Wednesday 30 September 2009

090930 Point Mapping

I proposed a hypothesis for these towers.

If the twin towers are going to be a very iconic and striking buildings in Perth, It has got to have a bit of reference of the city itself.

To generate Voronoi Cells, you need points and a boundary. The points are the extracted node points of the city in four categories - Traffic Junctions, Open Spaces, Commercial, Entertainment/Tourists.

Here are the point maps of the city, and these will give the "randomness" of the points on facade.


Traffic Junctions


Open Spaces


Entertainment/Tourists


Commercial


Overall

090930 Sketches for the Twin Towers

I was thinking of uploading some valid sketches here to show what I am actually doing and the possible final outcome.



Sketch on Pattern of the Carpark, this could possibly be the panel within the Voronoi cell structure. Ideally, the openings can be justified by the control of sunlight penetration. This sketch also include the possible outcome of the twin towers


This sketch look into the structure of the individual panel and also the Fenestration of the openings. The top sketches show the relationship of the buildings with the Perth Concert hall.


This is the rough idea of the form of the buildings. And the right bottom is the rough structure of the script.


This is a sketch by my tutor in exploring the sectional cell in relation to the human. Also exploring the possible paneling structure.

090930 More Sites for Voronoi Cell

I just want to sum up all the research for Voronoi Cell with several links. Perhaps you can add more in the comment box.

Background:
Wikipedia

Examples:
seen.by.spiegel - voronoi-cell-cluster by Oilvan Oesterle, Michael Knauss
voronoi-diagram by imcyborg
Responsive Volatility - Programme

RhinoScript/Grasshopper:
RhinoScript Wiki
un didi - 3d-voronoi-in-grasshopper by Dimitrie Stefanescu
Rhinoscripting by Kenfield Griffith, John Snavely
Kokugia - RvbScript
RhinoScript.org

090930 Material System Design

Matsys

Established in 2004 by Andrew Kudless, Matsys is a design studio that explores the emergent relationships between architecture, engineering, biology, and computation. Based on the idea that architecture can be understood as a material body with its own intrinsic and extrinsic forces relating to form, growth, and behavior, the studio investigates methodologies of performative integration through geometric and material differentiation. The studio’s work ranges from speculative and built projects to the crafting of new tools which facilitate an interdisciplinary approach to the design and fabrication of architecture.

Bio
Andrew Kudless is an architect based in San Francisco where he is an assistant professor at the California College of the Arts. Andrew has taught design studios, workshops, and seminars at The Ohio State University, the Architectural Association (London), Yale University, and Rice University. In 2005 Andrew was the Howard E. LeFevre Fellow for Emerging Practitioners at OSU. He earned a Master of Arts with distinction from the Architectural Association’s Emergent Technologies and Design graduate program and a Master of Architecture with honors from the Tulane University School of Architecture. In 2004 he was the recipient of a Design Merit Award in the Far Eastern International Digital Architecture Design (FEIDAD) competition and in 1998 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to research architectural design and urbanism in the Kansai region of Japan. He has worked as a designer for Allied Works Architecture in Portland and New York and as a digital design, modeling, and fabrication consultant for Expedition Engineering in London. Andrew’s work has been exhibited in the US, England, France, Japan and China.

Here are some of their works.





090929 Voronoi Script Test

The Voronoi Script (a.k.a Point Set Reconstruction) from McNeel Wiki is a little bit too primitive. It restricted to only abounded by a box and the cells are either curves, polysurfaces or meshes. It's really hard to manipulate the generated cells. To achieve what I want, which the cell membranes as primary structure while having a curve opening, I started learning how to script in Rhino.

Scripting in Rhino is not new and getting more refine and powerful. I have gone through the basic introductory of scripting called vbscript for beginners downloaded from McNeel Wiki. Then I saw RhinoScript101 on the web as well. Spent the whole day in trying to create openings for voroni cells. Something like this posted by sonniewong on Caustic Surface: 3D Voronoi Script Test.



Here's my result with the script written by me.

What I did was
-> Pick Polysurface
-> Scale <1> Extractwireframe
-> Join as Polyline
-> CurveThroughPolyline
-> PlanarSrf the Curve
-> End (that was as far as I got last night)





Ideally, the close polyline of the cells can for planarsrf with the insetted curve.
Then, I can extrude surface with a thickness. Let's see how it goes tomorrow.

Monday 28 September 2009

090928 Voronoi Pattern Study

I challenge the skin structure of the towers by making it more organic with Voronoi Cell System. Before heading into the actual structure itself, I studied on what Voronoi Cell is about and precedented works. As described in Wikipedia, a Voronoi

"... diagram is a special kind of decomposition of a metric space determined by the distances to a specified discrete set of objects in the space."



Por Jorge Huang Li, the editor of VANGUARQ beyong architecture, blogged a post on "Futuristic cellular structure architecture". Basically he researched on the cellular structure in the mainly the field of architecture. Be interested to look at some real and virtual works from his blog.

So, here's some of the models that I have done with the Voronoi Script. It takes me a while to know how exactly this plug-in works. And the pipe command in Rhino just too inconvenient because you've got to do it on every curve. So I have to use 3ds max's modifier to give the spline a thickness.



-> editable spline
-> enable in view port -> radial (set thickness)
-> editable mesh
-> import back to Rhino (pain in the neck ... )

Here are a couple of results that I have made for the skyscrapers:


Learning how to use the PointSet plugin


Computed Voronoi 3D Cells


Voronoi Cells in rectangular tower


Voronoi Cells in circular tower

Sunday 27 September 2009

090927 CCTV by OMA

Today I dig into studying the structural element of CCTV by OMA. CCTV has a primary steel structure on the facade which wraps around the whole building as a loop. The pattern on the facade is purely generated from the resulting analysis by several structural engineering softwares.

To begin with, I would like to quote some lines from the Introduction of A + U special edition on CCTV by OMA written by Ole Scheeren. He questioned on the nature of skyscrapers and also the future typology of skyscrapers in relation to the urban development.


Shibata, N., CCTV by OMA: Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, A+U, Tokyo, 2005.

" ... Is it a typology that has become the ultimate tool of financial speculation, enslaved to economics and devoid of contents? Is it nothing more than the constant and monotonous repetition of a piece of land in vertical direction, whose only aim is the profitable multiplication of the value of the ground, and whose only means of expression are reduced to striving for absolute height and dominance of the skyline of a city (if not the whole world)? Is nothing left but the self-referential quality of a vertical line, which desperately seeks (to compensate for the lack of) identity, with a decorative top sprouting a flower, pagoda style or modernist composition? Is the higher the better? all that remains? ... "

" ... After the promise of surprising programmatic variety in its initial incarnations (Manhatten), the skyscraper became emptier and emptier - and was finally adopted by Asia ... the ultimate symbol of tis modernisation at the very moment of its conceptual implosion ... " " ... It seems about time to no longer treat this typology as a commercial export product ( and subject it to the apparently irrevocable laws of Central Business Districts as their ultimate model), but instead to re-think the skyscraper as a potential for new urban manifestations ... " - end of quote

These questions stay valid, still, that, as we can see there are a lot of new typology in skyscrapers, e.g. challenging structure, modularisation, eco-towers. All these typologies have their validity with, undeniably, strong reasons/motives behind. CCTV does not exclude in this, what I called "A New Movement in Digital Architecture" which I have mentioned in my previous post. So maybe after many years later, CCTV will become like an avant-garde in the history of architecture.

Here are some of the highlighted writings in jpeg and some images of CCTV itself. Please click the image for better resolution:


Introduction by Ole Scheeren


Programme


Site Plan


Overall Diagrams


Text


Structural Studies


Structural Study Models (there are really a lot of these by Arup!)


Unfold Facade showing Structural Stress


Text + Exploded Diagram of Facade


Final Model featuring its Structure


Axo-Diagram




Key Text




Structural Analysis







Structural Documentation Drawings

More information can be found from arcspace.com, OMA official website, miragestudio7, e-architect and archiCentral.

Last but not least, here's a video clip showing OMA CCTV Presentation Video found at archifield.

090927 Sunlight Study 02

Another sunlight study has been done.

This time I set Tower 01 at 180m in height and keep Tower 02 the same at 220m in height.







Here are the results:

In Winter:






In Summer:






They all are positive results. I will use this building height as a restrain/guide for further design development.