Compositional Surfaces

These tile (views) are constructed from an iteration of project 1b_version2 in which a car hood is altered by a variety of NURB points and transformational functions.  From there patterning, via mirroring, repetition, and rhythm establish solid void relationships. The last iteration is celebrated through hierarchy in each of the three tiles.

Inchaote : Expirement in Architectural Education

Marc, Angelil

Exposing the debate between Apollonian and Dionysian educational foundations, this article suggest that design is conceived as a deployment of means rather than a process that reaches a predetermined end.  The article challenges traditional discourse, citing its lack of focus on structures and constructional processes.  

The article suggests a new division of praxis; technical, intellectual, and intuitive.  Within this framework it is suggested that architecture can revitalize itself by reaching outside of its own borders for inspiration.  A new iteration | generative process would be developed, no longer bounded by a desired (fictional) framework, but one that regenerates off  the residual energy and thought left behind from the previous developed exercise. 

Versioning : Connubial Reciprocities

Ponce de leon, Monica, and Tehrani, Nader

The work of Office dA seems to mitigate rifts of Surface | Space relationships.  Based on both rationalist and empirical methods, the firm exposes unavoidable construction dilemmas (opportunity) as generators of form. Blurring the work of H + dM and Ghery, Office dA strikes to find comprimise between development of skin and the formal consequence of manipulation of skin.  Analog to both the figure ground manipulation of poche or Le Corbusier's objectification of spatial definition, Office dA's work can be seen as an expressive articulation of constraints and structural exploitation.  Using the alibi of Polyglotomy, or incorrect primacy, the firm creates a rational argument for their tectonic expression.

Within the context of expression, the reading suggest dishonesty between idea (language) and reality (syntax). Office dA's Witte Arts Building exposes the impurity of modern day construction techniques.  Akin to Khan's Exeter library, the expression of the modular unit is evocative of the bricks structural limitations and capabilities.

This expression of surface can be seen as using the tectonics of a modular to derive space.  Referencing the Yokohama Port Terminal as the purest (to date) attempt to absorb programmatic and archi-tectonic constraints into form, a pure space is left uncompromised. 

Contemporary Techniques in Architecture
Alejandro, Zeara-Polo

 "This is whe amateurs have an advantage over pros. a pro knows what he can deliver and rarely goes beyond it. An amateur has no concept of his limitations ad generally goes beyond them".  Trey Gunn. Road Diaries

"The concept of architectural services derives from the interaction between architectural technology and effect"

Architects have been hindered by creative mobility.  Forced into a chasm of practice based around limited tools, budget, time, and responsibility, the architect has long since forgotten about creativity.  The quote "there is enormous potential yet to be discovered in the techniques of architectural services that have not yet been exploited.  For example, project management, estimation, surveys, and the modeling capacity of artificial intelligence.  None of these has yet been integrated in the discipline of architecture" resonates with the frustrations of contemporary practice.  The forthcoming BIM revolution has once again created the opportunity to allow the architect to become the master builder, a controller of the process.  The new tools of investigation; dynamic parametric modeling, database management and communication advances can allow the architect to redefine his or her practice, yielding a new form based on the process. 

Form becoming re-constrained to the software development and analysis. 

The work of Bjorke Ingles Group, as a body, is a collection of massifistations which speaks to this new process.  By seeing and manipulating site, solar and programmatic constraints, there architecture is evidence of a new architectural form, highly localized, yet unified.  There work is dependent upon innovations in computer visualization, which allows the designer to perceive and resolve problems that were previously undetectable in a planar, drawing based design process. 

Figure Shown: Courtyard, 8 Housing BIG.        http://www.big.dk/    

"The Perspective Hinge"
Perez-Gomes, et al.

“Filarete draws his ideal site as a plan superimposed on a view of the natural and topographic features of the place chosen for the future city, thus combining the ideal and the specific. “

Vision (Perceived projection) is in constant change.  The though has captured people from the time of Euclid through the architecture of today.  The act of eye perception is a large basis upon our common definition of truth.  Science, culture and doubt hinge upon our eyes perception. 

Traditional architecture, and its representation, were based upon techniques of projection and technology. The advent of the computer as created a new age for architecture, a new natural for the profession, which opens a new means for process.  Before, the great architects were confined to the plane, marking there and here, and differences perceived through line.  The advent of the computer has created the ability for form not only to be dependent upon the recognition of line.  The computer has forced a transgression into value and light whilst changing the view point of perception. The objective and subjective can now be read simultaneously, creating a dynamic search for form (truth).  If architects, design drawings, then what are the repercussions when drawings are no longer stationary, but are first relative to position and movement for perception?  

C O M P O U N D           G E O M E T R I E S 

SURFACE MANIPULATIONS | CONSTRUCTED MORPHOLOGIES

These morphological manipulations focus on creating a realm of ambiguity from a recognizable object.  By framing the context then manipulating it's confines, spatial distortion of the body is achieved. Altering objects by scale, rotate, array, shear, and twist allowed for the distortion of a known object into a series of planes, masses, and voids.  Within this construct, dynamic zones of compression and expansion are achieved.

The matrix created a framework of variables or rules.  Within the zone of a frame, the manipulation of these rules created an artifact of evolution.  At first, scale was used to change perceived interstitial zones between body and space.  From there, rotation, stratification, and revolution consequently generated new massifestations.

FORD MUSTANG

FOLDS, BODIES, AND BLOBS
Gregg Lynn

Lynn challenges the historical view of architectural practice as a series of rthographic projections.  In his analogy, Lynn uses "blobs" as an amporhous mass which cannot be depicted by tradtional plan, section orthagraphics.  Arguing that form is dependent upon its location in space-time, these blobs can shift, transform, rotate and grow.

Though the analogy is somewhat indirect, the idea of a living architecture challenges our traditional means of representation techniques.  As a result, computer graphics, as a medium seem to be architectures medium of choice to represent this 4D spatial-time conitium. The emergence of blobs in architecture as a form has yet to be seen, however, succesful reactive architecture is dependent upon computer visualization tools.  Moving solar shields, and computerized operable windows are small components of space-time visualization.  The ability to generate form based on spacial and temporal location is slowly being tested.

Herzog + DeMeurons DeYoung Museum Skin depicts blob thought.  Parametric holes are pierced through steel as a result of the space-time patterning of solar radiation in San Francisco.

SKIN + BONES
Folded Forms From Liebniz to Lynn

"Forms are now 'proto-geometric,' 'anexact,' 'bloblike,' 'pliable', and 'viscous'.  Form is no longer oncieved of as a geometric "original" distroted or broken to incorporate complexity or represent conflict.....

Vidler is commenting on the potential for our tools, software, to shape space. He argues that a new spatial vocabulary should emerge from the use of new tools.  Much like the enlightenment of the Baroque, this digital enlightment challenges the way we think and therefore create.

Vidler goes on to cite Victor Hugo referencing the idea of "skeletal architecture". The inside space a product of forming, the structure designed specificially for the form. Vidler argues that Folding, the tool in which realms joined and seperated creates an ambiguous seperation in which inside and outside are blurred.






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