STUDIO AIR: JOURNAL

Rhiannon Jones - 557484

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part A. Conceptualisation

Part B. Criteria Design

Part C. Detailed Design

References

02 - 03

04 - 15

16-17

05 - 08

09 - 11

12-14

15

15

A.1 Design Futuring

B.1 Research Field

C.1 Design Concept

B.5 Technique: Prototypes

C.5 Learning Objectives and Outcomes

A.2 Design Computation

B.2 Case Study 1.0

C.2 Tectonic Elements

B.6 Technique: Proposal

A.3 Composition and Generation

B.3 Case Study 2.0

C.3 Final Model

B.7 Learning Objectives and Outcomes

A.4 Conclusion

B.4 Technique: Development

C.4 Additional LAGI Brief Requirements

A.5 Learning Outcomes

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Introduction

My name is Rhiannon. I am a third year student at the University of Melbourne, majoring in Architecture. I was born in England, however I only lived there for four short years. I grew up in Belgium, which I now consider my home. I was educated in French. I also speak Spanish and Dutch.

I have a deep love for travel, I thoroughly enjoy learning about other cultures by visiting their cities and getting lost in unknown places. I also love being able to meet new people, trying new foods and I’m always up for trying new activities.

Except bungee jumping. And anything to do with spiders. My other main hobbies are photography and reading.

It was through my travels as a child that I discovered my interest in architecture. We would regularly go away for a few days or a week somewhere in Europe and end up visiting multiple middle-age castles and wandering through the historical cities. My parents would always lose me in the rooms where the architectural drawings were displayed. Or if I went looking for secret passageways.

When I got a bit older we travelled further abroad, where I got to be in contact with cultures and architecture that were fundamentally different to what I’d previously been exposed to. I found it exciting to witness how people lived differently and how their ways of life were reflected through their buildings.

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Finally, it was due to a year’s volunteer program with an NGO called “Le Défi Belgique-Afrique” that I decided to study architecture. We spent a year meeting up regularly on week-ends and having discussion where people would come and talk to us about their living conditions in Africa. We covered topics such as the woman’s situation, woman’s health, children’s health, education, the economy, how Europe is portrayed to them, how they give up everything to go to countries such as Belgium and then endup with nothing when they get there...

The year ended with a three week trip to Burkina Faso where we got to meet the locals and work together in planting trees to fight the advancing desert, go teach in schools and live the simple life. When I came back from that trip, the western civilisation seemed so rich, wasteful, complicated, unhappy. That’s when I decided I wanted to do something that could influence people’s lives.However I did not see myself as capable of being a doctor or a teacher. I eventually remembered my love for architecture and decided it was the right choice for me.

My only experience with digital design is Virtual Environments in first year, where we were required to create a lantern using Rhino. Although I found it hard at first to get my head around the computer program and the commands, I did enjoy being able to create something digitally. I found it amazing how you could modify their design in ways that you wouldn’t necessarily imagine if you restricted yourself to designing by hand. The best part for me was definitely being able to print out the model and build it. The joints were so crisp and clear, it all fit together perfectly, giving the lantern a real astonishing finish.

PART A. CONCEPTUALISATION

“Conceptualization begins to determine WHAT is to be built [...] and HOW it will be built.”1

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A.1 Design Futuring

We have to ask ourselves how we are going to solve the problems of the future through design. We want freedom. We want a future. Therefore we need the ability to sustain ourselves, to provide for ourselves. We currently are living in an unsustainable way; nature alone cannot sustain us.Design futuring is a new design intelligence. We can no longer maintain the ideal that people have a power of deciding how they want to live and changing their environment to accomplish it. We need to look at our environment and live accordingly by making critical decisions. We cannot afford to reduce design to its aesthetical facet.

‘Problems cannot be resolved unless they are confronted and if they are to be solved it will not be by chance but by design.’

“Design Futuring - Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice” by Tony Fry (2008).

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A1. 01: POWER BUBBLE2

Power Bubble is a design that uses two types of renewable energy: the sun and the gasses emitted by landfill (principally methane).Power Bubble is a live system that is continuously changing. It reacts to the quantity of gas released as well as the amount of sun captured by the solar panels. This makes it interesting for visitors and can entice them to visit multiple times. Additionally, the bubbles are alight at night time.

Solar panel technology is used to convert solar energy into electrical energy in an efficient way.In addition to this, the methane is collected and turned into energy or used for boilers. If methane is let into the atmosphere it can be harmful, however reusing it can be very beneficial.

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A1. 02: SWIRLING WATER PARK3

slides. The tops of these machines can be used as bird nests which is good for the biodiversity of the site.

If the energy created by these water vortexes could be harnessed and turned into electricity, the water park would not only be providing its own energy but

The Swirling Water Park is a design that is based on water vortexes.The description of the design is unclear as to how the park would function fully but it mentions that there are vortex machines, swirling large volumes of water around creating water motion. This can then be used as a rived or for water

supplying energy that can be stored on the grid.

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A1.02: KINETIC ENERGY (PAVEGEN HARVESTING TILES4)

materials. They can be placed in already completed floorings or made especially for a particular project or design.The slabs are durable and created to resist harsh weather conditions. They are therefore functional outdoors as well as indoors.The drawback is that the tiles do not provide a very large amount of energy, not enough to power a city for example.

Various case studies have already been conducted with the tiles. In 2013, the annual marathon in Paris had a sectionof the track covered in the tiles. 40.000 runners then ran across them collecting only enough energy to power a light bulb for five days5.The tiles were also used in Sydney6, in the Westfield shopping centre. The tiles permitted the Christmas tree lights to be lit uniquely through kinetic energy.

Pavegan are a company that create energy harvesting tiles that are activated by footfall. This means that every step that lands on a tile produces energy, 8W to be exact. The energy collected by the tiles can be used immediately or stored for future use.The tiles are most effective in areas where many people will be walking as it is each step that creates energy.The tiles are made of rubber and recycled

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A.2 Design Computation

“Theories of the digital in architecture” by Rivka and Robert Oxman (2014).

“Architecture’s New Media: Principles, Theories, and Methods of Computer-Aided Design” by Kalay, Yehuda E.(2004).

In digital design it is performance that dictates form an permits architecture to respond to its environment.

When designing it is important to identify ALL the elements of a problem.Each step of the design must be re-evaluated as whether it is solving the problem.

Digital architecture is a direct produce of digital design. Through the use of parametrics, one can modify the outcome of a design as a whole by changing its individual parts.

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A2.01: SAGRADA FAMILIA

The Sagrada Familia is a basilica situated in BArcelona, Spain. It was designed by Antoni Gaudi in 1882 and is an example of Catalan Modernism.The design of the building permits stone to appear as an organic and fluid structure.

However, the building is not yet completed. Today, Gaudi's work is continued by new architects who are using digital programs to visualise the final outcome of the temple. This permits more people to understand the complex geometries and organic forms of the building. Additionally, a video was recently created to show the world what the Sagrada Familia will potentially look like once complete7.

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A2.02: IT’S IN YOU NATURE, I’M LOST IN PARIS

Francois Roche’s house ‘Lost in Paris’ is all about a modern vision of nature. A nature that is created by humans and upon which we depend. Lost in Paris develops a type of ecological architecture through which technology is intertwined. The facade is overrun by plants turning it into a green monster. The objective of the house was to create a design that was great mechanically whilst being completely swamped by nature8. Bacteria is grown on the facade that kills the surrounding plants9.

Fancois Roche has been using computers to design since the first programs came out in 1995. The appeal was being able to metamorphose the design progressively, building upon the design.

Francois Roche specializes in architecture that flows, where the individual parts form a whole and are indistinguishable from one another9.

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A.3 Composition and Generation

Computation is not to be confused with computerisation. Where the later is simply putting a completed design into digital form computation is the process of design itself. It allows flexibility, permits the architect to push the boundaries and generate something complex. It also lets the designer predict how the final product will interact with users. Computation is also useful once the building is complete to update how the building evolves and changes according to feedback from users.

Computational design is more that just creating fancy 3D models. It extracts the essence of architecture. It permits new design possibilities to be explored and performance to be simulated.

“Computation Works: The Building of Algorithmic Thought” by Brady Peters (2013).

Definition of “Algorithm” in the MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (1999).

And algorithm is made up of a finite set of rules that are clear and simple to follow applied to a set of ‘objects’ and is always computable.

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A3.01: SWALLOWS NEST by VINCENT CALLEBAUT

The cultural centre in Taiwan, also known as the Swallows Nest, was designed by Vincent Callebaut. The project tries to incorporate ecological and modern living into the building design.

The building incorporates photovoltaics for energy production. The environment of the building was taken into consideration as it is protected against earthquakes and typhoons.Its objective is to be a zero carbon emission building10.

Computational design was used to create this project. The complex geometry of the structure is produced by the continuous repetition of simple parameters11.The complexity of the design could not have been produced as effectively without the use of digital software to solve the algorithm necessary.

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A3.02: ATELIER MANFERDINI

Elena Manferdini uses digital design to explore tectonics. She believes it is important to understand architecture as a whole but also as a sum of all its individual parts.Elena Manferdini has a particular interest in lace as there is a close interaction between the openings between the lace and the lace itself.

Atelier Manferdini appreciates digital design and is currently researching computer-aided design. Digitalization permits designs to be more subtle12.

The image on the left depicts a SCI-Arc Gallery installation that was about the investigation of the intricacies of lace making from 2008.

The image on the right is an image of the Malpensa Airport entry competition for Milan. The roof is formed by the repetition of the same form connected together13.

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A.4 Conclusion

A.5 Learning Outcomes

To conclude part A. Conceptualization, it is important in a modern world to create architecture that is sustainable and that responds to its environment. It is vital to produce an architecture that is capable of adapting itself depending on the users and how different factors change over time. For this to be possible, the architect has to attempt to predict the different uses and how the building will age.

The architect can be aided at the designing stage by computation. Digital design permits the architect to push his or her known boundaries and to play around with the form of the building in a way that was not possible simply by drawing. The form of the building should now be determined by the use, environment and purpose of the building. The design process is starting from the other end.

Digital design also permits the designer to produce something that is a lot more fluid and flexible than if they were tackling the process manually.

Digital design does not only permit you to predict how the building will interact with its users but it can then be continued to be used once the building is occupied to see how the building evolves.

I now have a much better understanding of why digital design is used. At the start of the assignment I would have said I much preferred the manual development of design because it gives a more human feel to the design. I have now learned that computation can help produce designs that are more efficient and responsive to their environment.

I have also learnt that scary words such as parametric and algorithm aren’t actually that frightening and are actually very useful tools in making a complicated design starting with simple geometries.

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1. ‘Intergrated Project Delivery: A Guide’, p.24.

2. Chen Z., Yin Kuang C., Wen Wen L., ‘Power Buble’ (2012), <http://landartgenerator.org/LAGI-2012/cykczlww/> [accessed 14th Mar 2014]

3. Seung Hoon L., So Jin P., ‘Swirling Water Park’ (2012), < http://landartgenerator.org/LAGI-2012/sa8216ik/> [accessed 14th Mar 2014]

4. Pavegen Systems Ltd., ‘PaveGen Systems Technology’ (2014), < http://www.pavegen.com/technology> [accessed 14th Mar 2014]

5. Zimmer L., ‘Kinetic Energy-Harvesting Tiles Generate Power from Paris Marathon Runners’ (4th October 2013), < http://inhabitat.com/kinetic-energy-harvesting-tiles-generate-power-from-paris-marathon-runners/> [accessed 14th Mar 2014]

6. Pavegen Systems Ltd., ‘PaveGen Systems Events’ (2014), < http://www.pavegen.com/experiential> [accessed 14th Mar 2014]

7. Jones, Rennie. “AD Classics: La Sagrada Familia / Antoni Gaudi” 16 Oct 2013. ArchDaily. <http://www.archdaily.com/?p=438992> [accessed 20 Mar 2014 ]

8. John Wiley & Sons Ltd. “It’s in your Nature. Lost in Paris.” 15 Apr 2010. Architectural Design, [Online]. Vol.80/Issue 3, 46-53. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/doi/10.1002/ad.1074/pdf [accessed 20 Mar 2014].

9. Kietzmann, N. “Francois Roche, R&Sie(n) Architects”. Crystal Talk. <http://www.baunetz.de/talk/crystal/index.php?lang=en&cat=Interview&nr=26> [accessed 20 Mar 2014].

10. Iau. “Swallows Nest: Cultural Center for Taiwan by Vincent Callebaut”. 14 Jun 2014. Architectism. < http://architectism.com/swallows-nest-cultural-center-for-taiwan-by-vincent-callebaut/> [accessed 26 Mar 2014].

References

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11. Vincent Callebaut Architects. “Swallow’s Nest, Taichung City Cultural Center, Taichung 2013, Taiwan”. Vincent Callebaut Architectures. < http://vincent.callebaut.org/page1-img-swallow.html> [accessed 26 Mar 2014].

12. Cityvision. “Atelier Manferdini”. 28 Oct 2011. CityvisionBeta. < http://www.cityvisionweb.com/mag/atelier-manferdini-interview/> [accessed 27 Mar 2014].

13. “Atelier Manferdini”. < http://www.ateliermanferdini.com/> [accessed 27 Mar 2014].