VARIABLE FORM GENERATION 125

Variable Form Generation MAIA SMALL ANDREW THURLOW Roger Williams University

Introduction housing, teaching modules, construction trailers and franchise design. This lineage Over the last three centuries, as developing stems from not only the travel trailer industry, industrial techniques and architecture schools but early examples of packaged houses as propagated new design and construction well, such as the Buckminster Fullers models, architects saw opportunities to Dymaxion House and the Lustron House. employ social agendas through large-scale Another PP example would be the Sears production. In education, burgeoning Roebuck, and Company Catalog-bought modernists opined that beauty could be Modern home kits that presented the classified and rigorously taught to students as purchaser with factory cut and organized a matrix of components that would sponsor an materials for assembly on site. Early examples ideal, universal result. Likewise in the of urban models are corporate or profession, standardization created the institutionally controlled urbanism, such as paradigm of the prototype, a singularly factory towns or worker camps. While not designed component that could be mass- factory built, many developer designed produced and transported easily and sold in communities, such as Levittown, New York bulk quantities. Since one design could have continuing into today's MacMansion suburbs, such a large effect, architects hoped to bring could be classified as parallel production good design through production to the masses systems because their production efficiency and instead often failed with notorious stems from a highly similar repetition of consequences: a dogmatic simplification of materials and output on site. These models social roles, monotonous repetition that have generally been highly successful denied individuality and the reinforcement of economically because of their low cost and economic division. This trap has been caused mass scale, however, they have generated by one primary equation: the inverse industries of design that have mostly relationship between repetition and cost. More eliminated the position of architects and any recent models have sought to soften that pretense of social intention. In some cases, requirement to allow for increased variety and they have caused dangerous consequences in individuation to avoid a perception of cultural an American cultural environment that homogeneity, and to restructure the equation. promotes personality and independence; Below is a list of historical models in this area through the promotion of a generic blandness, of study: inhabitants have complained of a lost sense of individuality and an increased feeling of Parallel Production (PP) + Highly cultural detachment. Repetitive Kit of Parts (KOP) + More Similar, Less Parallel production models maximize design Unique sameness to maximize mechanical production cost and efficiency. These highly repetitious Kit of Parts systems describe a way to systems in architecture are found primarily in organize the design or construction of a factory built structures: manufactured building through pre-made building assemblies that can be organized or 126 GElTING REAL: DESIGN ETHOS NOW

reassembled easily within the system. Prior to by combining them in different ways. I new forms of industrial manufacturing, KOP once suggested that nature herself is the systems are actually one of the oldest forms best standards committee, but in nature, of ideological pre-Modernism. For example, in standardization is practiced almost the 18th century, 3. N. L. Durand cataloged exclusively in the smallest possible units, canonical design elements and imagined how the cells. This results in millions of they could be refigured through different different combinations that never become programs or building types. This intention to schema ti^.^ codify geometry and proportion offered a detachment from the unique to the systematic CC systems allow for reasonable efficiency and propelled typology and universality in within predictable geometries, but are design. An urban example could be John inflexible and resistant to formal and material Nash's design for Regent Street in London in experimentation. (Aalto also complained about the early 1800s where the repetitive facade the limitations of standardized bricks in the elements modulated in terms of the urban U.S. when he tried to do rounded forms.) fabric. In manufacturing, the Kit of Parts While seemly infinite variation should occur, systems developed primarily after World War because of the economic and social pressures, I1 and the excesses of industrial steel and design tends to be limited to predictable large scale manufacturing technology for ship conventions: straight walls, ninety degree and weaponry construction. The Case Study angles, four foot dimensions, predictable wall housing program in , specifically the thicknesses, etc. Because the degree of Eames House, was perhaps the most well factory production is limited and much of the known example, where the catalog purchased work is on site, the quality of construction is components could not only be assembled and dependent on labor skill. Anything that distributed during construction, but could deviates from a conventional system transfers ideally be reorganized or adjusted or replaced from the highly economically efficient category easily by the owner at a later date. While of "standard" to the unaffordable "custom," there is more variety possible through this typically only available left to high-end system, it is limited often to color, residential or museum construction. Also, composition and material type. The pieces are because variety is linked to cost, the division predetermined, and design comes through of interests (stereotypically: contractors = arrangement.' cost, architects = quality) leads not to partnership, but to conflict and, under the Cellular Construction (CC) + Similar pressures of time and cost, quality generally Material, Similar Form falls to ease.

The most common type of American Unique Form Generation (UFG) 3 Unique construction, cellular systems essentially form, Similar Material balance between small unit repetition and custom, unique building. Based on models by UFG models include design systems that allow such engineers as Albert Farwell Bemis, for the mass production of entirely non- efficiency in this way of building relies upon repetitive form. These are found exclusively in standardized units and dimensions, for emerging technology and processes, such as example: the 4'x8' plywood panel, the 32" x large-scale 3D printing machinery that can 6'8" door, 5/8" gypsum wall board thickness, "print" a building out of concrete much like etc.' Alvar Aalto described its opportunities: their Rapid Prototyping powder-based 3D printing counterparts on the very small scale. One further phenomenon in architecture The advantages of these systems are that should be called to mind in this context, form individuation and customization could be the oldest and at the same tie the more highly complex and geometrically unique on a recent technique: standardization. very large scale, however, so far, they are Standardization is usually seen as a relatively untested and material options are method that makes everything uniform very limited. and schematic. It is clear that this is not so. Properly standardized building elements and raw materials are such that one can achieve a wide variety of results VARIABLE FORM GENERATION 127

Variable Form Generation (VFG) + More Another example of this era of repetitive and Unique, Less Similar variable models was the Hector Guimard's designs of Metro stations in Paris. The Because UFG are so limited in developing stations, a small-scale deployed urban technology and material output, their formal system, used standardized iron components in opportunities do not offset their required combination with custom and modulated sameness. Thus, we believe the current pieces to create a recognizable system of optimum option is the Variable Form entries that also responded directly to the Generation model. VFG systems allow for conditions of each site and neighborhood. mass custornization of form embedded within Their ornamental enthusiasm cloaked their the built material. Unlike the three types listed industrial processes and proved that the Art above, these systems do not constrain Nouveau did not rely on the Arts and Crafts repetition to cost. Some indulgent historical model of contextual, labor intensive, manual highlights: production. The formal, sinuous qualities both gave an aesthetic brand to the city and let The design for the idealized Industrial Cit6 by each entry have its own character and Tony Garnier in the early 20th century subtlety.' intended to employ the variable reinforced concrete systems of August Perr~.~ At the large scale, the 1930s development of Reinforced concrete could be employed in the Tennessee Valley Authority created a precast and cast in place manners and with system of landscape and infrastructure with high amounts of variability to accommodate the same methods and techniques, but with changes in housing or commercial density. highly contextual output. The systems here Reinforced concrete offered a way to create were not manufacturing, but a trained mass construction, quickly efficiently, using workforce, methods of material delivery and local materials and at the same time engender engineering models. The result was a multi- various forms, geometries and option^.^ state system of landscape alteration and dramatic elements of infrastructure that was As well, during the turn of the 20th century, both clearly identifiable and ultimately H.P. Berlage housing developments in variable. (The Alcoa Aluminum Company also Amsterdam in the Netherlands also employed built many dams around the same area and the use of brick in a highly repetitive and time, yet they are distinctly different in unique way. Social housing in southern character.) The TVA was so compelling as a Amsterdam had two intentions: to bring system, that it drew Le Corbusier to one of his housing in an efficient manner to the masses only two stops in the -- the other and to create a sense of ownership and place being New York City. among its residents. The larger social goals not only include efficient methods of While these historical VFG models mostly use construction and quick turnover, but provided, manual processes, contemporary VFG often at the detail scale, beautiful processes have increased dramatically with crenellations, articulated windows and the use of computer numerical controlled rounded ornament that gave each district its machinery. The direct translation from digital own character. Often certain types of moves environments into material production would be repeated, but with variations in processes has offered a greater complexity location or scale to create contextual and precision and the freedom from reliance responses and personal flair. This model was on manual skill and technique. The constraints also used in other forms during the so far are the scale of the machines available predominance of the Amsterdam School such and how the variable components integrate as in the housing of De Klerk in Northwestern into an over all design. The following are three Amsterdam that also provided a variety of examples of our design proposals for VGF brick techniques, layouts, details and systems. patterns. The reason it transgressed the Cellular model to become a VFG model is that Gabion Field: National AIDS Memorial they were deployed systematically on a vast scale over neighborhoods and employed Existence is no more than the precarious repetitive manual techniques with unique attainment of relevance in an intensely outputs. mobile flux of past, present, and future. 128 GEmING REAL: DESIGN ETHOS NOW

The past itself, as historical change Memorial Grove in . These continues to accelerate, has become the objects, as a landscape of spirit, elevate a most surreal of subjects - making it series of layers of screening and overlapping possible ... to see a new beauty in what is to express light weight organizations of air vanishing. and space, containers of program, eddies and Susan Sontag swirls of density. They also house remembrance by becoming a framework for The first project is a finalist entry for the memento, such as for red ribbons-- or the National AIDS Memorial located in Golden impromptu self-organized memorials, such as Gate Park. While the location was specific, the in New York City after 9/11. (Imagine the design included more a technique for making impossibility of a red ribbon appended on a objects with in a loose landscape. The specific wire for every person who contracted HIV...) response within itself included variations of a The wire frameworks offer a structure for particular system employed across an existing layers of memory so that remembrance is not landscape. abstract, but instead has texture, individuality-- so that it remains conscious and alive.

The design is a distributed composition of wire structures across the AIDS Memorial grove in Golden Gate Park in . The wire gabions are distributed into the surrounding forest and out into the meadow where they densify and help to form organized spaces. The wire is deformed to create benches, walls and portals. The wire lattice also creates an Figure 1. Memorial view. atmosphere of framework, without interfering with the lush surroundings or treading heavily Unlike the instantaneous and overwhelming upon the ground. The figures become more disasters that the world has seen recently angelic, more spirits in the material world that through political and natural destruction, the guide the space of the memorial garden. The pandemic of AIDS has crept and spread figures, as trunks, operate like columns of towards societal erosion over decades. But collected space, similar in scale and nature while the destruction is vast, there is no like surrounding trees. They would be both singular marker in time of remembrance, visual clues of another type of garden space anniversary of an event that becomes a and space defining objects. collective acknowledgement. Instead, linkages of individual stories have become a global ...space goes through them ...looking at network; sadness and loss has become not them we can notice that they are made by only a personal and local process, but a global air, like a sculpture. emotional experience as well. We experience Harry Bertoia grief through a new sense of scale. In an environment of a disease that captures and changes lives throughout the world, over time, incrementally, in hidden and overt ways, in all economic and social environments, through political passages, this design proposal for a National AIDS Memorial is more a memorial landscape than monument.

It is a loose and interactive system of distributed components, an open network of - - landscape organized by choreographed Figure 2. Memorial view. figures; it is not a fixed, pristine, idealized object intend to charm or abstract a complex The wire-mesh-components shape space, they experience. The project deploys wire-mesh- are meshes which consist of braids and architecture in the existing landscape of the linkages, a form of architectural drapery, like VARIABLE FORM GENERATION 129

webs floating in the air, "strong yet delicate in appearance." The individual wires are joined together to create an airy and light structure that can be extended in multiple directions. Their fabrication would be done through a combination of fabrication techniques, but most specifically using CNC milling to establish formwork in which wire would be laid. A four-axis mill would mill foam in the shape of the three-dimensional forms with channels. The channels would describe the lenticular wire shapes and would allow the wire to be inlaid and welded in place. Then Figure 3. Urban Art Pavilion view. once formed, the formwork would be removed and two haves would be attached to create an offers three grotto-like territories for grouping upright gabion. Each gabion would then be and viewing art within an existing interior or powder coated with opalescent paint and exterior environment. Each created space is treated to withstand the salt air of the park. discreet in scale, delicate, textural and Once completed, the gabions would be organized nodally along the sinuous, brought to the site and installed into poured in continuous surface structure. The slide place foundation anchors. As the memorial encourages the adventure of new movement could gather individually placed ribbons, they patterns and circulation while broadcasting art would seem to almost hang suspended in by nesting into an existing and familiar space, space. as a symbiotic organism folds into its pair: the urban environment provides and enclave, The Ogive: Urban Pavilions while the slide activates its interior.

The second VFG project is for an ogival The Obvita slide is constructed as a 38 zone, system of construction used in two examples: large fiberglass shell mounted to a framework as an urban art display system and as a roof of braided ogive-shaped, or lenticular system as part of a park pavilion. Ogive aluminum extrusions. The aluminum describes a formal logic between two extrusions are simply bent into shape and components that follow one another, joining held where they converge. Each zone contains and separating in predictable intervals. In several individual panels that are vacuum- both projects, the ogive strategy is used to formed over unique CNC foam molds and structure changeable surfaces that allow for micro-patterned with machined toolpath variable formal articulations that remain profiles, as new-ornament. This micro-ribbed continuous. To create a surface and structure effect is pronounced where there is no art that vary but are also a replete system, we displayed and becomes flatter towards display employed a strategy much like Guillard's areas. Parisian Metro station entries-- less a specific design and more a sensibility of form that This VFG model involves two types of form could be used at various scales to create a variation: the panels can adapt to the series of urban infrastructures. The Ogive is structure and the structure can reconfigure or structural, simple but with variability for use refit into different locations. While the in different contexts and for a variety of structural pieces are all different, their fittings programs. The following two projects work together to allow it to be reset and demonstrate some of its possibilities. reformed. This structure is light and strong and can be assembled and reassembled in Urban Art Display: the Obvita Slide different locations over time or for different types of display. Each time it is erected, it The Obvita Slide project is a proposed art either uses the surfaces from before if it is in pavilion that avoids the enclosed and separate the same shape or requires replacement nature of "pavilion," and instead creates pieces in some locations that fit into its new pavilion-less-ness: an open, permeable shape. The new shapes can determine new framework. It is a performative envelope that relationships between the work displayed on 130 GElTING REAL: DESIGN ETHOS NOW

aie Figure 5. Urban Information Pavilion view.

stimulating surround. They entice as pockets of program, a bookstore that opens to a cafg and information that is available 24 hours aday. They are grottos, small in scale, delicate and textural, within a complex and vast urban fabric. They also define a space within the greenway to encourage the adventure of new paths, directions and trajectories. Each building has a central exterior court space around which the pavilion program wraps to create a seamless transition between programs and interior and exterior spaces.

A glass fiber-reinforced fabric-covered canopy frames views onto the city and surrounding linear park spaces. The pavement extends Figure 4. Urban Art Pavilion view. beyond the massing of the pavilions and unfolds into the landscape terminating in a the surface and the public spaces it defines. CNC milled textured granite scalar model Art could also be hung in place of the panels representation of the Boston Harbor Islands. or from the aluminum extrusions. Viewers can The roof system not only defines the interior experience the artwork both from inside and and exterior of enclosed spaces, but out-- or through the slide display surfaces. articulates the nature of each program and While the slide expands to move through the building. The cafe and bookstore are the most urban area as a system, it is easily enclosed and have the tightest pressure of demountable and, when stacked, comfortably ogival pieces. The information pavilion has a fits into a small space for storage. The panels looser structure with more openings to are simply fastened to the aluminum tubes describe the permeability of the programmatic which are themselves slotted to fit together intention. Parts of this roof are simply open as much like tent poles. a lattice or trellised area. Urban Information Pavilions: the Boston Atoll The VFG function of this project is through the way in which the roof structure would be like the islands outside of Boston, are not made of variable pieces created from laser-cut isolated and differentiated from their metal and covered with CNC milled and surroundings, but are rather tied to an formed pieces. The system is intended for this existing network of life and energy of the city. specific location, but as a pavilion type, it They supervise and cultivate, draw in for rest could become a large design deployed through and propel towards discovery. The atolls a city that responds to the specific natures of become stations for enjoyment, pools to relax, both programmatic and site desires. Boston, patience in the city, softness in the specifically, is full of historical and natural VARIABLE FORM GENERATION 131

sites that could each sponsor a pavilion Eventually, the market has continued to crush adjusted to convey its unique characteristics. the need for architects in housing. Since the masses have grown up through a false sense Ethics of Standardization of iconography, they seek the same models already provided. Because of this, people These projects promote architecture that rarely desire their own architects nor can they employs a strategy of manufacturing that afford an industry that promotes one-off allows the designs to shift their specificities designs. Architects can engage a larger social and reacts to local conditions. They argue that commentary by reengage the systems in variation as essential to good design systems effect: developer logics and their effects on and that architecture can partner with land and production models that link cost and construction techniques. They do not promote repetition. As much as the industrial a specific technique, nor do they promote an production models offer immediate responses ultimate solution or technological answer. to a lack of housing and urban infrastructure, we must resist their temptation, to instead Ironically, while standardization and industrial allow for local variation, complex visions and processes were jumpstarted in Europe, where incremental change. post war housing spurred quick innovation and socialism encouraged repetitive, collective Endnotes: models, it has been in America where standardization has taken deep root. Hernandez, Antonio "J.N.L. Durand's Architectural European models of the build environment Theory. A Study in the History of Rational Building offered a complex web of aesthetic, Design," Pers~ectaNo. 1, 2 pp. 153 - 160. individuality and historical significance. Thus a few projects that systematized output did not Bemis, Albert. Evolvina House. Cambridge: The reform a sense of cultural identity. The new Technology Press, Massachusetts Institute of developments also were typically small in Technology, 1956. scale, medium density to either create urban infill or not compete with agricultural lands, Aalto, Alvar. Sketches. ed. G. Scihldt and trans. S. and worked off of existing aesthetic or stylistic Wrede, Cambridge: 1978. "The Influence of models. In America, where the western Construction and Materials." 1938. pp. 60 - 63. cultural influence was short, style relatively artificial in its significance and land so easy to ' Britton, Karla, Auauste Perret. London: Phaidon acquire that low-density projects could amble Press Limited, 2001. pp. 4 - 15. into available suburban space, repetitive Weibeson, Dora. Tonv Garnier: The Cite models were and are still employed because Industrielle. New York: 1969. pp. 11 - 20, 107 - of their quick profitability. Since there was little cultural or stylistic context, developers 112. appropriated faux models and then repeated 6Graham, F. Lanier. Hector Guimard. New York: The them to force a sense of cultural attachment. Museum of Modern Art, 1970. Local conditions were never allowed to develop-- the capitalistic models replaced 'Jaulmes, Laurent. Hector Guimard: Fontes local-based cultural evolution and essentially Artistiaues. Paris: Galerie du Luxembourg, 1971. franchised architectural style. American housing was a brand, that promoted lifestyle instead of daily habits and local conditions promoting spatial and aesthetic models.