digital design in architecture: 2008

Sunday, November 9, 2008

BOOK

in tools menu u will find new book about Mel for an artist.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Digital Urbanism - The International Workshops

Opening Lecture:

Algorithmic Urbanism / Algorithmic Design

“How to engage all the complexity and indeterminacy of the city through the methodologies of a discipline so committed to control, separation and unitary thinking? This is the dilemma of the architect working in the city today.” Stan Allen

Using observations in urbanism, biology, digital technologies, contemporary art and the gaming industry as a starting point, the opening lecture will address the topics of emergence in self-organizing complex systems.

The premise is that with the proliferation of digital technologies we’ve entered a third stage in the history of emergence, where the forces of self-organization are no longer only recognized and studied but also artificially created and applied throughout our society.

Although algorithmic urbanism and architecture has hardly been fully explored at this point, this lecture will attempt to display the huge potential artificial emergence can have in the fields of architecture and urbanism, especially when facing the huge challenge architects and urbanists face in today’s large scale urban developments throughout the world.

Workshop:

The goal of this workshop is to introduce students into a new way of design that utilises algorithms and rule-based techniques in order to deal with the vast amounts of constantly varying parameters and information faced with in Urban Design. Where planning techniques based on predictive scenarios and static predetermination strategies segregate matter from the forces that shape it; these new urban computational systems enable a real-time incorporation of varying properties and parameters through the instrumentalisation of information.

Part 1: (Tampere): MEL scripting crash course

The first part of the workshop will focus purely on familiarizing students with basics of Maya Embedded Language.

Starting from the main concepts like the use of variables, loops, etc. we will be presenting and developing a series of examples and exercises together with the students that can be applied in various ways during the following stages of the workshop.

The main aim of this part is to equip students with a basic knowledge of scripting that will allow them to independently continue exploring digital design in architecture and urbanism in the future.

Part 2: (Cottbus / Lodz): Urban Application

In the second part of the workshop participants will be asked to develop possible urban solutions for a chosen fragment of the city in which they will include the application of algorithms for design and analysis. The main aim of the exercise is to familiarize the students with the tools and to test their application on a given context.

Students will choose one of the given topics and scripting exercises from Workshop Part 1 as a basis for their project.

Possible topics could be programmatic optimisation, massing, density, connectivity, growth, environmental aspects etc.

After studying the rules and logics initially used to design the chosen site, participants are asked to re-address, re-design and apply those systems in a rule-based design for the development their urbanisms. The tours around and lectures of the 3 addressed cities by local professors will provide the basis for this.

Part 3: (Cottbus / Lodz): Urban Exploration

The last part of the workshop will concentrate on testing the limitation of the previously designed system by either extrapolating the parameters or using the system for a different site. Students will have to rethink their design in order to make it adaptable for different environments and needs changing over time.

Reader:

- Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software, (New York: Scribner, 2001)

- Phillip Ball, Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another, (London: Arrow Books, 2005)

- Stan Allen “From object to field”, (Architectural Design: After Geometry, London: London Academy Editions nd, 1995)

- John Frazer, An Evolutionary Architecture, (London: Architectural Association ,1995)

- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, (New York: Vintage, 1961)

- Michael Weinstock, “Morphogenesis and the Mathematics of Emergence”, (Architectural Design 169: Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies, London : Academy Editions, 2004)

Cities. Architecture and Society. Catalogue to the Venice Biennale 2006. Venezia: Marsilio, 2006.

Digital Urbanism

We would like to introduce you the 3rd edition of workshops organised by Technical University of Lodz, this time in cooperation with Tampere University of Technology and Fachhochschule Lausitz - International Workshops - Digital Urbanism.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

PERFORMALISM: FORM AND PERFORMANCE IN DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE

//from tel aviv
Performalism: Form and Performance in Digital ArchitectureGuest Curators Arch। Yasha Grobman, Arch। Dr। Eran Neuman CatalogueArchitects of the early twentieth century determined the architectural form as a derivation of the function it had to fulfill. In the wake of the digital revolution, the relation between form and function has been extended and defined as the outcome of performance. The concept performance generally defines the manner in which we use architectural form not only in relation to physical factors such as climate and construction, but also in relation to the perceptual and cognitive dimensions expressed, among other things, in understanding the sensations that a certain space can arouse. The current exhibition critically examines the meaning, implications, and influences of this architectural phenomenon. The main argument of the exhibition is that digital architecture’s formalism, realized through a multidimensional use of performance, offers a field of action by far wider than mere formalism, actually defining new needs and a new inessential concept of subjectivity. Shown in the exhibition will be built, virtual and conceptual architectural projects concerned with computer based architecture and which apply intricate forms that raise questions regarding the use of the new technology. The participants include Archi-Tectonics, USA and Netherland; Karl Chu, USA; Preston Scott Cohen, USA; Contemporary Architecture Practice, USA; Eisenman Architects, USA; Foster+Partners, UK; Franken Architekten, Germany; Gehry Partners, LLP / Gehry Technologies, USA; GLForm, USA; Kol/Mac LLC, USA; OCEAN, Europe, Australia and Israel; Open Source, USA, Europe and Israel; R&Sie (n), France; RUR, USA. Exhibition courtesy AZRIELI GROUP and with the assistante of an anonymous donation ENCOUNTER WITH THE EXHIBITION CURATORS 17.7 20.00; 26.7 11.00; 12.8 20.00; 23.8 11.00

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

script lattice tool

polyCube -ch on -o on -sw 3 -sh 3 -sd 3 -cuv 4 ;

rename pCube1 motherobject;

int $iRow = 5;
int $iCol = 5;

for($i=0; $i<$iRow; $i++)
{
for($j=0; $j<$iCol; $j++)
{
$sName = "cell_"+$i+"_"+$j;
select motherobject;
duplicate motherobject;
rename $sName;
setAttr ".t" ($i*2) ($j*2) 0;
}
}

setAttr "motherobject.visibility" 0;
select -r cell_0_0 cell_0_1 cell_0_2 cell_0_3 cell_0_4 cell_1_0 cell_1_1 cell_1_2 cell_1_3 cell_1_4 cell_2_0 cell_2_1 cell_2_2 cell_2_3 cell_2_4 cell_3_0 cell_3_1 cell_3_2 cell_3_3 cell_3_4 cell_4_0 cell_4_1 cell_4_2 cell_4_3 cell_4_4 ;

lattice -divisions 2 2 2 -objectCentered true -ldv 2 2 2 -exclusive "Create new partition";

$iNumVectors = 8;
string $myArray[8] = {"ffd1Lattice.pt[0][0][1]", "ffd1Lattice.pt[0][1][1]", "ffd1Lattice.pt[1][1][1]", "ffd1Lattice.pt[1][0][1]", "ffd1Lattice.pt[0][1][0]", "ffd1Lattice.pt[1][1][0]", "ffd1Lattice.pt[1][0][0]", "ffd1Lattice.pt[0][0][0]" } ;
for ($a = 1; $a <= $iNumVectors; $a++)
{
$ax = rand (1,10);
$ay = rand (1,10);
$az = rand (1,10);
$myObject = $myArray[$a - 1];
select -r $myObject ;
move $ax $ay $az;
}