IAAC MAA 2010: Digital Fabrication Class – BLOG
Light in Islamic architecture, then, is used to symbolically represent God’s presence in a space while emphasizing the colour and texture of decorative elements, materials, and architectural articulation. One particularly intriguing mediator of light and space in Persian and Indian architecture is the screen or jail.
“Meet the Taichung Center, Taiwan’s massive eco-friendly installation. The building comes complete with eco-skin, a Venetian blind-style covering which will allow airflow and light to enter the structure. The center will also feature large grassy areas in an effort to focus on the Eastern wisdom of harmony between nature and dwellings. Taiwan hopes that this new project will spur interest in renewable building practices throughout country and become a landmark among future eco-designed structures.
Perhaps even cooler than the building’s concept and design is the use of Photovoltaic Glass. PV Glass produces residential solar power like a panel while still functioning as a window. As Sir Norman Foster said, “solar architecture is not about fashion, it is about survival.” He’s right, but with Taiwan’s very modern appeal and radical design, solar panels would have likely distracted from the theme and greenways because of their need for space. It may not be about fashion, but we humans love the aesthetic appeal. So we may as well create it.”
The Cybertecture Egg, an office building, located in Mumbai , India, was design by a firm based in Hong Kong called James Law Cybertecture International Ltd. They have started to use technology to create a new language called cybertecture, which they apply to this building. The main concept is planet earth working as an ecosystem that allows live to evolve, to morph over time using technology, providing its habitants optimal work space. The idea is to blend tangible materials (concrete, steel, and glass) with intangible materials (technology, multimedia,intelligence, and interactivity). The skin of the building is its main structure, which allows the building’s floors to span up to 30 meters with no interior supports.
Zach began developing a pattern of fractal geometry, which can be replicated at different scales. The control of this geometric pattern allows to variate the permeability of each unit, which may vary depending of a programatic or spatial requirement to build a particular interior space . The repeating pattern allows the generation of various shapes and sizes.
The project has a structure of interconnected hexagons together by its translucent surface arists. The translucent surface generates an articulated interior wich is screened by light and shadow of the structural cells.
By this way, the independent cells become a unit, forming the building and creating a common interior.
Example 1: Construction Stage : Capital Gate -Abu Dhabi
STRUCTURE
From its foundations right through its pinnacle, Capital Gate is a unique building and among the most technically challenging engineering projects in the world.
Some key features stand out amongst others:
–It’s gravity-defying 18 degree lean, widely believed to be the most inclined in the world
–The continuous twist of its form which ensures that the tower looks different from every angle
–The unique nature of the floor plate, each floor is unique
The foundation contains an incredibly dense mesh of reinforced steel that sits above 490 piles, drilled 30 meters underground to accommodate gravitational, wind and seismic pressures.
The core of the building is a pre-cambered, ‘slanting’ core that pulls in the opposite direction to the lean. It straightens as the building grows, pulled into a vertical position by the change in the centre of gravity of the building as concrete was poured onto subsequent floors.
The floor plates up to the 12th level are stacked vertically over one another. Between levels 12th and 29th the floor plates stagger over each other, in relation to the lean and twist of the shell, by between 800 to 1400mm and then back to 900mm. Between the 29th storey and the top storey, the range is between 900 and 300mm in relation to the line of the façade.
Capital Gate’s shell comprises a super-strong exo-skeleton called the diagrid, that provides a clear, unobstructed floor plate, using much less steel than a conventional structural frame. Other high-profile buildings that use the diagrid technology include the Hearst Tower in New York City, the Swiss Re building (“the Gherkin”) in London and the CCTV headquarters tower in Beijing. The total weight of steel used in Capital Gate is estimated to be around 21,500 tons which compares favourably to the 50,000 tons estimated for the CCTV tower in Beijing and the 36,910 tons of steel used in Malaysia’s Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.
Example 02: Conceptual : St. stephen’s cathedral,Vienna Austria by liu CHIEN SHENG.
New cathedral integrates the surrounding societal functions, such as religious, art, commercial activities, tourism and traffic system. The church is placed on the ground floor, theaters and department store on the upper floor of the basement, and metro station on the bottom of basement. All the layers are divided by glass floor, and thus, the activities in different level generate visual overlap by the transparence of glass floor. People can experience the new cathedral through variety of spaces. This design is more appropriate style for the cathedral which is required to have multiple functions in modern human life.
The second example shows us that there are endless possibilities when it comes to architecture using parametric design.
Parametric design and digital fabrication is being used in development various of art forms, furniture and personal utility items but but the technology has still not stepped into the field of mass production to a noticeable scale.
The first example is the Digitally Fabricated Furniture Twin Shelves By Chilean Design Studio Gt2p.
The shelves are made of Lacquered Medium-density fiberboard using a CNC Router Machine.
These shelves belong to a series of parametric furniture digitally fabricated and generated by means of an algorithm which is based on Voronoi’s tessellation. The Twin Shelves model’s variables are an edge and points that determine its inner subdivision. This allows to customize the x,y and z dimension adapting the shape of the furniture to the specific requirements of each client. The tessellation rule permits to regulate the number of inner subdivisions, creating a variety of objects spanning from shelves to passive solar controls.
The Second example is of a model designed by Koen Boonen
This model is an adaptation of the Julia-fractal in a xenodream metamorph the mesh for this artform was optimised using cinema4D
The Jellyfish House, a recent project by San Francisco’s IwamotoScott Architecture, has been “modeled on the idea that, like the sea creature, it coexists with its environment.”
Jellyfish have no brain, no central nervous system, no eyes, and consist largely of the water around them. Yet, they sense light and odor, are self-propulsive, bioluminescent and highly adaptive to changing aquaculture. Like jellyfish, the house attempts to incorporate emerging material and digital technologies in a reflexive, environmentally contingent manner. The house is designed as a mutable layered skin, or ‘deep surface’, that mediates internal and external environments. The skin is designed as a parametric mesh that uses efficient geometric logics of Delauney triangulation and the Voronoi diagram. It deforms in thickness locally for geometric, structural, visual, and mechanical performance.
The house is a transformative prototype for reclaimed land. Specifically, it is sited on Treasure Island, a flat, artificial island built off the naturally occurring island of Yerba Buena in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Treasure Island is at once local and distant, isolated and connected. It has recently been decommissioned by the military, and is being redeveloped largely for new residences. Like many former military bases, Treasure Island suffers from a range of environmental hazards. The most geographically desirable parts of the island have toxic soil that requires remediation. In these areas, the particular hazardous materials necessitate that up to five feet of topsoil be removed for cleansing. In other areas, the contaminated soil can be treated on site using plant based phyto-remediation techniques. The proposed site strategy is to infiltrate the island with sinuous fields of wetlands that allow the removed soil to not have to be replaced, and remediate the remaining toxins. In addition, the wetlands act as a filtration system for the island, becoming a form of productive infrastructure that naturally filters stormwater run-off.
This is an interesting concept called the HyperGreen Tower by Jacques Ferrier, which was recently submitted to an architectural competition in Paris. The 246 meter tower design has an unusual curving exterior lattice facade made out of concrete that acts as the building’s primary structural system. This allows for adaptable floor plates and vegetated sky lobbies that sit between the tower’s facade and interior office space.
The green highlights of the HyperGreen Tower include integrated solar cells, wind turbines, a rain water harvesting system and a geothermal heating system.
Materinal: Gloss Laminated Polyurethane resin, silicone
The enigmatic liquid form of the Aqua table awakens one’s curiosity. The user is invited to explore the forces of motion that created such a form. The form is blurring the relationship between the horizontal top and vertical legs. The three blisters bulging out to form legs below the table surface register as indentations at the top surface.
The “Water Cube” is a rectangular-shaped steel building covered by a membrane of brightly lit blue bubbles which is incredible to look at but it is also important on an environmental level. The Water Cube consists of 100,000 sq m of ETFE, (Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene) a unique transparent plastic which absorbs solar radiation and reduces thermal loss. It is the world’s largest and most complex EFTE building ever constructed. EFTE is recyclable and light (1% the weight of glass) but it is also strong, capable of bearing up to 400 times its own weight. As it lets in more light and is a better insulator than glass it will reduce energy costs in the Water Cube by 30%. The Water Cube’s structure consists of 3,000 pneumatic cushions ranging from with different sizes from 9sqm to less than 1sqm in size. These “air bubbles” are relatively independent of each other so they can be easily replaced. The LED-lit bubbles allow warm air to enter the building and keep the water temperature at an optimum 28 degrees, but the air can also be stored and used in the Water Cube when required. The Water Cube spans 80,000-sq-m and was constructed with 6,700 tons of steel, but as EFTE spans greater distances than glass it needed less supportive steel structure beneath it.
