Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Assignment 6


Interior Rendering of Boutique Hotel

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Reading 3

The process of design is not stagnant. It is static and impulsive. It undulates and moves inconsistently. It morphs and shifts. This process is not a stringent list of rules but rather a journey to create a solution to the problem presented at the site. A designer moves sporadically without a set path. He can move forward and regress reaching different conclusions about feasible buildings forms and spaces. He can explore different methods of abstraction, such as diagrams or sketches to CAD drawings and three-dimensional models. With ever-changing technologies and advances, new programs can expedite this process of design. However, these programs cannot do the designing themselves. Their purpose is not to create design but rather be a tool in the representation of an idea or concept. These programs act as generative tools. They possess the power to quickly and efficiently produce drawings and models. Computer aided design programs allow the designer to explore multiple options and variations of an initial plan. The designer can make multiple generations and then evaluate them to discover the workable elements. Digital media is crucial in producing mass numbers of iterations with the same conceptual backing. The designer controls the iterations but is able to copy and mirror elements with the assistance of computer design programs. The designer also has the ability to manipulate the environment. Technologies allow models to be put under the forces of gravity. Designers can also test their models against sun and wind patterns. All these environmental elements aid in the refinement of the initial concept. They allow an idea to be fully developed and explored at the given site. Digital work is comparable to laboratory work. Technologies allow designers to continually experiment and get feedback in a very short time. Digital work can be moved and edited far more easily than crafted models or hand drawings.  Digital work allows the designer to explore different aesthetics in a particular scheme. He can explore multiple variations of the same overriding concept without having to start over. The different tools of programs such as Rhino or AutoCAD allow the designer to easily create slight mutations of the same concept with ease. The idea behind these digital practices is that a very large number of schemes can be created so that the highest amount of analysis is created. The designer is able to work with the highest number of explorations and schemes. Digital media allows the designer to: take an idea, manipulate it, copy it, mutate it, and build it. 

Reading 4

Greg Lynn explains Blob tectonics using corny horror flick allusions and other popular media portrayals of what a “blob” is to explain this complex form of construction. The general being the larger scale universal theories that are placed on the space and the particular being the more specific means of construction and orientation of the individual parts.

            Using the idea of the blob as a collectively complex structure that is also a single unit, Lynn breaks down the principles of this confusing form. Blobs go against normal tectonics and act as detached entities whose form is decided entirely by its surroundings. They interact tremendously with their context. They can absorb things, stick, mold, and are entirely inverted in structure. Continuous surfaces that is both the interior and the exterior. Then the subject of multiplicity and singularity arises. The blob is neither. It is networked and structured as multiple forms, but the form itself is singular in body. To explain these forms through models animation software creates an isomorphic polysurface or a meta-ball (blob) model. The many surfaces are affected by two influences: the zone of fusion and the zone of inflection. Each outside forces working to manipulate the vulnerable shape of the blob. A single surface is then formed by the changing of many surfaces due to the forces on the blob.

            The idea that structures must always be “standing upright” is then challenged. Lynn considers this rule to be “overrated” and encourages architects to stray from this normative response and attempt to conquer the blob. Aside from a few attempts upon the roofs of small structures this notion is still for the most part untouched.

In built form the blob is a difficult task given its material limitations and its need to be flexible and able to make transitions. Reiser + Umemoto and Yoh’s have, however, made considerable advances. Using truss systems to allow for deflection, a change in thickness, a relation to the height of the volume, repetition of surfaces and fluctuations all enhance the blob’s natural abilities of motion.

The Yokohama Port Terminal uses “plan symmetry” in its programmatic organization and massing, but loosens up its structure and becomes more fluid though each connection of slabs. It is an integration of symmetrical plans and flexible connections and sections.  

Assignment 4