At the start of the year, coupled with Grasshopper training we will be looking at lattices as a granular spatial organising principle. From molecular systems to quasi-crystals, nature organizes itself through space efficient, resilient and complex arrangements.
Brief 01: 3D Lattices/ Urban Crystallography & Self-Sufficient Bio-Machines: At the start of the year, coupled with Grasshopper training we will be looking at lattices as a granular spatial organising principle. From molecular systems to quasi-crystals, nature organizes itself through space efficient, resilient and complex arrangements. We would like to start the year with a study of all these three-dimensional systems as an exercise to understand the many ways structures can be arranged in space. Using timber struts and nodes, or surfaces and hinges, whether defining space packing volumes or porous three dimensional grid shells, the modularity of the systems allows us to work at all scales. However for the first brief we expect you to design and build a self-sufficient small scale bio-machine interacting with the given sites. Like a tree absorbing carbon whilst creating timber and fruits, your architectural system will be a blend of technology and nature in the urban context.
Brief 02: Eco-Parametric Urban Infrastructures to combat climate change Nature does not make waste, everything is reused and feeds back into the system. DS10 will learn from this by applying the principles of permaculture, regenerative agriculture and renewable energy generation to propose Eco-Parametric Urban Infrastructures. You will design and test large scale infrastructures tightly interwoven into and above the urban fabric of London’s train tracks which immersively integrate nature into the city using your 3D lattices as a reference. We are seeking new architectural ideas which address energy needs in the age of the circular economy. Your mixed use infrastructure will create energy and deal with its waste to close the loop whilst helping people live better and healthier lives and create an economy in the process. Proposals may include self sufficient communities and economies, cradle to cradle business ideas, inhabited bridges forging connections between different sides of the tracks and structures which actively contribute to the area such as carbon capture devices, solar collectors, pollution scrubbers etc,
Zainab Kahn, The Spirulina Bank
Site: The underused spaces over the existing railway tracks of central London will form the foundations for exciting large scale mixed use structures, creating new connections and a new hyper dense and hyper sustainable urban fabric.
Output: Rather than a traditional paper portfolio we will focus on digital representation techniques such as animations, high quality digital renders which explain the process of your work.You will become a member of the WeWantToLearn.net community (1.7 million viewers) sharing your research and studio submissions to inspire and contribute to the wider design community. Blog posts will form part of your portfolio submission.
Some images of our final cross-crit of the year! Our students presented their Brief03:FutureCities. Have a look at how the next generation of architects envision the future of our cities.
Thank you to Andrei Jipa, Kester Rattenbury and Lindsay Bremner. Final sprint to the portfolio submission and end of year!
Eva Ciocyte – Aral City – As the earth gets too polluted to allow the growth of any edible crop, Aral City attempts to purify the soil progressively by building giant evaporative and inhabitable greenhouses.
Alex Berciu, The Algorithmic City, In the presented scenario, the natural environment in which human beings live today will no longer exist, having been replaced by fully computer generated habitation. As the Earth’s surface will have been largely damaged by pollution and natural disasters, the only solution for living pushed human society upwards in suspended structures developed through the technique of extruding concrete and drone assembly. Based on a growth algorithm that evolves with relation to continuous feedback gathered from climate data, structural qualities and population needs, the system can perform in any given location. in the generated structure, the algorithm places accordingly a selection of 8 typologies considered suitable for the needs of the future human society. These are: aliment production/farming, aliment storage, housing, education hubs, culture hubs, spiritual hubs, places of sin and production laboratories. Each typology is designed to fit within the modular grid and is placed according to density and distance rules. The ratio between the 8 typologies is also adaptable, responding to possible changes in societal needs.
Garis Iu – The Inflated City – Marine Pollution has become a growing plaque as plastics are accumulated into patches within the gyres around the world, damaging the marine ecosystem and entering the marine food web. As these plastics are not biodegradable, they continue to pose a threat to the marine wildlife as well as humanity. Centuries into the future, people have begun to seek for ocean colonization in an attempt to tackle marine pollution and the rising sea level. The Fluas is a self-sufficient city that realises the potential of ocean plastics as a source of reusable material. Situated within the North Pacific Gyre and consisting of clusters of floating platforms, the city is centred on the collection and recycling of these materials into elements of the city – in the form of pneumatic structures. As plastics are salvaged from the gyre, the inflated city continues to grow while its inhabitants live a seaborne lifestyle.
Garis Iu The Inflated City
Joe Leach – Cidade de Árvores The Atlantic Forest in southern Brazil has long been viewed as a vast quilt of rain forest interspersed by small river outposts. The surging population growth has seen these remote settlements transform this ancient rural vision to an expansive city scale. Cidade de Árvores (City of Trees) envisions an environment where both the city’s infrastructure and its inhabitants maintain a symbiotic relationship with the surrounding natural environment. Built entirely from locally grown timber, the Cidade de Árvores exists as a network of steam bent beams, joined to form a structural space frame. Like the forest, the frame is allowed to grow and develop organically over time with inhabitants adding to structure to meet their requirements. The city is powered through the use of micro wind turbine electricity generation which manifests as a series of towers scattered throughout the forest. For the city and the environment to function in harmony, the city access routes manifest as elevated walkways around large courtyards, allowing light to penetrate to the forest floor.
Tobias Power’s Infinity Tree for Burning Man development
The Infinity Tree – Updated structure with the help of Format Engineers and Ramboll
The Origami City – Naomi Danos – This project seeks to develop a response to the combined challenges of natural disasters, the aging population and over-fishing. All three are closely connected in Japan. In Japan, where life expectancy is one of the highest in the world, 1 in 3 people will be over 60 by 2050. Unfortunately, Japan is also a country that has been hit by major natural disasters such as tsunamis, during which the vulnerable elderly suffered the most. Finally, in Japan fish is the main food source and over fishing may become a major issue in the future. Moreover, Japan has one of the highest percentages of labour force of people aged 60 and over within the fishing industry. I am proposing a self-sufficient, resilient city for the super-aging Japanese fishing community along the coast, as a response to these future scenarios. The structure of the proposal would not only act as a vertical evacuation point, and accommodation for the elderly and their families, but would also be used as sustainable fish-farming.
Naomi Danos, The Origami City
Lorna Jackson presenting her Burning Man proposal and future city for women only.
Diana Raican – Fractal BreakCity will act as defence and breakwater structures against tsunamis and floods. Benefiting of internalised creation of food, resources and objects, a trade based economy will emerge, while the cult of product marketing will shrink to its essential. The city is based on recursive aggregation: one geometry is repeated in a self-similar way to create a complex looking aggregation, following a fractal pattern. The system consists of one module, with structures of different scales according to their function, so that the bathroom will be the smallest box unit, the bedroom slightly larger and so on. The largest box unit at the center of an aggregated module, will consist of the communal and production based spaces. Cellulose mixed with water, can be 3D printed to create structures stronger than steel and will become structural elements for the city, while aerogel wall components (made of silica, which is found in sand, across the world) will clad each unit’s sides.
Jon Leung’s developments on the Bismuth Bivouac for Burning Man
Jon Leung’s Bismuth Bivouac updated render with latest development with the help of format engineers.
John Koning’s power generating Ron Resch origami city
Here we are – we have reached the middle of the academic year at the University of Westminster. Time to assess and appreciate our students portfolios and hard work during a lively “interim cross-marking” with our colleagues. Here are couple examples of the most remarkable portfolios in our Diploma Studio 10. Very excited to start our new brief03 on future cities. We will soon announce the three winners in our studio which will get the opportunity to build installations at the new headquarters of Buro Happold and students will soon post their Burning Man proposals on this blog. Oh and we are also going to our unit trip to Copenhagen next week!! Pictures by Toby Burgess.
Our Studio Space at the University of Westminster
Sarah Stell’s Inhabitable Geometric Transitions
Joe Leach’s Flower of Life Curved Playful Truss
Jonathan Leung’s Bismuth Bivouac
Aslan Adnan’s recusrsive explosion
Lorna Jackson’s Spirohedron Confessional
Maria Vergopoulou’s copper sulfate crystals and mirrors
The investigation started by the examination of stalagmites and stalactites as a naturally growing system. Water carrying dissolved calcite is deposed gradually, creating layers of crystalissed mineral formations. This research resulted to the study of the geometry of crystal growth and the testing of mineral deposition in general.
Experimenting with mineral deposition under different principles and mapping the results of each imprint was followed by the creation of a manually controlled 3D printer of minerals.
Testing with different saturated solutions, crystal growth techniques and observing changes based on drop point and drop techniques of minerals, light, temperature and consistency of solutions led to the idea of creating a clever glass panel that follows the rules of crystallisation and can transform based on environmental changes.
These panels can be used for the creation of a structure that is adaptable in extreme environmental changes of warm and cold temperature, such as those experienced in the Black Rock Dessert of Nevada where the Burning Man Festival is located.
Below are couple pictures of our first cross-crit yesterday. We would like to thank the critiques, Kester Rattenbury, Lawrence Lek, Andrei Martin, Daniel Piker, Jack Munro and Adam Holloway for their helpful comments. Great work, keep it up guys!
Above: Marilu Valente showing her potato starch elastic columns
This is a Thesis project by Barbara Weinzierl which looks into Quasicrystals and their potential application within architecture. She has experimented taking the penrose tiling and raising it into a 3D geometry, analyzing its pattern morphology and the different combinations of rhomb found. One of the things I found most interesting is the potential of fractal patterning as shown below, this opens up great possibilies for the designer to play with scale. I think this could be particularly appropriate for burning man as the warm baby girls were saying that scale can be difficult to gauge in the desert. She explores their use in a single layered system as well as multidimensional crystals, creating some really interesting models.
You can read some of her research paper by following this link to her facebook page. She has also had an article published in the Swedish design magazine “Arkitekten” this month.
Above: Andrei Jipa’s crystal formation and soap interference.
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