PHASE 2: MODELING

ASSIGNMENT 2.1

The second phase of design will be more involved with physical and digital modeling exercises, to enhance the structural development of your project. You will have to test your previous design choices in a more technical way. Your ideas and design concepts should be reinforced or reconsidered by the configuration of the material and visual expression of your building.
As we already pointed out in the Envelope assignments: “The conceptual logic of techne continues to influence the way we configure aspects of our architecture…”.

Particularly, you must define in detail your structure-skin (envelope) system and its components and relationships, as other important design generators affecting the form of your building.

Key words:

Envelope
Body(structure)/Skin
Systems
Physicality
Assembly
Materials
Materiality
Joints
Integration
Expression



To look at:

Reiser+Umemoto, http://www.reiser-umemoto.com/
Sagaponac House, Long island, 2002
New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC
Vector Wall, NYC, 2008

Zaha Hadid, Dorobanti Tower, Bucharest, Romania 2009
www.contemporist.com/2009/01/28/dorobanti-tower-by-zaha-hadid-architects/
Concrete filled steel profiles follow in sinus waves from the ground level to the top of the tower, creating a distinctive identity and complementing the tower design. The concrete filling will give additional strength to the structure and it will provide fire protection to the steel profiles. The facade structure adjusts to the building programme and to the structural forces. At the bottom, the façade grid has denser amplitudes according to the structural requirements for a tower of this height, providing the required load bearing capacity and stiffness to the structure. At the technical and recreation levels, the structure condenses creating almost solid knots. Additionally, the secondary structure supports the main steel frames. It also gives the 200m tower a human scale as the grid of the secondary frame structure reflects the floor heights. Furthermore, the secondary structure could be utilized to support additional glass panels as a shading device.

Zaha Hadid, Saragoza Bridge and Pavillion, Spain 2008, Engineer Arup http://www.bdonline.co.uk
The basic module from which the whole structure has been derived is a triangular steel frame. It is repeated at 3.6m intervals along the bridge’s length, and adjusted in height and width with each iteration. What emerges through this procedure is an arched truss which is then lined out to become a spatial enclosure.
The bridge comprises four such trusses. Two are laid end to end, forming the public route. The other two are rammed in from either side and serve as exhibition halls. The plan that results is trident-like, the handle bearing on the south bank, the forks pointing north.
Early on in the project’s development, the design team considered the possibility of an engineering solution based on a series of shell structures. This was ultimately rejected because the architect felt that such a monolithic structure would give the project the presence of a piece of heavy engineering. What Hadid wanted was a finer, more building-like scale. The bridge’s external image is very largely, therefore, a matter of cladding.
The lower level has been faced in premoulded steel panels, giving it a sinuous, aerofoil profile. Above, we are presented with a skin of mosaic-like glass-reinforced concrete panels. Comprising a series of interlocking triangles, this treatment is built up of ten different cutting patterns, each of which is assigned a distinct tone, graduating from black to white.
Many panels are also omitted, casting a rich pattern of light and shadow on the bridge’s floor.

More substantial openings have been introduced at the junction of the glass-reinforced concrete panels and moulded steel cladding. The interplay between this horizon line, the ridge and the bridge’s underside forms the primary motive for the elevations: a simple idea, but one handled here with fantastic dynamism and invention.
The exhibition halls are entirely lined out, but at high level, large expanses of wall along the public route have been left unlined. This is the one point where the building’s construction is legible: we can see the triangular frames, a grid of secondary steelwork laid on the diagonal, and finally the underside of the GRC panels.

Kas Oosterhuis , www.oosterhuis.nl/quickstart/index: Saltwater Pavillion, 1997, Holland:
Web of North, 2002, Holland. Go to: Projects/Building process

Exercise:

Try to define a 3D diagram of your building structural concept.
Explore the structural/material assembly of your building’s north and south elevation. Draw them in Autocad. Test them digitally with a 3D view that includes the interested parts of your building. Develop a physical sectional model of selected parts of your building involved with south and north facades.

Print the following:
3D diagram representing your building structure.
Autocad drawings of N-S elevations in 1/8’’ scale
Rendered axo/perspective views interesting N-S facades

Physical model of N-S structure/skin systems applied to selected parts of your building. 1/4" scale.

Due on Mon, March 02, 2009
Class pin-up