Sunday, November 29, 2009

...progress update...

EARLIER TEST MODEL - TREATING SOME PROGRAM AS STRUCTURAL, SOME AS NON STRUCTURAL















LATER MODEL.... TREATING SOME PROGRAM AS STRUCTURAL, SOME AS NON STRUCTURAL















FIRST LEVEL PLAN























SECOND LEVEL PLAN























THIRD LEVEL PLAN






















TREATING THE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS AS WIRE FRAMES


Wednesday, November 18, 2009

MODEL PHOTOS

Below are pictures from our midterm review models. They are still in a diagrammatic stage.

PROGRAM IN THREE CATEGORIES
ORANGE SOAP: FLUID SPACE
WHITE BOXES: FIXED SPACE
"WEBBING": PROGRAM AS CIRCULATION


MODEL ONE:




















MODEL TWO:

Sunday, November 15, 2009

midterm review

From the midterm review, things to work on/questions to answer:

1. overall form - why the curved edges?
Allows an easier flow between areas, begins to blur program more easily. I think use of materials could further emphasize these ideas.
2. displaying our ideas of transparency, time and fluctuation in the fixed, transparent and program and circulation spaces.
This means, our plans, sections and renderings can begin to represent our concepts. In addition, our renderings should represent how these different spaces begin to be used.
3. exploring soap and jello more - but at a more micro scale. it is time to zoom in and see how the fixed, fluid and program as circulation areas work. build a light box.
4. rooftop as swiss cheese: there needs to be a different strategy to hole-punching. Why are there openings in certain spots and not others?
5. animation - our sectional animation of our latest iteration failed to show our concept as well. how can we do this differently? how can we make it more like the charcoal - the charcoal shows traces, where people have been - it also gets darker with density.
6. materials: what is the material difference between fluid, fixed and program as circulation.
7. build a light box to better display soap/jello and further transparencies we look at in the next few weeks.
8. create an entrance that is more inviting.
9. Fluid spaces are more public than fixed - they also probably receive more light. There is a certain transparency allowed unlike the fixed spaces. This transparency could not only be visual, but related to sound as well. In other words, a child walking past a classroom in a fluid space could either see what is going on, hear what is going on or both.


Transparency represents movement over a period of time - showing how spaces can be occupied differently. Here are some renderings with that transparency and "real" people:


Thursday, November 5, 2009

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

talk with karl; what's next?

Below is a study of how different types of verbs occur in the same space. For example, the diagram on the left shows the relationship between art, music and science. Science is predominately a thinking space, art a making and music a performing - yet other activities occur in these areas. The center, Sensory and Discovery is a zone that becomes a dialogue between the three types of labs - collaborations on display for the students to interact and look at.















In taking the Jello-program analogy pretty literally, we cast Jello molds of program distributed throughout our building. Using clear, and flavorless :( gelatin, we added color dies to show how program begins spilling out and mixing throughout a building - most importantly how this random mixing can occur in the spaces between "rooms". The corridor, hallway or circulation becomes a mixing pot of program. The Jello is something we could come back to as we start forming more relationships between the given programs - and show how programs grow and shrink depending on what activity is going on in the building at a specific location and time. There is also the advantage of easily cutting the mold into sections.






















Below is an animation strategy that shows how children may use the art-science-music labs and discovery space (each child is represented by a dot). With Karl, we discussed possibly showing the shrinkage and expanding of a room in the animation, depending on the density of the crowd occupying it at a giving moment (reminds me of the cardiovascular system - the heart expanding and contracting as it pumps cells through the rest of the system).


























Above is a diagram of all the stills of the animation layered on top of each other and given a transparency. It begins to suggest where the student have been and where the most dense activity occurs. The charcoal animation posted on an earlier date seemed to be a better example of this "trace." Below, is Bleecker's videos in Manhattan that begin to show a similar strategy in figuring out how people move, group and disperse throughout a day.


5th & 15th Still Observation from Julian Bleecker on Vimeo.


The naked house allows the flexibilty of program enclosed in a space. The rooms literally move on wheels and have the benefit of being used for multiple types of activity:

http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/SBA_WORKS/SBA_HOUSES/SBA_HOUSES_24/SBA_Houses_24.html

Sliding screens or fabrics could be a way of thinking about how to allow growth and shrinkage of a space or program.





Sunday, October 25, 2009

New methods of modeling program and space;

Ways to think about program as a field condition:

















A class room unit could be thought of as the floating fruit in a blob of other program. If the program is thought of as a field condition, then the gelatin blob would be constantly moving, rearranging and changing - where the classrooms (the fruit) would remain constant physical elements, with the field moving in or around them.























A shift in our project: in creating hypothetical relationships between spaces and programs, we will begin to design our building not around the physical space, but around the chance groupings, separations, and regroupings of the people and things that encompass our building. We will try different methods of producing these field relationships. In drawing, we come up with the problem that it is not a time based medium. We have to use points, lines, gradients, opacities, etc. as methods for representing field conditions.























This is a plan drawing of classrooms and how the k-3 (red), 4-6 (yellow) and 7-8 (blue) might move throughout the day. This diagram shows interactions between grades and conversations/projects that pour out into the hallways.























This is a plan drawing of classrooms and how the administration might move throughout the building during the day. The darker the red dot, the longer a member of administration stayed in that area.



This is a gif file that uses stop motion in order to show how the masses of children might move throughout the building and gather during certain times of the day. It is supposed to represent children coming in during the morning and then leaving at the end of the school day.

Field Conditions













Hilary Sample presented a video of how the MOS house might be used if introducing the element of time.

In traditional architectural drawings, the program is a labeled and static element. The gymnasium is labeled as "gym", instead of showing how it's uses may change over time. The drawing fails to communicate how people and things move through the space. It does not propose how the gym may grow smaller or larger and start encompassing other spaces in the building according to a specific event in time.

If program is thought of as an element that changes according to time of day, year and long-term, then spaces can be arranged according to interactions and possibilities of movement within the school.

Looking at field conditions in nature is a way to think about program. As in the examples below, there are specific elements that remain constant but there is still a living element that is constantly changing and evolving over time according to outside environmental conditions. In a building, permanent elements are the walls, floors, and structural elements (maybe the dead load). Impermanent elements can be thought of as the live load - or the objects and people that encompass it. Weather, light, time, politics and culture could be influences on the building's field condition.


The cuttle fish's skin changes as it moves and interacts with its environment.



The brain activity of a human shows where concentration of brain usage shifts according to what a person is doing and thinking about. Therefore concentration in certain areas will be more prominent overtime, as the video shows.



Computer generated starlings, Starlings, Starlings, Clouds: In Craig Reynold's computer program that simulates the flocking of birds, he set up three rules: 1. the bird must maintain a min. distance from objects 2. birds must match velocities with other birds in the area 3. birds must move towards the perceived center.




One distinct thing that all these evolving systems have in common, is the inability to reproduce any form. Within each field is an infinite number of possibilities. This is because the evolution of their form depends on unpredictable interactions with their environment.


Gondry's chemical brothers video - how film can represent constant and changing elements in music:


Koolhaas' Parc de la villette -
"The program by the city of Paris was too large for the site, leaving no space for a park. The proposed project is not for a definitive park, but for a method that - combining programmatic instability with architectural specificity - will eventually generate a park."

FAIRBANKS: A GENERATIONAL SHIFT IODERNE BECOMES ULTRA MANAGED
The problem with the modern: suppression of change, lack of time, organic life unacknowledged. There is too much emphasis on the physical rather than comprehension of space and time. A map of Manhattan's grid systems, subways, bridges, etc. in no way describes the unpredictabilities, flexibilities, usages and interactions that occur within what is thought as a rigid grid (but as Allen points out in his article, all grids are fields - but not all fields are grids). No map or method of drawing has been able to fully represent such a system. In the architectural field, there has been a shift to time-based works, and the article mentions a few architects who are thinking about this in their work:
http://www.marblefairbanks.com/
http://www.glform.com/
http://www.shoparc.com/
http://www.metaxy.com/

Stan Allen: The Field

Barry Le Va












Allen talks about how the evolution of art has led many post-minimalist artists to produce "field" artworks; or spacial fields implicated by sculptural work. Post-minimalism works involve the choice of materials. The artist does not have precise control over a material, but develops the conditions (or rules) of what will direct the flow of the material. The final art piece becomes the evidence of a time-based process since interactions between the artist and material become the form. Time and outside forces create the field condition of the material.

According to Cannetti, Crowds have four attributes: 1. The Crowd wants to grow. 2. There is equality in a crowd. 3. The crowd loves density. 4. The Crowd needs direction (maybe this is the "physical" architecture
(?)).

Iannis Xenakis:

A field represents "change, accident, improvision." It leaves space for uncertainty.