workshop at De Montfort University Leicester lead by D.Koering

4th to 7th of March

From classic floor plans to organic architectural solutions. How the Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline [could have] changed the way in our language of creation of virtual objects. A technique developed by the car industry to describe mathematical organic free forms. The idea about creating surface from splines which are controlled goes back to Pierre Etienne Bezier who developed this theory in the sixties-as we see architecture is a slow reaction on modern thoughts.

The workshop will focus on the basis of constructing 3D objects in a classic way on real architectural examples, later spiced up by personal organic shapes which are produced by students and finally the extraction of data from the computer as communication file for further re-production.

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Ads1 run by Tobias Klein and Roberto Bottazzi

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is proud to show the works in progress of this years students: Ottilie Ventiroso, Luke Smith, Dawid Panek, Marie Koyzar, Georgios Manousis, Paniz Peyvandi, Deena Shuhaiber, Bethany Wells, Alison Hesketh and Safia Qureshi. Thanks to all the critics and guests that help shaping this year – a special thanks to Lena NAlbach for her time, help  and insight information on our field trip to Berlin.  http://ads1rca.ning.com/

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Exhibition open to the public
3 – 9 February 2010
11am – 6pm daily

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Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore,
London SW7 2EU
T: +44 (0)20 7590 4444
www.rca.ac.uk

The design of the Lion Gate Project creates an urban spine as main generator, an organism which will structure Dubai new and reactivate the link between Dubai historical old town and the future projects – communication between Bur Dubai to Deira, or vice versa.

Dubais new Spine will start from the Burj Dubai – 310 Sheikh Zayed Road, over the trade center road, which will lead into the Lions Gate onto the 103 Omar bin Al Khattab Road. The Lion Gate refers to symbolic bridges, like Golden Gate Bridge, Tower Bridge, Pointe Vecchio or the Rialto Bridge in Vennice; each of different size, but rich in traditional meaning for each town – the urban environment is part of them and they add cultural value and symbolic power to the cities.

ON the crosssection between the Creek and the urban spine is a concept space, which will inhabit according to the Du(b)ailities – micro ethnic localities a “Point of Exchange”; indoor / outdoor lounge, recording studios, broadcasting studios, etc. . The Interactive wall / billboard structures into two membranes which are overstretching the carriageway of the bridge; it creates for travellers and commuters a daily update of news and life in Dubai itself.

The transient inhabitant of Dubai feels not foreign anymore, they are part and will set the seeds for the new culture of Dubai.

.narrating embodiment

Author: Tobias Klein and Eva Sommeregger

with Nikolaos Klimentidis and Graham K. Smith

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.concept

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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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.concept

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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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.curatorial

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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.

.viewer

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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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Book 03 – Printed Aedicules

The Printed Aedicules project developed a new mode of architectural expression for a library in Tivoli, Italy. The library was proposed for the Museum of Manuscripts located at the Villa d’Este.

The project sought to explore new spatial constructs within the confines of a book developing architectural space on and through the page. The books explored the process and spatial representation of manuscripts and book printing to blur the spaces imagined through reading and the physical spaces developed through construction.

The project was inspired by illustrative representation of architecture that separate narratives such as in medieval manuscripts. The Printed Aedicules books attempted to three-dimensionalise these spaces and lift them off the page. While it is recognised that manuscripts are not printed it were the spatial characteristics of manuscripts that were of interest. The term ‘printed’ was used more to describe the process of the making. Printing was used at each stage along the process – to print the original thesis, printing the pages to form the final book and lastly, through new processes, printing three-dimensional models of parts of the library using SLS.

All three books, the Altas, Tivoli Book and the Printed Aedicules Project were completed at the Bartlett, UCL. Dr. Marjan Colletti and Dr. Marcos Cruz, 2009.

Memory Archive

The Memory Archive in Tivoli was designed as a counterpoint to the Vatican Secret’s Archive in Rome. The archive sought to create secret spaces for the public to explore, search and hide. It developed a woven sequence of internal volumes that oscillated between hidden chambers and revealing labyrinths.

The project included three linked buildings that meandered through the site, inserting new vantage points from which to view the town and the people using the archive.

The first building at the north end of the site is the Public Archive. The platforms bridge an existing stair, which winds up the hill towards the old town and runs perpendicular to the street giving visual access through the building and site to experience the archive passively.

Adjacent to the public archive is the Private Archive; more hidden it is carved deep into the soft travertine hillside beneath the medieval houses that bound the site. Whilst more difficult to experience it offers better vantage points in which to hide and view others using the archive, revealing the full sublime richness of the spaces.

Lastly is the archive’s library, where memories left by individuals are organized, catalogued and stored. This structure rests most visibly in the town, adjacent to the entry bridge and town square at the south end of the site.

The Memory Archive seeks to convey the emotional aspects of what it would feel like to use a memory archive, to form an architectural expression and explore the atmospherics of a deeply personal space, one that encloses the wonderment of thoughts and the burden of secrets feeling both the heat and humidity or the cold chill and darkness.

Completed at the Bartlett, UCL. Dr. Marjan Colletti and Dr. Marcos Cruz, 2008.

Book 01 – The Paper Trail Atlas

The project examined the typology of the library for the Didactic Museum of Ancient Manuscripts in Tivoli, Italy. Rather than exploring the configuration of conventional spaces the project sought to explore the library through the scale of a book, the book becoming an expression physical and imagined spaces.

The Paper Trail Atlas was an attempt at making physical what would conventionally be drawn on the page. This ‘drawing’ indicating the route by which paper travelled from central China in 100 B.C. towards Europe, reaching southern Spain via North Africa in approx. 1056 A.D. and Fabriano / Tivoli 220 years later.

It was the diagram as built-form, using the paper trail as formal exploration, the model rising from the page to denote hierarchical importance such as were to trail cuts through the page as indicated in the image to the right to carve through the world map to reveal Tivoli and Rome in the pages below

Book 02 – The Pilgrimage of the Tiber

The project examined the typology of the library for the Didactic Museum of Ancient Manuscripts in Tivoli, Italy. Rather than exploring the configuration of conventional spaces the project sought to explore the library through the scale of a book, the book becoming an expression physical and imagined spaces.

The second book attempted to map through the page. The previous Paper Trail Atlas had extruded the drawing / diagram into a physical object, Book 02 intended to form a spatial pilgrimage linking disparate elements of the book, not as object resting on the page but as spaces through it. These images and texts served as the context for the models, which were used to heighten and make the reader aware of specific images and texts within the book. These models continually varied the readers viewpoint revealing and hiding elements within the book by shifting the formal and resultant spatial condition as one flipped through the pages.