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