yazdanseta|arch670|UMD

Camera_interpretation_2

2007-05-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

Camera_interPretation_1

2007-05-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

latest_diAgraM

2007-05-08T14:55:00.000-07:00

Project_2c

2007-04-24T15:23:00.000-07:00

Project_2a

2007-04-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

ProJecT_2a_ProcEdUrAL_sEqUeNcE

2007-04-08T09:02:00.000-07:00

57 seconds_29 splices_Keanu Reeves_Collin Chou_Matrix Revolution

sPatiAL+TemPoRaL SeqUenCe_ConsTrUcTeD MorPHoloGY_VerSioNing

2007-04-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

Gregg Pasquarelli's lecture was one of the best I have heard. My favorite part of his lecture was when he talked about model making (as versioning) and he said the part of the model you are having a problem building, the part you have trouble gluing together, is the exact detail and part of the construction process you will have problem with.
Without Versioning, without making hunderds of study models, nobody can conclude and finalize a final design. Thanks to versioning one day we will eliminate classical buildings and "skins".
With versioning we can easily go back and forth from computer to phyisical models. This process is more about detailing and working out small ornaments in the work of ShoP Architects or Lewis.Tsrumaki.Lewis or H_dM and more about form finding and spatial investigation in the work of Frank Gehry or Peter Eisenman.
The work of Nader Tehrani and Monica Ponce de Leon addresses geometry and patterning simultaneously as he puts in the Versioning reading. In my opinion their work and also the work of Herzog de Meuron is almost not spatial and only about skin and facade geometry. The perfect example is de Young Museum in San Francisco, a recent work by H_dM.
The building is entirely clad and covereed by bronze panels and has a 90 degree torque in the observation tower, only visible and noticable from the outside. Inside he building you will not experience any of the features or architecture used on the outside.
As we read in the text, Peter Eisenman and also Frank Gehry to a lesser extent strive for an architecture to resovles issues spatially and formally and are less concerened about smaller details or skinning. The form of Gehry's buildings on the outside are reflected on the inside.
Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaero Polo and found the perfect balance between these two methods of investigation in the design of Yokohama Port Terminal. They delivered a single surface prototype where folding traits spread throughout all scales of the design. The urban proposal introduced the continuous ground as a mechansim for the penetration of urban space on the terminal’s roof and a start of a public space at the interface of terminal functions and city events. Farshid Moussavi calls it “a public space that wraps around the terminal, neglecting its symbolic presence as a gate, de-codifying the rituals of travel and a functional structure which becomes the mould of an a typological public space, a landscape with no instructions of occupation. The building’s formal determination manifests a topological surface concept in sequences of inclined curvilinear spaces that accomplish smooth transitions between programmatic elements. The construction principles intensify the overriding spatial concept by assigning the origami folded steel plate as the structural principle in order to demolish the traditional separation between building envelope and structure. Even though the fishbone structure of the building has a regular generic structure, every unit in the specific folded plate is differentiated.

In The fold, Leibniz and the Baroque, Deleuze introduces a set of baroque traits that contribute to the appreciation of contemporary art. These traits are summarized as follows:
1. The fold: the infinite work on process, not how to conclude, but how to continue, to bring to infinity.
2. The inside and the outside: the infinite fold separates or moves between matter and soul, the façade and the closed room, the outside and the inside.
3. The high and the low: being divided into folds, the fold greatly expands on both sides thus connecting the high and the low.
4. The unfold: not as contrary to the fold, but as continuation of this act.
5. Textures: as resistant of the material, the way a material is folded constitutes its texture.
6. The paradigm: the fold of the fabric must not conceal its formal expression.
The traits that Deleuze introduces in his book, the Fold, Leibniz and the Baroque, have affected the thought process of many architects. These traits have turned themselves into an architectural technique that can now be delivered as a design method. Most important to understand is that folding is not an aesthetic way to objectify a building. The folding technique allows the building to situate itself with respect to its urban fabric. Folding is a way a building can relate to its context. Examples of this statement are evident in the selected projects discussed above and ongoing in the work of many contemporary architects such as Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman and Foreign Office Architects.

Project_1d_fiNaL_viRtUaL_pRoJeCtIoN

2007-03-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

Project_1c_ComPoSitiOnaL_diSpLaCeMenT

2007-02-27T14:43:00.001-08:00

Coop Himmelb(L)au Quote:

2007-02-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

"... We are fed up with seeing Palladio and other historical masks, because we do not want to exclude everything in architecture that makes us uneasy. We want architecture that has more to offer. Architecture that bleeds, exhausts, that turns and even breaks, as far as I am concerened, architecture that glows, that stabs, that tears and rips when stretched. Architecture must be precipitous, fiery, smooth, hard, angular, brutal, round, tender, colorful, obscene, randy, dreamy, en-nearing, distancing, wet, dry and heartstopping. Dead or alive. If it is cold, then cold as a block of ice. If it is hot, then as hot as a tongue of flame. Architecture must burn."

Peter Eisenman Quote:

2007-02-16T07:56:00.001-08:00

"...one can never know at the same time what is the condition of society, its so-called 'zeitgeist', and how architecture should respond to it. One has always had to go outside of architecture. I have had to do so in order to address the question of 'what should I do?' and I would argue that philosophy is one of the most readily available. Let's put it this way, in any time architecture has 2 roles. It either reflects society, or in a sense is a precursor - not revolutionary, not radical, in between reflection and radicality - that is something I would call a precursor. Thinking about something that might disturb something in the present. I think that my work is more like disturbance, rather than change, a radical change. Its certainly not reflection. I would say disturbance, precursor, premonition."

ReaDing_SyNopSis: WaRping_sPaCe

2007-02-13T23:24:00.000-08:00

My synopsis focuses on the work of Thom Mayne and Wolf D. Prix (Coop Himmelblau), since there seems to be a fair amount of criticism and analysis of their work in the article.
Architecture is a self-referential index of the process of its own making. Architecture is a love affair, a method of seeing the world, a way of seeing things which is not possible in any other business and industry.
Architecture is different than any other form of art. People are not willing to accept architecture just like any other art. People are conservative and comfortable with what is within reach or what was in the past. They are not comfortable with what is put way ahead of them.
Architecture of Thom Mayne and Coop Himmelblau did start more formally, aggressively and more self-referential in the beginning of their careers. But now after 35 years of practice their work has become a connective tissue of the social idea and public act. Their architecture takes a world view, an idea of how we live and exist together and deal with each other in a civil society and concretizes it. In their architecture the social act and the public act come together.
The success in their work lies in pushing the limits of what the mainstream and public is willing to accept. And above all their work is about the aesthetic fascination with conflict and the power of confrontation.
Frank Werner says, "After a considerable number of decosntructive buildings had gone up all over the world, the international specialist press finally also realized something that experts had already complained about concerning the New York exhibition: that it is not right to tar all Deconstructivists with the same brush. But they now quickly set about dividing the Deconstructivist camp into "good" and "bad" protagonists. Even such an eminent magazine as"El Croquis", which dedicated a whole lavishly produced tissue to Coop Himmelblau in 1989, was not afraid to downgrade Coop Himmelb(l)au's architecture in the accompanying commentary "as limited operations" of "an epigonic phenomenon" and to play Rafael Moneo's supposedly "more referential" work off against them in a somewhat threadbare manner. If things like this still happen today then it is either through ignorance or professional politics. According to this good Deconstructivists would be those who-like Libeskind, for example-"ennoble" themselves with symbolic building commissions, while bad ones - like Coop Himmelblau - "prostitute" themselves with commercial building commisions.
Peter Eisenman says: "A major displacement concerns the role of the architect/designer and the design process. Something may be designed which can be called displacing, but it may be only an expressionism, a mannerist distortion of an essentially stable language. It may not displace the stable language, but on the contrary further stabilise its normative condition. This can be seen in many examples of current architectural fashion. There is a need for a process other than an intuition - 'I like this,' or 'I like that.' When the process is intuitive, it will already be known, and therefore complicit with the repressions inherent in architectural 'knowledge'. Intuitive design can never produce a state of uncertainty, only, at best, an illustration of uncertainty."

Project_1b_ComposiTional_Frames_pRoCess

2007-02-13T22:42:00.000-08:00

Here I share with you a piece that I read from Bernard Tschumi, former Dean of Columbia University School of Architecture, in his book Event Spaces. This reading was an underlying theme for the way I executed projects 1a_1b.
Bernard Tshcumi says: "The movements-of crowds, dancers, fighters-recall the inevitable intrusion of bodies into architectural spaces, the intrusion of one order into another. The need to record accurately such confrontations, without falling into functionalist formulas suggested precise forms of movement notation. An extension of the drawn conventions or choreography, this notation attemptgs to eliminate the preconceived meaning given to particular actions in order to concentrate on their spatial effects: the movement of bodies in space. Rather than merely indicating directional arrows on a neutral surface, the logic of movement notation ultimately suggests real corridors of space, as if the fighter (or dancer) has been carving space out of a pliable substance': or the reverse, shaping continuous volumes, as if a whole movement has been literraly solidified, "frozen" into a permanent or massive vector. Each event or action (a singular moment of a program) can be denoted by a photograph, in am attempt to get closer to an objectivity (even if never achieved) often missing from architectural programs."
Tschumi also feels that the traces left by bodies or movements also have an important part to play in terms of transformation or combination:"All transformational devices (repetition, distortion, etc) can apply equally and independently to spaces, events or movements. Thus we can have a repetitive sequence of spaces (the succesive cortyards of a Berlin block) coupled with an active sequence of events (dancing in the first court, fighting in the second, skating in the third, etc.)...adding events to the autonomous spatial sequence is a form of motivation, in the sense Russian formalists gave to motivation..."
And fianlly in terms of deconstruction Tschumi's ideas lead to a convincing explanation of the desired integration of photographs of bodies or body movements into planning processes:"Photographs of events (as opposed to photographs of buildings): the photographs internal logic suggests that it can function in varied ways. It first acts as a metaphor for the architectural program, by refering to events or to people. Second, it can be read independently for these photographs all possess their own autonomy, independent of the drawings juxtaposed to them. Third the events' allegorical content can powerfully disturb the neutral logic of the game's successive moves, introducing a purely suggestive reading. Finally it can be deconstructed and reorganized in a variety of ways, suggesting the idea of hybrid activities."

project_1b_ComposiTional_Frames

2007-02-07T23:03:00.000-08:00

As Professor Michael Ambrose described, at this phase of assignmnet_1 we will be exploring and developing a broader understanding of frame as a concept, tool and method by studying the relationship between surface and void as both analytic and generative operations that must undergo a subsequent transformation to be realized as architecture.
In order to approach this task, I have used a scene from the movie Snatch, directed by Guy Ritchie. The farmes that brad pitt is hit by the other fighter and flies through the air and is shot at to different angles and showed with slow motion will be modeled in 3d modeling software to explore the pattern of movement. Then I will create an animation that explores the relationship between objective and subjective forces and time from different angles and different frames.

ReaDing SynoPsis: aNiMatE_form+tiMe_rePreSentation

2007-02-06T11:17:00.001-08:00

As Greg Lynn mentions in Animate Form, a form in architecture is conceived as a modulating frame through which a mobile eye moves. The complexity of this (modulating) frame is in fact the main factor when tempral procession is discussed. In processional models of time architecture is obviously an immobile frame which motion passes through it. (do NOT make fly throughs. They are NOT animations). There are alternatives to the processional model of the static frame, both of which formalize time. Processional time as Greg Lynn says depends on the static frame, but formal time indexes time thorugh the multiplication and sequencing of static frames.
In cinema force+motion are secondary, since they are added to give shape and form vitality hidden in static frames. But in animation force is the primary reason for the movement.
Architecture is, according to Lynn, the study of the inert since it is dedicated to the models of permanence. Structure and statics are very important elements in architecture since they are the ethics of discretion. The terms static and discrete are mutually dependent on the seperation of force from form. Ethics of motion does not mandate that architecture has to be movable and it also does not suggest actual motion. Both processional and sequential models of movement are instances of virtual rather than literal timing.
So processional and sequential timing are diffrentiated by the presence of motion and force. Eliminating motion and force from form along with reintroducing motion to a sequence of static frames is the basis of both processional and sequential models.
This was the premise and underlying thought for me to do this exercise.

project_1a

2007-02-04T15:44:00.000-08:00

For project_1a, Compositional Lines, we shot footage of two dance students. Thank you Sarah and Tzveta. Without your help this would not have been possible. Dancers were asked to perform the same movement twice at two different angles. The two footages were edited and overlayed in order to better analyze the trace of the body movement. Rather than using trace paper to establish patterns of the movement (a technique proven to be successful by Renzo, Alberto and Mauro in Struttura uomo. Vol. 1: Manuale di anatomia artistica) we traced the profile (contours) of the dancer in 15 consecutive frames. We then further synthesized these elements and imported each frame into Maya Alias. All frames. each containing both angles, 90 degrees apart, were traced in Maya as contours. These contours were then put apart in order of the frames. Here I introduced time as 4th dimension to study the pattern of movement in each part of the body. At the next step, the contours+frames were lofted in order, to better depict the pattern of movement and spatial relationship between each frame. The resulting lofted shape (blob) is in fact an isomorphic polysurface including the element of time and is in fact mathematically driven. At any given interval along the projection of the loft a section can be cut and than section cut is the contour of the dancer at that given moment. The depth of the loft is in fact time and the period of the video footage. So every element, x, y and z + our 4th dimension of time is a known number. So blobs are not just accidental and imaginary shapes.

here we go

2007-01-31T10:03:00.000-08:00

Competition for a Virtual House by Peter Eisenman

Peter Eisenman at Wolf D. Prix Studio_Yale. Mark Goulthorpe and Greg Lynn in background. Click on image to see video.