digital aptitudes - Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2012 - 12:30PM - 2:00PM
Architecture Continued
Small House
Donna Kacmar, University of Houston
This 544 sq. ft. house was placed at the back of a large lot to allow
for future development if desired while also sized to allow for
house to be moved if property was sold for land value only. The
house sits next to a large carport/porch and looks out to a large
Ipe deck and the lawn beyond. The house is efficiently designed for
a couple who spend much of their time away but required a place
near work and family. The house is wrapped in low maintenance
metal siding on the exterior and simple materials are used inside.
The bathroom and closet are clad in vintage white oak siding that
matches the kitchen cabinetry and refers to the cabin like quality
of this very modest home.
Structural Scents
Glenn Nowak, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Erik Swendseid, Univeristy of Nevada, Las Vegas
The Structure of Scent
An examination of past developments between design and human
interaction will generate the NEXT pedagogical intersection between
architecture and society; the next point in which designers
educate and inform society of the experiential qualities of a fulfilling
built environment.
Throughout the last 100 years, society’s vastly changed perception
of color, light, scale, sound, movement, and technology in design
and architecture has forever altered the way we live in and
judge our built environment. This heightened sense of awareness
has either redefined or given each element a new role as a layer
in the designer’s thought process. Their combined syntheses with
all other elements of design have led to groundbreaking creativity
and innovation in architecture. We now see buildings that are
covered with light that dance to music. Information technology has
made possible a whole new level of complexity and human interaction
with architecture. Advances in engineering and the science of
materials have allowed architects to design bigger and taller, while
keeping users safer. Architectural visualizations and architectural
acoustics have made tremendous strides over the last one hundred
years. With such advances happening in the way architecture engages
our emotions and physical environment, we can argue the
thought that the olfactory sense will, in the next 100 years, mimic
these advancements and employ a much more critical role in our
sensory experience.
Given its potential cognitive capacity, a heightened sense of olfactory
awareness will enable us to do more than merely enjoy a
pleasant amenity, but instead will provide us with a tool for living.
Educating ourselves of this potential, learning the “language” of
scent, and taking advantage of its benefits will deliver only richer
experiences in design. Today, the way we perceive scent and
translate its meaning often leaves us describing it in very elementary
terms such as “good“ or “offensive“. With such an effort in
society to cover one scent with another scent, we often fail to
recognize the many subtleties in between an under whelmed and
overwhelmed environment. Being able to express and recognize
gradations in scent will allow designers to use scent as a tool for
design, to communicate specific goals to the end user, and will
allow the olfactory sense to become a more functional piece of
everyday life, as opposed to something with which we currently
use to simply recognize decoration. With advances in perfuming
science, scientists can not only create new smells that have never
been recognized before in nature, but they can pinpoint the exact
molecular structure for these and all other scents in order to arrive
at a specific purpose for design.
As designers, we need to seize the opportunity and potential of all
senses in design, while taking into account the complexity of the
human mind and its multidimensional and multisensory comforts
to insure that they do not become dormant in an unchallenging
society. “The architecture of tomorrow will call for an architect that
can embed new kinds of rules and design behaviors together with
design ingenuity.” Maria Lorena Lehman
The Fibrous Structure Machine: a Generative Process
Towards Form-Finding
Emmanouil Vermisso, Florida Atlantic University
The project discussed here was developed during a six week research
& design seminar on biologically inspired prototyping
(the project itself lasting four weeks). Based on the observation
that nature produces infinite structural and formal configurations
through re-cycling of only one material (fibers), a ‘machine’ was
designed that would fabricate complex shapes using a variety of
thread types and a simple actuator such as a Lego® motor. The
project is regarded as an attempt to learn from the efficiency of
biological systems; in the long-term, the authors would like to extract
a series of ‘rules’ from the properties of the three fiber types
that exist in the human body. We are interested in this line of study
because it operates on both formal (aesthetic) and performative
(functional) levels. The nature of the work involved requires input
from other disciplines like Engineering to perform analysis on the
resulting prototypes which is something that we are encouraging
as a working methodology. From an Architectural standpoint, the
next generations of this machine can provide a good platform for
developing some sort of structural response to form. The precedence
for this investigation seems to be assuming an ever-growing
importance within the context of integration in Architecture and
the authors believe that such premises will constitute a large portion
of future Design -related research.
Thick-It
Adam Fure, University of Michigan
Global climate change and the imperative of sustainability have
placed immense pressure on the discipline to consider innovation in
new terms. Technological progress is no longer measured solely by
advancements in structural engineering, responsive skins, and new
composite materials but also by the responsible recycling, renewal,
and reuse of that which already exists. Until now advancements
in computation and digital fabrication have been predominately
in service of the former while material scientists and a handful of
resourceful architects have propelled the latter. Thick-It expands
the role of computation in sustainable material practice by mixing
high-tech digital protocols with low-tech material realities.
Digital Apptitutes + Other Openings - Boston, MA - 39