Thursday 27 September 2012

Defining our architecture

Our utopia is energy. It's about being on the threshold of potential and expressionism: a utopian energy
This idea entails excitement and potential. We want to show a life and energy in our architecture that one would experience with animation and vivacity. This is an architecture to be alive in.
Our dystopia is the remnants, the leftover skeleton, of a previous life.
We're stripping away the skin and flesh to reveal a structure and design. It does not entirely functional by itself, not without the skin or flesh, but rather it shows a rigid, loose but structural form.

Thursday 20 September 2012

Wednesday 19 September 2012

Attempts at Matrices

Matrix of Island Plant Room



Matrix of City hotel Facade


Matrix of Island hotel Facade





Tuesday 18 September 2012

Peer Review 4 : Sharchitecture (Team 37)
        This is the second time we got an opportunity to review Sharchitecture. This time, they presented us with their progress of the two hotels and their outputs from the workshop “Between two floors”, better known as “The Stairs” workshop. The concepts of their two hotels, “woven” and “sail” were intriguing and they showed us successful models and drawings to support their concepts. The “woven”, which is the one in the city, had many pod like structures which comprised the different hotel units. The pods, especially in case of rooms, were at different ground levels, which is to give a sense of seclusion to the visitors of the hotel. The “sail” hotel, which is located at the island, seemed like, the structure was designed, after a good study on the movement of wind. Its semi dome like structures, were designed with an objective to give shelter to the visitors from the natural factors, mainly the wind.
          Coming to their stairs, we didn’t really have the chance to see their final CNC models, but, the Archi Cad models of both the stairs and their extracted drawings were very helpful in perceiving the ideas behind the development of the stairs.  It was interesting to see, in one of their drawings for the “sail” hotel, how they portrayed the movement of the wind through their structure, which gave us the sense of how the experience would be, if we were inside there. The idea behind the stairs of the city hotel, which were shown in abstracted drawings, were really interesting to look at. 
          They showed good team work in organizing and presenting their work. They showed us their blog, which was written in a well organized manner. There were several tags under each article, relating to the contents, which makes it much easier to find everything and move through the blog.


City Hotel Media Surface


Material card 10 : LiTraCon


 Litracon


Litracon™ is a combination of optical fibres and fine concrete.  It can be produced as prefabricated building blocks and panels.  Due to the small size of the fibres, they blend into concrete becoming a component of the material like small pieces of aggregate.  In this manner, the result is not only two materials - glass in concrete - mixed, but a third, new material, which is homogeneous in its inner structure and on its main surfaces as well.

Thousands of optical glass fibres form a matrix and run parallel to each other between the two main surfaces of each block.  The proportion of the fibres is very small (4%) compared to the total volume of the blocks. Moreover, these fibres mingle in the concrete because of their insignificant size, and they become a structural component as a kind of modest aggregate. Therefore, the surface of the blocks remains homogeneous concrete.  In theory, a wall structure built from light-transmitting concrete can be several meters thick, because the fibres work without almost any loss in light up until 20 meters.  Load-bearing structures can be also built of these blocks, since glass fibres do not have a negative effect on the well-known high compressive strength value of concrete.  The blocks can be produced in various sizes and with embedded heat-isolation.

Matrix: Dystopian Facade

                                                                                                                                                      by Ting

Monday 17 September 2012

Material Card 9: Luna

Luna



Luna is a unique cast glass building material that contains a phosphorescent chemical, absorbing light during the day and glowing for hours at night. Luna is manufactured using glass recycled from car windshields and is ideal for bar fronts, tops, feature walls, flooring applications, or any interior or exterior area.

Facade Arch











Movie Link

Material Card 8: Liquid Display

Liquid Display



Liquid display is an interactive interface that will project air bubbles in a screen of water at different rates depending on how a person touches the tanks of water. 
" The Liquid Display is intended to convey information discretely—approaching the limits of perception—rather than the increasingly saturated information exhibited by contemporary display technologies"
The way the liquid display interacted with the human touch and the changes in speed and size of the bubbles was influential in our scripting for Second Life. 

A video of the Liquid Display: http://vimeo.com/1250915

Sunday 16 September 2012

New Module

The new module shape to be used for the island hotel. We felt that the previous design was too simplistic and it would be better to use a three dimensional module. 
From the Y block construction used for the plant room I made a module that consists of triangular and square faces. This module can be used to create an interesting interior and exterior space and can be tessellated in many different ways.

Friday 14 September 2012

Hotel Experiment

The Arch Plantroom

expriment 1

experiment 1

experiment 2

experiment 2

Thursday 13 September 2012

Play with the string



Inside Out




Add some light

and...

Magic~


Facade Experiment

Draw multiple curves as a wall plan

Use Grasshopper to generate a facade
Top view

Right view

Draw a curve as the pattern of the facade

Use Grasshopper to PIPE the facade

Bake the original and the piped facade




This is a possible remodel for the dystopian hotel. We had some other ideas about changing the planning, the floor levels and perhaps the overall shape. These are some screenshots of a quick modelling of what the changes might look like





  


                               

Progress of the Two Hotels




The two hotels, the one on the left ,located in the city, showing the sectional view and 3D projection of the different stories. The hotel is completely underground, except for the plant room which comprises of the series of arches. The one on the right, located in the island, showing the #d view, the plan and the elements of plant room. The two vehicles, the boat and the glider are shown in the picture.




Wednesday 12 September 2012

Rhino Model


The dystopian hotel was modelled mostly on RhinoCAD. The grey pieces are the exterior, the purple shows the second floor, and the green shows the third. The floors sit below the plantroom which is at ground level. The red rectangle in the middle is an elevator but may be changed to a staircase in the next workshop.

Bimx File

 Screenshots of our bimx file made for the exhibition. While the file wasn't perfect (there was a lot missing in the landscaping, the vehicle detailing and the interior), it was what was produced and shows the progress of our hotels so far.