Cabinet of Curiosities
LMNts’ third blog post and image are up on Metropolis Magazine’s POV blog where Scott Crawford shares his thoughts on a design technology Cabinet of Curiosities. Be sure to also checkout Confessions of a Design Technology Evangelical and Re-Upping on Design Technology if you haven’t already.
Confessions of a Design Technology Evangelical
Guest blogging at Metropolis Magazine, Dan organizes his Field Notes. (Meanwhile, the Design Desk Liberation Front launches another photographic assault). For an pseudo-retro-iconoclastic-interlude to all this computational fetishism, go read the Confessions of a Design Technology Evangelical.
Still Life with Design Technology
George Shaw – managing partner at LMN – on Re-Upping on Design Technology: a bit of history on the ideas and projects that led to LMNts. In Metropolis Magazine’s POV section.
DIVA is Awesome and Everyone Should Use It
We’ve been playing around with the DIVA plugin for Rhino and Grasshopper for the past month. DIVA stands for Design Iterate Validate Adapt which is similar to the approach that we take with parametric modeling.
By looking at a large number of iterations it often is possible to tease out patterns of performance which can help to find a “satisficing” solution and help designers to develop a better intuition about how to approach a problem.
Med Mart 5: Panel Fabrication
As we developed our precast panel surface geometry, we found ourselves increasingly pushing the limits of our rendering engines. We knew that natural light could potentially reveal different effects on the complex surfaces, and physical models would be the only trustworthy method of study to ensure a more predictable final product. The fabrication process of the model paralleled the fabrication process for the full size panels. Our close collaboration with the form-liner and precast fabricators helped to fine tune the design beyond our initial assumptions.
Med Mart 4: Facade Design Coordination
The ambitious schedule of the Cleveland Med Mart project required us to reexamine and retool some of the ways we design, document, and deliver a project. As the leaders of the design effort, we knew that we would need to find and build smart connections between our generative design tools and our documentation process in order to not only meet deadlines, but also adapt to the parameters that were developing throughout the design-assist process. This post outlines our linking of Grasshopper and Revit – through a custom utility called Cricket …
AIA Seattle whichCRAFT? Dialogs
Thursday, June 23rd, 2011: Part of the continued AIA Seattle 2011 Series on Craft comes the full day forum entitled WhichCraft? Dialogs. A full day of panel presentations and dialogues will explore the multiple definitions of Craft for architects and help to explore directions for future work. In the morning, Dan will take part in the panel discussion called “speculativeCraft” – including specialists from Boeing and Walsh Construction – which will be moderated by Kimo Griggs of the University of Washington.
Med Mart 3: Daylighting the Atrium
In this post, we move into the interior to talk about how we are using daylight inside the building. A major feature of the design is a large central atrium with a four-story structural glass wall facing the Mall. While providing a good amount of natural light to the atrium, this entirely glazed edge also contrasts greatly with the three other non-glazed walls. We knew we needed a strategy to more effectively balance the light levels throughout the space, and our goal was to achieve that with natural lighting.
Med Mart 2: Panel Texture and Geometry
While studying the overall configuration of the Medical Mart facade, we were also developing textural concepts for the surface of the precast concrete panels. We were interested in using the surface texture of the precast concrete panels to build increasing layers of detail to what will be a very large scale facade. With very little time to execute the study and produce a constructable solution, we knew we needed to develop a faster way of generating ideas. Our working process developed rapidly into a focused study of rectangular surface forms.
Form Finding with Flexible Modules
Panelizing free-form surfaces is usually done using a large number of uniquely shaped pieces. A free-form surface can also be approximated using a predetermined module. The advantage is being able to limit the number of unique pieces necessary to fabricate that surface.
For this experiment, the module was flexible between panels, but each panel is rigid. A set of forces are then established between each module to control the relationships between modules once they are pulled to the base surface.
Med Mart 1: Generation of Facade Geometry
From the beginning of our design work on the facade system for the Cleveland Med Mart, we desired to develop a system that would give the building multiple layers of varied, unifying texture, legible from multiple scales. Initial explorations of this concept focused on the textural capacities of precast concrete panels and later move on to studying the process for panelizing the entire facade with precast and glazing units. Parametric modeling allowed us to explore many iterations of the facade while also keeping control of the information needed for fabrication.
Symposium: Craft Kraft craft
The UW College of Built Environments is hosting a two day symposium on High Performance Craft. The event will bring together a number of practitioners and thinkers working at the intersections between emerging technologies and building materials, new and old.
Med Mart: Introduction
This is the first in a series of post that will describe LMNts involvement in the design of the Cleveland Medical Mart. In February of 2010, a joint partnership between Merchandise Mart Properties (MMPI) and Cuyahoga County chose LMN Architects as the designer for the Cleveland Medical Mart and Convention Center project. The Cleveland Medical Mart and Convention Center is the city’s most prominent effort to date in reinventing itself as the country’s hub of medical research and trade activity.
Woodbury’s Elements of Parametric Design
Reviewed: Elements of Parametric Design by Robert Woodbury. If you are new to parametrics, then you will get the lay of the land at this particular point in design history and have a good idea where to begin. If you are a designer already steeped in parametric practice, this book is a quick read and a welcome synthesis of many things you probably have already experienced. For all others, an in-depth review of the design patterns that make up parametric architectural design.
Xenakis’ Reynolds House
We recently had the opportunity to produce a physical scale-model of an unbuilt design of Iannis Xenakis. Xenakis was the Greek/French composer, music-theorist, and architect, best known for his use of mathematical models, stochastic processes, and game theory in his composition. Xenakis was an important influence on the development of electronic music and he also [...]
A Breathing Building Skin at ACADIA 2010
Scott will be presenting “A Breathing Building Skin” at the ACADIA 2010 Conference at Cooper Union in New York, taking place October 21st – 24th. The theme of the conference this year is “the changing nature of information and its impact on architectural education, research and practice,” with a focus on the roles of information in the design process, generative and evolutionary modeling, and digital fabrication.
Terzidis’ Algorithmic Architecture
Is the algorithm a radically new way of generating form or just another tool for design? Though this presents a false-fork, it does caricature two sides of an imbalanced debate…a debate that Algorithmic Architecture enters into in an odd way. Reviewed: Algorithmic Architecture (2006) by Kostas Terzidis.
Interactive Architecture by Fox & Kemp Reviewed
Interactive Architecture is a monsters compendium of recent work; it is a catalog and survey of current trends. While it has the heft of a textbook, Interactive Architecture is a quick read. If you need a starting point (who doesn’t?), Interactive Architecture is a great one.