090922 Modular Skyscraper??

Modular Skyscraper is a topic not within my field of research. However, after reading Inhabitat's post on Bio-Fuel Growing Eco Pods Rejuvenate Stalled Boston Project written by Bridgette Meinhold, I felt like writing something before I go to bed.



Modular Skyscraper is not new at all. As for as I remember, Moshe Safdie's Habitat'67 in Montreal Canada built in 1967 is a modular apartment.



Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower in Japan is another good example of modular apartment, but it is facing a strong debate over its demolition. As written in PingMag, the public has voted that this building has to be demolished due to high maintenance cost and uninhabitable space. If you have the chance to see it for the last time, you better be hurry!



Travel back to some recent projects such as Vertical Park designed by Jorge Hernandez de la Garza in Mexico. The project did not continue due to high cost and did not win the public voice.



Another famous one is by MVRDV called Sky Village. Many websites have featured this project as an evolution project which incorporate refined structure, ideal private and public space and the green. You can find some more info from COMTEMPORIST, dezeen, and bdonline.



MVRDV, a group of Data Architects, started to evolve into a modular pixelated world. What the architects are trying to do is perhaps to find a proper solution for this globalising and soon globalised world. The totality of the universe perhaps is the driving force in exploration of such. Not putting MVRDV on this table for discussion, but at this moment, I can not say modular has an architectural quality. It is more like a system which can create millions of solutions. From modular shape to its detail in exterior skin system, from its stacking pattern to its solid-void manipulation. It seems like this system could possibly be put into any part of the world. However, architecture is not about modularisation. Modular buildings can only be interesting when they start to stack very randomly. Architecture has its uniqueness to its particular site. It cannot be modularised. Unless the universe or even the Earth has a modular pattern, I see no point in doing modular "architecture". A site has no particular modular, it is human who creates this modular for modular architecture. Perhaps, yeah, modular architecture will only exist in a modular context. Modular architecture is a very technical solution which can easily be separated from conventional architecture. And is that really simple to solve all human-nature solutions by using boxes? I doubt so.

To shut down myself, I just quickly show you recent MVRDV's dnb nor headquarters, norway once posted on designboom.





Iconic? When there are more of this kind of buildings. This building won't be as iconic anymore.

090817 Research Topic

TOPIC:

Parametric Modular Skyscraper

BACKGROUND:

According to a lecture conducted by J. David Allan on Population Growth over Human History, it is predicted that the projection of population will reach an absolute eventual world population of eight to twelve billion by the end of twenty-first century compare to six billion people in 2010. There will be only little land left for human to step on with the nowadays models of density of both city and suburb. The decline in fertility is the major reason in such decay after the saturation. However, such an ideal graphical presentation is presupposed with the trace of the history despite other natural facts such as climate change, natural disaster, infectious virus, or the like. Nowadays, environmentalists and scientists have alarmed a warning of global warming which consequently bringing all civilisations back to zero ice age. Even doctors and pharmacists could not predict the evolution of hazardous latent virus which could kill human instantly. The urge in birth control and sustainability at a global scale has pushed to a critical moment where all specialists have to put in maximum effort to balance the current ecosystem in a balance mode of co-existence.

I am Legend by Will Smith


WALL-E by Pixar

For architects, we have been designing buildings with high sustainable qualities. But what if there is no more land for architects to design new buildings? What if the land is contaminated with hazardous substances? What if the climate change affects the global topographic properties? The question here is – how can we maintain a constant healthy population while allowing time for the nature to rebuild?