The digitalisation of architecture has intensified the entanglement of digital materiality and design practice due to the process of remediation, which comprises both conceptual and organisational ...processes. The analysis of remediation demonstrates the ways in which advanced technology enables architects to explore white spaces, defined as the open-ended, unmapped, in-between, and not yet realised territories of conceptual, organisational and physical spaces. Consequently, the process of remediation changes both design practices and the experience of physical spaces. This paper investigates the case of a leading architect, Frank O. Gehry, who has pioneered the digital remediation of architecture. The premise of this paper is that sociomaterial entanglement is an experience idiosyncratic to individual architects, who can escape the determinism of digital materiality by developing their unique digital tools. This paper also stresses the importance of power relations for the construction of digital materiality, which, in turn, influences design practices and innovation in architecture.
•The paper investigates digital materiality and design practice in architecture.•Our empirical study analyses the case of the pioneering architect Frank Gehry.•Architects remediate design tools causing a unique sociomaterial entanglement.•Remediation changes design practice by enabling the exploration of white space.
Networked Space Shelden, Dennis
Architectural design,
03/2013, Volume:
83, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Dennis Shelden, Chief Technology Officer at Gehry Technologies, asserts ‘a networked spatial approach to design informatics’ that brings together a spatial understanding with a current knowledge of ...geometry, the digital and modern communications. This emphasises the connections between not only forms and objects in space, but also among disciplines in a collaborative practice context and of the Web itself. It is a connectedness that has been further facilitated by the adoption of 3‐D building information modelling (BIM) that helps to streamline processes and facilitate better communication among disparate members of the design team.
Sculpting with glass is often the choice of artist and designer Danny Lane. He can combine it with steel, timber, acid etching and numerous other techniques and materials, yet at its root Lane's ...life's work is glass. He teases it to its limits for artistic effect – extruding, moulding, dripping, colouring, striating, cracking and nibbling at its edges. The other partner in his arsenal is light, the way it flickers, beams, glitters and projects. In an interview with AD Editor Neil Spiller, he reveals his thoughts on his creative history, his beloved material and his influences. Danny Lane, Etruscan Chair, 2016 This design for a glass and steel chair was originally conceived in 1986, and has been through various modifications since then; 1990s glass became 25mm thick and the metal was refined, with Jimmy Choo high‐heeled shoe tips.
Vivid colours, commedia dell’arte, collage and hypergraphics, and villae jutting out of the cliffsides designed for the unknown dwellers – are these projects postmodern? American art, architecture ...and design critic Aaron Betsky investigates this question and its context, focusing on the V.I.P. Center Shopping Mall, an unbuilt scheme that was to win Lebbeus Woods his first professional acknowledgement under the auspices of the Progressive Architecture Award.
Abstract
Just as the capabilities of machine tool design influenced the aesthetic form of streamlined industrial design products during the mechanical age, the embedded curves and splines of digital ...software employed by architects today originated in the offices of automobile and aeroplane manufacturers from the post-war era. The use and reproduction of smooth, curvilinear forms would not appear in the field of architecture until many decades after their development within industrial design. The current relationship between architecture and industrial design is forged through the innovative use of Computer Numerical Control fabrication and the parametric procedures and software invented for its use. This article investigates the history of designing and fabricating complex, curved surfaces in industrial design and architecture in order to establish the technological and theoretical links between these two fields. It involves the transfer of technological knowledge amongst a diverse cast of designers, engineers and architects from multiple continents that took place over a period of 40 years. Moreover, this research claims that the origins of parametric architectural design can be found in this moment of developing and programming numerically controlled machines.
Physical objects have long been used in addressing the challenges involved in constructing innovative buildings, yet their significance for collaborative problem solving in inter-organizational ...projects is rarely acknowledged. The aim of this research is to investigate what happens when a project team has to collaboratively innovate to address radical design challenges in a construction setting. We focus on the role of a full-scale mock-up of a façade in transforming the design intent for a building by Frank Gehry into design realization. The concept of boundary objects is used as an analytical lens via a case study methodology utilizing non-participant observation of weekly meetings and workshops over a period of 10 months covering client, consultant and contractor involvement. The research shows the role of mock-ups in radical construction settings is in tension along three delivery dimensions: performance, aesthetic and technical construction. Task completion competed with the requirements for experimentation around innovative problem solving with the how to construct it problem left unresolved. The findings suggest that co-location and synchronicity are critical conditions for collaborative and innovative problem solving in radical construction contexts. Project teams need to create open-ended 'moments' for iterating critical objects and the interactions that take place around them.
This paper analyzes and discusses the constraints and conceptual influences (architectural and artistic) that led architect Frank Gehry to change the way he design in the early 1980. The object ...propose to study these phenomena is the Winton guest house, designed between 1982 and 1985. The oeuvre is considered a key work in the evolution of the architect’s creative process and was defined by Philip Johnson as the ‘80s archetype house. The small building has been addressed by critics (and its author, too) to considerations of a work of art, a sculpture. In 2008 the small house was dismantled and transferred to a new location to serve as exhibition space. However, it was auctioned in 2015 and will again be disassembled and transferred to another location and will serve another use, both remain unknown. This transformation of the house into a “mobile object”, much like a sculpture than a house, can be regarded as a statement of its current existence as a work of art, the paper, however, takes this discussion to the time of work pregnancy in order to better understand the paths trodden by the architect to design such an oeuvre.
In the contemporary world of design, we rely on these new technological advances to keep us at the forefront of our practice, helping us maximize time and stay competitive. ...of the Industrial ...Revolution, high quality steel became mass produced upon the refinement of the Bessemer process in the 1860s. Because this steel was so much stronger and relatively lighter than masonry or concrete, the number of steel buildings skyrocketed. ...of the convenience of using steel, the amount of time that it took to erect a building that was 14 or 15 floors decreased.
Digital technology is eliminating the separation between design and making that had existed since the Renaissance. But in order to seamlessly produce experience rather than just artefacts, architects ...have been turning to software developed for other fields. Adam Modesitt – assistant professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and founding principal of New York‐based Modesitt Design – discusses the new directions that this hybridisation of workflows is allowing architecture to take.
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