MArch Portfolio Year Two

Initial Model Ideas (24.01.17)

This week I have been exploring the possibilities of Pulse Width Modulation with the Arduino and practising with sensors and actuators to understand how they can be used to draw interactively. Additionally, I have started to think about the new model whilst the previous will be used in the studio tomorrow. Initial ideas are:

- One half of the model would experiment with the moving observer whilst the other uses a moving object and a stationary observer.

- Creating a pillar of light at the heart of the model that changes in colour as participants move closer or further from it (Doppler effect 'red-shift') using Doppler sensors.

- the machine will include various layers of patterns and textures that project onto the picture plane by the light pillar. The distance from the light and the intensity of the light can be altered as well as the acceleration of the movement away and towards the source. This can be continually recorded using a goPro camera.

- the sound in the room can affect the combinations of the layers as they rotate around each other. 

- the base can be continually rotating to force people away and towards the the main object (light pillar) to continually adjust their proximity. 

- The model would be designed symmetrically with two adjusting picture planes. As the variations take effect, the two picture planes will create two different drawings, asymmetrical. 

Week Four - 18.10.16

This week I worked on creating a grasshopper script that would allow me to play around with multiple projections of the same geometry. The objective of the script was to be able to vary the angle of the plane, the distance of the projection plane to the object and the position along the viewing path. The drawing above overlays these multiple projections. I will work on adjusting the geometry in rhino and the viewing path this week to continue the experiment.

Week Two

Designing through making.  I am going to start my design process by creating physical model as a machine/ tool for developing ideas about projection. I will start to design the way in which the machine draws. Can I present the machine with an object and ask it to represent multiple faces of it at the same time using perspective techniques? Could the model be a made up of a series of objects that have specific behavioural properties that relate to each other and operate as a system to create the drawing.       

Week One - Pin Up (28.09.16)

I will be continuing the theme of adaptation and interaction in Architecture from Year One. Here I have begun to log the history of the subject picking out key references such as Contamin and Dutert Galerie des Machines, Cedric Price/ Gordon Pask's Fun Palace, Archigram's Walking City and more recently Nat Chard's drawing uncertainty along with Ruairi Glynn's Performative Ecologies installation.

From reading the book Architecture and Disjunction by Bernard Tschumi, I was interested in the Kuleshov Effect and how the same effect can take place in Architecture. For example, the same event can be altered by each new space as it is the combination of event and space that is essential in evoking different emotions. Also, the sequence/ relationship of space, event and movement are all key in adaptable/ interactive architecture. Tschumi also discusses the topic of architecture and transgression. The term transgression is symbolically loaded, meaning to violate, infringe, to go beyond the boundaries of law, commands and moral principles. In architecture this mean challenging the norms, exploring hybridity and going beyond standard practice.

I have chosen to use the Strand for my site this year. One of the key architecture themes linked with the Strand is transgression. Wren, Gibbs, Gibson and Jones are second generation Palladians as they were taking ideas from Italy and translating/ reinterpreting it into their own form of Classical Architecture. Transgression in architecture is often a convoluted process of translation particularly when there is no first hand experience of the architecture. However, there is also a wilful process of transgression where the initial ideas taken are worked on and something new is added. 

The link between machines and classical architecture is also an interesting topic to progress with. Classical architecture is very systematic, the geometry is based on interrelationships - there are interrelating operations of geometry. Machines are also reliant on these interrelating operations (A machine for living is a geometric system). Is the machine just something that is capable of movement or is it about an intrinsic virtual structure that has interrelationships.