ABPL30048

Design Studio: Air

392129 Jiin Kim

DESIGN STUDIO: AIRSEMESTER . 2012

JOURNALBY JIIN KIM

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JOURNALCONTENTS

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ARCHITECTURE AS A DISCOURSE 04

COMPUTING IN ARCHITECTURE 08

THE BRIEF 13

MATRIX OF DEFINITIONS 16

RESEARCH PROJECT: MOIRE PATTERNING 20

PERFORMANCE DRIVEN DESIGN 24

PROJECT CONCEPTUALIZATION 30

Week 01 “Architecture as a Discourse”

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Contemplation of Life and Death, Bridge 2011

This is a bridge that was not meant to be crossed but to resemble the concept of ‘life and death’.

It is a discourse as the usage of this architecture was changed from ordinary use of it as a passage from one point to other, or for its aesthetics as an archi-tectur but to communicate the history of the site and its ideas to the viewers.

This bridge design was made for Designing Environments class where the brief was to create a bridge complating the concept of ‘life and death’.

Architecture as Art

Architecture is a superior form of art which comprehends all forms of visual arts. The façade and the exterior design of architecture can be viewed as a two dimensional form of art such as painting, while the overall three dimensional design of architecture could be seen as a sculpture. However, architecture being seen as only a form of visual art is understatement and should not be conceived as a subsystem of visual art. Although architecture is expected to express the creative mind of its designer, we also expect architecture to reflect on its surroundings, historical background and social status and if it is a modern building, we expect for it to be revolutionary in some way. Architecture exists because a person or a community needs it to exist for its roles listed, not because an individual artist wants to express their creative ideas. This shows that architecture just isn’t a form of art but an autopoietic system – an individual system that commu-nicates and interacts with many other systems. Therefore, to analyse architecture it should be analysed as a discourse and be it observed and communicated through many different mediums.

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“Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, are merely shadows cast by outward things on stone or canvas, having in themselves no separate existence. Architecture,

existing in itself, and not in seeming a something it is not, surpasses them as substance shadow.”- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Opera House has Sydney harbour as its back drop where the sea reflects light to glistens the decorative tiles of the building beautifully. The series of grand curved ‘shell’ like struc-tures are unique structures that has never been tried before and the silhouette of these shapes are now iconic to Sydney. Sydney Opera House is a masterpiece designed by a young architect Jorn Utzon and

one of the representative of late modern architecture. There was long history and discourse since before the construction of this architecture. From the start, there was already ambition to build “an edifice that will be a credit to the State not only today but also for hundreds of years.” (Report of the proceedings of a conference, Public Library, Sydney, 1954).

They held an international competition to find the best design for the opera house and to keep the world interested and to advertise Australia internationally. This competition became worldwide discourse about the newly built architecture in Sydney.

Through this international discourse, The Sydney Opera house is acknowledged as not only an icon of Sydney, but an icon of Aus-tralian nation. Also, the competition itself wasn’t the only reason that the opera house became the icon; the unique shape of the silhouette was recognizable and differentiated from many different architecture or other icons of a city, the design which was able to win the competition.

The Opera HouseSydney, Australia 1973

The Water CubeBeijing, China 2008

The current design of The Water Cube was able to win the competi-tion as it was the most outstanding and feasible design and came up with a great concept inspired by soap bubbles.

Even though the shapes of soap bubbles seem random, their nature always touch each other without leaving any empty spaces in between and are three dimentionally repeatable. However, to make a feasible Water Cube, there needed to be over a hundred of different ‘bubbles’. To create this numerous complicated shapes, parametric modelling had to be used.

Its role as an ‘Olympics stadium’ and its publicity and advertise-ment of 2008 Olympics was not the only reason of the architec-ture’s discourse. The unique soap bubble structure suits well with its use as an aquatics centre and creates interesting aesthetics with its complicated patterns.

The Water Cube is one of the well recognized buildings in China where it was primarilly designed for the 2008 Olympics. It was also important to consider the use after the Olympics as a national aquatics centre.The building project of this architec-ture was important to express China’s growing international role. An international competition for the aquatics centre began in 2003 to find a design appropriate for the criteria.

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Week 02 “Computing in Architecture”

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Computing in Architecture

There is more to architecture than just aesthetics and when being designed, it has to be structurally and functionally efficient as well. Traditional designing process can allow more freedom of creativity and free flow of generating ideas; however, structural and functional issues has to be considered throughout the design process and calculations and fixing errors can get complicated and time consum-ing. Computational design can save time and editing effort in designing process as computers do not make silly mistakes and makes editing and locating errors in a design easy with simple commands. Although computational design may limit one’s creative expressions, through parametric designing, we can achieve unexpected solutions to the design process.

The luxury automobile showroom in Utrecht, the Netherlands, designed by ONL Oosterhui-Lénárd is a perfect example of how form can be developed from a function and a place using methods made available by computational architecting.

Situated along the A2 highway, the extremely sleek design of the structure re-flects the speed of its location, running along it in a streamlined fashion. It shows itself as iconic to the highway, presenting the qualities of the road it travels along.

Similarly, its function as an automobile showroom has large influence on the form of the building. Much like a luxury car, the showroom looks fast, aerodynamic and powerful. It even slightly resembles a car, with the ‘open’ central cockpit representing the sleek top of the expensive and modern cars it displays inside.

Using parametric scripting, ONL effectively described the building in two details informed by the 3D model: one describing the highway façade, and the other the acoustic barrier which makes up the opposite side of the structure. Reference points were extracted from the surfaces, visualizing all the elements of the exterior in simple tables, which are then run through CNC production machines to create all the parts of the building.

Its innovation in parametric design and the compound use of its shell as an additional sound barrier to the highway saw it winning the 2006 Funda Award, the 2006 Dutch Design Award for Public Space, the 2006 National Steel Award, the 2006 National Glass Award as well as nominations for the 2008 Mies van der Rohe Award and the 2008 Golden Pyramid. These awards cemented its place in architectural discourse.

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The Digital Teahouse Workshop held at the University of Tokyo in 2010 was a competition between three groups to produce a Japanese-style tea

house using the Grasshopper plugin for Rhino3D. The entirely compu-tationally designed projects showed the varying designs of the same

structure using parametric logic and concepts, as based on the differing interpretations of the brief.

The constraints of the plywood offered unique challenges in the fabrication of the designs: one team etched lines in the flat CNC-routed plywood pan-els in order to allow them to be able to curve with the structure in waves,

which would not be possible with a flat surface. Other teams decided to produce visual curves by incorporating gradual directional changes in the

structure, which they adjusted to a fine point by modifying parametric values in grasshopper.

As an overall, the teahouses produced made a compelling argument for the applicability of parametric design for both large and small installa-

tions, that an ideal result can be achieved not only faster, but to a higher precision.

Digital Tea HouseTokyo, Japan 2010

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EXPRESSION OFINTEREST

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The Brief “Western Gateway Design Project”

This is our expression of interest for the Western Gateway Design Project for the Wyndham City Council. Situated along the Princes Highway, the project is to create a gateway into Wyndham City and Melbourne City from the western landscape.

The Wyndham City Council wants to create a Gateway on the Western Interchange entry to the city which is equally compelling to the installation on the Eastern Interchange entry of the city.

The installation will be viewed by many drivers going in and out of the Melbourne and Wyndham City. Therefore, the installation is aspired to be exciting and eye-catching that it can be seen by the viewers driving at 100m/h.

This expression of interest document lists our case for innovation and the use of parametric modelling, establishes the focus of our research and design, and

goes through our initial design conceptualisation. We hope that this document will allow us to further our design proposal into a realised sculpture.

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Based on the outlining of the brief, we identified four key considerations to take into account when researching and developing our design ideas. They were the prominent location of the site at the entry to metropolitan Melbourne, the sculpture as an iconic feature of the area, the use of the lighting in the area to create observable patterns and the taking of an experiential approach to our structure.

The site is located on the Princes Freeway at the edge of the Wyndham urban growth boundary west of metropolitan Melbourne, and the design is to act as a gateway from the undeveloped plains of the west, into the Wyndham municipality. Based on this prominent location that acts as a changing point between the relaxed landscape to the west and the faster-paced Wyndham and Melbourne areas, the sculpture should reflect this through a combination of the sharp and soft ideas that represent the contrast.

To contribute to architectural discourse and to stand as an eye-catching visual instalment, the sculpture needs to be iconic. In the context of the brief, the iconic qualities of the structure should represent its location (as described above) as well as its surrounding environment. As the sculpture is to be situated within the area of the Princes Highway, the iconic features involved should match the features of the highway. We have determined two main characteristics of the highway as iconic: speed and direction.

In line with our previous considerations, we have decided to go against our sculpture being object-centred and static, opting to adopt a more experiential approach to our thinking. An experiential structure involves or is based on experience and/or observation; our sculpture should involve the audience and not just be shown to them. As such, we have focused our process on the relation of the sculpture to its audience; how it can change relative to not only the viewer’s location, but also their personal interpreta-tion.

Again in relation to speed and direction, the low-lying ground enabled us to consider the effect light has as it passes through a non-filled structure; specifically, shadows that would lie across the road. Based on the structure, the shadows crossing the road could invoke certain feelings in the driver at certain times of the day, as well as having potentially dynamic qualities; that is, not only does the shadow move throughout the day, but changes as well.

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Week 04 “Matrix of Definitions”

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Boolean Patterning

Maths Functions

Multiple Maths

Streaming Text Files

Using Sets

Component Extrusion Rotation

We began our design process by creating and critiquing a matrix of computational design definitions in Rhino3D and Grasshopper, producing a wide breadth of candidates that we could explore further in hopes of finding a base for our initial concept. The matrix consisted of input definitions (how the space is arranged), associative definitions (how the arrangement of space is modified) and output definitions (how the modified space is represented).

The components output produced a system of curves along another curve, be it the same one or different, scaling them based on certain associative definitions. It produced a wide array of varying results; however they seemed to lack official clarity in their arrangement. Without an in-depth under-standing of how they are produced, they risk being inaccessible to an average audience. Interesting as they may be, these abstract qualities were not exactly in line with our design focus. However, with further experimentation, these systems could align themselves with our focus.

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Curve Intersections

Attractor Point

Curve Attractor

Image Sampler

Maths Functions

Component Extrusion Rotation

Multiple Maths Functions

Streaming Text Files

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RESEARCH PROJECT:MOIRE PATTERNING

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A moiré pattern is an interference pattern that is created when two or more grids of lines (be themcurved or straight) are overlaid in a non-regular fashion. This can be achieved through differentshapes of lines (for example, a grid of circles overlapping a grid of straight lines), different mesh sizes or the rota-tion of one of the grids. The pattern is created at the intersections of the lines, where they appear thicker due to the higher density in the area. Such intersections form patterns with neighbouring intersections, creating a virtual line through the grids. The moiré effect (which creates the patterns) is typically an undesired effect of digitally created or altered images, but can also be used to advantages; it can be both a positive and negative effect, crafted or unwanted.

Seemingly merely a visual phenomenon created by the juxtaposition of two patterned elements, a fair amount of mathematics is involved (differing throughout the shapes being patterned), reflecting the iconic direction approach we are looking to achieve with our design. Although the effect is visible on two unmoving grids, its more interesting qualities come from one or both of those two grids moving. However, with spacing between the two patterns, the eye moving shifts the panels relative to the viewer, recreating the effect on a still structure. This allows for a dynamic moiré pattern to be structured into the construction, changing the pattern it produces as the perspective differs (through both the relative speed and location of the viewer to the sculpture), resulting in a sculpturethat is fast, directive, dynamic and experiential in design.

One important factor to note is that if there is to be a space between the two grid elements that form the moiré pattern, then the perspective of the viewer could potentially change the initial pattern. That is, the lines further away from the viewer would appear smaller due to them being further away, when in reality they are actually the same size as the ones closer to the viewer. This could change the pattern away from what is desired, unless it is duly accounted for.

After our exploration on the matrix of defini-tions in Grasshopper and looking into the perspective differences created by overlapping surfaces and their potential to satisfy our design intent, we deemed them very similar to a moiré pattern.

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Based on a pre-existing paper Research on the Moiré fringes formed by circular and linear grating (Chen et al 2011), we discerned that the spacing of the lines played an important role in the moiré patterning visible between circles and lines. A succinct summary of the paper is the focus on two vari-ables, P and a, where P is the distance between the parallel lines and a is the distance between the circular lines.

Three distinct shapes were realised when changing the variable P (the distance between the parallel lines) against a static a. When the ratio P/a was greater than 1 (that is, when P > a), ellipses formed horizontally along the grids. When the ratio P/a was equal to 1 (that is, when P = a), parabolas formed, focusing to the centre of the circle. When the ratio P/a was less than 1 (that is, when P < a), hyperbolas formed, focusing to the centre of the circle. However, when the ratio P/a became too far away from 1, the patterns became difficult to distinguish, resulting in the need to care for the distances. This radical change in moiré patterning based solely on the distance between parallel lines prompted us to develop a parametric definition in Rhino3D and Grasshopper that would allow us greater control over the variables involved and the outcomes produced.

Visual Summary of ‘P’ and ‘a’

Grasshopper Definition

Perspective render - Line sidePerspective render - Circle side

Moire model experimentation

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Week 05 “Performance-Driven Design”

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BANQ Restaurant

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BANQ Restaurant

The design intent of BANQ Restaurant shows layers of contour lines on top of each other and this to shows curving shapes that resemble waves or carved out sediments affected by the movement of water. The form itself creates calming sensation in the environment and also the changes in the shapes and physical form shows interesting silhouette. This silhouette can be affected by different directions and strengths of light creating soft and beautiful shades that shows strong silhouette depending on the lighting source.

We want to focus on it’s movement and changes in form and how it affects the shadows and silhouette with changes in the light source.

We were given definitions to experiment on with parametrics and to explore and focus on the ideas, such as movement, silhouette and speed, we reverse engi-neered BANQ Restaurant (as it had similar design intent) to generate and extend our ideas.

Data Driven Component was the major definition that reflected our ideas of various curve lines. From these lines created, we made surfaces and subtracted surfaces in between the lines to create a form - which then repulicated and layed them on top of each other to see the form it creates.

We needed to experiment with the lighting and the silhouette, so a physical model had to be made. The overlapping of the shadows of the physical model cre-ates interesting silhouette. If cars were to drive through it, it could create flickering of lights, increasing sense of speed and movement.

This process was taken to generate ideas and this was not enough to create contour lines that we intended, so we moved on to creating different Grasshopper definitions.

CUT Definition experiment

Physical model of the experiment

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Using the Moire patterning and the BANQ Restaurant contours as concept, we were able to combine these two ideas together to generate this para-metric model using the definition above.

The steps taken:

1. Two thin boxes were drawn on Rhino layered next to each other.

2. The front facade will show the contour lines inspired by BANQ Restau-rant. By using the commands ‘Rebuild’ and ‘PointsOn’, the surface of the front box became free to change the form to create the contour.

3. We used the above definitions to create linear Y-Z contour lines on the boxes.

Two boxes re-shaped and referenced in Grasshopper

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Baked model in different perspectives

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Week 06 “Project Conceptualization”

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The model was made in two sets of layering of wood pieces, which one set is steady and the other is able to slide in and out to see the effects of moiré patterning. The over-layering of the lines creates flickering effect when a car would drive underneath the sculpture through the shadows that are created. This should create sensation of speed and movement to the drivers.

The model had to be stable with a bit of thickness in the material so that the shadow lines could be more visible. This model was cut out of plywood board to suit this needs. This material is brittle and does not bend easily like pasteboard or plastic. The plywood material has wood like texture that blends in with shape of the contour lines of the model.

The movement of the light source have been experimented to test how the shadows would look at different times of the day. Also, sliding the back piece of the model was experimented to see which placement of the two sets would have the best effect with the shadows and form.

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DESIGNNARRATIVE

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This is our proposal for a sculpture to be constructed at the Maltby Bypass along the Princes Highway.Influenced by the effect of cuts in forms and how vision and light is passed through them, the visible silhouette of an object and moire patterns (interferences created by the effect of two overlapping pat-terns), our sculpture utilises these ideas in a way that makes use of the site’s location in reference to its locality, will be iconic to the Bypass and the Wyndham City Council and presents an experiential experience through its dynamic ideas.As the viewer moves across the sculpture, the silhouette produced by the moire effect changes relative to the viewer’s speed. The spacing between the two elements is such that different views are seen by inbound and outbound traffic; that is, somebody driving into the city will have a varied view to some-body driving away from the city.Although the sculpture is inherently static, it becomes dynamic through the movement of people, and their movement produces movement within the sculpture’s silhouette.The curved nature of the structure’s form plays with the new curves produced in the roads through the bypass, resulting in the moving viewer constnatly changing distance from the sculpture, produc-ing more change in the experience.

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CONSTRUCTION PROCESS

CONNECTION JOINTEach of the panels of the model would be divided in four sections and would be placed on top of concrete footings. This is because the structure is too long and the sculpture could fall easily if it was not divided into sections and do not have any footings below to support the structure. The footing size would depend on the engineering calculations.

Each sections of the panels would be connected with joints shown in the diagram on the right.

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160m

10m

12.25m

12.25m

sculpture is 20m tall

Site C

Towards Geelong

NORTH VIEW

SOUTH VIEW

SITE PLAN

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160m

Site A

N

Site B

wards Geelong

Towards Melbourne City

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DESIGNING WITH COMPUTERSAt the beginning of the course, I felt very lost with what we were doing as I had no experience with Rhino or Grasshopper at all. However, weekly tasks of EXLAB videos, tutorials and own research, I started learning more about the programs and so much that it could do in the designing process. All the complicated designing process of calculating each dimensions, thinking how to create this curve, shape wasn’t needed, because using Grasshopper for parametric designing, I have learnt that simply ‘playing around’ with numbers and shapes could create so much more. From taking this subject, I have learnt a new skill to use the program and how it could be used.

ARGUING PERSUASIVELYIt was a good experience being have to present in front of the panels and to have to think about my argument about my design. In other studio classes I have taken in the past, I would mostly just ex-plain my ideas and my design. I thought it was good experience to learn how to pursuade my clients to consider using my design.

REFLECTIVECONCLUSION

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COMMUNICATING VISUALLYI have learnt that to pursuade my clients, being too complicated with words and descriptions wasn’t an effective way of communicating. Simple diagrams and important features of my ideas with clean layout is needed to show clearly what I intend to create.

APPLYING TECHNICAL SKILLSIt was different experience to use FabLab to make more precise models. Fabricating the model with laser cutter is a quick, easy way to make models and taught me a new way of making ‘perfect’ models without any unprecise manual handling. however with so many students trying to print at the same time made it difficult to fabricate a model in such a short time. I have faced some difficulties trying to use this technique at first, but now I feel more comfortable to use this skill in the future.