Week 11 final submission A3.2: Analytical Models of One Project

Hydrophile: Hydrodynamic Green Roof | Bioscience Innovation Center 2010 

Servo Architects

With inspiration drawn from the shell of the 'Namib desert beetle', a contradicting concept is discovered in relation to hydrophilic and hydrophobic attributes which assist in its ability to collect, and direct the natural flow of water. Servo integrates this unique design concept into its project Hydrophile Bioscience Innovation Centre where the same notion was portrayed in the form of a hydrodynamic vegetated roof. This organic roof focuses on supporting existing, “biotope structures and habitat networks and promoting biodiversity in the local environment” [1]. It also draws onto the perception of depth in design to develop a structure that is multi-functional, and aims to generate a space that enables viewers to experience and collaborate with the structure from multiple vantage points, ranging from above, within and below. In such a dynamic design, which blends nature and architectural form, it is vital to vary the thicknesses of the structures' foundations to depend on the load forced on the configuration from above. It is due to the roof being a habitat for local plants and other flora, which can be submerged into water. However, this depends on the plants proximity in relation to the declining slopes, which aims to accumulate rainwater overtime for future use.

Section showing the varying thicknesses in the structure.

Visual representation and labeling of materials.

A sense of interaction between the structure and the surrounding landscape is gained through the engagement of viewers with various vantage points, whether it be above, between or below. Each point of access allows viewers to experience the changes in form and varying depths. Above being its developed architecture that mimics the outer landscape through the inclusion of particular forms of dense vegetation. Between is the designated auditorium space and specialised areas intended for the, "cultivation of vegetation in semi climatically-controlled microclimates" [2]. Below is the interior, where people are able to interact with the bulging roof form that warps towards the ground with the smaller protuberant forms that emit water, air or light. Ultimately, this ability to experience the structure from various perspectives allows for a greater understanding of the overall form.

Electronic representation of parametric
design capabilities

To make such complex geometries Servo utilises, “highly controlled algorithmic and machinic processes” [3], whilst also merging into this design approach, a combination of digital and analog techniques of design and fabrication, thus, ensuring efficiency in the design process.

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r e f e r e n c e s

• [1] [2] Arch2o.com, "Bioscience Innovation Center – Hydrophile | Servo“ (2012-2015). Accessed: 20 May 2015. <http://www.arch2o.com/bioscience-innovation-center-hydrophile-servo/>
• [3] Servo, Los Angeles. Accessed 16 May 2015.<http://www.servo-la.com/index.php?/projects/hydrophile/>
• Designbuzz, "SERVO bioscience innovation center to exhibit extensive green roof" April 7 2011. Accessed: 20 May 2015. <http://www.designbuzz.com/servo-bioscience-innovation-center-to-exhibit-extensive-green-roof/>

Week 11 submission: Draft Project Analysis for Assignment 3.2

Botswana Innovation Hub 

SHoP Architects

In SHoP’s work, Botswana Innovation Hub, the structures’ intention to uphold its sustainable architecture is established whilst nature is unified in an interrelated composition represented by its organic form. It is through the interrelationship between nature and architecture that allows such processes – such as morphogenesis - to increase the range of inspirations available to designers, like SHoP, who find it in their intention to enhance future change and growth. With particular focus on constructing in phases by following a process, it enables maximum collaboration amongst architects, engineers and builders, thus, eliminating the gap, and “the features of architectural representation that make space for the mystery, the obfuscation and the mendacity, that has for at least a century now separated those who draw from those who build”. This unique process maximises accuracy in such innovative design techniques, such as the “Energy Blanket” [1] roofscape, which freely, “overhangs passively to shade the building’s interior volumes, while mechanisms collect and re-use water, and both passive and active photovoltaic systems harness solar energy” [2]. The roof sweeping over each slender structure on site, often referred to as the "green roof", is of iconic nature whilst it remains aesthetic yet functional with its photovoltaics which collects the sun's energy. Also, a roof garden filled with indigenous species which collect rainwater for reuse will allow the structure to blend seamlessly with the surrounding environment.

Above: Development of the basket weave pattern.
Below: Pattern projected onto interior of the buildings auditorium where it also will serve as an acoustic baffle. 

Further design innovations were constructed in order to compliment the structures’ organic based form with the inclusion of a developed basket-weave pattern inspired by the craft traditional to Africa. This central texture had the ability to be, “propagated across a variety of surfaces” [3]. With such versatility, it enables SHoP to enhance the already organic structure with various cultural elements to add to overall aesthetics as well as functional aspects in relation to reducing acoustic baffles within the auditorium. 



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r e f e r e n c e s

• [3] Nobel, Philip, “SHoP and the Ethics of Knowledge Transfer” in The Builder’s Name (2015): Pp. 108, 109.
• [1] [2] Unknown, “Botswana Innovation Hub”. SHoP. Accessed 16 May 2015. <http://www.shoparc.com/projects/botswana-innovation-hub/>
• BIH - Botswana Innovation Hub Development - Botswana. (2014, May 28). World Market Intelligence News. Accessed 16 May 2015 <http://search.proquest.com/docview/1553442714?accountid=12763>
• Cilento, Karen, "Update: Botswana Innovation Hub / SHoP" 16 Aug 2011. ArchDaily. Accessed 16 May 2015. <http://www.archdaily.com/?p=160416>

Week 11 Topic: Collaboration

The development of collaborative digital software has maximised efficiency in the design process, ultimately enabling effective mock up testing and scripting to be achievable in one program. This ensures that larger projects are, “automatized, [as] we cannot have a piece of software written for each type of design problem” [1]. The manipulation of design increases manual labour as it, “would affect the whole geometry… down to these very last elements [and] their machining programs” [2]. This then leads to the need to manually modify the concept in each program, therefore, further complicating the design process. It has to be understood that, “the future of architecture is unreadable” [3], as designers move forward with a collaborative mindset where, “contemporary free forms are called into considerable question when they become cliché and sacrifice the past to the advantage of an absolute present” [4]. To cater for enriching technical ingenuity and cultural and sociological imaginations, the combining of programs increases time that could be spent analysing context and experimenting with ideas. For example, a curved panelling system that incorporates, “heterogeneous elements as a challenge to be met by innovative design” [5], “is a general architectural problem that leads to [a] complex manufacturing process” [6]. However, it can be avoided through frequent software development and integration by designers.

The installation consists of 100 robotically-routed plywood ribs. Even with smaller projects, manipulation of the design elements in multiple design programs can be time consuming, thus, can be avoided through the use of arising multipurpose programs.

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r e f e r e n c e s

• [1] [2] [3] [4] [6] Cache, Bernard, "Toward an associative Architecture", in Digital Tectonics edited by Neil Leach, David Tumbull & Chris Williams (2004): Pp. 108, 109.
• [5] DeLanda, Manuel, "Material Complexity", in Digital Tectonics edited by Neil Leach, David Tumbull & Chris Williams (2004): Pp. 21.

Week 10 Topic:Practice vs Project: VI: Parametricism vs. Parametric Thinking

Heyday Aliyev Center located in Baku, Azerbaijan. Designed by Zaha Hadid.
Representing the up-rise in curvilinear design.

Parametricism and parametric design are often confused due to their coexistence within the design process. In the past, Isms such as Postmodernism or Modernism in the architectural profession were purely based on parametric thinking – the process – of the final form, therefore, reducing the connection with culture. In the same way, parametricism is seen as the effect of the use of parametric technologies. It is due to the ease of use that comes with parametric design – the way this ease increases, “the adoption of parametric software in computers” [1]. In apparent contrast to the way in which traditional architectural drawings, “have no inherent structure, and are merely dirty marks on paper” [2], - this notion can be clearly argued. Ultimately, the popularity of curvilinear forms in the architectural profession increases as they are now easier to create, which then gives the impression of an emerging architectural style. There is a need to understand the influence culture itself has on new coming architecture as it is culture which emits, “a certain design aesthetic, and the techniques can merely facilitate the articulation of that aesthetic” [3]. But how could such a style arise in an industry where a, “very small fraction – maybe 1% - would be using actual parametric software”? [4]. Parametric thinking should be referred to as a radical “way of approaching design” [5], a process, which works alongside algorithmic design to create a, “scripting language that allow[s] the designer to step beyond the limitations of the user interface, and to design through the direct manipulation not of the form but of the code”[6]. This is where, “design exploration and the epistemology of criticism suggests that we must embrace the possibilities” [7] and finally represent the way in which, “logic should be the new form” [8].

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r e f e r e n c e s

•  [1] [3] [4] [5] [6] [8] Leach, Neil, "Parametrics Explained", in Scripting the Future, Tongji UP, 2012: Pp. 3, 5, 7, 9.
• [2] [7] Mitchell, William, “A New Agenda for Computer-Aided Design”, in Computational Design Thinking, edited by Achim Menges (2011): Pp. 2, 15.

Week 9 Topic: Practice vs Project III: Nonstandard and Versioning

The five centuries of mechanical culture has allowed for extensive experimentation of effective methods of versioning. This has ultimately improved the production of non-standardised products. Non-standard and versioning greatly relate to the development and management of a product in the production and manufacturing processes. They focus directly on the process involved with refining and maximising product performance through upgrades and / or customisation of technology, not particularly the form itself. Upgrades of “new software [has] opened a generative domain [of] complex morphogenesis and complex geometries” [1], thus, leads to the creation of non-standard designs. This then intends to, “shift the way architects and designers are using technology to expand”[2] while also allowing “architects to think or practice across multiple disciplines, borrowing tactics from film, food finance, fashion, economics and politics for use in design(s)” [3]. It is this concept of the non-standard that could be seen as a method of evoking, “a refusal of normalisation, of widespread standardisation of modernism to deploy standardisation as a fundamental factor of industrialisation, as a determining principle of modernism” [4]. Consequently, it is given that this new method of approaching non-standard designs through versioning is “beyond architecture” [5], as, “this trend has given birth to [a] one-sided world culture of production and products” [6].

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r e f e r e n c e s

• [1] [4] [5] [6] Migayrou, Frederic, “The Order of the Non-Standard: Towards a Critical Structuralism” in Theories of the Digital in Architecture, edited by Rivka & Robert Oxman (2014): Pp. 17, 20.
• [2] [3] HoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli (2002), “Versioning” in The Digital Turn in Architecture 1992-2012, edited by Mario Carpo (2013): Pp. 132.

Week 8 Topic: Practice vs Project II: From Surface, Hypersurface, to self-organised Bodies

Surfaces today are intertwined with technological innovations that ultimately, [1] “challenge the traditional mode of presence of architecture”. It is in this way that designers are eroding the, [2] “traditional statures of architecture”, as a means of representing new theories, such as the Hypersurface Theory. Stephan Parrella, founder of the theory, describes his intention of developing this theory based on the, [3] "observation that architecture is becoming increasingly saturated with digital technologies", therefore, he is able to establish how, [4] "the dimensional image and form with its own logic in either 2D or 3D questions the other", and to further articulate the interconnections between 2D and 3D representations and how they are not adequate to describe the new inter-dynamic hypersurface. In saying this, the theory intends to promote, [5] "a broader interface and interactivity between cyberspace and the built environment". 

For example, the development of the following installations, each possess the ability to react in real time - whether it be pre-set or interactive - and develop animated materials which enrich the appearance of the form. WHIST's installation explores the "non-physical" nature of light to create animated materials through the unique arrangement of pixels on a 2D surface that give the illusion of a 3D surface, in a non-interactive manner. This idea represents the [6] "magnificent play of volumes brought together in light". Whereas, the Orchestrating the Depth of Light (2014), introduces a fourth dimension, time, as it enables interactivity with its environment. The interactivity is discovered by viewers when a camera flashes in front of the installation, which leads to the blinking of LED lights. The flashing of coloured lights within the installation will begin from the closest point of impact and then slowly wander away. 

Example | One

Hypersurface Installation by WHIST. Animated projected Images create sense of materiality in an open space. 

Example | Two 

Orchestrating the Depth of Light (2014) by MAI, the William Maximilian University’s Städelschule Architecture Class and AHL Media Facade. 

Interactivity | Blinking of LED lights triggered by a camera flash in front of the installation. Flashing will start from the closest point of impact and then slowly wander away.

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r e f e r e n c e s

• [1] [2] Picon, Antoine, “The Surface as Architecture” in Digital Culture in Architecture: an Introduction for the Design Profession (2010): Pp. 89, 90.
• [3] [4] [5] [6] Haeusler, Hank, Chromatophoric Architecture: Designing for 3D media Facades (2010): Selected articles:
•  Introduction: “Chromatophoric Architecture”: Pp. 17, 19, 20, 23.

Images and further research

Image 1, 2 | Accessed: 04/05/2015, <http://www.whist.ch/en/project/textile-installationen>

Image 3 | Accessed: 04/05/2015, <http://www.mediaarchitecture.org/our-projects/>