As a member of T1 group, in this session, I studied Water Cube, and one chapter from the book On Growth and Form by D’arcy Thompson. Both of the text and the case are related to find/define form from nature.

Water cube, whose official name is Beijing National Aquatics Center, was built for 2008 Olympic Games. It is a fascinating building, which looks like a gathering of bubbles. The most interesting part of this building is its structure, which is known as Weaire-Phelan foam structure. This structure is a description of idealized foam of equal-sized bubbles in a mathematical way. It is completely regular, but looks random. The design team even rotated it to make it looks more random and organic. When the structure was built, air pillows made of ETFE were used to fill in the frame of the structure to build a continuous bubble-like skin. When those plastic bags are lighten up from inside they look just like bubbles, although during daytime they look gray and dirty.

The text has a title: On the Theory of Transformation, Or the Comparison of Related Forms, which concludes the text quite well. In this chapter, the author mentioned that mathematics is the most precise language to describe our world, but in the morphology of living things the use of mathematical methods had made slow progress. There were variety of reasons, like the complexity of shapes of living things, and people studying them often care more about the differences between different species. But we must learn from mathematician to eliminate and to discard, to keep the type in mind instead of single case. For us, comparison of related forms is more important than precise definition of each. By doing so, we can actually find that many shape is a transformation of another. The author than introduced a grid, and put shapes in it, for instance, a fish, a skull, or a bone. By changing the grid, he could get a series of different fish, skulls, and bones. Although they look different, but topologically they are the same. In short, nature proceeds from one type to another can be defined by physic-mathematical conditions of possibility.

From the text and the case, I gained a new vision of geometry from nature. I always avoid curves and other structures seems complex when designing in the past, because I didn’t know the logic behind them. But now I know that in nature there are many structures that are more efficient, many geometries that are reasonable, at the same time beautiful, and people can actually use the language of mathematics to describe them, moreover, use parameters to control them. The way Thompson did his research also inspired me, for it suggested that, to see things in a different way we may get more information. So I think that I should try to change my view of architecture, as well as the way of design. Like the rhizome, this kind of logic is interesting. Human always like to use structures as grid and tree in the past, for they are simple and clear. But now we have better ability to collect and use information, we should try more possibility, try to learn the complexity form nature instead of just simplify everything, but of course, in a logical way.

To my interest, I would like to learn more about what human can learn from nature. I would like to read the On Growth and Form, the whole book. Also, I would like to learn more about the geometries people learned from nature. I want to know how they can be digitalized and how they can help our design. Also, the rhizome, and the ant society is interesting to me. Because parameters are only parameters, they should present new logic and relation inside so they can be reasonable and meaningful, and that’s what I think most important for advanced architecture. Using a new form is not advanced, but understanding the new form and taking advantage of it is advanced. So I think what I should do from now on, is to enlarge my sight, to study more about the nature, and then, explore the way to apply this new knowledge to my design.

image: http://mypages.iit.edu/~krawczyk/acsa01/a002.jpg

As a member of T1 group, in this session, I studied Studio House by F451, and Conditioned Outdoor Room by Bernard Rudofsky. Both of the text and the case are have the thinking of how to deal with the relationship of indoor space and outdoor space, and what can architect do when facing nature.

In the text Conditioned Outdoor Room, the author looked back the changing of American houses since New England settler started to build house in New world. Since the very beginning, human have been fighting to control the climate, but, as the author mentioned, climate cannot be conquered, and we are actually a part of climate. So although we can make our indoor room always comfortable, we still like good climate, good air, and good view, etc. However, American house gardens are not successful in dealing with outdoor and indoor spaces, because although there is big picture window, the garden ends up a decoration of indoor space instead of an outdoor living space. But actually people succeeded in controlling outdoor space. Pompeii house garden is a good example. Those gardens were real outdoor room, they were real living spaces of daily life. The big difference between American garden and Pompeii garden is that Pompeii garden was enclosed by wall, had artificial floor, with an absence of disorder, while American house garden is totally open, more public than private. But if we look into the big difference, it all started from a very simple movement: erecting a wall. The wall makes spaces different, distinguishes in and out, and draws a line between private and public. Also it changes the microclimate around it, provides shadow and shield. This simple movement actually achieved the dream human have for long: control the outdoor climate.

Studio House is also an interesting case. In this case, the architect tries to be in harmony with nature. The atelier has natural light form north, the green roof makes the building part of landscape. Also, from the entrance of the territory, people have to walk in the garden in order to get to house door. Besides, clear big windows also provide good view of garden from indoor room. Here, the house has a good interaction with the nature.

For me, these reading make me think again what we can do as an architect. It’s been a time that people think architect has the power and chance to change something, architect can do something great, like a skyscraper, a monument, even the Radiant City, in order to change society and the world. But now, actually, I started to think in a different way. Space, volume, form and order is till important, but if we want something new, we should look deep into relationship. The world is dynamic, nothing is isolated in vacuum, and everything is related with something else. According to my understanding, advanced architecture is no longer game with spaces, but reflection of different relationship. So, actually, a simple and small movement can do something, like a wall, a hole on the wall to let a branch go though, architecture doesn’t need to be always big.

I’m always interested in understanding our era, the era of information, so I’m really curious about what architecture, even city, would be like in this background. I would like to explore how architecture will interact wig information. As professor mentioned in lecture, architecture is always static, architecture is always build to stand for long. But information is dynamic, it keeps changing and has no shape. To me, the idea of studying how architecture interact with tree is interesting, for a tree keeps changing, although comparatively changing slowly. A tree can make architecture very different, when take into the consideration how to interact with the tree, so it is even more exciting to imaging when architecture interact with information, which is more dynamic, changing much faster. A tree let architecture have expression in time dimension, imaging where information can lead architecture go? It is a really interesting and exciting topic to me. Of course it is more complex than thinking about trees, but studying tree and architecture is a very good hint of how to study the relationship between architecture and information. So, maybe the first thing for me to do, is to understand “information” better.

picture: @dezeen   http://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2013/02/dezeen_House-and-Atelier-for-Lara-Rios-by-F451-Arquitectura_4.jpg