Introducing FY!-Langes

Hello my fellow microcosmonauts!!!

As an alumni of the microcosm studio, I wanted to reach back to my roots and some of my favorite people to shed some light on a fabrication installation I'm involved in at GSAPP (columbia university).

It's called: FY!-Langes.
 and here's our media abstract:

FY-Langes is an installation that is currently being designed and produced by 10 students enrolled in the Fast Pace/Slow Space technology course at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), and will be on display on campus in the middle of May of 2012.

Our aim is to push the boundaries of digital fabrication and experiment with a non-conventionial material, and push the boundary of its performance in order to create an occupiable structure. The goal is to marry non-conventional cutting techniques with advanced digital design tools in a singular project.

please check out our site @ fylanges.com and help us turn this into reality!!!

fy-nance @ fylanges.com and please, please, please, spread the word!  you're crowd based support will go a long ways!  thanks in advance.

p.s. the microcosm studio is kicking-ass.  woot woot uwm!

FY!-LANGES!

Zarletti: Wood Veneer Panel Prototype

The past week has been a whirlwind of details, details, and more details.  Here is the prototype that embodies the spirit of the final design


Here is a glimpse of how it will look in the restaurant


A script allows us to calculate the curvature of the veneer as well as the positioning of the structural fins. The curves of one section (three adjacent panels) is pictured above. The blue circles control the density, the green circles control the peaks, and the yellow circles control the valleys.

We can't wait to unveil the final fabricated panels at the gallery on May 5th!

Materials Research and Parametric Techniques

How do you see materials research and generative scripting (or other parametric techniques) influencing today’s practice?

It depends on whether by “today’s practice” you mean mainstream practice or experimental practice. If you mean experimental practice, then I would say that materials research and parametric techniques are not “influencing” today’s experimental practice – they are today’s experimental practice. They are the methodological backbone of the practice. They are the means of such practice. Another way to say it: today’s experimental practice is the practice of materials research and parametric techniques. There is certainly more to contemporary work than these two methods, but nonetheless, much of what experimental designers do, falls into one or both of these methodological categories. This is why it is crucial for young designers to master these methods, if they want their work to be seen as relevant and their skills to be seen as valuable to experimental practitioners who might employ them.

Surface vs Structure

Do you think scripting can be a tool for structural innovation or just for surface articulation? Any real life constructed examples?

With regard to scripting, I talk about this in Feedback Loop in the chapter Refutation of Arguments against Scripting. This discussion occurs in the section on the Argument from Decorative Effects. However, I think there is a larger question here, which goes beyond scripting: Is contemporary experimental architecture overly concerned with the production of surfaces and surface effects, rather than with structure? Below are some thoughts on this larger question.

How can designers accentuate surface? In what state does the surface aspect of architecture dominate? Surface dominates when architecture contains large expanses of smooth, continuous, opaque areas, whether flat or curved. The typical painted drywall surface (wall, ceiling) is a common example. This is surface accentuated to an extreme. It reduces the experience of wall or ceiling to a thin plane devoid of depth and materiality, and with no way to perceive its structural anatomy or thickness. In a typical drywall house, structure is seen nowhere, and instead, everywhere is pure surface planes. Much Modern architecture accentuates surface. Consider the Barcelona Pavilion: an environment of free-slipping, pristinely smooth surfaces with a negated sense of structure. Or consider the typical curtainwall enclosure: conceived of as a taut, flat, continuous “skin” stretched over a largely hidden structural framework. Post-Modern architecture aggressively sought to detach surface from structure. The surface was conceived of as an impenetrable or distorting veil. Consider Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall or Experience Music Museum, in which there is no intelligible relationship between visible surface and underlying structure. Seeing the surface tells you nothing about what lies beneath. (In his more recent projects such as the Chicago park pavilion, Gehry reveals the structure that holds up the surface, but they remain two completely incongruous sub-systems.)

Despite the widespread efforts to make surface architecture in previous decades, and despite the fact that conservative mainstream designers continue to perpetuate surface architecture today through the conventional curtainwall, these opponents of experimental work like to accuse experimental designers of a surface bias. This is nothing but a smear tactic, since in fact, the trend in current experimental work is to reject surface architecture. This is one way contemporary work breaks with the Modern and Post-Modern past. So rather than have a surface bias, experimental designers today tend to have a strong bias against the surface. Instead, they seek to accentuate structure.

Consider the many recent studies for interior systems: partition systems and ceiling systems. They share a goal: to structuralize the smooth, continuous surface, breaking it down and converting it into a highly articulated structure. When a wall or ceiling gets componentized, and when the joinery between components is articulated, and when the components are given overt materiality, and when, due to this materiality, they have visible thickness and weight, then what was once a thin, intangible surface becomes a deep, tectonic, corporeal entity (i.e., a structure). Experimental designers today have such a strong aversion to the pristine, detached surface that they have devoted significant research to figuring out how to treat every surface as a structure, even in those places where plain surfaces have historically been taken for granted, as in non-structural interior systems. The articulated surface is the structuralized surface. In this work no surface is allowed to remain a surface. Everything is treated as structure.

This renewed love of structure, which is an outgrowth of the renewed love of Nature as a model for architecture, can be seen everywhere in experimental work, at every scale, not just interior partition systems. Consider the Caltrans Headquarters by Morphosis. A taut curtainwall “skin” covers one side of the building, but at its lower edge the “skin” metaphorically unravels, buckling into a folded plate roof structure at ground level to cover a public plaza and bus terminal. Banal surface mutates into complex, multifunctional structure. In this new way of thinking, even when surface remains smooth and continuous, it is used structurally. Consider Richard Rogers’ Law Courts in Bordeaux. A series of smooth-surfaced, conical “barrels” hold the courtrooms, and they are covered by a giant-scale smoothly undulating roof surface. Yet these surfaces are actually crucial components in the structural system. They possess conical and undulating curves in order to enhance rigidity and spanning capability. So to the extent smooth surface still exists in experimental work, it is used for its structural capabilities, integrated into a structural system rather than concealing or subverting it. Norman Foster’s undulating curved roof above the British Museum Court is another example. Its curvature is so integral to its structural performance that a parametric system was developed, which automatically recalculated the size of spanning members whenever the curvature was adjusted.

Scripting and Complexity in Other Fields

Do the ideas behind scripting cross into any other fields that could be useful to designers?

Yes, virtually every field is being affected by the principles of complexity science, which also provide the conceptual foundation for scripting. So while scripting does not have a literal equivalent in every field, the concept of complexity does. There are some examples from biology and robotics discussed in Feedback Loop, but here is a list of some other fields that have been especially affected by the new concept of complexity: evolutionary biology, genetics, robotics, computer science, meteorology, particle physics, economics, product design, automotive design, aeronautical design and architecture.

What is the Microcosm Studio?

Contemporary culture embraces complexity in countless forms: networked mobile computing, news on-demand, global air travel, mobcasting, robotic-assisted surgery, computer-controlled fabrication, global positioning systems and Facebook. Each of us is part of an increasingly integrated global system that offers higher and higher degrees of local, individual influence. This is an unprecedented kind of order, which defies traditional categorization. The world is both orderly and unpredictable. Its parts are both integrated and independent. The world can no longer be convincingly described as centrally-planned or as a chaotic mess. Instead, it is a complex dynamic system.

This view is transforming diverse fields of inquiry from robotics to economics and from software development to architecture. Whereas architects have predominately sought simplicity and regularity in design, a new movement explores architecture as complex and diverse. The Microcosm studio investigates and extends this work, using emerging technologies and design methods to understand and channel complexity, rather than deny it.

Students undertake a series of short-duration research projects culminating in the design of a complex building. Based on empirical experiments and a review of writings in complexity theory, students identify the properties of complex systems, including non-cyclical order, emergence, redundancy, ubiquitous difference, and rule-based behavior. In early experiments, students test common materials such as concrete, glass and aluminum. By subjecting them to a tooling or chemical process, unexpected behaviors emerge. These behaviors are documented and tested further to reveal architectural potential. In another set of experiments, students analyze biological organisms and identify parametric rule-sets used to reproduce the organisms’ geometry. The geometry is then tested for its structural potential. In a final set of experiments, students integrate the results of material and geometric research to design a mass-customized, parametrically-controlled, architectural enclosure system.

Geometry of Bending

Here's an interesting blog showing a designer researching bending (read blog from the bottom up). Notice the integration of materials testing and scripting.
http://thegeometryofbending.blogspot.com/

The Pavilion

Here.s a photograph from a project that I recently worked on and a link to our [sort of successful] blog. http://marcusprize.blogspot.com/

Although firmly rooted in the spirit of computer aided digital fabrication, the lack of available equipment necessitated the need for an intermediary step involving both human cut and human fabricated building components a [a process commonly known as using laser eyes and laser arms]. As is illustrated by early design mockups, these components were crude, and often lacked durability and functionality. A combination physical and digital refinement yielded the final building partially pictured above.

Also, check out http://pearashoot.blogspot.com/. I have a running collection of links and blogs listed that cover a wide array of digital design and fabrication issues. There are links to script source files too. SCRIPTS!!!