Athina CHARALAMPIDOU | Postgraduate Student, “Architectural Design” Program Department of Architecture Engineering, University of Thessaly, Nea Ionia, Greece athinacs@gmail.com
Georgios-Petros LAZARIDIS | Architect
Department of Architecture Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece gpetros.lazaridis@gmail.com
Abstract
Since the outbreak of computer-driven technologies, innovative designers, architects and artists have been preoccupied with the pursuit of digital techniques. With the wide spread of various computational tools observed in recent years, computational design as a field of research and of architectural and artistic creation is no longer restricted to the academic community, but has become a central tool for many architects, artists and designers. Working with robots and 3d printers gave them the opportunity to achieve results that surpassed the conventional way of thinking.
This paper examines this current design tendencies and brings them together to present a new type of architectural and art creation; one that combines advanced manufacturing knowledge with aesthetics.
Exploring the mathematical relationship to design
The references in mathematics and in particular in arithmetic and geometry constitute a general feature of the architecture and art during the history. The math has been frequently treated as the true foundation, the theoretical documentation of the architectural discipline, and other times as a collection of useful tools for the design and art creation. Towards the end of the 18th century with the development of calculus, the gradual alienation among those sectors made its appearance, since the architects and artists found it difficult to monitor the rapid developments and the increasing specialization of mathematics of their time. During the last decade with the initial use of our computers they had the opportunity not only to reconnect architecture and art to geometry but also to explore the potential of Non-Euclidean Geometry and in addition to realize the opportunities offered by the other branches of mathematics, such as topology, the differential and integral calculus and algorithms. Today's mathematical tools are more
127 sophisticated, with digital technology fast becoming a primary choice. More and more architects and designers used daily the math in order to embrace their longing for creation and for the achievement of their objectives. Whereas in the hands of an artist, computers can produce art, powered by unseen complex internal mathematical processes that provide their magical abilities.
A shift from the drawing to the algorithm
The last 20 years, architecture has changed significantly since the advent of computer technology and information. The design software and numerical fabrication machinery have recast the traditional role of geometry in architecture and have opened new limits of knowledge to the possibilities offered by parametric design.
As a result, architecture is currently experiencing a shift from the drawing to the algorithm as the method of capturing and communicating designs. This computational way of working enhances the designer's intellect and allows us to capture not only the complexity of how to build a project, but also the multitude of parameters that are fundamental in a building's formation. When designers have sufficient understanding of algorithmic concepts, when we no longer need to discuss the digital as something different, then computation can become a true method of design for architecture, and not only.
Computation is redefining the practice of architecture. Architects are developing digital tools that create opportunities in design process, fabrication and construction. Using in this paper some built architectural and art projects we provide an insight into emerging design approaches that use computation as a design method.
But what do we mean by computation?
To start with, the terms computerization1 and computation shall not be confused.
Computerization refers to the use of the computer for representational reasons, while the latter is what we’re focusing on this paper. Computation pushes the boundaries of the design skills and takes the concepts to another level, allowing the designers to familiarize themselves with complex situations. It contains the understanding of the three dimensions in terms of algorithms and it questions how the relations between elements can affect the space. Thanks to that, designers are capable of producing complexity from simple codes and of understanding how a modification in these codes could further affect their potential of their design. For some architects and artists the scripting is the mean to develop their own tools and design environments.
1Kostas Terzidis, Algorithmic Architecture, Architectural Press (Oxford), 2006, p. XI.
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning
128 Sean Ahlquist and Achim Menges define computation as the processing of information and interactions between elements which constitute a specific environment it provides a framework for negotiating and influencing the interrelation of datasets of information, with the capacity.1 Computation in Architectural Practice
Architects are increasingly experimenting with computation to simulate building performance, to incorporate performance analysis and knowledge about material, tectonics and parameters of production machinery in their design drawings. These new custom digital tools allow for performance feedback at various stages of an architectural project, creating new design opportunities. Using these tools, structural, material or environmental performance can become fundamental parameter in the creation of architectural form. The development of computational simulation tools can create more responsive designs, allowing architects to explore new design options and to analyze architectural decisions during the design process.
Asymptote, Zaha Hadid Architects, Foster + Partners UN Studio, are all studios who even a decade ago were regarded as avant - garde as much for their inventive digital techniques as for their experimental designs.
Their work includes peculiar forms, sculpture-like, which are extremely elegant by its suggestion of fluidity and dynamism. This high aesthetic and elegance of these architectural composition, reasserting architecture's position as a primary art. Visual intelligence that has arisen from the use of relational equations and scripting gives to the architectural results the opportunity to be seen as artistic creations.
In addition, given this digital nature of architecture and design today, experimenting to code and to use 3d printing technologies is essential for innovative architectural and design studios such as Kokkugia and MY Studio. Many of them have started to explore the emergent relationships between architecture, engineering, biology, and computation. Based on the idea that architecture can be understood as a material body with its own intrinsic and extrinsic forces relating to form, growth, and behavior, architects investigate methodologies of performative integration through geometric and material differentiation. Their work ranges from speculative and built projects to the crafting of new tools which facilitate an interdisciplinary approach to the design and fabrication of architecture.
As they are working for the establishment of a project experimentation is essential both for the exploration and promotion of the full potential of the tools used, and for the encouragement of research and extension.
1 Sean Ahlquist and Achim Menges, Computational Design Thinking, John Willey & Sons (Chichester), 2011
129 For example, when an architect uses scripting to solve a design problem, further options can then be explored through modifications to the script - sketching by algorithm1. An algorithm is a particular set of instructions, and for these instructions to be understood by the computer they must be written in a language the computer can understand, a code.
So, operating through design experimentations and focusing on implementing complex and abstract forms into 3D printed prototypes, there are many examples of first developed pieces which contain an aesthetic and elegant result. Architects who have been able to add this layer of aesthetic sophistication, due to the use of scripting, to their designs often immerse themselves with other forms of art too.
What is of great interest is the fact that innovation derives from experimentations, which architects consider as their own state of art.
Digital morphogenesis is what is being meant, when talking about computational architecture; processes of form-finding with the substantial help of the computer. Concepts such as genetic algorithms, parametric design and topological space have emerged, while several material techniques of digital fabrication have made their way in an anticipated means to bring the ideas to the three dimensional world. “Installations allow architects to comment on and critique the status quo, and to imagine new forms, methods, and ideas in architecture.”2 Bernard Tschumi insists that installations help architects achieve better results by leaving needs of a client behind and exploring to the greatest point their own idea; experimenting and figuring how materials work; being innovative.
Undoubtedly, one could begin by mentioning the works of the design studio Matsys, as by their experimentations in both the screen and the fabrication process they have come up with impressive results. The project “C_Wall” is a good first example where one can clearly see in one installation the complexity of constructing the voronoi algorithm in the space. From scripting to the use of the CNC machine, volumetric cells have been reassembled into larger aggregates producing astonishing patterns of light and shadow.3 This kind of installation is an artistic approach of three-dimensional projects that are site-specific and aim to transform existing spatial conditions. In addition, after strong research on natural fiber composite shells and experimenting on parallel bottom-up design strategies, the ICD/ITKE in Stuttgart showed in 2014 a pavilion, entirely developed by a custom robotic fabrication method. Even though some installations hide behind them a great range of study and experimentation, they act just as a visual focal point; they do however explore conceptual ideas in the built environment. On the other hand, others are asking the visitor to experience the space, while human senses and human body are being
1 .Brady Peters, " The Smithsonian Courtyard Enclosure: Computer Programming as a Design Tool", in Brain Lilley and Philip Beesley (eds), Expanding Bodies : Art, Cities, Environment. Proceedings of the ACADIA 2007 Conference, Riverside Press (Waterloo, Ontario), 2007.
2 Bonnemaison and Eisenbach, Installations By Architects-Experiments on Building and Design (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009) p.14
3 Lisa Iwamoto, Digital Fabrications – Architectural and Material Techniques (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009) p.84
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning
130 activated with the domination of the space by this kind of art. Specifically talking, the dance performance piece “California” 1 developed by John Jasperse contains a surface-form characterized by flexibility. Deep knowledge of the tessellation fabrication method, combined with structural knowledge, become another example of an architectural vocabulary which was based on computation and was then translated in form of art. Additionally, origami, a paper sculpting technique, has inspired many architectural works thanks to the computers. Today's tools such as Grasshopper and Kangaroo for Rhino has helped perceive the geometrical complexities within double- curvative folding, while programmable folding explores the design possibilities of a geometry on multiple levels; it delivers a final product whose design is embedded in generated folding patterns. These patterns have been used by architects in order to produce building forms or building facades such as Al bahar towers by Aedas Architects or even to create art works such as Issey Miyake with a line of foldable, origami-like clothing. . An example project which is based on folding technique and produces a form which has both artistic and architectural features is the master thesis of student P. Papastergiou "spatial changes in a setting "; folding forms for the ancient greek tragedy Oedipus the King are explored.
Fig. 1,2: 3D unfold and fold presentation of the thesis "Spatial Changes in a Setting", P.
Papastergiou
1 http://digit-all.net/California-Stage-Set-for-John-Jasperse
131 Computational design is often influenced by other sectors, as well as nature itself; a transdisciplinary combination is thus achieved. Tomas Saraceno’s installation “in orbit” in Dusseldorf, Germany, was a net construction that allowed visitors to walk on the metallic nest in a big height, and it was a collaboration between architects, engineers and arachnologists. The artist, in this case, was also interested in translating all his experimentations into this gigantic structure in order to explore the relations between the people experiencing his aesthetic work.
Modern technology has given the artists the ability to investigate further the human behavior, as Bourriaud says. 1 The organic-like, biomorphic architectural forms that arove from the generative scripts of R&Sie “seek to elucidate the sense of the world as is today by stressing the embodied nature of human and artificial consioucsness and bodily existence as the original and originating material premise of sense”. Their installation “I’ve heard about” proposes an utopian approach of a city growth based on algorithmic procedures. What is of importance is that the experiments done together with programmers, biochemists, nano experts has been translated into an experiment that the visitor keeps alive by “transforming it into his own biotope”. 2
A project by Charalampidou and Lili based on the study of spider nests and can also be presented as a public art. Their proposal attempts to reapproach one particular region of Athens (Evripidou), through the management of its voids and of its boundaries. The project aims to alter the indifferent repetitive spatial experience of the street, through the introduction of a form (produced with help of a rhino plug -in Spider) that highlights the decay and attacks to the disuse, suggesting new ways of perception of public space.
1 Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (translated by Pleasance & Woods with the participation of Copeland) (le presses du réel, 1998
2 http://www.new-territories.com/hypnosisroom.htm
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning
132 Fig. 3 : illustration from the project " A noiseless patient Spider"
Fig. 4 : 3D view from the project " A noiseless patient Spider", Athina Charalampidou, Efthimia Lili
133 Epilogue
Possibilities that were entirely theoretical few years ago, are now beginning to be implemented and to be built. The architects and designers in general are found, more than ever before, faced with a plethora of tools to make their job, with each one of them to have excellent strength.
Subsequently, the scope of how these tools affect, approve or facilitate the designer is developing rapidly and the challenge is to navigate between such dynamic circumstances with a clear sense of criticism about how this helps promote architecture and in which direction. As one delves deeper into the era of Human-Computer Interaction, improving our relationship to these machines by making them more approachable, adaptable, functional, and safe, will become of paramount importance1. Hence, architects and artists have already included in their common area of research, the 3D printing technology, which has already enabled great advancements.
Leila Kinney, executive director of CAST (Center for Art, Science & Technology; M.I.T.), said that good matches between artists and scientists “really contribute to the development of an artist’s work and also challenge our researchers.”2
Today's architects and artists should not be limited to the kind of mathematical data that can be imported from an environment or inserted on it, but they shall have access to the full range of possibilities and participate in a more thorough investigation of the world of geometry and mathematical models. Unless we want to get lost in an inhomogeneous archipelago geometric experimentation, we need to evaluate and understand the quality of the machinery with which plans, and not the projects are produced.
Complex, sculpture-like or algorithmic designs are undoubtedly expressive, but isn’it there an ethical consideration to be taken into consideration?
1 http://b3dgeable.staging.wpengine.com/2016/02/20/exo-biote-project-breathes-life-into-3d-printed-soft-robotics/
2 Hilarie M. Sheets, 04.03.2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/arts/design/at-mit-science-embraces-a-new-chaos-theory-art.html?_r=2
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning
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