Digital Design and Fabrication, Schools of Architecture

Lighted floors

2013-03-29T14:47:00.002-07:00

These photos have apparently been around for a while, but this is totally new to me. An enterprising group of robotic vacuum cleaner owners have used LEDs affixed to the top of their Roombas to create these amazing long exposure photographs. Check out Roomba art group for more. Photos via IBR Roomba, Mike Bala, and Steve Doll. (via laughing squid)

Wooden Lamp

2013-03-29T14:44:00.003-07:00

Paul Foeckler over at LA-based Split Grain is making some pretty stunning lights and other sculptures using pieces of California cypress trees. The artist says each light can involve up to 100 hours of labor as he selects the right section of wood, slices, sands, and reassembles each piece. See several more of his recent pieces over on Etsy. (via take over time)

Walls are alive

2013-03-19T21:11:00.005-07:00

Anyone who's had surgery would probably agree that being wheeled into the operating room can prove quite the anxiety-producing ride.

(Credit: Jason Bruges Studio)

A London design studio has come up with a wonderfully creative way to calm young patients en route to surgery -- interactive wallpaper that turns clinical corridor walls into a magical forest to engage and distract the kids as they journey toward their procedure.

The installation, called Nature Trail, fills about 165 feet of corridor walls in part of the Mittal Children's Medical Centre at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The cheerful printed paper (hospital grade, for easy washing) disguises 70 LED panels housing a total of 72,000 LEDs. When triggered by motion sensors, the LEDs reveal themselves as interactive animated patterns of light shaped like moving horses, deer, hedgehogs, birds, and frogs peeking through the foliage and trees.

"The idea came from remembering walks in my childhood," Jason Bruges of Jason Bruges Studio, which created the installation, told the Guardian. "I loved spotting and following things, those stolen glances and glimpses... I was trying to re-create this with the idea of digital lookout points along the corridor."

The hospital says its young patients have been so entranced by the nature canvas that it will grow to fill more walls by 2017.The studio modeled the critters in 3D before translating them to low resolution to give the creatures an aesthetic akin to pixelated video game characters. The creators then placed the LED panels at various heights so kids from newborn to 18, in beds and wheelchairs, can access the animals at eye level.

Glass Farm by MVRDV

2013-03-19T21:07:00.003-07:00

Schijndelâ’s market square suffered from Operation Market Garden damages during the Second World War and has been subject to numerous enlargements and refurbishments. Winy Maas wrote a letter in 1980, and in 2000 the town council adopted the idea of a new structure in the square between the church, town hall and main street. MVRDV since then iteratively proposed new options that could fill the gap of this unusually large village square. The Glass Farm is MVRDV’s seventh proposal for the site, earlier designs included a theatre.

The village engaged vividly in the process resulting in heated debates, polls and polemics in the local press – by supporters and adversaries. The 1600m² building which is entirely covered by a glass facade consists primarily of a series of public amenities such as restaurants, shops and a wellness centre.

By coincidence, the maximum envelope that was defined by the town planners had the form of a traditional Schijndel farm. All remaining historical local farms were measured, analyzed and an ideal average was conceived from this data. In collaboration with MVRDV, artist Frank van der Salm photographed all the remaining traditional farms, and from these an image of the typical farm was composed. This image was printed using fritted procedure onto the 1800m2 glass facade, resulting in an effect such as a stained glass window in a cathedral. The print is more or less translucent depending on the need for light and views.

At night the structure will be illuminated from the inside, becoming a monument to the farm. At a height of 14 metres the Glass Farm is intentionally designed out of scale and is 1.6 times larger than a real farm, symbolizing the village growing into a town. The printed image follows this ‘augmented history’, with the superimposed farm door for example appearing 4 metres tall. When adults interact with the building, they can experience toddler size again, possibly adding an element of nostalgic remembrance to their reception of the building. To enhance this further, there will be a table and swing next to the building, a scaled up farmyard.

Coinciding with the completion of the building, an exhibition opens in the local Museum Jan Heestershuis about Context and Authenticity. Later this year a book will be published by NAi Publishers exploring the development of the Glass Farm, including a literary description of the lengthy processes which lead to its realisation.

MVRDV realised the building for RemBrand developers, a combination of Van Den Brand Real Estate and Remmers Construction Group, together with Hooijen Engineers, IOC Ridderkerk for installations, Brakel Atmos for the facade and AGC for the print.

Snow Clearing in JAPAN

2013-03-19T21:06:00.001-07:00

Here in the American northeast we've got a bit of a storm on, with six to twelve inches of snow projected to fall on Core77 HQ. That sounds like a lot of snow, until you put it in perspective by looking at the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, which connects the Japanese municipalities of Tateyama and Omachi.

How on Earth do they manage to clear that road, and get the sidewalls so freaking straight? As you'll see in the video below—which seems it was produced in the '80s—they use a combination of snowblowing vehicles and a backhoe to "sculpt" the walls.

Möbius Strip: Plans to Build World’s First 3D-Printed House

2013-03-19T21:02:00.005-07:00

An unlikely and unique collaboration is in the works between an architect, an inventor and a mathematician-plus-artist to produce a first-of-its-kind printed house in a single shot using cutting-edge 3D construction technologies.

Janjaap Ruijssenaars of Universe Architecture has teamed up with, Enrico Dini, the developer of D-Shape, with help from Rinus Roelofs to design and implement a looping wonder home made of a kind of concrete. It will use sand as the primary aggregate, and be based on huge panels (nearly 20 by 30 feet) with infill.

This connected-panel system will be three-dimensionally complex – incredibly difficult for normal manufacturing processes, and consequently an amazing illustration of the potential of 3D printing for architectural applications. The Möbius strip shape, suggesting infinite possibility, seems an apt one for the project.

MYO - Muscle gesturing

2013-03-19T21:00:00.004-07:00

Well folks, looks like 2013 is shaping up to be the year gesture control finally becomes available to the masses.

First up, the Leap motion controller that caused such a blog stir (we covered it here and here) will start shipping on May 13th, just about a year after they began taking pre-orders.

Hot on their heels—or forearms, I should say—is the Myo controller pictured above, an arm bracelet that you wear well above your wrist but below the elbow. Why the weird position? The Myo actually reads the electrical activity in your muscles, rather than relying on a camera.

This seems like a pretty smart approach, as the Myo can decipher complex finger gestures, flicks and rotations without requiring line-of-sight. That suddenly opens up a new world of interactivity that doesn't require the user be sitting in front of a camera-equipped computer, or dancing around in front of a Kinect. Peep this:

Looks amazing, no? If it works as advertised, it will have a much broader range of applications than the stationary Leap, and the Myo's price reflects that: The Leap's going for $80, while the Myo will run you $150. It's up for pre-order now and they're claiming it will ship later this year.

DITA’S GOWN: A 3D PRINTED DRESS

2013-03-19T20:56:00.004-07:00

I’ve witnessed many amazing things that come from the magic of 3D printing, but never in a million years would I imagine it transposing to the fashion world. Leave it to 3D master Francis Bitonti to make it a reality in this collaboration, Dita’s Gown, with designer Michael Schmidt Studios and Shapeways, one of the pioneers in the 3D printing world.

Read more at Design Milk: http://design-milk.com/ditas-gown-a-3d-printed-dress/#ixzz2O35dcejj

A Projector And A Fog Machine Create Startling Virtual Spaces

2013-03-19T20:54:00.001-07:00

British artist Anthony McCall’s “solid light” sculptures have received an outsized amount of attention this spring, with three concurrent exhibitions in Switzerland, London, and France. An exhibition at Sean Kelly Gallery this month adds New York to the list. The name of McCall’s stateside show--Face to Face--cleverly functions both as a structural description of the work and a way to name what happens when you’re inside of it.

Upstairs at Sean Kelly, visitors are ushered into a silent, darkened room filled with the sickly sweet scent of fog machines. In the center of the room, two projection screens hang from the ceiling. Dual projectors cast thin strings of white light onto the screens from opposite angles, casting shattered pieces of what looks like parabolic arcs that eek slowly into new positions.

But the piece doesn’t really “start” until you step in front of the projector and enter the volumetric spaces created by the thin white lines. Thanks to the blankets of synthetic fog seeping through the darkened gallery, the white light becomes material, a three-dimensional element of the space. The curving parabolas create soaring walls that reminded me of Eero Saarinen; in other spots, choppy blocks of light look almost Brutalist (it’s hard not to fall back on architectural comparisons). Though I think I fall on the cynical end of the art goer spectrum; I found myself dumbly uttering “whoa” into the empty weekday gallery.

Face to Face, like much of McCall’s work, falls squarely into late-stage phenomenology territory. “The slowness of the works makes for a different kind of engagement,” he told a European news crew last year during a Hamburger Bahnhof show of his work. “The pieces do begin to change, but they never move ahead of you. They always move more slowly than you do.” If there’s some commentary here on the intangibility of the digital age, he isn’t saying so. “I find the public has very interesting things to say about it without me suggesting what it means,” he added.

Check out Face to Face until March 23.

Roland Snooks - Encoding Algorithmic Matter

2013-03-19T20:52:00.002-07:00

Best Indoor Bike Parks

2013-03-19T20:52:00.000-07:00

In 2004, Ray Petro transformed a Cleveland warehouse into a rideable version of Chutes and Ladders, inspiring a wave of other indoor bike parks to open across the country. Not just formountain bikers, these playgrounds offer a haven for cyclists who want to ride through thewinter and hone their bike-handling skills. Practicing wheel lifts and subtle weight shifts onuneven terrain will improve your confidence and agility on the road or trail come spring. Put these five parks on your must-ride list.

Architecture schools -

2012-01-13T20:42:00.001-08:00

World Trade Center... Design Agony Continues

2012-01-10T15:01:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK (AP) — The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has scrapped a plan to cover the concrete base of a World Trade Center tower with 2,000 clear prismatic glass panels due to technical problems.

The New York Times reports that manufacturing the panels at such a large scale has proved to be difficult. It says the refinishing process that gives the glass its prismatic effect makes it brittle and prone to shatter.

Construction of 1 World Trade Center has already risen to 65 stories. The glass was to cover the skyscraper's 185-foot-tall concrete base, created to withstand a vehicular bomb.

The agency tells the Times that traditional clear glass will likely be used instead. The building is still expected to open as planned in January 2014.

Information from: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com

Ranking 2012 - Schools of Architecture

2012-01-09T19:16:00.000-08:00

Construction methods and materials
1	California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
2	Kansas State University
3	University of Kansas
4	Syracuse University
5	University of Cincinnati Research and theory

Research and Theory
1	Harvard University
2	Yale University
3	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4	Princeton University
5	Southern California Institute of Architecture Sustainable design practices

Sustainable design practices
1	Kansas State University
2	California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
3	University of Oregon
4	University of California, Berkeley
5	Auburn University
6	Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Most-admired undergraduate architecture programs
1	Cornell University
2	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
3	Cooper Union
4	Syracuse University
5	California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Most-admired graduate architecture programs
1	Harvard University
2	Columbia University
3	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4	University of Pennsylvania
5	University of Michigan

2011 America’s Best Architecture Schools, Learning From America’s Best Schools

2012-01-09T18:56:00.000-08:00

Stepping into a successful career in architectural practice begins with education. Norman Foster, a Yale University graduate, said that two strong influences have contributed to his success and resilience over the years. They are, first, the people he met in school and during his formative professional practice years and, second, the time he spent in college. Foster has enjoyed a unique and storied career, but parts of his experience are common to all architects.

At university, students’ experiences can significantly enhance or diminish their interests as well as their likelihood for future success. This gives schools both tremendous opportunity and huge responsibility, since what happens in them has the potential to change the careers of individuals as well as the architecture profession as a whole. This is one response to a question I’ve been called on to answer many times since publishing the first “America’s Best Architecture & Design Schools” rankings in DesignIntelligence 12 years ago: Why rank schools?

Another answer is given by the architecture firms that employ recent graduates. If the purpose of a professional degree is to prepare students for professional practice, then how well are degree-granting institutions performing the task? Ongoing research by the Design Futures Council and Greenway Group shows that architecture firms and related professional practice careers are being deconstructed and reinvented at an accelerated pace. Beyond the economy, for example, the profession is being shaped by profound changes in technology, such as building information modeling. Can educational institutions keep pace with the changing needs of 21st-century practices? And so we ask in our survey, “In your firm’s hiring experience in the past five years, which schools are best preparing students for success in the architecture profession?”

Time for change

Since 2004, when DesignIntelligence began ranking undergrad and grad programs separately, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design has held top honors for its M.Arch. program. So it is fascinating to consider how the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning nudged Harvard out of No. 1 this year. In fact, Michigan didn’t even appear on our list of top 20 grad programs last year. It hovered just below the requisite votes needed to tie for 20th place.

Suddenly emerging at the top seems like an unlikely story for Michigan. Yet the unfolding story is even more interesting. In her Dean’s Message posted on the Taubman College Web site, Monica Ponce de Leon explains how the school is reformulating a pedagogical strategy that has remained virtually unchanged in architecture education for more than a century. To forward Taubman’s goal of more realistically paralleling contemporary professional practice, studio work is being integrated into other required courses; various areas of expertise (history, structures, urban planning) are being integrated into the studio; and design studios are being paired with courses in other areas of concentration — a structures course or a structures seminar, for example.

Each year in connection with the Best Schools survey, DesignIntelligence conducts a parallel survey of architecture deans and department heads to assess opinions about their own and peer institutions. It is telling that this year the deans’ five most admired M.Arch. programs are the same top five chosen by practitioners, albeit in a slightly altered ranking: Harvard University, Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, and the University of Michigan.

And space for continuity

In the undergrad program rankings, the interesting story this year is that school rankings are remarkably consistent. The top five schools have the following rank average over the past eight years: Cornell University, 1.25; Syracuse University, 3.75; Rice University, 5.37; California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, 3.75; and Virginia Tech, 4.50. In addition to these stalwarts, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Texas at Austin, Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Oregon have made the top 20 for eight straight years.

Top-ranked Cornell University shows devoted consistency among the student body as well, with 97 percent indicating a belief that they will be well prepared for their profession upon graduation, and 97 percent giving Cornell’s program a grade of A (excellent) or B (above average).

Among the 20 top-rated B.Arch. programs this year, nine improved their position in the rankings: Rice University, Southern California Institute of Architecture, Carnegie Mellon University, Pratt Institute, the University of Southern California, the University of Kansas, Cooper Union, the University of Notre Dame, and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Deans’ picks for their five most admired B.Arch. programs diverged a bit from practitioners’ favorites: Auburn University, which was ranked 18 by practitioners, was chosen No. 1 by deans. In particular, academics said they valued the program’s integration with the Rural Studio and its highly focused curriculum, both of which serve to engage students at a high level. Rounding out the deans’ most admired undergrad programs were Cornell University, Virginia Tech, the University of Texas at Austin, and Syracuse University.

Whenever I speak or write about the DesignIntelligence Best Schools research, I add a caveat: It is important to be aware of the limitations of any ranking system. Small schools are at a disadvantage, as are newer programs, simply because there are fewer graduates; therefore, fewer professional practices are familiar with the fruits of these programs. And we’ve seen that some large programs that have drifted in the past are coming back with strong, innovative programs but may not yet have regained their brand strength. Some schools are a good deal better than they are able to communicate. And in any case, a student’s choice of program must go beyond rankings and delve into the specifics important to that individual. The ability to connect with peers, mentors, and educational options that speak to personal needs and preferences is imperative.

A robust profession requires a regular infusion of strong up-and-comers. The architecture profession is dependent on schools to deliver fresh talent each year, individuals who are not only driven by their passion for the profession but who come prepared with what they’ll need to begin a career that will last for decades. Many professional-practice beliefs and methods are born in tertiary education, with accredited architecture programs serving as either leaders or laggards in innovation. This is why professional-practice leaders and educators need to continue discussing how to align their priorities and establish strategic pathways forward.

James P. Cramer is the founding editor of DesignIntelligence and cochair of the Design Futures Council. He is chairman of the Greenway Group, a management consultancy in the Atlanta area with clients worldwide. He discusses the survey and how schools make it to the top in a video on architecturalrecord.com.

Milled seating - Mehmet

2011-12-18T13:39:00.001-08:00

Chair by Anaelle

2011-12-18T13:25:00.000-08:00

Transforming Lava Lamp - Anil Dipu

2011-12-18T09:06:00.001-08:00

Multipurpose Seating / Table / footrest / Lamp - Takao Watanabe

2011-12-18T09:05:00.000-08:00

Cardboard Bench - Radek Chrzanowski

2011-12-18T09:02:00.001-08:00

Cleopatra Lamp - Linda Bardhi

2011-12-18T09:01:00.000-08:00

Interactive Multimedia Art Installation

2011-09-30T17:11:00.000-07:00

Design by Erik Jester

Technical Support by Michael Chladil

Supervised by Program Director Insook Choi, Prof. Robin Bargar, and Prof. Illya Azaroff

This work was produced as part of the Interdisciplinary Team Project and

The Emerging / Honors Scholars Program @ NYCCT

This is a spatial rendering of an interactive art installation. The design narrative is based on Jean Genet's one-act play, The Maids. The maquette presented here proposes a future construct not as an isolated object, but an extension of literary and performance themes within a museum gallery or theater lobby. Audiences, before and after the play will encounter similar interior settings and motifs related to the play. The physical constructs integrate multi-media technologies with interactive sound and video, combining the actor's performances with visual metaphors and images of the visitors in the installation.

Visitors’ actions are integrated by sensing body movements and objects’ movements. Computational image processing extracts visual features that are used to generate video images; movements of people and objects such as doors and drawers determine the timing of display events. Installation objects are instrumented with embedded processing such as the arduino board to enable distributed control of video and audio displays. Image sources include actors’ performances and live images of visitors.

Bloon

2011-09-19T17:21:00.001-07:00

HIBA-tat

2011-09-17T09:16:00.001-07:00

2011-08-18T20:00:00.001-07:00