I've no excuses for my extended absences except to say there were a series of holidays, studio exhaustion and several excursions into the Southwest, which has some of the most breathtaking nature I've ever seen. I'd like to take credit for the photos below but its really Nature doing all the work... 

In my trips i like to document my travels through an informal mapping of the routes and incidences that occurred... 

LAST WE SPOKE

The last week of Fall quarter passed in a total blur. The final week was my first experience of a 3-day sleepless marathon, but I've learned to brace myself for many more.

A recap on the last project Bent Space, an intervention in the main atrium of the board Art Center with the design of a performance-based object. One requirement to derive our initial material tectonics and fabrication process from a quick one week case study project (Eames LCW, DCW, Toy Animals, Aalto's Palmio Chair, Gehry's High Sticking Chair, Summers Lounge Chair, Pilessnig Providence Chair, Mollino's Tea Table etc.). A detail, a formal property, a certain bend, crease, notch, intersection

I was happily surprised to learn that my seaming project was selected to be exhibited in the Currents Best-Of exhibition staged at the end of each quarter. I'll post some photos of the work soon (yes, even behind on documenting my own work) but wanted to share a few quick drawings and photos from peers.

AUD 411: Final presentation | Derek Buell | M.Arch I 2014

Photos courtesy of UCLA AUD

Krysten Burton

READY SET GO

Finally, entering this current quarter, we now stand at 2 weeks into the 10 week curriculum (the quarter system is merciless). The first week of classes are so sweetly civilized, with clean desks, shiny studio floors, cheery students. I anticipate in two weeks a total devolution. This quarter is a structural studio, starting with a two week case study of classic structural projects

AUD 412 | Case Study: Eero Saarinen Ingall's Ice Rink | Krysten Rhae Burton & Jia Gu | M.Arch I 2014

My teammate and myself were assigned Eero Saarinen's Ingall's Ice Rink, a shell-like structure situated in Yale University campus grounds, used for all those racy, icy sports I am not terribly fond of.  From the onset, I tried contacting a few Yale offices to collect original drawings or plans. One conversation with a person at the Architecture Department went something like this: 

Me: Hello, I'm a graduate student at UCLA doing a case study on Saarinen's Ingalls Ice Rink and I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of someone who might know more about the construction process of the building ... 

Yale: This is the Yale Architecture Department. 

Me: Yes, I know. 

Yale: That has nothing to do with architecture. 

So we didn't get original master plans but we got some excellent information out of our own deduction and research. What we discovered is that Saarinen's building is an extremely elegant solution to program requiring a space free of columns yet needed to span up to 300 feet to accomodate the rink. The structure is composed of three main concrete elements - the vaulted arch that serves as the spine of the building, and two compression rings. The vaulted arch is a 290 foot long central arched backbone of reinforced concrete. From this central support the timber roof is attached to a cable net structure which gives the roof the signature double curve. Saarinen's solution is to essentially cap a dome over the entire space.

The classic dome is generated by a series of arches rotated around the vertical axis. Like arches and vaults, the dome’s thrust is composed of its weight and the horizontal thrust of the basic arch section. The combination of horizontal and lateral load creates a net of compression forces that are transferred to the ground to form a compression ring [diagram 1]. The symmetry of the dome is replicated in saarinen’s buiding by rotating the spinal arch along the horizontal axis to create a compresion ring around the rink. However, in departure from the traditional arch, the design of the arch lifts the ends of both sides [diagram 2]. The spinal arch is then mirrored in plan. The resulting effect operates similarly to a dome in its load and reactive forces. The revolved arches create a thin-shell structure whose performace also mimics that of the dome [diagram 3]

The sectional arch of the shell is then nirrored in its transverse axis. In its final form, the tensilve units are draped between the spinal arch and the arch in plan [diagram 4]. An inversion of geometry is an inversion of performance. The behavior of the arch is reversed when the geometry is mirrored. Rather than pushing down to the ground, the hanging tensile unit operates as a catenary, pulling the ring inwards towards the horizontal center of the structure [diagram 5]. 

So although Saarinen's building originated with the principles of the dome, a series of moves later produces what's the Whale, fond nickname for the curved lifted structure. 

SPEED DESIGN

Moving right along... Jesse Reiser gave a lecture last Friday at Decafe, the gray-felt lined lecture space of Perloff. While I would have loved to follow the lecture via a live blog, UCLA AUD lectures are staged under curious conditions: total, utter darkness befalls the room. The only source of illumination are the projection screen and the exit signs, of which you can make your choice. For this lecture, I tried to take notes by the dimmed glow of my cell phone (still refusing an iPhone-centric existence) but only managed to get two words  down before giving up on my own scrawl: ubiquitous difference

Atlas of Novel Tectonics elaborates: Its a new universality that rests on ubiquitous difference constituting a larger whole. As such, it neither proposes imposition of a homogenous universalizing system nor does it seek to fix of ricrumscrive traditional regional differences. Rather, ultra-regionalism proposes working within existing transnational systems where they intersect local practices but understands the local as two-fold: first, that changed conceptions of universalizing systems hold that they are not homogenous but can crate their own internal regions and logics, and second, that fixed notions of cultural and national regions belong more to ideology than reality and in fact with very few exceptions are constantly changing. So the task is not to resist the global but to seek out the most creative ways to develop richer regions within it. 

Finally, Reiser and Jason Payne have launched a four day intensive design charrette titled Existenz Minimal that focuses on the aesthetics of the relief tent design for the Tohoku earthquake. Taking place from January 20-23, The workshop begins by subverting the traditional understanding of the relief tent (minimal aesthetics, max utility). Initially I was put-off by the idea of literally inverting min-aesthetics/max-utility to max-aesthetiscs/min-utility; in truth the workshop is not about pushing for a designed envelope but about designing the non-design, of which emergency relief shelters epitomizes.

We don't design emergency relief tents with aesthetic purpose because it would be vanity/hubris to do so, and in essence we feel that an emergency response necessitates instant and utilitarian forms, while the properties of aesthetics, i.e. optics, texture, feel, shape, posture, are de-prioritized and sidelined for other considerations. "Taking the inevitability of future earthquake and tsunami damage as given, we imagine tents for use in coming relief efforts designed to the highest standards of formal ingenuity and aesthetic determination, wwith the understanding that the more prosaic values associated with tents, those to do with their basic operation as emergency shelter, need no further attention." As I understand, the workshop begins with an interpretation of the complexities of geometry and behavior of the tent through the classic structure and skin model. Yet, as Payne and Reiser note, "Any perceived categorical separation between “structure” and “skin” is largely illusion as the skin pulls and shapes the skeleton toward structural integrity and vice versa. While modernist buildings and furniture we have been taught to appreciate radically separate structure and skin, we will explore an approach that integrates the two, yielding tent prototypes based upon the concept of a dynamic composite."
The workshop is a mix of M.Arch I, M.Arch II and undergraduates of UCLA's Architecture and Urban Design Department which I think is an absolutely fantastic in its collaborative nature. I wish there was more. I'll post some updates of the final pin up this Monday. 

Speed designs by Joe Matthias, Julie Mithun, Raman Mustafa and Peter Nguyen (M.Arch I)

Pin up presentation by Adam Lind, Ryan Ramirez and Brent Lucy (M.Arch II)