fix our energy addiction

Just like the recent competition of Metropolis indicates, the current studio topic proves to be wit the Zeitgeist:
Rising energy costs present new design problems.

Redesign the broken models of the 20th century. Challenge our patterns of living and working in a fuel-hungry world…come up with solutions that connect us, make us more efficient, more humane.

Ask yourself…
How would I bring work closer to home?
Can a product help eliminate long commutes?
What can I do to revitalize old ideas such as living above the store?
What kind of interiors or furnishings does a telecommuter really need?
Or follow your own dreams…what calls out for a major redesign?

Focus on one area that needs fixing—products, interiors, buildings and landscape, communication systems, or anything else you can imagine—and develop your idea fully.

more under>

metropolitan dreams and visions

SCALE: Consider the visionary statements from the architectural field in the period of the 1960-1970's that were able to condense a critical leap forward, and featuring such firms as Archigram, Archizoom, Superstudio, Friedman, Eckhard Schulze Fielitz etc..
It seems being paralleled by the current similar approach between art and architecture. There is also an exhibition currently in Berlin on the topic, "Megastructure reloaded" until 2. November
images by NOX (NYC) and schulze Fielitz on his design for the canal building to England.

see following links
evolo
megastructure reloaded

fluid continuity

“Architecture has to follow the diversity of society, and has to reflect that a simple square or cube can’t contain that diversity.”
Toyo Ito













Toyo Ito
Taichung Metropolitan Opera House
Taichung City, Taiwan

reading list

for the presentation on your reading, there are no images necessary, unless you choose to do underline some concepts with it.
You should extract the relevant ideas and concepts which pertain to our studio topic on natural systems as the model for generative processes and formulate those in three pages to be presented to the class.

images Venice Bienal, surface explorations with multiple orientations and surface continuity> this is one idea for the generation of a deep surface.

minimal surfaces exploration

http://www.b-l-u-s-h.com

This group of students undertook a similar approach, where a single pattern component is based on a principle of surface transformation.














In a second stage it is multiplied and varied within the larger surface assembly, where particular edge conditions show a street wall solution or eruptions become towers. The first two images show the pattern layout by blush and the surface buildout with surface decreases and increases in areas of densification.


The second set shows the sectional development of the surface for the base buildout and the structural doubling of the surface in certain areas.

Structural pattern

repetition & difference

At the basis of the following exploration of structural geometries towards new organizational structures at a larger scale, the strategies of transformation of several single components need to be guided by a series of concepts.

Can one push the underlying principle to its limits? What is the right tactic to get to the point where the systemic behavior proliferates variations?

(first 2 images by blush)

a) Inversion: An exterior surface is programmed on both sides, example: the roofscape being populated and having surface characteristics related to access and connection to other surfaces and planes below.

b) Continuity: A project engages predominantly multiple surfaces, which are interconnected such that the project utilizes as an example “roofed-over” facades, where one single surface receives a multitude of functions and properties. Like it fluently changes from roof to façade to floor and back etc..remember Ito…remember the different orientations of surfaces.

c)Incongruity: A geometry emphasizes an inscriptive procedure of free massing with strategies like volume-within-volume sections. Some of the characteristic spatial results are incongruous and residual spaces, which are either constant in their succession or interrupted into separated and non-regular parts.

…and complement these conceptual strategies with skill techniques of assembly and multiplication:

techniques:

the pleat/ the fold: folds in the surface might create not only a deformation but lead to structural rigidness in repetition or folding into each other

the layers: either an offset to stack sheets, or a slice in the surface to attach to other sheets-stripes

the weave: bended stripes, or twisted bands form mesh assemblies which also lead to structural stiffness

the eggcrate: multiple perpendicular surfaces joined for a common seam create light but stable structures

Assignm. due mon 13:
3D shape designs of selected assembly parties as a result of composing individual design component generations.

3D development in 11x17 “ sheet (8 ½ on pdf)

Deep surface

air at an unexpected location

With the addition of air, liquids and solids diminish their density. Something homogenous and solid transforms into a loose and perforated structure.

The foam model indicates, that under circumstances yet to be clarified, the dense, the continuous and massive yields an invasion of the void. Air, the element most misunderstood, harvests means and ways to protrude into places, where no one expected its presence.

Even more so, it brings into being strange places, which did not exist before. The process of becoming, is an occasion to watch the subversion of substance. By tradition, we are concerned with the potential to excavate substances and respond with suspicion or even guess transgression not to say perversion.

The aggregation of air filled voids, springs from a questionable victory over the solid, and as a foam like structure, appears to turn upside down the natural order within nature. It seems to be a bastard of material, emerging from an illegitimate marriage of elements. As opposed to this common disrespect of the seemingly vague, the latent, the close to arbitrary, and the irregular, the studio will take the foam model serious and work on a rehabilitation of its inherent processes and expressions.

(images by blush)

In order to complement the widely used methodologies of becoming, such as drift, repetition with difference, processes of catastrophy or creative recombination, we will explore the term explication, in the sense of a discrete move from one condition to the next, like a continuous escape from the status quo.

An important question to answer will be: When does surface become deep?
Do certain techniques accelerate new strategies towards the formation of original organizational structures? Apply one or several of the techniques acquired in the software skills workshops to generate single components of surfaces, further develop and transform them.

You should specifically refer to surface modulations. This means that surfaces get informed or inflected by an extendable variation of interventions on the material and detail level -folded, cutted, sliced, pleated, laminated, layered etc..

(image by sweeney)

Surfaces are initially either smooth or broken, depending on their tangency behavior being continuous or not. Modulations then effect changes in the surface such as folds to foster structural rigidity, or such as weaves of bands supporting each other. Surfaces may be manifold in the beginning or get cut and sliced from an initial larger surface into single elements.

Modulations might be
-bending, slicing, bifurcating as some vertex manipulations.
-Extruding via joining vertex points or doubling
-displacement via translating a selections set of vertices

Assignm. due mon 13 :
3D shape designs of selected parties following individual component design generations.

3D development in 11x17 “ sheet (8 ½ on pdf)

New York Zoning

Zoning shapes the city. Zoning determines the size and use of buildings, where they are located and, in large measure, the densities of the city’s diverse neighborhoods. Along with the city's power to budget, tax, and condemn property, zoning is a key tool for carrying out planning policy. New York City has been a pioneer in the field of zoning policy since it enacted the nation's first comprehensive Zoning Resolution in 1916.

drawing by Hugh Ferris


The recent zoning changes to the Chelsea district in NYC creates unique opportunities for development compared to New York’s history, as they change the use destination and increase floor area and bulk in one of the most popular districts of Manhattan. On June 23, 2005, the City Council approved the Department of City Planning’s proposals for zoning text and map amendments affecting the West Chelsea area in Community District 4 Manhattan. The area is bounded generally by Tenth and Eleventh Avenues from West 30th Street south to West 16th Street. The proposal creates the Special West Chelsea District to provide opportunities for new residential and commercial development, facilitate the reuse of the High Line elevated rail line as a unique linear open space, and enhance the neighborhood’s thriving art gallery district.

The handout covers all major issues related to zoning districts and laws. Read through the history of zoning development and get familiar with the regulations pertaining to the site C6-4 area, with emphasis on residential zoning, large scale developments and tower regulations. Major focus is on the Special West Chelsea district. Follow up on the city council decisions as they adopted the West Chelsea/ High Line proposal with regard to recent modifications of the FAR and bulk amendments. Be aware of the direction towards a mixed use are that includes also lower income classes and makes that applicable with the Modified Inclusionary Housing program (MIHB). Important amendments are referred to via the High Line Transfer Corridor, High Line Improvement Bonus and the IHB, both regulating maximum FAR's and permittable building heights. Get familair also with the High Line adjacency controls since those are applicable in the most interesting spot along tenth avenue and will form one of the highlights along the High Line.

Develop your site massing and tower bulk in to steps. Review on sept 29 and october 10.
Text handout NYC zoning

field mapping digital notations

Architecture is a 4-dimensional practice of investigation and an inclusive process. Time based cycles (minutes, hours, days etc..) generate differences in articulation of parallel streams such as the character of spatial conditions as light alters the impact on our perception, or materials that change and adapt as well as the programmatic use that depends on the specific cycles of inhabitation.
Investigating the underlying logics of the time dependency, a system of notations reveals unique field conditions by inserting referential markers in between repetitive phases of events that are representing those singular events.
In order to notate the qualitative changes of specific conditions that break the rhythm, one needs to code these unique time based events.

Play out the skills you acquire during the workshop and entertain ideas of the previous exercise with digital means (polygonal, nurbs). Alter your strategies as you improve and add additional techniques from the program.
due sept 22

Field Mapping paper notations

Explore “free form” surfaces, also known as structures with compound curvature.
These are surfaces that seem “free”, but in reality have much more control than flat surfaces, since the information they contain is a lot more complex and they are built with curved splines.

Take the information of the last exercise on “the interior” and extrapolate the critical data related to the timeline. Program a surface through activity. Describe the rhythm of the character’s time flow. Focus on the repetitive moments and the difference of events as field conditions that appear as special occurrences during the otherwise regular intervals.
Prototype: Develop one three-dimensional free form with a double curved folded surface. Define and construct this form with specific rules that you set up. The idea is that the surface is composed of elements that give structural strength through those operations and form various patterns with depth of a differentiated “epigenetic landscape”.

booklist

Go through the list of books.
Titles under further reading are supposed to be the browsing background for all of you. Short articles like Guattaris or Kwinters are a must.

The titles under Complexity and Emergence instead are a selective list:
Choose one of the works and extract information relevant to the studio. You will be asked to give a presentation to the class at a later stage during the design development.
due friday october 10

postscript

The handout texts to go under the Postscript section of your class brief.
You are supposed to read those with attention since the underlying context is supposed to create the theoretical background for your project.

narrative and fiction

….Icon Humor Tribe Beauty Inspiration Happiness Vision Honesty Home Whimsical Expression Love Democratic Hearth Unpredictable Sophisticated Classic Quality Design Playful Nature Welcome Ironic Respect Creativity Tenderness Warmth….


While construction as a technological process is prosaic –deriving directly from a mathematical equation, a functional diagram, or a rule of formal combinations- architecture is poetic, necessarily an abstract order but in itself a metaphor emerging from a vision of the world and Being.
Only by engaging our own imagination (with its inescapable horizon of language, and despite its dangers) can we be truly compassionate. It is our imaginative faculty that allows us to identify with the other, and truly understand her suffering. This entails a very real, yet opaque connection between words and deeds. Alberto Perez Gomez

Narrative and fiction, have always played a role in architecture, not long ago however suppressed through modern architecture. If we think about rituals, even back to religious and ancient mythodologies, mankind tries to understand its condition through symbols and the words described within.
Architecture often is a metaphor for those interpretations and the words become inscribed into its processes and more so into its representation. Architecture affords to be read in those terms.
The architectural narrative in the last century has been replaced for most projects with the mathematical orchestration of a program, nothing but a rational quantification of volumes, sizes, proximities etc..
With this project, it is now the time to revisit the power of the architectural narrative and to establish an association between architecture and fiction.

Kiesler>Endless House

What is the projected interrelation of spaces to the distinctiveness of means of how we inhabit architecture and even in a larger sense …the world.
You need to accommodate the "individual" first, but also extend your concept to the larger group, the family, friends, environment…The interior as a place is addressing life and the methods of occupation of space as you would define it.
Think about the recent emerging reflection back to the ritual and the mystic, as it informs architecture.
Get interested into the more intimate territories of life, which includes also the insecurity of life, death, tradition, the family, ceremonies, the richness, rite, secretness... How do we obtain or reconsider a new significance in daily life? How do you see the idea of the modern minimalist open space as opposed to the “house” with a lot of small secret spaces? What about the violence or public exposure through media?
Or is the human condition the center point of decision where we need to reflect first on the environmental and sustainable conditions before we inhabit space?

Assigments:
Due friday 5:
Give a brief written description of the physical and psychological condition of the typology of the person inhabiting the space. Explain through your narrative in how you see “him or her” in relationship to a variety of external conditions. Take notice of the specific environment in which the occupant/s are situated, New York. Your narrative needs to incorporate a vision on how one sleeps, works, eats, uses the bath etc...
Give few words (1-3) in a loose list that describe the atmosphere as you imagine it.
Enhance the narrative through a collage of few images, describing the words.

Due Monday 8: Set up a potential time line of the described daily activities, which you then transfer into an abstract diagram or drawing.
The diagram will be read as being in three dimensions as it inscribes the essence of those activities and time into space.

The type of occupation will be situated somewhere within the project to be designed.

Films: Michelangelo Antonioni, >L’Avventura >Blow-Up >La Notte > Eclipse (not to forget Terry Gilliams > Brazil)
Format: printouts letter size & pdf on class server!
Books:
• Frederick Kiesler, Selected Writings
• Frederick Kiesler, Endless Space
• Frederci Kiesler, Inside the Endless House

Highrise & Contemporary Residential Design

1. Give a description of the innovative aspects of the project that you choose out of the group of selected buildings presented in class (700 words)
2.Give a description of one of the innovative aspects in high rise construction during the 20th century. Include an image or diagram if possible.
3.Compare one plan of the residential or residential/mix use of one typical floor in scale of 1/200 (1/16”) of the highrise with a plan of the “Innovative residential design examples” as handed out. Think of a way of how to show plans side by side with same scale, so it allows to read the differences of the program and its organization. Include a diagrammatic section if necessary.

Requirements:
Emphasis is on the making of plan – section diagrams as an instrument to understand and mediate collected information effectively and as a strategy to translate selected critical data later on into the proposed project.
Format: 8-1/2 * 11

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A) High-Rise concepts

The studio work will proceed from an analysis (first quantitative/ then qualitative) of very recent high rise designs forming part of unprecedented developments in different parts of the world. There is no restriction besides that the design and construction of the building needs to originate after 1990.






Assignment

Stage 1:
Student teams will select one of the three zones for the exploration of projects:
a) North America (NYC, Chicago..) & EU (London, Paris, Madrid..)
b) Asia (China, India, Taiwan, Malaysia..)
c) Arabic Continent (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, ..)

Stage 2:
Student teams with the instructor will discuss and select individual buildings for further inquiry. Buildings will be selected according to quality of design, façade pattern as exoskeleton, structural typologies and innovative aspects pertaining to the design.

Vertical Urbanism

The studio will inquire strategies of “vertical urbanism” through the design research of high-rise building by integrating structural characteristics and behavior with evolutionary material systems. Models of exploration related to the geometry, shape and behavior of natural systems will support proposals of surface structures with stiffness and flexibility. The design process will implement topological modeling techniques to populate forms for high-rise structure and envelope with hybrid skins as versatile material aggregates.
Residential “i-space” is central to the investigation and the definition of mixed programs for vertical structures and explored as an innovative hybrid with private to public and work atmospheres. The project’ effects of program mix, design culture and customized fabrication, play on the recent development concept of lifestyle environments. Implemented into a contemporary large, public urban development zone in New York, the project’ effects of hyper density, scale and experimental mixed use maximize the function as urban interface into a strategic point of energy to Re-urbanize the city.

MANifold ECOlogies

MANifold ECOlogies is a Design Studio that will explore the potentials of the digital craft for the generation of housing as dynamic organizational structures on the urban and architectural scale.


MANifold ECOlogies seeks to create hybrid organizational structures that propose new exciting spatial environments for dwelling through selected additional programs geared towards leisure, work and social functions. Their features and services such as innovative materiality and structure, synergetic flexible programmatic densities and efficient infrastructure optimize activities and network flows and make it a place of attraction, power and ultimate performance.
The interactive digital communication network offers unprecedented potential to participate in the global economy. The accelerating speed to congregate and exchange with others requires to enhance existing physical interfaces in order to adapt to new typologies of virtual contexts. New configurations are evolving to merge physical space and virtual environments. To respond to today’s velocity, cities will grow into multiplicities of networks.
“Work” and its traditional (Euclidian-generic office block honeycombed with cubicles) enclosures, its spatial frontiers of normative office-typologies will be fragmented, liquefied and radically redefined. Business will be unleashed from the constraints of traditional environments. Life-long learning will join as a continuous educational process.
By the same token the dynamism of new living-forms will search for structures that are malleable enough to adapt to the individual’s thought on life-style, desires and urban living in the 21st century. A new living system is created where the inhabitant and the environment are virtual parts of a dynamical system in constant evolution.
Architecture will no more deal with the planning of time-less permanent projects but temporary expressions of expanded visions which deny any kind of static barriers in order to keep up with the fast pace of global developments. Space will be given the added dimension of time.