STUDIO AIR2015, SEMESTER 1, TUTOR BRADXIRONG BAO

INTRODUCTION

PART A. CONCEPTUALIZATION

A.0 DESIGN FUTURING A.1 DESIGN COMPUTATION A.2 COMPOSITION / GENERATION A.3 CONCLUSION A.4 LEARNING OUTCOMES A.5 APPENDIX- ALGORITHMIC SKETCH BOOKS

CONTENTS

ABOUT ME INTRODUCTION

I’m Xirong Bao ( Maggie ), a third year student majoring in architecture in Melbourne University. I come from China and spent all my school years there learning about science. I’ve been trained of a very rational way of thinking, but personally I’m very emotional and have a great passion in arts and all the beautiful things in general.

I chose architecture because as most people would assume that it strikes a balance between arts and science. But after two years’ studying I’m now pretty confused whenever asked about it. I’m not sure what is the most important about architecture nor can I understand all the large concepts and big ideas associated with it. But I really appreciate and admire the intelligence, sensibility, energy, beauty, creative thinking and the general wish to make things better that is so often found among architects and delivered through their works. They keep inspiring me and make me wish to join this group in the future.

PREVIOUS WORKSI’ve done several design projects in previous studios but I’m not completely satisfied with any of them. In virtual environments I learned about Rhino and went through a digital design process guided me from conceptualization to fabrication. But I think I did most of the work intuitively without enough rational evaluations or creation. And because the lantern designed was only an object with a limited scale, nothing went too wrong. I was not completely satisfied with my work but I really got exited about what could be done through the digital design process. And I’m really looking forward to having a great design experience through studio air.

A.0 DESIGN FUTURING It is said by Fry that our current unsustainable mode of inhabitation, the future of human beings as a race is in doubt. Architecture as a design discipline, is embedded with all the power and responsibilities associated with creating a better future. It is believed that our ways of living is mediated by the built environment and thus architects should be capable of guiding people to a better future (Dutton). Unfortunately, the ability for design to directly impact and predict the future is overrated. Designers and especially architects are too restricted and limited by all the other cultural and social systems to simply design a good future for us. And beyond all the limitations, to simply design a better future is something that cannot be mastered by any groups of expertise alone (Fry).

What designs are really good at is articulating different possibilities related to our future which assists the society finds a preferable one through debates and discussions. It could be done through either evocative designs illustrating a promising future or ironic ones that demonstrate an undesired future and encourage people to critically reflect on the current situation (Dunne).

PRECEDENTS 01

The first project I chose is the Teesside Power Station located in one of the poorest areas in UK. It is a biomass power station built to provide energy for the new homes built around the area. The architect Thomas Heatherwick detects the current inefficiency in the arrangement of necessary elements of a power station and promoted a new composition. In the proposed structure, the bottom part of the station is buried in spare soil on site not only allow plants to grow upon but also provides acoustic insulation to the station. The top part is built as public space that utilizes the height required by the station to generate great view for recreation. The design radically shifts the site from a scary power station with danger signs that keeps people away into a power park that invites people in and be proud of the place supplying energy. The driving force of this design is probably the sensibility to human experience, and the outcome really creates great social values that will be continuously appreciated.

I chose this project as an example to innovative design not because it is carbon neutral nor does it engages with the most advanced technology to create outstanding building performance. But it inspires me that sometimes the sensible and creative design thinking it self is powerful enough to generate great change promise us with a better future.

IMG: Teesside Power Station Stockton-On-Tees, Teesside, UK, Heatherwick Studio

PRECEDENT 02

The second precedent I choose is the newly released design for Google’s California Headquarters. It is still under research and development, which positions itself at the very edge of the current and the future.

This project is innovative in so many aspects. In the social context, it creates a community oriented plan, which opens up space and actively shapes it for the benefits of the whole community. Facilities that can be shared by the locals such as bike tracks are laid out around the buildings as well as retail shops that associated with new work opportunities. It manages to keep the diversity and vitality of urban settings but blurs traditional distinctions by making the space accessible to all that lives in the area. The environmental considerations provide this project with qualities that will be continually appreciated in the future. It leaves the ecological sensitive areas untouched and aims to restore the natural environment through reformation of parking lots. It also sufficiently utilizes renewable energy. In the technical field, the project is engaged with translucent membrane as a new material, which blurs the exterior and interior. Moreover, flexible working space is created through movable lightweight building blocks. A more efficient office-working pattern is proposed here which may initiate

severe change in the future.

The many exciting and innovative thoughts involved in this project are not only formed from collaborative design of two creative and much celebrated architects at the moment but also thanks to the contribution of Google, as a client that is very sensible to the environmental and social issues and the responsibilities related to them. It gives some suggestions on the contribution that the commissioner can make to an architectural project.

The whole project is almost like an experiment of optimizing the built environment in every possible way, given the best resources. Though unfinished it unquestionably provides us with a promising vision of built environment in the future and hopefully it will inspires new innovative designs.

IMG: Design for Google’s California Headquarters, Google / BIG / Heatherwick Studio

A.1 DESIGN COMPUTATION Architectural design benefits from the new computational techniques in many ways. Both the design process and outcomes evolved with the help of the analytical and generative power of computers.

Traditionally, an architectural proposal goes through separated stages worked by groups with different expertise before its realization. The long process does not allow people with certain expertise to participate in the early design stages such as the structural engineers. On one hand, there is potential risk of expensive modifications in later process due to the lack of expertise of architects in certain fields. Moreover, the multiple groups that could help refine and expand design ideas much further fail to contribute in the formation stage of a design. The efficacy of this process can be well solved through computers as a medium that facilitates communication between architects and other groups. Architects can now encodes their abstract design ideas in different formats besides 2D drawings that could be easily decoded by other groups such as engineers. This new collaborative and integrated process can take design solutions into much more advanced fields beyond conventional practice (Kalay). Architects are now able to make designs beyond what are intuitive and familiar to them with the help of computers (Roudavski).

In this collaborative relationship, building performance can also be significantly improved. Architects can provide design proposals with controlled variables thanks to the generative power of computational design. And these proposals can be tested by engineers on

structural and energy performance with 3D simulation software. Thus architects can be guided with active feedbacks and new possibilities through the whole design process. And these analytical jobs traditionally done manually with potential mistakes had led to unpredictable outcomes (Kalay).

In addition, computational techniques reshape material fabrication. Rapid prototypes and digital testing of materials all encourages the use of new materials and more complex geometries. Indeed, the modern iconic buildings are well characterized by their ordered structural complexity and employment of new materials (Oxman).

PRECEDENT 01

The BMW Welt building is really a good example to show how the collaborative relationship between architects and engineers helps to realize ambitious design ideas. And lies the in the heart of this relationship is the efficient commutation facilitated by computers.

The design of the BMW is ambitious, architects creates a giant hall with a twisted tornado-like shape that is not familiar to traditional architectural practice. But with the help of computers, architects were able to specify the geometry of every each panel, which allow calculation to be conducted by structural engineers. With the help of the expertise of structural engineers, the hall with vast support-free space was realized.

The requirement on the performance of the building was equally challenging. Since it is used for car delivery, the gases produced by cars must be efficiently exhausted. The giant hall is required to be naturally ventilated. With the help of computational technique, designers and engineers were able to simulate the airflow within the complex structure. Repeating calculations were conducted to find out the optimal distribution of the outflow and intake vents on the irregularly paneled surface.

IMG: BMW Welt, Coop Himmelb(l)au

PRECEDENT 02

Zaha Hadid Architects wins projects around the world with their non-repetitive design solutions achieved through computers. There are no rigid forms or fixed plan found through their projects. Instead, every each building is comprised of a unique dynamic form shaped by a parametric approach of articulating complicated social process.

IMG: Zaha Hadid Architects

A.2 COMPOSITION / GENERATION Architecture theory and practice has slowly shifted from composition mode based on the representational logic into generation mode following the logic of algorithm. At the beginning of this shift, iconic buildings such as Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum led architecture away from formal representations. Giant buildings were divided into smaller scaled components to be designed and digitally fabricated. Theorists that attempted to form a new architectural theory out of these new buildings picked up not the complex geometric outcomes but the algorithmic thinking, as ‘formation precedes form’. (Kalay)

To well use algorithmic thinking, associative relationship between the components of an object and their parts-and-whole relationship with the object were carefully studied. A new medium emerged to use algorithmic thinking for the creation of variations that is the parametric design. It allows the creation and modulation of differentiation at various scales. (Kalay) Based on these scriptable variability, building performance could be selectively studied and improved through simulating testing. Besides building performance, there are simply too many advantages associated with this generative model of design (Oxman). It makes the creative design process traceable that can be constantly refined and studies. In addition, it provides a bottom-up pattern of design that allows architects to generate solutions free from the limitation of their preferences and backgrounds that best serves the site. And the programed rules help to define the possibility space, within which much more solutions can be generated by the algorithms compared to

traditional practice.

But there are also disadvantages embedded in this design mode. Parametric design over relies on programs, which limits our creativity to transferring what is available in the software into designs instead of searching for what is mostly needed. And in addition, many of the programing software we use to conduct architectural design were originally invented for other purpose, thus the solutions generated from these programs may not be the best in the architectural context.

PRECEDENT 01

The first project I chose is the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion by Toyo and Balmond. This project is one of the earliest experiments made on parametric design. At the first sight, it seems to be an extremely random box created intuitively by the architects. It is like an art object at a larger scale with a sense of instability and elegance. The contrast between the positive and negative space, the translucent and transparent is also extremely interesting. But what is really significant about this building is not its outcome but its design process, which employs algorithmic modeling. And surprisingly the algorithm applied to the design is an extremely simple one: ‘a cube expands as it rotates’.

This building really demonstrates the level of complexity and beauty that can be achieved through even the simplest parametric design, which inspires much more ambitions proposals in the following years.

IMG: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2002, Toyo Ito, Cecil Balmond, Arup

PRECEDENT 02

The second building I chose is the Beijing National Aquatics Center. Unlike other generative design that often hides their algorithms behinds complex geometries, this building takes a representational approach of parametric design. Architects drew the inspiration from soak bubbles.

At the first sight, the formation of them may seem quite random without a fixed pattern. But after careful investigation, architects found that the way the bubbles are packed together outlines a natural rule of space optimization. Sphere bubbles blend into each other and turned out to be polyhedrons sharing surfaces. And this form is the most efficient way of occupying three-dimensional space.

This fantastic rule found in nature was then encoded as algorithms to generate bubble-like cells of mediated variations on the façade. The parametric modeling tools help architects give precise geometric definitions of each bubble and later be used to work out the complex steel-frame that supports itself. IMG: Watercube – National Swimming Centre, PTW Architects

A.3 CONCLUSION

A.4 LEARNING OUTCOMES

My intended design approach is the parametric design. It is innovative because it emphasis the rules over form and transfers abstract design process into traceable creative algorithms. I think we can all benefit form this design approach in the future as it has endless potential to create architecture that is better than ever.

Through the three-weeks learning of my understanding of digital architectural theory is completely reformed. I used to have very ambiguous understandings of the various terms that seem to be similar such as digital design, computational design, parametric modelling and algorithmic thinking. Now after specific studies of precedents I’m getting more clear about the elements essential to digital design and their connections.

A.5 ALGORITHMIC SKETCHES

A.5 REFERENCE

BMW Welt, Coop Himmelb(l)auhttp://www.archdaily.com/29664/bmw-welt-coop-himmelblau/bmw-welt-7059/

Design for Google’s California Headquarters, Google / BIG / Heatherwick Studiohttp://www.archdaily.com/603947/see-big-and-heatherwick-s-design-for-google-s-california-headquarters/

Dunne, Anthony & Raby, Fiona (2013) Speculative Everything: Design Fiction, and Social Dreaming (MIT Press)

Fry, Tony (2008). Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice (Oxford: Berg), pp. 1–16

Kalay, Yehuda E. (2004). Architecture’s New Media: Principles, Theories, and Methods of Computer-Aided Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pp. 5-25

Oxman, Rivka and Robert Oxman, eds (2014). Theories of the Digital in Architecture (London; New York: Routledge), pp. 1–10

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2002, Toyo Ito, Cecil Balmond, Aruphttp://www.archdaily.com/344319/serpentine-gallery-pavilion-2002-toyo-ito-cecil-balmond-arup/

Teesside Power Station Stockton-On-Tees, Teesside, UK, Heatherwick Studiohttp://www.heatherwick.com/teesside-power-station/

Watercube – National Swimming Centre, PTW Architectshttp://www.ptw.com.au/ptw_project/watercube-national-swimming-centre/

Zaha Hadid Architectshttp://www.zaha-hadid.com/archive