Saturday, September 22, 2007

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Monday, April 23, 2007

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Stereotomic Permutations

So after reading the article for the fourth time this is what I got……. Preston Scott Cohen’s writings on Stereotomic Permutations attempts to develop a way by which one could view and understand an object by eliminating the boundary between description and perception. He is led to this analysis by the distortion of rational paradigmatic operations such as linearity, symmetry, scale, intersection, folding, ect… He uses the concept of parallel projection in juxtaposition to point perspective method to construct an argument that the blending of these two devices in light of the design process, would give us an architecture that’s “implicit order symmetrical order is repeatedly brought to bear on its objects and perspectives by forcing them to intersect, join, and fold back on themselves to form a series.” I find this to be an interesting investigation, but find my self speculative about the practicality and usability of the determinant results. I appreciate his conscious effort to blend that in architecture, which is descriptive with that of perception, and I found the process and graphic representation to be quite compelling.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Umberto Eco "Travels in Hyperreality"

Eco approaches the concept of hyper reality within the context of replication and recreation. He focuses his writings on the American Culture and out insatiable desire to "have more". The most intriguing of his conceptual agenda is the concept of blurring reproduction and "the real" to the point of indistinguishable cohabitation.

He talks about the concept of the diorama and its aim to “establish itself as a substitute for reality, as something even more real”. The concept of recreation to re present an established object ties into our current project in that we are also attempting to re present the intent of the producer, although our “diorama” is one that will take roots in its precedent but extrapolate upon previous production intentions develop into its own form.

One other concept from this reading that really ties into our projects of this term is the idea of recreating two-dimensional form with three-dimensional representation. Eco references the 20th century portrait of Peter Stuyvesant that the New York museum recreates in three-dimensional sculpture. Between, reconstructed colonial towns, wax museums, historical dioramas, and scientific advances such as the hologram and virtual reality, there is a growing fascination of the representation of time and space. This concept of hyper reality is one that will continue to grow and advance until the concept of time and space are indistinguishable.

Sexy Images of Process


Process




Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Versioning

After reading this article, the intent of our final assignment became much more clear to me. I find the concept of seamless integration of design, process and production quite provocative but begin to wonder where this will eventually lead the profession of architecture. A line from this reading about Dynaform that I struggled to justify was the statement that “The architect finds himself- as a designer- controlling a process that allows the form to manifest itself.”

To me this is novel yet troubling due to that fact that physical form and the creation of space is in effect being left to happenstance. Granted these variations and mutations are based on scientifically derived algorithms and the process by which the mutations occur are being closely monitored in a semi-controlled environment; it begs the question of weather the design process has become too dehumanized.

As technology advances in this direction, it begins to cut out the need for human though and intervention. You no longer need groups of engineers slaving over calculations because they are already inherently incorporated into the integrated software. Once we start relying on algorithmic sequence to define form, pattern, space, and tectonic form, doesn’t that begin to make the traditional studies of the architectural professional obsolete.

I have to play the devils advocate here because I hear this criticism every day. Personally I find this new integration of technology, mathematical language, process and design to be the new avant guard for architectural thought and I feel like the rest of the professional community aside for firms like OfficeDA and SHoP, need catch up to the curve.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Midterm Reflections



Overall, I found the midterm review to be a very successful one in that it was different from the monotonous critiques of our typical studio reviews. I was inspired by the broad scope of approaches employed by the various students in the class. In general, we all had the same departure point, but from there, it was readily apparent that we all experimented with vastly different analytical experimentation.

Although I find the concept of animation as process a very intriguing and avant-garde approach to design, I am still struggling with its practical application in static form. After reading my peers comments on their blogs, I have to agree with the general sentiment that it is difficult to regulate and justify the manipulation of modeled form. The fact that it is so easy to manipulate the original modeled form to get a better view or to create a sexy image is a difficult urge to subdue, despite the fact that it does not hold true to the spirit of the project.

Also, I have to agree with Dorit in that the faculty sitting in on our review from our own school were almost non-existent. I was hoping that they would at least raise some questions as to what we were trying to accomplish or what we had gained out of the assignment. All of the outside reviewers, including Ron and Mark were great, but it is a growing concern of mine that the faculty within the school are falling behind the technological curve of where the profession is heading. These are the people who should be teaching, critiquing and getting us excited about the possibilities of these new tools available to us.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Monday, March 12, 2007

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Skin and Bones

In Leibniz's writings on folds and how they differ from the concept of skin and external membrane, I found myself questioning the deconstructive rational of blobs, skins and stretched membranes. If these forms were to be true to the architecture they are trying to represent, it would seem to me that they would not just reflect their skeletal structure, but also begin to have their own skeletal structure. The "skin" or "wrapped membrane", if indeed an animate form, would also have to react to its internal forces as well as its external forces. Once a skin if pulled taught around its generating skeleton, there would be a new concentration of external forces on the areas between that which is held taught by frame. This membrane needs to react to these forces not in their physical application but in their conceptual existence. I was intrigued by this idea of the "fold" being the space between where these internal and external tensions exist. "The Libnizan fold is in continuous movement, enveloping former folds and creating new ones on the surface of the diaphragm. Secondly, the fold, as an interior mechanism which at once reflects the outside and represents the forces of the inside, is more of a mediating device, a spatial instrument, than an object acted upon from one side or the other" I started to make some sense out of this after reading Victor Hugo's description of the interior of a monumental element built of wood and plaster from the Napoleonic era. He describes the outside as a normal form of an elephant and the inside as a huge skeleton. It was his description of the space created within the elephant based on the interior forces of framing and the external forces of the plaster coating that got me really thinking about this concept of the animate fold. "A long beam overhead, to which massive side-members were attached at regular intervals, represented the back-bone and ribs, with plaster stalactites hanging from them like entrails; and everywhere there were great spiders' webs like dusty diaphragms. Here and there in the corners were patches of black that seemed to be alive and had changed their position with sudden, startled movements. The litter fallen from the back of the elephant on to its stomach had evened out the concavity of the latter, so that one could walk on it as though on a floor." BOO YAH KA SHA........ The space between that which is and that which is not.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Animation


In this animation, I attempt to explore the path of movement created by the dancer's form as well as inhabit the tensile space created between interior and exterior forces. The path of the animation attempts to explore the space created between these two seemingly disconnected forms. The inhabitation created between the exterior and interior forms creates an object that is dependent upon both object's simultaneous disconnect for its own existence. Note: I had problems with my model disappearing in electric image; hence the reason for the camera passing through the volumes at certain points.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Project.1.b


I attempted to render her body as three blobs interconnected and articulated by her movement at time based intervals. The reaching motion of her arms becomes a frame that creates a folded space between solid form and framed extension of the object.

In this version, I let the body of the dancer become the interior frame and let the exterior solid space be defined by the extension of her arms in her circular movement.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Animate Form

Although I find all of Greg Lynn's writings extremely insightful and exciting, what I would like to discuss in this entry is something that I struggled to justify in my most current analysis of modeling subjects and the implied forms created via movement with respect to time. I was conflicted when it came to the actual modeling of the movement analysis because of the limited methods by which I knew to tackle the problem. The idea of modeling time based on frame captures of a film on a given interval made me question the legitimacy of my analysis based purely on the fact that I was attempting to model fluid form based on multiple frames of static moments. I had no way to accurately represent the movement occurring between the static frames except via intuition and memory. "The dominant mode for discussing motion in architecture has been the cinematic model, where the multiplication and sequencing of static snap-shots simulates movement. The problem with the motion-picture analogy is that architecture occupies the role of the static frame through which motion progresses. Force and motion are eliminated from form only to be reintroduced, after the fact of design, through concepts and techniques of optical procession." - Greg Lynn

Sunday, February 4, 2007

movement study


Point analysis via color coded base node movement


Static trace frame overlay to understand fluid form based on linear progression of time


A collection of individal gestures that together create a fluid object

"Gestures, such as these, are highly principled flexible connective networks. The gesture maintains openness through an attention to the particular characteristics of the disparate elements which constitute it and give the continious shape of its particular curvilinear form." - Greg Lynn "Folds, Bodies and Blobs"



The red in this image takes on the form of movement in the dancer's extremities, which are the defining flow that constitutes the external envelope. The internal forces become a translucent body built of interconnected splines and vertices that give definition to the balance between internal and external.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007