scriptedarchitecture

EDF0 – Raven Kwok Raven Kwok combines recursive geometry with elastic easing motions, in Processing, to create animations composed of nebulous subdivided structures that organically transform and reconfigure over time. Works such as EDF0 insinuate the membranous structures of soap bubbles and foam dispersions well as the complex symmetry of micro-marine organisms such as Radiolaria. [...]

Using composites in architecture will be the topic of a one day conference in Denver, ”A Vision for the Future of Composites in Architecture – Where We Go From Here, and Why” May 15, 2013. The day will feature a keynote address by visionary architect and designer Greg Lynn, and an impressive lineup of speakers presenting technical insight in-depth.  All sessions have been approved by AIA, for a total of 7 hours of LU/HSW continuing education credit.   This first-time emphasis on the use of this rapidly emerging material system for architectural applications is part of the ACMA’s (American Composites Manufacturers Association) semi-annual Corrosion & Construction conference, focused on the long-standing use of composites for highly corrosion resistant systems and infrastructure applications.   Click here to register for the event!

Mandala – Kyuha Shim Kyuha Shim, a research fellow and data visualization specialist at SENSEable City Laboratory, MIT, has created a series of works exploring the extrusion of classic 2-D mandala geometry into 3-D objects. After first realising some software, in Processing, to create hypotrochoidal and epitrochoidal forms he has subsequently generated spheres with subdivided [...]

  AEC-APPS democratizes how building-industry tools are created, discovered, and shared   April 15, 2013 New York, NY - AEC-APPS (aec-apps.com) is the first Web-based library of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) applications built by and for digital tool users and toolmakers, who share a common interest in the evolution of innovative technologies. Conceived, designed, and maintained by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (www.som.com) and CASE (www.case-inc.com ) to lead the industry toward a model of collaborative knowledge and technology exchange, AEC-APPS connects tools, from snippets of code to established software platforms, and people, from educators and students to practitioners and hobbyists. Part Wikipedia™, part GitHub™, AEC-APPS is a not-for-profit online community that fosters knowledge sharing and problem solving across disciplines, software platforms, geographic locations, and experience levels.   “Innovation in digital tools is changing the nature of practice, and it’s being driven by many players in different parts of the AEC industry, but they are not often aware of one another’s efforts,” notes SOM’s Technical Director Nicholas Holt. “We saw an opportunity to bridge the awareness gap by creating a new kind of social-media hub for the building industry, where tool users and toolmakers could share ideas on equal footing, from students scripting in universities, to entrepreneurial incubators in the basements of Brooklyn, to the developers at Dassault, Bentley, Autodesk, McNeel, and other major contributors.”   “Developers are constantly creating new tools and applications to improve building design, construction and management. The pace at which these tools are released is rapidly increasing and frankly, overwhelming even for the most savvy of tool users,” CASE Partner David Fano observes. “With this wealth of knowledge scattered all over the Internet, AEC-APPS will exist as the primary resource for the AEC industry to not only stay up-to-date with the latest technology but to evolve their own practices as well.”   In the constantly expanding universe of digital tools dominated by established developers, opportunities for sharing practitioner-driven innovation are limited. Populated by a diverse, ‘maker-driven’ user group, AEC-APPS’s crowdsourcing initiative democratizes tool creation and selection, allowing designers to control their own tools and independent toolmakers to compete on a level playing field. Membership is free and open to the public.   AEC-APPS has three primary components: User Community, App Kits, and Apps. AEC-APPS’s registered users are architects, engineers, contractors, allied design professionals, students, academics, researchers, computer scientists, artists, software developers, and enthusiasts. They post, rate, review, describe, and discuss apps to leverage existing tools and collaborate on the creation and sharing of new ones. The community is largely self-regulating so that no one entity, group, or tool is artificially elevated.   Each user has an App Kit that can be browsed by other users and followers in the community, in which they collect and share applications. Apps, which are presented in a democratically crowd-sourced hierarchy, range from commercially marketed programs to user-created scripts, assets, and utilities. This toolbox approach encourages exploration of existing technologies and provides a shared space for development, customization, and creation of new tools.   Following a four-month beta period, AEC-APPS currently hosts more than five hundred users who have posted some eight hundred apps for use in the design, construction, and operation of buildings, from enterprise software to plugins and other tools.   About Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) is one of the leading architecture, interior design, engineering, and urban-planning firms in the world, with a 75-year reputation for design excellence and a portfolio that includes some of the most important architectural accomplishments of the 20th and 21st centuries. Since its inception, SOM has been a leader in the research and development of specialized technologies, new processes and innovative ideas, many of which have had a palpable and lasting impact on the design profession and the physical environment. The firm’s longstanding leadership in design and building technology has been honored with more than 1,600 awards for quality, innovation, and management. The American Institute of Architects has recognized SOM twice with its highest honor, the Architecture Firm Award—in 1962 and again in 1996. The firm maintains offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Abu Dhabi.   About CASE CASE exists where building and technology intersect. They combine their experiences as architects, engineers, projects managers, software developers and educators with a passion for technology to improve the way buildings are designed, built and operated. CASE is a Building Information Modeling (BIM) and integrated-practice consultancy based in New York City, and provides strategic advising to building design professionals, contractors and owners seeking to supplant traditional project delivery methods through technology-driven process innovation. Recognized as industry-thought leaders on the integration of technology and BIM principles, CASE helps the building industry identify, implement and manage the technologies and business practices that enable more effective coordination, communication and collaboration. 

Smartgeometry will take place in London, UK from April 19-20. The conference brings together the brightest industry leaders and showcases the most innovative tools, technologies, and methodologies in one event. As co-founder of the event, Bentley will be sponsoring this year’s Smartgeometry conference as it returns to London where it all started ten years ago. The theme "Construction for Uncertainty" focuses on the transition of computational design from the hard space of the ideal to the soft reality of an uncertain built environment.   The conference consists of a two-day conference that includes a Talkshop, Symposium, and Reception. Renowned speakers will share their insight and expertise during the conference that follows a hands-on four-day workshop, where 100 participants explore various ways using advanced technology.

Flying Proletarian – Yuri Avvakumov In the mid 1980′s architect Yuri Avvakumov produced a series of sculptural works commemorating Soviet Constructivist art and architecture of the 1920′s. The works mainly comprise of delicate wire-frame structures or ‘architectons’, with platforms, which pay homage to artist/architects such as El Lissitzky, Tatlin and Melnikov. The sculptures celebrate the [...]

Linkscale – Maj Plemenitas Maj Plemnitas architectural propositions, explored in his Linkscale thesis project, resemble intricate mineral-like structures, computational moss cultivated through algorithmic accretion and machines grafted together from organic material. We may imagine that a few of the shyer corners of Greg Egan’s Permutation City might contain textures and forms such as those exposed [...]

Parametric Design and Digital Fabrication workshop at the Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto (FAUP) as part of the 1st eCAADe Regional International Meeting “Future Traditions” in Porto, Portugal. The 2-day workshop was held from 3-4 April 2013 in collaboration with Goncalo C. Henriques (X-REF).

“The continuing advancement in digital fabrication technology offers not only the promise of mass-customization in architecture as an extension of the assembly line logic of the 20th century, but rather provides the starting point for an investigation into performative aspects of architecture and fabrication where, similar to nature, adaptation to the local requirements of structure and environment can be achieved through differentiation in geometry and materiality.

Material and geometric performance principles are activated to define a set of building components forming a 3d double curved shell structure. Principles of structural morphology ensure structural behavior by limiting the forces transmitted between the plates connections to shear forces, excluding flexion, thereby enabling the design of efficient and extremely thin shell structures.”

>>> More information about the workshop: http://futuretraditions.arq.up.pt/performative-morphologies/ >>> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FutureTraditions2013

Simon Katan – Cube with Magic Ribbons Simon Katan’s audio-visual piece Cube with Magic Ribbons takes the visual form of an electronic circuit diagram that behaves as a live musical score and performative sequencer simultaneously. Temporal multi-modal relationships between visual elements and sound events are actuated by a ‘tape head’ as it follows the path [...]

A collection of former Serpentine Gallery pavilions in their current state discovered via bing maps. Read about their post-Serpentine life in Marina Otero Verzier’s article. Zaha Hadid’s pavilion is used as event venue in Flambards theme park, Helston, Cornwall, UK. Toyo Ito’s pavilion is used as beach club restaurant in hotel Le Beauvallon near Saint Tropez, France. Frank Gehry’s pavilion is exibited on the property of the Chateau La Coste winery near Aix-en-Provence, France.

In 2007, I attended my first Smartgeometry Conference in New York as part of a group of selected participants from the SOM NY office. We more or less represented its computational design group which at that time was loosely formed around Neil Katz who spearheaded the computational design effort not only in the office but also in the field since the late 80s and early 90s. So when Neil was asked to contribute to this upcoming book about SmartGeometry, he invited us former members of the group to participate. It was a pleasure and honor to collaborate on our text and I can’t wait to finally get my hands on the book. “Inside Smartgeometry: Expanding the Architectural Possibilities of Computational Design” is edited by Brady Peters and Terri Peters and features a really impressive lineup of contributors.

Katz N., Krietemeyer B., Schwinn T.: 2013, Interacting with the Model, in Peters B. and Peters T. (Eds.), Inside Smart Geometry: Expanding the Architectural Possibilities of Computational Design, Wiley, London, 2013. (ISBN 978-1-1185-2247-9)

Limits To Growth – Mitchell Whitelaw Well known within the digital media and generative arts community for his research and writing as well as his own artistic practice, Mitchell Whitelaw has recently updated his online folio of essays, artworks and data visualisation projects. ‘Ten Questions Concerning Generative Computer Art’ [PDF] recently linked from his site, [...]

Edizioni Forme Libere Nel 2010 fu lanciato da PresS/Tletter un concorso destinato a individuare VENTI talenti under 35 attivi nel nostro panorama architettonico. L'obiettivo era capire cosa stesse accadendo in Italia alla generazione che seguiva quella degli architetti quarantenni e cinquantenni per i quali la critica si era spesa generosamente ma con il rischio, appunto, di esserne troppo presa, dimenticando i più giovani. Questo concorso era il primo di una serie. Difatti il prossimo, per selezionare altri venti talenti under 35, sarà bandito, sempre da PresS/Tletter, e questa volta con la partnership della Associazione Italiana di Architettura e Critica, nel maggio del 2012. Oggi esce questa pubblicazione che serve anche da catalogo a una nuova collettiva a Selinunte, che inaugura il 31 marzo all'interno dell'evento "Architects meet in Selinunte: Partire, Tornare, Restare", dove sono presentati progetti inediti. Come si può vedere sfogliando le pagine del libro, il livello di qualità è molto più che confortante. Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi "STELE DELLA MEMORIA" Fondazione Pol.i.s. Mercoledì 14 marzo 2012, alle ore 16.30, presso la sede dell'Ordine degli Architetti Pianificatori Paesaggisti Conservatori di Napoli e Provincia (Napoli, Piazzetta Matilde Serao, 7), all'interno della sala delle assemblee "Raffaele Sirica", si svolgerà l'iniziativa La bellezza contro le mafie per presentare il catalogo delle opere che hanno partecipato al concorso di idee Stele della Memoria. madeoffice.it

Have you ever needed to schedule an item of data that Revit would not let you? This is a common hurdle for many and now there's a free tool that you can use to get around this. Common uses include migrating Wall Base Constraint Element Names (Levels) into a schedulable parameter. I'm sure you guys will find lots of uses for this one.   http://apps.case-inc.com/content/migrate-parameter-parameter

We are all aware that Revit can export families to a library, but the control that you get is less than sufficient for large models. This exporter will organize your families into subdirectories matching the names of the category that the family originated from

Schwinn, T., La Magna, R., Reichert, S., Waimer, F., Knippers, J., Menges, A.: 2013, Prototyping Biomimetic Structures for Architecture, in Stacey, M. (Ed.), Prototyping Architecture: The Conference Papers, Building Centre Trust, London, 2013, pp 224-244. (ISBN 978-0-901919-17-5)

Golden Parachutes, Rx8xR – James Bills James Bills series of projection drawings, Golden Parachutes, are generated by random numbers obtained from a series of of polyhedral dice throws. Each aleotoric drawing uses a different system, indicated by its title (such as 1xRxR or 8x8xR), to translate those numbers into indeterminate isometric lattices characterised by spectrographic [...]

Two new temporary wooden structures have been erected recently at the ETH campus in Zurich. Spatial Aggregations 3, by Gramazio & Kohler: A reciprocal frame structure, by Spiro:

On February 22, I had the priviledge to present our paper “Prototyping Biomimetic Structures for Architecture” at the Prototyping Architecture Conference (Feb 21 – 23) together with my colleague Frédéric Waimer from the Institute of Building Structure and Structural Design (ITKE). In our paper we compared the biomimetic design approaches that were followed in the latest two research pavilions from 2011 and 2012.

The conference was held at the Building Centre in London and featured an impressive line-up of speakers including Philip Beesley who is co-chairing this year’s ACADIA 2013 conference, to be held at the University of Waterloo in Cambridge, Ontario, together with Omar Khan (University at Buffalo, SUNY) and Michael Stacey (University of Nottingham), one of the organizers of the event at the Building Centre.

As of March 10 the proceedings of the Prototyping Architecture Conference are available online and can be downloaded free of charge.