Pulsation in Architecture highlights the role of digital design as the catalyst for a new spatial sensibility related to rhythmic perception. It proposes a novel critical reception of computational architecture based on the ability of digital design to move beyond mere instrumentality, and to engage with core aspects of the discipline: the generative engine of digital architecture reinvigorates a discourse of part-to-whole relationships through the lens of rhythmic affect. There is a paradigm shift in spatial perception due to the intense use of computational techniques and the capacity to morph massive amounts of data in spatial patterns; rhythm plays a pivotal role in the articulation of the topology of buildings, generating the atmospheric character that induces moods and throbbing sensations in space. Pulsation introduces the fundamental animate capacity of living form and reshapes our perception of architectural space across the multiple scales of a project, from digital inception to fabrication. An emerging thread of rhythmic sensibility loosely binds a survey of contemporary design practices, including contributions by Peter Eisenman, Jeff Kipnis, Greg Lynn, UNStudio, Preston Scott Cohen, Reiser + Umemoto, Asymptote, Ali Rahim, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Ruy Klein, Gage / Clemenceau, NOX, Evan Douglis Studio, kokkugia, and MONAD Studio.
This book is a rigorous account of architecture’s theoretical and technological concerns over the last decade. The anthology presents projects and essays produced at the end of the first digital turn and the start of the second digital turn. This anthology engages and deploys a variety of discourses, topics, criteria, pedagogies, and technologies, including some of today’s most influential architects, practitioners, academics, and critics. It is an unflinchingly rigorous and unapologetic account of architecture’s disciplinary concerns in the last decade. This is a story that has not been told; in recent years everything has been refracted through the prism of the post-digital generation. Design Technology and Digital Production illustrates the shift to an architectural world where we can learn with and from each other, develop a community of new technologies and embrace a design ecology that is inclusive, open, and visionary. This collection fosters a sense of shared experience and common purpose, along with a collective responsibility for the well-being of the discipline of architecture as a whole.
This book explores the connection between digital fabrication and the design build studio in both academic and professional studios. The book presents 17 essays and cases studies from well-known scholars and practitioners, including Kengo Kuma, Joseph Choma, Dan Rockhill, Keith Zawistowski, and Marie Zawistowski, whose theoretical and practical work addresses design build at various levels. Four introductory essays trace the history of the design build movement, exploring the emergence of design build in the pedagogy of the Bauhaus, the integration of technology into architectural design, and the influence of the act of making on the design build studio. The rest of the book is divided into two parts; the first part looks at traditional pedagogical models for the design build studio, and the second part focuses on experimental methods used in design build programs. Together, these works discuss human behavior, social-cultural trends, and motivations in socially minded studios which are based on a service-learning model. They look at component-based studios where innovation allows for an increased level of research and testing of new materials and assemblies, sustainable principles, and zero-energy prototypes. Illustrated with over 200 color images, this book will be a valuable resource for architecture students, educators, and practitioners seeking to explore the impact of digital fabrication on the global design build movement.
This book proposes a new critical relationship between computation and architecture, developing a history and theory of representation in architecture to understand and unleash potential means to open up creativity in the field. Historically, architecture has led to spatial representation. Today, computation has established new representational paradigms that can be compared to spatial representations, such as the revolution of perspective in the Renaissance. Architects now use software, robotics, and fabrication tools with very little understanding and participation in how these tools influence, revolutionize, and determine both architecture and its construction today. Why does the discipline of architecture not have a higher degree of authorship in the conception and development of computational technologies that define spatial representation? This book critically explores the relationship between history, theory, and cultural criticism. Lorenzo-Eiroa positions new understandings through parallel historical sections and theories of many revolutionary representational architecture canons displaced by conventional spatial projection. He identifies the architects, artists, mathematicians, and philosophers that were able to revolutionize their disciplines through the development of new technologies, new systems of representation, and new lenses to understand reality. This book frames the discussion by addressing new means to understand and expand architecture authorship in relation to the survey, information, representation, higher dimensional space, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence – in the pursuit of activating an architecture of information. This will be important reading for upper-level students and researchers of architecture and architectural theory, especially those with a keen interest in computational design and robotic fabrication.
Architectural Exaptation: When Function Follows Form focuses on the significance and the originality of the study of exaptation. It presents exaptation as an opportunity to extend architectural design towards more sustainable approaches aimed at enforcing urban resilience. The use of exaptation’s definition in architecture supports the heuristic value of cross-disciplinary studies on biology and architecture, which seem even more relevant in times of global environmental crises. This book aims to make a critique of the pre-existing and extensive paternalistic literature. Exaptation will be described as a functional shift of a structure that already had a prior, but different, function. In architecture, a functional shift of a structure that already had a function may apply to forms of decorative elements embedded in architectural components, and to both change of function of tectonic elements and the change of use of an architectural space. The book is illustrated with examples from around the globe, including China, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, the USA and the UK, and looks at different civilizations and diverse historical periods, ranging from the urban to the architectural scale. Such examples highlight the potential and latent human creative capacity to change the use and functions, something that cities and buildings could consider when facing disturbances. Exaptation is shown as an alternative narrative to the simplifications of evolutionary puritanism. It also offers an innovative perspective and presents an opportunity to re-think the manner in which we design and redesign our cities. This book will be of interest to architecture, planning, urban design and biology researchers and students.
This book considers the material basis of building as a key impetus of both urbanization and the energetics of urban life. The otherwise externalized material geographies and thermodynamics of building’s material basis reveal much about the dynamics and efficacy of how we build. This book plots the material history and geography for one plot of land in Manhattan—the parcel of land under the Empire State Building—over the past two hundred years. Through rich illustrations, it tracks all the building material that have passed through this parcel or remain in its geographic and ecological dynamics: spatially (in terms of their geographic material footprints and industrial processes) and quantitatively (in terms of embodied energy, embodied carbon, and emergy flow). In successive chapters, the book articulates the empire and states that are inherent to building, but remain unconsidered—abstract and unknown—by architects.
This book explores urban resilience through significant, original and rigorous academic research, utilising the experiences of town planners, architects and decision makers to create a charter on resilient communities. The second part of the book presents mini-essays discussing the strategic points of the paper, and enabling more casual readers with the ability to access information on urban resilience. The book then explores urban resilience through the work and understanding of the institutions responsible for regulating the professions of urban planner, educators, professionals, and those involved in communication. Providing numerous illustrations and examples, Resilient Communities and the Peccioli Charter will be of interest to researchers, postgraduates, architects, urban designers and planners alike.
Evoking Through Design: Contemporary Moods in Architecture is visually stunning, featuring built work and speculative projects, which highlight how contemporary practices are using devices such as spatial compositing, surface articulation and novel manipulations of materials in order to constitute spatial conditions radiating in delicate and sophisticated atmospheres. Contributors: Benjamin Bratton, Jeffrey Kipnis, Neil Leach, Silvia Levin, Frederic Migayrou, Juhani Pallasmaa, David Ruy, and Mario Carpo. Architects: Phillip Beesley, Marjan Colletti, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Evan Douglis, Michael Hansmayer, Steven Holl,Ferda Kolatan, Sean Lally, Greg Lynn and Peter Zumthor.
This book reveals the Ancient Egyptian knowledge of harmonic proportion, sacred geometry, and number mysticism, as manifested in their texts, temples, tombs, art, hieroglyphs, ...etc., throughout their known history. It shows how the Egyptians designed their buildings to generate cosmic energy, and the mystical application of numbers in Egyptian works. The book explains in detail the harmonic proportion of about 20 Ancient Egyptian buildings throughout their recorded history. Everything that the Ancient Egyptians built/molded/sculptured was for the purpose of generating energies and/or to embody energies. And just like our electrical system that needs activation by turning a switch on, all Egyptian works also require/required activation by the right actions [sounds, gestures, etc.]. And while these 'stone' marvels appears static because they appears stationary, they are no different than [stationary] energy generating units—like our solar panels that absorb solar energy from the sun and convert it to energy supply for our earthly human needs. This book reveals the Ancient Egyptian knowledge of harmonic proportion, sacred geometry, and number mysticism, as manifested in their texts, temples, tombs, art, ...etc., throughout their known history. It shows how the Egyptians designed their buildings to generate cosmic energy, and the mystical application of numbers in Egyptian works. The book explains in detail the harmonic proportion of about 20 Ancient Egyptian buildings throughout their recorded history. It is the aim of this book to provide such an exposition, one which, while based on sound scholarship, will present the issues in language comprehensible to non specialist readers. Technical terms have been kept to a minimum. These are explained, as non technically as possible, in the glossary. This Expanded Edition of the book is divided into three parts containing a total of 13 chapters, as well as 10 appendices being A through I. Part I: Architectural Concepts—Function and From consists of five chapters—1 through 5: Chapter 1: The Architectural Canon will cover the deep rooted Egyptian beliefs of 'As above So below' and its application to Egyptian art and architecture, the existence and adherence to a divine building code, as well as utilizing design and construction plans prior to [as well as] during the construction stages, which extended over several centuries for large projects. Chapter 2: The Metaphysical Structure of The Universe will cover the realms of creation and its correspondence in Man, as the image of all creation. Chapter 3: Visitation Sites of The Lower Heavenly Court will cover the interactions between earthly livings and the lower realms of the metaphysical cosmic structure, the significance of landscape architecture in such interactions, and the major types of visitation buildings—both burial and non burial sites—to facilitate such interactions. Chapter 4: The Sealed Pharaohs' Tombs will cover the concept and role of the pharaohs which require their tombs to be sealed and inaccessible for further communications after their earthly existence, as well as samples of some pharaoniac tombs. Chapter 5: Egyptian Temples of The Divine Forces will cover the main function of Egyptian temples, being divine generation, the overall conceptual temple layout, the metaphysical funnel conduit design, the generative significance of jointing patterns, outer walls physical/metaphysical protection, and the organic foundation roots of the Egyptian temple. Part II: The Physical Manifestation of Metaphysical Concepts consists of five chapters—6 through 11: Chapter 6: Architectural Constituent Forms of Metaphysical Functions will cover the various architectural forms as manifestation of their corresponding functions [both physically and metaphysically] for "false doors", recessed wall panels, columns and pillars, capitals of columns, porticoes, peristyles, colonnade formations at four different locations, obelisks, statuary images of various roof forms (flat, gable, corbelled, arch & vaulted), stylistic architectural details (architrave, cornice, and torus) and stylistic ornamentation and decoration such as starry ceilings, floral, geometric, figurative, a combination of two or all three, guilloche (misnamed as the Tuscan border), chevron, and scroll pattern. Chapter 7: The Primary Geometrical Shapes/Forms will cover the principles and application of sacred geometry of Divine Architecture, the Egyptian sacred cord [tool], general layout of sample geometric shapes, the sacred circle as the archetype of Creation, squaring the circle, the primary triangles, and the combined square-triangles 3-D pyramids. Chapter 8: The Generative Square Root Rectangles—"Irrational numbers" will cover the generative root rectangles as the hypotenuse of right angle triangles, beginning with a square, and generating square roots of 2, 3 and 5; formation of cosmic solids; generation of the Golden Proportion from the root five rectangle; the construction of whirling square spirals; and example application of this form of dynamic design to four locations in Ancient Egyptian monuments. Chapter 9: The Arithmetic Generative Progression will cover the role of numbers as generators of orderly growth and progression, the Summation Series and the Golden Proportion, and the Cosmic Proportion of the Human Figure. Chapter 10: Combined—Arithmetic and Graphic Harmonic Design of Egyptian Buildings will cover combining both the arithmetic and graphic elements into a harmonic design of the parts and the whole of an Egyptian temple, that includes: active axes, significant points, the telescopic triangles, and the rectangular perimeters in both the horizontal and vertical planes. Chapter 11: Harmonic Analysis of Ancient Egyptian Works will cover several examples in Ancient Egypt from all eras and throughout Egypt that show the Egyptian applications of the design elements discussed in this book. Examples include temples, tombs, pyramids, shrines, capitals of columns, stelae, pylons and doorways. Part III: The Spirited Communications has two chapters—12 and 13: Chapter 12: The Animated Metaphysical Images on Walls will cover the metaphysical significance of walls' decoration as well as explanations of various depictions. Chapter 13: Human Activities will cover the roles of humans in activating, maintaining, participating in various rituals and festivities as well as deactivating the powers of the temple when temples and the whole Egypt is under siege. Appendices has ten appendices—A through J: Appendix A: General Plans of Sample Egyptian Temples covers layout plans of several Egyptian temples with a short description of each. Appendix B: Practical Mathematics in Ancient Egypt covers reference to the four most recognized Ancient Egyptian "mathematical" Papyri and the practical mathematical contents within such papyri. Appendix C: Fraction Mysticism covers the reasons that in Egypt, a fraction—any fraction—could only be a fraction of unity and Egyptian tables to deal with "complex' fractions which will be similar to modern Logarithmic Tables. Appendix D: Intentional "Irregularities" In Egyptian Works covers the religious reasons for what seems to be "irregularities" in the highly executed Egyptian works. Appendix E: Monument Appropriations Reconsidered covers clarification of what appears to be monument appropriation by one pharaoh of another. Appendix F: Sample Egyptian Sculpture Works covers a very short list of recognizable Egyptian sculptures. Appendix G: Concrete Blocks Various Types covers the advanced Egyptian knowledge of concrete mixes and application examples of such knowledge throughout Ancient Egypt. Appendix H: The Masonic Egyptian Roots covers the Egyptian roots of the widespread secret fraternal society called ‘Free and Accepted Masons’ (popularly known as Freemasonry). Appendix I: Egyptian Influence on Modern Architecture covers several examples worldwide of such influence. Appendix J: Types and Forms of Mortals' buildings will cover types and forms of residential, private, communal and public buildings as associated with its earthly existence' function, as well as highlighting that mortals of all classes—including pharaohs and priestly staff—resided in mud-brick houses.
