Archinect - Knowlton School of Architecture (Marc Syp)

Qingdao Campus: An Augmented Reality Architecture Presentation

2011-01-14T15:42:46-05:00

I recently produced this video for NBBJ's Qingdao Campus Masterplan competition entry. The project was a 10,000,000 SF campus plan in Eastern China.

The design team had already nearly completed concept design when I joined the team for the express purpose of creating the required "multimedia" component. I wanted to do something that combined the conceptual clarity of 3d animation with the theatricality of live-action performance.

I found a lot of inspiration in BIG's 8 House video. Though I have many more ambitions for architectural representation, I was given an insanely short time frame to complete the entire project (4 weeks from concept to delivery), and I had a steep learning curve ahead of me, so I chose to go with proven techniques rather than risk complete failure with untested innovations. So this is more of a process exercise than anything else.

As it turns out, 4 weeks was far too short of a production schedule, and it was a nearly inhuman effort to complete in time ...

Realtime Physics for Space Planning

2010-10-06T13:41:49-04:00

Since my last entry, a lot has changed. I moved on from Fuksas in Rome and I'm back in Columbus, Ohio. I am now working at NBBJ and have taught a few parametric modeling seminars at Knowlton.

I would like to share with you some of the research I have been doing at NBBJ for conceptual design tools. All of the work is done in Rhino with the Grasshopper and Kangaroo plug-ins.

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Architecture: Realtime Physics for Space Planning
http://vimeo.com/15563685

I wanted to develop a system that allows designers to quickly organize and understand complex architectural programmes in three dimensions.

It is an advancement of the traditional bubble diagram; it solves adjacency requirements automatically and suggests planimetric and sectional relationships. The resulting diagrams are not formal solutions; they are simply organizational diagrams with solved adjacencies and accurate required areas. The diagrams are raw materials, meant to be manipulated sculpturally, or even squeezed in...

Fuksas Architetto di Roma

2008-10-02T17:08:39-04:00

I will do one more entry as a post-graduate update. The following is taken from an update for friends and family, and I'm not able to share very much information about the work I am doing, for obvious reasons, so please excuse the non-intellectual content and touristic pictures.

All I can say is that the work is challenging, the atmosphere is intense but amiable, and I am learning a lot on the job. I am on the competitions team and have been given the responsibility of 3d modeling on a large commercial project that will soon begin construction. The model will be used by the engineers and project team to develop construction documents. I have also been doing cost management and design in conjunction with modeling, and in the future the office wants to try out my rendering skills. Needless to say, I have my hands full but I am taking to it like a fish to water.

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Hello all.

I write to you during my first true break since arriving in Rome. I arrived last Monday and starte...

Final post

2008-09-18T15:12:19-04:00

Thank you Archinect. It has been a great run. I hope I have provided some insight, inspiration, or amusement. Of course you all know how many demands are put upon the modern-day architecture student, but the great bloggers on this site have been so dedicated and diligent in their sharing with the community, and I thank them for that. I wish I had given more to this blog; so much of the evidence of my scholarship, thoughts, and ideas are already hidden in notebooks, packed away in boxes, or stored in the back of my mind. I intended to cover all kinds of exciting things, the happenings of last year, the Kipnis studio, the exit review jury with Michael Speaks and Michael Meredith, the insider guide to the post-graduation job search, but I have been sidetracked again and again and again. Life moves so rapidly and soon it changes yet again.

It was a whirlwind finish and now I am moving on. On Sunday, as many of my friends return to school for their final years or settle in to t...

Deep Green - Renderings Complete

2008-04-22T17:15:42-04:00

At long last I have finished the new renderings of Deep Green for my portfolio. As usual, I have been shirking my duty to update on a timely basis, and as usual, I will return to post updates, reflections, writings, etc. Probably after graduation in early June.

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Animus // Studio with Kipnis and Reiser

2008-01-10T14:17:34-05:00

It's hard to believe that this is my last quarter of studio. Maybe it's getting older or maybe it's the sheer intensity of the last 3 years, but it "seems like yesterday" that I turned to architecture bright-eyed and naive. I'm happy to say that my interest in architecture has only been refined and intensified; the horror stories about burnout and bitterness have luckily not applied. What's more, I haven't found architects and professors to be the egotistical monsters that they are often purported to be; in fact, the overwhelming majority have been insightful, reasonable, and sometimes even empathetic (!!) people. It's not rose-colored glasses or late-year nostalgia that makes me say this.

I do think that architectural education is an environment for a particular type of person. It is possible to be self-assured without being egotistical, and strong personalities with a tough skin seem to thrive in this environment. I learned very quickly to put my ego aside and allow mysel...

The Art Museum the Detritus of Commerce

2008-01-09T13:41:24-05:00

Last quarter we engaged the topics of dynamic systems and architectural effects in a studio with Kivi Sotamaa. Kivi was a fantastic studio professor; he has an uncanny ability to hone in on what is successful in your project and encourage development accordingly. We were all battling a steep learning curve (learning Maya and Realflow for the first time) but in the end I think there were some great projects in the studio.

The project was a museum for two permanent collections (Chillida and Bacon) in Valparaiso, Chile. Valparaiso is an intriguing seaport that served as a primary stopping point for shipping vessels traversing the Straits of Magellan; it became a diverse collection of culture, architectural style, and tradition, with seafaring guests leaving a piece of their heritage during brief sojourns from long voyages.

Dedicated a UNESCO world heritage site in 2003, Valpo is famous for its villas stacked on steep hillsides and the numerous staircases and funiculars that connec...

Deep Green Revisited + The Photorealistic Rendering

2008-01-01T18:36:10-05:00

So I recently began going through my old projects for my portfolio and decided to do some new renderings. I began posting early results on my Flickr, which sparked a heated debate about the place of the photorealistic rendering in the architect's arsenal. I won't repeat it all here, but I thought there my be some interest to the Archinect folks, and I'd be happy to have you chime in.

You can find the discussion here.
New renderings (in progress) of Deep Green here.
Some raw files from my final project last quarter here.

Office of Metropolitan Desire

2007-12-22T16:41:21-05:00

This year started with a bang. In addition to the Kivi Sotamaa studio and the Baumer class, both of which I will discuss in detail later, we were offered the opportunity to take a seminar with K. Michael Hays of GSD fame. The class focussed on the architecture of the 60s, for the most part, which a special focus on the manifestations of desire in the work of architects like Eisenman, Hejduk, Rossi, Tschumi, etc.

We spent a lot of time discussing Lacan, but also had many forays into things like VSB, Roland Barthes, Thomas Pynchon, Chomsky, Saussure, Bertolt Brecht, Derrida, Tafuri, etc. We were basically exposed to the material that Hays is fashioning into his new book on desire in this period of architectural history...

Hays is a very pleasant professor, which is to say open-minded and willing to explore any avenue of thought as it pertains to the discussion. References from outside the discipline were welcomed and encouraged.

Our final project was open-ended; we were ...

Comprehensive Studio - Deep Green

2007-12-13T16:09:01-05:00

Last Winter we had the "Comprehensive Studio" with John McMorrough and Mike Cadwell. The project was a housing block in downtown Columbus. Each team of two had a "theme" that was to be explored in the project.

My partner Zhishan Wang and I were assigned Deep Green. This of course meant exploring ecologically sound principles. Our professors were hoping to use calculation and maximization as a driving principle for design decisions, so in many ways we were doing a systems project on acid. It was difficult to decide whether to allow the green systems to overtake the project or whether to "conceal and reveal"...

As you can see, we maximized the biological and technological aspects of the projects in creating our "Urban Power Plant." The idea was to make reference to post-industrial reclamation efforts at the same time as contributing to the contemporary discourse of skin as force-receptor, skin and structure as power-generators; space of the ground and space of the roof as ...

KSA Gallery: Aranda/Lasch, Soo Sunny Park, Liam O'Brien

2007-12-11T18:53:52-05:00

There was an exciting list of shows at the Banvard Gallery last year. Authors of Pamphlet Architecture 27: Tooling, Aranda/Lasch put together a visually arresting show comprised of slide projection, Stratasys models, folded paper models, and exquisite drawings of their research into algorithmic patterning.

Soo Sunny Park brought a fresh perspective from the world of Sculpture, with a materially rich exhibition of chain-link fence, steel studs, plastic cups, yarn, digital prints, retroreflective glass beads, and custom lighting. The show was titled "Modified Thoroughfare" and engaged the topics of epigenetics, dislocation, and transience.

Our customary annual LeFevre fellow exhibition was provided by Liam O'Brien, a young architect with an impressive body of work with his own practice as well as with collaborative practice ACRONYM. His opening was well intended and many were heard gawking over his impressive graphic abilities as well as the rigor with which his research into fe...

Annual Refresher - Part I

2007-12-11T17:20:47-05:00

And thus it begins. The annual blast through last year's happenings. I regret not keeping up with this blog in real-time, as many of the observations and day-to-day minutia get lost in this format.

However! Next quarter I will have be taking only studio and professional practice... I will have a bit of a breather with respect to all of my ancillary commitments, and I will be using this blog for rumination, not just as a data repository. In the meantime, let's get caught up.

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The last substantial update to this blog was over a year ago, in the middle of fall quarter 2006. We were in the midst of a studio that was integrated with our computer graphics class, in which we were learning Rhino, 3D Studio, etc. I was developing a sunshade system for a FLW house using space warps in 3D studio. To follow-up on the preliminary design that I provided over a year ago, I attach my final boards and a few renderings from that project:

As per a new philosophy on process-based archit...

Remission

2007-08-29T07:55:07-04:00

Oh my god I am a complete delinquent. This embarrassing alien blob of a study model has been the only eye candy I have provided in what, like 10 months?

In my defense, I finished spring quarter on June 9th and I have been out of the country since June 12th. Seven countries and 3 months later, I will be returning to the States in early September. I am attaching some random photos from the trip, and when I return I will do a massive update covering the whole of 2007. It's becoming a sort of tradition...

Fog in the Swiss Alps

True Glory of Rome

OMA Dutch Embassy in Berlin

Therme di Caracalla

The genius of Frei Otto, Munich

Piano and ruins in Rome

Hadid's MAXXI under construction

Poznan, Poland

Stockholm, Gamla Stan

Aalto, Wolfsburg

Bernini, Roma

Foyer of the you-know-what

kipnis exam, parametric sunshade for f.l. dubs

2006-11-14T21:59:46-05:00

Kipnis gave us an exam on Tuesday. Or rather he asked one of the students to administer an exam for him. We were urged to think as little as possible; use any resource we wanted, including internet, chatting with classmates, and the library; and be concise (25 words or less) in our answers to questions like "What's the difference between freedom and democracy?" and "Given the daily need for familiarity and repitition in our lives and buildings, why would an architect ever bother to experiment?" We also had to do short building analyses. It was a fun test... we'll see how it all works out.

In studio, we're designing new building components for the Usonian Baird House. I'm doing a sunshade, specifically. Here's my early digital model... y'alls get to see it before my studio prof:

Finally, the opportunity to use vectors! Peter would be so proud. The vectors are generated from major axes and from views from specific places at specific heights.

There is a transition from a tra...

evidence of a process

2006-11-10T18:30:27-05:00

What is an index? A quick reference? You idiot. A list of items and their locations? No, no, no. An index is evidence of a process. Now lets not get carried away. Evidence of a process does not guarantee indexicality. After all, any material construction can be said to be evidence of a process. It's there, right?

So what is indexical architecture? What qualities define it? What characteristics must it have to be considered indexical?

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In other news... the parametric project turned out quite well, despite the fact that my model was an absolute failure. I spent a good amount of time developing my argument in my boards, which were received well. There was a vigorous discussion and I managed to steer the attention away from my model.

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The Viennese students are gone. Don't know if I mentioned it before, but Knowlton is doing an exchange with the Vienna University of Applied Arts, where Zaha, Greg Lynn, and Wolf Prix conducts studios. About 15 of them came t...

studio frustration

2006-10-22T23:14:00-04:00

So we're doing parametric design, using a single parameter, and I'm absolutely stymied. I'm working with the Hair and Fur Modifier in 3DS Max. I generated density bitmaps to define areas of the density of "fur" in plan, and then I was planning to Boolean these fields with lofted splines of the human body interacting with furniture. This was going to create the furniture, stairs, etc out of the density of fur.

Only there is so much geometry that Max crashes every time I try to do the Booleans.

I simplified, and my prof complained that my process is only 2.5D. Then I recomplicated with an alternate method of Booleans (no lofted splines) but my section slices are outrageous. CAD files are looking untenable. I'm at my wits end. Missed my laser cutter time for my final model. Will have to reschedule for Tuesday, day before final crit.

*sigh*

Initial field study:

First attempts at smaller scale Booleans (large booleans caused crashes):

Split into 3 separate topographica...

aversion-to-tisement

2006-10-21T23:11:01-04:00

Is anybody else disgusted by the new Dow Chemical ads, "The Human Element"? They've been playing during the World Series.

As if I believed for one second that Dow Chemical Company is in awe of the beauty of nature -- the ingenuity of the human spirit, I'm sure they're in awe of that, since it's made them billions of dollars. Unfortunately, that same human ingenuity (i.e., development of complex polymers, use of heavy metals, manufacturing processes, etc) is also responsible for the insidious contamination of nature's fractal bounty.

Everything's connected, you say, Dow? I wonder how those halides got in the water we drink...

But speaking of sports-related TV, how about that new Monday Night Football opening sequence? The one where
everybody on the street is turning into players, officials, fans, while the city is converting into a stadium? Buildings roll over to become playing field, drawers pull out of skyscrapers to become field boxes, etc.

Intriguing, in that it nods...

I've got your digital right here... plus Kipnis

2006-10-01T11:49:46-04:00

Remember how I said that I got too enamored with the computer last year and wanted to put renewed energy into physical modeling? Well, turns out I'll have to put that plan on hold. This quarter our studio is being taught sort of in conjunction with 630 Graphics, in which we are learning 3D Studio Max, Rhino, and Form Z.

The good news is that our prof, Stephen Turk, is just as interested in the philosophical implications, and has been leading discussions on Lynn, Kolarevic, and Praxis readings, for instance. I love Lynn's description (in Animate Form) of a sphere as not a platonic solid, but as a special case of NURBS surface. I love the idea of the potentiality of parametric design embodied in what we consider to be more traditional or classical orthagonality. I suppose this is because my interest lies more in the interaction between the box and the blob than the blob itself.

We'll see how this plays out in studio. Our first project is to use parametric design processes to ...

the scoop

2006-09-21T21:29:40-04:00

okay, okay. finally. enough with the monumental posts covering last year's news.

...on to the new.

First some quick news of faculty awards... Jeff Kipnis was awarded an honorary degree by the Architectural Association of London; Jack Nasar was made a Fellow by the American Institute of Certified Planners; Jose Parral won the Rome Prize; and Beth Blostein and Bart Overly won the Ferrous Park competition and will join Schmaling architects and Rockhill and Associates (of KU Studio 804 fame) in the development of eco-friendly, forward thinking housing in Kansas City.

The new KSA Sourcebooks are out... the Sourcebook 7 for Architecture is Zaha's BMW building, and Sourcebook 3 for Landscape is Peter Walker's Nasher Center Sculpture Garden. These are books that delve deeply into a single project, tracing the development all the way from initial concept to completed construction. Great series.

But the real news is all about what's coming up next:

... Francois Roche (of R&Sie) w...

sketches

2006-09-21T11:23:22-04:00

Some samples from my sketchbooks. Like I said, I learned to draw on the trip. Never really done it before. Keep that in mind! I wish I had some examples from some of my classmates. There were some incredible sketchers...

europe pics

2006-09-21T01:03:33-04:00

These are some of the pics I managed to salvage from my profs hard drive, along with a few assorted pics from classmates... so many things missing from this collection, I'll post a few more of the really great ones as I get them.

Porto

Down on the beach...

The view from the hotel in S. Sebastian...

Brazil Pavilion...

Portugal - Spain - France - Belgium - Netherlands

2006-09-19T01:07:06-04:00

So, at long last, I'm catching up with everything that happened this last year. Three days after the last final exam, 40 of us packed up and headed to Europe for an INTENSE architecture road trip. It was absolutely unbelievable. I'm not sure that there is any travel opportunity like this at any other school. I certainly hope so, because this was one of the most valuable experiences of my life, despite the fact that I have traveled widely in the past.

The trip happens every year and alternates basically between Western Western Europe and Eastern Western Europe... next year's trip will be Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic.

Anyway, our group included mostly graduate students in architecture (from all 3 years) and a handful of 3rd- and 4th-year undergrads. There was one landscape graduate student as well. We had a chartered bus for the whole trip, which was a fantastic way to travel. Comfy seats and a window seat overlooking the majestic European landscape,...

KSA Banvard Gallery 05-06

2006-09-18T20:19:26-04:00

Okay, so I was the gallery assistant last year. This year I was offered the opportunity to expand my responsibilities in the gallery, including marketing, promotion, communications, hospitality, grant writing, new initiatives, and curating (under the supervision of a highly-respected, professional panel) -- basically managing the gallery series. I was given this chance based on my experience as a film curator and as a former director of a non-profit organization... I provided samples of my work as a curator and wrote a lengthy proposal, including my short and longterm goals for the gallery series.

I'm excited that the administration has given me this opportunity, and to me it means that they value the experiences of their graduate students and are willing to foster a creative, professional environment for the graduate students. It sounds like a fairly simple and obvious concept, but having seen the inner workings of 3 universities now, I know how easy it is for the simplest o...

Lecture Series 2005-06

2006-09-17T20:19:25-04:00

So far I've skipped all of my commentary on all of the extracurricular activities that transpired last year. After that Ken Smith show, an intense installation that coincided with a final review, my blog became non-functional. So I haven't talked about any lectures or gallery shows.

First up, a few highlights of the lecture series. I wrote quite a bit in my journal at the time, but I'll spare you:

Cecil Balmond
This was a fantastic lecture. The work is fascinating and I appreciated his enumeration of the processes behind it. I especially liked his talk on non-repeating patternmaking. He covered an Ito pavilion, Koolhaas' CCTV, and the Libeskind coiling museum in London, among other things. Very cool.

Maurizio Meossi
This is a guy that was involved in translating Zaha Hadid's design concepts for the BMW building into a buildable reality. Pretty interesting stuff. Also interesting to hear about the "realities" of avant-garde design.

Francois Roche
This was a wacky lecture...

New strategy

2006-09-17T17:57:58-04:00

Okay, so I'm going to close out the summary of the first year and then try to mix things up a bit here. I've been reading other peoples' blogs all day and I'm starting to think that my blog is boring in comparison. The goal is to ramble less about my projects and to make more pithy observations. No guarantees, mind you!

This was the flyer for a party I threw at the beginning of the year. It is supposed to represent the inevitable loss of innocence, a reference to the day I lose my irreverance for the Almighty Le Corbusier. (That happened this summer, by the way, when I traveled to Poissy and walked through Villa Savoye.)

So anyway, here is the abbreviated, whirlwind tour of the rest of my first year.

Winter Quarter '06

I started learning CAD on my own, since they don't teach it in class. That's fine with me, I prefer teaching myself software anyway. Plus all of us classmates share knowledge when necessary. Next year we'll have a 3D class on FormZ, Rhino, 3DS Max.

Got he...

Long overdue update

2006-09-16T18:42:14-04:00

It is now September of 2006 and it's hard to believe that year 1 is already over. It has been fantastic. It has surpassed my expectations, actually. I'm going to reflect a bit and post some pictures, since I was grossly delinquent during the school year, and in the next posts I'll talk about our trip to Europe and focus on some exciting things coming up this next year.

It is my sincerest hope to stay on top of this blog, no kidding. I have a tendency to be long-winded, which deters me from taking the time to update, but that's going to change, even if it means I force myself to tersify.

Anyway, let me talk about last year. Where do I start... I didn't even make it through fall quarter! Here are some quick examples of early projects.

The first exercise was called "Spots and Dots." We were given the first and last frame, and we were asked to use four frames to develop a transition between these two. My final iteration of these project uses the filmic sensibility that I d...

Europe in 5 hours

2006-06-12T10:40:49-04:00

It's been a long, rewarding year. I'm getting on a plane to Lisbon, Portugal, in about 5 hours. We're doing a 5-week whirlwind tour of over 200 architectural sites in Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. We'll sleep the night in La Tourette. We'll see the new Corb building in Firminy, which our very own Jose Oubrerie has recently completed. It's going to be a grueling, awesome trip. And hopefully I will learn to sketch when I'm there.

I want to apologize for not updating my blog during the school year. I'll write much more when I return. Plus I'll have pictures and sketches from Europe. In the meantime, here are some images from this past year. I'll explain later. Take care, all.

Ken Smith, Construction, Eisenman, and Studio

2005-11-04T23:07:59-05:00

SO it's been a long time. Just finished midterms, which went smoothly. My gallery assistant position kicked off in a big way with a Ken Smith (landscape architect who did MoMA rooftop garden) installation that was nothing short of back-breaking. In an attempt to convey ordered randomness, Ken had us chalk line a 12" x 12" grid on all surfaces of the gallery, including the 16' ceilings. Then a "random" process was used to 9 different kinds of flowers in a sequence at one of 9 positions of each square. I was wrecked after this installation, after putting about 40 hours of climbing, reaching, taping, scaffolding, and braindeadizing into it in about 6 days. The results might be fascinating, but I wouldn't know. Given the pain it inflicted on me, I'm not capable of stepping back to appreciate it objectively... err...

The good news is that I don't have another installation to do until next quarter. In other news, we've been doing a series of large scale drawings in construction c...

On a Pedestal

2005-09-27T21:33:18-04:00

So we found out last week that this year's Baumer Professor will be Peter Eisenman. As 3+ students we won't see too much of him but he will be conducting seminars for the 6th-year students and also a lecture for the whole school. I believe they will also be doing a source book on one of his works (possibly the Convention Center in Columbus) as a part of the Baumer seminars.

It will be interesting to see who we will get for our Baumer prof in 6th year. It's my understanding that 5th-year students get to make a wish list for their Baumer professors... past Baumer's have included Hadid, Tschumi, Prix, and plenty of others. Sounds pretty exciting.

Anyway, the quarter has started off with a bang. Jacquie Gargus sat in on our first two crits in studio and she is absolutely hilarious. Her comments are unfailingly poignant and lucid and she has a great sense of humor. I'm looking forward to having her as a studio prof this year.

We had a great assignment in Cadwell's Construction ...

And now it's gone, gone, gone...

2005-09-20T23:23:40-04:00

So that's it. Summer break is over, just like that. Here are a few pics of my and some of the other final models from our class:

I moved into my new place 3 days after final crit. It's 0.8 miles from the architecture building, so that means that now I can jet home on the bike if I need to take some time out from studio and hang with Ida:

We had graduate orientation today, which was short and sweet. We met our new section head, Ashley Schafer of GSD and Praxis fame. She literally just arrived at the school within the last week, so we got mostly an "excited-to-be-here-too" introduction, but she seemed nice and she did have some interesting things to say.

Apparently there are mixed feelings about the change in leadership from Rob Livesey to Schafer, but I think that's usually true of leadership changes and I don't know enough to weigh in meaningfully. I do know that Livesey is very well liked in the architecture program and hopefully Schafer will build upon all the thing...