Larry Sass is an assistant professor at MIT who focuses on research and the advancement of digital fabrication processes. His main design interest is described as designing and constructing culturally sensitive community based buildings. He is anti-factory in production, advocates a no-paper design environment, and a user of low energy techniques. He effectively puts technique above style for the purposes of his research.
One of his major research questions is determining if participatory design work is possible. Can people without sufficient knowledge and training utilize a medium with which to make design decisions? He seeks to make such interaction possible and feels that such technology will be more prominent in the near future.
Sustainability is amongst his chief interests in design. He feels that a green economy is not possible with old homes. This leads his research to the fabrication of brand new, sustainable designs to the exclusion of the modification of existing buildings to meet more societal responsible requirements.
Error is prefabrication’s greatest weakness and one Sass goes to great lengths to conquer. Error can necessitate additional hand based manufacturing, high energy factory fabrication and delivery, and imprecise, low quality products. As an anti-factory designer who seeks to ideally do without power tools on the job site, Sass relies on digital printing and laser cutting techniques to shape materials almost exclusively. This eliminates an enormous amount of error in communication and shaping by hand. He uses materialization, which he defines as the creation of geometries for manufacturing from CAD data, to make this possible.
His techniques are pretty remarkable. He uses no fasteners and minimal glue in the creation of his buildings, which are held together primarily by friction. Interestingly enough, these buildings are sufficiently stable. Erecting such designs is essentially like the assembly of a three-dimensional puzzle. This requires minimal skill and equipment usage on behalf of the builders, whom Sass drafts amongst his likely inexperienced students who still more than capable of putting together such projects.
Overall, Larry Sass is utilizing thought provoking methods that are beneficial to architectural design as a whole. Though his focus on sustainable, participatory, and ultimately low-cost design seems narrow minded as his products lack similarly thought provoking modern special design, his work is remarkable. He is setting a precedent for other designers to take these techniques and utilize them in addition with what equates to more architecturally interesting endeavors. Give him a break for implementing his techniques with a traditional shotgun house; focusing on his lack of attention towards spatial design is missing the point.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Reading Two: Techniques, Technology, Temporality in Time
The first chapter deals with techniques and technology. It begins describing the feedback loop between technology and culture, where advances in one lead to more in the other. With potential for innovation like never before, architects must sieze opportunity to utilize new digital technologies to drive this process forward. They must participate actively in this feedback loop.
The loop consists of technologies, which lead to technical innovations, which then call for new techniques, which then create feedback. A technology can be defined as the “purely technical or scientific advance,” towards a cultural context with an overall aim at greater efficiency. New technologies result in technical advances, which are new innovations that continue to drive the process forward. The difference between a slow and a fast internet modem would be an example of such an advance. In response, new techniques are necessary, which are defined as skills and strategies that users must adopt to make the most from the technical. These lead to cultural feedback and fuel the process continuously.
The author praises new techniques and their adoption in architectural practice. New techniques incorporate feedback from culture, destabilize traditional practice to be more daring and innovative, are process-driven meaning they lead to new techniques, and are most importantly interdisciplinary, which allows for a greater amount of potential possibilities. Often what were once new techniques are detatched from this feedback loop and eventually become static and routine over time. Even three dimensional modeling programs have merely taken the place of traditional methods with only improved efficiency in mind. The author defines the best digital practices that are ultimately a part of the feedback loop and take more innovative approaches as “technological design practices.” The firm of Charles and Ray Eames serve as a good example. They used technological advances during World War II to produce a series of techniques that built on their past work so that the firm could produce much more innovative work over time. While many of their designs focused on efficiency and mass production, they constantly worked as part of the feedback loop to drive their technology and design process forward.
Contemporary technological practices “must fully engage the conditions and possibilities of the digital age.” Zaha Hadid leads a good example of such a firm. These firms must employ techniques that seek to be a part of the feedback loop that yields “catalytic cultural effects.”
The next chapter deals with temporality and time. Architecture has typically resisted time in consideration of design. The author suggests a different approach, embracing time as an “ally in the production of transformative design.” He argues that technological practices use “temporal techniques” to make innovative designs that engage with the feedback loop. Two theories of temporality are introduced: physical and thermodynamic. Physical temporality suggests that time is “reversible.” This means that there is no change in the fundamental properties of materials over time. From this perspective, time is reduced to a numerical aspect only. The past and future states of materials are symmetrical. This essentially describes stagnation over time. Thermodynamic temporality suggests that processes are “irreversible.” Unlike physical temporality, the past and the future states of materials are assymetrical. This is both quantitative and qualitative, containing a numberical component of time as well as a potential for qualitative change. This is essentially dynamic over time.
The default method for approaching time in architectural practice is similar to the physical theory is generally done subconsciously by ignoring it. Technological practices consider their approaches to designing with time closer to the thermodynamic theory, incorporating it dynamically. They consider themselves and their modes of practice as momentary configurations that are in a constant state of flux.
These firms employ “temporal techniques” which can continue to change objects even as they are built. Traditional practices develop their schemes by clarifying them with the end in mind through top-down approaches. Efficiency is a strong determinate in the design process for such firms. Technological practices see the design process as irreversible. Each development builds on the last and never is the final product known. These firms seek to “generate unanticipated catalytic effects.” Each step takes the design in a new direction.
Other similar techniques are then introduced: temporal, generative, and transformative. Temporal techniques seek to be a combination of traditional and technological practice methods, combining virtual and numerical components. Generative techniques borrow strategies and programs from other industries. Two examples of architects who use these are Greg Lynn of FORM and Lars Spuybroek of NOX. Both use a set of information, like contextual conditions and differences in program, to shape their projects through analyzing the unexpected outcomes that the computers produce. The programs do the drawings and designing, but the firms give them their directions based on trial and error approaches to those products. The transformative techniques change materials irreversibly in time, leading to enexpected results. In this approach, objects have zones of influence that determine the ways they interact and their resulting forms. This approach also reveals no clues of the final product.
Overall, the author feels that static design methods make static buildings. Working dynamically instead allows architects to produce catalytic works that in turn continue to fuel the feedback loop and lead to innovative possibilities.
The loop consists of technologies, which lead to technical innovations, which then call for new techniques, which then create feedback. A technology can be defined as the “purely technical or scientific advance,” towards a cultural context with an overall aim at greater efficiency. New technologies result in technical advances, which are new innovations that continue to drive the process forward. The difference between a slow and a fast internet modem would be an example of such an advance. In response, new techniques are necessary, which are defined as skills and strategies that users must adopt to make the most from the technical. These lead to cultural feedback and fuel the process continuously.
The author praises new techniques and their adoption in architectural practice. New techniques incorporate feedback from culture, destabilize traditional practice to be more daring and innovative, are process-driven meaning they lead to new techniques, and are most importantly interdisciplinary, which allows for a greater amount of potential possibilities. Often what were once new techniques are detatched from this feedback loop and eventually become static and routine over time. Even three dimensional modeling programs have merely taken the place of traditional methods with only improved efficiency in mind. The author defines the best digital practices that are ultimately a part of the feedback loop and take more innovative approaches as “technological design practices.” The firm of Charles and Ray Eames serve as a good example. They used technological advances during World War II to produce a series of techniques that built on their past work so that the firm could produce much more innovative work over time. While many of their designs focused on efficiency and mass production, they constantly worked as part of the feedback loop to drive their technology and design process forward.
Contemporary technological practices “must fully engage the conditions and possibilities of the digital age.” Zaha Hadid leads a good example of such a firm. These firms must employ techniques that seek to be a part of the feedback loop that yields “catalytic cultural effects.”
The next chapter deals with temporality and time. Architecture has typically resisted time in consideration of design. The author suggests a different approach, embracing time as an “ally in the production of transformative design.” He argues that technological practices use “temporal techniques” to make innovative designs that engage with the feedback loop. Two theories of temporality are introduced: physical and thermodynamic. Physical temporality suggests that time is “reversible.” This means that there is no change in the fundamental properties of materials over time. From this perspective, time is reduced to a numerical aspect only. The past and future states of materials are symmetrical. This essentially describes stagnation over time. Thermodynamic temporality suggests that processes are “irreversible.” Unlike physical temporality, the past and the future states of materials are assymetrical. This is both quantitative and qualitative, containing a numberical component of time as well as a potential for qualitative change. This is essentially dynamic over time.
The default method for approaching time in architectural practice is similar to the physical theory is generally done subconsciously by ignoring it. Technological practices consider their approaches to designing with time closer to the thermodynamic theory, incorporating it dynamically. They consider themselves and their modes of practice as momentary configurations that are in a constant state of flux.
These firms employ “temporal techniques” which can continue to change objects even as they are built. Traditional practices develop their schemes by clarifying them with the end in mind through top-down approaches. Efficiency is a strong determinate in the design process for such firms. Technological practices see the design process as irreversible. Each development builds on the last and never is the final product known. These firms seek to “generate unanticipated catalytic effects.” Each step takes the design in a new direction.
Other similar techniques are then introduced: temporal, generative, and transformative. Temporal techniques seek to be a combination of traditional and technological practice methods, combining virtual and numerical components. Generative techniques borrow strategies and programs from other industries. Two examples of architects who use these are Greg Lynn of FORM and Lars Spuybroek of NOX. Both use a set of information, like contextual conditions and differences in program, to shape their projects through analyzing the unexpected outcomes that the computers produce. The programs do the drawings and designing, but the firms give them their directions based on trial and error approaches to those products. The transformative techniques change materials irreversibly in time, leading to enexpected results. In this approach, objects have zones of influence that determine the ways they interact and their resulting forms. This approach also reveals no clues of the final product.
Overall, the author feels that static design methods make static buildings. Working dynamically instead allows architects to produce catalytic works that in turn continue to fuel the feedback loop and lead to innovative possibilities.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Reading 1
The reading begins with a quote linking modern technology and its very close effects on architecture. It praises Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace as a bold building for its time, leaping forward technologically and materiality as an architectural marvel. This building saw criticism as not being “architectural” because of its method of design, materials, and assembly, which were all unconventional. Similar criticisms may be drawn to modern designs with heavy computer influence or complete conception.
Technology and its infinite abilities open up new dimensions in design. This is all fairly recent, only in the last few years has computer aided design made such great advancements and had the potential for such commanding influence on building design. Advanced programs help make very difficult and expensive buildings to design constructible. The author relents that initially, digital “architectures” reject conventional methods and influences, those contextual or functional, instead seeking to be experimental. However, this new style is not without precedent. It too tries to go break tradition and “establish norms of beauty and proportion in architecture.” Those two conditions can be met through parametrics, as explained later.
“Smooth” architecture, implementing curvilinear shapes, has been formally ignored or dismissed by many architectural forms for being difficult to spatially comprehend or construct. The author figures there is basically no excuse for this considering curvilinear forms are very familiar to us, in the forms of consumer products and spaces in the likes of cars and airplanes. “Blobs,” or smooth surfaces created digitally, and “boxes” should not be seen as completely independent of one another, but as similar forms on a “sliding scale of formal complexity.”
The author makes comparisons between ships and buildings, which are surprisingly similar from a design perspective. Designing each requires many of the same requirements, principles and methods, with a nod to shipbuilding in terms of complexity and difficulty. As such, architects have historically taken precedent from shipbuilding. “Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao would not have been possible without the local steel and shipbuilding industry.”
Architecture borrows techniques from other practices. Animation software, such as Maya, was originally developed for use in films, but is often put to work architecturally. Architecture borrows from product design, automotive, aerospace, and shipbuilding industries. Each large step in technology of these industries makes a considerable impact on the designs possible. The Boeing 777, which was “the first 100% digitally designed aircraft,” serves as a good example.
The next chapter deals with digital morphogenesis. Architecturally, digital media is becoming more frequently used as a generative tool for making forms only possible digitally, and not solely for representation. So essentially using computers to do the designing work based on specifications is becoming more common. When this is done, drawings like plans and sections don’t “generate” the design but rather seek to analyze it. This is a methodical shift from the “making of form” to the “finding of form.” In generating these forms, computers are concerned with topology, which is “a study of intrinsic, qualitative properties of geometric forms that are not normally affected by changes in size or shape.” Topologies “remain invariant through continuous one-to-one transformations or elastic deformations, such as stretching or twisting.” This differentiates them from curved surfaces.
Pre-digital architecture is limited by Euclidean geometric forms and simple shapes like lines, circles, and quadrilaterals. With this traditional method, constructing complex curves relies on the utilization of these simpler geometries to form them with greater complexity and difficulty. NURBS programs, which stand for Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines, bypass this. This system uses a combination of elements called control points, weights, and knots to define topologies. It can create a wide range of geometric forms, from simple lines and Platonic solids to much more complex surfaces. It is also an computationally efficient way to represent geometric forms.
Parametrics are tools that can help determine form by “describing a range of possibilities.” They are essentially rules computers use to generate form. As such, the design parameters are declared, not the shape of the form. Different objects can be created by assigning different values to these parameters. The International Terminal designed by N. Grimshaw and partners demonstrates this method in its irregular roof form. A parametric model was used to make the arches of the roofs instead of modeling each one individually. Parametrics profoundly change the entire nature of design. “For the first time in history, architects are designing not the specific shape of the building but a set of principles encoded as a sequence of parametric equations by which specific instances of the design can be generated and varied in time as needed.”
Parameter based design takes into account the unfolding of the internal system (program) and the enfolding of contextual information fields (responds to the context). Parametrics can accommodate both. Animation programs can be used to determine the forces that represent the unfolding and enfolding of different information fields. Greg Lynn did this first with animation software depicting the kinematics, or the study of the motion of systems of objects. This software sees forms as the reactions of forces, an idea echoed by D’Arcy Thompson in a book published in 1917.
Biological “rules” and genesis can be applied to the generative process for architectural form. Architectural concepts are expressed as a set of generative rules, which set up digital parameters. A morphological process basically takes different randomly generated designs that fulfill certain parameters and crossbreeds them with one another to create a sort of vertical evolution.
Performative architecture, which is beginning to take hold, is used for the design on cities, buildings, landscapes, and infrastructures. It places the performance and use of spaces above form making. It can be described as parametrics with an emphasis on program.
The reading ends on a note of caution to see digital design simply as a different method and not more than what it is. The author suggests that it should be scrutinized and considered on an equal platform as any other architectural methodology.
Technology and its infinite abilities open up new dimensions in design. This is all fairly recent, only in the last few years has computer aided design made such great advancements and had the potential for such commanding influence on building design. Advanced programs help make very difficult and expensive buildings to design constructible. The author relents that initially, digital “architectures” reject conventional methods and influences, those contextual or functional, instead seeking to be experimental. However, this new style is not without precedent. It too tries to go break tradition and “establish norms of beauty and proportion in architecture.” Those two conditions can be met through parametrics, as explained later.
“Smooth” architecture, implementing curvilinear shapes, has been formally ignored or dismissed by many architectural forms for being difficult to spatially comprehend or construct. The author figures there is basically no excuse for this considering curvilinear forms are very familiar to us, in the forms of consumer products and spaces in the likes of cars and airplanes. “Blobs,” or smooth surfaces created digitally, and “boxes” should not be seen as completely independent of one another, but as similar forms on a “sliding scale of formal complexity.”
The author makes comparisons between ships and buildings, which are surprisingly similar from a design perspective. Designing each requires many of the same requirements, principles and methods, with a nod to shipbuilding in terms of complexity and difficulty. As such, architects have historically taken precedent from shipbuilding. “Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao would not have been possible without the local steel and shipbuilding industry.”
Architecture borrows techniques from other practices. Animation software, such as Maya, was originally developed for use in films, but is often put to work architecturally. Architecture borrows from product design, automotive, aerospace, and shipbuilding industries. Each large step in technology of these industries makes a considerable impact on the designs possible. The Boeing 777, which was “the first 100% digitally designed aircraft,” serves as a good example.
The next chapter deals with digital morphogenesis. Architecturally, digital media is becoming more frequently used as a generative tool for making forms only possible digitally, and not solely for representation. So essentially using computers to do the designing work based on specifications is becoming more common. When this is done, drawings like plans and sections don’t “generate” the design but rather seek to analyze it. This is a methodical shift from the “making of form” to the “finding of form.” In generating these forms, computers are concerned with topology, which is “a study of intrinsic, qualitative properties of geometric forms that are not normally affected by changes in size or shape.” Topologies “remain invariant through continuous one-to-one transformations or elastic deformations, such as stretching or twisting.” This differentiates them from curved surfaces.
Pre-digital architecture is limited by Euclidean geometric forms and simple shapes like lines, circles, and quadrilaterals. With this traditional method, constructing complex curves relies on the utilization of these simpler geometries to form them with greater complexity and difficulty. NURBS programs, which stand for Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines, bypass this. This system uses a combination of elements called control points, weights, and knots to define topologies. It can create a wide range of geometric forms, from simple lines and Platonic solids to much more complex surfaces. It is also an computationally efficient way to represent geometric forms.
Parametrics are tools that can help determine form by “describing a range of possibilities.” They are essentially rules computers use to generate form. As such, the design parameters are declared, not the shape of the form. Different objects can be created by assigning different values to these parameters. The International Terminal designed by N. Grimshaw and partners demonstrates this method in its irregular roof form. A parametric model was used to make the arches of the roofs instead of modeling each one individually. Parametrics profoundly change the entire nature of design. “For the first time in history, architects are designing not the specific shape of the building but a set of principles encoded as a sequence of parametric equations by which specific instances of the design can be generated and varied in time as needed.”
Parameter based design takes into account the unfolding of the internal system (program) and the enfolding of contextual information fields (responds to the context). Parametrics can accommodate both. Animation programs can be used to determine the forces that represent the unfolding and enfolding of different information fields. Greg Lynn did this first with animation software depicting the kinematics, or the study of the motion of systems of objects. This software sees forms as the reactions of forces, an idea echoed by D’Arcy Thompson in a book published in 1917.
Biological “rules” and genesis can be applied to the generative process for architectural form. Architectural concepts are expressed as a set of generative rules, which set up digital parameters. A morphological process basically takes different randomly generated designs that fulfill certain parameters and crossbreeds them with one another to create a sort of vertical evolution.
Performative architecture, which is beginning to take hold, is used for the design on cities, buildings, landscapes, and infrastructures. It places the performance and use of spaces above form making. It can be described as parametrics with an emphasis on program.
The reading ends on a note of caution to see digital design simply as a different method and not more than what it is. The author suggests that it should be scrutinized and considered on an equal platform as any other architectural methodology.
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