HotHouse(s): Prototypes, Assemblies and Architecture

I’m teaching studio with Hani Rashid again this semester, and we’re also adding Theo Lalis (former designer at Future Systems) into the mix.

The brief follows :

HotHouse(s): Prototypes, Assemblies and Architecture
Columbia GSAPP Advanced Studio VI
Spring 2007
Hani Rashid + Alex Pincus + Theo Lalis Sarantoglou

Ten years ago the Digital Design Studios were initiated at Columbia GSAP. It was a pivotal decade that brought some important discoveries to architectural theory and design mainly through the investigation of computation and the potential for new formal strategies and methodologies. Today a new approach and pedagogy should focus on the mutation and realignment of the original digital design initiatives to pursue a new pedagogical agenda. Experimentation in architecture is now in search of some deeper resonances and trajectories, in need of a new infusion of thinking that is more consequential. What is of interest presently can be found in the realms of radical engineering, innovative hybrid materials, new modes of digital fabrication and non standardization/mass customization as well as innovative strategies for environmentally responsive and intelligent buildings. Today we are embarking on a new phase that is clearly about a greater integration between the way architecture is conceived, iterated, fabricated and implemented. it is about achieving a greater level of control over the symbiotic relationship between technique, process, and outcome, even if that outcome is deliberately about the unpredictable and the speculative. This endeavor depends on the following:

Cloud Forest

A truly bizarre world of potentially affective refractions and bulbous forms.

Final, Final Review

Final Review Slide Alexander Pincus Columbia University

Here is the opening slide for my final, final review. Only 14 more to go...

The Underbelly

This is where I imagine some of the seedier folks of London hanging around. It's kind of a cliche of how bridges are used, but seediness is one of the elements I was interested in preserving when re-conceiving the bridge.

Atmospheric Landscapes

The organization of this atmospheric landscape is based on dynamic simulations of flocking behavior that is injected with attractors to particular ideological flows. Essentially there is a desire in the flock to find certain organizations and to move in certain directions as influenced by a set of variables that consider ideas of site, agenda, space, and programmatic performance.

Flow Path Plan

This is still sort of a sketchy plan, but the idea is to produce a landscape that replaces the functions of a bridge while adding a slew of programmatic opportunities.

Pseudo Science

Disruptive Pattern Materials Presentation Alexander Pincus

These are the opening stills from my midterm presentation at the AA in London. I’m playing around with an idea of pseudo science, both as a joke and as an excuse to use a 1950's textbook graphic style (as influenced by Damien Hirst's most recent publication).

Diagonal Mesh Topology

Albedo Study 02

Another light study on a more complex surface. The refractive capacity of the surface is getting to a pretty interesting point via the variation in the component organization.

Albedo Study 01

This animation shows the effect of light as it moves across the surfaces I'm developing.

DPMA High Resolution

Here are some better renderings of the high-refraction surfaces I'm developing.

DMPA Assembly

Minimal Surface Edge to Edge connections

These diagrams show the minimal surface components I'm developing attaching via edge to edge connections.

Disruption Pattern Material via Albedo (DPMA)

I’m working towards a geometry that maximizes refraction and albedo to the point that it is subsumed by its own effects. This is the first surface experiment that seems to be getting close to what I’m after. Its based loosely on the connection technique of the Schwartz H surface and optimized based on techniques that maximize albedo and reflection.

Minimal Surfaces

I’ve started the semester looking at three diverse spatial and organizational ideas, disruption pattern materials ( camouflage ), emergent behaviors, and minimal surfaces. You can learn more about minimal surfaces here. I’m really interested in how minimal surfaces allow for complex geometries with seamless edge to edge connections and am looking to explore this in concert with some ideas I’ve been working with on other types of topological systems.

Graphic Language

We just had an informal review of our work so far this semester. I won't go into what this is all about, but I can tell you that it did not go over well.