matrical analysis_03

matrical analysis_02

This series is the result of a second 03 x 06 matrical study. Each row went through a single (either scale or shear) deformation in a single direction. Surfaces in the final row were rotated 30 degrees and scaled on the y-axis. For this analysis, the transformations have occurred surficially without separating and manipulating the components (vertices, faces) of the original.

matrical analysis_01

This series is the result of the first 04 x 03 matrical analysis; the only deformations occurred in the top and bottom rows, where the object was scaled in x and z direction, respectively.

"potential performative effects"

Every cultural object has a determinant history (lineage) that can be definitively traced back to a singular physical item or artifact. Rahim argues that through contemporary techniques and a deconstruction of these finite lineages, new effects emerge when observed simultaneously over time.

Memes are copied forms of behavior that as passed down evolutionarily “through a non-genetic means, usually through imitation.” It is only through both variation and selection that lineages can produce new performative effects, because both are not self-replicating. According to Stephen J. Gould, these deviations allow for cultural change. Rahim methodically traces the evolution of a computer as an example to illustrate how lineages, memes, and ideas coincide to spontaneously create an artifact. As a nonlinear process, it can be analyzed but not replicated. And in order to extract meaning from both the artifact and the organizational processes from which the object originated, it cannot be viewed as a static entity. Rahim suggests a contextual (temporal) understanding of the object is necessary, and can only be accomplished via contemporary techniques.

‘Techniques,’ as defined, is “a way of carrying out a particular task.” Rahim integrates the noun through the article in a seemingly broad manner. His lack of specificity however, is directly related to how “digital” design should operate: loosely and perhaps without an agenda. Utilizing programs to achieve a final product (image, built work, drawing) negates the ability we have to use computational power to our advantage. It is a manner of recognizing that without the systems’ capabilities, many performative effects actualized in architecture would be either ineffective or impossible.

Another critical aspect of the readings is present in the first word of the title: the potential for lineages to produce these effects versus what is actualized. What does this mean in terms of architecture? Well, by using existing temporally dependent lineages and conditions and reconstituting them within a temporally independent software program, truly “new” performative effects emerge that cannot be conceived or imagined previously. Cool.

the culprit

I've been attempting to adjust vertices today, in hopes to get a model to 3d print for tomorrow. The .stl I had ready for Friday morning had virtually no thickness, and as a result couldn't be printed. Bummer. I think this area I highlighted is one of the problematic spots, as well as at the edge where it folds. Michael suggested splitting it on the seam a few times along an isoparm. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

project_1a images

These drawings are a re-presentation of the air intake in the back of he vehicle. After setting down the initial contour lines, I worked mostly from a perspective view by manipulating the control points in order to maintain clear edges but keep the b-splines. The images exploit my process, to a degree, by calling attention to the points in space and their connection to (but detachment from) the object itself.

process_1a

About the time that I had drawn three longitudinal contour lines did I realize this first (bottom) iteration was not successful; it would have been better to draw the contours transversely across the car from front to back instead of bottom-up. For the second study, I looked at the air intake by focusing on a smaller volume which I could control with more precision.

process_1a

Vidler, "Death Cube 'K'"

Within the excerpt titled “Death Cube ‘K,’” Vidler first calls attention to the work of fiction writers such as Franz Kafka and William Gibson in an attempt to draw parallels between their highly mechanized, pseudo-realities (as constructed in their short stories) with the recent work of Morphosis Architecture. It is significant he chose to illustrate work of Franz Kafka and the like because early twentieth century writers were part of a select few who responded to and against the rise of modernism within a bureaucratic society. He explains that the psychologically driven, situationally based environments that Kafka created were indeed under-theorized; the various scapes and scenarios he envisioned were a backlash to “the horror in the merely schematic” facilitated by modernist values. Vidler explores how the firm is re-evaluating terms sometimes used simultaneously, modernism and modernity, to explore the ramifications of a more critical study and possibly extract a new and avant-garde type of modernism.

It is significant that Vidler chooses an early twentieth century novelist to shed light on where our society is headed both sociologically and conceptually within the realm of architecture. The questions and vivid imagery present in the work of Kafka (and perhaps even more so in the work of EM Forster and Raymond Chandler) strikingly anticipate many relevant issues present in our contemporary existence. Like the term associated with architects Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi in the 1980s, their hyper-realities were a deconstruction of modernism and the infatuation with speed, technology, and identity.

Morphosis harbor the dream of “liberating space” and concern themselves with reconstituting the private realm back to the public. One of the ways in which they attempt to do this is via an investigation of typology. Vidler states that while the emergence of the model and the type (as pertaining to architecture and put forward by Foucault) were once a concern among architects practicing in the 1960s, “the word ‘type’ itself has…become an almost extinct term.” I found it particularly interesting that both the office building “type” and the apartment house “type” has remained objectively static. Presently, the architects at Morphosis are concerning themselves with typology to question fundamental spatial organization. How has it translated from the era of Foucault and is this translation valid? How has the advancement of technology from industrialism transformed both what we can create physically (or, well, digitally) and how we react to those conditions psychologically and socially? How can it inform contemporary design?

Reading a Kafka excerpt and EM Forsters’ “The Machine Stops” makes me feel simultaneously uneasy and enthralled. It completely mind-blowing to realize that a century ago, Forster (maybe the grandpa of cyberpunk?) wrote a short story about what is essentially a virtual reality “pod.” How can you anticipate such a contemporary conceptual idea? Vidler alludes to Forster’s hindsight, saying that Kafka was writing “through the lens of a traditional sense of disaster and redemption.” Certainly, he saw the negative repercussions that technology brought about while writing during the First World War.

Vidler uses Kafka as a framework for contemporary discourse about Morphosis because it was he that first articulated a dilemma that faces both theorists and architects: what is “new” and how do we invent it without the reliance on the form of the “old?” Kafka surmises that both trajectories (Vidler recounts Benjamin’s description of elliptical foci) can coexist, albeit as fragmented and broken. It is here that the connection is made between the former appraisal of modern life and the formal geometries present in the work of Morphosis.

"why tectonics is square and topology is groovy"

Lynn states that our current fascination and dependency upon geometric conflicts in architecture is a response against idealized, pure forms. Indeed, an interrogative process. He exposes a number of philosophers and theorists who both oppose and support the idea that “architecture…resists the play of writing more than any other.” That is, the act of writing (a heterogeneous, mutable and perhaps even illogical ((?)) operation) opposes the static, utopian forms conceived of in architecture and reminiscent of the inherent geometry found in the human body. The exactitude and symmetry celebrated by the Canons of Proportion text and drawings thus express what Lynn is arguing against: true geometries reducible to ideal forms. He calls for an architecture of anexact forms and rigor. Let’s be more like writing.

His argument presupposes that the act of writing is in fact “indeterminate, non-ideal, heterogeneous, and undecidable.” I am having difficulty understanding the process as such. Maybe I need a better working definition for what writing actually means? How is writing any different than critical thinking and inflection? Is it the physical manifestation of putting words to paper and editing and re-editing letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs to offer a coherent argument?

I wonder if writing is the best model to juxtapose the viewpoint of Bataille and Hollier that architecture is “reducible, static, exact, and fixed.” While the collection of essays was written in 1998, from the perspective of developments in computational power and cyberspace the book is dated. Currently, researchers and philosophers are drawing parallels between the architecture of the computer and how our minds work. It is in this non-linearity of the internet and neuronal firing that best exhibit what Lynn describes as an “anti-architectural” amorphous process.

Lynn offers a critical distinction between exact, inexact, and anexact forms in order to support his argument. He presents as evidence a number of disciplines concerned with measuring and mapping amorphous objects and conditions. I was not familiar with the word “anexact” before this reading, but now seem to understand the integrity of the distinction between the three terms.

The second article is about blobs, with respect to both the particular and the general. Lynn likes blobs. He argues that these form(less) objects have the capacity to change contemporary tectonic discourse. Formally indeterminate, they cannot be reduced to any certain geometry and have an almost parasitic nature to them.

Perhaps blobs operate at the highest level of abstraction within an architectural context? Indeed, extrinsic forces and conditions coupled with the physical properties of the envelope determine their resultant shape. It seems to me that these intensive, conditional idiosyncrasies of site are abstracted to the nth degree until a blob is born.

His biases in both essays are apparent. Favoring incompleteness and improbability, the evidence presented support his claims. I was intrigued by his discussion of the planimetric and sectional freedom manifested by Le Corbusier in both the Maison Dom-ino and Citrohan. Implicit within their simple frames, each illustrates the infinite possibilities of the random section model and helped my further understanding of a new favorite word, anexact. Even with infinitesimally close transactions, will we ever be able to model and map an exact amorphous form? It seems to me that even at the rate computational power is exploding daily, it is impossible to replicate a three dimensional object at a level that it can be deemed exact.



I often wish there existed a verb to describe the act of questioning, creating and influencing the built environment. And I wish it was called architect-ing.

source object

Lamborghini Diablo will serve as my precedent for the first project. Looking through the selection of drawings distributed for this exercise, I was enticed by the body lines on this car. The air intakes on either side would be a very interesting study. It's a hot car. $240,000 USD hot.