DTAL is very pleased to announce a new workshop taking place at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism in Cluj during 17-20 May, which is very nicely timed with Neil Leach’s conference there (20 May). It all happens under the umberlla of the +/- Cluj Center of Architecture. Thanks to AStA Cluj for the invitation.

I will be tutoring alongside Ionut Anton.

Watch this space for more details regarding participation and the workshop schedule and theme.

Initial explorations: Culture Cracking.

Bucharest never had a coherent image in any point in history. Its only true comon denominator would be the highly despised disorder generated by the struggle between
western rigor and local chaotic impulses. It is one city where conflict is strikingly out in the open, little existing in maters of interface between old and new, poor and rich, highrise and low-rise. This project taps into these conflicting energies, drawing strength and geometry from them while at the same time exposing them and becoming an icon of their formative power.

We parametrically explored possible future configurations for the study area (450ha large, at the intersection of two main planned road-infrastructure extensions) and tried to push for a solution that would maximize performance (density, height, shading, access to natural elements and connectivity) of the whole region while leaving ample potential that allows for unplanned emergent evolution.

Our goal was to envision an urban tissue that could flexibly respond to all local input factors as well as accommodate desired (planned) goals. An universal 130m by 130m grid was proposed and then deformed to differentiate and create a unique lattice that allows for surprise and yet is easily mapped due to its inner space-partitioning algorithm.

We iteratively cycled through several circulation analysis (using Depthmap) and continuously changed the main axial map of the area to maximize integration.

The text on the boards is in romanian, sorry about that – hopefully the explanations given around the post should be enough. Here are the final boards, reduced:

It was great to work on this project, and also great to find recognition for an approach that is considered risky by our faculty’s standards   We used Rhino and its parametric plugin Grasshopper for the main work and Depthmap for the integration analysis.

Project teachers: Tiberiu Florescu, Sebastian Guta.

My vision concentrated on issues relating to the poor visibility/readability of the overall area (and the necessity of a landmark) and the lack of “free” public urban space. The functional program was mainly derived from the observation that most historic centers (Lipscani being a prime example in this) loose their initial cultural and traditional economic value in favor of the over-dominant bar/cafe. This leads to a certain repetition of fluxes (economic, cultural, pedestrian) which harms the respective area.

Geometry-wise, my proposal respects local aspects of the area, namely its porosity and the way the urban tissue coagulated around narrow winding streets and small interior courtyards in a constantly surprising lattice.

In respect to this approach, i considered the lot as a solid volume on which forces are applied in respect with the openings and general director lines of the site. Performing a “structural” analysis on the site revealed the patterns by which these forces would naturally flow towards given points of rest (namely the designated openings of the courtyards).   Using topological optimization techniques these patterns were transformed into geometry which was later subtracted from the original body thus giving the overall shape of the building.

By following this design method I ensure an optimal circulation flow through the built site, encouraging interaction and furthering the development of the local urban tissue in a manner very close to its characteristics (gained by spontaneous evolution) thus fully integrating the new implant.

That’s wrapper of the last month, give or take.

(27.05.09) The Symposium takes place at 18:00 in the Geodätenstand 6 O.G. TU Berlin Hauptgebäude, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin.

The Rule Based Design Symposium highlights contemporary academic and practice based research employing CAD, CAM, Coding/Web tools in addressing & communicating architectural design intents & constraints. The research spectrum ranges from theory to the digital crafting of buildings and their components.

Organized by Christophe Barlieb.

Flexibility in thought and expression is vital to all creative fields. The power of a new generation of parametric and bespoke CAD tools lies in the ability to negotiate and communicating the design intent clearly. This streamlining saves time, materials while integrating architecture, engineering and fabrication over the course of the entire architectural design process.

The symposium features research works by young contemporary academics in the fields of mathematics, architecture and fabrication

Schedule:
Time Speaker Affiliation Theme
18:00 Gisela Baurmann TU Berlin RBD Opening Statements
18:05 Kristoffer Josefsson TU Berlin Mathematics in Architecture
18:25 Dimitrie Stefanescu U.Bucharest Scripting Architecture
18:45 Christophe Barlieb TU Berlin Integration of Engineering & Design
19:05 Norbert Palz CITA Rapid Prototyping in Architecture
19:25 Martin Tamke CITA Fabrication of Architecture
19:45 Baurmann, Barlieb, Pfeiffer TU Berlin Discussion with Speakers & Public
20:00 PARTY

More as a scripting experiment, when i was mucking about trying to make the delaunay triangulation work in grasshopper i somehow found the wonderfully complex qhull library which i promptly set to push and pull to get it to work with grasshopper. As advised on their website, the best way to do it is to call it as an external program, which is exactly what i’ve done:  no files are written or read, no dos windows pop up, everything’s smooth.

Given that you don’t have many complex operations in grasshopper after the solution is generated, you’ll be able to handle quite an impressive amount of points (say 200 on my three-year old toplap) in real time. If you add the simple planarSrf operation, then say 60-70 and it gets sloppy.

What you’ll need to do to get things rolling:

0. Download the 3dvqhull definition and example file, and remember not to use it for commercial purposes, share-alike whatever you do with it and take the time to give the proper credits: 

1. Download qhull, and unzip it in a folder of your choice.

2. Get going and search for “System.dll”. What you’re interested in is the 2.0 version which you’ll usually find in here: “C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.5[...]\”. If you can’t find it, I’m amazed grasshopper works for you. Anyway, you can find and install it from here.

3. Add the newly found System.dll version 2.o as a referenced assembly of the qhull component in the definition file.

If it turns orange, it’s cool.

4. Write in the panel that is linked to the “path” input the full path to the qhull program qvoronoi. You don’t need to add the .exe extension, but you can do it if you feel confortable.

5. There’s just one more thing you should know: facets that contain the infinite vertex are omitted altogether, without remorse. So as to have as little facets tending towards infinitum, I always add the corners of the points bounding box to the input sites.

You can scale the bounding box in respect with its center, or you can just call the whole thing off – it’s your choice.

I think this just about covers everything. Take care and have fun.

didi out.

PS: Qhull does more than voronoi. So if you have the time to explore and test, please do – the package is very powerfull and it can be used for more than this.

I talked about some projects I did (some together with Veronica Popescu) over the last two years, always insisting on the computational approach and detailing the techniques used.

I presented scripting approaches and more interactive (parametric) grasshopper based modeling. Some  Processing based approaches were presented and I insisted on the necessity of using multiple open tools that can be made to communicate between one another.

I tried to clearly mark out the relationship between fabrication and the overall design – how material properties and building techniques inform the design and viceversa.

Reactions were good, and it seems computational approaches are definetively stirring people up.

Thanks are required to Patrick Bedarf, who made this possible and is proving to be an excellent host in Leipzig, and also to prof.  Henning Rambow for all the support.

Also if you are reading this from Leipzig and are interested in joining us tommorow at 16.oo @ HTWK computer pool for some hands-on grasshopper work, there’s  no one stopping you.

For those who really like to play with voronoi regions and stuff, here’s the final grasshopper definition file (right click, save target as – else you’ll get a ~250kb of useless xml in your browser window).

The vcell component outputs now individual cells as closed polylines and closed nurbs curves. This is useful if you are using this for some urban project like i am i would have liked to, mostly due to easy offsetting and area calculation possiblities – included in the definition file – or height extrusion – included as well. You can even go further and color (using shaders) each cell coresponding with its mass/area/height etc.

Massive unroll Script:

Select as many surfaces as you like and then unroll each one of them.

Download it.

Adaptive fenestration script:

An interesting script that cuts holes in a surface based on the relation with a given attractor(point). I used it to generate a porous membrane for my latest project.

Download it.

Here are some other potentially super-bugged scripts:

Faceting. – Does the same as the adaptive fenestration script only it also “facets” the seed surface.

Ribs. – My attempt (quite sucesefull) at writing a honeycomb script.

We started out on this by analyzing the area and its surroundings from the point of view of circulation (more on how we did this). How would people move around? The conclusions from this study where integrated later on in the project.

Next we took on the task of (re)creating the landscape – modify the terrain in a functional yet unobtrusive way. Formal concepts revolved around radiolaria, foam, water, waves etc. Luckily we had a working circle packing applet in processing ready (which was used for this). From here on, it was quite straightforward: expand the circles to smooth spherical caps and smartly transform them into urban furniture.

The interstitial space that remained between the”bubbles” is packed with wood alongside the routes we discovered to be ideal using the circulation study. The rest is English lawn pure green smartly-cut grass.

This project is a collaboration between Veronica and me.

Tools we used include:
Processing was VERY important early on in the design process – we used it for the circulation study as well as for the early circle packing experiments (size, density, spread etc).

Rhino and RhinoScript: RhinoScript is great – we used it extensively (create spherical caps based on the generating circle’s radius, expand circles, contract circles, import circles which the processing applet generated, etc.). Rhino was used for everything else – 3D modelling and, of course, making valid STL files for the 3D printer and also exporting the right things for the laser printer.

Laser cutting was done here (as always).

3D wax models were kindly made for us by mazarom (at the moment the only 3D printing service in Bucharest). If you need a complicated model, don’t hesitate to contact them!

Plotting the final presentation was done at studio spot. They don’t have a webiste…

parametric variation of given frame (lateral walls) in given limits. each house becomes uniqe, escaping repetition. hints of emergence.

Basically the facades are independent from the core. Each lateral wall (calcan/blind wall) starts from an ideal shape that is subtly altered by a small script. This creates variation, as opposed to the usual repetition of a terraced housing lot. Mass production of 18 identical houses becomes mass production of 18 identical and UNIQUE houses. I would like to stress that: Mass production of 18 identical houses becomes mass production of 18 identical and, in the same time, UNIQUE houses.

There. Now I feel better.