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.