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The vertical alottments are linked together in eahc district, which means that not every allotment needs all layers of production. Overall goal is to introduce into the urban fabric a zero carbon network which produces food and energy; a new elastic network which will form the spine of future society and connects different cultures with there basic needs in an nowadays anonymous urban environment. This green fabric forms a new gathering space for the people who live in this district. The social aspect is farming, which tries to adapt historic idea of a village has now become an urban village. the aspects of social order whith the equlibirium of nature to the idea that human being itself fills the gap, a gap which should taken care of and forms a gathering space. this feedback loop of production and social care also educates young people. The new gathering spaces transform the brutalist high-rise into a projected situation of urban farming, a symbiotical relationship between nature and social order.

Encapsulated Fields – Reflective Scapes

New Faculty Building for T.U. Delft Bouwkunde

The competition was completed by Tobias Klein, Sara Shafiei and Johan Voordouw in 2008 as a short charette competition for the new T.U. Delft Bouwkunde building.. The project attempted to make a vertical series of streets and plazas that meandered through the programmed spaces of the school. Multi-storey void spaces punctuate the floors to be used as studios, crit spaces and exhibition voids that could be viewed from multiple vantage points by faculty and students to continually participate and view the activities within the school as they moved along its winding corridors. The submission was an extension of Herman Hertzberger’s Centraal Beheer in Apeldoorn, the importance of the project was to form connections between the different years and studios to inspire the students and inform the faculty, forging a stronger school programme and a more cohesive student body.

The candy-stripped façade was inspired by the tulip fields that surround Delft, the coloured glass continually animating the offices and voids as light passes throughout the day bringing colour into the building and would be used as a playful marker to the surrounding city just outside of the the T.U. campus.

.narrating embodiment

Author: Tobias Klein and Eva Sommeregger

with Nikolaos Klimentidis and Graham K. Smith

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The project is initiated by a response to Shinkenchiku design competition where it won a commendation. Further more the project is an ongoing investigation on non-linear projections and narrative architecture within a digital environment.

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We do not believe in static renaissance modes of representation. We understand plans and sections neither as a design integral document nor as a means of architectural construction. We embrace a perceptive architecture that has evolved from a narrated background and is only able to be drawn and understood in a perspective projection. We think of projections and projection planes that are capable to embody a narrative within architecture. We are interested in creating a dialogue within projection, representation and design so that the architectural representation becomes architecture and the narrative becomes projection.

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The architecture we project in this scheme is related to the movie Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky, in that he was able to transcend a Deleuzian crystal image idea within a narrative embodiment allowing for the establishment of the zone. The zone for us is an n-dimensional space embodied within architecture that acts as a 3 dimensional projection space for a 4 dimensional projection. The site in this scenario is the famous Trellick Tower in London by Erno Goldfinger. At the time it was conceptualised as a vertical city allowing the inhabitants to form an urban community but similar to the novel High-Rise by J.G. Ballard, soon a dystopian image emerged from the planned residential order. The narrative of a distorted perceptive architecture is informed and informs the scheme and constantly shifts the viewpoint from an immersed spectator to an external visitor. This creates an architecture from the within utilising the cinematic experience of the ubiquity of n-dimensional space, embodying the character, the narrative within the formal expression.

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Narrating Embodiment is a project that explores the boundary of experimental architecture, attempting to design and understand a cinematic zone-like space – a chthonic landscape that allows the architecture to be projected and fused within a site specific narrative. The projects transcends through functionalism and rational static description; merging instead perception with story and time with projection.

The site is defined as an ever oscillating narrative ground. It flitters between the actual of the Trellick tower estate in the west of London and the virtual of the zone-like wilderness depicted in the movie Stalker by Andrei Tarkovski.
Site is an amalgamation of the two states, creating a High-Rise – a Ballardian dystopian space, cinematic in its nature and narrative in its expression.

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The plan was defined as a vertical orthographic projection of an object – within a cinematic architecture, it has evolved into a narrative projection plane. It is three dimensional in is form and incorporates a 4 dimensional story-line that transforms the plane to a landscape. In our scheme the chthonic landscape embodies the Tarkovskian void reflecting a psychopathic vertical society.

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The section always carried the closes narrative aspects within and could best describe spatial qualities. It is a linear cut through 3 dimensional space creating a 2 dimensional section. Within the immersed 4-dimensional projective scape the section becomes an immersive space that has been generated from the character’s point of view. This opens up towards a realm of perceptive construction of possibilities, rendering them visible and believable to the viewer’s eye. In particular it deals with how the ubiquity of imagery and specifically the moving image changes how architecture is consumed at the moment and consequently projected into the future.

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The elevation is the altitude within a horizontal coordinate system, a projected celestial coordinate system that uses the observer’s local horizon as the fundamental plane. This divides the sky into the upper hemisphere, and the lower hemisphere. A distortion within this horizontal equilibrium leads to a replacement of the physical thought-model with a more dynamic viewer oriented system. Within the zone the horizon becomes distorted and space becomes simulacra- space becomes scape.

.contoured embodiment

Author: Tobias Klein and Ben Cowd

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On a tectonic level, Contoured Embodiment is a reinterpretation and intervention of and within the Dome of Sir Christopher Wren’s St Pauls Cathedral in London. Crafted and manufactured digitally, the work combines laser-cut planar slices, articulating a traditional relationship of surface and boundary; with rapid prototyped convoluted spaces, proposing a new understanding of space defined by density and fields.
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On a conceptual level, the work is guided by a fascination of Catholic Iberian Baroque, an excess of ornament, organic spatial exuberance and the scale-less implementation and rhetoric of symbolism, allegory and narrative explored through the Sacred Heart.
Developed from MRI generated body data and inserted into St Paul’s Cathedral: Space is sculpted viscerally and digitally: Utilizing adjacent properties as constructive and symbolic interpretation; exaggerating sublime illumination and baroque illusion through the interruption of views and distortion of natural light by a complex layering of convoluted skins, veins and arteries. Suspended from the existing intermediate structural cone, the intervention is hung by an array of reinforced tendril structures hidden in the whispering gallery and existing cavities within the dome.
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The Sacred Heart amalgamates symbiotically and constructively the qualities of precise contoured geometries and historic spatial displacement of historic monumental architecture (Ben Cowd): With synthetic topographies, digital ornament and volumetric voluptuous embodiment of MRI generated organs (Tobias Klein). The result is a synthesis of ideas and themes, guided by the baroque but exploring and constructing a new understanding of space beyond complexity, boundaries and skins.

.topotable

Author: Tobias Klein and Roberto Bottazi

with the help of ADS1 of the Royal College of Art

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.introduction

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As part of the Department of Architecture at the Royal College of Art in London. Architecture Design Studio 1 (ADS1) – taught by Roberto Bottazzi and Tobias Klein – has been working on an innovative project that has been constructed in the occasion of the Graduation Show between June 21 and July 4 2008.
Roberto Bottazzi and Tobias Klein started teaching together in 2007 and have been focusing their academic activity on digital architecture. The some of the work produced by the studio – titled “Binaries and Oxymorons” – has already been exhibited in London and Honk Kong.

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..concept

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Our proposal was to test the possibilities of digitally-based architecture in the context of exhibition spaces by interface using CAD/CAM methods. The organisation of the exhibition design often advocates generic spaces–often labelled “White Cubes” – against which to display works of art. This is at odd with the complexity of digital-based design which requires immersive conditions and flexibility that necessitate a re-thinking of the relation between the displayed object and its exhibition environment.
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The project aims at challenging the traditional sectional profile characterising tables’ designs. Freed from the functional necessity to be strictly flat and neutral in relation to the objects displayed, the top surface is altered to engage in a deeper and more dynamic way with objects and viewers. By “inflating” the horizontal line coinciding with the top plain, two undulating, continuous landscapes – the top and bottom profile of the table – provide a range of spatial conditions for models to be positioned.

This apparently simple move transforms the tables from a neutral surface into a volume; a body whose presence affects both the surrounding space and the objects exhibited. Like a curatorial strategy, the models need to establish their own relation with the ‘peaks’ and ‘falls’ of the table.

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The project focuses on the gap between the demand for generic exhibition spaces and exuberant and complex geometries made available by digital tools. The final piece is an interface design that is using the potentials to manipulate and implement complex surfaces through computers to establish a closer interaction between the body of the viewer and the material displayed. The best students’ works of the 2007-8 academic year were displayed in the piece.
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.topology

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Topology (Greek topos, “place,” and logos, “study”) is the branch of mathematics that studies the properties of a space that are preserved under continuous deformations. Topology grew out of geometry, but unlike geometry, topology is not concerned with metric properties such as distances between points. Instead, topology involves the study of properties that describe how a space is assembled, such as connectedness and orientability. In plan as well, the conventional rectangular shape is substituted by a more dynamic silhouette with pockets and recesses that allows the viewer to be fully immersed in the space and become part of the installation itself.
A miniaturised, playful interactive stage is thus created where displayed items and exhibition environment no longer remain indifferent to each other’s presence but rather interact to transform the relation between the viewer, the object displayed, and the surrounding environment
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.thanks

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Topo.table has been sponsored by Cordek and the department of architecture at Royal College of Art. I would like to particularly thank Prof. Nigel Coates for his support and Alastair Seaton, Trevor Larkin, and Michelle Sheperd at Cordek for their sponsorship and invaluable technical expertise during the manufacturing process. A special thanks as well to Dietmar Koering for his support in the visualisation of the project.

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Moulin Rouge / Curve-linear choreography

Author: Tobias Klein and Justin C.K Lau

The main concept for the design of the Moulin Rouge is to transform and utilize the iconic windmill silhouette while creating a fluid choregrophed space that allow the encounter between visitor and dancer, displays and narrative history of the place and three dimensionally explores it. Two main points are very important in the design.

The Choregraphed circulation is a gentle meandering path that climbs through the building and ending in an impressive suspended walkway that becomes even part of the auditorium. The core pathpay is centred around a void space that penetrates the entire building, and acts as a view corridor as well as naturally ventilates the building. The height of this dynamic vertical form creates a stack effect to allow air travels from ground to the roof level. It encourages stale air to rise out of the ground and pulling through cooler external air.

The Constant interaction between visitor and dancer (public and private) is key to the organisation and the design. We expressed this relationship by multitude of view glimpses and a dramatic insertion within the fluid ceiling from over the ground-floor. The public program has been considerately choreographed into a breathtaking spatial and historical experience which reflects the exciting history of the Moulin Rouge

Both design concepts together form a narrative infrastucture/journey that inform the organization and expression of the building in every detail and spatial experience.

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.synthetic syncretism

Author: Tobias Klein

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The project’s narrative background is based upon the hybrid Cuban religion of Santeria (a mixture between Catholicism and the African Yoruba tribe beliefs). As a result of this unusual syncretism an altered kind of religion evolved which hybridizes Catholic Saints with animals and Sakralraum with sacrifices.

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The necropolis Christobal Colon, the main cemetery, does not provide enough burial space hence the proposal for a processional route through the city of Havana for a ceremonial funeral in the sea. Along this processional route the ‘Chapel of Our Lady de Regla’ acts as architectural highlight. Slotted inside an existing cross shaped courtyard, this inverted chapel contains a series of Santerian relics and utensils condensed from the virtual into the actual. Tweaked to the max, skeleteral and visceral at the same time, these ‘cybrid’ objects, 3D modeled and 3D printed in order to perfectly fit animal bones found on the site in Cuba, and 3D scanned into virtuality and re-moulded into actuality in London, provide, on a smaller scale, the formal expression for the larger architectural intervention.

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At face value computer-aided architectural design (CAAD) merely performs within the domain of what is best described by the German term Technik (it expresses technology, technic and technique). The truth is that CAAD overcomes the dichotomy between technē (craftsmanship) and poiēsis (art). Although digitally driven, the project does not succumb to the pervasive allurement of ‘Parametric Digital Modernism’—the unspecified whitewash (actually grey) of 3D surfaces, the universal Sachlichkeit of algorithmic design techniques, and the mechanistic vision of input-output interactivity.

The project provides an example of syncretism of contemporary CAD techniques and CAM technologies with site specific design narratives, intuitive non-linear design processes, and historical architectural references. The project shows the architect as the creator-craftsman that finally has the chance to overcome the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century schism of intellectual from manual labour, as well as the nineteenth-century gulf between automatic mechanisation and poetic creation.