Predator Prey Imagery

User Group

Barangaroo competing users >>> Professional / Tourist 

zoomorphism; the attribution of animal characteristics or qualities...

anthromorphism; the attribution of human characteristics to non-human creatures, forms, objects, phenomena or concepts...

metaphor;  a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity...

predator > prey

        lion > zebra

   tourist > professional

Professional – Zebra

·         The zebra is part of a herd/corporation. Singularity is its weakness.

·         The zebra represents a structured existence; routine existence is cooperative with the herd; eat, sleep, drink as a group.

·         The zebra represents the professional; their structured daily work life is a part of the collective professional body; work, lunch break, coffee break, to and from work.

·         The zebra (professional) is relatively harmless, and goes about its business independently

·         The professional is disrupted by the lion (tourist), who feeds on their existence and upsets their lifestyle.

·         He is the unsuspecting victim to her brutal invasion of privacy and environment

·         He is driven by fear of this noisy, unpredictable tourist that might destroy his perfect, quiet, computer-focused world.

·         He thinks of numbers and spreadsheets, he is cautious and risk averse. His actions are analytical and ordered. He represents the machine.

Tourist – Lion

·         The lion operates in a strategic fashion, observing and pre-empting its opportunities (prey).

·         The lion savagely interrupts the zebra’s existence.

·         The lion represents chaos, disorder and disruption.

·         The lion is uncontrollable, its movement is unpredictable.

·         The tourist (lion) is loud, obnoxious, disrespectful, will stop at nothing to get that ‘kodak  moment’.

·         She refuses to stand in line, she is cunning and the professionals are at her mercy.

·         She stands out amongst a sea of black suits, and is on the prowl. REOW

·         She is not a typical tourist, no matching hat and flag for her.

·         She is an outsider to the corporate world, and is out to sustain herself; she is the ‘spanner in the works’.

Based on our interpretation of the tourist, our third experiment explores this sculptural unpredictable personality, as opposed to the rigid revit  formula-driven form of the professional.

exp 3 kinetic structure

Juhani Pallasma - The Eyes of the Skin ' Architecture and the Senses'

Pallasma argues that there is a bias toward vision in architecture, and a tendency for present architecture to be conceived and taught of as a visionary subject, rather than relating to the other senses, or being sensory. Pallasma has an indepth interest in the senses, and the notion of hapticity, the tactile sense of experiencing the world by being in it. "The body is the locus of perception, thought and consciousness". He expresses concern for the way architecture is perceived and taught, and that life-enhancing architecture, must stimulate all the senses, particularly the skin, and not just be visually seductive. If this occurred, then our sense of experiencing the world, would be strengthened through our architecture and it would be the very representation of meaning. Significant architect, in fact, is beyond meaning, it directs our consciousness back to the world and toward a sense of 'being'.

We share a similar concern to Pallasma that digital representation, whilst being visually appealing, is limited in sensual or meaningful interpretation. There is a strong argument to suggest there has been a loss of criticality in architecture, since the advent of digital technology in the architectural field in the 1980s. Our use of Pallasma's book in experiment three, is to anchor our digital experimentation so that it may become more meaningful than simply 'form generation' in 3D Max. Rather, through the use of an underlying metaphorical theme, predator and prey, or zoo-morphism, the viewer can 'experience' the architecture with heightened sensitivity, even though it is viewed through a screen.

exp3 on site 2

exp3 on site 1

exp 3 b

exp 3 a

The Adaptive - Future - Interactive

Theoretical issue:

As a reaction to the unpredictability of the future and the rigid programming constraints of functionalism, the era of flexible architecture arrives. Flexible buildings respond easily to change throughout their lifetime. They accommodate user’s experiences/intervention, adapt to technical innovation more readily, and offer the potential to be economically and ecologically more viable.

Experiment:

Investigate computer technologies that may be of value in the recent shift toward a new generation of contemporary, flexible buildings and flexibility within the design process.

Schedule:

Weeks 12-13/15

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-George Bernard Shaw

“OMA’s work… are perceived firstly, to recode traditional typologies and to tease out the lore of the aesthetic of commodity fetishism, without turning against the temporality that is essential to modernism.” (Gervork Hartoonian, Skyplane)

Scholarship:

‘Flexible; Architecture that responds to change’ Robert Kronenburg

Tony Owen – 3D software to achieve radical curved forms that are translate into buildable laser-cut structures.

‘Skyplane’ – Richard Francis Jones (particularly Gervork Hartoonian’s essay…)

Precedents:

Rotating Tower, Dubai, David Fischer

Rem Koolhaus (OMA) works – Seattle Library, Museum Plaza Tower & CCTV Building

Method of investigation:

1. Explore the flexibility within the design process through the understanding of the capabilities of Revit 2010 software and its opportunity for generative components.

Modes of representation:

Revit 2010 (uses generative components)

3D computer models & videos