Simply Complex, Toward a New Kind of Building
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Frontiers of Architectural Research (2012) 1, 411–420 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com www.elsevier.com/locate/foar CASE STUDY Simply complex, toward a new kind of building Kas Oosterhuisn TU Delft, Hyperbody, Julianalaan 134, 2628 BL Delft, Z-H, Netherlands Received 15 April 2012; received in revised form 11 August 2012; accepted 15 August 2012 KEYWORDS Abstract Nonstandard; The world around us is evolving. We are living inside evolution. As a practicing architect I find Customization; nothing more natural than to look around me and implement relevant changes into my own Complexity; profession. Taking this seriously means implementing new digital technologies in the very fabric Parametric; of design methods, from the first conceptual thought and from the first accurately described Programmable; design proposal. Mass production is soon to be overhauled by the principles of customization, in Swarm the form of both industrial mass customization and in the form of distributed small scale household fabrication. Customization, which is the modern made to measure, will change architecture from its very foundations. A completely new esthetic will be the natural outcome of the digital parametric design process that connects the file to factory CNC production methods— a new kind of beauty for a new kind of building. Complexity based on simple rules characterizes the dramatic paradigm shift from mass production to customization. The new kind of building is complex yet systemic in its design method. The new kind of building dramatically enhances the potential of today’s architectural expression while keeping strict control on its data, including costs. Truly nonstandard architecture is cost-effective and simply complex. & 2012. Higher Education Press Limited Company. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. As the world turns The world is changing. So is architecture, the art of building. Since the world is evolving its communication nTel.: +31 62 4714 226: fax: +31 10 244 7041. and manufacturing methods drastically and with increasing E-mail address: [email protected] speed, architecture will never be the same. I present in this URLS: http://www.oosterhuis.nl, http://www.hyperbody.nl. writing a theory and practice of architecture which is based Peer review under responsibility of Southeast University. on the principles of swarm behavior. It comes down to the provocative assumption that in the end all building compo- nents must be designed to be active actors. Based on 20 years of practice of nonstandard architecture I have come to the conclusion that buildings and their constituting 2095-2635 & 2012. Higher Education Press Limited Company. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foar.2012.08.003 412 K. Oosterhuis components can no longer be seen as passive objects. This necessarily in the form of double curved geometry—will assumption revolutionizes the way the design process is be the dominant language of (inter)national architects. If organized, the way the manufacturing process is organized, my assumption proves to be false after all efforts I have and the way we interact with the built structures. The new done in the last 20 years to develop the practice of kind of building is based on the invasion of digital technol- industrial customization in the realized works of my archi- ogies into the building industry and into the design process, tectural office ONL (Oosterhuis_Len ard) in Rotterdam, and such as parametric design, generative components, file to during the last decade the theory of swarm behavior in factory production process of mass customization, and various educational and research projects with my Hyper- embedded intelligent agents. Step by step we are balancing body Research Group at the Faculty of Architecture of the the familiar top down control with emergent bottom up TU Delft, I will be the first to acknowledge it. But if it proves behavior. Based on simple rules we rethink on the basic to be right then I will consume the pleasure of having been building blocks and we build bottom up bidirectional an early mover to design and construct buildings according relationships between all constituting building components. to the new rules of industrial customization, and I will feel I investigate the effects the paradigm shift from mass satisfied having explored the power and beauty of complex- production to mass customization may have for the ity in due time. designer’s mind. When the designer is open for this new reality, architecture will never be the same. I will give here one example to visualize the consequences of a truly mass 2. Informed point cloud production esthetic. The Cockpit in the Acoustic Barrier project that was finished at the end of 2005 features 40,000 As the world keeps turning we will need to redefine the different pieces of steel, and 10,000 different pieces of foundations of architecture from time to time. Now more glass. Not a single building component is the same in this than 20 years have passed since the introduction of the PC, structure. The radicality of this mass customized specimen since the emergence of the global Internet, and since of nonstandard architecture equals that of the 50+ year old embedding miniaturized information technology in our Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram building, which is the ultimate consumer products. Today we have become familiar with esthetic expression of mass produced architecture (Fig. 1). remote control, wireless Internet, with intelligent agents Mind you, the Seagram building is beautiful, but I would active on the internet, with intelligent agents embedded in never fancy to strive for such esthetic again, now it is time consumer products like printers, cars and computers, but to find the proper architectural expression for the actuality we have not seen much change in the very building blocks of of industrial mass customization. Within 50 years the the built environment as of yet. Neither have we seen much paradigm shift toward customization in any form—not change in the way we design and build our environment. We have indeed developed computer programs to simulate otherwise traditional building materials like concrete, steel, and glass composites in a building information model (BIM). Often the BIM is used to improve known designs, largely because most designers do not take advantage of the BIM to develop new design methods, with the aim to realize designs that are not possible with the traditional design techniques. In a BIM the simulated building components are tagged, the tags containing information on their qualitative and quantitative properties. It sure is an opportunity missed that most architects do not use digital design tools in the early design process. Even at respected universities the students are often told not to use the computer to design. It is my explicit opinion that students in architectural faculties should play in the very design process with all kinds of new digital and social media, from day one. It is very compro- mising for their design skills to postpone designing with new media until they have reached the master program. While in our practice the parametric design by and large specifies the design of the relational system of the building components, the freehand sketch—whether executed on paper or with the 3D digitizer—specifies the top-down geometrical force imposed on the parametric design sys- tem. Both the system representing the bottom-up genera- tion and the ruling curves from the sketches representing the top-down control must be developed in parallel. The top-down force inserts specific data into the parametric bottom-up system. Sketching in itself is fine, but do express yourself on your Fig. 1 Mass production esthetic, Seagram Building, New York, touchscreen tablet, use your smart phone to interact and architect Mies van der Rohe, 1958. participate—as I conducted some experiments with Simply complex, toward a new kind of building 413 interactive lectures at Hyperbody, transpose your design the streaming information, and produce new streaming concept immediately into a (Grasshopper) script, such that information, indeed like the birds in the swarm. Complexity you can play with the parameters and open up your design based on simple rules. When the information defining its process to others. The actual emphasis on the ‘‘drawing’’ as spatial coordinates that are received is not changing, the advocated at the TU Delft by Michiel Riedijk is conspicu- position of the point in the point cloud remains stable without ously counterproductive in this respect. In my view the any change. Now suppose some parametric data are changing, drawing and the section are nothing more than a ‘‘flat- then the point will act accordingly and change its position, or tened’’ derivate from the 3D model. The drawing and the change any of the other properties the point has been tagged section should never be the starting point for any spatial with. The crux of the new kind of building is that all reference design. Building 3D models must belong to the core skills points will be informed in a streaming fashion both during the that students in our era are taught. The 3D model contains design process and during its subsequent life-cycle. Even if we all information, while the drawings and the section allow for are commissioned to design for a static environment, we must only a poor restricted view of the spatial conditions. Using set up the BIM in such a way that all constituting components new media makes the design process transparent, verifiable can potentially receive, process and send streaming informa- and participatory, and allows for a stronger individual tion. The BIM will understand its deeper meaning as Building expression at the same time. The new media are nothing In Motion.