Andrew Holder |
The lecture given by Andrew Holder, who is an fellow in UMich, is about the projects he had made and the how he used digital tools to approach the design. He said: we see architecture as a sculpture rather than a hollow shell. This is different from what I learn in architecture school. Sculpture has no space in it, so sculpture is one of the things we wouldn't use as our architectural concept. However, it did inspire me because the sculpture he made is full of amazing space. The space is not inside the sculpture but outside. The space is created in the moment when two or more sculptures are placed together. The space exists among the sculptures. In his work "48 characters", those balloon animals are put together and interact with one another, even with the environment he made for those animals. Those animals start to define the space, just like the columns in a building. After the lecture, I realized that a hollow shell (the way we usually treat architecture in) define only the space inside the shell, but the sculpture define the space outside itself. Therefore, the space defined becomes larger and those sculptures are connected together within a space. Also, his works make Moriyama House, which is designed by Ryue Nishizawa in 2005, occur to my brain. The house is separated into many small white objects, and those objects are placed on the site to form the space in between the objects, "the space without functions". And, the space defined by those objects is connected to streets, neighborhood and the city.
Furthermore, the conversation about digital tools is also what I am interested in. While using digital tools, Andrew tried to hide the trace of the digital tools. He tried to make it look not digital. It's interesting because it's just like when you sketch something but intentionally cover the pencil trace on the paper. Also, while he was making the balloon animals, he kept his hand off the models to avoid hand prints. The characteristics of tools are removed (even the trace of "making" are removed) to stay in pure material and forms because animals are born rather than being made. It is difficult to remove all the traces of tools, I think there should be a lot of technical issues to address. However, the issue is not about digital, it should be about "tools" or "artificial". Just like the watches that Tim Ingold mentioned in his book, if we design a watch which can produce another exactly same watch, how do we define the line between nature and artificial? Or, as Kevin Kelly said, the technium has autonomy and it should be viewed as a living creature. Perhaps Andrew did not connect his work to this issue, but his works actually lead me to the thinking about the boundary of human beings and machines.
Don Hart |
The first thing I can recall from Don's lecture is elevator pitch. 3 parts of story, situation, conflicts and solution, can quickly organize the structure of an idea, and, most important of all, this story is really good. It is a good method to quickly deliver the ideas to people.
Robert Adams |
In the class, we had the discussion about the "relationships" among objects. It attracts me because relationship is one of the research topics of my thesis. In architectural design, we still use modeling based tools to design a house, however, we barely describe the relationships clearly and logically in a readable language. Most architectural designers constantly use their eyes to check the design. For example, every architect knows the size of a parking lot in Taiwan, however, architect still needs to maximize the amount of parking lot manually. Actually, we have tons of algorithms for spacial optimization but still use our creative (talent) to achieve the maximum number.
In the very beginning of IC design history, engineers drew the layouts completely by their hands, and also they did need to optimize the size of chip. However, engineers started to use description language (VHDL or Verilog) to describe the behaviors of the circuits instead of drawing those wires and transistors. Verilog was born in 30 years ago (1984) and this kind of language may be traced back earlier. However, we haven't clearly defined the relationships among components in architecture, thus we can hardly use a language to describe them and let computer or robots to design for us. As I know, some labs have their own languages to design architecture but those languages are still in the lab versions. Another example I know is Esri CityEngine, but the scripts describe the forms (or sizes, shapes) rather than relationships. Rhino Grasshopper describe forms mostly, Processing describe only graphics. Christopher Alexander's article, A City is Not A Tree, illustrates the the system is space, I think that's the closest concept of the relationships script. I believe that machine will take over many routines from architects, so architects need to level up the design, the 2nd level design.
沒有留言:
張貼留言