Lattice members - Research

Images from the the 3ds max model imported from max: complex joint connections

Following the aesthetic of Robert Maillart's - Salginatobel Bridge the lattice form will take on the minimalist sublime.

As an area of inspiration origami provides a strategy in realising the complex joints. The process of of order acts to create unique and diverse shapes that can be easily reproduced out of a easily massed produced plane material (sheet material).

In concept the joints could be custom made to match each nodule point through deconstructing the BIM Revit models. However, we have decided that we would bring the joints together in a more haptic way embodying the chaotic ambience of the overall structure to be enjoyed by those who take on the challenge to climb through the lattice that will also be an extreme adventure course for dare-devil tourists.

The beams would be modular construction to a point. The lattice will be made up of trussed cross members in order to distribute the dynamic forces that it will be subjected to. As the grid is irregular the lattice will be subject to immense shear force as well as complex tension and compression.

The nodule connection would be costume made through the use of BIM technology in order to be custom made and made off site.

3ds MAX education

There are some great sites that provide some really extensive explanations of how to do some really cool things with max rendering

check them out:

www.cgcookie.com

www.creativecrash.com

www.pxleges.com

yay! improve your skills set!

In-class exercise...10 minute idealisation...

This in-class exercise stemmed from our inability to solve our own design problems, and instead find other people's studio projects far more 'solveable' and 'easy'. In fact, in a few minutes we had established that almost anybody else's design problem could be worked out in ten easy minutes. ..let me just show you how... haha

And what better way to face a challenge then to attack it head on. Ten minute bursts of work for Joanne's project, led to at least 18 residences being designed for 18 different clients (performed under pressure with a stopwatch, the only way to get architects to do any work quickly). The following week it was our turn.

We devised a number of 3d views that provided views of parts of our projects, and with some blank butter paper, gave the group ten minutes to devise a narrative, or conceptual idealisation of what might occur in the space, or how the structure might be resolved.

The following sketches are what was created in relation to my current BIM model.

Russell's African garden entry...and ramped moat? The savannah awaits...

Ros's structural resolution of the lattice system...it's just so 'straightforward duh'...

Ro's creative use of the cantilever, a bungie swing for tourists...what better way to make money from the site!!

Jo's viewing deck and complimentary roller coaster...who said anything about budget?!

Jacky's cruiser processing point and 'in your face' digital screen! No chance those suckers will miss reading OUR advertising....

Joanne's entry space (upside down, upside down...hehe), pods float in space and gardens grow between the floor structure...interestingly this was actually the roof...in fact with an entry space so fun, who could ever be bothered to climb upstairs to work...

That's all folks for now.. to be continued...!!

where are we up to...in the world of fibre optics...

An optical fiber is made up of its core, (which carries the light pulses), its cladding (which reflects the light pulses back into the core) and its buffer coating (the skin which protects the core and cladding from moisture, damage, etc.). A fibre optic can carry up to 10 million messages at any one time, using light pulses.

Fiber optics is the marriage of applied science and engineering concerning design and application of optic fibers. Optical fibers are widely used in fiber-optic communications permitting transmission of signals over long distances and at much higher bandwidths than other forms of communication. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with no susceptibility to interference and less loss of signal. Fibers are growingly used for illumination, and are wrapped in bundles so they can be used to carry images, thus allowing viewing in tight spaces.

Fibers are widely used in illumination applications. They are used in medical applications where bright light needs to be shone on a target without a clear line-of-sight path. In some buildings, optical fibers are used to route sunlight from the roof to other parts of the building. Optical fiber illumination is also used for decorative applications, including signage, art, displays and artificial lighting displays.

A piece previously exhibited in MADE Design's cooler in Toronto exhibition is a fibre optic table lamp. The coloured light forms planes that create a proxy lamp within the boundaries of the casing.http://mocoloco.com/archives/010786.php

Optical fiber is an intrinsic part of the light-transmitting concrete building product, LiTraCon. Developed in 2001 by Hungarian architect Aron Losonczi and scientists from the Technical University of Budapest, LiTraCon is 'light transmitting concrete'. Made of fine concrete embedded with 4% (by weight) of optical glass fiber, and can be purchased as large blocks. The most notable installation of it to date is Europe Gate a 4 m high sculpture made of LiTraCon blocks, erected in 2004 in observance of the entry of Hungary into the European Union. The product won the German "Red Dot 2005 Design Award" for 'highest design qualities'. Though expensive, Litracon appeals to architects because it is stronger than glass and translucent unlike concrete.

Optical fiber is now used regularly in everyday products, for novelty lighting, see frisby below, andhas even made its way into fashion. As it is a safe light to touch, with a long lasting lighting life, it has been incorporated into shoes and clothing.

More recently, fiber optic has been used in signage and digital screens, and has made its way into architecture, in the form of large building facades and screen technologies.

In the Shanghai Pavillion below, feautring at the World Expo in Shanghai 2010, the 'Dream Cube' is the result of a collaborative effort between New York-based ESI Design and Chinese firm Atelier FCIZ Architects. The building changes colours based on visitor's movements and incorporates thousands of photos of the building's visiting crowds.

Digital elements were incorporated in the building design from the beginning, rather than being 'tacked on' toward the end of a project, which resulted in a successful, innovative building with its digital technologies an integral part of the experience of visiting this exceptional building.

Within the pavilion, photos submitted by Chinese citizens float in space as part of a multi-layered path through the exhibit. Along the way, fiber optic tubes respond to visitors' waving arms. The trip through this dreamscape ends up in a 360-degree theater, 100 feet in diameter, and surrounded by a 14-foot-high screen. As people gather in the theater they're asked to clap, in a sort of Chinese Tinkerbell moment, which triggers changes in the LED lights on the cube's exterior. People approaching the exhibit will see the whole building change color, in response to visitors inside.

In the words of ESI founder Edwin Schlossberg, in regards to this building, "I like to design something where the story is composed by the people participating in it. It's a sign of where we're going, and we're just beginning that odyssey now."

Drawing inspiration from the present use of fiber optics in architecture, in conjunction with our developed metaphor of the predator/prey analogy, the lion and the zebra, it is integral to represent the skin, or fur, of these animals, in the building's facade. Fiber optics have so far been the most technological and ideal form of representation of this metaphor, through their soft, fibrous nature. It is conceived that thousands of fibre optics might form a digital screen facade, that collectively, shows coloured digital images, to tourists and professionals alike.

artist's impressions of conceptual design

Super Colossal - UTS Broadway Tower

This is an alternative design by Supper Colossal Architects for the UTS Tower in Sydney criticised as being an eye sore in the skyline. This has some resemblance to the direction in which model 1 is headed, the variety of vertical and horizontal space enables diverse use of the spaces and experience.

The UTS Tower is taken, split into four and distributed across the site. The podium space is elevated, linking the new slender towers at multiple points creating large flexible teaching spaces.

Model 1 Developement

Urban Screens: Toward the convergence of architecture and audiovisual media

The high visibility of the Barangaroo site, particularly from the harbour, and the heavily transient population of tourists and professionals that will inhabit the area, make it an ideal location for an exploration of architecture meets audiovisual media, or in present day terms, the 'urban screen'. No longer the domain of advertising companies and their blatant and usually objective billboards, which have brought about the universally recognisable Picadilly Circus, London or Times Square, New York, architects have begun to take an active interest in digital screens and a particularly successful example is given below.

Picadilly Circus

Times Square

As Tore Slattaa writes, "[recent urban screen architecture] ...is analysed as reflecting shifting corporate and cultural ideas about the relations between media and society: a new material and symbolic relation between constructed spaces for symbolic creativity in the global audio visual industry and global urban centres."

She identifies the use of digital screens in the Danmarks Radio (DR) building, a national public broadcasting institution in Copenhagen. In particular, of this very large scale development, the concert hall, a design competition won by French architects Atelier Jean Nouvel.
"Building in emerging neighborhoods is a risk that has often proved fatal in recent years. When there is no built environment upon which to found our work...we have to turn the question around: what qualities can we bring to this future? We can respond positively to an uncertainty by using its most positive attribute, that is, mystery. Mystery is never far from seduction. When the surroundings are too neutral we must create a transition, a distance between them, and us, not as a retreat into ourselves, but as a means to establish conditions that will allow a particular territory to blossom. In other words we need to bring value to the context, whatever it may be. For this we must establish a presence, an identity. I propose to materialise the context by creating an exceptional urban building respecting the planned layout of the site. It will be a volume, a mysterious parallelepiped that changes under the light of day and night whose interior can only be guessed at. At night the volume will come alive with images, colors, and lights expressing the life going on inside. The interior is a world in itself, complex and diversified..." (Jean Nouvel)

Perhaps most compelling about the digital screen in this architecture is that is no longer a visual tool that we simply observe once or twice, but rather it is fully inhabited. The people moving around heighten the visual seduction and the changing projected images provide a complex narrative to the building's use.