Grace Qi-Yun Hong

Hi, I’m Grace Qi-Yun Hong, I’m a third yr student majoring architecture. I was born in China and grew up in Melbourne. I did Virtual when I was in my first yr of uni, and I did struggle a bit with rhino at the start, but later during the semester I managed to produce a model. However my skill with Rhino is still very limited, so I’m looking forward to have a chance to improve. I’m in group no.3 for my reading group.

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Precedents of Innovation

The building, Walt Disney Concert Hall, is one of the best buildings designed by Frank Gehry located in Los Angeles, California. This $274 million project is considered as an innovation which leads the modern architecture to a form of art. With the extravagance of its form the design for this precedent break the rules of harmony and symmetry – the magnificent curvature and irregular sculptural shape, it could be considered as a work of art in itself. The project was con-vered with approximately

12,500 pieces of unique formed corrugated steel sheets, as the exterior is de-signed with fascinating com-plex form, there are no two same shaped steel sheets were used, each piece takes a unique form of agreement to their location.

The idea of the archi-tect was to design an interior space with an evocative sculptural form of music, achieving an intimate con-nection between the orches-tra and audience. The interior space of this corrugated metal shell was designed with extreme care in the acoustic quality. Every curve

Architecture to ArtWalt Disney Concert Hall

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of the ceiling and internal walls has its own purpose to improve the acoustics spread-ing the sound. Gehry says his building was designed to ‘catch the light’; his Walt Disney Concert Hall achieved a structure that no earlier architects would have reached. He breaks the concept of classic architec-ture – equilibrium and harmo-ny by displaying the magnifi-cent curvature and billowing metallic shape. The design could not be achieved without the aid of computers,

Architecture to ArtWalt Disney Concert Hall

the harsh angles and gen-tly flowing curvature make it impossible for anyone to draft the construction plans. On the other hand, the Walt Disney Concert Hall was also criticised, according to Esa-Pekka Salonen, Music Direc-tor – the fancy exterior over-whelmed the visitor and forgot about the original purpose of the building – which is a hall for music.

Hand Sketch of Walts Disney Concert Hall.

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The Walt Disney Concert Hall also fulfils an important role in urban areas. The fascinat-ing sculptural exterior design blends in well with the city of Los Angeles. From my per-sonal opinion, this would be what the Gateway competi

tion is after – the modern and artistic architecture fits well with the urban environment, with the sense of not only architecture we are looking at, but an art.

Architecture to ArtWalt Disney Concert Hall

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The DaVinci Rotating Tower A Futuristic Innovation of Architecture

The DaVinci Rotating Tower A Futuristic Innovation of Architecture

The DaVinci Rotating Tower is planned in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, de-signed by David Fisher. The tower is planned to be 1027 metres tall with 68 floors of moving skyscraper. The floor of the tower will be able to rotate independently, just like the futuristic Suite Vollard located in Brazil – providing it an ever changing form. The entire rotation will vary from 1 to 3 hours, allowing the resi-dents to have a 360 degrees panorama over the course of a day. The rotation of the floor is also designed to not physi-cally noticeable to avoid upset stomachs.

Around 90% of the tower will be prefabricated, which allow the tower to be constructed within 22 month. Wind turbines and solar pan-els will also be installed on the tower to power the entire tower; they will be located on the roof and the top of each floor. This not only would al-low the DeVinci tower be the world’s largest and dynamic rotating building, but also self-sufficient building.

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The DaVinci Rotating Tower A Futuristic Innovation of Architecture

With the prefabricated materials and the solar pan-els and wind turbines that is going to be installed on the tower, not only the cost to

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construct the tower will be dramatically reduced, but also it will provide a much safer environment for the workers.

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Lofting and State Capture

I lofted curved surface using grasshopper, and baked it out. I started with three curves, as we can see on the grasshopper screen shot below.

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Lofting and State Capture

I tried using different density of circiles.

Computational Design Technique Before 1450, when Ar-chitecture was not considered as a professional practice, the way to construct or design a building is by those people called ‘Craftmanship’. Build-ings were built unplanned and undersigned in a slow process and also it is hard for those people to adapt new technologies and style.

But soon after 1450, when architecture became a profession – scaled drawing and models were produced to gain control over building process. As well as showing accurate detail and propor-tions and dimension. Also experience the design solu-tion visually and physically - it had become a communi-cation tool between architects and builders.

Now days, computer technology had become an important tool in our design life. They fill in what we hu-man are lack of, and never tire or make mistakes, al-though at the same time they

are lack of creative abilities. Compare to hand drawing and models, create a 3D design using computer allow us to have a more accurate visualisation – material and tectonics.

Computational design breaks down the traditional linear and hierarchical design strategies. Compare to the traditional design process, ev-erything is allocated at the be-ginning – who’s doing what; but for computational design, it is totally the opposite, we are required to have discus-sions often and agreement have to be made each time.

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Meseo Soumaya - Form of Complexity

Museo Soumaya – the private museum, located in Mexico City, designed by Mexican architect Fernando Romero. This is a complex building which adopted com-plex computational tech-niques. A complex 3D struc-ture were used between the exterior and interior surface of the building, instead of hav-ing same structured support, the design team has come up with a structure that does not

have a single repeating struc-ture – as every one of them adapt to their own local sur-face condition. Around 80% of the surface was considered as the most ‘regular zone’ where similar sized hexagons were arranged. Another 20% of the surface is where unique hexagons were grouped, where the surface is consid-ered as ‘most curved’ zone.

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Meseo Soumaya - Form of Complexity

We need a simple, in-tegrated process for the build-er and client to understand what we are doing. Commu-nication is an important stage within the design process; we need to exchange information and ideas constantly with the people who are involved. For a complex building like

Museo Soumaya, we cannot afford using the traditional linear and hierarchical design process, instead of that we are required to have a more efficient process – the only way to achieve this is through using computational technol-ogy.

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Partricia and Phillip Frost Mu-seum of Science - making Complex Geometry Feasible

Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science, designed by Grimshaw Archi-tects, it is planned to open in 2015, in Miami. Various com-puter software were used to design this museum, such as, Rhinoceros and Grasshopper and Autodesk etc. The muse-um is designed with structural framework to hold a 2.3

million litre Gulf Stream tank; the structure is also required to contain the living support systems. The museum is designed with curved, verti-cal and inclined walls – it is a complex surface to construct, as it will need bent steel grid with curved framing.

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Partricia and Phillip Frost Mu-seum of Science - making Complex Geometry Feasible

With the computational design technology, we can design something that we cannot achieve in the past. The inclined structure of the walls for the museum would be hard to generate without the computation design pro-cess. But on the other hand, the fancy gothic or baroque buildings were achieved with-out any computation help. So we cannot say all the complex geometries buildings only can be achieved through compu

tational design process. Al-though that’s the case, com-putational design means to create new structures beyond pre-existing typologies – it is considered as an art which allows new creativity in space making, optimisation and con-structability.

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Explore Curve Menu

I explored the sur-face menu on Rhino through Grasshopper.

First of all I created two curved line and allow the two curves to be divided up. Then by using the ARC buttom, I created arcs across the two curved lines. Finally I divided the length of the arcs and by using the IntCrv buttom, I created interpolated curve through points.

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Explore Curve Menu

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Parametric Design Mercedes Benz Museum - A Master Piece Expressing Contemporary Por-gramming Cultures

The Mercedes Benz Museum is located in Germa-ny, designed by UN Studio, and was completed in 2006. The attractive exterior and the geometry structure resulting in a new landmark. The build-

-ing was based on an unique cloverleaf concept – by us-ing three overlapping circles, each level were connected by a ramps around a central atrium.

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Mercedes Benz Museum - A Master Piece Expressing Contemporary Por-gramming Cultures

The parametric de-sign allows the building to be designed in a more com-plex free form shapes and yet repeating elements are also created. This building is considered as a success-ful parametric building, as it is a building that is obviously designed using computational process. From the exterior, the smooth curvature and the 360 degrees panoramic windows is very likely to be a parametric design.

I agree with what Woodbury Robert men-tioned in his book ‘Elements

of Parametric Design’, how some complex building can be only achieved through computer programming tech-nology. The twisted, folded and double curved elements in the M Benz Museum is an obvious example, as the twist and turns around the museum provide a sculpture feeling for the visitors. The flowing design was inspired by trefoil – which is three loops contin-uously overlapping and re-turning into themselves – with this geometry shape, there is no mistake allowed.

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Taichung Metropolitan Opera House - A Success in Parametric Design

The Taichung Metro-politan Opera House located in Taiwan, designed by Japa-nese architect Toyo Ito. The design is an open structure, with several entrances around the building – emerging the interior with the exterior park-land. The smooth continuity of the structure allows the building to engage with art and music performance – Ito calls this architecture as the ‘Sound Cave’.

The powerful curving

forms of this architecture with multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry to evoke the chaos of modern life. The main structure of this opera house will be formed with connecting curved in-terior and exterior walls and floors. The walls are designed to be formed with 58 curved wall units. Although this is a futuristic design, the construc-tion of the 3D curved walls is a challenge.

Taichung Metropolitan Opera House - A Success in Parametric Design

The Taichung Metro-politan Opera House is de-signed using parametric tool – the curvature of the walls and floors. This succeed as the connection between the curved walls are perfect, they

connected continuously and formed a shape of cave. The design engaged both with the purpose of the building as well as the modern urban environment.

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Parametric Modelling

This week I tried using Parametric modelling using Grasshopper.

It is quite chanllenging for me, but yet interestingl fol-lowing the steps on the online video tutorials are very helpful to me.

Parametric Modelling

I find this very useful as it maximise intersection of the curves, so we can trigu-late the structure.

Though, I’m not quite sure whether I did it right, as the grid on my surface are not as neat as the one shows in the video tutorial.

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