digital aptitudes - Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2012 - 12:30PM - 2:00PM
Design Continued
Ornate Screens
Daniel Baerlecken, Georgia Institute of Technology
The project “Ornate Screens” investigates ornamentation of 3-dimensional
surfaces through digital tools, which allow the re-introduction
of variation. Ornament has been abolished by the avant-garde in the
first half of the twentieth century and ornamentation has been replaced
by material aesthetic. With this project we will argue that ornament
is not a parergon, an unnecessary accessory, but that the parergon,
the ornament, actually becomes the ergon, the main element.
In that sense ornament becomes performative in two ways. Firstly,
ornament performs in a perceptual way. With Ernst Gombrich we argue
that aesthetic enjoyment is guided by the “sense of order” “as an
active agent reaching out toward the environment, not blindly and at
random”, but structured. Ornamentation allows “Einfuehlung” - empathy,
the identification with an object.
Secondly, we argue that ornament can perform on the level of the
ergon as structural system.
The project has two design foci: the first focus is the design of a series
of lights, which are fabricated through STL and SLS technologies. The
objects are brought to life primarily as single objects without joints or
seams as ‘additive fabrication’. By that, the objects can be produced
directly from digital information as unique pieces. Each light can be
different from the other, but still belong to the same family. Changing
variables in the original script allows creating a different light, which
still can feed back to a greater family. Mass production is replaced
with mass customization. One can create unique objects by manipulating
the parameters.
The second project is an installation, a CNC fabricated wood construction
that demonstrates how a pattern based geometry can be
optimized structurally through a set of iterations. The tessellationbased
project is adapted in order to achieve a maximum of structural
strength. The structural calculation model contains not only geometry
but also loads resulting from various sources.
The design of a series of lights demonstrates the potential of CAAD
and CAAM tools for a design object and shows how these tools allow
us to re-think the relationship of author and user: Through parametric
tools each user can design its own light within certain constrains. The
second project shows how parametric tools can be used to optimize
geometry to achieve a structural performance.
Ornament can be re-introduced as ergon that allows strengthening
empathy between subject and object and that allows solving problems
of performance. Ornament becomes necessary again.
the NEXT curtain
Virginia San Fratello, San Jose State University
The inherent nature of 3D printing opens new possibilities for shaping
materials and it’s my belief that this process will reshape the way we
design and fabricate architectural and interior building components.
Digital materiality, a term coined by Italian and Swiss architects Fabio
Gramazio and Matthias Kohler, describes materiality increasingly enriched
with digital characteristics where data, material, programming
and construction are interwoven (Gramazio and Kohler, 2008). The
designs for these two curtains were created as an exploration into the
rapid manufacture of interior building components that are not only
made through the process of 3D printing, but are all also responsive
to the environment.
Unique, one of a kind building components, generated quickly and
economically, from advanced 3 dimensional modeling software were
explored. These 3D printed curtains were studied in conjunction with
solar conditions throughout the day and year and offer an alternative
to traditional curtains and blinds, one that is responsive to weather, to
views and to interior programming.
Exploration #1: The WAVE curtain is a passive solar curtain that is
designed to admit the low winter sun into the building interior and restrict
the direct, intense summer sun in order to help keep the interior
cool. The curtain does this through the use of cylindrical tubes that
vary in width and depth along the length of the window. Because the
cylindrical tubes are hollow one always has access to exterior views
-even when the sun is being blocked - unlike a typical shade or curtain.
The curtain is 3D printed of white poly lactic acid from renewable
resources such as corn starch.
Exploration #2: The HEX curtain is designed to open and close automatically
in response to natural day lighting conditions. Each row of
the HEX curtain is composed of hexagonal shaped apertures that are
covered by 2 operable shields. The 2 shields have the ability to pivot
open and closed. The shields are hinged at the bottom and threaded
at the top. The top thread connects each shield to the one next to
it. At the end of each row a rotary motor pulls the thread and slowly
opens or closes the shields in tandem. The rotary motor is driven by
an arduino microcontroller connected to a solar sensor so on a sunny
summer day the shields remain closed and on a sunny winter day the
shields are automatically opened to allow sun to enter the interior and
warm the space.
The HEX curtain is constructed of laser sintered nylon and is 3D printed
in 27” x 22” panels.
The Next Generative Infrastructure for Detroit
Constance Bodurow, Lawrence Technological University
Detroit has a wealth of empty space, though little intelligence or understanding
of it. There is a global, morbid fascination with Detroit’s
emptiness. The media and design disciplines have mythologized it
in imagery and obsessively mapped and quantified it (the reported
yet disputed 40,000 parcels). Vacancy perpetuates entrenched
social, economic and environmental disparities and inequities, but,
in the midst of formal ‘right sizing’ and informal urban agricultural
initiatives, a constructive civic dialogue about the role of vacancy in
the future of the city has yet to begin.
Our transdisciplinary design research lab wishes to prompt the dialogue.
We believe that a new urban geography and ecosystem are
required to balance the benefits and impacts of both shrinking and
rapid urbanization and leverage the assets and complex combinations
of forces of the city-scape. We look at vacancy as a new infrastructure
for the city. We see vacancy, as it manifests: in land,
buildings and infrastructure, as generative. Vacancy provides an
armature for collective dialogue, design intervention and policy. We
recommend a variety of productive, temporal uses for vacancy, to
generate the next urban form of the city. In the same manner that
the grid and infrastructure become a generator of urban form and
use (Smithsons, Varnelis, Belanger, et al), vacancy can guide future
urban form in Detroit.
Digital Apptitutes + Other Openings - Boston, MA - 43