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The paper describes and examines the implications of the recent developments in the
architectural application of the latest digital design and fabrication technologies, which
offer alternatives to the established understandings of architectural design and production
processes and their material and economic constraints. It offers a possibility of a revised
understanding of the historic relationship between architecture and its means of production.
Keywords: Digital design, digital fabrication, CAD/CAM.
architectures), motion kinematics and dynamics heterogeneous, yet coherent forms of the topological
(animate architectures), keyshape animation architectures computationally possible and their
(metamorphic architectures), parametric design construction attainable by means of computer
(parametric architectures), and genetic algorithms numerically controlled (CNC) machinery.
(evolutionary architectures), as discussed in Isomorphic architectures (Figure 1), based on
(Kolarevic 2000). New categories could be added to isomorphic polysurfaces, represent another point of
this taxonomy as new processes become introduced departure from Platonic solids and Cartesian space.
based on emerging computational approaches. For Blobs or metaballs, as isomorphic polysurfaces are
examples, new methods could emerge based on sometimes called, are amorphous objects constructed
performance-based (structural, acoustical, as composite assemblages of mutually inflecting
environmental, etc.) generation and transformation of parametric objects with internal forces of mass and
forms. attraction. They exercise fields or regions of influence,
In his essay on “architectural curvilinearity” which could be additive (positive) or subtractive
published in 1993, Greg Lynn offers examples of new (negative). The geometry is constructed by computing
approaches to design that move away from the a surface at which the composite field has the same
deconstructivism’s “logic of conflict and contradiction” intensity – hence the name – isomorphic polysurfaces.
to develop a “more fluid logic of connectivity.” This The surface boundary of the whole (the isomorphic
new fluidity of connectivity is manifested through polysurface) shifts or moves as fields of influence vary
“folding,” a design strategy that departs from Euclidean in their location and intensity (fig 1).
geometry of discrete volumes represented in In animate architectures, design, as described by
Cartesian space, and employs topological, “rubber- Lynn (1998), “is defined by the co-presence of motion
sheet” geometry of continuous curves and surfaces, and force at the moment of formal conception.” Force,
mathematically described as NURBS, Non-Uniform as an initial condition, becomes “the cause of both
Rational B-Splines. What makes NURBS curves and motion and particular inflections of a form.” According
surfaces particularly appealing is the ability to easily to Lynn, “while motion implies movement and action,
control their shape by manipulating the control points, animation implies evolution of a form and its shaping
weights, and knots. The NURBS make the forces.” In his projects, Lynn utilizes an entire
Figure 3. Milling of
Styrofoam molds for the
casting of reinforced concrete
panels for Gehry’s Zollhof
Towers in Dusseldorf,
Germany (Rempen 1999).