This week at the forum: an open conversation with Neri Oxman. Her bio and projects can be found here.
Image: Carpal Skin - by Neri Oxman

Summaries of the projects discussed during last friday’s experimental “thesis workshop”:

Shapes Grammars as a Computational Model for The Perception of Affordances-Mark Watabe
James J Gibson, a psychologist who wrote prolifically about his theories of visual perception argued there is a difference between direct information, that is the perception of the affordances in an environment, and indirect information, that is the information contained in signals and signs in a defined channel of communication. What are affordances? Affordances are what the various surfaces and substances that compose the environment offers to the animal, for example standing on, hanging from, nibbling on. And the potential of these actions are directly perceived in that which is seen. Classifying, categorizing, and attributing meaning to that which is seen only hinders our ability to perceive affordances. See more here.

Logic matter-Skylar Tibbits
Given the increasing complexity of the physical structures surrounding our everyday environment; buildings, machines, computers and almost every other physical object that humans interact with, the processes of assembly are inevitably caught in a battle of time, complexity and human/machine processing power. If we are to keep up with this exponential growth in construction complexity we need to develop automated assembly logic embedded within our material parts to aid in construction. In this thesis I introduce Logic Matter as a system of passive mechanical logic modules for self-guided-assembly of large-scale structures. As opposed to current systems in self-reconfigurable robotics, Logic Matter introduces scalability, robustness, redundancy and local heuristics to achieve passive assembly. I describe Hairy Chain and greedy NAND logic as effective tools for encoding construction sequences. I then show a physical prototype that successfully demonstrates the described mechanics, encoded information and passive self-guided-assembly of Logic Matter. Finally, applications are outlined including; space/volume filling, surface construction and 3D circuit assembly. See more here

Prefab the FabLab: rethinking the habitability of a fabrication lab by including fixture-based components-Joseph Nunez
This thesis is about defining a fixture-based system that can be adapted into a digital fabrication production system of friction fit assembly. It is inspired by the work and research conducted by the Digital Design Fabrication Group at MIT, specifically the work related to the Cabin House and the Instant House. The building industry in recent decades has experienced a fluctuation of different delivery methods. Within that variation has been prefabricated construction. Numerous examples, academic and professional, have demonstrated the benefits of prefabrication construction and as result this delivery method has gradually become more attractive to those considering alternative building types.

This week MIT alumnus and parametric design expert Dennis Michaud will join us at the Forum to discuss his work at Massachusetts-based company Blu Homes. His talk will give us a chance to take a look inside industry’s use of BIM, parametrics and kinetics in housing development. Pre-fabbers watch out!

Talk blurb
The aim of this talk will be to describe and show examples of how parametric modeling (CATIA) and innovative building technology are being used at Blu Homes, a Massachusetts-based prefab housing company, to tackle the following perennially-discussed topics in prefabrication: delivery costs, site-time, customization, manufacturing efficiency, and architecture-as-product.

Mini-bio
Dennis Michaud is VP of Product Development at Blu, Inc. (www.bluhomes.com) and is responsible for managing the development of Blu Homes’ designs, as well as its building and information technologies. He received his Masters of Architecture at MIT in 2008.
Daniel & Ari

Omar Khan’s Reflexive Architecture Machines, presented in the Computation group lecture, tapped into the ambition of an ever increasing number of architects: to incorporate responsiveness, unpredictability and movement as both expressive and performative strategies in spatial design.

Khan positioned the work -products of his research group in University of Buffalo- within the cybernetic tradition of Ross Ashby’s Homeostat, a machine built with the sole purpose of maintaining state against self-generated disturbances intended to simulate an environment. Consistent with its model, Khan’s team researches deformable molds and kinetic structures that produce artifacts that move and re-accommodate in response to changes in their environments. The emphasis placed on the non-indexical nature of the artifacts’ responses -they are supposed to act less like mirrors and more like “organisms”- confirms our culture’s continuing fascination with the unpredictable as a source of poetic meaning.

The work on deformable molds explored self-similarity and variation brought into tangible patterns and structures. The series called Ellastic Catenaries, for instance, comprised prototypes made of flexible polymers that, set in motion by hidden engines and invisible cords, seemed to mimic the rubbery and fluid quality of parametric models. Are Khan’s works an example of a parametric expressionism -or literalism- of sorts? An installment of architect’s long-held tendency to seek in the physical world the attributes of their modeling environments, in this case, the digital stages of parametric design software?

Responsive and intelligent architectures have been the “next” thing since at least the late 60s, but some of Khan’s projects’ emphasis on the expressive and contexted nature of space and space intervention bring back some of the curiosity about embodied experience that characterized mid-century cybernetic conceptions of environment, mind and body, specially in Britain. This -I would say healthy- curiosity is notoriously absent in today’s contemporary performance-driven design discourses; Khan’s work shows how it can yield curious and playful artifacts that involve audiences by means of feedback, movement, and variation. Within this scope Khan’s structures may be seen as examples of an updated architectural “cybernetic serendipity”.

Image: Omar Khan, “Open Columns”, 2007

- Daniel Cardoso

Friday, March 12th, in Room 9-250 (note change in room) 1:00-1:20  Murat Mutlu  (Yoon, Tehrani, Kassabian) 1:20-1:40   Steffen Reichert  (Knight, Yoon, Ortiz) 1:40-2:00  Mark Watabe  (Stiny, Ochsendorf, Lepinay) 2:00-2:20  Varvara Toulkeridou  (Stiny, Nagakura) 2:20-2:40  Junno Ophir  (Larson, O’Reilly, Knight) 2:40-3:00  German Aparicio (Sass, Shelden, Danziger) BREAK 3:10-3:30  Shani Sharif (Sass, Knight) 3:30-3:50  Adela Kalenja (Nagakura, Knight, Shelden) 3:50-4:10  Skylar Tibbits (Knight, Winston, Demaine) 4:10-4:30  Joseph Nunez (Sass, Nagakura). Image from Steffen Reichert’s Thesis presentation.

This coming Friday at the Harvard GSD six panelists will present their views on the relationship between math and architectural practice. See details below, or clic here for more info.

“Architecture and mathematics have constantly balanced between two extremes: an experiential dimension, often imbued with contemplative connotations, and the quest for operative techniques that do not necessarily present a spatial meaning. Hence the ambiguous moment we are going through, faced simultaneously with architecture’s estrangement from mathematics and the spectacular diffusion of computational tools. Six leading scholars and practitioners debate the renewed instrumentality of mathematics from a historical, epistemological, and practical point of view.”

Conference schedule:

1:00pm / Opening remarks by Dean Mostafavi

1:15pm / George L. Legendre, GSD design critic, architect and author, IJP London
Introductory Remarks: “An Ambiguous Moment”

1:30pm / Amy Dahan-Dalmedico, professor and writer, University of Paris and CNRS-EHESS Paris
“Mathematics and the Sensible World: Constructing, Representing, Simulating. A Historical and Philosophical Profile”

2:20pm / Antoine Picon, Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology, Harvard GSD
“Architecture and Mathematics: Between Intuition and the Quest for Operative Techniques”

3:10pm / George L. Legendre, GSD design critic, architect and author, IJP London

4:00pm / Ben Aranda, Aranda/Lash NY
“Destruction and Renewal”

4:50pm / Break

5:00pm / Dennis Shelden, CTO Gehry Technologies LA
“Beyond Descartes: Emerging Ontologies of Space, Form and Design”

5:50pm / Keynote Lecture by Bernard Cache, architect and author, Objectile Paris
“Continuity and Discontinuity in De Architectura”

6:40pm / Roundtable discussion with all speakers

Convened by George L. Legendre

Open to the public

For more information, contact:
Brooke King (bking@gsd.harvard.edu)

Sponsored By:
Department of Architecture

Conference

» 01:00 PM - 08:00 PM 03/05/2010

Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall

This week Alise Upitis will join us at the Forum. In her talk “Two architectures and the design process” she will discuss how post-war technological changes dramatically shaped conceptions of the design process. A great opportunity to understand the technological context -and the sensibility- that gave origin to the tools that define architectural and design practices today. Not to be missed!

Two architectures and the process of design.

This talk seeks to illuminate the technical details of how early computer architectures enabled and constrained the development of early computational tools for design and in turn how these tools conditioned how the process of design was conceived. It focuses on two trajectories in the development of digital computers, the TX series that developed at MIT out of Project Whirlwind and the IBM 700/7000 series, and two areas of computer-related research at MIT between WWII and 1964: computer graphics and architect Christopher Alexander’s computer programs for architectural design.

Mini-bio Alise Upitis is a Visiting Scholar in MIT’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology, where she is investigating new modes for understanding and disseminating archival productions surrounding time-based art. Alise received a PhD in Architecture: Design and Computation from MIT in 2008.

Image Credit

Diagram of Whirlwind I architecture. From Anonymous, Whirlwind I (Cambridge, MA: Electronic Computer Division, Servomechanisms Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1951), 10-11.

This week Jan Kokol will be at the forum sharing his work. Jan is a visiting student from Technical University in Graz, Austria, and is currently doing research on Mass Customization here at MIT under Prof. Nader Tehrani’s supervision.

See below for more details. Please note that the Forum’s new room is 9-250. The forum meets from 6-8 PM on Friday.

Short Bio

Jan Kokol, born 1978 in Ljubljana, Slovenia is currently researching at the MIT under the supervision of Professor Nader Tehrani in relation to his PhD about Mass Customization. His supervisor at the Technical University in Graz, Austria is Professor Roger Riewe. Architectural education at the Technical University in Graz, Austria, the Faculdade de Arquitectura in Lisbon, Portugal and the Chiba-Dai University in Chiba/ Tokyo, Japan. 2005 finishing his Masters thesis designing the concept of the Austrian Pavilion for the Expo 2005 in Nagoya, Japan based on Nanotechnology and Artificial Intelligence. 2000-2002, 2004-2005 working for Günther Domenig, focusing on the T-Mobile Center in Vienna, Austria. 2005-2007 in function as the leading 3-D designer at the Miralles Tagliabue architectural office in Barcelona, Spain. 2007-2008 collaboration with Opersis/ Zaha Hadid on the Bridge Pavilion for the EXPO 2008 in Zaragoza, Spain. 2009 thesis tutor at the Facultad de Arquitectura de la UNAM in Mexico City, Mexico. 2006, exposition at CIVA Brussels, Belgium for the Miralles Tagliabue architectural office. Works in relation to Conceptual Art and New Media Art since 2005. 2007 founding of the design and visualization company PIKALELE.

Presentation Abstract

the architecture as a part of art and the architect as the joining link in between. in the fast moving world of today as the related complexity it is of great importance to have clear ideas. ideas are the origin of further processing and can be seen as the computation of thoughts. by definition, computation is any kind of information processing, from human thinking to computer calculations. but there is a great difference in between intelligence and artificial intelligence. the rules and code are still defined by a human brain, which is dynamically searching for problem solutions. following this explanation we return to the starting point describing the idea. the idea can be seen as the main concept.

the goal of this presentation it to visualize the importance of the concept in art, as architecture and design. following modern production processes as mass customization a great question arises…the valour of a product created by machines, with unlimited repetitions, in comparison to a handcrafted object, unique as based on the involved human error.

the work presented has a wide range from painting, photography, home-page design, visualization, animation, architectural concepts. it is a conglomerate in terms of personality, instead of work only. this is the reason for calling it life and work.

the main projects presented will be collaborations with the artist and cousin of enric miralles, jordi pallares, collaborations with the architectural office of günther domenig, collaborations with the miralles tagliabue architectural office and collaborations with opersis/ zaha hadid. A deeper insight will be granted at the main presentation as discussion.

This year the Sigradi conference (a sister conference to ACADIA and ECAADE) will take place in Bogotá, Colombia, in November 17-19, and will be held jointly by the Architecture, Arts, and Math Schools of Universidad de los Andes.

The conference is currently accepting papers, check the author guidelines and start the submission process in

http://sigradi2010.uniandes.edu.co/index.php/sigradi/2010/schedConf/cfp

Image By Ella Piechovich

The ‘enlivened’ geometric models within modeling environments invite a redefinition of what we understand as a design representation. Designers who learn how to program often use idioms that render the very notion of representation as atavic, seeking to emphasize the perception of scripts as performative, or ‘alive’. This became once more evident during the last two weeks of the IAP period, when a group of students learned the fundamentals of scripting under the instruction of descompers Skylar Tibbits, Steffen Reichert, and Ari Kardasis. During the first week of the workshop participants developed custom tools (using RhinoScript) to automate the execution of geometric tasks. During the second week a design agenda was disclosed; the tools developed were to be used on entries for MIT’s iconic Lobby 7’s plinths design competition.

Establishing such clear distinction between “development” and “design” was a provocative methodological decision that helped participants, instructors, and guest critics, reflect on the role tools and toolmaking play in creative endeavors. It did so, among other things, by highlighting the semantic knots that we incur when we try to keep “concepts” and “representations”, and “representations” and “tools”, as entirely separate entities. Revealingly, when asked about the ideas ‘behind’ her competition proposal one of the participants said “sure, if you want a concept I can give you one”.

Fibonacci Spiral - Dina El-Zafaly

A presenter said, for instance, that her script had become too representational at an early coding stage. Despite the script’s ability to yield multiple parametric variations it had become predictable and prevented her from “being more creative”. Revealingly, adding a few equations to the script solved the problem, and the student-coder regained interest in it as a “generative” tool. While our designers’ fascination with the “generative” seems to rely on the unexpected and the naif -too much understanding and too much control seem to threaten our “creativity”- the appeal of sketching, by contrast, is its capacity to epitomize control. Our language often construes sketching as a Cartesian translation between the “mind” and the paper. What happens when scripting becomes second nature?

Dynamic Spiral - Varvara Toulkeridou

Consistently throughout the presentations the vocabularies of computation and design intertwined, yielding a hybrid jargon that was in itself a rich and “creative” artifact -a space of metaphors where design was depicted sometimes as a goal-oriented, sometimes as an exploratory, endeavor. Some of these “tools”, however, transcended the constraints of this binary and derived in elegant design proposals that successfully involved both the materiality and the unique space of Lobby 7.

The “Only Tools?” workshop was set to interrogate the role of tools in design processes. It played out nicely, and helped us question the boundary of what we think of as design. This is always a healthy exercise.

- Daniel Cardoso