ctbuh.org/papers Title: Elegance, Stature & Meaning in Tall Building Design Author: Hani Rashid, Founder, Asymptote Subject: Architectural/Design Keywords: Design Process Technology Publication Date: 2008 Original Publication: CTBUH 2008 8th World Congress, Dubai Paper Type: 1. Book chapter/Part chapter 2. Journal paper 3. Conference proceeding 4. Unpublished conference paper 5. Magazine article 6. Unpublished © Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat / Hani Rashid Elegance, Stature and Meaning in Tall Building Design Hani Rashid Asymptote Architecture, 160 Varick Street Floor 10, New York, NY 10013, USA Abstract Architecture, and particularly Tall Building design, has been traditionally understood through an assessment of structural and engineering solutions coupled with the architects’ domain of floorplans, core and curtainwall skin. Architects also supply symbolic gestures. Today architects are embarking on a new phase in building design, collaboration and manifestation that is clearly centered on and developing an even greater understanding and integration of the ways architecture is conceived, iterated, fabricated and implemented. Architecture is now, more than in any previous era, capable of achieving a new level of control over the historically laden symbiotic relationship between technique, process, and outcome. Today, digital processes utilizing animation software, parametric modeling tools , new materials and materiality and non standardization processes are drawn from and are influenced by the aerospace, automotive and nautical industries. A desire to build new form and meaning into architecture are fueling a great deal of [email protected] change and possibility. It is this state of flux and transformation that architects need to embrace to develop methodologies and approaches towards the creation of new and inspired works. Biography Hani Rashid, founder of Asymptote Architecture, has received international acclaim for architectural design excellence and Keywords: tall building design, technological innovation, globalization, elegance, modeling is recognized as a leading practitioner and academic in the field. Asymptote’s projects include architecture, master plan- ning, installation art, digital environments, exhibition and product design. In 2004, Rashid along with partner Lise Anne CoutureIntroduction were presented with the prestigious Frederick Kiesleressentially Award in recognitionany aspect of capableexceptional of contributionsbeing ‘visualized’ to the progressArchitecture and merging today of art is and emerging architecture. from a drawn out graphically or numerically. The digital tools at our and tenuous relationship with style and shifting stylistic disposal are affording us new ways of translating the Asymptote’smovements dominantcurrent projects throughout include the midtwo tocommercial late twentieth office towerspurely in conceptualBudapest, Hungary,into plastica luxury actualization.mid-rise residential As towercentury. in NewToday, York’s computers West Village, with powerful as well assoftware 50-storey and luxury sacrilegious residential astower this mayin Abu seem Dhabi to many and architectsa super high-rise today, the in Busan,computer Korea. aided Asymptote fabrication is alsotechnologies currently engagedare bringing in master to planningonce omnipotent projects in handMonterey, drawn Mexico sketch orPrague, hand craftedCzech Repubmodel- licthe as forefront well as a newlarge ways scale ofcultural, thinking hotel about and performingand making arts complexis increasingly in Penang, being Malaysia. supplanted Recently by processes completed that projects can includearchitecture. the award Of winningparticular HydraPier importance in thein Netherlands,this revised the Turfmove Club ideas Master immediately plan in Penang into digitally Malaysia, animated the Alessi sketches, Flag- shipplaying Store field in New is the York impact and ofa proposaldigital tools for aand new techniques Guggenheim Museumstereo lithographed in Guadalajara models, Mexico. ‘printed’ prototypes and on the design of Tall Buildings. In this shifting terrain of one-to-one scale digitally fabricated components. technique, tools now exist to bring us to a heightened Notions of elegance in architecture have understanding of what constitutes elegance, beauty and traditionally differed across cultural lines and distinctions, meaning in the design of such buildings. These buildings specific eras, and nuances of locality and place. Today, the delineate not only our skylines and vital urban centers but advent of societies predicated on hyper-mobility has also signify our cultural status and condition globally. caused a blurring of traditional boundaries and formed Elegance in Tall Buildings is no longer simply a mere hybridized cultures with new concepts of what constitutes aesthetic or stylistic condition; rather, a new elegance is elegance in design, architecture and urbanism. With the emerging from more profound aspects tied to propagation of the international style, the question of technological innovation. elegance in architecture and urbanism has been very As computing has become absolutely pervasive; precisely delineated within the bounds of mid twentieth having found its way into every aspect of the discipline century ‘internationalism’. The recent onslaught of of architecture, it has the promise of increased efficiencies globalization has subsequently produced a and control over the procedural proliferate. As we comparatively distorted range of elegance somewhere conceptualize, envision, represent and produce between the expected and the banal, the new and the architecture we turn more and more towards the digital in unanticipated. It is within this emerging and convoluted all of its guises. For increasing numbers of architects the context where one might begin to configure a new and computer is, in fact, becoming such an important and even problematic definition of elegance. indispensable tool that today works are emerging that can only be enacted through the use of algorithmically based A. Preliminary sketches digital tools. Even among more traditional practices, it is The sketch for the architect has traditionally been a the digital, in one form or another, that is put to the task of gestural mark, the delimitation of possibilities and desire. analyzing formal strategies, spatial flows, time based In designing Tall Buildings, we sketch both by means of spatial conditions, programmatic efficiencies and the analog (pen to paper) as well as by digital means CTBUH 8th World Congress 2008 1 Elegance, Stature and Meaning in Tall Building Design Hani Rashid Asymptote Architecture, 160 Varick Street Floor 10, New York, NY 10013, USA Abstract Architecture, and particularly Tall Building design, has been traditionally understood through an assessment of structural and engineering solutions coupled with the architects’ domain of floorplans, core and curtainwall skin. Architects also supply symbolic gestures. Today architects are embarking on a new phase in building design, collaboration and manifestation that is clearly centered on and developing an even greater understanding and integration of the ways architecture is conceived, iterated, fabricated and implemented. Architecture is now, more than in any previous era, capable of achieving a new level of control over the historically laden symbiotic relationship between technique, process, and outcome. Today, digital processes utilizing animation software, parametric modeling tools , new materials and materiality and non standardization processes are drawn from and are influenced by the aerospace, automotive and nautical industries. A desire to build new form and meaning into architecture are fueling a great deal of change and possibility. It is this state of flux and transformation that architects need to embrace to develop methodologies and approaches towards the creation of new and inspired works. Keywords: tall building design, technological innovation, globalization, elegance, modeling Introduction essentially any aspect capable of being ‘visualized’ Architecture today is emerging from a drawn out graphically or numerically. The digital tools at our and tenuous relationship with style and shifting stylistic disposal are affording us new ways of translating the movements dominant throughout the mid to late twentieth purely conceptual into plastic actualization. As century. Today, computers with powerful software and sacrilegious as this may seem to many architects today, the computer aided fabrication technologies are bringing to once omnipotent hand drawn sketch or hand crafted model the forefront new ways of thinking about and making is increasingly being supplanted by processes that can architecture. Of particular importance in this revised move ideas immediately into digitally animated sketches, playing field is the impact of digital tools and techniques stereo lithographed models, ‘printed’ prototypes and on the design of Tall Buildings. In this shifting terrain of one-to-one scale digitally fabricated components. technique, tools now exist to bring us to a heightened Notions of elegance in architecture have understanding of what constitutes elegance, beauty and traditionally differed across cultural lines and distinctions, meaning in the design of such buildings. These buildings specific eras, and nuances of locality and place. Today, the delineate not only our skylines and vital urban centers but advent of societies predicated on hyper-mobility has