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Contemporary research on the human genome has directly influenced new biological metaphors for architectural design. The architectural historian Martin Bressani has summarized this tendency as a new form of “Architectural Biology,” which the critcs Reinhold Martin and Manuel Delanda have related to historical paradigms of architectural organicism. 1 The intent of this paper is to discuss the biological metaphors that translate the generative principles of genomics into new strategies for architectural design.
The black lives matters movement has risen in response to social injustice in the African American community in the united states, specifically concerned with police shootings and brutality. Similar to many modern movements in the age of information, there has been many protests around the United States that utilize mobile technologies and social media to diffuse information, organize, and occupy public space to demand justice and equality. In this research we study one recent protest that happened in the United States; the protests in the aftermath of the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott at Charlotte. We will study the events in three different layers: social media, physical social network, and public space.
Anatomy of a Protest: Activism, Social Media and Urban Space
The variety of quantitative optimizations available in BIM software has the potential to leave more human factors to become secondary considerations in design. Computational tools can begin to embrace predictive models of human behavior in order to generate solutions which better serve their occupants and better represent basic knowledge of human conditions. This project explores the approximation of human movement behaviors within an architectural space through the development of Animal, an agent- based model of circulation for Dynamo within the Revit environment.
Animal: An Agent-Based Model of Circulation logic for Dynamo
Design methods and digital/spatial environments that combine augmented reality (AR) and architecture are presented, with particular focus on synthesizing a novel design process. The architectural brief is an archeological museum/excavation site that directly confronts issues of occupation, circulation, form, and large archives of data. Combining the efforts of twelve architectural designers with a team of AR developers, a taxonomy is developed of affordances, feedback mechanisms, and output/display options. This taxonomy constitutes preliminary usability heuristics for an architectural user interface synthesizing AR and architecture.
This is our primary question: with the inexorable advance of digital technologies along all fronts of human endeavor, whither architecture? We identify performance as the primary criterion to revealing a new paradigm for architecture. We do not delimit this definition to the role traditionally played by mechanical and quasi-mechanical technologies in the optimization of environmental control systems and building skins. Nor do we intend to ascribe to performance the interpretation narrowly defined by the emergence of digital gadgetry, primarily optical in methodology, which have nonetheless already radically altered the means by which we negotiate our environment, built and otherwise. The focus of our work, then, is to make the building responsive, to see the performance of the user as an integrated part of the building.
Architecture User Interface: Towards a Performative Architecture
We present research on the integration of augmented reality and architecture using a design science research methodology. Our goal is to consider the design of architectural space and augmented reality (AR) applications simultaneously. The architectural brief is an archeological museum/excavation site that directly confronts issues of occupation, circulation, form, and access to large archives of information. Combining the efforts of twelve architectural designers with a team of AR developers, we develop a taxonomy of affordances, feedback mechanisms, and output/display options. This taxonomy constitutes preliminary usability heuristics for the use of AR as an embodied device for interaction in architectural settings.
Augmented : Reality :: Architecture : Interface
The growing consciousness regarding ecologically conscious architecture mandates a deeper understanding of the strategies that may be adopted by designers towards achieving this goal. With the advent of building information modeling (BIM) and the associated paradigm shi in the design process, it has become increasingly possible to make informed decisions earlier on in the design process. Despite this advancement, the architectural realm continues to lack computational resources that are capable of providing formal guidelines, through a genera ve process, that serve as a starting point for sustainable design. Towards overcoming this limitation, this paper will describe a computational tool that generates buildable performance envelopes in response to aspects of a site that are influential in designing sustainably: climate and context. These envelopes are created in a genera ve manner through the utilization of a voxel (three-dimensional pixel) matrix, which continually updates itself based on formal elements created by the user. Facilitating the process of making ecologically conscious design decisions at the earliest stages of design, which is the primary goal of this tool, more substantially increases the achieved energy optimization. Illustrative building designs presented in the paper resulting from the testing of this tool in contrasting climate zones, such as Miami, Florida (ASHRAE Zone 01) and Aspen, Colorado (ASHRAE Zone 07), confirms the assertion that the performance envelopes generated with this tool serve only as a guideline for optimized sustainable design, and not as the final form of the building itself.
Buildable Performance Envelopes
Parametric design environments (Building Information Modeling) are transforming architects into agents of their own systems, at the expense of systemic logics too complex for us to control. This agency is often defined by a system devoid of adaptive or responsive tools. The work in this paper proposes a hypothetical response to this condition by designing ‘glue’ for components of software to integrate new forms of information for a user. Author Mario Carpo has recently outlined three-scenarios for these types of parametric inputs through the idea of ‘split agency’ (Carpo 2011).
Collective Intelligence as Responsive Design
Computational Design Correlation Diagrams- Jin Goog Kim
Many architects understand that learning to program can be a challenge, but assume that time and practice are the only barriers to performing well enough at it. However, research from computer science education does not support this assumption. Multinational studies of undergraduate computer science programs reveal that a significant number of students in their first and second year of full-time instruction still have serious misconceptions about how computer programs work and an inability to design programs of their own.
Confronting the Challenges of Computational Design Instruction
Architects and designers have recently become interested in the use of “big data”. The most common paradigm guiding this work is the optimization of a limited number of factors, e.g. façade designs maximizing light distribution. For most design problems, however, such optimization is oversimplified and reductive; the goal of design is the discovery of possibilities in conditions of complexity and uncertainty.
Through an investigation into material phenomenology and digital fabrication a codependent relationship evolved revealing the possibilities that these new technologies can having with respect integrating the architect more fully in the construction and fabrication of architecture. These studies used an digital and analog generative design process as an approach to reveal the characteristics and possibilities that lie within this relationship.
DIGITACTILITY by Nicholas Ault
The building sector is now widely known to be one of the biggest energy consumers, carbon emitters, and creators of waste. Some architectural agendas for sustainability focus on energy efficiency of buildings that minimize their energy intake during their lifetime – through the use of more efficient mechanical systems or more insulative wall systems. The focus on efficiency is but one aspect or system of the building assembly, when compared to the effectiveness of the whole, which often leads to ad-hoc ecology and results in the all too familiar “law of unintended consequences” (Merton, 1936). As soon as adhesive is used to connect two materials, a piece of trash is created. If designers treat material as energy, and want to use energy responsibly, they can prolong the lifetime of building material by designing for disassembly. By changing the nature of the physical relationship between materials, buildings can be reconfigured and repurposed all the while keeping materials out of a landfill. The concept of design for disassembly is a recognizable goal of industrial design and manufacturing, but for Architecture it remains a novel approach. A classic example is Kieran Timberlake’s Loblolly House, which employed material assemblies “that are detailed for on-site assembly as well as future disassembly and redeployment” (Flat, Inc, 2008). The use of nearly ubiquitous digital manufacturing tools helps designers create highly functional, precise and effective methods of connection which afford a building to be taken apart and reused or reassembled into alternative configurations or for alternative uses. This book will survey alternative energy strategies made available through joinery using digital manufacturing and design methods, and will evaluate these strategies in their ability to create diassemblable materials which therefore use less energy – or minimize the entropy of energy over the life-cycle of the material.
DigitalDesignforDisassemblyIntro.pdf
This paper describes the connections between computation- al thinking and digital craft, and proposes several ways that architectural education can cultivate better digital craft, specifically: motivating the use of computational strategies, encouraging a conceptual understanding of computing as a medium, teaching computer programming, and discussing digital ethics. For the most part, these subjects are not widely taught in architecture schools. However, moving forward, if the profession values good design, it must also value good digital craft, and ought to instill a way of working in the next generation of architects that makes the most of both the computer and the de- signer. Computational thinking provides a common foundation for defining and instilling this critical mindset and, therefore, deserves greater consideration within architectural pedagogy.
Digital Minds, Materials, and Ethics: Linking Computational Thinking and Digital Craft
The expanding role of computational models in the process of design is producing exponential growth in parameter spaces. As designers, we must create and implement new methods for searching these parameter spaces, considering not only quantitative optimization metrics but also qualitative features. This paper proposes a methodology that leverages the pa ern modeling properties of artificial neural networks to capture designers' inexplicit selection criteria and create user-selection-based fitness functions for a genetic solver. Through emulation of learned selection patterns, fitness functions based on trained networks provide a method for qualitative evaluation of designs in the context of a given population. The application of genetic solvers for the genera on of new populations based on the trained network selections creates emergent high-density clusters in the parameter space, allowing for the identification of solutions that satisfy the designer’s inexplicit criteria. The results of an initial user study show that even with small numbers of training objects, a search tool with this configuration can begin to emulate the design criteria of the user who trained it.
It would seem that since humanity first began building settlements and creating tools that it has been marching tenaciously upon a path of progress. So intertwined have been the actions of humanity with advancement, that the ages themselves take title from the character of human creation. The Stone Age, The Bronze Age, and the Iron Age are each characterized according to the level of sophistication reached by humans through progress. Steady progress through Antiquity and the Middle Ages inevitably lead to a critical mass of knowledge, which manifested itself as the Enlightenment and ultimately the Industrial Revolution.
Evaluating Progressivism: A Critique of Biological Analogy
Kevin Lynch’s work on urban legibility has taken on new importance as the delivery of information about cities has shifted largely to mobile computing devices. This study extends his work with the aim of quantifying the number and type of elements that constitute a competent cognitive map of a city. We conducted a user study of 109 student sketch maps of Chicago that test the frequency and nature of the elements identified by Lynch (path, edge, district, node and landmark), their interrelationship and the effect of gender, prior experience and scale.
Heads Up: Using Cognitive Mapping to Develop a Baseline Description for Urban Visualization
Numerous systems have been developed to display large collections of data for urban contexts; however, most have focused on layer- ing of single dimensions of data and manual calculations to un- derstand relationships within the urban environment. Furthermore, these systems often limit the user’s perspectives on the data, thereby diminishing the user’s spatial understanding of the viewing region. In this paper, we introduce a highly interactive urban visualization tool that provides intuitive understanding of the urban data.
Legible Cities: Focus-Dependent Multi-Resolution Visualization of Urban Relationships
DesComp Thesis Completed by Christian Sjoberg (2017)- Presented at ACADIA 2017
Machine Learning Models for Directed Curation of Design Solution Space
Despite exponential developments in technological manufacturing and computational design, the act of drawing still plays a role as the central vehicle for speculation in architectural practice. Historically, drawing has been tied to not only advances in architecture, but advances in technology and culture as well. From Alberti’s Lineaments, to da Vinci's Machines, to Thomas More’s visions of Utopia, Laugier’s Primitive Hut, Ledoux’s City of Chaux, Boullee’s Cenotaph to Newton, and Hugh Ferriss’ visions of New York, innovation in the field of architecture over the last 600 years has inextricably been tied to speculative drawing.
PAPER[space] Architecture: A tool kit for Speculative Digital Drawing
Advanced design software allows designers to rapidly create huge numbers of design variations. However, these variations do not incorporate material and manufacturing limits, which are typically considered much later during the process of design documentation. By creating a method, which incorporates these limits during the design process, we avoid iterations that would be difficult, costly, or impossible to build. This method allows designers to work in a configured design space, which focuses on feasible designs.
Pinned Incremental Metal Forming
The recent rise of food vending in U.S. cities combines physical mobility in urban space with continuous online communication. In contrast to traditional forms of urban space that have predictable and planned spatial locations, mobile food vending generates temporary forms of urban social activity mediated by websites such as Twitter. Given the unique nature of this emerging phenomenon, new forms of analysis are needed that explore and interpret online communication as a critical development in the assembly of urban social life.
By Paul Stockhoff- Presented at ACSA 2017
Slip Mounted Single Point Deformed Structural Skins
Historically, architecture’s cultural role has changed in sometimes radical ways. A theory of contemporary architecture must deal with the proliferation of information and communication technologies, seeking a transformed role for the physical setting in a digital age. This paper reviews perspectives from computational disciplines, proposes the outline of a theory of interactive architecture, and presents a preliminary exploration of heuristic methods as a tool for the design o interactive architecture.
The case for a theory of interactive architecture
Architectural Design has ignored the natural processes of social segregation, letting other factors dominate the occupational organization of the built environment, ultimately isolating communities and their members. By incorporating modern social behavioral analytics into design logics, social spaces can facilitate more productive engagements between occupants. The goal is to create a more diverse and sustainable community through an informed understanding of how space and program influence behavior.
In this paper, we discuss how one can build a visual analytics system to comprehensively describe a place throughout its many interconnected histories. We discuss the needed 4D data structure, the analytics techniques, and the interactive visualizations. This combination of automated and interactive techniques can be brought together into a new, powerful capability. We focus on the example of Rome and, more specifically, on its architectural/cultural history.
The Whole Story: Building the Complete History of a Place
The January 2011 Egyptian uprising in Tahrir Square was called a “Facebook revolution,” but its importance is not that it was solely digital, but rather that information and space were bound in an arena for social change. Some recent work analyzing the location of tweets within Cairo reveals a pattern that is directly tied to the location of mosques in tight alleyways during the incipient stages followed by surging crowds and tweets in Tahrir Square. Such technologically enabled social practices not only present challenges to policy officials concerned with the regulation and security of citizens in urban spaces, but are also giving rise to a plethora of new research opportunities for urban designers about the methods, effectiveness, and locations of their intervention.
“The design engineer, in his prioritizing of materialization, is the pilot figure of this cultural shift which we have termed ‘new structuralism.’”(Oxman, Oxman, 2010) “It [architecture] must become more primitive in terms of meeting the most fundamental human needs with an economy of expression and mediating man’s relationship with the world...and more sophisticated in the sense of adapting to the cyclic systems of nature in terms of both matter and energy. Ecological architecture also implies a view of building more as a PROCESS than a product.” (Pallasmaa, 1993)
Zero-Waste, Flat Pack Truss Work: An Investigation of Responsive Structuralism
In this paper, we will examine the impacts and potential for Wind Drive Rain to be harvested on the facades of buildings, and will describe a plug-in tool for schematic design for Autodesk Revit, which can assist in the definition of optimal geometries and orientation for a building to harvest water in its particular location and site. The tool described here is intended to create comparisons between building masses and their orientation based on conditions in particular locations and sites. These base calculations presumably would adjust uniformly as the science around WDR adjusts or as other factors complicate models.
By designing the geometry of a form through its material constraints, we can minimize the amount of customized components while maximizing form-making possibilities and ease of construction. This paper will outline our research demonstrating how architects might expand these systemic processes to larger objects and systems using a combination of relatively simple geometric definitions along with parametric modeling software to map fixed-sized objects across complex surfaces.
“Quilting” – Material Ecology Through Responsive Design Processes
