Back in Studio World

It's easy to forget, but alongside thesis there is still studio.  Our programme this term is for a yacht club, sailing school and race sailing research lab down by Crissy Fields in the Marina District.

Here are some photo's of a generative cast plaster model I did.  My partner, Jeremy Bamberger, and I are working with the Venturi Effect to maximise exposure to the wind through funneling apertures.  The idea is to bring the phenomological elements associated with sailing into the building.

An Ideogram charting my projected progress for thesis

I have put together an ideogram for my own sanity and clarity on how to deal with the work load for thesis.  It was actually quite helpful for clearing up my own ideas and what is important to the idea.

Term starts with a BANG with the CCA all-school warm-up charrette

We all arrived at the Architecture Department Convocation on Wednesday to be presented with an all school charrette competition.  We were split into teams of 5 or 6 with grads, undergrads and interiors students all mixed up.  The brief was to propose a new direction for the newly purchased property behind the current CCA campus.  My team was made up of Colby Rosenwald, John Fulton and Mark Campos.  Kind of a dream team compared to the others.

Manifesting the Project Based Learning Environment

Thesis Design Experiment #4


For my final design experiment I created a matrix of formal possibilities that might engender potential for PBL.  Open enclosure and implicit and explicit spaces of various sizes combine with a simple formal tectonic to create project spaces for different sized groups.

Project Based Learning

Thesis Experiment # 3


Myself and the KIDmob team went back up to Indian Valley Academy in early September for a second round of hands-on Project Based design teaching. Seeing as my thesis research is very much leaning towards this kind of power redistribution it seems only fitting to include this visit as one of my four experiments.

The 7th graders all clubbed together and after a few practical exercises collaboratively diagramed the circulation routes, and connectivity of the arrangement of the furniture.

Control through porosity and permitted transparency

Thesis Design Experiment #2


Concentric layers of plastic punctuated in a grid by perforations and translucencies allow the viewer only intermittent access to the privileged interior.  A clear top-down hierarchy excludes and prevents physical and visual access to the inner most layers. 

 

Project Based Learning

Thesis Positioning Statement #6

Note - This paper is linked to the ‘Control through Interaction’ positioning statement, because it describes a scenario that re-evaluates an accepted power hierarchy and places the user of the space in a directly collaborative relationship with the space itself.

Back to basics teaching methods can be described as a top down subordination of the student where the broader social and cultural norms are impressed upon the pupil.  This traditional method is seen as a generational impartment of the moral and behavioural expectations that adults see as a requirement for participation in broader society.  It requires the student to obediently and meekly yield to the information given by the teacher – questioning the information, or even the authority of the teacher is not an option.[1] 

The Monumental Condition

Thesis Positioning Statement #5

The architecture of memorial is a fascinating field when considering the broader issues of control within the built environment.  The monument has the innate ability to fashion and shape the communal consciousness and dictate the priorities of memory.  They can be an aggressive political tool, as is evidenced in the former USSR, or they can be a sombre reminder of the devastation of war, as is seen in the countless unmarked graves in Flanders, Dieppe and the Somme.  Almost always, though, they represent the potential held in future endeavour.  They reflect on the past, but the goal is to represent the future as it relates to certain ideals.

Khatyn Memorial Complex, Belarussian SSR, 1970.

Architecture Democratises Information

Thesis Positioning Statement #4 

Because cultural identity is tied up in the mechanism of cultural production, control of those mechanisms is a hotly contested battleground.  Those who are able to garner power over the way our representations of space are generated, are in turn able to manage our broader cultural identities.  Because how we identify ourselves in turn affects basically any daily decision process we make (our behavioural patterns, consumer patterns, voting strategies, commitment to education, family roles etc.) the importance for a benign presence driving these processes cannot be stressed more highly.

Small Scale Strategies for Control in the Built Environment.

Thesis Positioning Statement #3 

There exists in the world, countless instances of behavioural manipulations subtly conveyed through form, patterning, architecture and media.  The motivations for these interventions are multiple, but are usually associated with some kind of power structure whose goals are to inflect behaviour patterns to their advantage.  In each case, the proponents of the control, are seeking some kind of strategic advantage.  This could mean anything from political alignment, consumer spending and military advantage to patriotic pride and defending the interests of the populous.  What follows is a brief outline of some of these strategies.

Control Through Inte­­raction.

Thesis Positioning Statement #2

Projection One from Andy Payne on Vimeo.

The Violent Response

Thesis Positioning Statement #1

Although the causes of the London Riots between 6 - 10 August of 2011 are numerous, there several consistent themes that continue to be cited both by observers and the rioters themselves.  Alongside the anti-Keynesian austerity measures that slashed funding for youth and community infrastructure, overt police control has been blamed for the violence. The most damage occurred in the most impoverished areas that are also, not uncoincedentally, dominated by minority ethnicities.  According to local Labour politician David Lammy, the pre-existing tensions between ethnicities and the police were exposed in the Broadwater Farm Riots of 1985.  In this case “cracks that already existed between the police and the community became deep fissures” and the riots of 2011 are “eerily, worryingly, dreadfully similar”[1] 

My Final Boards

The Term Is Finally Over

So after what seems like a MASSIVE slog, the final presentation is done, and school is finished for another year.

My research continued into algae farming, but I began to look more at the architectural consequences for creating this closed loop system. The thermal and phenomenological characteristics of the algae system created flux in the ambiance and colouration of the spaces as well as a seasonal migration of programme from inside to outside as the outdoor spaces become more habitable.

The making of the model

The rings around the outside of the model could not be addes, but here are the process photos for the rest of the model.

Some Interesting Moves Made Over The Weekend

The structural grid has now become a Delaunay triangulated mesh, open on the outside, housing flat glass algae tanks on the inside. Surface area is optimised, allowing for more productivity, while architectural opportunities occurs in the spaces created in between.

The Project Progresses

The programme projects out in most directions allowing specific views of Saatyat Island. The views each protrusion frames is appropriate to the activity that will occur in that part of the building. The museum of Satyaat Island looks out over the freeway so one can survey the new Zaha, Nouvel and Gehry bulidings to the northwest and the Tadao Ando Maritime Museum to the South East. The Real Estate offices give select views over what will be the residential part of the island, while the restaurant at the top presents a panorama of the whole island.

The lattice frame work holds the algae farm in flat tanks and contributes structurally to the sinuous forms that contain the more standard programmes. Everybody here agrees that the rigid square frame is holding back the more dynamic and gestural interior.

Plot #3

The algae farm exists in thin tanks embedded within the 20' X 20' structural frame.  These panels are habitable, and are located according to programmatic needs for outside access using a variety of different cut out sizes in the matrix.  Once mature, the algae is fed into the core of the building where processing begins.  Using a process called transeterification, the algae is electrified with a low voltage current that breaks down the membrane and allows faster extraction of the lipids and therefore bio-diesel.  

All the other programme sits outside the central infrastructural core looking in through large windows making the algae processing the focal point of the whole building.  An inverted Lloyds of London or Centre Pompidou, if you will.  

Working Out the Programme/Farm Relationship

Instead of using tubes for algae cultivation, I have moved into flat tanks. These will provide more local colour variation and can also be unitised for ease of installation and mainenance. The downside of this is that the water does not circulate around the building, and therefore gains huge thermal mass, essentially working like a trombe wall...not what you need in the middle of a dessert. Efforts will have to be made to pull the skin away from the programme where heat in not required and vice-versa.

It occurred to me that if I was treating the skin and programme as separate, I might as well have independent systems that maximise each others capabilities.  These drawings use a scaffold lattice that acts as structure for the programme, but also houses the algae tanks.  The programme interlaces the farm space and also directs light into the depths of the algae farm using sinuous form.

Algae Farming Research for Skyscraper Typologies in the Middle East.

Algae farming can have huge potential as a bio-diesel generation technique.   If 1/10th of the area of New Mexico is given over to algae cultivation then, even using todays technologies, the ENTIRE energy needs of the U.S. can be met.

As a gateway building to a new city district in an oil rich country that is beginning to take precautions for peak oil, the potential of algae farming as both practical solution and symbolic gesture can not be underlined enough.

concept painting for algae farming skyscraper

potential vessel for algae cultivation

removable vessels contain algae in fluctuating skin.  The algae farm can continue above the building adding and subtracting as energy needs dictate

potential vessels for algae cultivation

The studio looks awesome with all these huge models!!!

The second iteration of my highrise model

New Term. New Models.

I'm doing a Studio with Thom Faulders where we are investigating the high-rise building typology.  Our site is in Abu Dhabi, so hopefully we'll get some things out that can equal the eccentricity of the location.

Here are the first iterations.  very early doors yet.  for a scale comparison, see the last image.