Our design for the LQ Chandelier is the latest addition to Zumtobel’s Avant Garde Collection. The form is made from a single minimal surface component that can expand infinitely via seamless edge to edge connections.
PROJECT CREDIT »
Asymptote Architecture: Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture
These high contrast photos, taken in La Balsa, Costa Rica, are the result of cross processing Fuji Velvia and pushing two stops.
I'll be speaking at the Agent Code Symposium on Wednesday, April 11th, 12:30-6:00 at Columbia University's Avery Hall. Description by Ed Keller below:
“… each portion of matter is not only infinitely divisible, as the ancients observed, but is also actually subdivided without end, each part into further parts, of which each has some motion of its own; otherwise it would be impossible for each portion of matter to express the whole universe. Whence it appears that in the smallest particle of matter there is a world of creatures, living beings, animals, entelechies, souls. Each portion of matter may be conceived as like a garden full of plants and like a pond full of fishes. But each branch of every plant, each member of every animal, each drop of its liquid parts is also some such garden or pond.”
Leibniz, Monadology
Cutting edge architectural work increasingly uses scripting and models of emergent and embedded behavior to explain systems and to generate morphology. The patterns we discover in architecture, social structures, political bodies, and in the formal operations of the city, function as a spatio-temporal index of life and the substrates of reality itself.
We’ve reverse engineered the geometry of our tower down to three formulas and a set of points in excel. The image above shows a Catia model Front generated from the data we emailed over.
PROJECT / IMAGE CREDIT »
Asymptote Architecture: Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture
This diagram plots the geometric rules for the plan of the tower I'm designing. I'm working towards developing a set of formulas and data points for the tower as a whole so that the geometry can be plotted in various software suites.
Lauren Stern gave me these drawings this summer and I’m still blown away. I just love them.
These are the byproducts of some experiments I’m doing in flash with randomization. Its nothing complicated, but kind of cool. The numbers are continuously random, while the text produces random organizations when you mouse over it. The file is embedded below if you want play around or edit. The random number code is quite elegant, but the text generator is pretty much a hack — I’m sure there is a better way but I haven’t had time to figure it out. Download the Flash file here.
I finally got permission from Asymptote to publish some images of the haptic interfaces I designed for Volkswagen. These images have been laying dormant on my site for over a year, so you can either scroll back or just click here to have a look.
PROJECT / IMAGE CREDIT »
Asymptote Architecture: Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture
Catenary Topology With Applied Vertical Force
Catenary Topology With Applied Angle Force
Taking my previous studies of a self optimizing topology as a starting point, I’m testing the effects of applied forces to create dynamic catenary arches. In this example the base topology is being drawn to a point of influence at approximately 15 deg above the surface. The surface doesn’t fully optimize its topology due to the localized forces acting along the ridgeline — something I need to resolve in the next iteration.
Phase Shift 1 - 6
Phase Shift 7 - 12
This quick animation shows the self optimizing surface I’ve been working on. The clip shows local surface geometry automatically adjusting into the most efficient positions based upon the geometry of the edge control points.
This study is something that takes up a number of issues that I’ve been interested in for some time: kinematic armatures, stockings, perforated meshes, and dynamic organization. The goal here is to develop a surface that optimizes its topology to any given form. The diagram above shows a lattice that controls the endpoints of the perforated surface and the resultant surface when these endpoints change position. It is very subtle in the two stages, but the perforations dynamically adjust their shape and position proportionally in respect to assumed material properties in the surface. This is a pretty simple example but the implications of this kind of optimized surface are really profound in my opinion. Not only does this approach solve the seemingly inherent “stopping problem” in dynamically driven architecture, but it provides a new kind of optimized geometry within a given formal organization.
PROJECT CREDIT »
Asymptote Architecture: Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture
David Farnsworth, the structural engineer we’re working with from Arup New York, won the gold prize at this weekend’s Smart Geometry conference by producing a parametric model of the tower I’m designing at Asymptote. Using Bentley’s Generative Components (beta) he was able to resolve the geometry of the tower’s unique structural system and enable the structure to redistribute itself based on changes to the buildings overall geometry.
This a piece of furniture I’m working on based on Hani Rashid’s M-Scape series of work for a show on Asymptote’s product and furniture design to be helt at the Phillips De Pury auction house in the Fall. We’re looking at making it out of vaccum formed Corian at the moment.
PROJECT / IMAGE CREDIT »
Asymptote Architecture: Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture
Erase, Locate, Reconstitute, Reconstruct
Start with something inspired, reduced, and ambiguous. Abstract the conditions to the point of amnesia. Eradicate any semblance of a priori meaning. Build a functionless, scale-less, sensual, sophisticated, affective, operable, meaningful, textured, intimate architectural object. Locate a new materiality and research from within the abstract condition of your project
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:
I drove to New Orleans in December and took polaroids with my Land Camera along the way. Here are my photos in chronological order.
Asymptote worked on this project in collaboration with OMA, designing the red slice through the building that houses the exchange. I led the design from our side, which was pretty cool, as Rem referred to me as “dude” the whole time.
This is one of the first real projects that I designed that I thought was any good. It has some glaring problems, but it opened up a door for me to see how techniques I’d been using in experimental work could begin to apply to the real world.
