will they be showing any of this online?

exciting event. wish i could visit the exhibit 'cause those images are too #$@!+# small to be useful. i wanna see the stuff, not just admire the formatting of the boards!

thanks sgoodrick

A couple of archinecters have their work there, and although I will not get to visit the exhibit I have seen some detailed photos of their work. Very impressive work with waterjet cutting/stl/milling. Hopefully they will share these with the rest of you...

congrats to Francisco David Boira for getting his teams work in the exhibition.

not only david; that is the commonwealth of both archinect editors FDB and Zoë Coombes. stay tuned, we're searching for images of the show.

Here are some pics of our work currently exhibited at the show.


SLA model




Thought to play around with the water jet cutter for the first time so we made this brackets for the Site model and the SLA model. (the nice screws we ordered never made it on time so we settled for this 15 cents solution)




This is us from now on: Commonwealth and Co.

...and thanks for the props guys!

hi Francisco, i like your model, but i don't get what it is, and what it is for, can you explain it to me? thanks.

any chance to see bigger pics of the projects?

Are these nine schools really in need of a self-congratulatory event that further promotes their respective programs?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a comparative analysis between the programs to identify strengths and expose weaknesses, but how accurate of a reading will one get when considering the heavy-handedness of project selection?

The project was a greenhouse system proposed for Baja, Mexico where American agribusinesses are building farms on a vast, and in many ways detrimental, scale. Our greenhouse is smaller, diffuse and serviced by an existing infrastructure, the bus.

The undercurrent of the project was the opportunity to see what we could model, and by implication build, using software-driven manufacturing technologies. The cnc-milled landscape is proposed as a carved earth allowing for superior drainage in a dry region. The models are .sla prints and the brackets that support the model were made using a cnc waterjet cutter.

We’ve delayed making the link to the Center for Architecture since the image they posted was a bad thumbnail we submitted long ago and never meant for posting. Seems you guys are on to this though... And Listen, this certainly isn't representative of the school. There are so many kinds of projects there. I think ours is a good one, but there are many others that are also good in a completely different direction and also very columbiaesqe.

We are now Commonwealth and Co.! More to come.

I'll be there for the opening Exhibition and Reception. look forward to meeting fellow archinecters.

Oh I'm sorry, I went to this post because I thought I was going to see architectural projects. I must have stumbled into the meaningless things you can do with plastics symposium.

HA!

it's so easy to be a hater, just about as easy it is to be jealous of what you can't do.

i guess the question to be asked is when Morphosis and other firms 15 years ago were using modeling paste on chipboard was that a chipboard and paint symposium?

since when does the model equal the idea?

i guess the houses in house of cards are irrelevant because they are falling apart?

raji and beta put it beautifully...
but to pop into a thread, and trash someone's work without backing your comments up says alot...Good one.

Perhaps you'd feel more comfortable if the exhibit included a church or two...
Maybe some really traditional architecture?
The reality is that this exhibit showcases "New York metropolitan area's 9 schools of architecture" not "Pat Robertson's-Regent University"...if they had a school of architecture...

Ok, I'll give you a chance to respond. However in response to Beta regarding the Morphosis models, did Thom Mayne base his production on architecture on the production capabilities of Gesso and Chipboard? Analyzing the designer's text, she stated that the "undercurrent of the project was to see what we could model using software driven manufacturing technologies" Ok, this could be applied to automobile design, nautical architecture, medical instruments, and there is reason to investigate its opportunities in architecture. But the idea cannot be the method of production alone nor can the method of production generate the only idea. To state that the manipulations of the landscape is a "CNC milled landscape" is stating that the idea is the method of manipulating the model materials. Would the idea be therefore different if the team had a jigsaw and styrofoam? I ask the designers if I am reading this wrong.

i guess i read "undercurrent" differently than you Maestro. i get the sense that through the manipulation and utilization of said tools one could get a better sense of how to produce these objects more cost efficeintly and effectively, but by no means do i sense that was a point of departure. i think the means of production based on the project type and location are a little more intimately connected than at first glance, but perhaps i am reading this wrong...??

when i first reacted to your comments it was because they were without explanation.

Thank you for your response...
Knowing nothing about 3D computer modelling much less stl/sla models...I can appreciate the progression of the "pertty computer image" produced in the years past to physical model...which will hopefully ispire/push forward/change the architeture to come. If musicians hadn't experimented with new technologies/INSTRUMENTS etc. we would still be listening to "classical"(int he sense) music. Not that there's anything bad with it or anything...

Philip Glass had an idea for the music before he laid hands on the instrument. Creativity always pushes technology. Math evolved to solve problems that creative thinkers asked. I seek in these modeling type projects an idea that begins to push the technology further, not a product that is subservient to the technology.

doesn't that come with exploration and time? these individuals are perhaps at the edge of the limits of current technology and will only begin to demand more from it...

I can assure you that they are...

Maestro:

You seem to imply that we were thinking too much about the tools we had before us (the computer, the waterjet cutter, the 3axis mill) and not enough about the place and situation we were supposed to be designing for.

Let me clear that up for you. This project is very much about the place and people it was designed for. It was a response to an ecologically harmful, but ubiquitous and commercially successful farming typology now in place in Baja, Mexico.

Agri-businesses (formerly known as farms) now build what are called CAEs, that is, Controlled Agricultural Environments. We visited one of these in Mexico and found that the scale of this typology is its most dangerous aspect. With their size comes a certain efficiency of transportation and labor. However, this also means that they strain the existing water supply by intensely drawing from a single aquifer until it runs dry. The economics of these thin plastic buildings allows them to abandon it within a relatively short term and still make a net gain from the investment.

The second detrimental effect that is triggered by building a farm at this scale is that it creates labor camps in the middle of nowhere. Farmers come from across the country and live here for months at a time, normally away from their families.

By building a much smaller greenhouse, we were able to locate it in places where people were already living. The diffuse scale and its connection to the commuter bus system allows this greenhouse to come to existing towns and places, rather than forcing labor to live in the shadow of vast and relatively temporary building.

Also, by scaling this typology down, we were able to produce our own water through what is called a multi-stage flash solar desalination system. Our greenhouses are difused along the coast and incorporate a looped desalination system. Evaporative Desalination is optimized in sealed torus geometry. This is why the building is shaped like two joined loops. Part of the project was a fairly detailed exploration of how this system can be implemented. There isn’t the space nor the interest here to flush out all the details.

I think that you can see that these three issues we were playing with: scale, context and environmental systems are all clearly things that one would classify as matters of Architecture.

In regards to the modeling: Why not use new tools? We went to a school that put them in our hands and asked us: what can you make of this? And how can you relate it to building? All along, I assure you, we were thinking, ‘How does this relate to the bigger scale of our agricultural system?’ Not only were the .sla, CNC mill, and waterjet cutters machines that allowed us to convey an idea just as clearly as the methods we already knew (chipboard and foam etc.) they also forced us to look what is going on in manufacturing. Clearly there is a shift going on there towards more and more software-driven production. Just visit the next woodworking convention in Las Vegas. We did.

It is true that the proposed landscape (which in this dry climate needs to have carved runoff channels) might, when it comes time for construction, need to be carved by hand. But didn’t the computer allow us to generate a more beautiful ground pattern through pulling CVs in Maya which then could be mapped onto the earth and dug with a shovel? Who is against beauty? Who wants more of the rough straight line channels that they usually build there? Of course beauty always has a price tag attached, but who is so sure that this is instantly out of our budget?

Remember this is a grad school project. One that was a hell of a lot of fun…

great work, guys.
now, why does this design look like testis?
keep it up, neverthless.

As I said "Evaporative Desalination is optimized in sealed torus geometry. This is why the building is shaped like two joined loops." but awesome- you are seeing your balls..
ha.

thx.

meh. my balls, your boobs, whatever makes you proud.

Gezzus.

Can we stick to the work?

that last exchange between you two was pretty funny. :)

**this is fdavid on zoë's laptop**

Hip, Hip, Hooray!! for shameles self promotion!

Hey, You guys are asking!

hey Zoe and Francis thanks for taking the time and posting about your project. i love to hear about others work as well.

liberace, 8 posts in and you piss pple off? bad form.

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