Education 2008-2009 Semester 1

here are some sketches that i hope to cover the questions about the form and the organization

this is the lablob project. it is an active structure that can generate a similar behaviour to my landscape cell.

We decided this week that the shape of our building would be derived from how we envision the program to grow from within. In terms of growth you could conceive of the building almost like a tree.

The newest growth, the greenest leaves, are located at the extremities. Here are the design studios. This means that the bachelors are located on the top edges of the building, which is appropriate since they also contain the largest surface area. They have to traverse the whole building before arriving to their studios.

All major structure is given by the exterior skin and the shafts within.

The design based offices begin their growth from the shafts, closer to the trunk. They represent older growth and are also smaller in size with respect to the studios. We begin to see a difference between centralized and decentralized program. Program that is held at the ground and program that rises up into the branches. Researching will also have decentralized, digital components integrated with the studios. Its major element will be found on the ground in the form of a library. It is approximately 1000 square meters in size will house physical books. The learning components are near the heart of the faculty. They vary in size and can accommodate between 30-360 people. There are also other educational facilities, 2000 square meters for a study hall, located near the core for lighting. The computer lab on the other hand will remain dark most of the time. The program specified for the restaurant and other public and collective facilities will be shared by the supplying and the socializing components. Socializing has a strong tie to supplying, however, the truth is that it happens everywhere.

The heart happens at the center of the building at the tensile point where flows defy gravity and move from a horizontal to a vertical direction. Valentina and Daniele have conceived of the building as an animal with a heart, but the building could also be described as a tree, where the heart is the seed.

Either way it is a living organism. Perhaps the seed/heart contains the DNA, the blueprint, or information on how the orgnanism can grow. Maybe it also receives information of how the tree progresses year after year, like the rings in a trunk. Perhaps by monitoring the buildings growth, the seed can effectively “learn” from its mistakes and adapt. Similar to concepts of artificial intelligence, the tree becomes smarter with time, and perhaps the next time it procreates, it’s offspring will be a more evolved version of itself.

A final thought is of course to consider decay as well as growth. I would very much like to examine ways to describe these sizes, quantities, and qualitative relationships in terms of scripting. One of the major successes of our msc3 team was that they were able to parametrically generate their skin.

The goal is to have the users define the shape of the building, which will in turn give characteristics and boundaries to the skin.

Here are some initial thoughts on scale and program.
It will be updated during the weekend.

After last week mid term presentation and talking to the tutors, the design still has to be more clearified. The way of connecting the organ to other organs and to the skin was also discussed in the group.

The meeting today was very fertile but still it has to made clear wich direction the groups design goes.

For my personal groupsdesign it is now quite clear what to do.

But because of the fact that I am sick today I have no pictures or products to present. This will come as soon as possible.

That is a new graphical representation of the project we are going to use for the competition presentation. In this way the diagram showing the time axis is going to look like. We considered all the comments during monday’s midterm review and we conclude some important issues.

First of all we would like to amplify the fact that the platform without components functions as three-dimensional park, offering all the park infrustructure - new graphical representation is showing it better.

Second of all the platform should be simplyfied and build in a much more logical way - I think the new one, which you can see above is closer to this

point of view.

the diagram shows the process of creating the basic plug-in platform, based on the contextual requirements - the optimum sun exposure, protecting the existing green areas and water canals

after the presentation we re-thought some issues and there are several changes we want to introduce:

the platform which creates the artificial landscape would appear as PLUG - IN platform, where all the different components can connect.the different functions would be positioned in the landscape according to the masterplan regulations which would specify their both physical and spatial requirements, but within which a certain amount of freedom will be left. Such an open formula would give possibilities of adding new components in time, changing or even removing the old ones, therefore the faculty would stay always up-to-date being able to respond to current needs.

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the diagram underneath tells a story of one school day experienced by the student of a faculty that we propose, explaining tha advantages of a faculty which functions more like a city structure where every function is an autonomous building, where student can bike from one studio to another breathing fresh air

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As you might have noticed my production has been below standard as of late. This has multiple reasons, which will only result in multiple excuses. It’s done & I’m rdy to Rock.