Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Contemplay Pavilion
The ContemPLAY pavilion is a student led initiative developed at the McGill School of Architecture as part of the Directed Research Studio program under the MArch course Community Design Workshop. It is built under the leadership and supervision of Maria Mingallon, the Gerald Sheff visiting Professor, in collaboration with F.A.R.M.M. (Facility for Architectural Research and Media Mediation) directed and founded by Michael Jemtrud (Director of the School of Architecture at McGill University) and led by Jason Crow.
The pavilion project is an excellent demonstration of the latest developments in the DRS program, exposing advanced construction techniques, digital processes and theoretical approaches to architecture in the public realm. Furthermore, the project highlights the student potential as well as the capacity for trans-disciplinary team work on a high level project. The project benefits from the use of novel design and fabrication techniques, utilizing algorithms for digital modelling and thus, facilitating fabrication of complex geometries and assemblies.
The project is a unique opportunity to allow students and the McGill School of Architecture to present an unprecedented graduate studies project in North-America, setting the standard for new architectural programs. It creates an opportunity for debate and discussion as two what public space can be, and how its structures can be conceived. The pavilion is donated to the public and open to all as a means of making architecture relevant and important in the community.
The pavilion is meant as a multi-generational artefact that gathers the ideas of contemplation and playing in a single clear gesture. As a socially sustainable public infrastructure that plays with the visual field through form and cladding, it questions the current trend in public space furniture and encroaches in the realm of the abstract sculpture or artefact. The gesture itself is a three dimensional Möbius strip supported by a triangular truss. The truss is a combination of plywood and steel members. The cladding is a visual pattern generated to create a simultaneous Moiré and parallax effect. As the public approaches and engages with the pavilion, the visual field is modified and interrupted by the interference created by motion and the two layers of cladding. The eye continuously covers the never ending surface of the Möbius inviting dynamic motion from the user. A base platform serves both as foundation and bench, providing a central area for seating within a never ending structure. The light filters through the cladding generating an ambiguous relationship between the notions of the inside and outside as well as furniture and shelter. As you move around the pavilion, new interference patterns are continuously created and destroyed due to the Moiré mechanism, creating a responsive, interactive experience. The simplicity of a half-twist in a ribbon was rendered extremely complex through the doubling and offsetting of the Möbius strip: the creation of two surfaces activated the Moiré but required strong yet minimal structural solution. The solution to this complexity was a space frame. To resolve all these design criteria, the Moiré pattern and an optimized space frame are generated via customized digital parametric modelling.
The project enhances the potential for utilizing latest developments in digital design and manufacturing, exposing advanced construction techniques, digital processes and theoretical approaches to architecture in the public realm. The hybrid structure of galvanized steel and exterior grade plywood is fully reversible and its construction process allows the pavilion to be built, disassembled and recycled. The complex form created unique opportunities to develop research through parametric design without increasing waste and simultaneously minimizing cost.
Dimensions
The pavilion has an 8.8m x 6.7m footprint with a total height of 3.7m. It is has an oval shape in plan that is the result of the structure being an infinite Möbius strip. Made of standard galvanized steel tube and exterior grade BC fir plywood, the pavilion can resist all seasons outdoors without the need for supplementary and wasteful paints or varnishes. All materials were locally available from suppliers and cam in standard formats.
Manufacturing
The production of the pavilion was the result of parametric design which allowed for the efficient management of material and optimized structural and formal solutions. Using grasshopper, Rhino and SolidWorks, the team managed to maximize the use of materials while simultaneously producing a distinct project. The manufacturing included CNC cutting for the plywood and CNC laser cutting for the steel details.
Construction
As a result of the pavilion’s need to move around the city, the construction process had to be fully reversible. All joints and connections are bolted and do not require adhesives, meaning that the pavilion can be fully disassembled and recycled. Furthermore, the individual parts are light enough for people to carry, removing the need for machinery during construction, making for a quieter and safer building process.
The pavilion was conceived over a period of 6 months and is currently being built by: Hamza Alhbian, Simon Bastien, Justin Boulanger, Evguenia Chevtchenko, Elisa Costa, Jason Crow, Nicolas Demers-Stoddart, Andrew Hruby, Olga Karpova, Shelley Ludman, Diandra Maselli, Maria Mingallon, Courtney Posel, Dina Safonova, Dieter Toews, Sophie Wilkin.
[C]SPACE - DRL10 PAVILION
Architects Alan Dempsey and Alvin Huang have won a competition to design a temporary, freestanding pavilion that will be built in front of the Architectural Association school in London early next year.
The competition celebrates the 10th anniversary of the AA’s Design Research Laboratory. It was open to all students and graduates of the DRL and called for designs that made innovative use of Fibre C, a glass fibre-reinforced concrete panelling material produced by Rieder.
Dempsey and Huang have set up a blog to chart their progress as they prepare to build their [C]Space pavilion.
Huang says: “We are now developing the design with Hanif Kara of Adams Kara Taylorand will be constructing it with the assistance of Rieder Co. The opening of the pavilion is scheduled for February 22, 2008.”
The competition jury said: “Alan Dempsey (DRL 2002) and Alvin Huang (DRL 2004) are the winners of DRL TEN Pavilion design competition. The winning design was chosen anonymously from 28 entries by invited jurors and was selected based on the following points: constructability within a tight schedule and budget, simplicity and elegant form, effective use of material, pavilion as a continuous extension of furniture to roof structure.”
There is more information about the competition and details of the runners up on the AA website.
Below is a project description from the architects.
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PROJECT: [C]SPACE Pavilion
SITE: London, United Kingdom
KEY DATES: October 2007 (Competition winner announced)
Febrary 2008 (Expected completion)
PROGRAM: Temporary Pavilion for the DRL10 – 10 Year Anniversary of the AA Design Resarch Laboratory
SIZE/AREA: 100 m2
CLIENT: Architectural Association, AA Design Resarch Laboratory, DRL10
ARCHITECT: Alan Dempsey + Alvin Huang
CONSULTANTS: Adams Kara Taylor
SPONSORS: Rieder Co., Zaha Hadid Architects
SITE: London, United Kingdom
KEY DATES: October 2007 (Competition winner announced)
Febrary 2008 (Expected completion)
PROGRAM: Temporary Pavilion for the DRL10 – 10 Year Anniversary of the AA Design Resarch Laboratory
SIZE/AREA: 100 m2
CLIENT: Architectural Association, AA Design Resarch Laboratory, DRL10
ARCHITECT: Alan Dempsey + Alvin Huang
CONSULTANTS: Adams Kara Taylor
SPONSORS: Rieder Co., Zaha Hadid Architects
DESIGN STATEMENT: [C]SPACE is the winning competition entry in the ‘AADRLTenPointZero’ Pavilion project, an advanced technology concrete structure that will be erected in Bedford Square (London) in February, 2008 as part of the ‘AATen’ Exhibition, publication and other events. It is being designed and devel¬oped by Alan Dempsey and Alvin Huang. Alan graduated from the AA DRL in 2002 and has since worked for Farjadi Architects and Future Systems (current). Alvin graduated from the DRL in 2004 and has since worked for Zaha Hadid Architects and Future Systems (current).
The winning design was chosen anonymously from 28 entries by invited jurors and was selected based on the following points: constructability within a tight schedule and budget, simplicity and elegant form, effective use of material, and a pavilion as a continuous extension of furniture to roof structure.
The striking presence of the pavilion invites inspection from a distance and upon closer interaction reveals its ambiguity through the merging of sinuous curves, structural performance, and programmatic functions into a single continuous form. Fibre-C elements perform as structure and skin, floor, walls and furniture.
As you move around, the surface varies from opaque to transparent, producing a stunning three-dimensional moiré. The surface encloses while also providing a route through for passing pedestrians. It has neither inside nor outside.
The jointing system in the pavilion exploits the high tensile strength of Fibre-C using a simple interlocking cross joint which is tightened by slightly bending each element as it is locked into consecutive cross elements.
Consultation with the Fibre-C technical department in Austria has suggested that a flex of 15-20mm per metre can be applied without affecting the structural performance of the material. The appearance of small micro cracks on the surface is mitigated by using lighter material colours and a Ferro finish.
The pavilion is fabricated from curved profiles that are nested on standard 13mm flat sheets and water cut. Once delivered to site the entire pavil¬ion can be constructed by hand.
Computational Design Research Pavilion / ICD-ITKE
In 2010, the Institute for Computational Design (ICD) and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE) designed and constructed a temporary research pavilion. The innovative structure demonstrates the latest developments in material-oriented computational design, simulation, and production processes in architecture. The result is a bending-active structure made entirely of extremely thin, elastically-bent plywood strips.
Material computes. Any material construct can be considered as resulting from a system of internal and external pressures and constraints. Its physical form is determined by these pressures. However, in architecture, digital design processes are rarely able to reflect these intricate relations. Whereas in the physical world material form is always inseparably connected to external forces, in the virtual processes of computational design form and force are usually treated as separate entities, as they are divided into processes of geometric form generation and subsequent simulation based on specific material properties.
The research pavilion demonstrates an alternative approach to computational design: here, the computational generation of form is directly driven and informed by physical behavior and material characteristics. The structure is entirely based on the elastic bending behavior of birch plywood strips. The strips are robotically manufactured as planar elements, and subsequently connected so that elastically bent and tensioned regions alternate along their length. The force that is locally stored in each bent region of the strip, and maintained by the corresponding tensioned region of the neighboring strip, greatly increases the structural capacity of the system. In order to prevent local points of concentrated bending moments, the locations of the connection points between strips needs to change along the structure, resulting in 80 different strip patterns constructed from more than 500 geometrically unique parts. The combination of both the stored energy resulting from the elastic bending during the construction process and the morphological differentiation of the joint locations enables a very lightweight system. The entire structure, with a diameter of more than twelve meters, can be constructed using only 6.5 millimeter thin birch plywood sheets.
The computational design model is based on embedding the relevant material behavioral features in parametric principles. These parametric dependencies were defined through a large number of physical experiments focusing on the measurement of deflections of elastically bent thin plywood strips. Based on 6400 lines of code one integral computational process derives all relevant geometric information and directly outputs the data required for both the structural analysis model and the manufacturing with a 6-axis industrial robot.
The structural analysis model is based on a FEM simulation. In order to simulate the intricate equilibrium of locally stored energy resulting from the bending of each element, the model needs to begin with the planar distribution of the 80 strips, followed by simulating the elastic bending and subsequent coupling of the strips. The detailed structural calculations, which are based on a specifically modeled mesh topology that reflects the unique characteristics of the built prototype, also allows for understanding the internal stresses that occur due to the bending of the material in relation to external forces such as wind and snow loads, a very distinct aspect of calculating lightweight structures.
Comparing the generative computational design process with the FEM simulation and the exact measurement of the geometry that the material computed on site demonstrates that the suggested integration of design computation and materialization is a feasible proposition.
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Powerpoint presenation- 3D designs and products
My designs and work that i've done throughout the years at Mcast Art and Design Institute!!!
Hope you like! :)
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