Archinect - Architectural Association (Faysal)

Winter

2010-09-27T19:24:19-04:00

In trying to define a thesis - because that is that time of year - one can dig himself a deep and dark hole by bouncing between two approaches (two extremes?). a. Does this have everything (or anything) to do with problem-solving, or b. is it about rigorously working at creating opportunities that are unashamedly thought of as impossible?

If these are not the same question, bottled differently, I'd go for b.

Al Manakh: Gulf Continued

2010-06-03T12:48:31-04:00

For those interested, here's the lecture, live:

http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/live.php

tokyo flashbacks

2010-05-09T09:29:24-04:00

Tokyo

2010-03-25T15:46:41-04:00

Tokyo-Ga. Wim Wenders gives the world a humbling film. He visited Tokyo because of Yasujiro Ozu, someone he never met, but to whom he feels an unexplained familiarity. A student and a mentor. Wenders never met Ozu in the sense that we understand meetings to have taken place. He met him through watching his films, over and over again. He called them treasures. Wenders says that his first visit to Tokyo was a visit to an uncannily familiar place. Before that, he says that in Ozu’s characters he sees his mother, his father, his brother, and many others whom he knows so well. Wenders was in Tokyo in 1983, but Ozu passed away in 1963. Twenty years after his passing, Wenders finds Ozu’s Tokyo unchanged. Unchanged means continuously changing, just as Ozu captured it.

In one scene, Wenders shoots an alley with the same camera he uses throughout the movie, and then shoots the same scene, from the same camera position, with a 50 mm lens. Ozu only used 50 mm lenses. Looking at the second scen...

prnt scren 24-31

2010-03-21T16:28:52-04:00

Term 2 has come to an end last week. We have a month long Easter break, which is a fairly busy time considering it's supposedly a break. A lot of fun things will happen though. Studio trips take place during this month, with our studio heading to Tokyo next week (other studio trips include another Tokyo visit, a Euro-road-trip in a van, and Boston/NYC). Moreover, due on the first day of Term 3 are two 3,000 word essays.

Anyway, we're taking this opportunity to divorce ourselves from the specifics of the project, trying to see opportunity in everything around us.

p.s. All studio work is done with Tyson Hosmer, Michael Dosier, and Ryan Szanyi.
prnt scrn 24 - revisiting the anatomy of the creature, trying to simplify him - conceptually and computationally - with the goal that it has the ability to "build." We took the last two weeks of the term as a charette, we have been talking about these things attempting to "build" for a number of months, but we never actually set out to try i...

prnt scren 17-23

2010-03-10T18:28:22-05:00

More developments in attempting to embed some sort of anatomy into the bodies. They are still simple, but each chain/creature, start to act as a collective, which was mainly enabled through using a physics engine, pbox2d, and exploiting its springs and collisions.

Another biweekly review explains my desktop background, and I have no idea why I do not have another prnt scrn on the last day. I guess I'm getting lazy.

Also, we keep on talking about starting a website so we can start to share the code(s), but I guess it'll happen over Easter break, or maybe summer break at the latest.

On another note, our studio trip - sometime during easter break - is headed towards Tokyo. Other studios are going to nyc/boston, tokyo(different studio), and a eurotrip/roadtrip across germany, italy and some other places.

prnt scrn 17 - because some days are simply disastrous.

prnt scrn 18

prnt scrn 19

prnt scrn 20

This was an interesting moment. These "creatures" have no desire for locomotion - n...

prnt scrn 10-16

2010-03-04T20:31:50-05:00

These are a little overdue. Spent a big chunk of last week preparing for a seminar presentation where I had to present a reading on Donna Haraway's work, which fell within the context of other related work presented on that day including readings from Norbert Wiener, Heinz Von Foerster and others.

prnt scrn 10

prnt scrn 11 - an image of Stelarc's "Third Arm." I had fun finding imagery for the seminar presentation, but I am a little worried now that I approached the readings a little too literally.

prnt scrn 12 - Moving back to studio, this is from a reading of Karl Sims' Evolving "Virtual Creatures," found at http://www.karlsims.com/papers/siggraph94.pdf

prnt scrn 13

prnt scrn 14

prnt scrn 15

prnt scrn 16 - This, and the above are the early attempts at trying to articulate the single pixel seen in the earlier prnt scrns into something that starts to show anatomical features. Ofcourse, it's still a circle. I should be getting images from my teammates, as they are doing more intere...

prnt scrn 3-9

2010-02-21T21:04:21-05:00

had a review sometime in the middle of the week, which explains the day with my desktop background as the screen shot. We're still trying to understand what constitutes an ecology within our digital environment. We also realized that we need to tackle the notion of how these things start to become material systems.

prnt scrn 3

prnt scrn 4

prnt scrn 5

prnt scrn 6

prnt scrn 7

prnt scrn 8

prnt scrn 9

p.s. All studio work is done with Tyson Hosmer, Michael Dosier, and Ryan Szanyi.

prnt scrn 2

2010-02-13T21:22:58-05:00

more processing work.

p.s. All studio work is done with Tyson Hosmer, Michael Dosier, and Ryan Szanyi.

prnt scrn 1

2010-02-12T15:44:35-05:00

what if I take a screen shot everyday and revisit it all in a year, when I'm done with all of this? I keep on making these huge claims, that are in fact simple to do, but always find myself ignoring them.

One of the other studios here have a design for disassembly component that they need to tackle. It strikes me that to tackle that within the context of architecture - and in their case some sort of factory - requires a high degree of future projection. Sure, the same question asks itself, what is our future space conception. It would'nt make sense to develop a design for disassembly strategy that works today, because it is likely to be irrelevant -perhaps inefficient?- come disassembly time. On another note, perhaps disassembly is not disassembling and putting parts in the back of a hundred trucks to ship them to a new home. Or perhaps we do not build for things to last as they used to. Maybe it stops making sense somewhere down the lane.

What is interesting is the parallel when...

lateness live stream

2010-02-05T13:59:43-05:00

I'm not sure if any of you can see the live stream from outside the building. Since the hall is full, I'll have to make do with this. For all those interested:

http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/video/live.html

frying brains

2010-02-02T18:31:18-05:00

I was just reading Hans Moravec’s prediction/belief/fantasy(?) where human consciousness will be downloaded into a digital form where it is either given free reign to roam around in cyberspace or be restrained within the body of a robot. He writes about scientists frying human brains and then separating layers of molecules so information can be scanned layer by layer. At the end of it, your head, now that does'nt sound like fun. While this freaks me out – on many levels – I have to admit, I’ve become more and more convinced of how fragile our bodily existence is. If everything around us is fragile, from political to economic to cultural to moral to all kinds of systems, then why isn’t our anthropocentric world-view just as fragile? Sure, this wont happen tomorrow – unless it is already happening and I missed it? -, and maybe not in the next decade or so, but something along those lines is surely in the making. iPad is not exactly the move in the other direction. Anyway, If it happen...

question

2010-01-30T19:41:32-05:00

A couple of months ago I attended a public conversation between Brett Steele and Marc Wigley which was moderated by Mark Cousins. Not surprisingly, the conversation revolved around contemporary education. Of the many things that stuck with me from that night, one statement by Mark Cousins remains strongly imprinted. He said that “if you hear someone start a sentence with the statement ‘architecture is...’, leave the room.” That attitude is one where architecture is not seen as a series of answers that are set in stone, but one where architecture is understood as a conceptual and material field that continuously evolves to transform the way we live. Our research has to provide an environment where new forms of teaching and learning can evolve and mature. It is through this pursuit of novel - yet relevant - forms of teaching and learning that we can foster a discourse about novel – yet relevant - ways of conceiving architecture. Design research is partly an attempt at creating and sha...

thom mayne

2009-12-09T20:18:54-05:00

Thom Mayne came for an evening lecture at the AA, after nearly 25 years of absence. He went through a good number of his new projects in a concise manner, and, in short, my (naive) opionion leaving the lecture was that it's this kind of person that makes you feel good about being an architecture student. I have always been a fan of Morphosis' work (Mayne never failed to use the collaborative -we-), and it was a pleasure hearing him attempting to tie his life's work under a coherent umbrella of recurring concepts.

As an introductory note that Brett Steele referred to him as the "most plastic of American architects" in the last couple of decades, which I thought was true, especially with the images Mayne showed, but I also have to note that with that description, other names also came up in my head (rick joy, steven holl, etc).

He framed his work around two recurring themes, the crucial role of organization, namely organizing multiple systems (sometimes referred to as unique forces ...

lots of images

2009-12-04T20:13:37-05:00

long overdue. flickr year-wide page. Have not been updated in a while though. enjoy.

here

Just Leave

2009-12-01T20:48:20-05:00

Something I heard a couple of weeks ago, in a roundtable discussion between Brett Steele, Mark Wigley, and Mark Cousins.

Mark Cousins said something along the lines of "if you hear a discussion start by the words architecture is... just leave"

true.

First Works

2009-11-09T12:17:56-05:00

My attmept at widening scope.

Last friday an exhibition opened in the main gallery at the AA entitled First Works. I found it timely because I have been struggling for a while with the theme of the exhibition (outlined in the curatorial statement). The work on show in the exhibition, all done in the 60s and 70s, has an undeniable influence on the work being done today, but the question one has to ask (I think) is what exactly these influences are and how are they being expressed.

Answering some of these questions would narrow add some specificity to an otherwise floating situation. Seeing all the work in one place (an amazing number of original drawings) is key in clearing up some of the confusion (my confusion).

Come for a visit if you are around.

Plaster and Other Things 2

2009-11-09T10:53:15-05:00

Here are the photos of some of the casts before the casting operations.

The work here was done with Brendon Carlin, Kyle Chou, Carlos Piles, and Lluis Enrique Monzo.

Plaster and Other Things

2009-11-08T14:02:51-05:00

Workshop 1 (i.e project 1, it can be confusing, it took me a while) at the AADRL has come to an end last week. I had already given the a short description of the brief in an earlier post so I'll dedicate this to show a number of images that should portray a clear cross-section of the work that was produced in the workshop that I took part in. There were two other workshops run by different tutors that finished simultaneously, and while all workshops dealt generally with the notion of material behavior, the work produced accross the three workshops was different in many respects. This is probably due to the different way the notion of material behavior had been problematized, and how each workshop set up a different kind of problem that required different expressions.

A quick note on the one I took part in. Most of the work done was in the form of casting plaster in flexible formwork (however, one team attempted to tackle the problem in the form of pasta as aggregates which touched ...

Analog Machines

2009-10-13T18:19:21-04:00

Fall Studio at the AADRL is divided into Workshop 1 and Workshop 2, with a number of options in each set. The workshop I am taking part of is titled "Matter as Computation: Experimentation in Analog Machines" and is run by Theo Spyropoulos and Rob Stuart-Smith.

The workshop aims at engaging spatial/formal experimentation through rigorous material processes (to understand material behavior) that attempts to understand matter as both formed and formable. Ever since the workshop was presented, I could not let go of Denis Diderot's notion of "Irritable Matter." The workshop started with problematizing the (in)famous hanging model that Gaudi built over 10 years while designing Colonia Guell. We were asked to jump into building hanging model to understand the potential found in building and problematizing catenary structures.

The workshop works hand in hand with a series of seminars, all trying to situate (some of) the research that happens in the school within a historical lineage, at...

Design (not Digital) Research Lab

2009-09-30T19:22:07-04:00

Today was the introduction to the AADRL. AADRL co-director Theo Spyropoulos gave a short presentation that was followed by an informal discussion about the programme's structure. The first words uttered by Spyropoulos were that this is not a "Digital Research Laboratory" but a "Design Research Laboratory". The digital is important, but the programme will not neglect the social, political, and architectural aspects of design (amongst other things). This was timely because it is very easy for a programme like the AADRL to be falsely accused of giving the digital thematic importance. Moreover, the presentation and the informal discussion focused heavily on the importance of the collaborative structure that the AADRL has adopted across the years (in the form of self-organizing teams of 3-4 individuals), a "participatory", "no-prescriptive" structure with "constant dialogue."

The studio work is going to start with 3 different workshops that student will choose from after the different...

Orientation: An Introduction to Informality

2009-09-21T19:06:15-04:00

Today was the first day of Orientation Week at the Architectural Association.

I had thought it would be a little weird being outnumbered by people who are younger than me. I'm not entirely used to that because I have always been younger than my classmates and colleagues at work and in school but I soon realized that even as a graduate student, courtesy of the School's structure and admissions system, I was not entirely outnumbered by younger students. The School allows admission into almost all of its years simultaneously (many transfer students, many one-year visit students, along with graduate and foundations students), which means that on orientation day, you can see the entire cross section of the School waiting in line for registration.

As for my impressions, they were not entirely unexpected. I had visited before and have friends who already attend the School, so, for good or for bad, I have already developed an idea about how the School operates and performs, and am current...

Flight VS 401 DXB to LHR

2009-09-12T09:46:45-04:00

So I just landed safely in London after my 7:30 hours flight. I need make my final arrangements and settle down as soon as possible. I don't want to be running around while school is well underway.

As I said before, orientation starts on the 21st of September. Will probably go down to the school before that to check things out.

A Little More Real By the Second

2009-09-01T19:08:21-04:00

I received an email from Archinect (i.e. Paul) yesterday telling me that I can now start posting blogs as this year's new Architectural Association's DRL blogger. Coincidentally, yesterday was my last day at the office, and as I was on my way home (shortly before seeing Paul's email) I was thinking that "this" is serious, I left my job and I'm going back to school, so receiving the School Blog Project email was further proof of the reality of the situation. Of course I am exited, to say the least, but still trying to get over the situation, only yesterday I was struggling with a AutoCAD hatching problem. Today I woke up and I was neither employed nor really a student. Cant wait till I get my student ID card, and start getting student discounts for all sorts of things. That would be end of my delusions (and paranoia), and I would be a student again!

Orientation wont start till September 21st, and classes (if such a thing will exist?) wont start till September 28th. Therefore, I won...