after five, while the cold winter waiting

No. 6 of 8 texturologies

Austin: bercy chen studio blogs steel velcro

Felix Heinen’s data visualization of social networks

»Data visualisation of a social network«
March 2007

On the first poster you can see the functions used, as well as additional information such as age, educational background, family status, gender and how often they are logged in. So, all demographic data which are available from every member’s profile.

View project slides here.

after five, applejack

after five, until we bleed

data, bubble sets and isocontours

alexander mcqueen paris show

more about “alexander mcqueen paris show – Google…“, posted with vodpod

Architecture for Gorillas on tensegrity and Buckminster Fuller

Tensegrity, a term coined by one of this century’s greatest minds, Buckminster Fuller, is a moniker for tensional integrity, and refers to a type of lightweight construction where tension and compression members are balanced computationally in space with every member being either in pure tension or pure compression. Typically made of lightweight rod and cable systems, the result is often a delicate-looking structure which is actually mathematically as strong as it’s component material properties allow. According to Donald Ingber at Harvard:

“The tension-bearing members in these structures – whether Fuller’s domes or Snelson’s sculptures – map out the shortest paths between adjacent members (and are therefore, by definition, arranged geodesically) Tensional forces naturally transmit themselves over the shortest distance between two points, so the members of a tensegrity structure are precisely positioned to best withstand stress. For this reason, tensegrity structures offer a maximum amount of strength.”

When he first saw the sculptures by Kenneth Snelson, Fuller realized the potential of the technology and incorporated the system in the development of his famous geodesic domes.

Read full article here.

 

Building Bridges on Mars; Reaching for the Clouds: The Floating Bones Journal

more about “Building Bridges on Mars; Reaching fo…“, posted with vodpod

tensegrity continued, Kurilpa Bridge has officially opened in South Brisbane

experiments with matter can become “live” and “active”

Pioneered by Russian Constructivist artists in the 1920’s, “tensegrity” refers to a class of structural systems that allocate tension and compression so that solid matter appears to float in a tensile network. The word itself was coined by Buckminster Fuller as a portmanteau of the phrase “tensional integrity.” Because of their incredible structural efficiency, tensegrity systems have been the subject of mega-structural utopian speculation at the fringes of architecture, such as the “Cloud 9” floating city project proposed by Fuller.

 

Perhaps as a result of this lineage, tensegrity systems have been co-opted by a kind of high modern discourse that privileges efficiency, balance, cellular repetition, and platonic forms.  In this mode of thinking, tensegrity structures are valued for their purity, the way in which compression and tension are separated and are resolved into rational forms at the macro-scale. The strictness of this scheme has resulted in a problematic interface to the messiness of real architecture as designers attempt to accommodate complex programs and forms within the regime of the “pure” system. In other words, tensegrity is boring.

 

As the purity of this scheme is loosened, however, tensegrity structures can become sophisticated computing devices that allow complex exchanges between tension and compression to emerge. With this looseness also comes a shift in values. The pleasure of a “pure” or “perfect” tensegrity system is in observing the spatial array of tensile and compression forces: the beauty of being able to visually trace familiar engineering concepts in counterintuitive arrangements that seem to float. By contrast, the pleasure of a loosened or “polluted” tensegrity is in the way tension and compression are control devices that provoke the development of new morphological and material systems. Put another way, tension and compression become interesting for the way they can do work that exceeds a structural capacity, but is at the same time driven by structural logic. In this way, experiments with matter can become “live” and “active,” energized by the activity of physics at play in the system. It’s time to reclaim tensegrity from the nerds.

thom mayne on “connections”

more about “thom mayne on “connections”“, posted with vodpod

after five, daylight

Current Reading

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World is a book by Steven Berlin Johnson in which he describes the most intense outbreak of cholera in Victorian London (See 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak)- and what it means to us today, from the way we understand cities, science, disease, and the modern world. The two central protagonists are Dr. John Snow, who created a map of the cholera cases, and the Reverend Henry Whitehead, whose extensive knowledge of the local community helped determine the initial cause of the outbreak. The book was released on 19 October 2006.

Current Reading

History of Shit (Histoire de la merde (Prologue), 1978), by French psychoanalyst Dominique Laporte (1949–1984), uses an idiosyncratic method of historical genealogy derived from, among others, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Georges Bataille, andMichel Foucault, to show how the development of sanitation techniques in Western Europe affected the formation of modern notions of individuality. Laporte examines this influence through the historical processes of urbanization, the apotheosis of nationalism, practices of capitalist exchange, and linguistic reform.

In the English translation of the book by Nadia Benabid and Rodolphe el-Khoury in 1993, el-Khoury explains that how for Laporte, “the history of shit becomes the history of subjectivity” and how his book becomes a “a prehistory to modernity and the modern subject” (viii). el-Khoury identifies Laporte’s scholarly strategy of joining the ridiculous and the profound as inherently political. Laporte’s stated ambition is to “remove a few masks with the roar of our laughter, laugh them off the figures of power” (ix).

In a previous work with Renée Balibar, Le Français national: politique et pratiques de la langue nationale sous la Revolution Française, Laporte studied language reforms carried out in the name of the French Revolution.

Laporte, Dominique, History of Shit, trans. Nadia Benabid and Rodolphe el-Khoury, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2000

Smooth Hangover

Architecture has a smooth hangover. In the early stages of digital design smooth shininess proliferated unchecked, and those featureless, seamless, surfaces still saturate architectural production. Why? The easy scapegoats are technical and immune to argument: “Rendering made me do it” “Surface modeling made me do it!” More likely, perhaps, is the idea that Architecture learned the wrong lesson from the iPod, which became ubiquitous at about the same time as accessible digital modeling software. Instead of developing a fascination with a kind of “pod” culture — the proliferation of a device that could carry libraries of music and information from location to location — architects developed a fascination with a “smooth fillet” culture of objects. We fetishized the surface qualities and characteristics of the product instead of on the relationship between the object and its capacity to reconfigure the proliferation of culture. The hallmark of a Dubai office tower became its monolithic smooth shininess, the degree to which it looked like an iPod.

iPod design is doubly problematic. First, the interest in smoothness as a desirable outcome of design has suppressed some of the most interesting and important problems that sustain architecture: the resolution of difficult fits, seams, and transitions between materials. Second, and perhaps more troubling, is that the obsession with seamless smooth shininess has infected architecture’s ability to understand the importance of design beyond the immediate surface characteristics of an object. The answer to the questions “so what?” or “why does design matter?” become reduced to an object’s ability to seduce visually. The value of architecture and design are limited by the optical characteristics of a thing. Design loses an ability to relate, to engage habitation, politics, social networks, culture.

Ruby vs. LADBS

Los Angeles has often been alluded to as a testing ground for progressive architecture and technology. From the early innovators such as Howard Hughes, to the mid-century modernists, to the production departments at the Studios, to Northrup Grumman and the modern aviation industry, innovation has been the driving force in Southern California. Architecturally, however, that legacy of innovation is being systematically killed off by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety.

“Building Code” is not a buzz word that designers like to throw around the office. It is generally seen as a nuisance and, at best, a reality of working in the profession that requires each office to have one or two experts on hand to interpret and apply to the various projects on the boards. The best practices seem to find a way to make the code their own, to interpret the law and use its constraints to their advantage. They produce work that is outside the system while they themselves remain inside the system.

That working model is no longer viable in Los Angeles. The intersection of multiple codes, including the California Building Code, the Los Angeles Municipal Planning and Zoning Code, Historical District Overlays, and Community Plan Overlays, makes it impossible to interpret the code with any measure of confidence. Add to that the unwillingness of the City to answer zoning questions prior to a formal plan review submittal, as well as the ongoing battle between the Building & Safety and Planning Departments over discrepancies in the code, and you have yourself a fine mess. One can no longer innovate by interpreting the Code because there is no longer a Code to innovate within.

Unfortunately, the code issues in Los Angeles are not even the primary obstruction to innovation. The LADBS has seen fit to require that any building product used in the City of Los Angeles has been specifically approved by the City as an acceptable building material. That’s great for the large suppliers, who have a large enough market share to make it worthwhile to have their products tested and approved, but this destroys any possibility of material innovation within the confines of the City of Los Angeles. Small, progressive materials research companies do not stand a chance.

In the end, the result of this system is predictable: new buildings in Los Angeles end up looking the same, made of the same materials, conforming to the same building volume resulting from a conservative interpretation of the code. For those willing to spend huge sums of time and money (read: the high end custom home market), innovation is still possible. But for the everyday buildings, the ones that make up the majority of the fabric of our city, we are stuck with the junk of endless repetition.

Does anyone like the Eames’ Case Study House #8 in Pacific Palisades? Dream on. That would never be allowed to be built in Los Angeles in 2009.

what happens when decoration goes fat?

LADG texturologies .21

after five, nantes