Via UFO-au:

Topostruct is a program for structural topology optimization written by Sawako Kaijima and Michalatos Panagiotis.  It’s development was influenced by the ideas and methods discussed in the book “Topology Optimization, Theory, Methods and Applications” written by M.P. Bendsoe and O. Sigmund.

The software is intended primarily towards designers and non engineers that want to familiarize with topology optimization as well as develop their intuition regarding the structural behaviour of materials.
Topostruct supports both two and three dimensional models.   The user will input the dimensions and resolution of an orthogonal region in space which will be assigned certain material density.  The user must then place different support conditions and applied loads within this region and finally run the optimizer which will yield a distribution of material that best meets these conditions.

Topostruct is available from kaijima & panagiotis’s website http://sawapan.eu/ which has a number of other generative design applets for download.

Smartgeometry is a week long, two part event which consists of a workshop and a conference, bringing together practitioners, specialists and students to explore the ever-expanding possibilities of digital fabrication and parametricism. Teams or ‘clusters’ were formed from the 100 participants, each with a different agenda. I was enrolled with the cluster which was exploring Parametric Acoustic Surfaces. See Photos for more details of the other Clusters.

During the four day workshop the ‘Acoustic’ cluster , lead by Brady Peters and Martin Tamke of CITA, designed and produced a 1:1 installation which explored the performance of acoustic panelling.  The participants were able to design their own panels using Generative Components or other digital means. These were constructed using the CNC machine and laser cutter available at IaaC, and collated on a single form. Orange acoustic foam was used to absorb sound and Di-bond and plywood were used to reflect and scatter sound.

The overall form of the ‘Sound Installation’ had been designed to incorporate a façade which focused sound due to its parabolic curvature, a façade which scattered sound, and an enclosed space which isolated the user from the outside environment, performing acoustically as an absorbent or dull space.

The following attachments detail the design process SoundBox01 SoundBox02

Brady Peters also put together a book of this project which can be previewed here

The project is concerned with a museum typology informed by a very specific architectural language and experiential affect. This affect is based on tangential continuity as a spatial mediator and structural technique.

The connective relationships between the buildings functions have been developed through research focused upon the movement of people between museum spaces. The experiential affect is a product of the transition between the prismic geometry of the surrounding urban context, to which the building’s exterior skin is aligned,  and the specific performative nature of the interconnected, tangentially continuous circulatory network.

More here.

via Core Form-ula:

Students from Stevens Institute of Technology are showcasing GC work at Center for Architecture in New York offering a glimpse of what can be expected at Smart Geometry 2009 in San Francisco.

For a more in depth look at their projets, go to Stevens Class Wiki.

Physical information pervades the world and it is through its continuous production that matter may be said to express itself. Material expressivity, on the other hand, crossed an important threshold when it ceased to be a mere fingerprint and became functional in the form of the genetic code: groups of three nucleotides, the chemical components of genes, came to correspond in a more or less unique way to a single amino acid, the component parts of proteins. Using this, correspondence genes can express themselves through the proteins for which they code. This implies that expression has gone beyond the production of information to include its active storage and processing. And this, in turn, implies that when populations of information-storing molecules replicate themselves, and when this replication is biased in one or another direction by the interactions of proteins with each other and with their environment, the expressive capacities of material entities may evolve and expand in a multiplicity of novel ways.

More DeLanda on materiality, including smart materials, here.

Seed archive by Brittany Bell, a student at Victoria University School of Design in Wellington, New Zealand.

“Seeds will be stored in the event of a future apocalypse,” explains Bell, who goes on to say that “Structure is a plant that has grown from the city.”

The following text is from Brittany Bell:

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Every year more and more species of plants are becoming endangered or extinct.  The New Zealand government has proposed the notion to create a seed archive for the Pacific Region to house its native plants and preserve them for future generations.

The major problem to overcome will be constructing architecture that will adapt to the changing and unpredictable future environment.  Therefore the architecture will mimic the architecture of a plant, as plants have the innate ability to adapt to their changing environment.  The architecture of the seed archive is in the form of a growing cytoskeleton of a plant.

It continues to grow and adapt to prevailing wind, rainfall and sun exposure.  For example the wings on the sides of the structure are heat sensitive and move to accommodate the protected plants within.

The funnel forms in the interior act as the main structural columns, but also house the large trees that need to grow upwards towards the sun.  The architecture will be able to grow and expand overtime and rely on element-sensitive technology to exist without human presence.

via Dezeen and Britt Bell Design.

below via serero architects:

AUTOLITH

MOCAPE, Museum of Contemporary Art & Planning Exhibition Shenzhen

International Competition – Finalist 2007

Site: Shenzhen

Client: City of Shenzhen, China

Area: 80 000 m2

Cost: 65 000 000  Euros H.T

Design Team : SERERO Architects (David Serero, Anthony Cheung, Nordine Chevalier, Alice Sabatier, Fabrice Zaini)

Gongshi (or Scholar’s Rocks) is the term for stones that were collected by Chinese scholars because they resembled mountains (both famous and imaginary) and similar natural wonders of the world around. They represented a focus for meditation of religious or philosophic principles and served for contemplation prior to writing poems or painting.  Chinese learned to admire the rocks for “surfaces that suggest great age, forceful profiles that evoke the grandeur of nature, overlapping layers or planes that impart depth, and hollows or perforations that create rhythmic, harmonious patterns.” For over 1,000 years, Chinese literati and Taoist monks often brought these mountains into their studios for meditation and contemplation while they wrote or painted.

Our proposal for the MOCAPE aims in similar terms to question the way the people consider an art museum, and its relationship with its urban environment. It is a point of singularity in the master plan of the Shenzhen Civic Centre. The MOCAPE is not a building, it is rather conceived as a rock , which geometry has been sculpted by program and by its  surrounding condition. It is wrapped by  a continuous surface which integrates strong structural characteristics with ornamental pattern inspired by the traditional Chinese puzzle called the Tangram.

PROGRAMMATIC ORGANIZATION

The MOCAPE volume is generated from our analysis of the building’s program. The museum is conceived as a set of separate entities, which are interconnected and can function together. The building has a torus shape delimitating an interior courtyard, opened to the rest of the city. It is composed of a base, a main plateau and three vertical protuberances.

The base is supported by 5 different feet placed around a reflecting pool of 2500 m2. These feet give access to the 3 interacting entities of the museum: the MOCA program and activities, the Planning and Exhibition department and the shared spaces by these 2 institutions with offices, reception and multipurpose halls.

These 3 vertical protuberances of 28, 32 and 40 meters high ,  are connected together by an elevated plateau, a continuous exhibition hall of 15 000 m2, with 7 meters ceiling height. Each of the floor plates of these entities are reducing in size when they are higher, as they host more private activities.

The first underground floor of the museum is a parking garage for 250 cars, with conference halls and technical rooms and the second underground floor ( 5 meters high ceiling) is used for the storage and the maintenance of artworks.

“TANGRAM” FAÇADE SYSTEM

The MOCAPE façade and rooftop system is a continuous surface with glass and steel cladding, which wraps around the whole building.  Like the ancient Chinese puzzle, the Tangram, this surface is composed of triangular and square panels. They are creating at 3 different scale a set of figures (both abstract and figurative) which are endlessly changing the amount of light penetrating in the museum spaces and filtering the views to the surrounding buildings and to the museum interior courtyard.

The façade is a structural lattice, which operates at different scale. It combines photovoltaic panels to offset the building energy needs, as well as automatic solar shade systems included in the thickness of the glass to control the museum  interior environment.

StructurAL PRINCIPLE

The museum is a made of concrete slabs with triangulated ribs supported by concrete columns. This large span system allows for greater flexibility of the exhibition halls. The façade anchored to the slabs is structurally participating to the stability of the building. Elevator and staircase shafts as well as atrium perforated concrete envelope are efficient structural and seismic bracing for the whole building.

ROCK GARDEN

In the central courtyard of the museum, a reflecting pool with “floating” rocks stimulates the visitors to enter in a state of meditation and observation of nature, in the same way that artists traditionally got inspired by these settings.

It is a mineral and vegetal garden, which provides both a public space inside of the museum as well as an outdoor extension to the museum activities.

more via Core Form.ula