So last post i gave a little background on myself and on the school. Thanks for all those with questions.. Keep em coming! I enjoy answering all of them.

This week was a busy one. Most of our time was spent on the creation of a Performance Criteria Document for out Design Optimization Course. This document outlines all the parameters of our project. These parameters are all very real and contain hard numbers. They include NYC and IBC building code, Zoning codes, Material qualities and limitations, performance objectives, prorgamatic requirements, fabrication and erection tolerances, environmental aspects and performanace, structural assumptions with corresponding Free Body Diagrams, loading diagrams, moment/shear diagrams...basically all the requirements an architectural office and engineering consultant would factor into the design of a project. What is crazy is that we are basically learning structures again from an engineering school. Back in undergrad i didnt really care all that much about structures....studio ruled. And i am finding that the other architects in this program were the same.. Now we are all about it, as materiality and structural optimization are what is driving a good portion of our projects. Its nice having an engineer in our group since he received alot more in-depth structures training. While we have come a long way on building the "wireframe" model in CATIA as well as the massing of the surrounding site, we cant start plugging in too many parameters untill this Performance Criteria Document reaches a point od completion. Like i said, the information/parameters are real so they will greatly effect the outcome of the design. Allthough, what is nice about CATIA is that at any point we can change/modify certain parameters and the model will respond accordingly as well as tell us if certain aspects will or will not work (for example the sizing of a structural member or a type of material). So now that we are close to finding all these parameters...we can start studying it in model form.
I mentioned in the first post that we are working with SHoP on the Fashion Institute of Technology project which ShoP won the competition for a couple of years ago. As in any competition alot of the design was kinda presumptuous and "on the fly" since it is done in a relatively short period of time without determining every paramter as we are doing now. Now,, allthough we have a desired aesthetic, concept, and parti, we are adding some logic and rigor that will as a result, greatly change the look and performance of the building. The driving force behind FIT is a: "layered, woven curtain wall that will contain the circulation between the classrooms, the quad, and the offices. This thickened facade allows many spatial possibilities and has review and exhibition spaces distributed throughout the building contained within its layers, all with natural northern light. This new façade is designed and constructed using methods of pattern making, unfolding, stitching," In addition to fullfilling and analysing the result of the curtain wall on the interior program, next semester will most likely be spent fabircating protoypes for the construction of the curtain wall assembly. I dont want to bore you with the material aspects and structural computations but here is an image of the competition proposal.



What takes some getting used to, but what s also great about this curriculum is that the courses are all fully integrated into one another. As opposed to typical design schools which have studio completely seperate from the other courses and run on its own conceptual foundations, our studio project is almost completely being directed or informed by our Optimization and Modeling and Simulation courses.

Here are some CATIA studies I did ..nothing too exciting and that i couldnt do alot quicker in maya, but the inherent inteligence of thes types of models is what makes it so complex and sophisticated.





I am going to periodically post some already completed projects from last year so you can see the kind of work that has been done in the program. Here is a design project done last year by the students who are now in their second year.
The project is The Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City, the home of a British Airways Concorde supersonic airliner. The project was initiated to design an enclosure or pavilion for the Concorde, both to protect it from direct exposure to the environment of the New York Harbor and to house a state-of-the-art exhibition to showcase the aircraft and supersonic flight. Regulation issues such as limits on the shadow that could be cast on the water (due to concern for the potential impact on fish in the river) were also discussed with senior management.








The primary focus of the Product-Architecture members of the group was the design of the enclosure and an integrated internal interactive exhibit. The Civil Engineering students primarily focused on the construction, regulatory issues, costs and coordination with the planning for the pier reconstruction being conducted by a consulting company.
The students were scheduled to spend one full day per week (Product-Architecture design studio and Civil Engineers capstone design) on the project but undertook additional work at other times. The Product-Architecture students also used the project as part of other course work, especially in the ME 635 Modeling and Simulation course (for which a special section was run for the Program) and in the ME 564 Optimization course. The Modeling and Simulation course actually provided the students with their ideas in proposing design concepts for the Concorde enclosure. In the course they applied fluid dynamics modeling (COSMOS) to visualize the airflow and pressure changes over the Concorde as it passed through various stages of flight from low speed through the sound barrier to supersonic speeds in order to discover why the aircraft is shaped the way it is, especially the unusual wing geometry. The students used the modeling results of airflow patterns as design cues that theyapplied in generating conceptual designs to capture both the aesthetics of the Concorde's
shape and its effects on the air during flight as an integral part of the building design. The results of the pressure modeling were used in developing a dramatic exhibition concept for inside the building.
The structural design process benefited from the ME 564 Optimization course and highlighted the concept of form-fit-function. MatLab was used in the optimization. The truss system was optimized to the loads which in part were supported by the shaped ceiling structure that followed from the airflow pattern cues. Thus the separation of the trusses is optimized with closer spacing away from the heavily curved section of the ceiling.While details have not been included here, the civil engineers developed detailed designs for the roof structure, the glass curtain walls, integration of the anchoring of the structure into the pier, construction costing and code compliance.
The team also developed designs for an integrated exhibition.
One key feature of this was to provide an experience in sight, sound and color of the simulated flight from take off through the sound barrier as it effects and is affected by the innovative form of the aircraft design. To achieve this the students coupled advanced computational fluid dynamics with non-linear digital video editing to create a projected color mapping of the pressure changes across the aerodynamic surfaces synchronized with the sounds of the engines and ultimately the sonic boom as Mach 1 is achieved.
Research into integrating current mist projection systems suggested that this can be achieved full scale directly onto the aircraft itself without adverse effects on the latter or the viewing public. This represents a state of the art approach in the project's attempt to deliver scientific information to a media savvy audience for whom traditional exhibition design is not engaging. Thus boundaries between architecture, engineering, science and entertainment dissolve providing a metaphor for the future of design and engineering education.