Oct '05 - Jan '07
One Image/Three Sentences
As this is the third term in our course here at the DRL, I thought I would ask for an image and three sentences from each team. This is an interesting time during the DRL in that we are working towards the June 22nd-23rd Final phase 1 jury.
The format for the submission is simple, one image and three sentences. Included with each submission are the names of the team members, tutor, and brief. At press time we have 10/12 teams reporting. Hopefully we can do this a few times before the jury to see how the projects progress.
Teams are presented in no particular order . . .
Team Name
ddis.turb
Members
Deniz Manisali, Dimitris Akritopoulos, Iannis Orfanos, Sylvia Georgiadou
Tutor/Brief
Tom Verebes/Soft Cities
Description
Hybrid commerce through differentiation and adaptability of spaces as a sequential aggregate logic
Image
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Team Name
Flotsam
Members
Oznur Erboga, Lillie Liu, Dora Ntatsopoulou, Victor Orive
Tutor/Brief
Yusuke Obuchi/Learning Environments
Description
Flotsam's strategy towards a Learning Environment is to develop an extremely large scale building (100,000 sqm) in which one can navigate without a map. Our goal is to develop a navigational system where in decoding the logic of the building's spatial organization, users are able to find their way. Formal organization of the site is generated through use of strange attractors as a tool.
Image
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Team Name
K²S
Members
Kyungeun Kelly Lee, Karthikeyan Ramamoorthy, Sara Sheikh akbari
Tutor/Brief
Patrik Schumacher/Swarm Urbanism
Description
Parametric Urbanism takes the paradigm and tools of parametric design into the domain of urbanism. The power of parametrics is usually exploited to cope with the rapid succession of design changes, i.e. for the ability to produce variations of a single building, or for generating versions of building components for a complex building geometry that does not allow for the repetition of elements. Parametric urbanism is suggesting that these techniques of versioning can be applied to an array of buildings, so that a new version does not replace an older version but comes to join and extend the field of simultaneous versions in the build up of a complex urban field.
Image
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Team Name
knife and fork
Members
Gerard Joson [Phillipines], Pavlos Xanthopoulos [Greece], Brian Dale [USA]
Tutor/Brief
Tom Verebes/Soft Cities
Description
Sound and bodies are our materials, feeding one against the other to generate a distributed logic of commerce. We are looking at where the fluid flows of people intersect, either at a point of sonic attraction or distraction, as well as then a point of sonic generation once the crossing up of bodies has inevitably occurred, as a way to organize this commercial logic, the flows of people, of products, the space itself. This is manifested as points of intervention of various scales, from the single person newsstand to small shops, clusters of shops, and entertainment venues.
Image
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Team Name
k-matic
Members
Ezhiil Vigneswaran R.R., Jose-Luis Lemos da Silva Neto, Lauren Barclay
Tutor/Brief
Patrik Schumacher/Swarm Urbanism
Description
Starting with the “Swarm Urbanism” brief we looked in building a logic system with a level of complexity that could be applied to an urban field. We are seeking to create a variety of porosities, alignments and continuities of massing and space to give shape to a set of building phenotypes that would gradually transform and adapt in a fluid parametric urban plan.
Image
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Team Name
P-FAX
Members
Paulo E. Flores, Feng Xu, Arturo Revilla, Xiao Wei Tong
Tutor/Brief
Tom Verebes/Soft Cities
Description
Our project for Stratford city focuses on an approach to urbanism as one that integrates the striation of a city grid into a smooth and gradient dissolution of mass and void that mix several activities and events into a programmatic differentiation into a city.
Image
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Team Name
rxn
Members
Luis E. Fraguada [USA], Sangyup Lee [Korea], Nantapon Juungurn [Thailand], Shu-Hao Wu [Taiwan]
Tutor/Brief
Theo Spyropoulos/Adaptive Ecologies
Description
The project aims to research methods to augment and redefine the character of London. We identify London (and any human settlement for that matter) as a parasitic form of nonorganic life, dependent on host resources for survival, and governed by multiple self organizing behaviors that maintain its character dynamic and fluid. The way in which London grows and evolves can be deviated by introducing an urbanism of symbiosis that is already adaptable through compatibility, and thus can spread through the existing resource channels available in the city.
Image
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Team Name
Serial Drippers
Members
Mihee Kim, Annarita Papeschi, Jose Ramon Tramoyeres, Andres Arias
Tutor/Brief
Yusuke Obuchi/Learning Environments
Description
We are working on a proposal for the IBC and MPC during the Olympic games in London 2012. At the moment we are exploring the labyrinths as an organizational system: focused in its possibilities to influence in their behavior. Using rats to simulate it: with the aim to create an intelligent navigational system.
Image
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Team Name
Sugar Inc.
Members
Marc Boles, Kristof Crolla, Giulia Foscari, Arturo Lyon
Tutor/Brief
Patrik Schumacher/Swarm Urbanism
Description
By utilizing cellular systems we are generating self organized behaviours and systems informed by localized relationships or field conditions. Arrays of responsive cells, reacting to their particular neighbourhood conditions, self-organize into clusters that respond to field forces. The emerging patterns can be applied as a massing tool responsive to the existing site-conditions. An intelligent system allows programmatically defined structures to emerge into or onto an existing context. By scanning the surroundings and responding to it in an autonomous way, optimal programmatic organisations or spontaneously grown structures emerge.
Image
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Team Name
LST
Members
Shih-Chin Wu, Shiqi Li, Chrysostomos Tsimourdagkas
Tutor/Brief
Yusuke Obuchi/Parametric Urbanism, Adaptive Machinic Process
Description
We deal with the International Broadcasting Center / Main Press Center
(IBC/MPC) for the London Olympics 2012. IBC/MPC is seen as a micro-city
which evolves following specific rules. Working with L-systems in various
ways, we try to define these rules and achieve intricate but coherent
circulation patterns and radical spatial qualities.
Image
21 Comments
go Luis, try not to get distracted by world cup
perhaps a good time to batch render
Ar-gen-tina (the UK will love that)
nice luis ...
good to see you back too ...
HAIL TO THE LUIS.
UNDISPUTED KING OF THE ADVICEATORS.
interesting idea/post Luis,
2 problems however, in my humble opinion;
1) I've not read many sentences eminating from the AA I understand, or which exemplfy the use of language as communication, rather than obfuscation (just to show I can use fancy words too, except in a grammatically correct format and context)
2) I've not seen many images generated by the AA that I comprehend, can see the pupose of, or feel like sticking on my wall.
I don't mean this is an awful jibe, just a hopefully entertaining observation. Then again, maybe I'm just a cynical simpleton ;-)
signum, it is a very valid observation. On the one hand, the one image / three sentence format forces us to comprehend our projects through extreme filtering. I can understand how a person's attampt to explain what they have been working on and what they are still working towards can be hard to put into so few words. Since we are in the middle of it, stay tuned, might find the projects gain clarity through the months ahead . . . you might find something to your liking! As far as the other sentences/images from the AA, I cannot comment. Thanks for the observation!
And by the way, thanks to all the teams that submitted!
Well fielded Luis, and there was me worried I might just sound like a philistine!
I will stay tuned, but may potentially also remain off-message...
signum, trust me, after a while hanging out with those guys, you learn to decode to architalk.
Description
Our project for Stratford city focuses on an approach to urbanism as one that integrates the striation of a city grid into a smooth and gradient dissolution of mass and void that mix several activities and events into a programmatic differentiation into a city.
Translation:
we just found out tha there is a gradient tool in illustrator. that should be enough till june. as soon as we figure out how to use clipping masks in photoshop, we be rockin'.
jokes aside, great stuff luis, i think i learned more by reading this post than i did with 3 months of reading the drl website.
the units in you renderings look a lot like the nests some spiders build for their larvae...is that by chance?
by the way luis, when's the final review? can non-aa people attend?
bigness . . . thanks for the comment . . . the final jury for phase 1 will be June 22nd -23rd 2006 at the AA Lecture Hall. I believe the jury is indeed open to the public.
From what I've heard this particular jury is interesting as they usually invite people that aren't necessarily all that into our work, or people that would generally be more critical. For instance a lot of our projects deal with urbanism as a scale to inform all aspects of the design. I am very curious to hear what an urbanist thinks of some of our approaches!
I have to agree with signum - most of the statements above pretty much bfuddled me into amusement. However! I do have to say that, Luis, your team's statement is by far the most comprehensible and (IMO) defendable (is that a word?) as an approach to a urban design problem.
Thanks for taking time to post these.
the mice are fun.
i understand the language more or less but like a few of the others above am not sure of its purpose...
still, much better to be doing this kind of stuff in school (where it is safe) than being forced to make sense all the time. looks a lot of fun.
looking forward to seeing what yall produce for finals (and beyond. would be very cool to see where this kind of work will take you in the real world).
"defendable" is now ... a word
but yeah I have to agree with LB, luis ...
you's seems to be the most comprehensible program ... didnt have to read it twice ( some of them even thrice .... very slowly ) to understand.
i do comprehend it. maybe that's why i disagree with it so much. organum is latin for instrument or tool. a perfect analogy for a city, rather than referring to it as an a parasite of inorganic form. imho you got it backwards.
interesting vado, could you eleborate on that? How does qualifying a city as organum allow us to understand the processes by which it grows? Also, I would say nonorganic as opposed to inorganic, which implies more atificiality. The city has a character, it has various stages of vitality and life. I will be the first to say that the description needs much refinement and I hope this will be reworked and the thesis be more clear as we move forward with the project. vado, are you hinting more towards a discourse of body without organs? These discussions are exactly the type we need to be having in order to get our ideas out of our heads/studio in order bounce them off of other people. Would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks!
the city as deliberate artifice is so retro...and the city as nature is as well (at least dating back to the romantic period) and the dissolution of the boundaries between the natural and the artificial was just starting to get retro. so someone comes up and tells you (someone like AZP) don't think too much, too many meanings will screw up production.
but seriously, i like the knife and fork theme ...but if they could only drop that 'commercial' rhetoric aspect, almost as if they're ashamed of being too delicate (read: 'phenomenological') and so adding some urbAAne grit. they do give the impression they want to listen as well.
mr luis, your group's image is more telling of an organ without a body.
thanks for the feedback there cellardoor, i am one of the three [brian] behind the kinfe and fork contingent. the words are definatly pasted from a few weeks ago in order to meet luis' impossible deadlines [a week...seriously...]. that said, it is something we have struggled with ourselves. given a brief of soft commerce, how does this actually relate to the urban fabric without introducing all of the other things we do every day besides shop? and is shopping the right way to work through some of this....any more thoughts you have would be welcome...
isn't that what the studio professors are getting paid for?
okay, i aint a scientist, i just like to google things. but here's what i'd do...an organism is a living complex adaptive system of organs that influence each other in a way that they act more or less as a whole.(this is from wikpedia, as i said i aint a scientist) this organism is in a non equilibrium thermo dynamic state. A thermodynamic system is part of the universe under consideration. in this case for metaphor sake "The City".
To classify the system/city you must understand its boundary and and the qualities flowing through it. There are three kinds of systems: isolated, closed and open. you should study your system/city in these three ways...this way you stay consistent with some kind of "organic" biologically based concept.
it just seems to deem it purely organic is not very accurate. While the organic is tempting as a qualification, the city is its own "urban" organism (to use a phrase coined during the ekistics movement, Havlick et all). The processes by which it grows and recedes take on their own forms. The nonorganic is closely related to the organic in a way, still goverened by self-organizing process (nonlinearity, turbulance . . .). I think to make the claim for "organism" puts us too far into analogy to be truly operable. The relationships you speak of (organs to the whole) become useful when understanding the specific "organs" a city has, an understanding that these are fundamentally different from an organism.
"To classify the system/city you must understand its boundary and and the qualities flowing through it. There are three kinds of systems: isolated, closed and open."
You are right about this vado, our project would benefit from a more rigorous understanding of these systems.
And, of course our tutors get paid for discussing this kind of stuff, but I think it helps immensely to bring the discussion out of studio sometimes, open it up to other people. Thanks for your thoughts!
it sounds like there is a little too much mythologizing of 'commerce' going on. in redeeming architecture from the mythology of leftist intellectualism, many have gone a 180. it is endering, like a child, to use a nietzschean term, overcoming its parent, but the child will also be the adult. if the intention is trully about the simultaneous b(r)anding together of the sonic and the commercial, then the apotheosis of this banding is in a venue like virgin megastore (and we know the AADRL likes airport lounges and big hip megastores ) . but, my hopeful impression was that there is a less blunt and more nuanced sensibility. i am not sure how you'd go about it. please don't translate a graphic depiction of sonic waves and turn it into a paramatrically ordered structural system that is capable of kintetic transformation...
luis im just being a dog with a bone here. i have latched onto your parasitic yada yada phrase and cant let go. i just disagree with that as a premise when if you analogize(my word i think) the organism and its scientific definition it just unfolds for you. but what do i know. im a chronic underachiever...
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