090825 Vertical Farm

Quoted from Archinet

A Farm on Every Floor The NYT finally catches up with 50% of all architecture school theses: "If climate change and population growth progress at their current pace, in roughly 50 years farming as we know it will no longer exist. This means that the majority of people could soon be without enough food or water. But there is a solution that is surprisingly within reach: Move most farming into cities, and grow crops in tall, specially constructed buildings. It’s called vertical farming."

Vertical Garden, vertical farm is not new. It's an ideal solution for food, land and resources. If the future projection on population versus land is accurate, by 2050, we will use up all land on Earth and population will reach its peak.

Vertical Garden (a.k.a Living Wall) is first invented by Patrick Blanc in 1988. It's decorative, elegant, functional, sustainable and renewable. However, vertical garden, to a certain extend, cannot feed on diet for all people. That is why vertical farm has been invented. Vertical Farm is a project leaded by Dr. Dickson Despommier who is a professor of Environmental Health Science of Columbia University. He wrote series of discourses on the necessity of vertical farming. And he also conducted studios for designing sustainable towers. More info from here.

There is also a video featuring Vertical Farm called "Living Tower" by SOA Architects which I think every city should have at least one or more.




The idea of have vertical farm is somewhat link back to the ideology of Tower of Babel, or even the Noah Ark. Or perhaps that is the only solution (except of living out of the Earth, like 'Wall-E') to solve over-consumption of natural resources. We actually live and self-sustain in this mini-Earth and we create things that we need in this mini-Earth through generation to generation until the mother of nature is back to a well-balanced equilibrium state. With the push of globalisation, I believe putting all people from all nations into this single mini-Earth is feasible. And perhaps that will create a new social cultural and identity for human beings.

Mahasamatman wrote a fantasic post called "GAIASys & The Evolution of the Planet" he said "...Globalization based upon these self-sufficient Resilient Communities has not yielded the soul destroying monoculture that many feared in the first part of the twenty first century. Instead, sustainable living and other nodes of permaculture that have permeated all aspects of life give rise to information rich, multi-story polyculture systems. Welcome to Earth; welcome to Gaia. Welcome to the future. Welcome to now."

How will the Earth become in the future, despite of the devastating Apophis Asteriod? How do we live in the future? How do we survive? How will architecture transform?

An exaggerated youtube on Apophis Asteriod just for fun. For you to think.

090824 3D Print for Skyscraper 01

There was an error on layer 354 (out of 588) when the printing is processing.
But it turned out to be a pretty decent sectional model even though there are still hundreds layers to go.

090822 Skyscraper 01 STL Preparation

Spent quite a bit of time in "CheckMesh" and making sure that the STL file is workable for 3D print.

The Tower #01 is marked at a dimension of (~45-60)L x (~45-60)W x (~100)H
The total volume is marked at 74509.6951 cubic mm = 4.54686 cubic inch.
I assume the price tag for Tower #01 is at AUD45 since AUD10 = 1 cubic inch.

090822 Skyscraper 01

Today I made a tower model based on the pattern of square frame and sine curve.

The tower's mesh surface is offset according to a sine curve and the mesh panel is made of rhombus component.

Here's the result:





Hopefully I can make a 3d print at the size of ~150mm x 100mm by Wednesday.

090822 ParaCloud GEM x Rhino

Have an idea in making a cool pavilion using paracloud and rhino.

090822 Grasshopper

I am pretty new to grasshopper. I took a several tutorials online and made a definition - Responsive Distance Logic.

The extrusion of the boxes is responsive to the variable point.



The definition is as follow:

090821 Research Proposal

Submitted research proposal today. And luckily I got the feedback from my tutor. I have a more refined topic - Skin as structure in skyscraper - Exploring mainly in the structural pattern of skyscrapers using parametric conditions and solutions. Anyway, we will see how it progresses.

One submission down! At the end of the day, we are still students. We need to do assignments to, ultimately, acquire our certs.

090821 Tutorial 5

Tutorial 5 - we learned how to use very very very very very uber basic ArchiCAD (BIM).
The model that we were required to build was Corb's Domino ...



Step 01:
Build Domino in ArchiCAD 12





Step 02:
Exported the model in *.3dm and rendered in Rhino with V-ray then pshop post-editing.



I find that, exporting BIM model to *.3dm will cause the edge to be slightly rounded. The faceted mesh becomes obvious as you can see in the render (become less obvious after fudging the image in pshop). Perhaps *.obj is better?

Hopefully the next tutorial will learn a little bit of rendering technique in ArchiCAD, will that be as good as V-ray? Let's see ......

090821 Tutorial 4

Tutorial 4 - we were taught to do simple animator in max
One thing I find interesting yet a bit meaningless (maybe there are whole heaps of theory behind which I do not know) is to screen capture animation and do lofting in Rhino ... ...

Anyway, here you go~~~

Step 01:
Screen-capturing in max



I fail to do gif animation in photoshop. I couldn't figure out how to export frames into gif image. Maybe there are some softwares on the web which are free to do gif animation.

Step 02:
Trace elements in 2D-CAD and bring the frames into Rhino for Lofting



Urghh ... actually I made a several lofts. I personally think that lofting across linear looks the best. Images upon request.

Animation:
Sent my setup in max to UWA render farm with scanline + skylight + light tracer setting. No external linked material added. It took 3 hours to render.



Some students may split render in render farm. But it DOES NOT WORK for animation. So do not set split render when you send your animation to the render farm. What you will end up with is 16 sets of horizontal-strip-animations, they just do not combine into one.

090821 Tutorial 3

Suddenly feel like putting up all the tutorial exercises ... bare with me :P

Tute 3: 3d-model for Corb's Villa Savoye

Step 01:
Build the whole model in Rhino



Step 02:
Render with V-ray + Photoshop post-editing

090818 Few more interesting articles on Parametricism

1) The Architect’ Journal the home of British architecture
http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/the-critics/parametricism-how-quaint/1935874.article

Parametricism? How quaint

27 November, 2008 | By Sam Jacob

Parametric architecture’s abstract hubris lies in ruins, but Sam Jacob finds it all rather picturesque.

Every success harbours the seeds of its own failure. Somewhere in the hubristic peak of complete accomplishment lurks the complacency, arrogance and absence of doubt that fans the inevitable, all-consuming bonfire of vanities. It’s just this kind of raging self-immolation that has cindered the global economic landscape – in days, the terrain has been completely transformed. The speed of transformation has hit built culture hard. The collapse revealed a world undescribed by the maps and charts we had drawn. Buildings find themselves completed in a different landscape, appearing on the skyline like giant mausolea for a failed ideology, or abandoned, half-built, like freshly minted ruins.

The markets had evolved into hyper-sophisticated, super-calibrated, cleverly geared systems whose logistics supported an ever-finer kind of abstraction. They became a machine for manufacturing value and growth in vaporous form, decoupled from substance. Their fall marks the failure of a particular kind of algorithmically programmed fantasy of abstraction.

2)

BD The Architect’s website

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3122853

The future is parametric

19 September 2008

In Venice last week, Patrik Schumacher, partner at Zaha Hadid Architects, hailed parametricism as the great new style after modernism. This is an edited version of his manifesto

We must pursue the parametric design paradigm all the way, penetrating into all corners of the discipline. Systematic, adaptive variation and continuous differentiation (rather than mere variety) concern all architectural design tasks from urbanism to the level of tectonic detail. This implies total fluidity on all scales.

The mass society that was characterised by a single, nearly universal consumption standard has evolved into the heterogenous society of the multitude. Contemporary avant-garde architecture is addressing the demand for an increased level of articulated complexity by means of retooling its methods on the basis of parametric design systems.

The contemporary architectural style that has achieved pervasive hegemony within the contemporary architectural avant-garde can be best understood as a research programme based on the parametric paradigm. We propose to call this style parametricism.

Parametricism is the great new style after modernism. Postmodernism and deconstructivism have been transitional episodes that ushered in this new, long wave of research and innovation.

That the parametric paradigm is becoming pervasive in contemporary architecture and design is evident. There has been talk about versioning, iteration and mass customisation for quite a while within the architectural avant-garde discourse, formulated at the beginning of the 1990s with the slogan of “continuous differentiation”. Since then, there has been both a widespread, even hegemonic, dissemination of this tendency, as well as a cumulative build-up of virtuosity, resolution and refinement within it.

This development was facilitated by the attendant development of parametric design tools and script. Parametricism can only exist via sophisticated parametric techniques. Finally, advanced design techniques like scripting (in Mel Script or Rhino Script) and parametric modelling (with tools like GC or DP) are becoming a pervasive reality.

But the parametric design tools by themselves cannot account for this drastic stylistic shift from modernism to parametricism. Late modernist architects use parametric tools to maintain a modernist aesthetic. At Zaha Hadid Architects, our parametricist sensibility pushes in the opposite direction and aims for a maximal emphasis on conspicuous differentiation.

Fields not space

Modernism was founded on the concept of space. Parametricism differentiates fields. Fields are full, as if filled with a fluid medium. Swarms have also served as paradigmatic analogues for the field concept. We would like to think of swarms of buildings that drift across the landscape or of large continuous interiors like big exhibition halls.

Imagine there are no more landmarks to hold on, no axes to follow and no more boundaries to cross. Contemporary architecture aims to construct new logics — the logic of fields — that gear up to organise and articulate the new level of dynamism and complexity of contemporary society.

090818 Parametricism - Is it really the next great architectural style?

Quoted from superjim from pushpullbar.com on 26.01.2009

"...Hello all, I have been asked to write a paper as a response to some of the ideas presented at this year’s Venice biennale, with particular regard to the ideas put forth by Patrik Schumacher. I noticed on this thread that there were a number of people interested in getting into a discussion about the theories and processes involved in parametric design so I thought I'd pose the question here and see if we can get a discussion going.

Patrik Schumacher (Partner at Zaha Hadid Architects and Co-director of AADRL (AA Design Research Lab) recently set out what he described as the Parametricist Manifesto at the 11th Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy. At the outset of this manifesto he states that Parametricism is the next great style after Modernism (he argues that Postmodernism and Deconstructivism were merely episodes ushering in what he describes as a "new, long wave of research and innovation.") - I will not go too much into what Schumacher talks about as you can read the full piece on his website at here, suffice to say that Schumacher's writings are both challenging and thought provoking.

I’m not going to go into much depth on describing parametric so this thread may only be of interest to those with a prior knowledge or experience of it, but if you’d like to get involved then here’s a wee bit to get you going.

A little about Parametricism-
Parametricism approaches the idea of architecture from a new angle, suggesting that we create a complete system that embodies every aspect of the design process, and that architecture should not be split up and dealt with in separate scales that do react to each other. Rather that all the information within an architecture is linked and reacts and changes in correspondence with every element of the building.

Imagine, for example, a highly complex spreadsheet, where each value is linked to corresponding values which are in turn linked to others etc etc. Now, when you change one value, this has an effect on the entire spread sheet, calculated by pre-determined parameters but defined by each value equally. Parametric design links the information used to design buildings in a way not too dissimilar to a complex spreadsheet - a change in one value creates a corresponding change in all other values. The building shifts and evolves as a whole, not as separately considered elements.

Again, an example of the use of Parametricism in architecture can be found in this project. Here you can see the use of what is fast becoming (in my opinion) the most powerful tool in the realm of parametric, Rhino/rhino script/associated plug-ins.

Now I know that’s a lengthy post and the subject is a very complex one (some of you will have no idea what I’m on about but don’t worry feel free to investigate the subject and see where you stand) with many aspects into which we could dip but for the sake of this thread id like to limit the discussion to the question- Is Parametricism the next great architectural style OR are parametrics simply a door to a new wave of creative tools that will merely inform and allow the next architectural style to evolve? ..."

Pushpullbar
http://www.pushpullbar.com/forums/architecture-design-theory-news-discussions/10250-parametricism-really-next-great-architectural-style.html

Parametricism - after reading a few articles questioning the ethical issues and methodology and also style, I have a basic thought on what Parametricism is, can be, and will be.

Parametricism, is simply a tool or methodology for architects or related designers to use and to aid them to push what I called "the limit of abstraction" to reality. From the well-said definition from the previous post, parametricism is a rationalised system mimic what the nature is all about. (heaps of discourses have been written on this) Often, you would hear someone is talking about Bio-mimicry, organic architecture or the like. These so-called style or trend is a subset of parametricism. Parametricism is not a style, yet, it may constitute to a new style which will become a (sooner or later) digital architecture movement. Certainly, at the moment and from what I see, parametricism is merely a trend of system for architects and designers to use. And it will never become a style. What a style is, I believe, is a popular collective trend where everybody believes that "I need to acquire this [object] so that I'm "in-the-style"' Considering software engineering, they often called themselves the designner of system (Look at Autodesk, Rhino, Adobe, etc.), which I hereby raise a intuitive question for everyone to think about. Are they the designers of the future or we are? Are we the designers of the future using other designed tools to design the future? Will that become a combination of the both which create new "stuff"? In that sense, can we still claim for copyright and originality? These questions might sound straight forward yet worth thinking of how our "career" or how "architecture" will become. Parametricism, it's not that hard to accept, certainly not acceptable for those who is obsess about it. It is, after-all, a tool.

090818 Parametricism Definition

Quoted from Ophelia Fletcher on Parametricism that:

" ... Parametricism is a methodologically justified style that takes the concept of using parametric form design from the production of a one-off building and applying it to a cityscape. "

" ... Architecture and urbanism should be tackled as a set of linked design criteria which form a complete “system” in a building, from urbanism down to the smallest details. "

"... Parametric design links all this information in a way similar to a spreadsheet so that a change in one value creates a corresponding change in all other values. Biological systems, organisms, from the microscopic to the macroscopic – These kinds of inputs stay in the repertoire. There’s also mathematics – new mathematics – topological patterns and also what is having an impact is new modelling tools and more recently parametric modelling, parametric fields and scripted fields, a new sensibility with respect to orders of iteration. Looking through these new tools there’s a kind of intricacy of overall arrangement with a very high degree of coherence. There are a lot of internal laws of correlation; everything relates to everything else. It’s a continuous change but it all fits together. It’s not random or arbitrary ... "

World Architecture Community

http://www.worldarchitecture.org/theory-issues/?position=detail&no=253

090817 Parametricism informal/unofficial debate

Yesterday midnight, there was a mild informal/unofficial debate over Parametricism vs ethics on facebook wall post conducted by Mr. Justin Smith, Mr. Bradley Curnow and I

The Topic Statement was: Parametricism - is that the way the world should go? Ask Zaha or Patrik ...

JS – Mr. Justin Smith

HB – Mr. Herman Boon

BC – Mr. Bradley Curnow

JS: is it ethical? :-P

HB: i'm confused :P

JS: its the computer generating form. granted, the parameters are set by you, but in the end its shaped by the computers? ur sitting like 5m away from me, we could talk face to face... but that would deny fb the pleasure..

BC: It's an interesting tool no doubt, and one which will surely be exploited to take care of the bottom line. As for its potential to create great architecture... the magnitude of that will depend on the skill of the architect who defines the parametric... no?

Given that computers deal in 1's and 0's and can't even begin to grasp the esoteric qualities that architects try to grapple with, architecturally speaking it's probably pretty useless, unless you're 'designing' fuel cell exchange depots for the latest line of Hitachi autonomous robots.

So, now that I've dutifully fulfilled my role as an energetic young architecture student and contributed to 'interesting and stimulating' architectural debate, I will now return to the rest of my semi-relaxing hiatus and will see you all next year :D

Kind regards,

BC

HB: The utopian thought of an architect has to be implemented into a newly defined parametric system in which form generated with the aid of computer = ethical. While parameters must be set with the notion of creating a better place for human and nature which allows co-existence despite the uniqueness of spiritual sensation of human beings, we as architects have to pursuit such goal before population reach its peak where civilisation starting to decline and human existence are in danger. I always believe advanced natural disaster such as virus and super climate change comes way before technology. There will be a point where time doesn't allow us to develop such technique before the crisis killing us all.

Big thought, big dream, as we always do.

Really appreciate both of your thoughts.

Cheers

JS: interesting suppositions.
my rebuttal:
mr boon- from our conversation from the previous night i summarised that you’re issues with computer based design came from the fact that computers were being used as a generative tool, rather than a tool to communicate a preconceived idea. the computer generated architecture would be unethical, as it wasn't manifested by human thought.
at what point does fleshing out an idea with the aid of a computer become generating ideas from the computer? is the combination of both ethical? and to what degree? does it really matter?
specifically regarding parametric architecture, we are in a sense creating a system of data entry and logic. the computer gathers the data which we specify and re-arranges/creates accordingly (in a sense similar to our own design methodologies, but probably much more specifically). are we not becoming something more akin to software engineers?.. or does our selection of inputs (i.e. in- and ex-clusion) constitute [architectural] design... will the form be a product of humans and therefore by your definition be ethical? or a product of the computer..?

also- nothing will save us from mother nature. she is always one step ahead. better medicine comes with more resilient viral strains etc. its like a balancing factor. we just have to make sure we don’t reach the critical mass. the effects of overpopulation can probably be nullified to a certain extent by technologies and therefore advancements in architecture, but its my guess that instead of creating a solution were just raising the critical mass. eventually the bar wont be able to raise any higher.

ethics makes my head spin,
i should really get some sleep...

HB: mr smith: very refreshing thought. I agree on all aspects. Maybe I should answer the first question and the rest we could talk face to face before making this as a discussion board.

"at point does fleshing out an idea with the aid of a computer become generating ideas from the computer? is the combination of both ethical? and to what degree?" It certainly does matter as there is a fine line between "you draw your first line with pencil" and "you draw your first spline with autocad". I think the point is rather obvious in the sense that we start off with a thought and that thought is visaulisable. What I emphasize is just a "thought" thought, not an outcome. Whenever you reach to a point of abstraction or unvisualisable "thought", you acquire advanced technology to aid you. From there, I disagree on using computer to generate the very first idea. But I do believe that with the aid of computer you can generate more ideas out of the first which do not supersede the original.

-end of conversation-

So what do you think about parametricism? It is definitely a trend yet not a style to digital architecture. We are now at the transitional point where digital architecture (if that can be defined) is shaping its way out in this Modern era. Sooner or later, digital architecture will become a new movement (good or bad). Let's see how the world is gonna change.