eVolo Skyscraper competition results

2010 skyscraper competition results

Portland Redevelopment

Image of a high density waterfront development in Portland, Oregon.  While the density looks good, it is not really what we are going for formally.

Must watch Michael Sorkin Lecture from SCI_Arc

Here is the link.  Creating eutopic green cities.
Interesting rule about 250' before a choice while walking through a city.  This sets a block structure.

Link to Studio Sorkin.

Cosmo Player Download

Here is a link to the Cosmo Player download.  DP allows for saving of WRL files directly (under saveas).  This is the file for use in the VR Cave.  Give it a try with one of your project files and then view it with Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Here is a CosmoPlayer screenshot of the water surface I am working on.

Photographic Archive for US Steel - Gary Works

Here is a link to the photographic archive.

Another history of Gary Works with images.

Historic movies about Steel

Interesting White Paper from Black Box @ SOM

Click the image to get to Black Box or click here for the white paper PDF.

Studio Day 2 - January 15

Following the summer traveling seminar presentations, we started in the BET Lab with the second DP demo.  Today was review of 2D sketches and intro to surfaces and solids.  There were some great questions that reminded me to talk about topology and geometric strategies for the development of the modeling.  We covered a few possibilities for making a slider bar that might constrain a range.  I think this has the group thinking about possible graphic interfaces for their design work.

Following the demo I met with everyone in three small groups to discuss their case study projects, the information that was found, and possible approaches to developing the project.  Different buildings obviously have different agendas and formal approaches so there will be a good range of rules.  I imagine at the completion of the first project we will have a whole population of rules that everyone will be able to mix, match and mate to create difference among their proposals.  We also talked about not only formal rules developed by the architect but rules that might have to do with structure, elevators, or egress.  We talked about the work being digital and therefore inherently malleable and to extend that imagining how they might manipulate their project and how it will be response not to scalar changes by changes that reflect embedded no-linear rules.  One example would be egress.  This can be driven by both geometry and quantity of occupants.  Stretching the floor plate will increase the number of occupants but additional egress is only required at 50 people, and 500 people.  The distance (depending on occupancy type) limits the maximum distance to 200feet.  These two factors will drive the size and location of egress.

Over the weekend the studio will be developing initial diagrams and models.  Some more complex interaction will only be possible once we get into more depth of DP while other aspects can be modeled already.  I imagine (or hope) that everyone has something they can model now and something that can build on their ever increasing software knowledge.

Studio Day 1 - January 12

Tuesday was the first official studio meeting.  It's always best to jump right in, so after briefly discussing the syllabus and first assignment I did a Digital Project demo on the interface and 2D sketches.  The first project (3 weeks) asks the students to take a case study tower project and uncover a series of rules that inform the massing, organization, or space.  This will drive the skill building from the technology side, introduce the concepts of formal rules, and introduce some of the basics for the design of a tower.

Once the demo was complete we headed over to the CAVE to get an orientation on the use and set-up for the virtual reality component of the studio.  Ted did a great job of welcoming us and giving us the run down.  We were also able to try out two of the demos that they use to explain the capabilities of the technology.  One at a time we put on the motion tracking glasses and over sized slippers and shuffled our way through the immersive environments.

The list of the case study projects are:
Bundle Towers - FOA - NYC
World Trade Center - United Architects - NYC
Sears Tower - SOM - Chicago
Hancock Tower - SOM - Chicago
NY Times - Piano - NYC
Swiss Re - Foster - London
Commerzbank Tower - Foster - Frankfurt
CCTV - OMA - Beijing
Segrams Building - Mies - NYC
Spire - Calatrava - Chicago
Aqua - Studio Gang - Chicago
Federal Building - Morphosis - San Francisco
Burj Khalifa - SOM - Dubai

Studio Lottery - January 8

The grad options studio will attempt to investigate a number of issues throughout the semester that have to do with quantities, which gives us the title "Strength in Numbers".  I am shifting the scale of studio work this term to focus on larger aggregations of buildings.  The studio will be designing a small city that will be an extension to Chicago along that lake in Indiana.  There are about 3000 acres of industrial land currently occupied by steel mills that we are looking to transform by the year 2110.  The super dense development is designed to house the influx of climate refugees from coastal cities.  While it is clearly not the best approach, I am curious about an urbanism created by architecture.  The example that I presented in the lottery is the United Architects WTC proposal.  The project is able to create a "city in the sky" while preserving a finer scale at the ground level.  The project is both icon and urbanism.

 The studio will make use of various technologies to explore the task of designing a city.  Digital Project will be used for the generation of building forms that will attempt to increase density but not at the cost of the occupation of the ground / public plane.  To further test these conditions the studio will be using the virtual reality CAVE on North Campus.  Given that we will be developing digital models, we will be able to immersivly represent the proposed environments.

The studio will explore the production of rules to define form and space.  Rather than focus on the design of one building, these rules will be varied to produce multiple buildings.  This approach will force a shift from the search for the singular right form and will instead draw the focus to the crafting of the code, rule, and algorithm.