Thursday, October 8, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
AUM STUDIO ED KELLER + CARLA LEITÃO (DIGITAL RESEARCH PRACTICE)
Studio description
AUM Studio [www.aumstudio.org] is an award winning architecture, new media and design research firm founded by Ed Keller and Carla Leitão.
AUM Studio designs a diverse range of environments and ambiances that integrate new media art projects, urban interactivity and smart surfacing of private and public spaces.
The work encompasses residential, institutional, and commercial architecture projects, to game design / multimedia / highdef digital video projects, art direction, and speculative geopolitical futurism. AUM Studio focuses on enhanced urban spaces and landmarks, new forms of media relationship to site and new forms of content and materiality in the context of the renewed agility of contemporary cities. The firm’s unique position merges a hands-on approach to the production of multimedia environments with a deep knowledge of architectural and artistic fields and practices. We provide insight on interactivity as applied to urban spaces and in general ubiquitous environments realized through the blend of diverse technologies, skill sets and disciplines of thought. We work in direct collaboration with fields such as computer science, computer graphics, landscape, material sciences, robotics, urban design, product design, and ecommerce.
AUM Studio's recent work includes residential/institutional/commercial projects and new media installations in Europe and the US (current ongoing projects include Lodi Library, NY); the interactive cinema installation ‘SUTURE' at SCIArc and TELIC galleries in Los Angeles; script, concept and design work for ORNAMENT, an online massively multiplayer game/film/graphic novel; and urban design and architecture competitions such as the MAK Center Vertical Garden [invited]; Turku Finland; UIA Celebration of Cities [National Award]; House for Andrei Tarkovsky [first prize]; and Museum for Nam June Paik. They participated in the 2004 Beijing Biennale NY Hotspot event with their installation 'Time Flow Control'. AUM Studio’s work was featured in the AD magazine issue on “Collective Intelligence” in 2007.
Both Keller and Leitão develop research projects in academia through design studios and seminars that focus on the role of new media and ubiquity in architecture, material, urban landscapes and geopolitics.
Statement on Digital Primitive
Geometry as a discipline has always addressed both mathematical and philosophical agendas. Our work uses both these lines as modes of thinking: searching though pattern for ways to build platforms for multiple species – biological, abstract, symbolic, digital.
Techniques for exploring continuity can discover or create new webs for dreams that live juxtaposed in reality – and in pattern verify the birth of new types. Algorithms obsessed with continuity are then confronted with the limits of smoothness.
These concepts relate to preoccupations with the apparent 'life' of forms in art, as well as to geometry's ability to control or connect with deeper forces through immanent diagrams of organization. Our use of formal techniques in our work is roughly analogous to the function of the axiom within an overall formal system.
When we design for a city, we de-focus the condition of building and design fogs, as these are more often able to install new territories, readings and action. New grids are installed in a counter-time to the conventional and centralizing rhythms of the city – moments where centrality and marginality can merge.
As a consequence of the romances between matter, the blackmailing between infrastructures and the “measuring-up” between protocols, moments or scales have to be found such that all gestures become urban and create a new temporal dimension for the soap opera of the infinite narratives of everyday life.
More patterns remain to be made- from direction to desire, mutual perception and embrace. Houses act as geologies with multiple corners, circular, for eternal ricochet, and deposit scales of familiar gestures, rhythms of collectives in the individual, repetitions of the individual in the common. The arcades of the future have been rehearsed but the gesture is still and forever to be defined.
Project 1: MAK COMPETITION
Location: SCHINDLER HOUSE, LOS ANGELES, CA
Date: 2006
Client: INVITED COMPETITION, MAK CENTER
Digital tools:
ILLUSTRATOR, GENERATIVE COMPONENTS, RHINO, RHINO SCRIPT, SURFACE EVOLVER, MAYA, PHOTOSHOP, SONY HDRHC1, FINAL CUT PRO, MPEG STREAMCLIP, QUICKTIME PRO, AUDACITY
Credits:
Design/ fabrication / Implementation
AUTHOR: AUM STUDIO [KELLER & LEITÃO]
NEW YORK [DESIGN TEAM]:
_DAVE PIGRAM_EZIO BLASETTI_ROLAND SNOOKS
LOS ANGELES [SITE RESEARCH]:
_DANIEL VASINI_EMILIANO ESPASANDIN
LISBON [LANDSCAPE AND ENGINEERING]:
_CLAUDIA SISTI
_VALDEMAR LEITAO
AUM Studio [www.aumstudio.org] is an award winning architecture, new media and design research firm founded by Ed Keller and Carla Leitão.
AUM Studio designs a diverse range of environments and ambiances that integrate new media art projects, urban interactivity and smart surfacing of private and public spaces.
The work encompasses residential, institutional, and commercial architecture projects, to game design / multimedia / highdef digital video projects, art direction, and speculative geopolitical futurism. AUM Studio focuses on enhanced urban spaces and landmarks, new forms of media relationship to site and new forms of content and materiality in the context of the renewed agility of contemporary cities. The firm’s unique position merges a hands-on approach to the production of multimedia environments with a deep knowledge of architectural and artistic fields and practices. We provide insight on interactivity as applied to urban spaces and in general ubiquitous environments realized through the blend of diverse technologies, skill sets and disciplines of thought. We work in direct collaboration with fields such as computer science, computer graphics, landscape, material sciences, robotics, urban design, product design, and ecommerce.
AUM Studio's recent work includes residential/institutional/commercial projects and new media installations in Europe and the US (current ongoing projects include Lodi Library, NY); the interactive cinema installation ‘SUTURE' at SCIArc and TELIC galleries in Los Angeles; script, concept and design work for ORNAMENT, an online massively multiplayer game/film/graphic novel; and urban design and architecture competitions such as the MAK Center Vertical Garden [invited]; Turku Finland; UIA Celebration of Cities [National Award]; House for Andrei Tarkovsky [first prize]; and Museum for Nam June Paik. They participated in the 2004 Beijing Biennale NY Hotspot event with their installation 'Time Flow Control'. AUM Studio’s work was featured in the AD magazine issue on “Collective Intelligence” in 2007.
Both Keller and Leitão develop research projects in academia through design studios and seminars that focus on the role of new media and ubiquity in architecture, material, urban landscapes and geopolitics.
Statement on Digital Primitive
Geometry as a discipline has always addressed both mathematical and philosophical agendas. Our work uses both these lines as modes of thinking: searching though pattern for ways to build platforms for multiple species – biological, abstract, symbolic, digital.
Techniques for exploring continuity can discover or create new webs for dreams that live juxtaposed in reality – and in pattern verify the birth of new types. Algorithms obsessed with continuity are then confronted with the limits of smoothness.
These concepts relate to preoccupations with the apparent 'life' of forms in art, as well as to geometry's ability to control or connect with deeper forces through immanent diagrams of organization. Our use of formal techniques in our work is roughly analogous to the function of the axiom within an overall formal system.
When we design for a city, we de-focus the condition of building and design fogs, as these are more often able to install new territories, readings and action. New grids are installed in a counter-time to the conventional and centralizing rhythms of the city – moments where centrality and marginality can merge.
As a consequence of the romances between matter, the blackmailing between infrastructures and the “measuring-up” between protocols, moments or scales have to be found such that all gestures become urban and create a new temporal dimension for the soap opera of the infinite narratives of everyday life.
More patterns remain to be made- from direction to desire, mutual perception and embrace. Houses act as geologies with multiple corners, circular, for eternal ricochet, and deposit scales of familiar gestures, rhythms of collectives in the individual, repetitions of the individual in the common. The arcades of the future have been rehearsed but the gesture is still and forever to be defined.
Project 1: MAK COMPETITION
Location: SCHINDLER HOUSE, LOS ANGELES, CA
Date: 2006
Client: INVITED COMPETITION, MAK CENTER
Digital tools:
ILLUSTRATOR, GENERATIVE COMPONENTS, RHINO, RHINO SCRIPT, SURFACE EVOLVER, MAYA, PHOTOSHOP, SONY HDRHC1, FINAL CUT PRO, MPEG STREAMCLIP, QUICKTIME PRO, AUDACITY
Credits:
Design/ fabrication / Implementation
AUTHOR: AUM STUDIO [KELLER & LEITÃO]
NEW YORK [DESIGN TEAM]:
_DAVE PIGRAM_EZIO BLASETTI_ROLAND SNOOKS
LOS ANGELES [SITE RESEARCH]:
_DANIEL VASINI_EMILIANO ESPASANDIN
LISBON [LANDSCAPE AND ENGINEERING]:
_CLAUDIA SISTI
_VALDEMAR LEITAO
Description
In the MAK project, a proposal for a vertical urban garden, tiling patterns were studied to generate certain kinds of luminous density and layers of opacity. These patterns had rules for proximity, blending, and scaling.
The site was mapped as a set of fields delineated lines of sight, light intensity, points of dry or moist growth; scripts in Maya and GC then deployed tiling geometry across the site within an envelope of iteration.
These scripts morphed between triangular and hexagonal geometry, and iterated the panels in varying density according to our mapping studies.
The tile system, to be fabricated out of sand blasted glass panels, functions as overlapping screens for community curated video projection and art installations at the Schindler house; as well they function to direct light and views on the site, and to mediate between the Schindler site and its neighbor sites.
The tiles function morphologically as the organizing system and generative edges for a minimal thin concrete wall that connects all the tiles, functions as structure, and is a substrate for the vertical garden. Surface Evolver was used to develop this continuous minimal surface, and the topology of this surface was adjusted according to proximity to the new building to the south, as well as the plant types and light conditions the project creates on the Schindler site.
We understood the plants as a neural network in the site- a fragile/flexible intelligence. To deploy the garden across the minimal surface, a Rhino script was used to analyze the geometry of the minimal surface structure; working with our landscape consultant, this script determined the plant species that would best adhere to the different angles and light conditions.
Every system- living or nonorganic- generates its own spatiotemporal field, which includes its thresholds of engagement with the landscape. In our project, the plants merge with the wall itself, and metamorphose not only the husk of the Schindler house, but reach out into Los Angeles as well. Los Angeles' time plane will become non-relative, as this autonomous, trans-temporal act of architecture meets the organic life and media systems as a crucible we are propose for the site. The project plays with a set of formal axioms at the molecular as well as the macroscale in the city to reinvent the fabric and landscape of imagination.
Project 2: SUTURE INSTALLATION
Location: LOS ANGELES, CA
Date: 2005-06
Client: SCIARC AND TELIC GALLERIES
Digital tools:
MAYA, AUTOCAD, PHOTOSHOP, ILLUSTRATOR, SONY HDRHC1, FINAL CUT PRO, MPEG STREAMCLIP, QUICKTIME PRO, AUDACITY, NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR, MAXMSP/JITTER, EOWAVE, MIDI USB HARDWARE, 3 MAC OSX DESKTOPS, 3 HIDEF VIDEO PROJECTORS, BEHRINGER AUDIO MONITORS, INTERNET CONNECTION BETWEEN GALLERIES.
Credits:
Design/ fabrication / Implementation
AUTHOR: AUM STUDIO [KELLER & LEITÃO] WITH
GEORGE SHOWMAN [PROGRAMMING AND TECHNOLOGY]
BRIAN FLAIG [PROJECT COORDINATION
AND OBJECT DESIGN] DESIGN/ FABRICATION: INSTALLATION
FURNITURE PIECES FABRICATED IN
SCIARC MILLING SHOP
Description
In SUTURE, an interactive multimedia installation, we suggested that a collective intelligence could emerge as a kind of agency distributed locally onto the participants in each gallery. Conceptually, we were interested in reconfiguring the concept of ‘suture’, a key term in film theory, in order to propose a new cinematic & architectural body created through the visitors' interactive editing of event, gesture and materiality. Instead of the semiotic framework the concept of 'suture' emerged from [See Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (New York, 1983)] we presented an interface to manifest it purely
through space, gesture, material, and cinematic-haptic fields. We redeployed responsibility for cinematic edits onto visitors as they moved in the spaces and triggered a cascading series of remixes and overlaps of gesture and material footage. The rules were established as a framework to permit a range of edits to take place; categories of homogenous, singular, or aggregate materials, and closeup, medium, and longshot gestures were mixed according to different degrees of acceleration, creating
inversions of the original sources, and switching the regularity of the space and time orientation. Instead of analysing footage for meaning, we relied entirely on the 'sense' built into each shot to develop rules for classifying and remixing.
Gestures and materials go beyond the human scale and encompass urban situations, infrastructure, and landscape. Desert spaces, transit spaces, and more distant abstract points of view- such as satellite orbits over the earth- established another scale in the footage. SUTURE proposed a way of working with collective intelligence [both the groups of people interacting with the project, but also the 'arrays of media' as autonomous, ruledriven bodies in the network itself ] such that the potential of different users and site interactions became responsible for actively renewing key concepts of ambience and environment. The installation placed each visitor in a position of agency to realize radical new scales and blends of gesture, material and situation.
It becomes necessary to create new situations, devices, machines or organisms that advance our ability to render visible this individuality within the collective: a key ingredient of a fruitful enrichment in both cultural and human terms.
A grid made of different nodal points is placed over the city. New points are discovered in the middle areas between the points of great visibility - of one temporal understanding of the city – and the opposite temporal points; those individuals who reveal a profound distance between the sense of locality, and the insufficient recognition of their individuality by the urban nucleus.
The nodes are spaces of night life – present in the urban dream – they are anchoring points for passage of individuals in a limit situation, when the capacity of self-expression is lost inside the urban context. The visibility given by the proposed structures announces a situation of play, of stage, of rehearsal, of temporary exercise of wills and desires, while simultaneously being devoted to the service of showing and caring for that same self-expression of others. The structures go from uncharacterised points to bright spaces of invention: exhibition galleries of diverse themes, experimentation places, meeting points. These nodes will start to bind themselves to their intelligent behavior, that is, the way in which they construct themselves on a local level and then invent new articulations of their situation in this network.
Project 3: UIA URBAN DESIGN COMPETITION
Location: LISBON, PORTUGAL
Date: 2003
Client: UIA
Digital tools: 3D STUDIO, ILLUSTRATOR, PHOTOSHOP, AUTOCAD
Credits:
Design/ fabrication / Implementation
AUTHOR: AUM STUDIO (KELLER&LEITAO) WITH
MARTA CALDEIRA
COLLABORATOR: CATERINA TIAZZOLDI
Description
Cities should be nothing more or less than the great range of density of human desires, which are able to provoke constant creativity in others.
A healthy city – an ideal agglomeration – is a condition born and developed through both the concrete and imaginary inventions of its inhabitants. All the participating agents in a city are immediate beneficiaries
of its evolution and answer to time. In the same way, each contribution is unique and indispensable in the process of imagining ongoing change.
Cities have several temporal ranges, areas of history that appear and disappear, dissipating in the structures which materialize as temporary or permanent wills. One of the most pertinent capacities in an urban nucleus resides in some of these non-permanent structures: that of the self-modification of meaning, that of the intelligent material.
The accommodation of activities made by the city does not summarize the city in itself: neither does it do justice to its complex body nor to its intelligent answer to time.A syndrome of disease in a city is evidenced – taking different forms – when the main role of individual agent inside a collectivity is not allowed to its citizens. Examples may be found in all the conditions that emphasize only unilateral or dual understanding of the surrounding environment. The concept of marginality, for instance, is foreign, yet nevertheless accepted in an urban mode of thought which is inclusive and by nature is engaged with the reconceptualization of city edges. This discussion of limits evokes not only what is exterior to the self but also the integral internal elements of the city body.
BENAMOR DUARTE ARCHITECTURE – (DESIGN PRACTICE)
Studio description
Benamor Duarte Architecture’s work engage the ideas of recursion, adaptation and reconstitution of formal, informal and informational protocols in different contexts. The studio’s projects have been using the bi-dimensional transposition technique as a way to explore and investigate the prefiguration of his design concepts. This method aims to develop the idea of adaptation and scale by transposing the registers of the figurative and geometry drawing techniques to the materiality of a furniture piece, a landscape or a building.
The studio was found in New York by Eduardo Benamor Duarte where in addition to his professional practice he has collaborates with several academic institutions while, he is currently design studios at the California College of the Arts.
Statement on Digital Primitive
Starting from its etymological meaning, we’ll find that the association of the two words implies the coexistence of two different realities.
Digital, implies a code providing information to attribute meaning or action to a function; and Primitive, constrains each function to a reduced set of properties.
Once articulated, these two words create an unlimited set of interdependent tools that generate multiple design solutions. Nevertheless in every Digital solution, the limitations of its variations become restricted to the reduce set of properties offered by the Primitive condition. In this case its ultimate variation can only be achieved if linked to a process of repetition.
Project 1: Rapigattoli chair
Location: Product
Date: April 2008
Client: Limited edition for Zero2
Digital tool: Rhino 4.0
Author:
Eduardo Benamor Duarte with Caterina Tiazzoldi and visualization by Lorenza Croce
Design/ fabrication
Tietz & Baccon, LLC
Description
The Rapigattoli chair is an original prototype aiming to investigate the idea of adaptation and scale by transposing on the registers of the figurative and geometry drawing techniques on the materiality of a chair.
Originally, generated from a single profile configuration encasing the seat and back, the primal profile is arrayed along the perimeter of a circumference creating the necessary surface for use. Two legs are added strategically by mirroring the first profile 45 cm above the floor. The Rapigattoli chair is built in ¾ inch birch plywood generating a wood flexion and rib structure to enhance the chair softness and lightness while changing the framing of the surrounding space: A new type of transparency is constantly created while the perception of amount of surface material is permanently altered.
The accumulation and transformation of the same rib profile is processed through a set of iterations processed with computer numeric control (CNC) pantograph transforming the rough birch plywood of the Rapigattoli Chair in a design piece.
Project 2: Coney Island Parachute Pavilion
Location: Coney Island, New York
Date: April, 2005
Client: Van Alen Institute - Open competition
Digital tools: Maya 6.0
Author: Eduardo Benamor Duarte
Design/ fabrication : CNC Laser cutter 
Description
Pattern spectacle
The site of the project is surrounded by a public landscape of leisure in an attraction park. The brief emphasizes the need for a physical relationship with the adjacent boardwalk and the historical parachute infrastructure. The Program area for the pavilion is laid into a new foil providing a filter to the major pedestrian fluxes in the site Its drawn as an artificial structural landscape of slopes coiled around two distinctive tunnels: One facing the top of the pachute jumping platform; another facing the ocean.
Pattern landscape.
The program is configured along a directional orientation knot drawn according to three major per formative principles: spreading; connectivity and aggregation.
These three principles are based on typological convergences, topographical restrictions and data densities. The resulting mass emphasizes the interdependency between each function while regulating the inflection and deformation of the pavilion’s perimeter.
Pattern recognition
The building skin is configured by replicating the geometry of the Parachute structure, recreating the daily performance of the user in the inside space, configuring alternative patterns of living. The shop and exhibition space are divided in zones that overlap topographies of enclosure and open air, in intervals of space between structural steel and concrete slopes.
Project 3: Europan 7 – International housing Competition 2004
Location: Budapest
Date: June 2003
Client: EUROPAN 7 - Open Competition
Digital tools: Maya 6.0
Author: Eduardo Benamor Duarte 
Description
Domestic Landscapes
The site of the project is a mixed environment of a public landscape and industrial surroundings. The Program area is laid into a new ground providing the major core for urban activities.
Its drawn as an artificial landscape of slopes with different heights and inclination offering a multitude of scales and performances.
The necessary infrastructure for the housing program is covered with slopes containing parking
Block landscape.
The housing blocks are configured along directional East West orientations drawn according to three major patterns: spreading; connectivity and aggregation.
These three principles are based on typological convergences, topographical restrictions and data densities. The resulting block is a mixed-use fluid confining and merging different types, housing services and voids. Its interdependency regulates the inflection and deformation of the block perimeter.
Structural landscape
The construction of the site is processed with the development of structural steel frame of ribs that outline the form and skin of the blocks.
In order to achieve a notorious fusion with the environmental landscape the skin of the blocks is filled with a large percentage of translucent and transparent panels enhancing the structure’s lightness and clearance.
Apartment LandscapeThe apartment are configured according to the daily performance of the user in the inside space, configuring alternative patterns of living. The apartments are divided in zones that overlap topographies of residencies and services, in intervals of space between structural steel and concrete slopes.
Benamor Duarte Architecture’s work engage the ideas of recursion, adaptation and reconstitution of formal, informal and informational protocols in different contexts. The studio’s projects have been using the bi-dimensional transposition technique as a way to explore and investigate the prefiguration of his design concepts. This method aims to develop the idea of adaptation and scale by transposing the registers of the figurative and geometry drawing techniques to the materiality of a furniture piece, a landscape or a building.
The studio was found in New York by Eduardo Benamor Duarte where in addition to his professional practice he has collaborates with several academic institutions while, he is currently design studios at the California College of the Arts.
Statement on Digital Primitive
Starting from its etymological meaning, we’ll find that the association of the two words implies the coexistence of two different realities.
Digital, implies a code providing information to attribute meaning or action to a function; and Primitive, constrains each function to a reduced set of properties.
Once articulated, these two words create an unlimited set of interdependent tools that generate multiple design solutions. Nevertheless in every Digital solution, the limitations of its variations become restricted to the reduce set of properties offered by the Primitive condition. In this case its ultimate variation can only be achieved if linked to a process of repetition.
Project 1: Rapigattoli chair
Location: Product
Date: April 2008
Client: Limited edition for Zero2
Digital tool: Rhino 4.0
Author:
Eduardo Benamor Duarte with Caterina Tiazzoldi and visualization by Lorenza Croce
Design/ fabrication
Tietz & Baccon, LLC
Description
The Rapigattoli chair is an original prototype aiming to investigate the idea of adaptation and scale by transposing on the registers of the figurative and geometry drawing techniques on the materiality of a chair.
Originally, generated from a single profile configuration encasing the seat and back, the primal profile is arrayed along the perimeter of a circumference creating the necessary surface for use. Two legs are added strategically by mirroring the first profile 45 cm above the floor. The Rapigattoli chair is built in ¾ inch birch plywood generating a wood flexion and rib structure to enhance the chair softness and lightness while changing the framing of the surrounding space: A new type of transparency is constantly created while the perception of amount of surface material is permanently altered.
The accumulation and transformation of the same rib profile is processed through a set of iterations processed with computer numeric control (CNC) pantograph transforming the rough birch plywood of the Rapigattoli Chair in a design piece.
Project 2: Coney Island Parachute Pavilion
Location: Coney Island, New York
Date: April, 2005
Client: Van Alen Institute - Open competition
Digital tools: Maya 6.0
Author: Eduardo Benamor Duarte
Design/ fabrication : CNC Laser cutter
Description
Pattern spectacle
The site of the project is surrounded by a public landscape of leisure in an attraction park. The brief emphasizes the need for a physical relationship with the adjacent boardwalk and the historical parachute infrastructure. The Program area for the pavilion is laid into a new foil providing a filter to the major pedestrian fluxes in the site Its drawn as an artificial structural landscape of slopes coiled around two distinctive tunnels: One facing the top of the pachute jumping platform; another facing the ocean.
Pattern landscape.
The program is configured along a directional orientation knot drawn according to three major per formative principles: spreading; connectivity and aggregation.
These three principles are based on typological convergences, topographical restrictions and data densities. The resulting mass emphasizes the interdependency between each function while regulating the inflection and deformation of the pavilion’s perimeter.
Pattern recognition
The building skin is configured by replicating the geometry of the Parachute structure, recreating the daily performance of the user in the inside space, configuring alternative patterns of living. The shop and exhibition space are divided in zones that overlap topographies of enclosure and open air, in intervals of space between structural steel and concrete slopes.
Project 3: Europan 7 – International housing Competition 2004
Location: Budapest
Date: June 2003
Client: EUROPAN 7 - Open Competition
Digital tools: Maya 6.0
Author: Eduardo Benamor Duarte
Description
Domestic Landscapes
The site of the project is a mixed environment of a public landscape and industrial surroundings. The Program area is laid into a new ground providing the major core for urban activities.
Its drawn as an artificial landscape of slopes with different heights and inclination offering a multitude of scales and performances.
The necessary infrastructure for the housing program is covered with slopes containing parking
Block landscape.
The housing blocks are configured along directional East West orientations drawn according to three major patterns: spreading; connectivity and aggregation.
These three principles are based on typological convergences, topographical restrictions and data densities. The resulting block is a mixed-use fluid confining and merging different types, housing services and voids. Its interdependency regulates the inflection and deformation of the block perimeter.
Structural landscape
The construction of the site is processed with the development of structural steel frame of ribs that outline the form and skin of the blocks.
In order to achieve a notorious fusion with the environmental landscape the skin of the blocks is filled with a large percentage of translucent and transparent panels enhancing the structure’s lightness and clearance.
Apartment LandscapeThe apartment are configured according to the daily performance of the user in the inside space, configuring alternative patterns of living. The apartments are divided in zones that overlap topographies of residencies and services, in intervals of space between structural steel and concrete slopes.
GSAPP COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY / AVERY DIGITAL FABICATION LAB – (ACADEMIC RESEARCH)
Studio description
The shift toward more expansive forms of digital production within the design and construction industry affords opportunities of not only reconfiguring the relationships between the key players, but also incorporating industry sectors not typically associated with building construction. At the core of this shift is the integration of communication through various forms of digital networks, CNC fabrication being just one among many, with the ambition of developing a comprehensive, well organized, easily accessible, and parametrically adaptable body of information that coordinates the process from design through a building’s lifecycle. This is the broader context for the goals of the Avery Digital Fabrication Lab.
Statement on Digital Primitive
What distinguishes CNC technologies for architecture is the opportunity it affords to reposition design strategically within fabrication and construction processes such that what architects actually produce—drawings—shifts from loose representations of buildings to highly precise sets of instructions that are coordinated and integrated into a full description of a building. At a more modest level within this comprehensive organizational picture, CNC has also influenced design methodologies as architects begin to respond more directly to the conditions of digital production as a means for both pragmatic concerns like cost and efficiency and more conceptual potentials like variability and customization. These are the topics of research and experimentation for the lab.
Project 1: AMPHORAE
Location: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Date: SPRING 2007 / FALL 2008
Client: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, LAFARGE
Digital tools:
3-D MODELING, CNC FABRICATION
Credits: Design/ fabrication / Implementation
MARK BEARAK, DORA KELLE, ADAM MERCIER, PHILLIP ANZALONE
Description:
Framing Space was an installation designed and constructed for the AIA-NY Center for Architecture “Make It Work: Engineering Possibilities exhibition. The installation was a collaborative between two Architecture Schools (GSAPP and Pratt), an architecture firm (Atelier Architecture 64) and a number of sponsors with a goal for education and demonstration of structural and design possibilities through the use of new materials, processes and design techniques. The Framing Space exhibition piece seeks to explore the relationship between craft, in its simultaneous traditional and constructive connotations, and contemporary methods of architectural construction. This study is done through the filter of material qualities, decoration, assembly details and other technical constructive means. The resulting installation evokes and engages with the human through optical, textural and conceptual qualities to bring to the surface the juxtaposition and potentials inherent in the joining of the old and the new. The Trusset Structural System used in this construction was invented by Phillip Anzalone and Cory Clarke.
Project 3: SLIDE LIBRARY
Location: DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY
Date: 2005
Client: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Digital tools:
3-D MODELING, CNC FABRICATION
Credits:
Design/ fabrication / Implementation
MARBLE FAIRBANKS /COLUMBIA GSAPP STUDENT TEAM
Description
This project was completed both as a prototype research project to test computerized fabrication techniques, and to fulfill the immediate program needs of the client as the first phase of a longer-term master plan. The design consists of four walls defining the space of the slide library and lit by the skylight above.
The east wall is made up of 435 sandwiched layers of 1” thick ultralight (lightweight mdf). Occasional viewing portals are formed by carved layers on opposite sides of the wall where two 1/2” thick glass panels are inserted. The middle of the east wall curves into the space to capture light in the hall outside from a skylight above. The edges of the glass panels refract and glow from natural light. The north, south and west walls are patterned with 1/4” perforated lines outlining the actual tooling paths for each of the layers of the east wall – these lines are illuminated by the light of the skylight in the slide library. As part of the rigor to digitally draw, fabricate and manage the entire project, every component of the design was milled regardless of its complexity to enable thewalls to be assembled like furniture.
The shift toward more expansive forms of digital production within the design and construction industry affords opportunities of not only reconfiguring the relationships between the key players, but also incorporating industry sectors not typically associated with building construction. At the core of this shift is the integration of communication through various forms of digital networks, CNC fabrication being just one among many, with the ambition of developing a comprehensive, well organized, easily accessible, and parametrically adaptable body of information that coordinates the process from design through a building’s lifecycle. This is the broader context for the goals of the Avery Digital Fabrication Lab.
Statement on Digital Primitive
What distinguishes CNC technologies for architecture is the opportunity it affords to reposition design strategically within fabrication and construction processes such that what architects actually produce—drawings—shifts from loose representations of buildings to highly precise sets of instructions that are coordinated and integrated into a full description of a building. At a more modest level within this comprehensive organizational picture, CNC has also influenced design methodologies as architects begin to respond more directly to the conditions of digital production as a means for both pragmatic concerns like cost and efficiency and more conceptual potentials like variability and customization. These are the topics of research and experimentation for the lab.
Project 1: AMPHORAE
Location: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Date: SPRING 2007 / FALL 2008
Client: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, LAFARGE
Digital tools:
3-D MODELING, CNC FABRICATION
Credits: Design/ fabrication / Implementation
MARK BEARAK, DORA KELLE, ADAM MERCIER, PHILLIP ANZALONE
Description
Amphorae is a collection of various objects with differing sizes and functions ranging from small bricks to full pieces of furniture, which are tied together functionally and aesthetically. Our elements range in size and level of detailing based on function. We created a system of ecologically sensitive concrete elements that can be used for the collection, filtration and redistribution of water. These units not only hold water, but they also have smaller pockets with space to grow various forms of plant life that are fed by the individual cisterns.
The project is meant to be far more than simply a structural wall; it is a vertical garden that can be reconfigured and installed anywhere.
The Amphorae elements are constructed from Ductal concrete. Our mixture is composed of recycled sand and reconstituted fly ash as a bonding agent. This mixture reduces carbon emissions by more than 30% when compared to standard concrete. The project goes beyond representation; from concept through execution decisions were made with the environment in mind.
Project 2: FRAMING SPACE
Location: AIA NEW YORK CENTER FOR ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Date: JANUARY 2009
Client: AIA NEW YORK CENTER FOR ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Digital tools:
3-D MODELING, CNC FABRICATION
Credits:
Design/ fabrication / Implementation
PHILLIP ANZALONE AND STEPHANIE BAYARD OF ATELIER ARCHITECTURE 64, GSAPP/PRATT INSTITUTE STUDENT TEAM
Description:
Framing Space was an installation designed and constructed for the AIA-NY Center for Architecture “Make It Work: Engineering Possibilities exhibition. The installation was a collaborative between two Architecture Schools (GSAPP and Pratt), an architecture firm (Atelier Architecture 64) and a number of sponsors with a goal for education and demonstration of structural and design possibilities through the use of new materials, processes and design techniques. The Framing Space exhibition piece seeks to explore the relationship between craft, in its simultaneous traditional and constructive connotations, and contemporary methods of architectural construction. This study is done through the filter of material qualities, decoration, assembly details and other technical constructive means. The resulting installation evokes and engages with the human through optical, textural and conceptual qualities to bring to the surface the juxtaposition and potentials inherent in the joining of the old and the new. The Trusset Structural System used in this construction was invented by Phillip Anzalone and Cory Clarke.
Project 3: SLIDE LIBRARY
Location: DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY
Date: 2005
Client: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Digital tools:
3-D MODELING, CNC FABRICATION
Credits:
Design/ fabrication / Implementation
MARBLE FAIRBANKS /COLUMBIA GSAPP STUDENT TEAM
Description
This project was completed both as a prototype research project to test computerized fabrication techniques, and to fulfill the immediate program needs of the client as the first phase of a longer-term master plan. The design consists of four walls defining the space of the slide library and lit by the skylight above.
The east wall is made up of 435 sandwiched layers of 1” thick ultralight (lightweight mdf). Occasional viewing portals are formed by carved layers on opposite sides of the wall where two 1/2” thick glass panels are inserted. The middle of the east wall curves into the space to capture light in the hall outside from a skylight above. The edges of the glass panels refract and glow from natural light. The north, south and west walls are patterned with 1/4” perforated lines outlining the actual tooling paths for each of the layers of the east wall – these lines are illuminated by the light of the skylight in the slide library. As part of the rigor to digitally draw, fabricate and manage the entire project, every component of the design was milled regardless of its complexity to enable thewalls to be assembled like furniture.
PETER MACAPIA labDORA (DIGITAL RESEARCH PRACTICE)
Studio description
Peter Macapia is the director and founder of labDORA, an interdisciplinary research office that focuses on design, the geometry and topology of matter/energy relations, and the advent of the algorithm. Each year the explores these problems through both material and computational work focusing on new tectonic and spatial problems.
Statement on Digital Primitive
There is a story in Plato about the cave – it suggests the problem of matter, of perception, of illusion. Descartes rewrote the story from the point of view of observing a piece of wax. The tendency towards a Royal science we all know is based on the notion that there is, that there exists, a foundation. And that the foundation can explain everything else that needs to be explained. But actually that knowledge is the constant product of the invention of problems that can never be seen or anticipated by the foundation. Even Leibniz knew this when he wrote about the calculus as having a limit, and that the limit was like these monstrous little species that might emerge. There’s nothing primitive about these kinds of problems: what is a geometrical logic, what is a topological one, and what is an algorithmic logic. I tend to see the interest in manipulating the signs according to a new paradigm, to quote Wittgenstein. The fabrication part is the most difficult of these investigations. The nonlinear behavior of material organization always forces a revision.
Project 1: FRINGE PAVILION STUDIES
Location: MANHATTAN
Date: 2009
Client: STUDY
Digital tools: NESTLIST ALGORITHM
Credits:
Design/ fabrication / Implementation
PETER MACAPIA WITH MAT HOWARD
Peter Macapia is the director and founder of labDORA, an interdisciplinary research office that focuses on design, the geometry and topology of matter/energy relations, and the advent of the algorithm. Each year the explores these problems through both material and computational work focusing on new tectonic and spatial problems.
Statement on Digital Primitive
There is a story in Plato about the cave – it suggests the problem of matter, of perception, of illusion. Descartes rewrote the story from the point of view of observing a piece of wax. The tendency towards a Royal science we all know is based on the notion that there is, that there exists, a foundation. And that the foundation can explain everything else that needs to be explained. But actually that knowledge is the constant product of the invention of problems that can never be seen or anticipated by the foundation. Even Leibniz knew this when he wrote about the calculus as having a limit, and that the limit was like these monstrous little species that might emerge. There’s nothing primitive about these kinds of problems: what is a geometrical logic, what is a topological one, and what is an algorithmic logic. I tend to see the interest in manipulating the signs according to a new paradigm, to quote Wittgenstein. The fabrication part is the most difficult of these investigations. The nonlinear behavior of material organization always forces a revision.
Project 1: FRINGE PAVILION STUDIES
Location: MANHATTAN
Date: 2009
Client: STUDY
Digital tools: NESTLIST ALGORITHM
Credits:
Design/ fabrication / Implementation
PETER MACAPIA WITH MAT HOWARD
Description
Developed out of a series of nestlist algorithms with the help of Mat Howard.
The problem set involved finding a way to generate geometrical system without using geometry. Absurd in a sense. But insofar as mathematical operations can be carried out by simple algorithmic rules it seemed necessary to question whether geometrical outputs had to be based on geometrical operations - only.
The function is one of simply sending a product back into an initial equation where the results will continuously vary. The numerical sequence then produces a topological network that is graphed spatially through spring mechanics.
As a result certain points generate further points with more or less density in 3space. the design use of this system doesn't have an apriori intelligence. What became significant is the translation of this system from the domain of a spatial network into a tectonic logic. In that sense it follows the research on urban pavilions for looking a new ways to develop designs that work with exiting conditions (like vacant lots) without relying on typical notions of mass and enclosure.
Project 2: GROSS TOPOLOGY: MANURUGLY TOWER
Location: MANHATTAN
Date: 2030
Client: MANUARUGLY
Digital tools: CELLULAR AUTOMATA AND TOPOLOGICAL NETWORK ALGORITHM
Credits: Design/ fabrication / Implementation
PETER MACAPIA WITH MAT HOWARD
Description:
The basis for my research in this project was to look at the problem of design from the point of view of computation and algorithm. If topology (rather than geometry) can shift the way in which we think of the spatiallity of the tower, then we ought to consider how that problem might manifest itself at the level of structure. And so the investigation looked at the problem of structure as topological rather than geometrical starting point. Gross means essentially two thing: first it is a lower dimension topological problem, that is, it deals with things like 2- and 3-space and second it works from a generalized (schematic) notion of space as manifold. Topology as such deals with ways of distinguishing manifolds. Differential topology deals with non-metrical notions of manifolds while differential geometry deals with metrical notions of manifolds. But a manifold as such is a topological space with local Euclidean characteristics. The general operation of the system is a lightweight structure in which the Primary and Secondary structures are combined not through direct contact but rather through a kind of inflatable splint. This third element is the programmatic space of the “pods.” The pods are assembled using lighweight steel members that are combined like a mesh with singularities (lamina) to take up large scale structural loads and continue them through the Primary and Secondary structures. The “envelope” is a series of EFTE pillows that deflate and inflate according to the solar and optical conditions. The external Primary Structure is also “glazed” with EFTE membrane on a large scale to provide interstitial space and program. Finally, the logic of development and growth is to initiate a condition in which the structure is never complete, but always evolving and changing. That is, “pods” can be continuously added and transformed according to programmatic need. The building is kind of like a lattice on which to grow a vine from which to grow grapes. That’s a kind of gross analogy, but topologically, it works.
Project 3: PERFORMA PAVILION
Location: MANHATTAN
Date: 2011
Client: PERFORMA
Digital tools: COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS
Credits:
Design/ fabrication / Implementation
PETER MACAPIA
Description:
The Performa Pavilion the result of a study of using vacant lots in the urban environment for environmental and tectonic exploration of urban porosity and topology. The basic interest is to develop projects that operate in terms of the following principle: the geometry and topology of matter/energy relations.Computational Fluid dynamics was a way to develop minimal surfaces or surfaces with great tension that could vary in their spatial and organizational qualities – that is, it would provide a condition of constant transformation. The framing system was developed using a stochastic geometry for the super frame, and a more subtle topologically sensitive geometry for the secondary one that could be moved and transformed according to the needs of the installation and transformation of tensile fabric. At the same time, the interest in a lightweight above ground structure that implicitly relies on a kind of already situated infrastructure was an important projection regarding cities of high density, public space, and sustainability. Projects like this are not mean to follow the traditional notion of a building as a solid permanent mass – it is rather nomadic.
LUCIO SANTOS (DIGITAL RESEARCH PRACTICE)
Studio description
Lúcio Santos is an Architect working in New York City. His design focuses on modularity and generative systems as a method of creating complex geometries from standard materials and fabrication methods. His research is process driven and focuses on simplicity while developing clear formal gestures.
Lúcio Santos graduated from the Architectural Association Design Research Lab [DRL] post-graduate program in 2005 receiving a Master of Architecture and Urbanism, and the New Jersey School of Architecture [NJIT] in 2003 where he received a Bachelor of Architecture degree.
His work experience spans both the US and Europe where he has worked on projects ranging from high-end residential additions and housing complexes to pedestrian bridges, hotels, football stadiums and cultural pavilions. His interest in design as a process of formal experimentation has developed a varied body of work which is constantly evolving.
Lúcio Santos has worked for Zaha Hadid Architects on the Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion for the 2008 World Expo from schematic design to the production of construction drawings. He was in charge of rationalizing the 3d geometry and overall design development of the bridge, where he worked closely with Arup London and Spanish steel fabricators, developing the primary structure and substructure to produce a repetitive system of panelization for the curved façade. Lúcio worked for the office of Farjadi Architects in London & SOM in New York as a Senior Designer where he was the lead designer on several projects in the US and Middle East.
Project 1: XO.S TOWER
Credits: Design/ fabrication /Implementation
LUCIO SANTOS
Lúcio Santos is an Architect working in New York City. His design focuses on modularity and generative systems as a method of creating complex geometries from standard materials and fabrication methods. His research is process driven and focuses on simplicity while developing clear formal gestures.
Lúcio Santos graduated from the Architectural Association Design Research Lab [DRL] post-graduate program in 2005 receiving a Master of Architecture and Urbanism, and the New Jersey School of Architecture [NJIT] in 2003 where he received a Bachelor of Architecture degree.
His work experience spans both the US and Europe where he has worked on projects ranging from high-end residential additions and housing complexes to pedestrian bridges, hotels, football stadiums and cultural pavilions. His interest in design as a process of formal experimentation has developed a varied body of work which is constantly evolving.
Lúcio Santos has worked for Zaha Hadid Architects on the Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion for the 2008 World Expo from schematic design to the production of construction drawings. He was in charge of rationalizing the 3d geometry and overall design development of the bridge, where he worked closely with Arup London and Spanish steel fabricators, developing the primary structure and substructure to produce a repetitive system of panelization for the curved façade. Lúcio worked for the office of Farjadi Architects in London & SOM in New York as a Senior Designer where he was the lead designer on several projects in the US and Middle East.
Project 1: XO.S TOWER
Credits: Design/ fabrication /Implementation
LUCIO SANTOS
XO.S PAVILION
The XO.S PAVILION is a formal exercise emulating biomorphic exoskeletal systems, intended to be used as a temporary place of gathering. It funnels pedestrians from one end to the other, compressing at the center and then widening at both ends dividing space into two zones.
The pavilion is fabricated from stainless steel folded strips, laser-cut from flat sheets and welded together. The exterior is painted with a high-gloss black car paint finish while the interior and inner faces are painted white.
Project 2: FACETED FIBROUS STRUCTURES
Credits:
Design/ fabrication /Implementation
LUCIO SANTOS
Description
FACETED FIBROUS STRUCTURES is a research endeavor focusing on producing complex double-curved structural geometries using standard planar materials assembled together in linear strips. When a material is folded its bending strength is increased parallel to the fold. Using ancient paper folding techniques (origami) as inspiration, the concept of folding flat metal sheets allows one to triangulate geometries and generate long volumetric folded strips that can then be assembled together to create structural ribs. The apertures and depth of the faceted system can be sized according to solar gain requirements as well as structural performance criteria and/or weight reduction necessity. Using standard CAD/CAM technologies, the folded strips can be easily manufactured from planar sheets using CNC, laser, or water-jet cutters.Design of the FACETED FIBROUS STRUCTURES was developed in Rhino using Rhino Scripting. The structure is generated using a base surface onto which 3 layers of points are plotted. The top layer represents the exterior, the middle layer the center, and the bottom layer the interior. Surfaces are then created from the points using an elongated hexagonal pattern.
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