual environment becomes the defining factor for their chaotic, complex shape. 

"As structural engineers have for centuries, architects might consider more complex analogies of support than the simplistic, bankrupt, and highly overrated notion that buildings should stand vertically." This statement epitomizes the entire notion of the Deconstructivist movement where buildings challenged the idea of traditional structural verticality. Steven Holl's Vanke Center harks to blob architecture as blocks of program bleed into the central core. Though the conventional construction techniques are still apparent, Holl expresses a similar idea to Lynn's blob architecture as forms permeate into the landscape and creates amorphous experiences of space.

First Class!

Hello World!