Sol Ok, Jenny Rong, Girolamo Carollo, Abraham Dreazen
110512 - braided landscapes
Examples of the braided landscapes. Go here for a slideshow of more models and here for the handout that introduced this exercise.
Sol Ok, Jenny Rong, Girolamo Carollo, Abraham Dreazen
Sol Ok, Jenny Rong, Girolamo Carollo, Abraham Dreazen
110512 - final drawings
110512 - final models
110512 - system diagram
110418 - final
…seemingly random but structured patterns strike a resonance within us, for our ‘internalisations’ may be built on similar ideas – a kind of haunting, of interior space being made external, of buried archetype surfacing. The whispers we hear will sharpen our intuition.
- Cecil Balmond
Informal, The Chemnitz Solution
Your final review is Monday April 25, 1 - 6pm. Plan your time carefully and work efficiently during the next week. Continue refining the material execution of concepts while developing final presentation materials. Do not simply remake what you already know.
Final Requirements:
ALL PLOTS MUST BE SENT BY 12 NOON ON SUNDAY. Finish your drawings first and leave the completion of models for Sunday afternoon and night.
Compose and rehearse your verbal presentation; it must be precise and concise. It must describe program how and the intervention responds to program. Trace a coherent line of thinking through the entire semester. Presentations need not be chronological. Focus on latest drawings and models while using earlier work to support the current position of the project.
Final Jury:
Kutan Ayata, Jeremy Carvalho, Michael Chen, Jason Lee, Erich Schoenenberger, Aaron White
- Cecil Balmond
Informal, The Chemnitz Solution
Your final review is Monday April 25, 1 - 6pm. Plan your time carefully and work efficiently during the next week. Continue refining the material execution of concepts while developing final presentation materials. Do not simply remake what you already know.
Final Requirements:
- braided river image
- river mapping
- group landscape, securely attached to white painted plywood base
- relevant group unit and strand models
- group material analysis drawings
- Octavio Paz poem with selected vocabulary highlighted
- text mapping
- exquisite corpse writing with extracted text sequences clearly indicated
- sunlight study filmstrips
- sunlight filter model(s)
- tracking document
- relevant intervention study models
- 1/4” scale model of intervention in landscape
- 1/4” scale horizontal and vertical sections of intervention in landscape
ALL PLOTS MUST BE SENT BY 12 NOON ON SUNDAY. Finish your drawings first and leave the completion of models for Sunday afternoon and night.
Compose and rehearse your verbal presentation; it must be precise and concise. It must describe program how and the intervention responds to program. Trace a coherent line of thinking through the entire semester. Presentations need not be chronological. Focus on latest drawings and models while using earlier work to support the current position of the project.
Final Jury:
Kutan Ayata, Jeremy Carvalho, Michael Chen, Jason Lee, Erich Schoenenberger, Aaron White
110411 - conditioning
A dynamic conception of architecture, which overcomes the traditional notion of buildings as a still, tectonic construct, allows us to think of space as practice. This involves incorporating the inhabitant of the space (or its intruder) into architecture, not simply marking and reproducing but reinventing, as film does, his or her various trajectories through space—that is, charting the narrative these navigations create.
- Giuliana Bruno
Atlas of Emotion, Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film
In an athletic pursuit, repetitive conditioning tunes the body to work exceptionally well within a specific set of performance parameters. In this process, the body gains certain abilities at the expense of others (i.e. a sumo wrestler does not make a good basketball player). A similar type of repetitive conditioning must now occur in systems for building the intervention into the landscape. So far, these systems have been driven by internal relational and transformative logics, now they must be conditioned in response to external demands of program.
As described above, program will be a ‘dynamic conception’ rather than a ‘still, tectonic construct.’ It will be based on a series of converging and diverging trajectories through space, not discreet, static compartments.
PROGRAM
Text sequences from the exquisite corpse writing exercise will conceptualize a program consisting of an itinerary of converging and diverging movement trajectories. Scan all exquisite corpse work, and then with Photoshop, isolate three intertwining strands of text (7-10 words minimum) from the final iteration. Use these sequences of text to imagine and describe three potential movement trajectories of an inhabitant through the landscape / intervention. The inhabitant must move through a series of qualitatively different spatial conditions. Different spatial conditions should be produced by: filtering sunlight in different ways, producing surfaces and enclosures in different ways, and dealing with notions of ground in different ways. Program will not be composed of a single narrative but multiple potential micro-narratives.
MODEL
Build a new version of the intervention in the landscape. It may be in bristol board, basswood or a combination of the two. Condition this model in response to program. Modify and augment rules of its construction and relationship to the landscape so that it begins to support the movement sequences described in the program. Following the example above from Thompson, modify modular systems by stretching and re-orienting components rather than breaking or tearing them. Refine the craft of the model. Increase precision of attachments to the landscape.
SECTIONS
Two 1/4” scale sections are required, one horizontal, one vertical. Sections must document as many different spatial experiences as possible. The vertical section must include shadows and scale figures. The vertical section may be drawn at different times of day or year to document changing lighting conditions. All sections must show deep space by calibrating line-weight and line-type.
- Giuliana Bruno
Atlas of Emotion, Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film
In an athletic pursuit, repetitive conditioning tunes the body to work exceptionally well within a specific set of performance parameters. In this process, the body gains certain abilities at the expense of others (i.e. a sumo wrestler does not make a good basketball player). A similar type of repetitive conditioning must now occur in systems for building the intervention into the landscape. So far, these systems have been driven by internal relational and transformative logics, now they must be conditioned in response to external demands of program.
As described above, program will be a ‘dynamic conception’ rather than a ‘still, tectonic construct.’ It will be based on a series of converging and diverging trajectories through space, not discreet, static compartments.
Biological form conditioned through environmental forces –
D’Arcy Thompson, variations on the form of a hydriod
PROGRAM
Text sequences from the exquisite corpse writing exercise will conceptualize a program consisting of an itinerary of converging and diverging movement trajectories. Scan all exquisite corpse work, and then with Photoshop, isolate three intertwining strands of text (7-10 words minimum) from the final iteration. Use these sequences of text to imagine and describe three potential movement trajectories of an inhabitant through the landscape / intervention. The inhabitant must move through a series of qualitatively different spatial conditions. Different spatial conditions should be produced by: filtering sunlight in different ways, producing surfaces and enclosures in different ways, and dealing with notions of ground in different ways. Program will not be composed of a single narrative but multiple potential micro-narratives.
MODEL
Build a new version of the intervention in the landscape. It may be in bristol board, basswood or a combination of the two. Condition this model in response to program. Modify and augment rules of its construction and relationship to the landscape so that it begins to support the movement sequences described in the program. Following the example above from Thompson, modify modular systems by stretching and re-orienting components rather than breaking or tearing them. Refine the craft of the model. Increase precision of attachments to the landscape.
SECTIONS
Two 1/4” scale sections are required, one horizontal, one vertical. Sections must document as many different spatial experiences as possible. The vertical section must include shadows and scale figures. The vertical section may be drawn at different times of day or year to document changing lighting conditions. All sections must show deep space by calibrating line-weight and line-type.
110401 - intervention studies
110331 - synthesis
On a continuum without values, everything can dissolve into inconsistency; however if we negotiate its inflections, we can ensure continuities between the most disparate registers, between the most distant eras.
- Bernard Cache
Earth Moves, The Furnishing of Territories, 1995
A synthesis combines diverse parts into a coherent whole. In the next phase of the project, synthesize concepts generated by text mapping and writing with structural and dynamic systems operating in the ground / intervention. This synthesis will function as a continuum that applies value across registers. It will provide a conceptual framework in which the product of material experiments may be evaluated, modified and augmented. You will generate a new series of written documents, and then use these documents to inform a next-generation intervention that considers issues of envelope.
EXQUISITE CORPSE
Revisit text mapping and writing in a group exercise based on the exquisite corpse game. Begin by writing a series of converging and diverging sentences with combinations and sequences of words extracted from your text map. Explore how graphic qualities of the map inform the writing. Create combinations and sequences of words that add information (i.e. gentle + tiger adds more information because it is an unexpected combination, fierce + tiger adds less information because it is an expected combination). Write these sentences in pencil on a 9” x 9” sheet of bristol board.
Then, in a specific sequence, one after the other, each member of your landscape group will rewrite the converging and diverging sentences on a new 9” x 9” board, adding to it and modifying it with combinations and sequences of words extracted from her/his own textmap. At the end of this process you will receive three new versions (one modified once, one modified twice, and one modified three times) of the original document you wrote. The third version will be the most dense and contain the most vocabulary, use it to frame ideas about converging and diverging sequences of movement through qualitatively different spaces in your landscape / intervention.
ENVELOPE
Develop a next-generation version of your intervention responding to exquisite corpse writings while also considering these two definitions of envelope:
- Bernard Cache
Earth Moves, The Furnishing of Territories, 1995
A synthesis combines diverse parts into a coherent whole. In the next phase of the project, synthesize concepts generated by text mapping and writing with structural and dynamic systems operating in the ground / intervention. This synthesis will function as a continuum that applies value across registers. It will provide a conceptual framework in which the product of material experiments may be evaluated, modified and augmented. You will generate a new series of written documents, and then use these documents to inform a next-generation intervention that considers issues of envelope.
Bernard Tschumi, plates from The Manhattan Transcripts –
a synthesis of Action (photograph) and Space (plan drawing)
into Movement (notational diagram)
EXQUISITE CORPSE
Revisit text mapping and writing in a group exercise based on the exquisite corpse game. Begin by writing a series of converging and diverging sentences with combinations and sequences of words extracted from your text map. Explore how graphic qualities of the map inform the writing. Create combinations and sequences of words that add information (i.e. gentle + tiger adds more information because it is an unexpected combination, fierce + tiger adds less information because it is an expected combination). Write these sentences in pencil on a 9” x 9” sheet of bristol board.
Then, in a specific sequence, one after the other, each member of your landscape group will rewrite the converging and diverging sentences on a new 9” x 9” board, adding to it and modifying it with combinations and sequences of words extracted from her/his own textmap. At the end of this process you will receive three new versions (one modified once, one modified twice, and one modified three times) of the original document you wrote. The third version will be the most dense and contain the most vocabulary, use it to frame ideas about converging and diverging sequences of movement through qualitatively different spaces in your landscape / intervention.
ENVELOPE
Develop a next-generation version of your intervention responding to exquisite corpse writings while also considering these two definitions of envelope:
- An envelope is a membrane continuously enfolding interiority and exteriority. This is more like the skin of a body with all its textures, curvatures, and folds than a normative architectural system of walls, floors, and ceilings.
- An envelope is a set of performance limits, i.e. the performance envelope of an aircraft. The performance of envelopes in your project will be measured in terms of sunlight control and the framing of movement sequences.
110322 - systems
The organization of a machine [system]…only states relations between components and rules for their interactions and transformations…
- Humbert Maturana & Francisco Varela
Autopoiesis and Cognition 1972
A system is a set of components defined by ‘their interactions and transformations.’ The organization of a system emerges from consistently enacted behaviors among its components. Low-level, part-to-part interactions among the components of a system produce pattern and organization at a higher level. Architects work with systems that have structural (pattern and organization) and dynamic (movement and transformation) aspects.
- Humbert Maturana & Francisco Varela
Autopoiesis and Cognition 1972
A system is a set of components defined by ‘their interactions and transformations.’ The organization of a system emerges from consistently enacted behaviors among its components. Low-level, part-to-part interactions among the components of a system produce pattern and organization at a higher level. Architects work with systems that have structural (pattern and organization) and dynamic (movement and transformation) aspects.
Louis Kahn –
traffic flow study for Philadelphia city center
Busby Berkeley –
42nd Street Musical
Kahn’s traffic flow study and Berkeley’s musical choreography exemplify systems with structural and dynamic aspects. The structural aspect of the system in Kahn’s diagram is the spatial organization of pedestrian and vehicular traffic flows; the dynamic aspect is movement along these flows. The structural aspects of Berkeley’s choreography are the positions and orientations of bodies in space and their relations to one another; the dynamic aspects are the movements and transformations of these bodies. Note that one of these systems is described theoretically in a diagram and the other is realized in physical space.
ATTACHMENT SYSTEM
Develop a system for introducing the light filter to the landscape. Consider structural aspects of this system:
ATTACHMENT SYSTEM
Develop a system for introducing the light filter to the landscape. Consider structural aspects of this system:
- associate specific modules of the light filter with specific molding pieces, units and/or strands in the landscape
- position and orient the light filter relative to the landscape
- control passage of sunlight through the light filter
Consider dynamic aspects of this system:
SYSTEM DIAGRAM
Diagram structural and dynamic aspects of the attachment system.
Structural aspects deal with:
- transform position and orientation of the light filter as it moves across the landscape
- transform how sunlight is controlled across the light filter
- organize flows of bodies through spaces created by the landscape and light filter
SYSTEM DIAGRAM
Diagram structural and dynamic aspects of the attachment system.
Structural aspects deal with:
- connections between light filter and landscape
- how light filter modules are positioned and oriented relative to landscape
- how light filter modules are positioned and oriented relative to sunlight
- how structural aspects transform
- flows of bodies through spaces and across surfaces
110321 - grounds
Here are my notes from Rajchman, Grounds:
This essay uses the word ‘ground’ as a starting point from which to unfold architectural / philosophical possibilities.
For Wolfflin, ground has to do with a basic formlessness. The will, as a vital force in immanent things must try to overcome this formlessness. ‘Force of form’ pulls us up from formlessness. Notions of regularity, proportion and symmetry derive from this idea.
In The Radiant City, Le Corbusier declares ‘natural ground’ to be the bearer of disease, and the ‘enemy of man.’ Thus buildings should be separated from natural ground. Severing the relationship to ‘natural ground’ gives a building an autonomy; it is free to become monochromatic planes set on pilotis barely touching the ground.
This is a type of un-grounding, a freedom from the weight of tradition. Artificial rather than natural, abstract rather than figural (abstract in the sense of a universal language reproducible anywhere).
Oppositional ways of thinking about ground:
Replacing the first with the second is meant to bring about a ‘revolution.’ What non-oppositional ways are there to consider the issue of ground?
Questions concerning ground (and becoming ungrounded) will address the following:
At a certain point in Eisenmann’s work, he treats urban sites as superimposed layers of ‘memory’. The ‘geology’ of urban memories can then be reconfigured to produce a type of ungrounding. The artifice generated here is different from Le Corbusier’s artifice, more Piranesi than Mondrian.
For Eisenmann, fiction comes before narrative and sure judgment, he moves away from “progressivism” and the idea of a complete-able architectural revolution toward something more like Borges’ garden of forking paths. Joints of time can come out of joint.
Matta-Clark’s cuts through buildings (unbuilding or undoing) provide another way out of contextualism. His interventions were seen as a resistance to attempts to revive the context of the historical city through architectural form.
This may be seen as a continuation of Smithson’s notion that the Earth is not a stable ground, but an entropic force, constantly undoing formal structures.
Another type of ungrounding derives from ‘dynamic topologies’ the move away from classical relations between gravity and vision, weight and upright posture. In this case, formlessness becomes a positive feature of space.
“…the faceless figures in the painting of Francis Bacon reveal an undoing of the Albertian relations between face and ground in favor of another kind of corporeal space shown as well in the loss of the skeleton/flesh relation, flesh becoming “meat” – soft, malleable, perhaps even bloblike.”
Groupe Espace (Virilio, Parent) spoke of rejecting vertical and horizontal axes in favor of the oblique – a move that should redefine architecture. Oblique function allowed for planes oriented toward movement and a ‘re-eroticization’ of the ground as a folded or pleated force-field.
This reflected Merleau-Ponty’s idea that the ground in architectural space should be a part of a more general rediscovery of the body, a phenomenological critique of abstract Cartesian space.
Virilio departs from the traditional phenomenological view of a corporeally grounded ‘lived’ space in which the Earth is stable, and instead works with a dynamic conception of the body. These movements are not about going from one fixed point to another, but are traces of an unbounded space.
Virilio says that we are constituted by a ‘corporeal “trajectivity” prior to our subjectivity and objectivity.’ This is another way to imagine becomings of cities and bodies and the spaces in which these becomings transpire.’
As axonometric drawing can produce an overly rectilinear, segmented view of space that dynamic topology can overcome, a programmatic view of space can produce an overly operational view of space that might be superseded by a more affective diagram. What types of spaces might this thinking imply?
We must understand ourselves as vague or indeterminate beings prior to being tied to fixed grounds.
Indeterminate spatial beings are not calculating individuals, members of organic communities, or participants in civil society. Instead our social beings are intersections and assemblages of indefinite trajectories through time and space.
‘Traditional’ social space is said to be grounded in tradition and possibly even in a specific location. The individual is an integral member of an organic whole. ‘Nurturing community.’
‘Modern’ social space is ungrounded from tradition and location. The individual is an atom drifting through undifferentiated space. ‘Possessive individual.’
As an alternative, modernity is a process that turns us into indeterminate beings that do not fit into grounded collective narratives and are not simply individual units in self-organizing processes. “The modern world unleashes patterns of demography or migration that put people in situations where…they are no longer able to tell straight narratives of their ‘origins.’”
We are all potential ‘anybodies,’ the life of a body is indefinite, ungrounded. There is something ‘yet to be constructed’ in an anybody. And this ‘yet to be constructed’ is particular. We are at once close to (particular) and far from (indeterminate) ourselves.
Once the life-world is understood as being ungrounded, we are free to move with lightness. “Movement and indetermination belong together, neither can be understood without the other.”
This essay uses the word ‘ground’ as a starting point from which to unfold architectural / philosophical possibilities.
For Wolfflin, ground has to do with a basic formlessness. The will, as a vital force in immanent things must try to overcome this formlessness. ‘Force of form’ pulls us up from formlessness. Notions of regularity, proportion and symmetry derive from this idea.
In The Radiant City, Le Corbusier declares ‘natural ground’ to be the bearer of disease, and the ‘enemy of man.’ Thus buildings should be separated from natural ground. Severing the relationship to ‘natural ground’ gives a building an autonomy; it is free to become monochromatic planes set on pilotis barely touching the ground.
This is a type of un-grounding, a freedom from the weight of tradition. Artificial rather than natural, abstract rather than figural (abstract in the sense of a universal language reproducible anywhere).
Oppositional ways of thinking about ground:
- natural vs. artificial
- organic vs. abstract
- figural vs. geometric
- contextual vs. abstract
Replacing the first with the second is meant to bring about a ‘revolution.’ What non-oppositional ways are there to consider the issue of ground?
Questions concerning ground (and becoming ungrounded) will address the following:
- a move away from ‘proper’ visual form, form-giving movement prior to the ground
- becoming ungrounded is not something that happens once and for all, but it is a potential force
- notions of history or memory that move away from progressive time to more complex time
At a certain point in Eisenmann’s work, he treats urban sites as superimposed layers of ‘memory’. The ‘geology’ of urban memories can then be reconfigured to produce a type of ungrounding. The artifice generated here is different from Le Corbusier’s artifice, more Piranesi than Mondrian.
For Eisenmann, fiction comes before narrative and sure judgment, he moves away from “progressivism” and the idea of a complete-able architectural revolution toward something more like Borges’ garden of forking paths. Joints of time can come out of joint.
Matta-Clark’s cuts through buildings (unbuilding or undoing) provide another way out of contextualism. His interventions were seen as a resistance to attempts to revive the context of the historical city through architectural form.
This may be seen as a continuation of Smithson’s notion that the Earth is not a stable ground, but an entropic force, constantly undoing formal structures.
Another type of ungrounding derives from ‘dynamic topologies’ the move away from classical relations between gravity and vision, weight and upright posture. In this case, formlessness becomes a positive feature of space.
“…the faceless figures in the painting of Francis Bacon reveal an undoing of the Albertian relations between face and ground in favor of another kind of corporeal space shown as well in the loss of the skeleton/flesh relation, flesh becoming “meat” – soft, malleable, perhaps even bloblike.”
Groupe Espace (Virilio, Parent) spoke of rejecting vertical and horizontal axes in favor of the oblique – a move that should redefine architecture. Oblique function allowed for planes oriented toward movement and a ‘re-eroticization’ of the ground as a folded or pleated force-field.
This reflected Merleau-Ponty’s idea that the ground in architectural space should be a part of a more general rediscovery of the body, a phenomenological critique of abstract Cartesian space.
Virilio departs from the traditional phenomenological view of a corporeally grounded ‘lived’ space in which the Earth is stable, and instead works with a dynamic conception of the body. These movements are not about going from one fixed point to another, but are traces of an unbounded space.
Virilio says that we are constituted by a ‘corporeal “trajectivity” prior to our subjectivity and objectivity.’ This is another way to imagine becomings of cities and bodies and the spaces in which these becomings transpire.’
As axonometric drawing can produce an overly rectilinear, segmented view of space that dynamic topology can overcome, a programmatic view of space can produce an overly operational view of space that might be superseded by a more affective diagram. What types of spaces might this thinking imply?
We must understand ourselves as vague or indeterminate beings prior to being tied to fixed grounds.
Indeterminate spatial beings are not calculating individuals, members of organic communities, or participants in civil society. Instead our social beings are intersections and assemblages of indefinite trajectories through time and space.
‘Traditional’ social space is said to be grounded in tradition and possibly even in a specific location. The individual is an integral member of an organic whole. ‘Nurturing community.’
‘Modern’ social space is ungrounded from tradition and location. The individual is an atom drifting through undifferentiated space. ‘Possessive individual.’
As an alternative, modernity is a process that turns us into indeterminate beings that do not fit into grounded collective narratives and are not simply individual units in self-organizing processes. “The modern world unleashes patterns of demography or migration that put people in situations where…they are no longer able to tell straight narratives of their ‘origins.’”
We are all potential ‘anybodies,’ the life of a body is indefinite, ungrounded. There is something ‘yet to be constructed’ in an anybody. And this ‘yet to be constructed’ is particular. We are at once close to (particular) and far from (indeterminate) ourselves.
Once the life-world is understood as being ungrounded, we are free to move with lightness. “Movement and indetermination belong together, neither can be understood without the other.”
110321 - atlas of novel tectonics
Here are my notes from Reiser + Umemoto, Atlas of Novel Tectonics:
2. Difference in Kind / Difference in Degree – Meaning that is assigned and fixed (chess) vs. meaning that is acquired in context (go).
3. The Unformed Generic: Form Acquiring Content – Projecting content and scale into an unformed field. The field implies no specific scale of content. The stain is at once generic and specific. It contains a wide range of variations.
4. Similarity and Difference – Difference can emerge from similarity and similarity can emerge from difference. Things that look the same may perform differently and things that look different may perform similarly.
5. Variety (Difference) vs. Variation (Self-Similarity) – Intensive quantity generates a whole irreducible to the sum of its parts. Differential repetition is a means of handling program.
7. After Collage: Two Conditions of the Generic – Transformation is a quality perceived through deployment of quantity. Difference is a product of transformation. The universal is understood a “progressive differentiation.”
10. Selection vs. Classification – Typologies are important because they have range within limits. Selection within this range is based on performance of program relative to type.
11. Intensive and Extensive – “The most important distinction in our changed notions of architectural design is the shift from geometry as an abstract regulator of the materials of construction to a notion that matter and material behavior must be implicated in geometry itself.”
Intensive = properties of matter with indivisible differences, gradient. Temperature
Extensive = properties of matter with divisible differences. Mass
Potted plant, intensive proliferation, and extensive limit.
12. Geometry and Matter – Extensive and intensive qualities (quantities) collaborate in the production of architecture. Codes and other constraints can be considered extensive while material systems generate intensive characteristics.
13. Folly of the Mean – The mean is expected, extremes are where there is potential to innovate. The Aristotelian mean is justified in terms of human conduct and gets transferred to proportional systems.
21. Exchanges among Systems – “The architect is, in effect, neither a passive observer of determined systems nor a determined manipulator of passive material, but rather, the manager of an unfolding process.”
24. The Diagram – The diagram is not about the thing itself, but its relation to its context, milieu, or environment. Relationships may change due to scale shifts or behaviors may move from one scale to another. The diagram tracks performance (of relationships) as an abstract model of materiality.
34. Systems Becoming Other Systems – Even received structural systems have the capacity to be transformed along a gradient. New potentials emerge between the standards or norms.
38. Operating under Surfeit of Information – The management of a material process (like cooking) occurs at a different level than scientific research (the minutia are not directly controlled nor are they necessarily understood). This is acceptable because it is the larger scale effects that are important.
39. Asignfying Signs – An asignfying sign is an indication of material quality and performance. It is a locus for becoming, not a linguistic reading. It promotes production of the unforeseen rather than representing the known.
2. Difference in Kind / Difference in Degree – Meaning that is assigned and fixed (chess) vs. meaning that is acquired in context (go).
3. The Unformed Generic: Form Acquiring Content – Projecting content and scale into an unformed field. The field implies no specific scale of content. The stain is at once generic and specific. It contains a wide range of variations.
4. Similarity and Difference – Difference can emerge from similarity and similarity can emerge from difference. Things that look the same may perform differently and things that look different may perform similarly.
5. Variety (Difference) vs. Variation (Self-Similarity) – Intensive quantity generates a whole irreducible to the sum of its parts. Differential repetition is a means of handling program.
7. After Collage: Two Conditions of the Generic – Transformation is a quality perceived through deployment of quantity. Difference is a product of transformation. The universal is understood a “progressive differentiation.”
10. Selection vs. Classification – Typologies are important because they have range within limits. Selection within this range is based on performance of program relative to type.
11. Intensive and Extensive – “The most important distinction in our changed notions of architectural design is the shift from geometry as an abstract regulator of the materials of construction to a notion that matter and material behavior must be implicated in geometry itself.”
Intensive = properties of matter with indivisible differences, gradient. Temperature
Extensive = properties of matter with divisible differences. Mass
Potted plant, intensive proliferation, and extensive limit.
12. Geometry and Matter – Extensive and intensive qualities (quantities) collaborate in the production of architecture. Codes and other constraints can be considered extensive while material systems generate intensive characteristics.
13. Folly of the Mean – The mean is expected, extremes are where there is potential to innovate. The Aristotelian mean is justified in terms of human conduct and gets transferred to proportional systems.
21. Exchanges among Systems – “The architect is, in effect, neither a passive observer of determined systems nor a determined manipulator of passive material, but rather, the manager of an unfolding process.”
24. The Diagram – The diagram is not about the thing itself, but its relation to its context, milieu, or environment. Relationships may change due to scale shifts or behaviors may move from one scale to another. The diagram tracks performance (of relationships) as an abstract model of materiality.
34. Systems Becoming Other Systems – Even received structural systems have the capacity to be transformed along a gradient. New potentials emerge between the standards or norms.
38. Operating under Surfeit of Information – The management of a material process (like cooking) occurs at a different level than scientific research (the minutia are not directly controlled nor are they necessarily understood). This is acceptable because it is the larger scale effects that are important.
39. Asignfying Signs – An asignfying sign is an indication of material quality and performance. It is a locus for becoming, not a linguistic reading. It promotes production of the unforeseen rather than representing the known.
110221 - emergence
Here are my notes from Steven Johnson, Emergence:
Introduction
Slime mold: oscillation between a single creature and a swarm.
Morphogenesis: the development of ever more complex structures out of simple beginnings without any ‘master planner’ calling the shots. “Bottom-up behavior.”
Simple agents follow simple rules to generate complex structures. They operate according local conditions, not a knowledge of the whole.
Positive feedback loops encourage particular behaviors to take shape.
Behaviors (or qualities) identified in emergent systems are only recognizable at the collective scale, not at the scale of an individual agent.
Emergent systems are operative in diverse fields. The systems are similar, but the medium in which they operate is different.
Emergent systems get their intelligence from “masses of relatively stupid elements rather than a single, intelligent ‘executive branch.’”
Emergence is movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication, however a system is not emergent until it displays some type of macro-behavior.
Adaptive emergent systems adjust themselves until a productive or useful macro-behavior is produced. Emergence without adaptation is like snowflakes, beautiful but useless.
Tuning the system. Given a stated goal, how do you make an emergent system adaptive?
Control Artist
Cannot predict results just by looking at the rules. The system must live before it can be understood.
Our tendency is to think of systems such as flocking birds as having a leader rather than a set of the simple rules that each bird follows.
Emergent systems obey rules defined in advance; the rules govern micro-motives. Macro-behaviors are controlled indirectly. “All you do is set up the conditions you think will make that behavior possible. Then you press play and see what happens.”
New form of programming, software that is “grown” rather than “engineered.” Programming that is ‘more like baking a cake’ than ‘engineering a machine.’
In the fitness landscape, there are local maximums. Finding global maximums is a process of trial and error.
‘Fitness’ implies that there is a gauge for success.
The rules of the game and the world of the game can be explored simultaneously. As a society we are becoming more tolerant of being somewhat out of control. We are more tolerant of the phase where the rules don’t all make sense.
Emergent systems are controlled “from the margins,” therefore the unexpected is possible.
“Rules give games their structure, and without that structure, there’s no game: every move is a checkmate, and every toss of the dice lands you on Park Place.”
A game where anything can happen is, by definition, not a game.
Emphasizing rules may seem antithetical to an open-ended, exploratory system, but this is not the case. The capacity for growth and experimentation relies on low-level rules.
“Emergent behaviors, like games, are all about living within the boundaries defined by rules, but also using that space to create something greater than the sum of its parts.”
In game design where a player has oblique control, it is up to the game designer to determine how far to the margin the player’s control will be located. Too much or too little control results in a poor game.
Designers have a feel for the middle ground between too much control and too little.
Introduction
Slime mold: oscillation between a single creature and a swarm.
Morphogenesis: the development of ever more complex structures out of simple beginnings without any ‘master planner’ calling the shots. “Bottom-up behavior.”
Simple agents follow simple rules to generate complex structures. They operate according local conditions, not a knowledge of the whole.
Positive feedback loops encourage particular behaviors to take shape.
Behaviors (or qualities) identified in emergent systems are only recognizable at the collective scale, not at the scale of an individual agent.
Emergent systems are operative in diverse fields. The systems are similar, but the medium in which they operate is different.
Emergent systems get their intelligence from “masses of relatively stupid elements rather than a single, intelligent ‘executive branch.’”
Emergence is movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication, however a system is not emergent until it displays some type of macro-behavior.
Adaptive emergent systems adjust themselves until a productive or useful macro-behavior is produced. Emergence without adaptation is like snowflakes, beautiful but useless.
Tuning the system. Given a stated goal, how do you make an emergent system adaptive?
Control Artist
Cannot predict results just by looking at the rules. The system must live before it can be understood.
Our tendency is to think of systems such as flocking birds as having a leader rather than a set of the simple rules that each bird follows.
Emergent systems obey rules defined in advance; the rules govern micro-motives. Macro-behaviors are controlled indirectly. “All you do is set up the conditions you think will make that behavior possible. Then you press play and see what happens.”
New form of programming, software that is “grown” rather than “engineered.” Programming that is ‘more like baking a cake’ than ‘engineering a machine.’
In the fitness landscape, there are local maximums. Finding global maximums is a process of trial and error.
‘Fitness’ implies that there is a gauge for success.
The rules of the game and the world of the game can be explored simultaneously. As a society we are becoming more tolerant of being somewhat out of control. We are more tolerant of the phase where the rules don’t all make sense.
Emergent systems are controlled “from the margins,” therefore the unexpected is possible.
“Rules give games their structure, and without that structure, there’s no game: every move is a checkmate, and every toss of the dice lands you on Park Place.”
A game where anything can happen is, by definition, not a game.
Emphasizing rules may seem antithetical to an open-ended, exploratory system, but this is not the case. The capacity for growth and experimentation relies on low-level rules.
“Emergent behaviors, like games, are all about living within the boundaries defined by rules, but also using that space to create something greater than the sum of its parts.”
In game design where a player has oblique control, it is up to the game designer to determine how far to the margin the player’s control will be located. Too much or too little control results in a poor game.
Designers have a feel for the middle ground between too much control and too little.
110310 - over the break
Keep pushing your project forward over spring break. Spend time working in studio and away from studio. Travel with your laptop. For those of you who are behind, this is an opportunity to complete any incomplete midterm requirements. For those of you who are caught up, this is a time to develop the light filter and tracking document further, as well as to modify / augment your work in response to criticism received in the review.
On Monday 3/21, we will discuss readings and have a pin-up of work done over the break. We will discuss Rajchman's Grounds and Johnson's Emergence, which were assigned earlier; and Reiser & Umemoto's Atlas of Novel Tectonics [excerpts]. All the readings are available for download here on the blog. After the pin-up I will meet with each of you individually about your midterm evaluation. Fill out the top half of the sheet (which I emailed) and bring it to the meeting.
Email me photos of models, pdfs of drawings and jpegs of images for feedback during the break.
On Monday 3/21, we will discuss readings and have a pin-up of work done over the break. We will discuss Rajchman's Grounds and Johnson's Emergence, which were assigned earlier; and Reiser & Umemoto's Atlas of Novel Tectonics [excerpts]. All the readings are available for download here on the blog. After the pin-up I will meet with each of you individually about your midterm evaluation. Fill out the top half of the sheet (which I emailed) and bring it to the meeting.
Email me photos of models, pdfs of drawings and jpegs of images for feedback during the break.
110308 - material analysis 2
110307 - material analysis
Example of the material analysis drawings. This material is composed of wood molding profiles, cut into parts, in assemblies of increasing scales (unit, strand, braid) to construct a landscape condition. Go here for a slideshow of more drawings and here for the handout that introduced this exercise.
unit - sol, girolamo, jenny r, abraham
strand - ned, aimee, jenny b
braid - alyssa, julie, matthew, yoshi
110228 - instrument
This expanded notion of materiality…liberates form from a dualist approach that separates ideas from substances, objects from subjects, and production from perception. Today, abstract and dynamic materials can be precisely measured and visualized with the aid of digital software, and merged with concrete materials used to produce the design of built forms. It allows built forms to address multiple causes and hybrid concerns, and allows us to redefine the role of function in built forms…
Farshid Moussavi
The Function of Form, 2009
Design a form with a function – an instrument for tracking and filtering sunlight. Designing this instrument will not separate ideas from materials; it will aim to address ‘hybrid concerns’ within a particular material logic. Consider how sharkskin merges material and function while simultaneously being hydrodynamically efficient and resistant to microbial infection. Consider how Francois Roche’s building “that never dies” works as an instrument tracking the moon through the sky, and how drawings of the project associate paths of celestial bodies with geometry of the building.
Francois Roche, R&Sie(n) –
SUNLIGHT FILTER
The instrument will track and filter sunlight with a graduated series of apertures and fins. It will reflect material logics of units and strands, curving and twisting while distributing apertures and fins of varying depth. Explore potentials for the instrument to address hybrid concerns – how can it filter sunlight and simultaneously create enclosed spaces?
Construct a physical model of the sunlight filter from two-ply bristol board. Build it to the following specifications:
TRACKING DOCUMENT
Develop a document tracking how the light filter controls sunlight. This document must show superimposed shadows for at least five different lighting conditions occurring at different times of the day and year. Use Rhino to render shadows from multiple views. Compose the document in Illustrator.
Farshid Moussavi
The Function of Form, 2009
Design a form with a function – an instrument for tracking and filtering sunlight. Designing this instrument will not separate ideas from materials; it will aim to address ‘hybrid concerns’ within a particular material logic. Consider how sharkskin merges material and function while simultaneously being hydrodynamically efficient and resistant to microbial infection. Consider how Francois Roche’s building “that never dies” works as an instrument tracking the moon through the sky, and how drawings of the project associate paths of celestial bodies with geometry of the building.
Microscopic image of sharkskin
Francois Roche, R&Sie(n) –
SUNLIGHT FILTER
The instrument will track and filter sunlight with a graduated series of apertures and fins. It will reflect material logics of units and strands, curving and twisting while distributing apertures and fins of varying depth. Explore potentials for the instrument to address hybrid concerns – how can it filter sunlight and simultaneously create enclosed spaces?
Construct a physical model of the sunlight filter from two-ply bristol board. Build it to the following specifications:
- width = approx. 9”, length = approx. 18”
- depth of apertures/fins must vary at least between 1/2” and 3”
- apertures and fins must filter sunlight differently for different times of the day and year
- the physical model of the sunlight filter must be rigid and self-supporting
TRACKING DOCUMENT
Develop a document tracking how the light filter controls sunlight. This document must show superimposed shadows for at least five different lighting conditions occurring at different times of the day and year. Use Rhino to render shadows from multiple views. Compose the document in Illustrator.
110221 - strand studies
Examples of curving / rotating strands built from cut and re-assembled bits of straight extruded wood molding profiles.
Alyssa, Yoshi, Matthew, Julie
Alyssa, Yoshi, Matthew, Julie
Ned, Jenny B, Aimee
Sol, Girolamo, Jenny R, Abraham
110220 - (un)grounding
…one might say that the concept of “program” may dispose us to an overly operational view of the space through which our bodies acquire their trajectivity, which another less programmatic, more affective diagram might allow us to see. A new question arises: What kinds of spaces or constructions might accommodate, show, facilitate, release these ungrounded sorts of movement, encounter, connection, for example in urban spaces, and the ways in which we fill them out? What would an architecture of such trajectories and movements look like…
- John Rajchman
Grounds, 1998
In the next phase of the semester, you will be analyzing landscapes of effect and affect. Effective potentials of a landscape are grounding; they suggest a level of stability in the earth. Effect will be studied in shadows moving across the landscape. Affective potentials of a landscape are ungrounding; they suggest open-ended trajectories of bodies in space. Affect will be studied in a text mapping exercise. The aim of these analyses will be to unpack unique qualities of landscape in your project.
SHADOW ANALYSIS
Build a Rhino model of the new smoother, more ‘surfaced’ landscape. Reflect all modifications to profiles, units and strands in the transition from wood to foam. The digital model must correspond as closely as possible to the physical model, but do not expect it to be an exact replica.
When the digital model is complete, use Rhino’s ‘One-Day Sun Study’ tool or the sun path model provided on the blog to track shadows moving across the landscape. Locate the landscape at 40 degrees north latitude, the approximate latitude of New York City. Orient the model to north and to gravity, then render shadows in selected view(s) for every 20 minutes of the winter solstice (shortest day), summer solstice (longest day) and equinox (equal day and night). Create a vertical filmstrip of small (approx. 2” high) still images for each of the three days.
TEXT MAPPPING
Refine and expand branching sentences from the first writing workshop: consider how branching organizes space and time, consider how branches converge and diverge, generate multiple alternatives for each sentence, work quickly by hand in your sketchbook, and scan selected branching sentences when complete.
Select one of the following Octavio Paz poems: As One Listens to the Rain, Axis, Spaces, The Street (find a link to Paz’s work on the blog). Using this poem as a pool of language, map text onto the river-scape. Strands of the river-scape will structure strands of text. Devise rules for relating text with notations in the map. Graphics and scale of text will be modified to reflect transforming characteristics of the river-scape. Create a high-density field of text. Text may be overlapping, but it must be legible in particular moments.
- John Rajchman
Grounds, 1998
In the next phase of the semester, you will be analyzing landscapes of effect and affect. Effective potentials of a landscape are grounding; they suggest a level of stability in the earth. Effect will be studied in shadows moving across the landscape. Affective potentials of a landscape are ungrounding; they suggest open-ended trajectories of bodies in space. Affect will be studied in a text mapping exercise. The aim of these analyses will be to unpack unique qualities of landscape in your project.
Day-long shadow study, top view –
Ashish Kulkarni
Conjugative Mass (detail) –
Daniel Zeller, 2004
SHADOW ANALYSIS
Build a Rhino model of the new smoother, more ‘surfaced’ landscape. Reflect all modifications to profiles, units and strands in the transition from wood to foam. The digital model must correspond as closely as possible to the physical model, but do not expect it to be an exact replica.
When the digital model is complete, use Rhino’s ‘One-Day Sun Study’ tool or the sun path model provided on the blog to track shadows moving across the landscape. Locate the landscape at 40 degrees north latitude, the approximate latitude of New York City. Orient the model to north and to gravity, then render shadows in selected view(s) for every 20 minutes of the winter solstice (shortest day), summer solstice (longest day) and equinox (equal day and night). Create a vertical filmstrip of small (approx. 2” high) still images for each of the three days.
TEXT MAPPPING
Refine and expand branching sentences from the first writing workshop: consider how branching organizes space and time, consider how branches converge and diverge, generate multiple alternatives for each sentence, work quickly by hand in your sketchbook, and scan selected branching sentences when complete.
Select one of the following Octavio Paz poems: As One Listens to the Rain, Axis, Spaces, The Street (find a link to Paz’s work on the blog). Using this poem as a pool of language, map text onto the river-scape. Strands of the river-scape will structure strands of text. Devise rules for relating text with notations in the map. Graphics and scale of text will be modified to reflect transforming characteristics of the river-scape. Create a high-density field of text. Text may be overlapping, but it must be legible in particular moments.
110220 - riverscape maps
Examples of the riverscape maps. Go here for a slideshow of all students' work. And here for the assignment that introduced this exercise.
girolamo carollo
abraham dreazen
jenny rong
sol ok
Great job everyone, these turned out very nicely! Now the challenge is to see how the organizational qualities found in this mapping work can inform the next phases of the project. And of course, those of you who haven't submitted the map yet, please do so ASAP!!
110220 - sun path geometry
Here is a Rhino model of sun paths for New York City's latitude for summer solstice, equinox, and winter solstice. You'll notice that each hour is divided into three segments of 20 mins. each. So bring this into your landscape model, scale as necessary and render a sequence for each of the three days by placing a directional light on each point aimed toward the center of the dome.
This will be more labor intensive then using Rhino's sun animation tools, but will yield accurate results. Hopefully it will give you a better idea of sun path geometry. Let me know if you find any problems with the model.
This will be more labor intensive then using Rhino's sun animation tools, but will yield accurate results. Hopefully it will give you a better idea of sun path geometry. Let me know if you find any problems with the model.
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