boldtoad blog

Today, thanks to James Tu and BLDGBLOG, I came across a flickr stream with images from two Yale School of Architecture courses on topics related to CNC fabrication, Voluminous Surfaces and Material Formation in Design. The focus in both courses seems to have been on the use of planar materials to build volumetric forms, and both resulted in large-scale models. The project shown on BLDGBLOG is a structure created from a single sheet of steel that’s plasma cut and then folded, yielding subtly varied surfaces. The heat-formed acrylic sheets in one project resulted in some amazingly sensuous forms.

What do I blog this? Our lab is offering a design studio this semester that focuses on volumes constructed from planar materials, with an organic formal vocabulary. These two classes at Yale seem to have shared similar constraints and preoccupations.

Last Friday I visited Ilot 13, a city block in Geneva that’s been developed over the past couple of decades by a number of residents’ cooperatives in a participatory design/build process. There’s an account of the recent history of the block in this article and powerpoint.

The block has a dense mix of housing types, and provides space for several small businesses, design offices, and artists’ collectives. The well-maintained public spaces attest to a strong community; there’s also a clear diversity of lifestyle visible in the many types of residences packed into the block. Several of the buildings were abandoned and squatted in the 1970’s, followed by a period of negotiation with the city and an eventual deal for land leases, allowing the development of the abandoned structures and construction of several new buildings under the oversight of housing cooperatives set up by the residents. The result is a compelling vision for the creative re-use of historic urban fabric.

Why do I blog this? With two colleagues I’m preparing a week-long architecture course on the future of the home, and am interested to study ways of living that reformulate typical boundaries between private and public space.This block has a complex relation of private, public, and semi-public amenities, and I’m looking forward to learn more about how these operate.

The Learning Center construction is in its final stages, with occupation of the building due to begin in September. Glazing is being mounted around the perimeter of the building and in the courtyards.

I wonder how this southeast corner of the building will be used … it’s not so clear from the floor plan. The floor swoops down into this corner from two sides, only to terminate dramatically in … what looks like an emergency exit … or, maybe the principal entry for the restaurant … We’ll see in a few months! It’s not clear to me yet whether the building will have a single point of entry or multiple entrances - the securing of books in a library usually demands the former option, but maybe the library will have its own point of entry within the plan. It will be interesting to see how this fundamentally open plan accommodates multiple program elements which each have their own requirements in terms of secure entry points, circulation, noise, etc (library, bank, shops, restaurant). These are questions that have clearly been solved before, but this promises to be unlike any open plan building I’ve seen before …

Why do I blog this? This is the building where I’ll be finishing the writing of my thesis, and I’m looking forward to the opening with great expectation …

The concept of Espace Pur, developed at nearby ECAL/University of art and design Lausanne by Marc Hottinger and Lucien Iseli, is the display of patterns in building interiors through the selective accumulation of dust. The panels remove dust from the air, gradually revealing the embedded patterns. Here’s a description of the project by the authors:

Espace Pur is an air ionizer that uses dust as pixels and that displays patterns thanks to it, in a very slow motion way. It cleans and purifies the air in architectural spaces. It increases the level of oxygen’s negative ions contained in the ambient air. Once installed, the air’s oxygenation becomes nearly the same as in the mountains. The more there are negative ions, the more the air is purified.

As a matter of fact, excessive dust is dangerous for health. Nevertheless, no dust at all decreases our immunity. That’s why the system is regulated by the saturation of dust. Once filled with dust, the display is deactivated, and dust can be cleaned on the floor.

The installation of the “anti-dust screen” can take place in flats, hospitals, offices, and everywhere where air needs to be cleaned.

The aim of the project is therefore to capture dust and organize it on wall panels in order to build pictures that will gently appear on the wall. The panels are displaying compositions of weed that are on the one hand harmful plants but on the second hand have beneficial aspect on the health.

There is more information about the project at various places on the web: here, here (near the top of the page) and here (near the bottom of the page).

Why do I blog this? The idea of visualizing air quality is related to my thermochromic panel prototypes, which also register changes in indoor climate using a visualization based on pattern. I like the idea of accumulating a largely invisible element in order to create visible patterns which in the end bear little physical resemblance to the material from which they’re accumulated.

I was happy to come across a description (pdf) of this architecture studio taught at the AA by Oliver Domeisen, curator of the recent Re-Sampling Ornament exhibit at SAM (Swiss Architectural Museum). The student work is also documented in an article in Architectural Design (Volume 78 - Neoplasmatic Design). The concept for the studio is apparently based on Louis Sullivan’s ‘System of Architectural Ornament’, and like the SAM exhibit the studio seems to have moved fluidly between an analysis of the historical significance of architectural ornament and the production of new ornament based on digital design and fabrication methods.
Two observations from the AD article stand out for me. First, the idea that ornament can operate at a range of scales, from that of  building structure to the intricate detailing of a window or doorframe to a freestanding object. And second, the role of ornament as a means of creating transition, of mediating between programatically or materially distinct zones within the plan.

The project shown above is by Alex Kaiser; here’s another image of his project (for a redesigned entrance to the AA building on Bedford Square):

Just before Christmas I had a meeting in Paris and took a few hours to visit the Institut du Monde Arabe. Dating from the 1980’s, this was the first building I know of that used an interactive, kinetic element as an iconic feature of the building facade and interior. Unfortunately, anyone who’s heard of the building also knows that the interactive components were a failure: none of the hundreds of tiny aperture mechanisms on the building’s south facade were functioning the day I visited, and looked like they hadn’t worked in a long time. It must have been impressive to see the entire facade adjusting to sun and shadow - I imagine the facade smoothly transforming as a cloud passed over the building. It would be interesting to know whether the system ever worked as intended, or if it was a failure from the opening day. It’s also interesting that the south facade is compelling without the motorized opening and closing, and the range of states in which the apertures have frozen creates a beautiful pattern of light and shadow on the interior.

All the motorized panels that I could inspect had clear signs of failure: broken components, loose screws, broken cables. There was a common place for mechanical failure, where the motor had sheared away from the arm that should have transferred its force to the apertures. It looked like bad mechanical design, with too much force applied to a component that couldn’t take it.

This building has done a lot to popularize the concept of responsive buildings, but has also given the idea a bad name. Someday it would be interesting to find out why the responsive aspect was a failure: was it the architects who didn’t have experience in designing responsive elements as a permanent part of the building; or owners who failed to perform required maintenance; or another reason?

What do I blog this? The problem of permanently integrating interactive components in buildings is closely related to my thesis research, and I’m interested in finding examples that illustrate the mechanical and conceptual challenges involved.

One of the memorable projects exhibited at lift this year was this animated book by Camille Scherrer, a recent graduate of ECAL (an excellent design school in Lausanne). The book works on the same principle as the animated books I remember seeing some years ago based on ARToolKit - an image of the book captured by a webcam is augmented with virtual content. The difference here is that the graphic design is really good; and there aren’t any markers explicitly intended for the computer - the image itself acts as a marker, allowing the computer to recognize the page and its orientation. The augmented content has the appearance of cut paper, and the animations are subtle and fun to discover as you turn each page of the book. The computer vision stuff was done by a lab just down the hall from me at EPFL.

Sent by Kamni (via swissmiss) - just what I needed to hear this morning.

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6.The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

The Cult of Done Manifesto by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark

Why do I blog this? Because this is great advice for perfectionists (which I tend to be). They’ve summarized a basic tenet of design: make lots of stuff - whether it’s good or not you’ll learn from making.

This blog has been out of commission for a while.

I’ve had to cut back temporarily on my hours at work, and blogging was one of the first habits that suffered from the change …

I was at LIFT last week, a Geneva conference in its fourth year, a real haven and inspiration for blogging and all forms of digital communication and creativity. I had a conversation there with Fabien Girardin about blogging, and now I’m convinced that less editing and more spontaneous writing is what I need to keep this blog going. I’m a compulsive editor of my own writing, but I’m going to resist this urge in an attempt to keep this blog irrigated with a steady flow of words.

Coming up in March: paper submission deadlines for ACADIA (March 09) and IV09 (March 16); a talk at CRAFT on my PhD research (March 16); my son Noah’s birthday (March 29); and the arrival of Noah’s long anticipated sibling (date undisclosed).

This temporary structure was designed for a competition in London by a group of undergraduate architecture students in the ALICE studio at EPFL. I was a critic in an early review of their work, and was excited to see photos of the final result. It’s an impressive installation, and the concept as I understand it is very nice - a flexible mesh structure made of a buoyant material, such that the whole structure rises and falls and morphs each day with the tides, anchored only by its attachment to the rail along the Thames embankment. There’s more information about the project here.

With continued invaluable help from Christian Abegg, the indoor climate sensor network for my thesis prototype is almost complete. The goal of this prototype is to investigate the relevance of sensor data about indoor climate to the production of engaging and beautiful architectural spaces. The idea is to see what kinds of  patterns in the occupation and use of spaces are revealed by changes in the data. On the most basic level a light sensor tells you whether a room is in use, as well as what kind of day it happens to be outside (assuming there’s some daylight in addition to artificial lighting). Over time this data will show how frequently the room is used, and at what times of day. Temperature can also give an indication of use, and tends to rise in proportion to the number of people in the room; the number of people in the room is also reflected in C02 levels. Use of some equipment can be tracked with environmental sensors - we have a laser cutter in our lab that triggers the dust sensor and smoke sensor every time it’s used.

For the past six months I’ve been collecting data related to indoor climate in two adjacent rooms occupied by our lab. The rooms are identical in volume and access; they’re quite different though in the way they’re used. One is occupied regularly as an office space, with workstations for 8 people; the other has an electronics workshop, CNC fabrication equipment, a laser cutter, and also space for meetings.

The intention is to make these temporal patterns part of the experience of architecture, analogous to the way a sundial measures a quality of the environment (the position of the sun) to indicate the passage of time over the course of a day. The sundial can be seen as an instrument, but it can also become a type of architectural ornament. There are clearly many functions of ornament - many ways that ornament informs and enhances the experience of architecture, engaging people in an emotional, intellectual and (often) tactile fashion. I have been especially interested in ornament that orients people in relation to their surroundings by registering changes taking place in the environment. A sundial does this, and so do the actuated diaphragms of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, to name one famous example of an ornament based on sensor data.

The final aim of my prototypes will be to build a dynamic ornament that responds to changes in indoor climate. The first version of this was built by Christian as part of the semester project he did with me last year:

These LED’s update each minute and display change in some aspect of the environment - in this case TVOC’s (total volatile organic compounds) and smoke.

The next step will be to set up a large thermochromic display that reflects these changes (with the invaluable assistance of David van der Maas). The idea is to create a surface that is gradually transformed depending on the environment in which it’s located. Such a sensor-based ornament offers the possibility of a dynamic, bottom-up expression of the character of a given space or aggregation of spaces that is not predetermined by the designer, but emerges from occupation and use. I’ve chosen the expression ‘dynamic ornament’ to convey this idea of an ornament that reflects its immediate surroundings by responding to dynamic qualities of the architectural environment.

The climatic variables that I’m currently measuring (or will be shortly) are temp, humidity, light, dust, smoke, CO2, and VOC’s. Here are a couple examples of patterns of use that can be inferred from the sensor data:

The light sensor data over the course of the week shows when the room was in use.

For some reason the TVOC (total volatile organic compounds) sensor responds every time the floor is mopped - on Thursday evening and on Wednesday last week (the drops in the graph represent high levels of VOC’s). What’s in that cleaning solution?

Why do I blog this? I am using this blog as a place to document progress in the development of my research. This is useful a) as a way to solicit feedback; and b) as a thinking tool - a means of thinking about what I’m doing as I do it.

Thanks to the New Yorker’s Book Bench I came across this proposal by Julian Gough - brilliant stuff:

A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges. A great poet does not self-censor; Sarah Palin seems authentically innocent of what she is saying. She could be the most natural, visionary poet since William Blake.

I searched the internet in a frenzy, for “Sarah Palin” and “poetry,” hoping she’d perhaps published a slim volume through the University of Alaska Press. I was not alone. Hart Seely, the grey eminence of American poetry who discovered Donald Rumsfeld, praises her work. Bennett Gordon, of the magazine Utne Reader, calls her a worthy heir to Kerouac and Ginsberg.

Not since Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass has there been such an electrifying debut. And she is yet to publish a collection. This is an astonishing poetic insurgency. The building momentum will soon be unstoppable.

The New Yorker provides this link as proof.

I especially like this one. Like everything Sarah Palin says, it’s funny and more than a little scary:

“Challenge to a Cynic”

You are a cynic.
Because show me where
I have ever said
That there’s absolute proof
That nothing that man
Has ever conducted
Or engaged in,
Has had any effect,
Or no effect,
On climate change.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)

Let us take a moment to thank all American people for not electing this woman as our vice-president, a fate that is already hardly imaginable …