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TS 01 PERSONAL PROJECT

-STUDLEY PARK BOATHOUSE

02 STATE Of THE ART PROJECTS-JEWISH MUSEUM-THE YAS HOTEL

04 INNOvATIvE dIgITAL PRECEdENTS-LINCOLN PARK NATURE BOARDWALK-THE AQUA TOWER

06 SCRIPTINg PRECEdENTS-PROJECT X-NEW HARMONY GROTTO-GANTENBEIN WINERY

09 RESPONSE TO THE LECTURE-WEEK O4 LECTURE THOUGHTS

10 CUT PROJECT-MATRIX OF TRIALS

The development of this project was conceived with reference to the architects Alvar Aalto and Daniel Libeskind. These two very different architects inspired my creation of a building that could integrate well with its surrounding natural identity and enhance the clientele’s experience of the surrounding environment. I learnt that there can be many alternative ways in which to fulfil this aim and it depended most ardently on all manner of aspects associated with the site in which the building would eventually reside.

My understanding of the brief for this project highlighted the requirement for the Gateway to connect with its natural surroundings, social surroundings and the built elements in the Wyndham municipality but with a inspiring thread

involved as well. The Gateway structure I don’t want to meld into the surroundings, it will need to grab attention and spark an interest in the viewer, a curiosity that will encourage a visit.

With the Boathouse project I was primarily concerned with the connection to the natural surrounds and drew inference on how to deal with that from Aalto. To deal with the social connection and also inspiration on aesthetics I looked at the work of Daniel Libeskind.

PERSONAL PROJECTSTUdLEY PARK BOATHOUSE

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Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin is an interesting example of a strong social construction that drives the design and has contributed to the architectural discourse by inspiring other architects to design and build with strong emotional input.

The museum is able to imbue the stark facts of the past, and also convey emotional and physical cues to enhance the experience for the visitor. Although not a Gateway or public artwork this building holds some interesting possibilities for me to learn from. I went to the building in the holidays and found for myself that the built form was sincere and not overtly “literal or didactic”, as was cited for the Gateway not to be. It juxtaposes yet integrates with the existing building the Baroque Kollegienhaus next door (top image on the right). The museum exemplified to me how architecture can be used to create and icon for a social occurrence, a historical past through new innovative design techniques.

This talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_libeskind_s_17_words_of_architectural_inspiration.html) given by Daniel Libeskind, corny as it may seem, has reiterated some of the ingredients I feel I should employ. His talk is focussed on 17 words that he designs by and I have found this talk helpful because I know that I have been quite easily bogged down in words that flap about but fail to really reach the crux of what I am trying to say.There were quite a few concepts that he covered that I found quite applicable;

Firstly my apprehension within this course lies squarely with the computer. It is a useful tool, but a tool that I know am not entirely in control of yet. Libeskind broaches this topic in his talk, “how can we make the computer respond to the hand rather than the hand responding to the computer…?” He reiterates the strength and inherent invention that the hand possesses and unlike some practitioners believes in the importance of understanding from hand drawings on paper not just ones made on the

screen. It is definitely for me a must, to draw to understand and then translate and hopefully enhance via computational means. It was somewhat a warning to make sure that in order to reduce the whole bumbling around until a happy accident comes my way, I must draw, draw and draw some more on paper before just trying to come up with something on screen.

Secondly Libeskind brought up the concept of “wonder”. This element of wonder is an interesting idea that is after a little consideration something that I feel is needed in the development of a really effective proposal for this Gateway project. In his Museum the visitor is encapsulated in/on an emotional journey within the depths of a historical occurrence. It is highly important that the Gateway design somehow invokes an emotional response. It is this emotional reception that gives architecture a whole new richness. It needs to draw the people zooming past in their cars away from their direct route into the city and get them to wonder about what actually is in the Wyndham shire? Encourage them to explore. It has to really act as a billboard an advertisement that grabs the viewer and ENGAGES them (while of course being safe drivers).

It ties in quite strongly with this weeks reading particularly the exploration of architecture as sign. The article by Richard Williams, ‘Architecture and Visual Culture’ explores how architecture in some instances acts as sign, embodying a message about the cultural context it is associated with. He talks of how the Eiffel Tower is a “symbol of Paris” it has marked the engineering and science of the nineteenth century, not to forget the aesthetic as well, it now acts as an immediate icon one recognisable to all. I feel as though the brief is asking for a work that will somehow be able to grab the drivers’ attention, emotionally excite them while expressing enough to coerce their conception of Wyndham into that of a place they must visit and spend some time in.

STATE Of THE ART PROJECTdANIEL LIBESKINd - JEWISH MUSEUM

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STATE Of THE ART PROJECTASYMPTOTE ARCHITECTS - THE YAS HOTEL

The YAS Hotel by Asymptote Architects diverges from the work I previously completed and the work of the Architect Daniel Libeskind. Asymptote’s method of designing is rooted in experimentation with advanced and innovative approaches (computational and otherwise) to solve their architectural quandaries.

The hotel was conceived as a architectural landmark that would embody various key influences and inspirations ranging from the aesthetics and forms associated with speed, movement and spectacle to the artistry and geometries forming the basis of ancient Islamic art and craft traditions. It is an interesting precedent because it deals both with clients that will experience the building as hotel guests but works also as a iconic landmark that is experienced in a vehicle. These two links are similar in essence to the themes we must address in this proposal; high speed viewing and a design that is influenced by the culture that it resides within.

This very different designing method I find very interesting their design I feel can be seen parallel to the requirements we are required to fulfil in our own designs for the Gateway. It is also extremely interesting to see how they are using new computational technologies to develop their designs, “blurring the lines between the virtual and the real world”.

The images I have chosen are examples of the interesting skin that envelopes the structure and is both arresting at night with the installation of coloured lights that change and by day shadows are thrown by the triangular members you can see in the picture above. This duality of being both an interesting design by day and night, is another aspect that I must consider when designing the for the Wyndham Gateway.

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Studio Gang Architects are a stimulating architectural group that are based in America, with work all over the world. Mark Burry explains in Scripting Cultures the importance of scripting in present day architectural endeavours -

“Scripting liberates designing by automating many routine aspects and repetitive activities of the design process.”

Studio Gang employ computational techniques for the liberation from said routine aspects and repetitive activities and have found that it has become a tool vital in their designing practice. Their use of the computer has developed from its use as merely a drafting tool to a utensil that can develop and drive designs what with their utilisation of scripting techniques to create innovative works.

Computers can allow for repetition, consistency and precision, they can speed up processes and extend others. SG’s projects showed that they had capitalised on these

criteria and utilised computation to push these mechanisms further to develop interesting designs.

The Lincoln Park Nature Boardwalk project in Chicago, 2010 included this pavilion that provided shelter and a sculptural addition to the park, it struck me because I was immediately wondering could this be a gateway? on a larger scale?

The pavilion was designed on the computer with carefully scripted inputs and then fabricated with bent plywood and fiberglass resin to build the dome inserts that adorn the top of the arch way.

I like how the pavilion has framed little views through each segment, is dynamic by day with the interesting and ever altering shadows thrown and by night lit up again transforming as a result of where the light hits the surfaces.

I N N O v A T I v E d I g I T A L P R E C E d E N T SSTUdIO gANg ARCHITECTS - LINCOLN PARK NATURE BOARdWALK

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I N N O vAT I v E d I g I TA L P R E C E d E N T S STUdIO gANg ARCHITECTS - THE AQUA TOWER

Another project by the Studio Gang group that I found interesting was their Aqua Tower, again in Chicago. Here they have used a natural phenomenon very pertinent to the site. This struck a chord for me because it reminded me how important ‘place’ can be for the validity of a metaphorical idea. Just a reminder for the Gateway project that the use of metaphors grounded in the site and its surrounds will be most convincing.

Here the building overlooks the sea and is cleverly constructed so that it assumes the eddies and flows that one sees in the water.

To achieve this the designers customised their software to emulate these form changes seen in water. The modeling was entered along with additional parameters pertaining to the number of apertures required and balcony space to create the facade. The script was alterable so it could be manipulated to emulate more of the wave, swell and eddie formations that give the facade its interesting form if desired.

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For most architects today some form of their practice, if not all of it, is informed by or dependent on computers. The software one uses for design has its limitations and these limitations are often the reasons why design is hampered, unoriginal or physically inconceivable.

For American based designer Dr Haresh Lalvani scripting is a means to annihilate this inherent problem with software and manipulate it in such a way that suits his requirements. By using scripting techniques designers can transcend the factory set limitations imposed by their 3D software. They can take charge of the tool that they are employing and harness it to breed new and innovative responses to design problems.

Working in collaboration with Milgo/Bufkin Fabricating Group for less than 10 years, Lalvani has concentrated on morphing and fabricating his conceptions simultaneously thus creating a seamless whole. He believes that ‘straight lines and flat planes are a minority throughout the universe’, so he has devoted his skills to produce complex algorithmically curved products. Lalvani’s AlgoRythmn columns discount the need for harsh folds and edges common in typical algorithmic designs, instead they organically and smoothly articulate the surface that is clad in glass also scripted into the design process.

To conceive this interesting form Lalvani looked at the

Morphological Genome a universal code for mapping and manipulating all form: natural, man made and artificial. He came across it on the search for a “shape gene” in nature, one such gene does not exist so in its absence a shape genome needed to be designed.

In laymans terms what resulted was a composition of families of morphological genes that specified a host of related parameters. This was all scripted by Lalvani and gave rise to his AlgoRythmn columns the basis for this Project X, apartment building in Manhattan that was designed for Stanley Perelman.

To create these structures, a procedure was developed so that single, continuous metal sheets are shaped by computer-driven equipment according to the algorithmically generated geometries. This approach permits the structures to be modeled and easily fabricated translating into a reasonable cost.

S C R I P T I N g P R E C E d E N T SP R O J E C T X - H A R E S H L A L v A N I

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S C R I P T I N g P R E C E d E N T SMETALAB ARCHITECTS - NEW HARMONY gROTTO

In this pavilion by Metalab architects a complex developmental process involving scripted iterations was undertaken in order to develop the final form. The project was concerned with reinterpreting the avant garde architect Frederick Kielser’s Grotto for Meditation. The Lab utilised digital, parametric and scripting techniques in order to accurately re construct a new take on the old master’s design.

With the computer enacting all of the tedious drawing and form building the lab members were free to experiment with more complex scripts. The result was a quicker realisation of the project to a standard otherwise impossible in such a short time frame. Many iterations could be tested thus the end product was a highly considered tested option.

Learning from these innovative digitally driven projects it is clear that many old tedious processes can be eliminated with the utilisation of scripting techniques. With a greater

understanding of scripting the architect can break free of constraint and truly push his or her designs in new and exciting directions. For the Wyndham City Gateway the council specified the want for ‘innovative’ design that would reflect well on their city. They also had a financial constraint and although we are not being hampered by it in our explorations the use of Rhino and Grasshopper to design if utilised correctly will be useful in minimising costs a common benefit spoken about by practitioners of parametric and scripted design procedures. This cost minimisation often comes about as a result of greater flexibility with time; the computer can develop many iterations without time consuming and laborious drawing. This can then lead to a higher quality of design, as there is more time to test more options.

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S C R I P T I N g P R E C E d E N T Sg R A M A Z I O & K O H L E R - g A N T E N B E I N W I N E RY

I was drawn to this example first by the use of materials, it wasn’t until later when I looked into the actual construction of this Winery that I became truly inspired.

For the Gateway project it was evident after our site visit that Werribee was very much an embodiment of some of the ideas of the ‘Great Australian Dream’. The life with a decent sized brick veneer house, a dog, a place to grow things and a car.

Mark Burry in his article Scripting Cultures highlights how technologies created in the computational realm are helping to re-appropriate old techniques. I thought this segued quite well into how within this winery the designers have used the humble brick along with some very advanced technologies to build such a unique construction.

Although it may look like it took years to conceive and create the help of scripting driving the design process allowed for this winery to be built within a period of only three months.

The fabrication was the most interesting part and by no means a common method either. Firstly a photograph of a basket of grapes was taken and abstracted somewhat to get the best result.

The team then employed a robot which they programmed to construct the panels out of individually laid bricks. The angles at which the bricks were placed were determined by the brightness of individual pixels of the photograph of grapes and when built are constantly altering the overall facade as a result of the sun hitting the edges of the bricks.

The seventy-two panels that make up the facade were delivered on site via a truck and lifted into place with a crane. Brick is a useful material as it naturally tempers the peak outdoor temperatures, leaving it cooler inside for the barrels of wine.

It is a project that just shows how innovation can utilise old traditional materials and arrange them in such a way that entirely changes them, brick never looked so sexy!

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R E S P O N S E T O T H E L E C T U R EW E E K 0 4

I just had to add this in because today’s lecture on performative design has thrown up some interesting questions for me. What struck me after Gerome’s talk was a very strange empty feeling. My initial comprehension of the ideas brought up in the lecture influenced the to wonder if we are to go down the lines of optimising all our buildings where does the architect cease to be important in the process? When will there be computer programs that are faster and more accurate at performing tasks we carry out now that don’t need our input? Will this time occur? Will the need for the architect’s involvement become redundant?

I thought it was an interesting angle looking at the task between the design and the optimisation as becoming a compromise aesthetics or functionality. I was forced to consider what the role of the architect is again in order to address this discouraging question.

I went back to Stanislav’s first series of lectures and most particularly the discourse theme that architects act as the generators of. It is that idea of a connection, a hinge or bolt that interacts with several surfaces in order to join them. The presence of this element is vital to provide the correct inputs to drive the design and to add what is inherently missing in computation a human influence.

I don’t quite know why I felt so deflated by the lecture, I think it just was delivered in such a way that I couldn’t help thinking about how architecture can be so close to becoming a part of an entirely different field engineering for example depending on the needs and requirements of the zeitgeist, and instead of seeing this as a bad thing it is a means of evolving, becoming more applicable, more sustainable and more resourceful.

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On Thursday the 22nd Alexa, Mykel, Ellen and I travelled out to visit the Gateway site. Our aim was to discover what really lies in Werribee and gain for ourselves some grounding on which to design. So armed with our cameras and sketch books we found:

THE SITE- very noisy: lots of cars zooming through- high speed: all of which were doing 100kmp/h- fairly flat: minus the slight rise in the middle of the split the overall topography is relatively flat; sight lines can be achieved, however one must contend with the service station - possibly a big/tall installment could counter this. -devoid of interesting things: as one would expect but this needs to act as a driver TO create some interest in the space.

When we had spent a sufficient amount of time experiencing our site, our attention turned to Werribee:

WERRIBEE MANSION & ROSE GARDEN- the landscape: surrounding this manor is beautiful, its a nod in the direction of Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens but it is slightly less grand and well kept.- trees: were large and majestic, beautifully shaped and with multiple varieties. - the history: of the mansion is also quite interesting but particularly the fate of the owner Thomas Chirnside. Chirnside was one of the big movers and shakers in Werribee in its heyday around 1860 - 1880. He owned a considerable amount of land around the greater Werribee area and was along with his brother Andrew accountable for enlarging the district around that time. All the stress must have become too much for poor Thomas who committed suicide in 1887. He was found in dead in the laundry with a shotgun at the mansion.

W E R R I B E ES I T E v I S I T

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The mansion since has become a icon for Werribee it is now a cultural center for festivals, weddings, and is most well known for the Helen Lempriere Sculpture walk held in its grounds every year.

“The creation of this new attraction adds another level to the Werribee Park experience and no matter what time of the year that people visit, there will always be a sculpture exhibition in place. Additionally, with more than 100,000 people visiting the Mansion gardens alone every year, the exposure for these Australian artists is tremendous”. - Director of the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award and curator of the Werribee Park Sculpture Walk, Anne Robertson.

The past seven Lempriere Award winners are still sited in the gardens and thus remain a draw card for tourists to the district. The arts culture is something that the Wyndham council want to cultivate within the area, hence the gateway could quite legitimately be more of a sculptural piece to express this.

-the Rose Garden: Werribee’s rose garden is quite extensive it is the state rose garden entirely run by volunteers and is made up of more than 5000 roses. -In plan, the design of the rose garden presents a stylised rose, with the traditional five-petalled Tudor Rose containing beds of HT and Floribunda roses forming

the largest display area at the northern end of the site. Pathways act as a rose “stem”, leading from the Tudor Rose petals, to a “leaf” and a “rosebud”.

WERRIBEE ZOO-open range: home to most of the exotic animals found in the savannah - African wild dogs, Cheetahs, Hippopotamuses, Rhino’s, meerkats, Lions, Gorillas, monkeys, Zebras......-LARGE draw card for visitors and tourists. -possible inspiration from the animals/pattern potential, fur, form instruction.

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Using the very direct focussed sentence “DESIGN IS A PURPOSEFUL ACTIVITY AIMED AT ACHIEVING WELL DEFINED GOALS” this week we (Alexa, Mykel and I) set out on learning how to achieve the best outcomes possible with the input, association and outputs files for Grasshopper. We also wanted to better understand what drove the elements to developing forms, this ment quite a lot of time was spent sitting in font of the computer going “awwww,” “HuH”, “AHA”, “YESSS AH no”, “PERF”. It has been good tackling this beast together the project seemed quite daunting and I honestly had know idea where to start let alone the expertise to drive Grasshopper to do the things I wanted!

We all were in charge of scripting up a combination of different input/association/output elements and then playing around with them and understanding what we had

done to be able to explain this to each other. These are iterations by Mykel and Alexa and are a mixture of other files that I didn’t use and some that I did. We have yet to really bed down a design path to follow yet so our experimentation may seem different however we all had strong influence from our site visit last week.

P R O J E C T C U TW E E K 4 - E X P E R I M E N T A T I O N

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I melded together the curve attractor scripts, the closest points, rotation operation and to finish it all off fiddled around with lofting and extruding bits of it. I found that I began to follow where things could go, what I could add to make components work and how to alter things so that I could get visibly different outcomes. My iterations were built from the original circle geometry, which I was sick of so I substituted in rectangles and saw what happened when I added number sliders to alter the configuration. Number sliders are my favourite things, they really make it all more tangible for me, I actually feel in control rather than stabbing around in the dark hoping the box wont turn red!

I felt successful in this researching/learning exercise it

helped me begin to understand Grasshopper and Rhino better and I think that given a bit more time to experiment and develop some interesting designs will hopefully evolve.

For this Cut Exploration Project we decided to re-engineer the parametrically scripted facade of the De Young Museum by Herzog and DeMeuron for a series of reasons. The Museums facade is a strikingly prolific example of perforation, and is articulated in a strong weather hardy material that changes somewhat over time. We were interested and inspired by the discovery that the pattern projected onto the surface is very much an inherent characteristic of the unique surroundings the Museum resides within. The images that map the placement of the perforations and dimples are of trees that are growing surrounding the Museum. They are mapped in such a way that is intended on simulating the experience of dappled light filtrating through a canopy of trees. This strong link to the place that the building exists was something that we had all flagged previously in our journals as a driver that we needed to integrate somehow into our Gateway Project.

We were all very much interested in ideas of “morphing” and “rates of change” in addition to this theme of place and as a result of some brainstorming we came to the conclusion that it was quite pertinent that the facade was constructed with copper panels that change in patina with time. This change is only a slight morph but it then lead on to our scrutiny of the script and how it had a variety of textures that create a illusion of the trees without explicitly copying them at all. The construction of a facade that can be textured morphing between cuts and dimples to create the feeling or experience of a natural phenomenon was again very compatible with ideas that we had explored in directions applicable to Werribee. This exercise has thus been a way of us defining some solid design drivers, taught us about using scripting to achieve versions of these conceptual intentions and brought up many interesting questions.

HERZOg ANd dEMEURON RE-ENgINEEREd

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With the understanding and re-engineering of the Herzog script complete we sought to express our own design intentions with relation to the process involved with the Museum facade. Our ingredients or design drivers, as illuded to earlier were morphing of form/pattern and use of significant elements unique/characteristic of place - Werribee. Our morphing in form is a device that is derived from movement and the perception that one will be privy to when passing the installation. M.C Escher has become a strong influence for us in our research of this theme. The

Zebra and rose are two very literal items that we have lifted directly from Werribee along with the “spine” concept pertaining to the meaning of the name the Aboriginals gave Werribee in their language.

INSPIRATION fOR REINTERPRETATION

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d E S I g N R E S E A R C HdEvELOPMENT Of POTENTIAL IdEAS, THEMES ANd dESIgN dRIvERS

15These sketches are preliminary ideas, I had to get out of my head onto paper. I was considering sides of the roads, view lines, movement, unit and whole, novelty and the site themes and potential influences when sketching. This exercise was

also good because I was able to consider the things that I definitely wish to pull out of all of my past research and my understanding of the brief.

The rose derived from the Werribee rose garden is was an interesting starting point as it lead to many possible starting points to inform potential designs.

It lead into the fibonacci sequence, then fractals and how these elements may potentially be

good patterning or form building devices with which we can employ in the digitalization

process.

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