1997.08.09
new urban landscapes
...creating new urban landscapes with deformed models from Quondam's collection.
1998.01.27
extruding in Arris
I just found out today that I can place a window around any set of lines and they will extrude -- I no longer have to trace the lines first. This is a tremendous function that I always wanted, and now I have to consider all the instances where I can now use this function. Of course, this has major implications in all kinds of areas, because I can now also rotate by window.
The first place I see this now being used is to generate a base 3-D model of the Ichnographia Campus Martius. I can extrude any and all the walls and stairs, as well as rotate any and all curved elements, including stairs. The only thing I can't do automatically is give closure to the elements (but I still have to do some research on that). If I started to do just one hour of Ichnographia extrusion and closure work a day, I would very quickly have a 3-D model (and that would be almost unbelievable). All I have to do is play around a bit until I see a good working process develop.
The second use for this is to get an opaque railing for the Altes Museum. This function actually solves everything, and I will no longer have to worry about not having the railings present in the opaque views.
Overall, I am excited about the time that this function is going to save me. Also, this means that any plan data that I currently have is automatically extrudable, e.g., the Mayor's House. If nothing else, this function may lead me into a design methodology whereby I design specifically with the quickness of this function in mind. I should go through all my plans and see what I can just start extruding.
1999.03.13
21st century buildings
I was just thinking tonight how I seem to have the ability to think about (design) what the next big "style" will be well before it actually happens, and along those lines I thought one easy way to figure out what's going to be next is to look at the late work Le Corbusier and then take it a step further. I immediately thought of the Olivetti project and these wild curvy, wiggly office towers, and even then crashing them together. Moreover, the way that Olivetti is on a raised "terrain", I thought of easily creating a "terrain" out of pieces of the Media base model, and then having that raised on pilotis. The imaginative designs on this theme alone are boundless.
I next thought how Quondam could (should?) in 2000(+) exclusively present 21st century buildings, i.e., buildings designed within the first days, weeks, months, year of the 21st century -- of course, these buildings will be entirely my design--"History is largely controlled by those who write it."
1999.05.08
cutting-edge design
...address the recent topological approach to architecture as well. The only ideas I have so far involve a combination of digital terrain and existing models and Corbusian principles. I also have the idea of applying existing perspective details and even composite opaque surfaces to any variety of building model surfaces.
...other new ways to generate weird geometries:
1. use solid rotate, but not using the normal polar axis of rotation -- I suspect that angled axes will create very weird latticed geometrics, and if the rotated line segment is also angled, then the produced variety of shapes is all the more infinite.
2. use solid extrude, but again not using the line of extrusion in a strict polar fashion. Moreover, the original lines being extruded do not have to be on the same flat plane either.
3. begin to exaggeratingly distort my existing models, e.g., spread them out far and wide to create whole new terrains (upon which to place new buildings and/or environments). Of course, playing with (reducing) the z factor will also come into play.
4. extrude and rotate wireframes that are already in 3d -- this may prove to be completely ground-breaking, and even revolutionary.
With these four new ideas alone, I have substantially increased the notion of Quondam's infinite collection as well as substantially increased my capacity to create very formally inventive designs -- models I didn't even think were possible for me to produce before.
I'm already thinking that Quondam begins 2000 with an exhibit entitled "an infinite collection", and all I have to do is display one new collection of forms after another. I'm also thinking that this new breed of model formation and manipulation is how I create Ottopia in 3d.
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1999.07.28
content for Ottopia
I'm now thinking that building collisions and rotate extrudes become a major illustrated theme along with model distortions.
Should Ottopia be the place where unfulfilled dreams are addressed, e.g., the unfulfilled and/or past contents of Quondam?
2000.03.17
good work with DTM today
A good portion of the last week's work focused on "sketching" and manipulating two of (the thirty odd) DTM surfaces I've generated. I primarily generated many hline perspectives of paired surfaces (which represent a single multistory building) which increased in number of pairs and ultimately included scale/rotation modifications. The resultant drawings (and design play) turned out to be very stimulating, and indeed inspirational. There is now much further design investigation to perform, investigations and opportunities to greatly enhance my design repertoire.
From the start, I was consciously working to introduce the whole new Gehry/hybrid form language into my own design methodology and capabilities, and there is also the intention of finding out how far I could use and push the CAD capabilities at my disposal. [I am able to successfully investigate this because I've recently discovered that the results of the old ARITEC sculpture software can be easily transferred to the new system via dos copied ri libraries.] What has happened is that I now have a very easy way to generate a vast collection of 3D mesh surface forms, that play perfectly within the infinite possibilities of CAD(esign) manipulation. Moreover, I believe I am documenting a methodology other than the presently popular Gehry/Hybrid Spaces way of using CAD/sophisticated form generating software. I am also developing an alternative to the "diagramatix" approach espoused by Eisenman (and UNStudio). All of this work fits perfectly within OTHERWISE EYES.
After generating the latest set of hlines, which were of two pairs of vertical surfaces combined, one orthogonal, one scale/rotated, the similarity of the resultant drawings to Gehry (design) drawings was near to identical, and also very provocative and eye opening. At night, after generating the last batch of drawings, I looked through the Gehry Complete Works, and was then further convinced that I was beginning to work with CAD on par with Gehry, and I will go so far as to say my approach is actually different than Gehry's because I've developed a catalogue of forms that can undergo infinite CAD manipulations. I would like to document all these new design methodology/theory/philosophy issues in OTHERWISE EYES.
Ultimately, I thought of a great project where I will reenact Bilbao Guggenheim in Philadelphia along the Schuykill River adjacent Eakins Oval (my first year final jury site). This project provides a myriad of opportunities: 1) a chance to design a building using the DTM collection; 2) a documentation / demonstration of the design process; 3) effective use of the Philadelphia Model; 4) further development of the Parkway Interpolation project and perfect promotion thereof; 5) another example of reenactment and/in architectural design.
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2000.04.03
feeling a bit more positive
I've also recently been reworking Laguna via the addition of mesh surface facades. This work gives the original mesh collection a greater reason, and therefore provides all the more reason to present my initial (hline) studies within OTHERWISE EYES. In redoing Laguna, I've so far generated nine hline perspectives, and it would be great if I generated at least 7 perspectives a week (hlines) of whatever "design" I can think of. I'm now doing both textual work and design work.
2000.04.04 20:39
rammed into an envelope
John Young wrote:
What is peculiar to me is the conviction that the visual in architecture should not evolve from the full implementation of its attributes, not as an envelope into which these attributes should be rammed.
Gregory Wharton wrote:
Well said. This puzzles the hell out of me, too.
Van Varga wrote:
Probably puzzles most of us. Architecture to non architects (most people) is just another expression of fashion. (snip)
Steve Lauf suggests:
Is not the 'architecture' of the human body an envelope rammed full of 'attributes' that DO NOT show their 'implementation' on the outside? For example, breasts with nipples hardly reflect either the lungs or the pumping heart inside, likewise the one-piece torso offers little 'superficial' indication of two cavities inside. And further, isn't the sublime singularity of the navel very much like the exact opposite of the twisting, turning, asymmetrical intestines just inside? [And just think how literally close the activities within barber shops and beauty parlors come to the activities inside the brain, yet who would dare say that these two activities share the same "function"?]
Perhaps the 'popularity' of liking the 'mechanical' out of sight is really only a reflection of simply being human.
Personally, it's no puzzle to me.
2000.04.06 12:22
ironically, I never mentioned skin
After I wrote:
"Is not the 'architecture' of the human body an envelope rammed full of 'attributes' that DO NOT show their 'implementation' on the outside? For example, breasts with nipples hardly reflect either the lungs or the pumping heart inside, likewise the one-piece torso offers little 'superficial' indication of two cavities inside. And further, isn't the sublime singularity of the navel very much like the exact opposite of the twisting, turning, asymmetrical intestines just inside? [And just think how literally close the activities within barber shops and beauty parlors come to the activities inside the brain, yet who would dare say that these two activities share the same "function"?]"
John Young and Van Varga both replied with immediate references to corporal skin. This epidermal connection is appropriate because our skin is indeed our corporal envelope, however, I wish to stress that the examples I used (breasts, nipples, torso, navel, head of hair) where not about skin, but rather corporal design features specific to the body's surface -- yes skin is involved as the predominant material application of these features, but skin is not what predominates the design; our skin is what adapts to the design.
Van also mentioned the sense of touch integral to skin, and this undeniable connection has truly provocative architectural design implications, i.e., envelopes that feel and or respond to contact (or, as inspired by John Young, building surfaces that (visually) indicate how they are "feeling"). About five years ago, while I was heavily doing research regarding (the theory of) chronosomatics, I came to the conclusion that touch is the first sense to have come into being, and that touch/contact was/is indeed the medium by which "life" itself began. Not only did touch exist before tasting, smelling, hearing or seeing, but, most of all, it was the contact of two otherwise lifeless entities that 'spawned' animate life. Moreover, it can well be argued that tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing are really only very specialized touch/contact senses. Note also that the sense of touch is not just an attribute of the body's external skin, but a sense indigenous to all parts of the body inside and out.
So what were these two lifeless entities that spawned life through contact with each other? Of course, my answer is that I reasonably assume the true answer may at this late point never re-appear, and that even a reenactment would fall far, far short of the original event. Nonetheless, I believe there is a very significant clue as to the 'scenario' of that first contact right on our own bodies, specifically at the body's extreme external tips, i.e., the tips of our toes and the tips our fingers. It is there that last vestiges of humanity's physical hard external shell still exists, namely our nails, and right underneath our nails are those cross-sections of our body's that are largely just skin. I theoretically propose that this soft entity under a hard entity represents the same conditions that first spawned life. Essentially, it was something soft and vulnerable that found "security and protection" under something hard and more permanent. Animate life began when the contact between the soft and the hard actually became a bond, and thus too the sense of touch came into being.
Now skipping millions of years on the evolutionary scale, I see this soft/hard duality as the beginning of two sexes as well. Contrary to common perceptions, it is the female that is hard and the male that is soft. In simple undeniable terms it is woman that enables embryonic development within her own body -- woman's bodies themselves are a hard protective shells (only women corporeally possess and facilitates the human egg that in turn allows fetal development). Men, on the other hand, very much do not have that "built-in" protectiveness, hence men make great displays about forever being on the defensive, and indeed it is almost exclusively men that have continually created our planet's foremost industry, if only to create that protective shell that their sex was not born with -- the age old military apparatus (shields, armor, war ships, submarines, tanks, stealth bomber, etc. are all "man"-made protective shells).
So what then is architecture? Is it a hard, 'simple', 'natural' protective shell that engenders the continuation of life? Or is it a soft formlessness forever (re-)designing an applied shell it doesn't naturally have?
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2000.04.09
patterns on mesh skins
My kitchen floor inspired me today to begin applying patterns to the mesh walls of Laguna, specifically the circle/square (Pantheon floor) pattern. I then immediately remembered the early(est?) Intergraph version of the Laguna house with the circle/square pattern on the elevation. The pattern application will take time, but the mesh also opens up all kinds of other patterning and even image (esp. line drawings) applications.
There is now also the whole inclusion of my skin/contact ideas with the Laguna redo, and now I have a bunch of "hypermural and beyond" ideas to include as well -- (another great chapter for OTHERWISE EYES--mesh in the Altes Museum porch, etc.
2000.04.12
hypermural paper, etc.
I also thought of a whole new design scheme for the mural which essentially is a fantasy design incorporating mesh surfaces more or less just taking over the museum front--it will be a very virtual design making elaborate use of my cad modeling and presentation capabilities.
2000.04.20
[signs of] OTHERWISE EYES
...a large set of directories, such as: chronosomatics, reenactionary, ichnographiam, ottopia, collection, otherwise-eyes, solarize, innuendo, vapor, acropolis, piranesian-daze, scale, theory, imagination, hyper, almost, lauf-vague-s, casa-vague-s, subcontinental, synopsis, not-there, pieces, seroux, metabolic, hybrid, plans, elevations, sections, details, paradigms, exedra, helena-augusta, enfilade, hypostyle, ramp, porticus, denkmal, sagacity, skin, intention, ludens, zeitgeist, ausland, locale, lacunae, palimpsest, visitation, remove, interpolation, augury, datum.
2000.04.27
OTHERWISE EYES directory ideas
5. collection: begin with displaying the two early element libraries and the new mesh surface libraries.
2000.05.04
skin
4415
b
2000.05.06
Ottopia, etc.
I will begin composing Ottopia with the houses for Otto distributed upon a collage of mesh surfaces; from there I will begin the design process, namely the modeling of the Otto houses. Given the strange terrain, I'm hoping that the house designs readily develop in schizophrenic ways, plus "otherwise" architectural ways. I'm already envisioning a use of mesh surfaces for other design features such as roofs and additional landscapes.
I suppose the greatest challenge will be to actually design a schizophrenic environment. In any case, the main thing is to start composing the house plans within a mesh collage. The work for this will require a wirefaming of the meshes and a grid by grid planer application (scaling and rotating) of the plans. At this point I'm not at all sure whether a Piranesian (a la Campo Marzio) Ichnographia narrative will become part of Ottopia's plan.
Along the same lines as above, I thought of introducing mesh surfaces among pieces (sections) of the Philadelphia model, and thereafter redesigning a new metropolis. Just now I thought that this Philadelphia manipulation could be part of Ottopia, I now see that Ottopia can be any number of built environment landscapes, and not just a "meshland," although I'm sure mesh will play a large role in the overall design.
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2000.05.13
OTHERWISE EYES - continued work
facading -- designing buildings where the main facades are a flattened version of oblique facades already within Quondam 's collection. There upon the profile of the facades will be extruded. There are many variations and developments that this process will take, e.g., mesh extruding one profile into another; bending/folding the facades (vertically); applying new openings to the flat facades; create buildings with a different oblique facade on each side; use the "skin" elevations as flat facades.
plan -- displaying plans made up via collage and perspective.
2000.05.14
idea
There was the idea from last week regarding a z-scale revision of Stirling/Wilford's UNEP/Nairobi design with drawings added to the elevations of the boxes, plus whatever manipulations I think of, especially with regard to mesh surfaces.
2000.05.16
ideas
1. While at Penn yesterday, I looked through some magazines and in AREA 00:02 there was a new wavy, bottom undulating project by MVRDV. I liked the project (I see both Le Corbusier's Olivetti project and OMA's Algiers hotel, plus it reminded me of the undulating plane question I posed to Sarah Whiting at Inside Density. Again, it seems that my own design ideas are right in sync with the latest "moderns," but I so far don't have proof that how I design is right there because there are no drawn out designs of what is in my mind or somewhere in my notes.
I seriously have to begin executing and displaying my designs. For example, I already have the mesh work Laguna study model, and the idea to reenact Bilbao along the Schuylkill River.
4. there is also the new idea of rotate-extruding building sections; I was particularly thinking of extruding the Firminy sections, but actually the sections can be from any building (like Hurva). A building composed of a number of various extruded sections could be extremely innovative.
2000.06.24
The Architecture of Being [FOG]
Architecture projects:
a. Go Go Home museum - distorted but planer shapes collaged and the planes have mesh perspectives applied; then extrude-rotate any portions of the elevation mesh, thus creating further (novel?) architectural deformities.
b. World Trade Center NY tower addition.
c. low income infill housing - Francisville site.
d. Independence Mall.
e. graffiti walls for Philadelphia parks or Philadelphia Graffiti Museum (better idea).
f. Stenton or Ryress addition, or some other obscure historic structure, or an installation at Memorial Hall.
g. Altes Museum Hyper Mural.
h. pedimental sculpture designs for the PMA.
i. an Art School for Girard College.
j. Corporate offices for Ebony magazine (ebony chairs @ Girard College)
k. Buddha tooth temple - a new design.
l. parent's house in Southwest Africa.
m. house for a couple encrytomology experts - very rich.
n. suburban sprawl master plan (?)
o. Casino Collagio, Las Vegas.
p. Wavelength Casino and Hotel, Atlantic City.
q. house in West Cape May.
r. Manly Beach house.
s. Beverly Hill's mansion (?) - faux-faux?
t. Temple University Architecture school.
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