PLAT 1.5 has just been released, and with it my critical essay entitled Algorithmic Abuse, which I’m sharing below. It’s a short attempt to raise awareness towards several gaps in computational architecture’s theory as well as practice.
Please support the journal by purchasing a copy!
Head over to my blog for the complete article.
Intro
The project started out as an ambitious student-powered endeavor to design and fabricate at a 1:1 scale the flagship pavilion for the ZA11 Speaking Architecture event in Cluj, Romania. While at the same time integrating into its historically-charged context, the design (which was elaborated to a concept stage during a week-long workshop) boasts a strong representational power which was much needed in order to fulfill its main goal: attracting passers-by to the event. At the same time, the object, through its tectonic characteristics, tries to make legible the new ontology which is slowly defined by computational architecture and thus becomes a showcase for the design processes empowered by digital tools.
During the 15-17th of December I will be tutoring at the automatic architecture event at the TU Delft. Here’s some info from the official site:
Automatic-architecture is a three-day workshop (15th-17th December 2010) open to architects and students in order to show the use of computational design for architectural development by cross-fertilization of knowledge. The cases for the workshops has been collected from a real estate developer and, in cooperation with the University of Delft this case has been translated into workshop material.
Costs: Euro 75,- for three days.
Automatic-architecture offers room for thirty participants. The workshops will be held at the Technical University of Delft starting Wednesday December 15.
Moving out. More info on the project here.
The assignment was loosely formulated so as to allow maximum freedom in identifying problems and needs in the Lipscani area and proposing an architectural (built) solution that would tackle the aforementioned points.
My vision concentrated on issues relating to the poor visibility/readability of the overall area (and the necessity of a landmark) and the lack of “free” public urban space. The functional program was mainly derived from the observation that most historic centers (Lipscani being a prime example in this) loose their initial cultural and traditional economic value in favor of the over-dominant bar/cafe. This leads to a certain repetition of fluxes (economic, cultural, pedestrian) which harms the respective area.
Geometry-wise, my proposal respects local aspects of the area, namely its porosity and the way the urban tissue coagulated around narrow winding streets and small interior courtyards in a constantly surprising lattice.
In respect to this approach, i considered the lot as a solid volume on which forces are applied in respect with the openings and general director lines of the site. Performing a “structural” analysis on the site revealed the patterns by which these forces would naturally flow towards given points of rest (namely the designated openings of the courtyards). Using topological optimization techniques these patterns were transformed into geometry which was later subtracted from the original body thus giving the overall shape of the building.
By following this design method I ensure an optimal circulation flow through the built site, encouraging interaction and furthering the development of the local urban tissue in a manner very close to its characteristics (gained by spontaneous evolution) thus fully integrating the new implant.
That’s wrapper of the last month, give or take.
More as a scripting experiment, when i was mucking about trying to make the delaunay triangulation work in grasshopper i somehow found the wonderfully complex qhull library which i promptly set to push and pull to get it to work with grasshopper. As advised on their website, the best way to do it is to call it as an external program, which is exactly what i’ve done: no files are written or read, no dos windows pop up, everything’s smooth.
Given that you don’t have many complex operations in grasshopper after the solution is generated, you’ll be able to handle quite an impressive amount of points (say 200 on my three-year old toplap) in real time. If you add the simple planarSrf operation, then say 60-70 and it gets sloppy.
What you’ll need to do to get things rolling:
0. Download the 3dvqhull definition and example file, and remember not to use it for commercial purposes, share-alike whatever you do with it and take the time to give the proper credits: 
1. Download qhull, and unzip it in a folder of your choice.
2. Get going and search for “System.dll”. What you’re interested in is the 2.0 version which you’ll usually find in here: “C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.5[...]\”. If you can’t find it, I’m amazed grasshopper works for you. Anyway, you can find and install it from here.
3. Add the newly found System.dll version 2.o as a referenced assembly of the qhull component in the definition file.
If it turns orange, it’s cool.
4. Write in the panel that is linked to the “path” input the full path to the qhull program qvoronoi. You don’t need to add the .exe extension, but you can do it if you feel confortable.
5. There’s just one more thing you should know: facets that contain the infinite vertex are omitted altogether, without remorse. So as to have as little facets tending towards infinitum, I always add the corners of the points bounding box to the input sites.
You can scale the bounding box in respect with its center, or you can just call the whole thing off – it’s your choice.
I think this just about covers everything. Take care and have fun.
PS: Qhull does more than voronoi. So if you have the time to explore and test, please do – the package is very powerfull and it can be used for more than this.
I get to speak on the 2nd of April there about parametric modelling and show off some projects. Suggestions are more than welcome.
This is just a prototype for our current school assignement involving collective housing (~80+ apartments + commercial and community spaces).
We are using the excellent space-partitioning properties of the Voronoi algorithm to create a lattice of interior and exterior courtyards that progressively make a transition from public space to semi-public, semi-private, and, in the end private space. This way we propose the creation of a coherent urban lattice encouraging interaction with the busy city outside while in the same time offering various degrees of protection/”cosiness”. We are not proposing a new type of urban tissue in itself, but merely adapting and reinterpreting some qualities of sponaneous developement and local tradition(“fundatura”) in a flexible (yet highly accurate) digital framework.
As I was saying at the begging of the post, this is just a technical showdown – everything you see rendered above is far from what the end product will probably be (since also the way the assignement was formulated forms that evade from some general bar-variation are quite difficult to fit in the judging criteria). Yet it indeed demonstrates the versatility of parametric/generative architecture and the capabilities of the digital framework proposed to control and manipulate with accuracy all aspects of the project (from raw geometry and algorithm to technical: floor height, floor areas, built/unbuilt ratio, sun exposure and so on – the possibility to expand the definition to apartment level details is definitively there).
That above graphic is a watered down version of the grasshopper definition (I will not release it under any license for now).
Unless otherwise specified, this work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Licence.
