PHOTO ABOVE: Dynamic Solar Shading sketch model. Advances in Architectural Geometry 2010 / SOURCE : robofold.com

We often wrote in this blog about developability of complex surfaces.
In one of our post about geometries of bending I said:  developability is a key concept you have to understand if you are trying to construct very complex forms that are easy to draw but difficult to build.

But why? Because if you can develop a surface, then you can build it.
Now, robots from ROBOFOLD are saying something similar: if you can fold it, we can build it.

FOLDABLE = MAKABLE

This is the very clear slogan of curvedfolding.com, a social network created by ROBOFOLD where you can “work towards an open CAD standard, initially based on a quad-mesh geometry, for representing and modeling curved folding geometries…and show what we have crafted in paper, modelled in CAD and then fabricated.”

PHOTO ABOVE : RoboFold at 100% Design, October 2011. Their video interview with RoboFold / SOURCE: robofold.com

It’s very interesting to note that ROBOFOLD thinks about innovative production as something strictly related to the learning process. That’s why they develop a strong departement for learning with workshops and other events.
The structure of the workshop is clear as their slogan:

A 3 steps process: folding paper by hand all the way to folding metal with robots – with some simulation in software along the way. 

Watch the videlo below to see a robot in action.

PHOTOS AND VIDEOS ABOVE FROM robofold.com

A special thanks to Vanessa from McNeel to send me this information, in relation to a research for one of our project.

A creative and technical team from HDA | Hugh Dutton Associés will be in Turin next week to direct and coordinate one of the group of international Smart Building Workshop in the context of Turin’s nomination for the European Smart Cities project.

The following key people from HDA are composing the team for the workshop:

Hugh Dutton | architect and designer, director of HDA | Hugh Dutton Associés
Gaetan Kohler | architect, co-founder of OZ collective
Sebastien Perrault | engineer and architect, sebastienperrault.com
Francesco Cingolani | architect, communication and urban strategy consultant, immaginoteca.com

The workshop will focus on contemporary key concepts such as smart buildings, new technologies, sustainability and new issues for public spaces. You can find more information (in italian) about the workshop at smartbuilding.oato.it

We will share as much as possible real-time information during the workshop. If you want to follow us, keep an eye on this blog and follow us on twitter at @HDA_Paris

We are very happy to announce that our design team, led by Heerim Architects & Planners, won first prize for the design competition of PASSENGER TERMINAL 2 for the Incheon Int. Airport.

An airport is a front door for a nation, like the grand railway stations of capital cities of the industrial age. The airport’s design is therefore iconic and symbolic of the Korean nation. The Heerim team identified the Phoenix as that icon evoking Korean history and future ambitions of reunification.
The roof of 30 hectares is designed as an active energy system, a “breathing roof” with an ambition to transform a potential energy glutton into a positive environmental asset. The general intent of the design for the user is a fluid, calm and luminous passage through the terminal. The flowing geometry of the structural grid-shell systems is visible through the light filtering roof. This delicate skeleton of optimal and funicular shapes provides articulation of the passenger flow as well as forming the expression the wings of the symbolic bird.
Minimal facades in cable and energy performance glass further address the question of sustainability by optimising energy transmission through the skin whilst maintaining clear views of the aircraft, the runways and the surrounding landscape.

Design credits:

Main Architects: Heerim Architects & Planners (Seoul) teamed up with Mooyoung Architects and Engineer (Seoul) and Gensler (Los Angeles)
Structural design and envelope: HDA | Hugh Dutton Associés (Paris)
Engineers: Thornton Tomasetti (New York)
Consultants: IBE Consulting Engineers, Landrum and Brown, Lea+Elliott, Sap Group, BNP Associates
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You can find more details about the competition at Korea JoongAng Daily

Ci-dessous le portfolio de l’agence: ça peut aider à se faire une idée du type de projet que nous développons.

Vous pouvez aussi lire notre article “Che lavoro fai?”

The video below presents the design thinking of the architect and researcher Neri Oxman, who is proposing a different way of thinking about the design of things around us: instead of thinking about forms of objects she suggests to understand first their performance and “how they should or need to behave in space as most natural systems do, such as trees”.

These purposes are especially interesting for us as in a past article titled Methodology of complexity (in French) we have defined form as “the spatial configuration of a physical object that is responsible for the relations between that object and the environment”.

I especially like the way she explains the professional relationship between architects and engineers, that I think it’s strictly related to what Hugh Dutton called “Integrated approach to design” in his paper “An integral approach to Structure and Architecture” available below.
If you have problems vizualizing the document and cannot read it, please download it from the following link.
"An integral approach to Structure and Architecture" (156)

“The construction industry’s recent technical developmentes in engineering and material science and the building industry’s new technical capacities provide new opportunities for architecture. These innovations can be used to integrate structure and the building envelope, or “skin”.

For an integrated approach to design, borders between the distinct professional, industrial, and construction territories must be transgressed. The success of this exploration depends on architects understanding of the capacities and constraints of each separate field during the design process.”

“An integral approach to Structure and Architecture”

Photo: Tom Allen for INTERVIEW
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“Architect and designer Neri Oxman is assistant professor of media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab, where she directs the Mediated Matter research group. Her group explores how digital design and fabrication technologies mediate between matter and environment to radically transform the design and construction of objects, buildings, and systems. Oxmanís goal is to enhance the relationship between the built and the natural environments by employing design principles inspired by nature and implementing them in the invention of digital design technologies. Areas of application include product and architectural design, as well as digital fabrication and construction.”
read more at  web.media.mit.edu

As we read at businessinnovationfactory.com, “She studies the structure of a leaf to learn how a single material can readjust itself, change directionality, and redistribute its organic matter where necessary to achieve strength in one place, flexibility in another. She observes how material behaves and what forms result from that behavior. From a biological standpoint, Oxman considers the functions of the leaf. From the perspective of a material scientist, she evaluates the physical construction of its fibers. She refers to this process as “translating” from scale to scale. It’s just a matter of “moving the dial,” she says.”

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If you liked this post, you may be also interested in:
Patterns, Patterns, Patterns…the Alan Turing’s work
Defining #parametric #design and #architecture
And if you speak a little bit of French, you can have a look at:
Les entretiens de complexitys: Hugh Dutton contre le “branding” de l’architecture
ARCHITECTURE HYBRIDE 10/10 : POUR UNE MÉTHODOLOGIE DE LA COMPLEXITÉ

Today we are feature a proposal we have designed in collaboration with the OZ collective,  formed by Alexandre Pachiaudi and Gaëtan Kohler who is also working at HDA.

You step out to be surrounded by busy yellow bricks and anonymous citizen giving you a cold eye. Haphazard buildings sprung up like mushrooms after rain welcome you in a reserved manner. It is exciting to breathe in the energy of urban life, but it makes your head swirl. Perhaps better to hop in a black cab Crossing Waterloo Bridge, you find a curious object extruding from the Queen Elizabeth Hall in conversation with the London Eye. It is your asylum in London, which works on a South Kensington girl and a Hoxton Square boy alike, who would like to be invited up to share the experience.
On the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, there stands the Peephole, absorbing the skyline straddling the Thames. Curtains left open, you recognize a familiar object: a wide-angle lens pointing to the sky. You approach the Peephole with a little tingle. A gentle ramp begirds the layers of the lens.
Curving around the middle layer, containing all the small necessary amenities and toilet, you reach the focal layer nesting a bed at an appropriate height below the lens.
As you put yourself in the most comfortable position, your eyes take in the whole of the London skyline refracted through the double lens of water and plexi — even better when it drizzles. This is where both Londoners and visitors can
sneak a peek at quiet beauty in this modern ancient city.

1 Peephole_HDA Oz

PEEPHOLE, A LENS FOR LONDON

Materials: Fish eye lens in plexi, lens of waters, steel structure, glass facade

Dimensions: diameter 7.70m / height 5.65 m

Design Team

Artistes: OZ collective (Alexandre Pachiaudi, Gaëtan Kohler)

Architectes et ingénieurs : HDA| Hugh Dutton Associés (Hugh Dutton, Catherine Kim, Pierre Chassagne, Gaëtan Kohler) + Alice Dufourmantelle

The proposal was originally designed for the competition A Room for London for a new, temporary, one-bedroom structure on the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the Southbank Centre in London. The winning proposal is designed by David Kohn Architects and artist Fiona Banner.

If you want to know more about OZ COLLECTIVE you can read the intro below or visit their website ozcollective.com

3 – Intro to Oz Collective

Nous vous présentons aujourd’hui notre proposition en collaboration avec le bureau de structure Schlaich Bergermann und partner pour le concours du futur pont de la république franchissant le Lez à Montpellier.

La projet gagnant a été celui du groupement Lamoureux & Ricciotti Ingénierie / Rudy Ricciotti que vous pouvez voir ici, et auquel nous allons prochainement dédié un post spécifique.

La solution que nous avons proposé est simple qui vise à être élégante et optimale, minimisant la matière.
Il s’agit d’un structure bipoutre PRS verte en acier dont la hauteur variable a été optimisée en fonction des sollicitations mécaniques de l‘ouvrage.  La découpe de la poutre latérale exprime discrètement les forces en une ligne fluide au dessus du tablier.

Le point haut de la vague des courbes (poutre de 1900mm de hauteur) représente le point de flexion maximale au droit des appuis.

La hauteur variable (entre 800 et 1900 mm) a été optimisée en fonction des sollicitations mécaniques de l‘ouvrage. Le tablier composite consiste en une dalle béton collaborant sur une série de traverses en acier entre les poutres PRS latérales principales. La dalle,  d’épaisseur minimale, permet une solution structurelle discrète qui évite des éléments en treillis ou en arc tel que cela a été évoqué dans l’étude de faisabilité.

Pour plus d’informations vous pouvez consulter les pieces graphiques ci-dessous ou bien la note explicative du projet ici:

Concours Pont de la Republique | pièces graphique

Credits:

Projet: HDA | Hugh Dutton Associés + Schlaich Bergermann und Partner

Images: Nicolas Trouillard

The Skylon was a futuristic-looking, slender, vertical, cigar-shaped steel tensegrity structure located by the Thames in London, that apparently floated above the ground, built in 1951 for the Festival of Britain.
A popular joke of the period was that, like the British economy of 1951, “It had no visible means of support”.

The Skylon was the “Vertical Feature” that was an abiding symbol of the Festival of Britain. It was designed by Hidalgo Moya, Philip Powelland Felix Samuely, and fabricated by Painter Brothers of Hereford, England, on London’s South Bank between Westminster Bridge andHungerford Bridge. The Skylon consisted of a steel latticework frame, pointed at both ends and supported on cables slung between three steel beams. The partially constructed Skylon was rigged vertically, then grew taller in situ.[2] The architects’ design was made structurally feasible by the engineer Felix Samuely who, at the time, was a lecturer at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury. The base was nearly 15 metres (50 feet) from the ground, with the top nearly 90 metres (300 feet) high. The frame was clad in aluminium louvres lit from within at night. Both the name and form of the Skylon perhaps referred back to the Trylon feature of the 1939 World’s Fair. Mrs A G S Fidler, wife of the chief architect of the Crawley Development Corporation, suggested the name and said she derived it from skyhook and nylon.

A few days before the King and Queen visited the exhibition in May 1951, Skylon was climbed at midnight by student Philip Gurdon from Birkbeck College who attached a University of London Air Squadron scarf near the top. A workman was sent up a few days later to collect it.
Questions were asked in Parliament regarding the danger to visitors from lightning-strikes to the Skylon, and the papers reported that it was duly roped off at one point, in anticipation of a forecast thunderstorm.

As HDA often works with glass and light steel structures, transparency has always been a central point of interest in our design process.
We share today the paper and its related presentation given by Hugh Dutton on 30th September 2010 in Dusseldorf, at  Engineered Transparency international conference.

HDA Projects

Here is the introduction of the paper:

Structural glass has become a commonplace component in architecture. Early pioneering work on structural glass that created the spherical bearing articulated bolts for suspended tempered glass and tensile cable wind bracing cable trusses was carried out by Peter Rice and the RFR group at la Villette, Paris in the early ‘80’s. The author had the good fortune of participating in that project and co-authored Structural Glass with Peter Rice telling the story of the development process.

For HDA, it is the architectural potential of structural glass that is the most appealing to me. At the time, maximal transparency was the objective of our work. The architect of the museum, Adrien Fainsilber, wished that the Museum have an open dialogue with the park, using the south facing Bioclimatic Facades as a ‘zone tampon’ between the museum and the park. The glazing system consisting of 2m x 2m panels of tempered glass were suspended from each other using investment cast components in stainless steel. An entire bay measuring 8m x 8m is an autonomous structural glass panel
gravity supported by the glass itself and using the glass surface to stabilize the cable system. The ‘cable truss’ was developed as an alternative to glass fins. The cable truss itself was a pioneering development of non-linear analysis engineering at the time.

RFR’s work has attempted to explore the architectural potential of structural glass, applying it in varied contexts with maximal attention to the architectural message of each case rather than an expression of the technology itself. There has been notable attention to the recent concerns of sustainable design.

Please find below the full article or download it here > HDA: Structural Glass, Work in Progress (519)

For those who read French, the following is a passage from a Hugh Dutton’s text about transparency, glass and light in architecture:

“Je crois que le Verre Structurel a permis la naissance d’une nouvelle architecture de la transparence et avec une nouvelle qualité centrée sur la notion de lumière. Également, cela a rendu possible aussi une approche sculpturelle au traitement de la matière des structures porteuses. Dans ce sens, la pyramide inversée de Pei me parait un exemple brillant de cette symbiose entre verre structurel et lumière. On y vois l’éclatement des points iridescentes, la clarté et, enfin, une révérence quasi sacrée de l’objet en verre meme 20 ans après sa conceptoion et realisation.”

We often talk about relevance of network effects in our jobs: networking dynamics can  be acheived both virtually and phisically. We first “met” Jon Mirtschin on his blog Geometry Gym, then we discovered he also was on twitter and finally we met him at HDA, thanks to Rhinoforyou.

We invite you readers to discover some interesting topics and posts we have selected from the Geometry Gym blog:

Exchanging Structure Models to/from Rhino3d (BIM and Analysis)

Generation of Structure Models from Grasshopper3d

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Minimal Surface Exploration

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Tesselation

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Geometry Gym is  a company based in the UK, formed by Jon Mirtschin, a structural engineer of 10 years experience.
Geometry Gym is aiming to provide innovative design tools within rapid response time frames needed by projects.

As a graduate engineer, Jon joined Connell Wagner (now Aurecon) in Melbourne, having graduated from the University of Melbourne with a double degree in Civil Engineering and Computer Science.  Projects he worked on included Eureka Tower (300m tall residential tower), the Melbourne Cricket Ground Northern Stand Redevelopment (MCG) and Wembley Stadium.  All projects challenged the capability of the software used to analyze, design and document these structures, and Jon frequently found himself developing custom and innovative scripts and spreadsheets to link and automate generation, processes and data information flow.

In 2005, Jon left Melbourne bound for a working holiday in London, an agency sent him to an interview at Expedition, which is not a typical engineering consultancy.  Jon discovered Rhino3d, and the fantastic development and design platform it provides. Infinity Footbridge (IStructE Champion Award Recipient), the 2012 Olympic Velodrome and 55 Baker Street are great examples of efficient form finding and trail blazing design and documentation.  All heavily utilized programs and plug-ins developed by Jon, in the evolutionary state of the plug-ins available today.

Late 2009, Jon left Expedition to form Geometry Gym, as a means to act as a sub-consultant and to distribute the software tools to the wider design industry (although the tools were also externally beta tested during the 10 months prior on some fantastic projects).  Why the name Geometry Gym? Well gyms challenge and demand their visitors aspiring to achieve goals and improvements.  And geometric manipulations and modifications take up so much time of consulting engineers and architects that all improvements are for the benefit of the industry.

Jon is particularly driven and interested in improving repetitive and time consuming tasks in consulting design, and in reducing the amount of replicated modelling work requiring coordination and checking. The premise of BIM (Building Information Modelling) and exchanging/extracting models for particular purpose and needs is core to the development.

A significant differentiation of the service provided to users of the Geometry Gym tools is prompt support and custom development.  Typical CAD/Software firms have lead times of months and years to implement customer suggestions and requirements, making them redundant for active projects, Geometry Gym endeavours to assist within days or weeks.

The Geometry Gym Blog provides demonstrations, insights and examples of how to use the Rhino3d tools being developed.  Jon’s take on how to explore the geometry of some well known projects including the Beijing Water Cube, 2012 Olympic Stadium and British Museum Great Court Roof have been popular with designers and students.

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A special thanks to Jon for sharing with us these high-quality contents every day!