Perfume, Voronoi Regions and Architecture

That would summarize my last project at the design studio. Our theme consisted of creating a “perfume museum” at a site located in the vicinity of the Mogosoaia Palace. (I found it to be a very difficult site – history, tradition, nature etc. how to properly integrate a building in such a rich and precise context is a question that remains open.)

The project’s challenge was to transpose the notion of perfume in an architectural form. Wikipedia suggests many trails. Chevalier’s Dictionary of Symbols suggests some more. Balzac: “Tout parfum est une combinaison d’air et de lumiere.”; Hugo: “Le parfum est de la lumiere.”. Floral motifs, blobitecture, incense and religion, drugs – it was up to you to decide on how to visually speculate perfume.

I was fed up of the meanings and interpretations of perfume. Perfume nowadays is synthetic. Leave me be. Smell chemistry. You can’t contradict that.

I broke the visual representations of the chemical components of a standard perfume (chemical representations have very strict geometric rules – 120 deg angles, pentagons and hexagons) and got voronoi regions.

Ahhh, sweet metaphor of computational architecture. Isn’t it beautiful? Elegant? Yet it has nothing to do with architecture. Form is detached from function and we are approaching a similar crisis of that of modernism, when the exact opposite happened. People don’t find themselves included in such designs. Computation that strictly refers to form/ellegance alienates architecture from its goals. I don’t trust the starchitect theory as being the solution; it won’t last or it will split us into sculptors and engineers. 

(Please do read that article. It’s a must. It shows past (as in blobitecture and zaha), present(not the “so last year” deconstructivism or – worse even – post-modernism) and pushes through to the question posed by the future.)

Enough theoretical blabber. I’m giving all this computational business some thought. Code in architecture is nice, as long as it serves the people, not just ellegance. (Please do notice I didn’t use the term “function”. I prefer the much more accurate and revelatory word “people” = complex emergent system.)

Here are some pics of the model:

Programmed in Rhino. Finished in Sketchup. Model made in ManualManufacturyCAD(hand glued). Laser cutting here.

Corbusier si unitatile zburatoare

Galeria 115, in a sa expozitie de arta digitala “ArtPartTwo“, contine si urmatoarea lucrare, care place la noi:

Ce ne chinuim cu Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, sau Foster? Unite d’habitation explodat in aer. Sau Corbusier drogat. Asta’i viitorul in arhitectura.

povestea

Am ajuns in finala olimpiadelor comunicarii, la categoria comunicare politica, cu echipa the Hatters. O aventura simpatica. Eu ma asteptam sa trebuiasca sa le fac doar un logo, niscaiva grafica de afis si o prezentare. Iata ca acum trebuie sa platesc 1o lei ca am avut acest noroc. Genitori creditori, iarasi va venit randul sa salvati progenitura de la colaps financiar.

Nu am ramas cu o impresie buna despre ce se intampla acolo, dar asta poate e din cauza ca nu am o impresie buna despre advertising in general, sau despre politica (din motive lesene de inteles), sau despre modul cum ne comportam ca societate.

Foarte interesant de vazut daca aveti timp seria de documentare The Century of the Self, frumos realizate de BBC4.

O poezie

This is not a poem. This is 42.
For romanian readers, here we go:

“

uite
scrie sub palarie
the hatters
cu o culoare draguta
in semicerc
iar la cercuri
fa-le de marimi diferite
adica verde si albe mai micute
alb si negru la margini
verde in centru
albastru si rosu de o parte si de alta
a verdelui
verde cea mai mare in centru
celelalte mai micute
iar cele de la capat
alb si negru
la fel ca verde
sa se diferentieze putin
asta e ideea

Lansez un concurs: cine raspunde corect la intrebarea care cerc e cel mai mic si in ce pozitie exacta se afla in sir (sunt 5 beads on a string) primeste un sticker ¨uber (in limita stocului disponibil). Pe bune!

Gibberish

I am wondering. Computational art/ Generative art takes a lot of programming. It’s quite a lot of work – compiling algorithms from different sources and inventing your own for those special needs that surely arise etc etc etc. Yet g. a. is a manifesto of two things (at least this is how i see it), the first being the concept and the second being the use of the computer as way of creating art in its purest.
So we are tackling two tricky subjects. The concept/idea you want to express (or not!) must be proper for deployment in a digital medium with pure digital tools (code). Sometimes one must stop when programming becomes more important than concept and vice-versa. It’s a tricky balance.

And second, I think I’ll program some boids playing tag you’re it. And map their trajectories. And throw them in a perlin noise vector field. And add some genetic evolution algorithms. And implement collision detection. And do that nifty Diffusion Aggregation Algorithm. And better my color palette. And add sound interaction. Or, better even, generate sound. Binary networks anyone?

Oh, and there’s one more thing. “It” has to look good. Aesthetic. Guten nacht.