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STUDIO AIR Part B

BY YITAO LIU TUTOR: JULIAN SJAAK RUTTEN

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CONTENTS

Part B. CRITERIA DESIGN B.1. Research Field 3 B.2. Case Study 1.0 5 B.3. Case Study 2.0 7 B.4. Technique: Development 10 B.5. Technique: Prototypes 13 B.6. Technique: Proposal 15B.7. Learning Objectives and Outcomes 16B.8. Appendix - Algorithmic Sketches 17

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For the start of my research, I chose structure as my research field. The potential of structure can be considered as beams, columns, frames, struts and other structural members. By applying this technique, the patterns like lattice, waffle and column grids could be created, which enrich architecture and give people an expressive feeling of the project. Person-ally, I agree with that structure is not just a simple applied technology, but an integral element of architecture.

Sevilla Metropol by Jurgen Mayer H-- Waffle structure

Canton Tower by IBA Architects-- Lattice Structure

B.1. Research Field

In the modern architecture, people use less ornments on the building and pursuit a simply but unique style. The patterns created by a well-designed structural system could be considered as a new kind of ornament. Namely, applying structure architecturally to bring the project to another layer of aesthetic and functional richness to de-signs is what I am interested. By doing this, a better effect of building usability may be achieved.

1. “Metropol Parasol”, Wikipedia, 2016 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropol_Parasol#/media/File:Espa-cio_Parasol_Sevilla.jpg> [accessed 20 April 2016].2. “CANTON TOWER - MARK HEMEL BARBARA KUIT INFORMATION BASED ARCHITECTURE”, Iba-bv.com, 2016 <http://www.iba-bv.com/tvt06.html> [accessed 20 April 2016].

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Birds Nest by Herzog DeMuron-- Expressive Structure

Water Cube by PTW Architects-- Expressive Structure

Structure as an indispensable architectural element is thoroughly integrated and involved in the making of architecture, and playing significant roles that engage the senses, hearts and minds of building users. It provides a large resource of very diverse precedents where structure enhances specific architectural ideas, concepts and qualities.[1]

1. Andrew Charleson, STRUCTURE AS ARCHITECTURE, 1st edn (Italy: Charon Tec Pvt. Ltd, Chennai, India, 2005), p. 1 <http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/sijpkes/arch-struct-2008/book-2.pdf> [accessed 24 April 2016].

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B.2. Case Study 1.0

With the help of Lunchbox plugin, a matrix of iterations can be created by applying different types of structural patterns into different geometric shapes and changing variables.

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These four outcomes could be con-sidered more successful than others as they are quite 3-dimensional with a hollow centre or open space under a roof. By observation, it is clear that many other outcomes seem impossi-ble to contain a human inside as the structures are messed and displaced without any rules.

During the creation of sequences of geometric variation, I was always seek-ing an outcome with a unique style. It is excited to get a totally different outcome when changing the variables. Also, I was trying to achieve the sim-plest one and the most complex one by push the capabilities of the definition to its possible limits.

Client: Passing pedestrians/ Local resi-dents/ Local animals

Site: A relatively flat area between the St Georges Rd and the walking/riding path along the creek

Lens: Sustainability; a relationship be-tween natural and human movements.

Description: A pavilion made by natural materials, such as timber or bamboo, with the decoration of plants. It provides a space for animals and people to rest and communicate. The form of the pavilion will be started by the investigation of structure.

The final version seems very unique but with a regular structural pattern. It makes the project look neater and more pleased to be produced, constructed and visited. This geometry is possible to contain people and the capacity is decided according to it actual size. The new project could be used as a pavilion or a small gallery, or just a decoration to the empty lawn.

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Introduction -- The Water Cube

1. Cara Cannella, "Celebrating The Ancient Wisdom Of The I-Ching At Beijing's Water Cube - Signature Reads", Signature Reads, 2013 <http://www.signature-reads.com/2013/06/celebrating-the-ancient-wisdom-of-the-i-ching-at-beijings-water-cube/> [accessed 20 April 2016].2. “Watercube Related Keywords & Suggestions - Watercube Long Tail Keywords”, Keyword-suggestions.com, 2016 <http://www.keyword-suggestions.com/d2F0ZXJjdWJl/> [accessed 28 April 2016].3. “Beijing Water Cube, National Aquatics Center, Bird’s Nest”, Chinatraveldesigner.com, 2016 <http://www.chinatravelde-signer.com/travel-wiki.aspx?id=2029> [accessed 24 April 2016].

B.3. Case Study 2.0

With the capacity of 17000 during the games and total land surface of 65,000 square meters, the Beijing National Aquatics Center, also known as the Water Cube, is an aquatics center that was built alongside Beijing National Stadium in the Olympic Green for the swimming competitions of the 2008 Summer Olym-pics. Although called the Water Cube, the aquatic center is actually a rectangu-lar box with 178 metres square and 31 metres high.

The Water Cube was specially designed and built by a consortium made up of PTW Architects (an Australian architecture firm), Arup international engineering group, CSCEC (China State Construction Engineering Corporation), and CCDI (China Construction Design International) of Shanghai. The Water Cube’s design was initiated by bubbles, as a symbolism of water. In addition, a square was more symbolic to Chinese culture and its relationship to the Bird’s Nest stadi-um.

The outer wall is based on the Weaire–Phelan structure, a structure devised from the natural pattern of bubbles in soap lather. The complex Weaire–Phelan pattern was developed by slicing through bubbles in soap foam, resulting in more irregular, organic patterns than foam bubble structures proposed earlier by the scientist Kelvin. Using the Weaire–Phelan geometry, the Water Cube’s exterior cladding is made of 4,000 ETFE bubbles, some as large as 9.14 metres across, with seven different sizes for the roof and 15 for the walls.[3]

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As my research field is structure, I decide to focus on the frame structure of the water cube, but not membrane.

Firstly, I tried to recreate the project by creating a box first and then applying populate 3D within it. Using these points, with the algorithms of Voronoi 3D, I got a similar pattern with the water cube but in a 3D way. Then I extracted the frame by applying explode tree, deconstruct brep and pipe to get the result of G1.

Obviously, the original one should not have the structure inside the building. The structural pattern should be only focused on the surface of the building. Therefore I tried another way. G2 is achieved by adding a box inside G1 as I tried to trim the inner structure off but failed.

The second way I tried is to create each pannel of buiding first and then combine them togeth-er. During the process, I found that it is a very difficult and imprecise way to achieve my final product. Therefore, I was wondering a way to focus only the surfaces of a box. G3 is the half- finished product of my second way.

The third and the most successful way is to applying deconstrcuct brep to a box first, then using face boundaries to convert the six surfac-es to polylines and set the regions for populate 2D. Finally, with the algorithm of populate 2D, voronoi and pipe, I achieved G4, which is pretty much similar to the original project.

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The current outcome I gained by using grasshopper could be seen as a half-finish work of the original one as I focused on the frame structure of the building but neglected the surface panel of the building. For the future development, I am considering to add the membrane element as the surface of the building.

Design process and result...

Method 1: Applying Voronoi 3D to the whole box but not only the surfaces of the box. The 3D interior structure has been created.

Method 2:Divided the box into 5 surfaces and made the structure patterns on each panel separately. Then, combining them together to form a box (without the undersurface).

Method 3:Using the grasshopper technique to make the al-gorithms of voronoi focus on the surface of the box only.

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B.4. Technique: Development

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At first, I tried to use the same grasshopper definition of my water cube prototype but change the initial geometry input. However, I found that voronoi did not work for a curved surface, such as the surface of a sphere. In addtion, if I changed the geometry to a triangu-lar pyramid, the populate 2D would distribute in a very strange way, which made the final result mussy and far more different from the ideal result.

Therefore, I decided to keep the same shape as the water cube but change the styles of structure. With the help of lunchbox plugin, I tried different structure types, such as braced grid, fiagrid, grid and hexag-onal structures to see the different outcomes.

I also investigated and generated several 3D interior structures with the definition of my first approach. It is surprised for me to find that the complex interior structure inside the box looks like a spiderweb. There-fore, for the interim presentation, I participated the group of designing a spiderweb bridge.

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The graphics shown above are the most successful iterations in my mind. According to our investigation theme, the technique of drones should be applied on our projects. The main structural frame could be done by timber or bamboo, and using drones to carry steel lines to create the inner struc-tures with some algorithms. The algorithms could be gained from the pattern of natural spiderwebs.

Although the purpose of these iterations I did were not used for a bridge as it is a box shape, the design idea of complex detailed inner structure to support the main struc-ture, and using the main structure to support people could be taken for the further devel-opment of our spiderweb bridge.

Our design of the Spiderweb bridge has a very similar design concept as the water cube I have investigated. Both of them took the inspiration of their structure patterns from the nature. Namely, their architectural innovations were inspired by nature, which is also called biomimicry. For the water cube, a inspiration of bubble has been taken to symbolise water. For my project and the group project, as the design site is near the Merri Creek, spiders and spiderwebs should be common to be seen around this area.

As I said before, the lens of my project are looking into sustainability and a relationship between the nature and human movements. By applying biomimicry into the design, the final project will bring the feeling of combin-ing the human movement into the nature.

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B.5. Technique: Prototypes

As I was investigating the Water cube, which took the inspi-ration from the natural bubble, our spiderweb bridge will take the inspiration from the natural spiderwebs.

Obviously, it is a tensile structure. Tensile aggregations are described as a concatenation of nodes and links. Flying ro-bots, namely drones, seem to be the best choice for the tech-nique we used. We simulated the walking paths of spiders by drones. We used drones to carry lines with the algorithms carried out by investigating natural spiderwebs.

I found these pictures above and tried to map out the web pattern in algorithmic terms. By observing the points of intersection within the web, I followed the rule to create some codes for the nodes and links of our tensile structure and we used grasshopper to generate the prototypes below.

As for the actual design, we decided to create this spirderweb bridge between the bridge and the bank, therefore, two panels on each side will be needed. During the computational process, we created this structural inside a box to investigate different structure types and the strength of the structure whether it is able to carry a human or not.

1. “Spider Web #6849391”, 7-themes.com, 2016 <http://7-themes.com/6849391-spider-web.html> [accessed 28 April 2016].

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For the actual physical modelling, we used a perspex box with many holes on each of panels. Then, we selected a pair of opposite panels as the existing bridge and the bank, which support our tensile structure, and tried to simulate the paths of the spider/drone to map out the spiderweb bridge by hand.

During the test of our structure, we found some drawbacks. The most important one is that the tensile structure is not as strenght as we thought. Actually, it is hard to keep balance on the tensile structure. Therefore, as we planned at the beginning, the main structure of the bridge will be needed, such as a flat surface for people to walk, and this spiderweb tensile structure will be used to support it.

For the further development, the density of the structure could be increased to in-crease the strength of the structure. In addition, creating more nodes would make the structure stronger. The way to add the walking path will be developed.

1. “Best Spider Web Png #21480 - Clipartion.Com”, Clipartion.com, 2016 <http://clipartion.com/free-cli-part-21480/> [accessed 1 May 2016].

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As I said before, our project combined the design concepts of biomimicry and high technique. In the context of Merri Creek, the spiderweb bridge will fit in with the back-ground very well. This design tried to indicate the way that human interfere with nature, also, the relationship between the human movement and the nature.

As an algorithmic design, we used drones to simulate spiders. We also investigated the different personalities of spiders and tried to give the drones personalities. As spiders are roughly classified with the personalities of bold and shy, I am thinking about to have two different algorithms for drones to simulate these two personalities.

As a structural design, the ornament is created by itself and in a very natural form.

With the reasons above, our design could be thought as the best choice to fit the criterea. For the further development, we will focus on the spiderweb engineer and the techiniques of using grasshopper and applying drones in our design. What is more, the safety problem will be considered later.

B.6. Technique: Proposal

Photos shown on the left is pretty much what I though the way that drones cooperate in our design.

1. “ETH Zurich’S Drones Able To Build A Bridge In Flight - H+ MAGAZINE”, H+ MAGAZINE, 2015 <https://humanoids.io/2015/09/eth-zurichs-drones-able-build-bridge-in-flight/> [accessed 28 April 2016].

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B.7. Learning Objectives and Outcomes

Before the start of this project, I could only play around with grasshopper, which means I could not use it to build the actual things I want, all the results are ran-domly gained. However, during this project, I was thinking to use grasshopper to achieve a specific goal. It makes me to gain a sense of achievement when I actual-ly create a similar prototype of the water cube.

During the process, I also have met some problems when I tried to use the same grasshopper definition but changed the original geometry, such as changing the cube into a sphere or triangular pyramid. When I did that way, either the definition did not work, or the result I gained was not what I want. For example, voronoi can be used for the surfaces of a cube, but it did not work for a sphere. I understood this as voronoi only works on the points of a flat surface but not a curved surface.

For the group work I participited for the midterm presentation, we tried to use some algorithm to simulate the creation of spider webs. In our plan, we used drones to simulate the movement of spider and design the paths of drones with algorithm to create our project -- a bridge with the shape of spider web. However, we are still researching the way to write the code for drones.

We also considered the possibilities of us-ing membrane structure, which means we use lines to create a 2-dimensional spider-web pattern like the actural orb webs. If doing this way, it will be very similar to one of the surfaces of the water cube that I investigated.There is another idea, which is using the spider web structure surround the space of walking path (main struc-ture of the bridge). The tensile structure is attached to the main part to support it. The final choice we made is to make the web dynamic and able to change around in different conditions by considering the situation of water flood in merry creek.

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B.8. Appendix - Algorithmic Sketches

With the help of grasshop-per plugins, such as kanga-roo and lunch box, it could be easy for me to achieve the things I want. Instead of some irregular structures, I can create some struc-tures with clear and regular patterns, and some algo-rithms can be seen within the project, which makes it look like a really project(pa-vilion).

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Reference:

“Beijing Water Cube, National Aquatics Center, Bird’s Nest”, Chinatraveldesigner.com, 2016 <http://www.chinatraveldesigner.com/travel-wiki.aspx?id=2029> [accessed 24 April 2016]

Cannella, Cara, "Celebrating The Ancient Wisdom Of The I-Ching At Beijing's Wa-ter Cube - Signature Reads", Signature Reads, 2013 <http://www.signature-reads.com/2013/06/celebrating-the-ancient-wisdom-of-the-i-ching-at-beijings-water-cube/> [accessed 20 April 2016]

“CANTON TOWER - MARK HEMEL BARBARA KUIT INFORMATION BASED ARCHITECTURE”, Iba-bv.com, 2016 <http://www.iba-bv.com/tvt06.html> [accessed 20 April 2016]

Charleson, Andrew, STRUCTURE AS ARCHITECTURE, 1st edn (Italy: Charon Tec Pvt. Ltd, Chennai, India, 2005), p. 1 <http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/sijpkes/arch-struct-2008/book-2.pdf> [accessed 24 April 2016]

“ETH Zurich’S Drones Able To Build A Bridge In Flight - H+ MAGAZINE”, H+ MAGAZINE, 2015 <https://humanoids.io/2015/09/eth-zurichs-drones-able-build-bridge-in-flight/> [accessed 28 April 2016]

“Metropol Parasol”, Wikipedia, 2016 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropol_Para-sol#/media/File:Espacio_Parasol_Sevilla.jpg> [accessed 20 April 2016]

“Spider Web #6849391”, 7-themes.com, 2016 <http://7-themes.com/6849391-spider-web.html> [accessed 28 April 2016]

“Watercube Related Keywords & Suggestions - Watercube Long Tail Keywords”, Key-word-suggestions.com, 2016 <http://www.keyword-suggestions.com/d2F0ZXJjdWJl/> [accessed 28 April 2016]