Digital Architecture

Spatial Representations and Urban Planning

by Gilberto Corso

trabalho apresentado no INPUT 2012 - Seventh International Conference on Informatics and Urban and Regional Planning, Cagilari, maio/2012.
referência da publicação:
PEREIRA, Gilberto Corso ; ROCHA, Maria Célia Furtado. Spatial representations and urban planning. In: Michele Campagna; Andrea De Montis; Federica Isola; Sabrina Lai; Cheti Pira; Corrado Zoppi. (Org.). Planning Support Tools: Policy Analysis, Implementation and Evaluation. 1 ed. Roma: Edizioni FrancoAngeli, 2012, v. 1, p. 611-623.

Urban models are idealized representations of the city, abstractions or simplifications of reality that seek to... more Urban models are idealized representations of the city, abstractions or simplifications of reality that seek to describe the urban reality, predict or plan for the city future. Digital technologies allow both, reading and analysis of urban realities, and their communication between various social actors - citizens, organizations, corporations - enabling access and diverse use of information. Digital representations could be used to amplify public participation but they also allow the manipulation of public opinion. The paper argues that the digital representations currently used in Urban Planning derived from topographical data acquisition must be extended to represent the social networks that today augment the public space and the current Urban Planning practices could be closer to the current social practices and their representations.

ANALISI GRAFICA DELLE OPERE DI ALBERTO SARTORIS: DISEGNO PROGETTATO O PROGETTO DISEGNATO? (2010)

by Cettina Santagati

M. Galizia, C. Santagati, ANALISI GRAFICA DELLE OPERE DI ALBERTO SARTORIS: DISEGNO PROGETTATO O PROGETTO DISEGNATO? Atti del X Congreso Internacional de Expresion Grafica Aplicada a la Edificacion, 2, 3, 4 dicembre 2010, Universidad de Alicante, ES, Editorial Marfil, Alcoy, ISBN 978-84-268-1528-6 pp 853-859

Local Optioneering: Producing Complex Geometries through Opportunistic Networking

by Stanislav Roudavski

Cite as: Warnock, Finnian and Stanislav Roudavski (2012). 'Local Optioneering: Producing Complex Geometries through Opportunistic Networking', in Beyond Codes and Pixels: Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, ed. by Thomas Fischer et al. (Chennai, India: CAADRIA), pp. 487-494

How can small architectural practices participate in contemporary architectural experimentation? One route is through... more How can small architectural practices participate in contemporary architectural experimentation? One route is through engagement with complex, parametrically controlled geometries. However, the utilisation of such geometries by small practices is comparatively rare. We sought to explore the circumstances of such engagements with the hope of finding what can make them more feasible. To this end, we developed a purpose-specific methodology based on the simulation of an integrated design workflow. To develop and assess this simulation, we exposed a hypothetical project to multiple stakeholders including fabricators, engineers, architects, builders, clients, planning authorities and researchers. The outcomes suggest that the conceptual stance described as optioneering in application to large projects can also be productive at smaller scales.

Keywords: digital architectural design; digital fabrication; local
expertise; parametric geometry; design innovation; optioneering.

For images and further details, see: http://issuu.com/finn.warnock/docs/local_optioneering_issuu/17

Estranged-Gaze Pedagogy: Probing Architectural Computing through Multiple Ways of Seeing

by Stanislav Roudavski

Cite as: Roudavski, Stanislav (2012). 'Estranged-Gaze Pedagogy: Probing Architectural Computing through Multiple Ways of Seeing', in Beyond Codes and Pixels: Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, ed. by Thomas Fischer, et al. (Chennai, India: CAADRIA), pp. 659–668

This paper discusses the challenges of teaching architectural design theory in a world transformed by the digital... more This paper discusses the challenges of teaching architectural design theory in a world transformed by the digital revolution. Design is changing in dramatic ways and architecture is changing with it but a well-defined body of knowledge that can serve as a foundation for digital architectural design has – as yet – not been established. Relevant concepts, methods and precedents originate in many fields that are typically well beyond the scope of reading suggested to (or encountered by) students of architecture. This material is highly dynamic, often contradictory and, typically, of varying quality. Presenting this developing body of knowledge to students is a difficult challenge. A suitable pedagogical approach ought to reflect the heterogeneous and volatile nature of the contemporary design discourse enabling critical analysis of existing design practices, evidenced defence of one’s own creative work and successful communication with many heterogeneous stakeholders.

Keywords: critical pedagogy; digital architectural design; architectural theory; architectural education.

Urban and Architectural Design of the Piazza del Governo in Enna (2012)

by Cettina Santagati

Restuccia F, Galizia M., Santagati C. (2012) Urban and Architectural Design of the Piazza del Governo in Enna, in Proceedings: First International Conference on Architecture and Urban Design (1-ICAUD), Epoka University Press, Tirana. ISBN 9789928-135-01-8

Digital Occupation: Gaza’s High-Tech Enclosure

by helga tawil-souri

Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 41, no. 1 (Winter 2012)

In disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel did not end the occupation but technologized it through purportedly... more In disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel did not end the occupation but technologized it through purportedly “frictionless” high-technology mechanisms. The telecommunications sector was turned over to the Palestinian Authority under Oslo II and subcontracted to Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL), furthering a neoliberal economic agenda that privately “enclosed” digital space. Coming on top of Israel’s ongoing limitations on Palestinian land-lines, cellular, and Internet infrastructures, the result is a “digital occupation” of Gaza characterized by increasing privatization, surveillance, and control. While deepening Palestinian economic reliance on Israel and making Palestinian high-tech firms into dependent agents, digital occupation also enhances Israel’s territorial containment of the Strip.

Sensitive environments. Spatial interactive technologies for preserving cultural heritage

by Letizia Bollini

The digital dimension has wasted no time in making its impact felt in the cultural heritage. Many museums have been... more The digital dimension has wasted no time in making its impact felt in the cultural heritage. Many museums have been providing a web-based taste of what they have to offer since back in the nineties: sometimes, this has been no more than a mere exercise in positioning, while others have created simulations of their interiors, achieving a degree of correspondence between the physical and virtual dimensions, and others again have used 3D representation and simulation media (such as VRLM or QuickTime VR). In the first generation of such projects, the focus was on blending in and simulating, while today’s potential for spatial (even before 3D) ostentation has opened the way to new scenarios, whose languages and approaches overwrite the conventional visit to a container of culture. The digital dimension is breaking out of its favourite role (the web) and into the reality of space, shaping it to suit hybrid logics that range from a theatrical rendering of information to triggering proxemic and emotional responses; permeating and overlapping real space, like a layer of knowledge, and directly manipulating the virtual dimension, where it questions physical objects by interacting with a conceptual space. Since traditional models of museum design provide pre-determined, fixed spatial settings, the experience they introduce remains symbolic, narrative and sequential. Compared to this, the new frontiers of digital museum design work on a logic that is closer to the real world, blending the place where the interaction takes place together with the display, so that the visitor’s gestures move away from projection and metaphor and towards simulating physical gestures. Technology is becoming an increasingly transparent tool for involving the observeruser in meta-narratives: potential layers of the cultural tale that explode and/or recompose units of meaning co-ordinated by a unifying act of direction. This new paradigm is matched by a change in perspective: instead of a surface where contact takes place, what is designed now is an interactive event, a performance that is staged to take place in the user-author’s space-time.

MAP 1: Investigative Designing

by Stanislav Roudavski

Cite as: Roudavski, Stanislav, ed., (2011). MAP 1: Investigative Designing (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, Melbourne School of Design)

A book showcasing ideas, projects, designs and courses united by the theme of Investigative Designing (and digital... more A book showcasing ideas, projects, designs and courses united by the theme of Investigative Designing (and digital architectural design). Realised at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne.

Paper copies can be purchased here: http://www.bookshop.unimelb.edu.au/bookshop/p?8880000451055

J. Suárez Otero (2010), Digging in a Medieval Cathedral: History of the Archaeological Research in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

by José Suárez Otero

Lecture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, november 14, 2010)

Updated english version of: SUÁREZ OTERO, J. (1999), La Tumba de Santiago, entre la Fe y la Arqueología, in VV.AA., Compostela na Historia. Redescubrimento- rexurdimento (Santiago), 15- 22.

Bari Urban Visions

by Anna Christiana Maiorano

Drama and Context in Real-Time Virtual Environments: Use of Pre-Scripted Events as a Part of an Interactive Spatial Mediation Framework

by Stanislav Roudavski

Cite as: Nitsche, Michael, Stanislav Roudavski, Maureen Thomas and François Penz (2003). 'Drama and Context in Real-Time Virtual Environments: Use of Pre-Scripted Events as a Part of an Interactive Spatial Mediation Framework', in Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, ed. by Stefan Göbel et al. (Darmstadt: Fraunhofer IRB Verlag), pp. 296-310

We suggest that the dramatically engaging mediation of an experience of place should be built in as a fundamental... more We suggest that the dramatically engaging mediation of an experience of place should be built in as a fundamental capability of a compelling and meaningful virtual environment (VE). Our main objective is to develop flexible interactive techniques that supply VE’s with a coherent context and make the resulting ‘virtual place’ available to the user in a dramatically engaging way. To support the concept of narrative expressive space, we propose a three-layer multi-purpose spatial mediation framework that utilizes an interactive narrative structure to coordinate stylized dramatic camera work, lighting, effects and sound. We then describe the use of pre-scripted events as a layer in this framework and explain the inherent benefits and problems, using a single-user prototype environment as illustration. The work offers guidelines for the design of VE’s to all fields that combine narrativity and spatiality, such as interactive entertainment, education and architecture.

Building Cuthbert Hall Virtual College As a Dramatically Engaging Environment

by Stanislav Roudavski

Cite as: Nitsche, Michael, Stanislav Roudavski, Maureen Thomas and François Penz (2002). 'Building Cuthbert Hall Virtual College As a Dramatically Engaging Environment', in Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2002, ed. by Thomas Binder, Judith Gregory and Ina Wagner (Palo Alto: CPSR), pp. 386-390

This paper outlines the interdisciplinary nature, collaborative work patterns and role of aesthetics in the Cuthbert... more This paper outlines the interdisciplinary nature, collaborative work patterns and role of aesthetics in the Cuthbert Hall Virtual College research project at the Cambridge University Moving Image Studio (CUMIS) and the Centre for Applied Research in Education Technology (CARET). The project identifies key properties of dramatically engaging real-time three-dimensional virtual environments (RT 3D VE) and how the holistic experiential phenomenon of place is organised and mediated through spatial narrative patterns. Interdisciplinary by nature, the project requires a collaborative approach between science, engineering, media and architecture, and the results are revealing for all these areas. The Cuthbert Hall project invites discussion of the importance in the creation and use of RT 3D VE’s - under single and multi-user conditions - of articulate aesthetics (the quality of architectural, visual and audio design; the production and incorporation of dramatic properties) and of the conditions required for collaborative, communicative use of the environment.

The full theoretical and technical discussions as well as the evaluation results are outside the scope of this submission.

Selective Jamming: Digital Architectural Design in Foundation Courses

by Stanislav Roudavski

Cite as: Roudavski, Stanislav (2011). 'Selective Jamming: Digital Architectural Design in Foundation Courses', International Journal of Architectural Computing, 9, 4, pp. 437-461

This article considers how the concepts and practice of digital architectural design can influence early architectural... more This article considers how the concepts and practice of digital architectural design can influence early architectural education.The article approaches this topic through one example, the Virtual Environments course – a constituent of the Bachelor of Environments program at the University of Melbourne.The institutional remit of this course is to introduce first-year students to the roles of design representation. However, recently, the course developed to encompass these pragmatic educational aims and began to question canonical attitudes towards architectural education and practice.At the core of this course are the notions, methods and skills of digital architectural design, understood not as a stylistic option or as a novel paradigm, but as a catalyst for creativity, experimentation, critical thinking and the sustained growth of creative communities.

What is a geodesic dome and its digitizing

by Delphine Aboohi

One of the most fascinating facts in the geodesic dome is that in the first look it seems that all the triangles are... more One of the most fascinating facts in the geodesic dome is that in the first look it seems that all the triangles are equilateral and all the struts have the identical length. Looking better,we notice that actually the struts have lengths which are similar, but not identical, and here begin all the magic behind the complicity of realizing a geodesic dome.
The geodesic dome is a structure based on a collection of triangles which, by staying in a state of tension, together forms in the space a hypothetical sphere. The sides of the triangles could be identical, forming equilateral triangles, or different, having from two different lengths to infinite. The structure becomes more and more sphere-like as the number of the diverse sizes of the struts increases. The development of the geodesic domes was made by the American engineer Richard Buckminster Fuller at the end of the ’40.
Although Buckminster Fuller developed the geodesic sphere using a sheet of paper and a pen, an easy way to calculate and to verify the stability of the dome is by using the abilities of the computer. In our era, the variety of software which allows us to model three dimensional digital shapes brings us to the same result in different and interesting ways.
In the first part of this paper I will try to explain what a geodesic dome actually is and how it works. The second part will be a tutorial for realizing a 3-D digital geodesic dome.
Following that we will try to transform the geometric form we have created into an architecture discovering the thin limit between a simple geometry and a real architecture.

Un Interstice Impalpable (French version, English and Portuguese translation)).

by Armando Menicacci

Published in Scenes d'architecture. Nouvelles architectures françaises pour le spectacle, Paris, Editions du patrimoine, Culturesfrance/Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris, 2006, pp. 18-23

Published for the exhibition representing France at the 7th international Biennal of Architecture in São Paulo

I'm trying to understand how the performing space is changing since the arrival of digital technologies I'm trying to understand how the performing space is changing since the arrival of digital technologies

CiberARQ: cómo habitar otra realidad y cómo ella vive entre nosotros

by Jorge Gorostiza

Hyper [DM] Process. Emerging Conditions for Digital Design and Manufacturing in Architecture

by Jose Pedro Sousa

> Co-authored with:
Marta Malé-Alemany
> Published in:
Proceedings of the 20th Conference on Education in Computer Aided Architectural Design, eCAADe 2003 (pp. 343-346), Graz
> Year:
2004

This paper participates in the current digital architecture debate taking into account the introduction of CAD-CAM... more This paper participates in the current digital architecture debate taking into account the introduction of CAD-CAM technologies in architecture and focusing on the way this could further change the process of architectural production. It proposes a mode of integration based on associative parametric environments and explains that new conditions for developing architectural projects indeed emerge from this digital framework. Finally, the research developed at DAw is presented as an academic laboratory where the arguments of this paper have been tested and timulated.

Parametric Design as a Technique of Convergence

by Jose Pedro Sousa

> Co-authored with:
Marta Malé-Alemany
> Published in:
Proceedings of the 8th Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia Conference / CAADRIA 2003 (pp. 157-164), Bangkok
> Year:
2003

Following the introduction of parametric design into the contemporary digital architectural scene, this paper exposes... more Following the introduction of parametric design into the contemporary digital architectural scene, this paper exposes its principals as well as some of its major potentialities that emerge from its use in the discipline. It is argued that parametric design is a technique that embraces the concept of “convergence” in multiple dimensions. Through this explanation this paper intends also to highlight the relevance of the integration of this technique in architectural education. Student’s projects are described to illustrate some of the concepts.

Questioning the primacy of visual simulation in an epistemology of digital models

by Mike Christenson

[2008]

In Architecture “in computro” (Proceedings of the 26th Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe, September 17-19, 2008, Higher Institute of Architectural Sciences, University College of Antwerp, Belgium), 889-895. Marc Muylle, editor.

This paper questions the degree to which visual simulations are conventionally assumed to be a primary means of... more This paper questions the degree to which visual simulations are conventionally assumed to be a primary means of entering digital models into productive architectural discourse. The paper considers established means by which digital models are made known, specifically those which place epistemological value on multiple representational modes, particularly building information modeling software. The paper outlines a proposal to displace the use of visual simulation as a primary means of making digital models known.

Trends and Issues in Computer Software Usage in Landscape Architectural Education

by Izham Ghani