studio air journal part b fixed

ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN

STUDIO

AIR

2013

382808

YINING SHE

CONTENTS

PART A. EOI I: CASE FOR INNOVATION

INTRODUCTION...................................01

A.1. ARCHITECTURE AS A DISCOURSE...............03

A.2. COMPUTATIONAL ARCHITECTURE................11

A.3. PARAMETRIC MODELLING......................14

A.4. CONCLUSION................................19

A.5. LEARNING OUTCOMES.........................20

A.6. APPENDIX - ALGORITHMIC EXPLORATIONS.......21

NOTES & REFERENCE FOR PART A...................23

PART B. EOI II: DESIGN APPROACH

B.1. DESIGN FOCUS..............................26

B.2. CASE STUDY 1.0............................29

B.3. CASE STUDY 2.0............................33

B.4. TECHNIQUE: DEVELOPMENT....................38

B.5. TECHNIQUE: PROTOTYPES.....................47

B.6. TECHNIQUE PROPOSAL........................51

B.7. LEARNING OBJECTIVES AND OUTCOMES..........53

B.8. APPENDIX - ALGORITHMIC SKETCHES...........55

NOTES & REFERENCE FOR PART B...................55

make a multiple designing system

Hi, my name is Yining She, and I am also glad to be called Darren. I’m an oversea student from China, and this is my first semester, third year in architecture ma-jor as I entered Melbourne Uni by the mid-year intake.

In past designing studios, I have basically done most of my design studio models with hand drawings or some physical tech-niques under the subject needs. Meanwhile I’ve also done some works by computer, basically with Sketchup & Autocad. Although I did the “lantern” design by Rhino and Fablab fabrication in Virtual Environments at my first year, but that was kind of an introduction and fundamental practice about Rhino, which is actually such a complex and helpful programme, so I’m re-ally looking forward to this Air Studio for its more advanced Rhino designing practice, and different architectural ideas.

01 INTRODUCTION

make a multiple designing system

In Virtual Environments subject at my first year, I started to or-ganize some of my designing ideas in a digital way with Rhino. The initial natural process of this lantern model I looked at was the track drew by the moving arm when the violinist plays the violin. In the view of relationship between the music and the concept of lan-tern, I was trying to make a multi-ple designing system that contains both visual and verbal fields. Rhino did help me a lot dur-ing the whole digitization. That was the first time I found a designing process could be much more efficient on comput-ers rather than hand drawings.

Digital designing will al-low more complex calcula-tions which delimit design-ers and will allow a diverse range of complex forms to be created with great ease using digital techniques.

Digital architecture also plays a vital and signifi-cant role in this industry. Using Rhino as an example, it analyses the changing data and parametric factors that can be hardly dealt with any other ways without comput-ing calculations. More ac-curate details consist of a better design for the cal-culations brings almost no errors that might take place during hand designing.

INTRODUCTION 02

A.1. ARCHITECTURE AS A DISCOURSE

Two brilliant architectural projects located in different countries designed be two great architects that have dif-ferent cultural backgrounds will be introduced and analysed to explore the significance of architectural ideas and its influence on our lives.

1. 4x4 House by Tadao Ando.

2. Seattle Central Library by Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus of OMA/LMN.

We live in a time of renaissance... cities are coming back to life, after a long neglect.[1]

- Daniel Libeskind

03 ARCHITECTURE AS A DISCOURSE

PART A. EOI I: CASE FOR INNOVATION

ARCHITECTURE AS A DISCOURSE 04

4x4 House

Architect: Tadao Ando

Year of construction: 2003

Land Area: 117.19 m2

Floor Area: 22.56 m2

Location: Tarumi-ku, Kobe, Hyogo, Ja-pan

Materials: Concrete, wood and glass

Structure: Reinforced concrete

This project was asked to be built at an extremely small size site, which is approximately 4m x 4m, and Tadao Ando named it so. The site is just close to the beach, having a great view of the sea in front of it. The first house also addresses the necessities of the occu-pants in height, with a basement, ground floor and three other floors above this.

However, the second one nearby has a dif-ferent vertical access system. Instead of the staircase, the second one has an elevator. Another difference is the first one uses all concrete while the sec-ond one replaces some concrete by wood.

Every level has its own specific function.

4x4 House should be regarded as a well done example showing how the idea of sus-tainability and space-organization could be achieved in limited areas. This con-dition becomes common in nowaday urban planning for the city development. Cilent now has an opportunity to feel a living sapce that has been highly planned and accurately calculated. The construction process could also be seen as an experi-ment indicates how to keep the aesthetic needs under strict spatial restrictions.


4x4 House is one of the best examples expressing the architect Tadao An-do’s thoughts in modern architecture.

Tadao Ando always believes three ba-sic points. Firstly, any building must be designed and built based on reli-able materials, such as concrete, and unpainted wood. This is a fundamental statement to guarantee the building provides secure, safe, and solid envi-ronment for the people living inside. Secondly, he loves obvious and pure geometric shapes in design. Geometries will give out the strongest security for users, furthermore, this method placed a firm foundation in the de-signing process, sending messages all about keeping clients safe and com-fortable in their private space. When the geometries appears, the boundar-ies would be quite visible, meanwhile location, orientation, and such prop-erties could be easily seen and de-termined. The nature and the building interact with each other, the building turns to a huge screen reflecting all the human activities on it, so does the lighting, which will be present-ed frequently and completely as well.

The third point is the nature. Tadao projects unique spaces, which change constantly, because the sun and wind play in their confines.[2] Besides that, he loves to re-arrange the natu-ral surroundings around the building, to create a unique type of artificial nature, which means an environment af-ter accurately organized and planned.

Tadao Ando is a minimalist architect and he has been strongly influenced by the Japanese traditional design and architecture, which which focuses on the simplicity and elegance of the shapes. I think 4x4 House successful-ly represents Tadao Ando’s idea that how human needs to plan our future, especially the living space. It re-news people’s thoughts of seeing and thinking, as well as the designing ap-proaches. This is also referring to the role of digitization in modern ar-chitecture. His works are mostly al-ways related to accurate arrangement, which is the best thing could be done with advanced computing techniques.


Seattle Central Library

Architect: Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus of OMA/LMN

Open Date: May 23, 2004

Building Area: 34000 m2

Floor number: 11

Location: Downtown Seattle, Wash-ington, America

Surface Materials: Glass and Steel


Dutch architect Rem Koo-hass has described the steel, glass, and aluminum library as “large but not monumental.”

Aluminum mesh sandwiched be-tween glass panels reduces heat and glare on the in-terior, and the glass grid provides seismic stability.

The view from the soar-ing atrium changes with each movement of the sun and clouds. The building garnered a 2005 national AIA Honor Award for Architecture.[3]


The Seattle Public Library’s Cen-tral Library is the flagship li-brary of The Seattle Public Library system. The library has a unique, striking appearance, consist-ing of several discrete “floating platforms” seemingly wrapped in a large steel net around glass skin.

In the designing process, Rem Kool-haas and his team put the function on the most important place. Al-though the library has an uncommon outfit from the outside, the vi-tal concept was to let the build-ing’s required functions dictate what it should look like, rather than imposing a structure and mak-ing the functions conform to that.

The impressive surface is not just a skin done by techniques. The whole outlook expresses some new ideas about how to establish a 3D space for public. Rem Kool-haas strongly believes Deconstruc-tivism Architecture. He loves this approach to building design that attempts to view architecture in bits and pieces. Most of their works may seem to have no visual logic, on the other side, they may appear to be made up of unrelat-ed, disharmonious abstract forms.

This type of architecture pays more attention on the relation-ships between different parts in the building as well as the spatial arrangement and surface design.

In Seattle Central Library project, the ideas of archi-tectural critics and the general public has been combined and mixed. Nowadays, many architects start to organize different thoughts from both urban planning and architec-ture into a co-existing system and make it work for ad-vanced architectural designing. Rem Koolhaas himself is a Deconstructivist architect, therefore a lot of post-modern elements could be easily found in his works, such like fragmentation, manipulating a structure’s surface or skin, and non-rectilinear shapes which appear to distort

and dislocate elements of architecture, such as structure and envelope. The finished vi-sual appearance of buildings that exhibit de-constructivist “styles” is characterized by unpredictability and controlled chaos.[5] De-constructivist architects have been enjoying dealing with complex relationships between different parts, and finally give out a sur-face or whole style fulfilled with “cells”, which will be the most fundamental unit to make

up a complete surface or space design. Deconstructivism is a big step in human history. People start to feel the strong visual messages sent from the works. Users in this Seattle Central Library would be satisfied by the unusual but efficient lay-out and vertical arrangement.

Another key point is that construc-tivist archi-tecture will be quite easily re-lated to computa-tional, digital, and parametric architectural de-signing. Digital designing is now an essential tool in most aspects of contemporary a r c h i t e c t u r e . However, the par-ticular nature of deconstruc-tivism makes the use of computers especially perti-nent. Though the computer has made the designing of complex shapes much easier and more accruate, and not every-thing that looks odd is “decon-structivist.”[6]

Architecture is expected to be solid,stable and reassuring – physically, socially and psychologically. Bound to each other, the architectural and the material are considered insepa-rable. But the immaterial is as im-portant to architecture as the mate-rial and has as long a history.[4]

-Jonathan Hill


A.2. COMPUTATIONAL ARCHITECTURE

11 COMPUTATIONAL ARCHITECTURE

COMPUTATIONAL ARCHITECTURE 12

ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion

University of Stuttgart, Facul-ty of Architecture and Urban Planning.

In November 2012 the Institute for Compu-tational Design (ICD) and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural De-sign (ITKE) at the University of Stutt-gart have completed a research pavilion that is entirely robotically fabricated from carbon and glass fibre composites.[7]

This pavilioon basically uses the same ma-terial concept as my project in Studio Air. Composite material is a huge range with al-most every type of materials in this range. At the core of the project is the development of an innovative robotic fabrication process within the context of the building indus-try based on filament winding of carbon and glass fibres and the related computation-al design tools and simulation methods.[8]

How to deal with the relationship between different materials will be a key point.


From my previous designing experiences and works, I found it is important and in-spiring applying with different media to impact on creative design development.

People have been creating designing ap-proaches for centuries. From the earli-est time, people use paintings and hand sketches to express their own thoughts. As time goes by, the photos became the most direct way to catch and keep the shapes and appearance of objects, which brought a revolution to designing world. It is much easier to keep ideas and inspirations when people see or feel anything wherever they are, and whenever it is. Photography also shorten the distance between common people to design works. Keeping ideas and express-ing thoughts are not that professional than years before. For decades lately, digital designing has become the center role in the creative design stage. Digitization shows highest accuracy compared to hand works meanwhile builds the actual communications with engineering. The concept and produc-tion have been associated to each other in a efficient way. As a result, different media will contribute to the development of creative design in a increasing trend, and at the same time, the connections be-tween every single way are going to be established efficiently and helpfully.

Just like what Kalay mentioned, comput-er, by their nature, are superb analyti-cal engines. If correctly program m ed, they can follow a line of reasoning to its logical conclusion. They will never tire, never make silly arithm etical mistakes, and will gladly search through and cor-relate facts buried in the endless heaps of inform ation they can store.[9] Most things those digital techniques could help with are calculation and repeating, which seems quite simple and non-creative. How-ever, hum ans that possess both rational and creative abilities, are easily bored, and tend to make mistakes. What programmes could archieve is highly helpful for types of works like calculation and repeating, and additionally, they do it in a high speed that people could save time for cre-ativity. Another important point is that computers would not make any mistakes if we ask them to go for the right direc-tion, which improves accuracy significant-ly. Kalay also stated that design, ac-cordingly, is a purposeful activity, aimed at achieving some welldefined goals.[10] Therefore, the essential point in design-ing is to solve problems, and computa-tional tools could largely reduce the chance that unexpected problems appear.

Now we are at a stage that architecture industry might be facing revolutions. The processes of constructing a design can be now more direct and more complex because the information can be easily extracted, exchanged, and utilized with far greater facility and speed. The digital information is exactly the construction information with the help of digital techniques.[11]

PARAMETRIC MODELLING 14

A.3. PARAMETRIC MODELLING

Paremetric designing should not be just focusing on creating shapes and curves, or archieving some difficult constructions with a huge number of calculations and experiments. However, instead of classical and modern reli-ance on rigid geometrical figures – rectangles, cubes, cylinders, pyramids and spheres – the new primitives of parametricism are animate geometrical entities – splines, nurbs and subdivs.[13] From parametricist architects’ eyes, the buildings could be seen as organic bodies. They could be designed from each little cell, to a entire whole. After understanding all those thoughts and ideas, the paramatric designing then makes a lot sense, not just com-putational analysis and calculation.

Schumacher also has his own idea about the whole picture of parametric de-sign. It aims to establish a com-plex variegated spatial order, using scripting to differentiate and corre-late all elements and subsystems of a design. The goal is to intensify the internal interdependencies within an architectural design, as well as the external affiliations and continuities within complex, urban contexts.[14]

We might be passing a period that mod-ernism designing is fading away, and post-modernism and deconstructivism were mere transitional for us cur-rently, and finally, parametricism needs to be discussed for its new way seeing and thinking about designing.

Patrik Schumacher has talked about the future of parametricism. He mentioned that many people might be worrying about if The admixture of a post-modernist, deconstructivist or minimalist design can only disrupt the penetrating and far-reaching parametricist continuity, and the reverse does not hold, because there is no equivalent degree of con-tinuity in post-modernist, deconstruc-tivist or minimalist urbanism. Howev-er, in fact, parametricism can take up vernacular, classical, modernist, post-modernist, deconstructivist and minimalist urban conditions, and forge a new network of affiliations and con-tinuities between and beyond any number of urban fragments and conditions.[12]


Beijing National Aquatics Center

Location: Beijing, China

Architect(s): PTW Architects, CSCEC, CCDI, and Arup

Built Time: 2004 - 2007


Burnham Pavilions

Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA

Architect(s): Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel

A temporary pavilion designed and erected in Chicago’s Millennium Park as part of the Burnham Plan celebrations - reflecting the Chicago’s long tradition for embracing cutting edge architecture in an in intricate but fluid struc-ture that incorporates hidden trac-es of Burnham and Bennett’s original 1909 plans to redevelop the city. [15]

Their purpose was to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago,[16] and symbolize the city’s continued pursuit of the Plan’s architectural vision with contempo-rary architecture and planning.[17]

The sculptures were private-ly funded and reside in Millen-nium Park. The pavilions were de-signed to be temporary structures.[18]

This is a tensioned fabric shell fit-ted over a curving aluminum frame-work inside, then decorated outside.

Parametric techniques help us to step onto the next level that imagination becomes the first and the most impor-tant element in designing process. Digital tools describe every detail accurately and turn those almost impo-ossible fabrication parts into real-ity.

Take background into consideration, the Water Cube will be more like a experiment to test how the natural elements and structures works and how much human can manipulate from these reasonable stories given by the na-ture.

19 CONCLUSION

In conclusion, contemporary digital and computational designing is now in a state of rapid evolution. From the beginning of human race history, architecture was born and kept developing during every histori-cal period. People need to earn a comfort-able living environment, private space, the architetcure satisfies those needs and provides artistic works with aesthetic elements. From the earliest time, people use paintings and hand sketches to ex-press their own thoughts. As time goes by, the photos became the most direct way to catch and keep the shapes and appearance of objects, which brought a revolution to designing world. It is much easier to keep ideas and inspirations when people see or feel anything wherever they are, and when-ever it is. For decades lately, digital designing has become the center role in the creative design stage. Computers take over all the monotonous work for us. They are able to present the results “in tex-tual reports, tables of numbers, charts, graphical constructions — even in dynami-cally changing images and sounds“[19].

Therefore the user of computers for the process of design, will be asked to re-quires both rational and creative abili-ties. Architects have been learning and using some typical programmes for a long time, such like AutoCAD and Rhinoceros. But the nature of architecture is still and will always be creativity. Ideas could be expressed and operated by digital techi-niques, but nothing can be built up without a strong, firm, attractive and impressive foundation, which is exactly, the idea.

A.4. CONCLUSION

LEARNING OUTCOMES 20

A.5. LEARNING OUTCOMES

In fact, the amount of things that I have learned in this subject so far al-ready could not be condensed into just these pages. During all those research-es when doing this report, I have been thinking not only the major project in Studio Air this semester, but also the nature of architectural designing.

From now on, it will be far more sophis-ticated than using computer instead of drawing board. Once my idea is done, I will need to find a proper way to fit my ideas into some programmes to make them visible for both myself and oth-ers. When the transit happens, I follow certain operations which are monotone and repetitive, but through all these, I will get myself a satisfying result.

Grasshopper is a graphical algorithm edi-tor tightly integrated with Rhino’s 3-D modeling tools. I had tried once using Grasshopper when I was at Year 1, in the Virtual Environments subject. I was strug-gling with the fabrication of my unusual model. I have been trying all digital tools to make it easier to control but failed. Then I found Grasshopper, which was re-ally useful for my situation at that time. Grasshopper requires much less knowledge of programming or scripting, but still al-lows designers to build form generators from the simple to the awe-inspiring.

I have also been doing my material se-lection and testing. Composite mate-rial is a more flexible concept but also difficult to define. I am look-ing forward to the project coming after.

21 APPENDIX - ALGORITHMIC EXPLORATIONS

A.6. APPENDIX - ALGORITHMIC EXPLORATIONS

APPENDIX - ALGORITHMIC EXPLORATIONS 22

23 NOTES & REFERENCE FOR PART A

NOTES & REFERENCE FOR PART AImage:

1. http://goodbysanfrancisco.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/arquitectura-4x4-house-tadao-ando.html

2. http://addfiuspring2010.blogspot.com.au/2010_03_01_archive.html

3. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonhefel/6727825259/

4. http://bevsbitsandbites.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/september-in-seattle.html

5. http://www.archdaily.com/11651/seattle-central-library-oma-lmn/1685363506_spl-fa-cade-detail-rualt/

6. http://www.archdaily.com/11651/seattle-central-library-oma-lmn/a301-model-1/




10. http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/1364604415_spl-book-spiral-diagram-rex.jpg

11. http://www.archdaily.com/340374/icditke-research-pavilion-university-of-stutt-gart-faculty-of-architecture-and-urban-planning/5136a9dfb3fc4ba663000235_icd-itke-research-pavilion-university-of-stuttgart-faculty-of-architecture-and-urban-planning_icd-itke_rp12_image18-jpg/

12. http://www.archdaily.com/340374/icditke-research-pavilion-university-of-stutt-gart-faculty-of-architecture-and-urban-planning/5136a95ab3fc4bf0a800022e_icd-itke-research-pavilion-university-of-stuttgart-faculty-of-architecture-and-urban-planning_icd-itke_rp12_image10-jpg/

13. http://www.archdaily.com/340374/icditke-research-pavilion-university-of-stutt-gart-faculty-of-architecture-and-urban-planning/5136a894b3fc4b32a4000226_icd-itke-research-pavilion-university-of-stuttgart-faculty-of-architecture-and-urban-planning_icd-itke_rp12_image02-jpg/

14. http://www.archdaily.com/340374/icditke-research-pavilion-university-of-stutt-gart-faculty-of-architecture-and-urban-planning/5136a9ffb3fc4b32a4000237_icd-itke-research-pavilion-university-of-stuttgart-faculty-of-architecture-and-urban-planning_icd-itke_rp12_image20-jpg/

15. http://onlyhdwallpapers.com/wallpaper/architecture_beijing_water_cube_desktop_3000x2000_hd-wallpaper-2727.jpg

16. http://blog.chinatravel.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Steven-Song-Water-Sky-Cube.jpg

17. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Construction_beijing_2008_wa-ter_cube_2.jpg

18. http://www.arup.com/Projects/Chinese_National_Aquatics_Center/WaterCube_over-view_1.aspx

19. http://www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/burnham-pavillion/#



22. http://static1.evermotion.org/files/EVRprfolio/ff3a44b44a512c065c37d-782b19583604a2cdf05.jpg

NOTES & REFERENCE FOR PART A

Text:

1. http://www.ilikearchitecture.net/2013/06/quote-69-daniel-libeskind/

2. http://www.minimalisti.com/architecture/01/minimalist-architect-tadao-ando.html

3. http://blog.aia.org/favorites/2007/02/108_seattle_public_library_200.html

4. Hill, Jonathan (2006). ‘Drawing Forth Immaterial Architecture’, Architectural Re-search Quarterly, 10, 1, pp. 54

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstructivism

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstructivism

7. http://www.archdaily.com/340374/icditke-research-pavilion-university-of-stuttgart-faculty-of-architecture-and-urban-planning/

8. http://www.archdaily.com/340374/icditke-research-pavilion-university-of-stuttgart-faculty-of-architecture-and-urban-planning/

9. Yehuda E. Kalay, Architecture’s New Media : Principles, Theories, and Methods of Computer-Aided Design (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004), pp. 2


11. Kolarevic, Branko, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing (New York; London: Spon Press, 2003), pp. 7

12. http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/the-critics/patrik-schumacher-on-parametri-cism-let-the-style-wars-begin/5217211.article




16. Cohen, Patricia (2008-06-24). “Footnotes”. The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2008-07-02.

17. Howard, Hilary (2009-07-19). “Comings & Goings; Chicago Celebrates An Urban Dream”. The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2009-07-29.

18. Kamin, Blair (2008-06-22). “2 architects to design Burnham pavilions”. Chicago Tribune. Newsbank. Retrieved 2008-07-25.


NOTES & REFERENCE FOR PART A 24

I make a project and I panic, which is good, it can be a method. First, panic. Second conquer panic by working. Third, find ways to solve your doubts.[20]

- Eduardo Souto de Moura

25 DESIGN FOCUS

PART B. EOI II: DESIGN APPROACH

B.1. DESIGN FOCUS

DESIGN FOCUS 26

In the very beginning of this semester, our group has chosen the composite ma-terial to be our direction of both de-signing concept and material selection.

In common sense, a composite mate-rial should be made from two or more types of materials with significantly different physical or chemical prop-erties, that when combined, produce a material with characteristics dif-ferent from the individual components before. However, in this design proj-ect, our group brought up our own opin-ion about the composite materials.

We would like to use two or more than two types of materials to build up a consistant, unseparated material sys-tem as the basic structure of our gate-way design. We will be trying to prove this point with a reasonable multi-ple material combination and a well-working system by parametric design.

COMPOSITE MATERIAL

GROUP ARGUMENTS

1. The design should be a multiple material structure with strong connections between these materials, both conceptual and physi-cal.

2. A half-opened construction provides most space with the inter-action of design and environment around.

3. The theme of our design will be “a changing world“.

4. Every piece of materials selected should be related and re-flected to the composite material direction.

Therefore, to achieve all those targets above, we introduce the “TRANSITION“ and “GEODESICS“ concept that will be explained later in the journal.

COMPOSITE MATERIAL CONCEPT & EXPERIMENTS

27 DESIGN FOCUS

Our own understading of composite material will be a co-operative closed system consists of two or even more types of materials. They might not have any chemical reactions among the system, or changed properties to fit each other. In other word, It does not need to be a whole new material after combination, what we are trying to achieve is t find interesting effect when the materials put together.

In our opinion, the best result will be that each material is inter-dependent to others, if any is missing, the whole system collapses.

As a starting point, we used several different materials to test how they work with each other. We bought some standard A4 of-fice paper and harder cardboards, meanwhile with metal wires and regular hemp cables. As we mentioned before, we would like to see what kind of effect a multiple material system can produce.

DESIGN FOCUS 28

We cut out a series of holes on the paper, then let the rope and wire embedding into these holes. The paper became a surface consists of two materials.

Looking back to our other arguments before, we would like to pro-duce a “changing project“ for the gateway site, then during the experiments done with this “paper and rope“ material, we found that we could use different bent surface to trace the transition of the material, which is a material system at this stage. So we have done several bending tests to find out how the surface moves and how it changes under the force from outside, by which, our hands here.

The way ropes run through holes on the paper is also reflect-ing the geodesics idea which is about the shortest distance from a point inside of a sphere to any point on the surface outside.

29 CASE STUDY 1.0

B.2. CASE STUDY 1.0

Montreal Biosphère

Architect: Richard Buckminster Fuller

Established: 1967

Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Type: Environment Museum

Montreal Biosphère was built to be the pavilion of the United States for the 1967 World Fair. It stood 61m-high and had a spherical diameter of 76m. It was con-structed as a frame of steel pipes enclosing some 1,900 molded acrylic panels. The building is almost completely transparent, and it used an elaborate system of retractable shading screens to control the heat inside the dome, and a computer adjusted the screens in accordance with the direction of the sunlighting.[21]

However, the former dome was burnt by the fire during structural renovations in 1976. The fire burned away the building’s transparent acrylic external surface, but the basic steel structure remained.[22] Until 1990, Environment Canada bought the closed site for $17.5 million to turn it into an interactive museum showcasing and exploring the water ecosystems of the Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence River regions.[23]

CASE STUDY 1.0 30

DOING MORE WITH LESS

Fuller was already known for his domes but Montreal Biosphère was, by far, his most elaborate and complicated work.[24]

The geodesic dome, in Fuller’s opin-ion, will be the best example to car-ry his understandings of the rela-tionships between material and space. The sphere uses the “doing more with less” principle in that it encloses the largest volume of interior space with the least amount of surface area thus saving on materials and cost.[25]

Fuller found it successful that the dome resulted in a satisfying outcome both in sustainablity and aesthetic point.

This type of structure requires less building materials due to the spherical surface area. Meanwhile the circulation of lighting and air is also efficient. The interior at-mospheres for human dwellings be-cause air and energy are allowed

to circulate without obstruction.

Lots of these advantages are simply because of the sphere structure it-self. What we are really intereted in is the idea behind, which is “doing more with less“. This concept works in the dome as the principle to build steel truss and acrylic cells, to re-sult in an enclosed structure final-ly. However, people will not feel re-jected from outside, instead of that, visitors will be invited from it.

Fuller uses fewer materials than other huge buildings, and created a inter-active space with pipes and panels. In this design, he showed us that en-vironment is the best background, and the nature is the best outer surface.

This is inspiring to us and helps us think about how to create infi-nite space with limited materials.

31 CASE STUDY 1.0

PARAMETRIC EXPERIMENTS

STAGGERED QUAD PANELS 1 DIAMOND TRIANGUAL PANELS 1 TRIANGULAR PANELS A 1

STAGGERED QUAD PANELS 2 DIAMOND TRIANGUAL PANELS 2 TRIANGULAR PANELS A 2

RANDOM QUAD PANELS GRASSHOPPER PROCESS USING THE RANDOM QUAD PANELS FUNC-TION AS AN EXAMPLE

CASE STUDY 1.0 32


TRIANGULAR PANELS B 1

TRIANGULAR PANELS B 2

TRIANGULAR PANELS C 1

TRIANGULAR PANELS C 2

QUAD PANELS 1

QUAD PANELS 2

We are interested in the grids and lattice field to improve our initial proposal, and to reflect the case study 1.0 project. However there is no any definition or further informa-tion about grids and lattice in the material system list on LMS, so we paid our attention to the lunchbox plug-in to see how we can make any changes onto the surface of this sphere.

During the process of trying different lunchbox functions, we found that it could be much easier to develop a basic sphere and bring it into next level. This method can also be easily found in a lot of modern architectural design, including Fuller’s Montreal Biosphère. By applying with these techniques, a simple geometry could be developed into many different outcomes, meanwhile they are providing obvious advantages in structral needs, circulation, and visual impression.

In another hand, the lunchbox has its own restriction in expressing our concept and ideas. Panels and cells are not perfectly drawing a smooth or continuous external sur-face, which is needed in our proposal due to that we were trying to combine the idea of “doing more with less“ and another idea of building a composite material system. Therefore we put this aside at this stage, and continued looking for a better approach.

Highlighted four are more successful and realistic than the others in fabrication.

33 CASE STUDY 2.0

B.3. CASE STUDY 2.0

CASE STUDY 2.0 34

Canton Tower

Architect: Mark Hemel & Barbara Kuit (IBA)

Structural engineer: Arup

Established: 2010

Location: Haizhu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

Type: Restaurant, Observation, Telecommunications (Mixed use)

Height: 600 m (1,969 ft)

Roof: 488 m (1,601 ft)

Lifts & elevators: 9

Canton Tower is a 600 meter high multi-purpose Chinese observation tower in the Haizhu District of Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. Before the Tokyo Skytree has complet-ed in 2011, Canton Tower was the tallest tower in the world, replacing the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada.[26]

The design of Canton Tower is a combination with para-metric design methods, and applied a simple struc-tural concept of three elements: columns, rings and braces, to this more complex geometry.[27]

Parametric technique plays an important role in this building, especially in the furface setting.

35 CASE STUDY 2.0


D I A M O N D TRIANGUAL P A N E L S

QUAD PANELS S K E W E D P A N E L S

TRIANGUAL PANELS B

STAGGERED QUAD PANELS

TRIANGUAL PANELS C

TRIANGUAL PANELS A

RANDOM QUAD P A N E L S

CASE STUDY 2.0 36

At this stage we tried the curve-loft method in Rhi-no and Grasshopper.

1. We started the mod-el with three curves and made a loft by con-necting them together.

2. Then by using lunch box plug-in, the loft surface could be resolved into a grid structure.

3. We tried a cou-ple of panel types by the lunchbox plug-in, and through that we found the closet one to the Canton Tow-er, which is made by Triangular Panels A.

4. Due to the huge structure of Canton Tower, it has more than 1100 nodes in it. We tested some different numbers in the U & V divi-sions to imitate the original real tower.

5. However, we also would like to use this case study to look back to our pro-posal, which is about the “paper-rope“ mod-el, so we did our sec-ond attampt in build-ing the Canton Tower by a more complex way.

GRASSHOPPER EXPLORING PROCESS BY US-ING DIAMOND PANELS AS AN EXAMPLE

FIRST VERSION

37 CASE STUDY 2.0

SECOND VERSION

After previous attempt, we looked at the model from an-other angle. This time we used a “surface blending“ method to bring up the whole structure of Canton Tower, and we also believed that we could find inspiration from this model to fit our pro-posal of the gateway site.

We created one start sur-face, then copied it, and manipulated the copy to useas the other start surface. Then we divided these sur-faces into sets of points, to be the levels in between.

This method acutually did not end up like the real Can-ton Tower, insteads that, it was even less efficient than the first version.

However, we found this method was more useful to create what we were aiming at. The half opened structure fits the “doing more with less“ idea; the surfaces could be devel-oped towards the “paper and rope“ model; most important-ly, this structure provides a reliable system built by two different types of materi-als that supports each other.

TECHNIQUE: DEVELOPMENT 38

B.4. TECHNIQUE: DEVELOPMENT

Continuing with our case study 2.0 techniques, we attempted to use some different plug-in tools to develop our model to some different fields. Because there is no any definitions on the LMS about our concept, we choosed some plug-in tools from the Internet and other precedents.

1. WEAVER BIRD

Firstly, I created a mass of mesh boxes, then kept only boundary faces of the mass, and joined duplicate mesh vertices, then assigned each vertice a random vector. Finally I just adjust the distortion amount.

This tool will work with any mass made of planar faced mesh objects. Instead of calling out boundary faces we can use mesh union but this will make the process much longer.

39 TECHNIQUE: DEVELOPMENT

2. EXOSKELETON

Exoskeleton is a plug-in grasshopper that can turns network of lines into solid. It brings simple wireframe thickening to grasshopper.

This experiment itself is not directly leading us to the result, but we found it interesting that network of lines could be manipulated into sol-id, which is helping us understand the process of wireframe thickening.

This method can be used in our proposal because our mod-el has a frame structure, but at the end we did not use this because it did not fit our other arguments.


Exoskeleton is a plug-in grasshopper that can turns network of lines into solid. It brings simple wireframe thickening to grasshopper.

This experiment itself is not directly leading us to the result, but we found it interesting that network of lines could be manipulated into sol-id, which is helping us understand the process of wireframe thickening.

This method can be used in our proposal because our mod-el has a frame structure, but at the end we did not use this because it did not fit our other arguments.


3. MINIMAL SURFACE

According to our design model was inspired by the “pa-per and rope“ material experiments, the forces onto the mate-rial system is one of those essential factors in our process.


This time we tried the kangroo plug-in to test how some physical ac-tions could affect with the shape and layout of the model, and this could be used for the starting step in our design, which is the forming of a bending surface, then we could explore the furtherideas such as the transition of it and make it to be the structure of our design.


DIGITAL MODEL

Point of view 5Point of view 4

Point of view 1 Point of view 2


The surfaces were divided into a series of points, and those points will be the locations of the pipes.

We created two surfaces as the top and the bottom, the basis.

By this step two fundamen-tal surfaces brings out two bending surfaces in between.

For fabrication we changed the smooth surfaces into fold ones with panels.

DESIGNING MATRIX


47 TECHNIQUE: PROTOTYPES

B.5. TECHNIQUE: PROTOTYPES

TECHNIQUE: PROTOTYPES 48

The ideal model of our design would be three smoothly flowing surfac-es being bend, but in order to fabricate it in reality, we used pan-eling tools to divide those three surfaces into many small panels.

We printed panels out in strips with extra edges on the side of every piece of strips for sticking them together by glue.

About the pipe part, in real life, we thought about using steel to be the material, and the whole structure will be made by steel, support-ing the panels and themselves. However, in the physical modelling, we met a lot of problems. The surfaces were just really difficult to be tied up to the plastic sticks, both with or without the help of strong glue.

Finally we used a lot of pieces of small rounds with a hole in the cen-ter as an attached part to connect the plastic sticks and the cardborads.

49 TECHNIQUE: PROTOTYPES

Besides that, the bottom of this model was not very stable as well. In order to avoid collapse during the fabrication, we cut a piece of square as the base of this structure, and every plastic stick could be stabilized onto the base under the help of pins.

When we were fabricating it, we found some places that not match well as what we could control in Rhino and Grasshopper. The surfaces changed the shapes because of the cardboards were printed out and glued and then stuck together, many details had been already changed in the former steps.

This fabrication process was a huge challenge to us because ev-ery plastic stick was affected by the surfaces, and the way of these sur-faces bent affected with the supporting stick system backwards.

This is actually what we were looking for although it was hard to build by hand. A system contains two different materials, and works with both of them, every piece of this system could not be separated.

B.5. TECHNIQUE: PROTOTYPES

TECHNIQUE: PROTOTYPES 50

51 TECHNIQUE PROPOSAL

B.6. TECHNIQUE PROPOSAL

From the very beginning, we decided to focus on three things: the transition, a material co-work system, and an idea of “doing more with less“. Now at this stage we organized what we thought be-fore, and what we actually have now, looked at the progress so far, we be-lieve that there are three reasons why our designing proposal should be fit-ting the Wyndham City Gateway site best.

1. The Transition

There is a designed project called “Seeds of Change”, which is a 10 me-ter high structure located near the highway, to welcome residents, and at-tract visitors, to the City of Wyndham.

The design encompasses modern mate-rials such as galvanised steel fab-ricated to the interesting shape. It features a series of open leaf shape frames, which descend in height.[28]

The “Seeds of Change” project was con-pleted 10 years ago. With our proj-ect bulit aside, we can send a mes-sage about how things changed and what things remained. The design isencouraging visitors to rethink of what they have gained and lost as time goes by. We changed the environment, what fade away and what came along? By show-ing the structure with three twist-ing layers, our “transition“ con-cept is behind and let people image how things change and flow near them.

51 TECHNIQUE PROPOSAL

TECHNIQUE PROPOSAL 52

2. Material System

The site is quite open to public, we are planning putting the design within the red zone due to its a intersection and people might easily use the building by going there.

Like our case study 1.0, although the Montreal Sphere is an enclosed building, but people feel welcomed by just stand-ing in front of it. This is why we are using the same concept about interaction with the nature (by light, sound, view and air circulation). The most efficient way is to build a half opened structure, communicating with the nature. Like our proposal. Visitors are going to feel covered and protected from the surfaces, also enjoy thier time by sitting under the layers.

3. Doing more with less

This is also related back two the second point describing how visitors could feel themselves in the nature.

Geodesics helps us to start thinking the relationship between the line and the surface. So now we would like to try to use limited materials to create an infi-nite space.

TECHNIQUE PROPOSAL 52

53 LEARNING OBJECTIVES AND OUTCOMES

B.7. LEARNING OBJECTIVES AND OUTCOMES

way in expressing a “co-working“ materi-al system. Our model might not be convinc-ing enough because it is not every piece of materials in the mod-el is unseparated. In the next three weeks, we need to find a way that building up a much strongly convincing model telling about how the whole system works with the exist-ing of every single piece of the materials we choose, which was also an unclear case.

Taking a step back-wards might be a good solution now for our designing. In or-der to understand what is missing in-deed, more approach-es and precedents we should look at and draw our own sketches.

After entering the second stage of para-metric designing in the Gateway in City of Wyndham, our group started to take ev-erything into con-sideration and come up with some ideas that could largely help us to think and deal with this proj-ect in a big picture.

On one side, we are getting familiar with these Rhino, Grass-hopper and a series of plug-in tools during the designing work. We now decide the direci-ton and the field that we feel interested in. This is the first thing for us whenever we want to take a step in a project design-ing process. The com-posite material has a large area behind. Therefore, on the oth-er side, the diffi-culty of even giving out an own definition of composite materi-als is greater than we thought before. We now think the “compos-ite material” is just an expression, a con-ceptual idea of our built-up system. We were not just choosing two or three different materials and tie them together, instead of that, we saw the po-tential that an assem-bled multiple materi-al structure has. From those experiments and explorations of the

“paper and rope“ exper-imental model, we saw a transition process when we twisted or bent it, then what we saw became what we really wanted to archieve.

The challenge came when we started to fabricate the physi-cal model in reality. Due to the non-physi-cal nature of digital modelling programmes, our model also met the problem. The mod-el seems alright on the screen, but when we tried to assemble those pieces togeth-er, the surfaces just did not bend exactly ilke they did in Rhi-no, meanwhile the con-nections of surfaces and structural ele-ments have been missed out of our consider-ation. At the end, we have to use a lot of paper rounds to stick on the surfaces, ty-ing two components together in quite a unrealistic way.

Besides the fabrica-tion, given the feed-back from the mid-se-mester presentation, we might head to a wrong

LEARNING OBJECTIVES AND OUTCOMES 54

55 NOTES & REFERENCE FOR PART

NOTES & REFERENCE FOR PART BImage:

23. http://www.evolo.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/parametric-architecture-3.jpg

24. http://www.tsplines.com/grasshopper.html

25. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Montreal_Biosphere.JPG

26. http://www.flickr.com/photos/manuelasiener/2560314054/in/photostream/lightbox/

27. http://www.flickr.com/photos/manuelasiener/2560313810/in/photostream/lightbox/

28. http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2010/12/15/4901234/2_CantonCropRelease.jpg

29. http://www.amazingpicturesplace.com/canton-tower-in-guangzhou/

30. http://wordlesstech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/canton-tower-guangdong.jpg

31. http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=30&with_photo_id=83405680&order=date_desc&user=161381

32. http://www.flickr.com/photos/87791108@N00/2249885238/lightbox/

Text:

20. http://www.ilikearchitecture.net/2013/08/quote-78-eduardo-souto-de-moura/

21. http://www.aviewoncities.com/montreal/biosphere.htm

22. Bolton, KC (2009-01-31). “Photo du jour - Biosphere Burning”. Spacing Montreal. Retrieved 2009-01-31.

23. Environment Canada (2006-01-24). “A Short History of the Biosphère”. The Sphere. Retrieved 2007-06-07.

24. http://www.aviewoncities.com/montreal/biosphere.htm

25. http://www.bfi.org/?q=node/106

26. “List of tallest towers in the world”. Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habi-tat (CTBUH). 2011. Retrieved 27 July 2011.

27. “Canton Tower official website”. Cantontower.com. Retrieved 2013-01-01.

28. http://www.experiencewyndham.com.au/artsculture/public_art/seedsofchange

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