joseph - plan
sylvia - plan
100508 - observatory drawings
Examples of the final observatory drawings. Go here for a slideshow of more drawings and here for the handout that introduced this exercise.
100505 - observatory models
100505 - landscape models
100505 - dunescape maps
Examples of the dunescape maps. Go here for a slideshow of all students' work. And here for the assignment that introduced this exercise.
Justin
Joseph
Steven
Azhar
Shachar
Great job everyone, these turned out very nicely! Now the challenge is to see how the gradients in this mapping work can inform the new gradient field models.
And of course, those of you who haven't submitted the map yet, please do so ASAP!!
100419 - final
…seemingly random but structured patterns strike a resonance within us, for our ‘internalisations’ may be built on similar ideas – a kind of haunting, of interior space being made external, of buried archetype surfacing. The whispers we hear will sharpen our intuition.
- Cecil Balmond
Informal, The Chemnitz Solution
Your final review is Monday April 26, 1 - 6pm in the HHS 3rd floor hall. Plan your time carefully and work efficiently during the next week. Continue refining the material execution of concepts while developing final presentation materials. Do not simply remake what you already know.
Final Requirements:
ALL PLOTS MUST BE SENT BY 12 NOON ON SUNDAY. Finish your drawings first and leave the completion of models and animations for Sunday afternoon and night.
Compose and rehearse your verbal presentation; it must be precise and concise. Incorporate the animation into your presentation. Trace a coherent line of thinking through the entire semester. Presentations need not be chronological. Focus on latest drawings and models while using earlier work to support the current position of the project.
Final Jury:
Jeremy Carvalho, William Feuerman, Ed Keller, Jamie Kruse, Jason Lee, George Showman, John Szot, Filip Tejchman, Soo-in Yang
- Cecil Balmond
Informal, The Chemnitz Solution
Your final review is Monday April 26, 1 - 6pm in the HHS 3rd floor hall. Plan your time carefully and work efficiently during the next week. Continue refining the material execution of concepts while developing final presentation materials. Do not simply remake what you already know.
Final Requirements:
- dunescape images
- dunescape maps
- 5 unit models
- 1 cluster models
- material and system analysis drawings
- wood landscape with wiring
- sunlight study filmstrips
- sunlight filter
- tracking document
- 1/4” scale model of observatory
- 1/4” scale horizontal and vertical sections of observatory
- perspective views of observatory
- written thesis
- animation
ALL PLOTS MUST BE SENT BY 12 NOON ON SUNDAY. Finish your drawings first and leave the completion of models and animations for Sunday afternoon and night.
Compose and rehearse your verbal presentation; it must be precise and concise. Incorporate the animation into your presentation. Trace a coherent line of thinking through the entire semester. Presentations need not be chronological. Focus on latest drawings and models while using earlier work to support the current position of the project.
Final Jury:
Jeremy Carvalho, William Feuerman, Ed Keller, Jamie Kruse, Jason Lee, George Showman, John Szot, Filip Tejchman, Soo-in Yang
100413 - bodies in spaces
As you continue developing spatial experiences within your observatory, it is worth taking at look at this post on bldgblog. Through the movie Die Hard and urban military movements, it explores the use of space in unconventional (or even illicit) ways. This is not to say your project will be inhabited by crawling through elevator shafts or blowing holes in walls between apartments, but it does suggest that the way we conventionally think about relationships between bodies and spaces can be limiting.
100412 - positioning
A dynamic conception of architecture, which overcomes the traditional notion of buildings as a still, tectonic construct, allows us to think of space as practice. This involves incorporating the inhabitant of the space (or its intruder) into architecture, not simply marking and reproducing but reinventing, as film does, his or her various trajectories through space—that is, charting the narrative these navigations create.
- Giuliana Bruno
Atlas of Emotion, Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film
While the section drawings, animations, and perspective images you will be developing for the final review are representational, they are also operative. This work will continue to test ideas and position your project within a clear conceptual framework. Along with your written thesis, this work will support an argument for your project.
ANIMATION
Develop a new version of your animation. Track three noun-noun neologisms through the pre-midterm work (dunescape maps, unit/cluster development, landscape sunlight study, etc.), the light filter studies, the attachment / extension system, and the distinct spatial experiences of your observatory. Though the structure of the animation does not need to be linear, it does need to track a coherent line of thinking through the entire project.
Consider how the following filmic techniques can inform the animation:
Consider using short video clips combined with still images. Consider introducing sound. The camera is more than a tool to document space; it is a tool to shape space.
SECTIONS - go here for examples of the final sections
Two 1/4” scale sections are required, one horizontal, one vertical. Sections must document as many different spatial experiences as possible. The vertical section must include shadows and scale figures. The vertical section may be drawn at different times of day or year to document changing lighting conditions. All sections must show deep space by calibrating line-weight and line-type.
- Giuliana Bruno
Atlas of Emotion, Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film
While the section drawings, animations, and perspective images you will be developing for the final review are representational, they are also operative. This work will continue to test ideas and position your project within a clear conceptual framework. Along with your written thesis, this work will support an argument for your project.
ANIMATION
Develop a new version of your animation. Track three noun-noun neologisms through the pre-midterm work (dunescape maps, unit/cluster development, landscape sunlight study, etc.), the light filter studies, the attachment / extension system, and the distinct spatial experiences of your observatory. Though the structure of the animation does not need to be linear, it does need to track a coherent line of thinking through the entire project.
Consider how the following filmic techniques can inform the animation:
- Speed: Is the camera moving fast or slow?
- Frames: What is being framed? Is there more than one image in the frame?
- Sequence: How might sequences play out separately or in juxtaposition? How are sequences manipulated by flashbacks, crosscuts, close-ups, and dissolves?
- Drawings: How are drawings panned, zoomed, and/or assembled?
Consider using short video clips combined with still images. Consider introducing sound. The camera is more than a tool to document space; it is a tool to shape space.
SECTIONS - go here for examples of the final sections
Two 1/4” scale sections are required, one horizontal, one vertical. Sections must document as many different spatial experiences as possible. The vertical section must include shadows and scale figures. The vertical section may be drawn at different times of day or year to document changing lighting conditions. All sections must show deep space by calibrating line-weight and line-type.
vertical sections - Yokohama Ferry Terminal, Foreign Office Architects
horizontal sections - Bibliotheque de France, OMA / Rem Koolhaas
100408 - excavated spillbreach
Here is a video Mandi Fung (one of my students from spring last year) made as part of the writing workshop with Filip and Jeffery. We're asking you to go much further this year in terms of how the animation becomes integral to the development of the project, but this is a good example to look at nonetheless.
Excavated Spillbreach from mandi fung on Vimeo.
Excavated Spillbreach from mandi fung on Vimeo.
100406 - observatory
Although architects generally make a clear distinction between what is given (context) and what is to be conceived (concept), the relationship is not so simple. Rather than a given, context is something defined by the observer, in the same way that a scientific fact is influenced by the observation of the scientist…Context is not fact; it is always a matter of interpretation.
- Bernard Tschumi
Event-Cities 3, Concept vs. Context vs. Content, 2004
An observatory is a device for monitoring celestial or terrestrial phenomena. An observatory is designed to gather data regarding a specific type of process or event, i.e. star formation, planetary movement, weather, earthquakes, etc. Observatories may gather data for empirical purposes (radio telescope), or for more experiential purposes (Roden Crater).
The two examples of observatories below, the Arecibo radio telescope and the Roden Crater are fully integrated into the landscape. They are organized by found terrains. Operations such as cutting, filling, extending, and slicing augment found terrains to give these observatories their final form.
Your project will be to design a type of observatory, one that monitors movement of the sun and uses filtered sunlight to produce qualitatively different spatial experiences. The observatory must have at least three clearly differentiated spatial conditions qualified by scale and time:
Go here for examples of the final observatory models.
THESIS
Write a one-page thesis that expands on the generic qualifications above. The thesis must discuss relationships between the landscape and observatory, argue for a specific type of inhabitation (how do people use your spaces and why), and make use of neologisms (existing from midterm or new).
PERSPECTIVE VIEWS
Continue developing the Rhino model of your intervention. Produce three preliminary perspective views, one for each of the three different spatial experiences. Include scale figures performing relevant activities. The quality of renderings is less important than conceptual information conveyed by the image. Every image must focus on a particular idea.
- Bernard Tschumi
Event-Cities 3, Concept vs. Context vs. Content, 2004
An observatory is a device for monitoring celestial or terrestrial phenomena. An observatory is designed to gather data regarding a specific type of process or event, i.e. star formation, planetary movement, weather, earthquakes, etc. Observatories may gather data for empirical purposes (radio telescope), or for more experiential purposes (Roden Crater).
The two examples of observatories below, the Arecibo radio telescope and the Roden Crater are fully integrated into the landscape. They are organized by found terrains. Operations such as cutting, filling, extending, and slicing augment found terrains to give these observatories their final form.
Puerto Rico
Your project will be to design a type of observatory, one that monitors movement of the sun and uses filtered sunlight to produce qualitatively different spatial experiences. The observatory must have at least three clearly differentiated spatial conditions qualified by scale and time:
- scale: small, medium, large
- time: morning, noon, afternoon or winter, equinox, summer
Go here for examples of the final observatory models.
THESIS
Write a one-page thesis that expands on the generic qualifications above. The thesis must discuss relationships between the landscape and observatory, argue for a specific type of inhabitation (how do people use your spaces and why), and make use of neologisms (existing from midterm or new).
PERSPECTIVE VIEWS
Continue developing the Rhino model of your intervention. Produce three preliminary perspective views, one for each of the three different spatial experiences. Include scale figures performing relevant activities. The quality of renderings is less important than conceptual information conveyed by the image. Every image must focus on a particular idea.
100406 - atlas of novel tectonics
My notes from the Reiser and Umemoto reading:
2. Difference in Kind / Difference in Degree – Meaning that is assigned and fixed (chess) vs. meaning that is acquired in context (go).
3. The Unformed Generic: Form Acquiring Content – Projecting content and scale into an unformed field. The field implies no specific scale of content. The stain is at once generic and specific. It contains a wide range of variations.
4. Similarity and Difference – Difference can emerge from similarity and similarity can emerge from difference. Things that look the same may perform differently and things that look different may perform similarly.
5. Variety (Difference) vs. Variation (Self-Similarity) – Intensive quantity generates a whole irreducible to the sum of its parts. Differential repetition is a means of handling program.
7. After Collage: Two Conditions of the Generic – Transformation is a quality perceived through deployment of quantity. Difference is a product of transformation. The universal is understood a “progressive differentiation.”
10. Selection vs. Classification – Typologies are important because they have range within limits. Selection within this range is based on performance of program relative to type.
11. Intensive and Extensive – “The most important distinction in our changed notions of architectural design is the shift from geometry as an abstract regulator of the materials of construction to a notion that matter and material behavior must be implicated in geometry itself.” Intensive = properties of matter with indivisible differences, gradient. Extensive = properties of matter with divisible differences. Potted plant, intensive proliferation, and extensive limit.
12. Geometry and Matter – Extensive and intensive qualities (quantities) collaborate in the production of architecture. Codes and other constraints can be considered extensive while material systems generate intensive characteristics.
13. Folly of the Mean – The mean is expected, extremes are where there is potential to innovate. The Aristotelian mean is justified in terms of human conduct and gets transferred to proportional systems.
21. Exchanges among Systems – “The architect is, in effect, neither a passive observer of determined systems nor a determined manipulator of passive material, but rather, the manager of an unfolding process.”
24. The Diagram – The diagram is not about the thing itself, but its relation to its context, milieu, or environment. Relationships may change due to scale shifts or behaviors may move from one scale to another. The diagram tracks performance (of relationships) as an abstract model of materiality.
34. Systems Becoming Other Systems – Even received structural systems have the capacity to be transformed along a gradient. New potentials emerge between the standards or norms.
38. Operating under Surfeit of Information – The management of a material process (like cooking) occurs at a different level than scientific research (the minutia are not directly controlled nor are they necessarily understood). This is acceptable because it is the larger scale effects that are important.
39. Asignfying Signs – An asignfying sign is an indication of material quality and performance. It is a locus for becoming, not a linguistic reading. It promotes production of the unforeseen rather than representing the known.
2. Difference in Kind / Difference in Degree – Meaning that is assigned and fixed (chess) vs. meaning that is acquired in context (go).
3. The Unformed Generic: Form Acquiring Content – Projecting content and scale into an unformed field. The field implies no specific scale of content. The stain is at once generic and specific. It contains a wide range of variations.
4. Similarity and Difference – Difference can emerge from similarity and similarity can emerge from difference. Things that look the same may perform differently and things that look different may perform similarly.
5. Variety (Difference) vs. Variation (Self-Similarity) – Intensive quantity generates a whole irreducible to the sum of its parts. Differential repetition is a means of handling program.
7. After Collage: Two Conditions of the Generic – Transformation is a quality perceived through deployment of quantity. Difference is a product of transformation. The universal is understood a “progressive differentiation.”
10. Selection vs. Classification – Typologies are important because they have range within limits. Selection within this range is based on performance of program relative to type.
11. Intensive and Extensive – “The most important distinction in our changed notions of architectural design is the shift from geometry as an abstract regulator of the materials of construction to a notion that matter and material behavior must be implicated in geometry itself.” Intensive = properties of matter with indivisible differences, gradient. Extensive = properties of matter with divisible differences. Potted plant, intensive proliferation, and extensive limit.
12. Geometry and Matter – Extensive and intensive qualities (quantities) collaborate in the production of architecture. Codes and other constraints can be considered extensive while material systems generate intensive characteristics.
13. Folly of the Mean – The mean is expected, extremes are where there is potential to innovate. The Aristotelian mean is justified in terms of human conduct and gets transferred to proportional systems.
21. Exchanges among Systems – “The architect is, in effect, neither a passive observer of determined systems nor a determined manipulator of passive material, but rather, the manager of an unfolding process.”
24. The Diagram – The diagram is not about the thing itself, but its relation to its context, milieu, or environment. Relationships may change due to scale shifts or behaviors may move from one scale to another. The diagram tracks performance (of relationships) as an abstract model of materiality.
34. Systems Becoming Other Systems – Even received structural systems have the capacity to be transformed along a gradient. New potentials emerge between the standards or norms.
38. Operating under Surfeit of Information – The management of a material process (like cooking) occurs at a different level than scientific research (the minutia are not directly controlled nor are they necessarily understood). This is acceptable because it is the larger scale effects that are important.
39. Asignfying Signs – An asignfying sign is an indication of material quality and performance. It is a locus for becoming, not a linguistic reading. It promotes production of the unforeseen rather than representing the known.
100406 - informal
My notes from the Cecil Balmond reading:
Informal
The informal contains the unexpected or surprising.
Order is not necessarily hierarchical.
Answers begin at the local level, not the level of the generic whole. Work proceeds outward toward a result.
Solutions stem from simple initial decisions.
Innovation, resisting the expected, requires risk.
Hybrid = one action overlapping another.
There is a difference between ambiguity and confusion.
The Chemnitz Solution
Solutions do not come from a picture of the outcome, but an analysis of the data, constraints or local conditions.
Solutions evolve and are calibrated by performance criteria.
Pose open questions rather than proposing closed answers.
A single design principle can be operative at multiple scales.
Rules that prescribe a simple set of operations can be calibrated to yield complex, unexpected results.
“Seemingly random but structured patterns strike a resonance within us, for our ‘internalisations’ may be built on similar ideas.” (p. 171)
The informal contains the unexpected or surprising.
Order is not necessarily hierarchical.
Answers begin at the local level, not the level of the generic whole. Work proceeds outward toward a result.
Solutions stem from simple initial decisions.
Innovation, resisting the expected, requires risk.
Hybrid = one action overlapping another.
There is a difference between ambiguity and confusion.
The Chemnitz Solution
Solutions do not come from a picture of the outcome, but an analysis of the data, constraints or local conditions.
Solutions evolve and are calibrated by performance criteria.
Pose open questions rather than proposing closed answers.
A single design principle can be operative at multiple scales.
Rules that prescribe a simple set of operations can be calibrated to yield complex, unexpected results.
“Seemingly random but structured patterns strike a resonance within us, for our ‘internalisations’ may be built on similar ideas.” (p. 171)
100401 - envelope
The architect is, in effect, neither a passive observer of determined systems nor a determined manipulator of passive material, but rather the manager of an unfolding process. p. 104
An architecture that has to explain itself, or be explained, has failed to present its own qualities. It sets up a conventional relationship between material organization and reference. p. 173
- Reiser + Umemoto
Atlas of Novel Tectonics, 2006
As you begin developing envelopes in your projects, consider these two definitions of the term:
WIRE
Install wires in the large-scale landscape. Follow principles developed in wiring the small-scale landscape, but do not necessarily duplicate configurations. Adjustments to the wires must be made in response to the location of inhabitable surfaces and corresponding orientations of the light filter. Develop a basswood attachment component between foam and wire. This attachment component must allow wires to be easily installed / removed and prevent wires from directly touching foam.
LIGHT FILTER
The light filter will operate according to both definitions of envelope given above – it will be an enclosing membrane and it will perform by filtering light in a specific manner. Following principles developed in the gradient model, build bristol board light filtering apertures onto the wire structure. Make iterative adjustments to the light filter so that it begins to enclose and cast shadows upon inhabitable surfaces. The shadows it casts must work like those in the tracking document.
An architecture that has to explain itself, or be explained, has failed to present its own qualities. It sets up a conventional relationship between material organization and reference. p. 173
- Reiser + Umemoto
Atlas of Novel Tectonics, 2006
As you begin developing envelopes in your projects, consider these two definitions of the term:
- An envelope is a membrane continuously enfolding interiority and exteriority. This is more like the skin of a body with all its textures, curvatures, and folds than a normative architectural system of walls, floors, and ceilings.
- An envelope is a set of performance limits, i.e. the performance envelope of an aircraft. The performance of envelopes in your project will be primarily measured in terms of sunlight control.
WIRE
Install wires in the large-scale landscape. Follow principles developed in wiring the small-scale landscape, but do not necessarily duplicate configurations. Adjustments to the wires must be made in response to the location of inhabitable surfaces and corresponding orientations of the light filter. Develop a basswood attachment component between foam and wire. This attachment component must allow wires to be easily installed / removed and prevent wires from directly touching foam.
LIGHT FILTER
The light filter will operate according to both definitions of envelope given above – it will be an enclosing membrane and it will perform by filtering light in a specific manner. Following principles developed in the gradient model, build bristol board light filtering apertures onto the wire structure. Make iterative adjustments to the light filter so that it begins to enclose and cast shadows upon inhabitable surfaces. The shadows it casts must work like those in the tracking document.
100402 - turning dunes into architecture
It's not directly related to the studio, but I think it's an interesting clip that is worth sharing with the studio.
Magnus Larsson: Turning dunes into architecture | Video on TED.com
Magnus Larsson: Turning dunes into architecture | Video on TED.com
100326 - system, revised
This is mostly a reiteration of what I spoke about with everyone in desk crits yesterday, but I want to make sure we are all on the same page:
If you are unsure about the direction you are taking over the weekend, email me images and questions!
- Focus on the attachment component, develop one or two component types that attach to +/-80% of the molding parts in the foam landscape. Deploy the attachment component pervasively throughout the entire foam landscape
- Focus on the extension component, the length and angle of the extension component must transform in response to transformations in width, cut angle, and rotation from part to part in the units and clusters.
- DO NOT focus on the surface component. Except for some of you with whom I spoke specifically about installing platform components in a limited zone, the rest of you need not worry about surfaces for Monday.
- Remember you have the landscape wiring and light filter waiting to be integrated into the project as an envelope strategy, so all you really need out of this new system are ‘ground surfaces.’ Many of you need to scale back and simplify the system.
- Develop the system diagram to document the structural aspects of the system, do not worry about including dynamic aspects of the system yet.
If you are unsure about the direction you are taking over the weekend, email me images and questions!
100322 - system
The organization of a machine [system]…only states relations between components and rules for their interactions and transformations…
- Humbert Maturana & Francisco Varela
Autopoiesis and Cognition 1972
Generally, a system is a set of components defined by ‘their interactions and transformations.’ The high-level organization of a system emerges from consistently enacted behaviors among low-level components. Specifically, architects work with systems that have dynamic and structural qualities. Dynamically, systems deal with transformation and movement. Structurally, systems deal with organization and pattern. Also note that systems can be conceptual and/or physical.
Kahn’s Philadelphia city center diagram studies a system that manages the movement of traffic in an urban landscape. This system is dynamic (movement of traffic), structural (spatial relations), and conceptual (the design was not realized, but used to think about how a could work). The Palpa Lines are a system that inscribes pattern onto a geologic landscape. This system is structural (legible pattern introduced to the natural landscape) and physical (the design was realized). Both of these systems operate on landscape, one urban and one geologic.
INHABITABLE LANDSCAPE
Conceive a system that augments your landscape to make it inhabitable for human bodies. This system will be comprised of basswood attachment components touching down on the existing landscape and basswood surface components that create surfaces and enclosures for bodies.
Build this system in the large-scale (1/4” = 1’-0”) foam landscape. Keep figures in the model to gauge scale. Developing a system is developing a procedural way of working; prioritize a systematized material practice over preconceived notions of inhabitation.
SYSTEM DIAGRAM
Diagram the dynamic and structural aspects of the new system. The dynamic aspects will deal with the potential flows of bodies across surfaces (specifically, how and where do bodies move). The structural aspects will deal with spatial relations between existing landscape and basswood attachment components (specifically, how and where are attachments made, how and where are surfaces located). Consider how the system operates both physically and conceptually. This diagram will be an extension of the material analysis drawings (modeled in Rhino, graphics and notations in Illustrator).
- Humbert Maturana & Francisco Varela
Autopoiesis and Cognition 1972
Generally, a system is a set of components defined by ‘their interactions and transformations.’ The high-level organization of a system emerges from consistently enacted behaviors among low-level components. Specifically, architects work with systems that have dynamic and structural qualities. Dynamically, systems deal with transformation and movement. Structurally, systems deal with organization and pattern. Also note that systems can be conceptual and/or physical.
Louis Kahn – Vehicular and pedestrian traffic flow study for Philadelphia city center
George Kubler – Photograph of the Palpa Lines
Kahn’s Philadelphia city center diagram studies a system that manages the movement of traffic in an urban landscape. This system is dynamic (movement of traffic), structural (spatial relations), and conceptual (the design was not realized, but used to think about how a could work). The Palpa Lines are a system that inscribes pattern onto a geologic landscape. This system is structural (legible pattern introduced to the natural landscape) and physical (the design was realized). Both of these systems operate on landscape, one urban and one geologic.
INHABITABLE LANDSCAPE
Conceive a system that augments your landscape to make it inhabitable for human bodies. This system will be comprised of basswood attachment components touching down on the existing landscape and basswood surface components that create surfaces and enclosures for bodies.
Build this system in the large-scale (1/4” = 1’-0”) foam landscape. Keep figures in the model to gauge scale. Developing a system is developing a procedural way of working; prioritize a systematized material practice over preconceived notions of inhabitation.
SYSTEM DIAGRAM
Diagram the dynamic and structural aspects of the new system. The dynamic aspects will deal with the potential flows of bodies across surfaces (specifically, how and where do bodies move). The structural aspects will deal with spatial relations between existing landscape and basswood attachment components (specifically, how and where are attachments made, how and where are surfaces located). Consider how the system operates both physically and conceptually. This diagram will be an extension of the material analysis drawings (modeled in Rhino, graphics and notations in Illustrator).
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