Just read the Metropolis piece on SHoP. I was particularly interested in this paragraph:
"Every piece of that structure [Mitchell Park], including the foundation formwork, was output directly to milling machines and assembled on-site using clean, clear diagrams that resemble instructions for building a plastic model. Where shop welding was needed, the firm provided templates that could be printed out 1:1. Pasquarelli described the process: “Fold, weld, bolt, screw: fuck you, it’s not that hard.” The contractors reportedly loved it—no measuring, no cutting. And when a model of the building was needed for a show at the Cooper-Hewitt last spring, the designers just went into the same files and dialed down the scale."
Any sense of what kind of software they're using? Their process -- integrating design, fabrication, and financing -- is really interesting. But it doesn't seem possible using most of the software on the market.
'That early experience of architecture as value-adding agent has led, in the years since, to sophisticated forms of financial involvement with clients that would make typical art-minded architects blanch. In many of its recent and current projects (and the office of 65 is doing more than $500 million in construction around the world), the firm has partnered with developers, essentially investing their fee. The result of sharing risk, Pasquarelli said, is creative freedom: “As soon as our skin was in the game, the developers stopped criticizing our designs.” Joining forces with a developer, SHoP recently secured a commitment for about $250 million in investment capital. In an extension of this money-where-your-mouth-is ethos, employees can choose to invest, in increments of $1,000, in any of the firm’s speculative projects.'
check out pasquarelli's lecture on this page... he talks about all of the same stuff during the lecture... they supposedly have received a boatload of money from a hedge fund to invest in developing their own projects now... as mdler said above "fucking brilliant"...
oh... mdler, at some point in time in the lecture he shows a slide of their "construction documents"... it was all 3d and templates... there weren't any traditional permit drawings...
My experience is that, while developers and contractors can be surprisingly open-minded, city & state agencies are next to impossible to budge. For example, city building departments often have a checklist of required drawings... site plan, floor plan, etc. How would templates and 3d models make it through the permitting process?
I remember reading somewhere (ArchRecord?) that they're using Rhino to model and create their own "shop" drawings (ha!--the pun is the reason I remember the article) Maybe they're using something else now??
I know of paying arch students having to build study models for their professors office work in studio (including spending $100's on materials)
this is all bullshit. If I were one of these students, I would have told my professor to fuck off and then report them to the AIA / architecture board (here in California)
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.
they were paid a decent stipend for their semesters of work...part of the novelty of Stevens PAE and their office collaborations, as in its not total exploitation....(i'm channeling monkeyboy since he is MIA)
HMMMM
What about
"We’re the last generalist profession. There’s a whole generation ahead of us that has been trying to make us specialists,” Pasquarelli said. “That’s the fatal flaw.”
Do you all agree that architecture is a generalist professions?
Is the way forward to continue to be generalist, perhaps generalists who serve as the mediator between specialists?
Or is it to divide into even more specialist areas
"green"
"Staritecture"
"Digitalisation"
my two cents as a former student on the whole making-students-work-for-free thing:
i had the sharples bros for a few classes including a housing studio. [2nd semester m arch] our projects were located at the same site as their east river waterfront project.
at that point, i think the scope/ambition of their master plan was much larger, so they were considering residential as a part of their plan. anyway, the issues they were dealing with and the issues we were asked to deal with were some of the same. i.e. the implications of building over the river, the social dynamics/connection to the city from that site.
i think in our studio there was a little bit of grumbling at the beginning that we were basically their research minions, but we were first years. [we were full of ourselves. what did we know?] i think the role of any studio professor should be to present a project to their students that the prof. genuinely wants to ruminate on/explore/theorize about along with their students.
we were never told what we were expected to research. [or if we were, it was driven from design decisions that we, the students, had already made.] i think the sharples were more interested to see what we spit out. i'm sure that they took some of what we did back to their office for discussion/dissection, but i think that's great.
perhaps in the stories mentioned above the students were more involved with the actual design that SHoP had already generated. [i'm not sure] but in that case, perhaps the class was more focused on design technology than the capital d "Design" that being in a studio implies. hopefully the students were aware of that before they enrolled because the two are not interchangeable. [but both vital classes!]
in my experience the sharples were very open about their intentions for all the classes i had with them. i think that they might be more aggressive about making the teacher/student relationship a mutually beneficial one than some others, but that all rolls into the unique position they take in the profession. in short, i think they have found what works for them partially through teaching and their students can most definitely benefit from their experiments.
I totally agree that architecture is a generalist profession. I think we as architects should avoid becoming pigeonholed as just another one of the specialists in the building industry. I think generalism and interdisciplinarity is one of the major things that architects bring to the table.
". . .the camera-obscura pavilion SHoP completed in 2005 for Mitchell Park, in Greenport, New York. Every piece of that structure, including the foundation formwork, was output directly to milling machines and assembled on-site using clean, clear diagrams that resemble instructions for building a plastic model. Where shop welding was needed, the firm provided templates that could be printed out 1:1. Pasquarelli described the process: “Fold, weld, bolt, screw: fuck you, it’s not that hard.” The contractors reportedly loved it—no measuring, no cutting. And when a model of the building was needed for a show at the Cooper-Hewitt last spring, the designers just went into the same files and dialed down the scale."
i appreciate knowing that there was a stipend paid, glick. very unusual and refreshing if that's the case. now i can enjoy the article -and shop's creative position in the profession - with everybody else!
Sep 22, 07 10:20 am ·
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Sharples Holden Pasquarelli Process
Just read the Metropolis piece on SHoP. I was particularly interested in this paragraph:
"Every piece of that structure [Mitchell Park], including the foundation formwork, was output directly to milling machines and assembled on-site using clean, clear diagrams that resemble instructions for building a plastic model. Where shop welding was needed, the firm provided templates that could be printed out 1:1. Pasquarelli described the process: “Fold, weld, bolt, screw: fuck you, it’s not that hard.” The contractors reportedly loved it—no measuring, no cutting. And when a model of the building was needed for a show at the Cooper-Hewitt last spring, the designers just went into the same files and dialed down the scale."
Any sense of what kind of software they're using? Their process -- integrating design, fabrication, and financing -- is really interesting. But it doesn't seem possible using most of the software on the market.
Also, can anyone comment on their design process?
$?
Hmmmm. Very interesting. Is the article online? Could you post it?
I wonder if they had to do a more traditional set of DWGs to get a permit?
'That early experience of architecture as value-adding agent has led, in the years since, to sophisticated forms of financial involvement with clients that would make typical art-minded architects blanch. In many of its recent and current projects (and the office of 65 is doing more than $500 million in construction around the world), the firm has partnered with developers, essentially investing their fee. The result of sharing risk, Pasquarelli said, is creative freedom: “As soon as our skin was in the game, the developers stopped criticizing our designs.” Joining forces with a developer, SHoP recently secured a commitment for about $250 million in investment capital. In an extension of this money-where-your-mouth-is ethos, employees can choose to invest, in increments of $1,000, in any of the firm’s speculative projects.'
-fucking brilliant
check out pasquarelli's lecture on this page... he talks about all of the same stuff during the lecture... they supposedly have received a boatload of money from a hedge fund to invest in developing their own projects now... as mdler said above "fucking brilliant"...
oh... mdler, at some point in time in the lecture he shows a slide of their "construction documents"... it was all 3d and templates... there weren't any traditional permit drawings...
My experience is that, while developers and contractors can be surprisingly open-minded, city & state agencies are next to impossible to budge. For example, city building departments often have a checklist of required drawings... site plan, floor plan, etc. How would templates and 3d models make it through the permitting process?
really we have demands for site plans on an interior buildout? wtf?
Hmmm. As the author of the article put it, I, too, may now have a one-deep list of favorite architects.....
I remember reading somewhere (ArchRecord?) that they're using Rhino to model and create their own "shop" drawings (ha!--the pun is the reason I remember the article) Maybe they're using something else now??
^ i agree with mdler, best fucking idea ever. Bookmarking page NOW.
do they say anything in the article about getting their paying-not-paid students in studios to do their daylight modeling and other design analysis?
meta
I know of paying arch students having to build study models for their professors office work in studio (including spending $100's on materials)
this is all bullshit. If I were one of these students, I would have told my professor to fuck off and then report them to the AIA / architecture board (here in California)
Really?
Maybe we should call them out......
bill massie has been doing this for years. maybe not quite as efficient or streamlined but doing it none-the-less.
from the school blog for stevens institute: http://www.archinect.com/schoolblog/blog.php?id=C0_268_39
...our studio group has been charged with assisting SHoP in designing the facade of the C2 building on the FIT campus.
i guess i can't verify that these students weren't paid in some way for their studio work but....
monkeyboy
they were paid a decent stipend for their semesters of work...part of the novelty of Stevens PAE and their office collaborations, as in its not total exploitation....(i'm channeling monkeyboy since he is MIA)
HMMMM
What about
"We’re the last generalist profession. There’s a whole generation ahead of us that has been trying to make us specialists,” Pasquarelli said. “That’s the fatal flaw.”
Do you all agree that architecture is a generalist professions?
Is the way forward to continue to be generalist, perhaps generalists who serve as the mediator between specialists?
Or is it to divide into even more specialist areas
"green"
"Staritecture"
"Digitalisation"
etc
my two cents as a former student on the whole making-students-work-for-free thing:
i had the sharples bros for a few classes including a housing studio. [2nd semester m arch] our projects were located at the same site as their east river waterfront project.
at that point, i think the scope/ambition of their master plan was much larger, so they were considering residential as a part of their plan. anyway, the issues they were dealing with and the issues we were asked to deal with were some of the same. i.e. the implications of building over the river, the social dynamics/connection to the city from that site.
i think in our studio there was a little bit of grumbling at the beginning that we were basically their research minions, but we were first years. [we were full of ourselves. what did we know?] i think the role of any studio professor should be to present a project to their students that the prof. genuinely wants to ruminate on/explore/theorize about along with their students.
we were never told what we were expected to research. [or if we were, it was driven from design decisions that we, the students, had already made.] i think the sharples were more interested to see what we spit out. i'm sure that they took some of what we did back to their office for discussion/dissection, but i think that's great.
perhaps in the stories mentioned above the students were more involved with the actual design that SHoP had already generated. [i'm not sure] but in that case, perhaps the class was more focused on design technology than the capital d "Design" that being in a studio implies. hopefully the students were aware of that before they enrolled because the two are not interchangeable. [but both vital classes!]
in my experience the sharples were very open about their intentions for all the classes i had with them. i think that they might be more aggressive about making the teacher/student relationship a mutually beneficial one than some others, but that all rolls into the unique position they take in the profession. in short, i think they have found what works for them partially through teaching and their students can most definitely benefit from their experiments.
I totally agree that architecture is a generalist profession. I think we as architects should avoid becoming pigeonholed as just another one of the specialists in the building industry. I think generalism and interdisciplinarity is one of the major things that architects bring to the table.
Thanks for the inside insight, semi precious.
Did our [shudder] friend PC note this ?
". . .the camera-obscura pavilion SHoP completed in 2005 for Mitchell Park, in Greenport, New York. Every piece of that structure, including the foundation formwork, was output directly to milling machines and assembled on-site using clean, clear diagrams that resemble instructions for building a plastic model. Where shop welding was needed, the firm provided templates that could be printed out 1:1. Pasquarelli described the process: “Fold, weld, bolt, screw: fuck you, it’s not that hard.” The contractors reportedly loved it—no measuring, no cutting. And when a model of the building was needed for a show at the Cooper-Hewitt last spring, the designers just went into the same files and dialed down the scale."
i appreciate knowing that there was a stipend paid, glick. very unusual and refreshing if that's the case. now i can enjoy the article -and shop's creative position in the profession - with everybody else!
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