The Creative Process

This poster (site) tries to capture the entire process of design.

It was created by Dubberly Design Office, a software design company. It may not be 100% relevant to architecture specifically, but I found it graphically appealing, none the less (pdf download).

My only criticism is that they spell it out as a linear process, while I find design to be a bit messier than that. It would be very cool to see a 3d interpretation of the creative process (even for one project), scripted or otherwise, as a way to explain the entire creative process (as was attempted here) or as a way to catalog research.

Perhaps this is the problem with mind mapping in general: it’s only 2d. I really wish someone would create a graphically appealing 3d mind mapping software (not this) - one that is intuitive and useful and not very hard to manage. Simply put, I want a tool which doesn’t make me work for it.

By the way, the website also has posters showing other processes such as baseball, a design for the internet, heart attacks, how to play, or innovate (among others). Viewer discretion provided.

Education and Sensation Final Argument

**This is the completed project of the original mid-term project that I posted earlier this semester.

**Also see the first project for the semester (just posted) named thinkering space.

“Education is not something which the teacher does. It is a natural process which develops spontaneously.”- -Maria Montessori The Absorbent Mind-

For this project, we were asked to design a school based around the teachings of Maria Montessori. For me, the contribution of architecture to a non-linear educational approach was quite appealing. The concept of non-linearity really had to do with shaping the logic of the form, or really shaping the phenomenon of fluids (ie particulate matter) in such a way as to create topological conditions which connect what would typically be the disparate indexical elements of the building. Therefore, the architecture should reflect the ideology: more linear, standardized, compartmentalized pedagogical programs are best expressed through disparate parts - parts that seemingly work together at some compositional level but really never truly interact. Because the Montessori method is based more on the drive of the individual and not the overall, top-down design of the typical American education program, a different logic is necessary. In this particular study, I used fluids to equate with a more fluid, or more interpersonal approach to education.

There were a number of elements that had to be considered for the completion of the work. This was a particularly important project architecturally speaking because of its references to more fluid precedent such as the Baroque. The uncalculated logic of fluids creates what is called a "painterly effect" and is perhaps best seen through the juxtaposition between the modern skyscraper boxes and the school (see below). We can understand modernism then as being representational of the high-renaissance - very calculated, calming, proportional, and what not; while what I have done addresses a new emerging trend in architecture, one that reacts to the tired aesthetic of Modernism.

As for the site itself, the project is located in a very specific location in Dallas, between the Elm Place and Renaissance Tower (how suiting). I chose this location for a number of reasons: the connectivity to public transportation, the proximity to density, and the reclamation of urban interstitial spaces (such as the Wozoco project by MVRDV); as well as the relative proximity to Thanksgiving Square, the West End, and the proposed Trinity River Corridor Project. Also, it should be noted that at the base of the tower, at the public drop off, there is a no-car zone, the only one that I know of in the downtown area.

The two towers have 12.5' floor to floor heights, therefore I've continued this trend so that the new school can cleanly integrate with the existing buildings for life safety considerations. I've also located the project lower to the ground and am proposing stronger "loose" joint between the three buildings, similar to those used in earthquake zones, as to not compromise the independent structural state of each building.

The “netting” acts to weave the buildings together monolithically with the slabs using the non-linear tensile material glass fiber reinforced concrete. The tensile strength of such a material is 4710 MPa at failure, almost 12 times that of your standard A36 steel. This material coupled with strong, lightweight concrete provides a solution that allows for such a site condition to exist.

As for the building itself, there are a total of five floors, each providing pods of programmatic elements. The first floor contains the main entrance, the administration offices, and the toddler space. The age continues to increase with floor size all the way up to the top story which is programmed to be a mixed use facility incorporating painting, music, art, and PE. The upper story will be visually open to the sky, while the performative glass shields the students from heat and the bulk of the radiation - think transition lenses for a building. Also note that many of the programmatic elements, such as restrooms, will have to have frosted glass as facade instead of the regular performative glass.

In conclusion, I will leave you with the following quotes: According to Jesse Reiser "Atmosphere and affect are aspects that the architect has traditionally maintained the agency controls. In fact, affect is a highly determined feature of architecture, whereas much of the importance ascribed to program is intractable - like sand going through your fingers. The affective dimension of architecture not only influences use; at the level of order it also describes zones of intensity that, while real, nevertheless may be experienced in wildly divergent ways. Program by contrast limits these. As (a) measure of people's practices, rather than what architecture can do, programming is a drain on freedom, on the possibility for selection, and thus on information.

Ben Van Berkel and Caroline Bos continue such logic "Effects are actions and they emanate from relations. The best effects which architects can produce in the contemporary world are those that are proliferating and moving, effects that are anticipatory, unexpected, climactic, cinematic, time-related, non-linear, surprising, mysterious, compelling, and engaging."

 

upper level typical learning space | toddler typical learning space

program & site

 

facade condition

 

 

typical section

animation showing walkthrough on the upper floor

Fluid as Fashion

Just thought this was beautiful:

The making of fashion for walls (although it has nudity, watch it full screen if you can – the video is small):

A Rhinoceros with Fins on Stairs

I was asked today to do a short tutorial on a little known yet valuable command in Rhino called Fin.

Fin, according to the help manual, “Creates a surface by extruding a curve on a surface, normal to the surface.” The practical example below will use the fin command to create stair a simple staircase based on bent geometry.

Problem: This technique will not work with an applied UV curve nor geometry which has been oriented to a predefined surface; in both instances the threads on the staircase become skewed. When offsetting a polyline which has been through bend, etc. the offset will not be fully realized, so offset/loft wont work either.

Also note that this is not for wild, topological stairs (which may or may never be used/built/whatever), but is for using very controlled geometries to create stairs which someone on a cane might use.

1. Create staircase geometry (lines). JOIN them all together as one line.

2. Manipulate by the ROTATE/BEND/TWIST commands to desired state.

3. Use interpolated curves along the top edge of the stairs, so that the curve your creating follows the curve of staircase. Copy this new curve vertically above and below the stair geometry. Connect these two new lines with single straight line. SWEEP2 the two curves and the straight line to create a surface parallel but larger than the new staircase geometry.

4. FIN the staircase curved polyline. Select the surface created in step 3 as the surface as the “base surface.”

5. Erase/Delete the construction curves and surfaces to complete staircase.

Also know that you can build stairs using Grasshopper, if that’s your thing.

Leave questions in the comments-

A Short Criticism of RealFlow

Just as fitting a round peg through a square hole can yield obstacles, using particle simulation software to model architectural environments can sometimes prove aggravating. I have a few criticisms:

1. The OBJ export always leaves holes in the mesh (same with the LWO export). Even after using extremely fine polygon sizes and using the fill all mesh holes script in Rhino, the model still has holes. Needless to say, you can’t send it through for rapid prototyping…

2. When you insert a mesh, you can’t turn off the mesh for further particle creation: every subsequent scene exports the corresponding mesh, which can take forever. To fix the problem, you could delete the mesh, but then you loose the node parameters set up for both the mesh and the fluids inside the mesh. If there was a way to temporarily “turn off” the mesh object (a la Rhino/AutoCAD/etc.) it would essentially solve the problem. I have a solution for this, but its not very elegant. I’ll try posting it in a later post.

3. RealFlow has the elegant interface help solution which allows for you to highlight a node parameter  and press F2 to pop up a short help summary of the parameter. However, if you hit F1 a tiny window pops up and, upon closing said small window the whole program crashes.

4. When you close RealFlow, the program acts like its crashing. Not a bid deal, but it makes you feel uneasy about using the software for in-production work.

 

RealFlow and Architecture

I’m exploring the use of Next Limit’s RealFlow software for creating fluid, hyper indexical architectural environments. Although such an approach has been done before, I’m trying it out all the same. I think the idea of fluidity and the spontaneity of the Montessori method have too much in common to not try to exploit such a technique.

Modeling architecture in RealFlow is like dating a really crazy girl: sure its fun (for awhile), sometimes it’ll blow your mind, but often time the culmination of the consequence (which is really what Real Flow outputs) is frustrating. Therefore, I’ll be posting up some tutorials and advice to help out anyone else who might be interested in creating the same sort of effect without so much of the heartache.

In Real Flow, the user sets up parameters which then get pushed through an animation and the output is a single frame, selected by the architect, meshed for export, and moved into a modeling software. For using RealFlow in Rhino, see the RealFlow Import tool created by David Rutton (download here).To control the export, access export central by pressing F12. Then simply check the mesh file types that you want to generate when you rebuild the meshes. See a video about file export here.

 

To move about the modeling environment, hold down ALT and use the mouse to move about (similar to MAYA).

There are four main Nodes (or manipulators) in RealFlow: objects, daemons, meshes, and emitters: objects are rigid/soft bodies, daemons influence particles during animation, emitters emit particles, and meshes mesh the particles according to very specific parameters. There are four main parameters (among sixty or so) which are key in controlling the fluid mesh: polygon size, filter->relaxation (after filter method is set to “yes”), blend factor, and radius (thanks Gnomon Workshop). All values are scale dependent. Change and rebuild the mesh to see the results.

Other than that, I feel that the interface is fairly simple, comparable to programs like Google SketchUp or the new Rhino OSX interface. You can script fluids, but with what I am working on this would be overkill.

Anyway, here’s a few screenshots to give you an idea of the software’s potential:

I know this is brief, so if you have any questions or something to add, post it in the comments-

Why we use four viewports in modeling software

Why do we use four viewports? Is it for simplicity? Or something else…

This may seem trivial to some, but I found it interesting: the answer lies in mathematics and theory.

In Cartesian space we typically have three coordinates: x y & z. Each view isolates one coordinate, leaving only two variables. In math, when only two variables exist, then you can isolate one to solve the other. When three are present, then the equation becomes somewhat indeterminate. Consider the standard viewport: typically these viewports show elevation or section – a flat representation of the model. We can assume three viewports for the three combinations created with the three coordinates: XY XZ & YZ.

The final viewport is represents what some might consider the fourth coordinate, that being Time. Typically this fourth viewport is a perspective – perspectives show relativity in space; that is, one is closer than another, or distance as representation of time.