There was also a recent article about New York city starting up a computer science high school so it seems like a bit of a Zeitgeist topic. Computational literacy seems to be pretty much a no-brainer for the coming generation of people. In the past you couldn’t be ‘a man’ unless you could tune twin Webber carburetors or a woman if you couldn’t bake a perfect Victoria sponge cake. Those requirements, and the gender distinctions that go along with them seem to be totally irrelevant these days, but there isn’t much to replace them. Creating and interacting with computers is pretty much ubiquitous now, you’d be hard pushed to find anyone who doesn’t need to do it for their work in some capacity. Bolting together websites and building iPhone apps is probably going to end up as a fairly common job, something like a cottage industry, so the skills needed will end up pretty central in high school education.

I wonder if the discussion about that should be compulsory or not in arch education is the wrong question, and that letting students chose their own path a bit more, (maybe leading to less defined degree names). Five years is an incredibly long time, so people could cover the requirements for registration (if that even remains relevant/important) and still chose a whole bunch of courses that are less aligned to the standard path. Any kind of compulsory module constrains an already hugely overconstrained intellectual pool (more on this next post), but widening the pool of possible options is surely a good idea?

This all assumes that going to university for learning is actually a good idea, which I’m increasingly sceptical about.

I was just watching at SG but I was presenting the some of the work that we’ve been doing at BVN over the last year or so at SimAUD under the title of “A_Spatial_Query_&_Analysis_Tool“. This is the pre-press version, so as soon as the proceedings are released I’ll put the proper link up and write more about it.

The real reason for this post was to get my notes from SimAUD up online.

Cloud 9 – Enric Ruiz Geli

• Cloud house in bcn, nurbs house.
• Hydrogen lobby
• We have ceded design to mega corps, in the past “I’m not sure what I’m doing but I’m doing speed”
•  What would the door to a zeppelin factory like?
  
  Same scale could build buildings inside that factory.
• “when beauty emerges, every body gets sleepy“
• Doesn’t seem to be interested in manufacturing optimisation
• Using a projector to check positioning of parts
• “Architects as a platform for contemporary art“
• Still more talk of innovation : but nobody is really talking about how to achieve it, just that it is a good thing, some sort of nebulous good
• “it’s not like materials are here to fight with us… We should play with them”
• “Attack”

bio tic building

• No oil, but we have software
• All surrounding buildings are not really built the way they look
• 150kg of people/m² 800kg of structure wtf
• “looks like, performs, is” “perform, look, one”
• 1:1 weight to function ratio
• Less weight means less cost of foundations, saves money for other parts of the building
• Top truss lifted on the rest of the structure of the building.
• 60% of Spanish energy is imported gas (figures here don’t seem to support this though)
• Satronik d 6000, plasma cutter?
• 60 companies in Cat doing digital fab, who’s doing digital fab in NSW?
• Move fees to architect to reduce steel kg, how do you write that contract? A bit like akt
• “stay in the bubble, continues dumb”
• Hang the building to produce emptiness
• When asked to draw what is missing they all draw columns (8 yr olds) we have constructed their reality
• “4 technologies for 4 energy diagrams of a building”
• Each etfe pillow component is smart arduino driven, 0.3% of the cost of the building
• Cloud in pillow produces a shadow
• Who are the enviro consultants?
• 7 years to net zero, are we ready? Will this happen in aus? I doubt it
• Adding 2 years of monitoring to the contract
• Arduinos do distributed decision making, I wonder if they have any oversight possibility?
• I wonder if you could mash the DEC database with google maps?
• Trees are the Boss of the buildings

clusters:

micro synergetics

• Start early and per plan the workshop via skype.
• Working with dynamic materials, simulation, micro controllers and user interaction
• Each sub component (personal project) is linked/networked into a larger system
• Using thermo wires and thermal paint
• Everyone seems to prefer to work with grasshopper, is it going to become the ubiquitous platform for everything? Do other fields like grasshopper?
• Digitally mediated vs direct material responses? Motors vs shape memory etc.

composite territories

• Designed materials, micro spec of materials affect macro performance
• Simulation and testing
• Glass fibre polymer
• Programming with making
• Working with structure in the surface
• A much richer understanding of failure
• Using layup to control bending and twisting
• Thermo presses, fancy t shirt press/ sandwich press
• Design, making, testing (formal), testing (playing), making
• Simulation using sofistick, but also using it for design not just verification
• The structure has completely stiff, flat and non rotating nodes so that all bending happens in the members.
• Questions
• Lars: where do you put the intelligence in your intelligent systems?
• Much disagreement ensues, but it seems that the one thing that is agreed on is that we ought to move into it in general, and let the balance of things work itself out.

Session 2

Robert hull

• The atom: we are manipulating atoms 1by1 in the last 15 years
• Atomic crystal structures are a finite set
• 230 symmetry solutions , a schema of crystallography until the 80s
• Nd rotational symmetry was not considered possible or make lattice structures
• Quasi crystals – dan shechtman – found 10 fold symmetry
• This is the root of aperiodic tiling
• Redefined crystallography using Ammann lines of symmetry
• Materials selection in conceptual design, ashby
• Using property graphs to spec materials without any idea what the material actually is.
• Graphs called ashby maps
• Iron carbon phase diagram a blueprint for modern civilisation
• Federal materials genome initiative

bioresponsive building envelopes

• Responsive pixelated building skins so that the performance changes dependant on whatever factors matter to you
• Double pane systems, like etfe pillows, allows directional opacity

Material conflicts

• Rc: as a designer nobody wants to pick over a scatter plot ( why not? Maybe it’s just a skill we need to get used to? All visualisations are an abstraction that leaves something out, so maybe we should be making our own abstractions?)

Manfred grohmann

• Using reciprocal frames and CNC cutting to make craft joints
• Geodesics on a surface to make frames and enclosures (what sorts of surfaces are amenable to this kind of treatment?)
• Cutting in the strong direction, bend in weak direction
• D to p on contractor side
• Hermes rive gauch
• Air rail parking connector
• Comp optimised Irregular girder – this doesn’t seem very interesting any more, this is quite good I suppose; this kind of thing is now mainstream
• Mountain rail
• Why make complicated details when you can just mill plastic, nicely pragmatic
• Statsel museum looks like it well worth a visit
• Gtecz.com
• Voxeljet 3d concrete printing

Grids hell tectonics

• Use geodesic curves to get straight unrolls
• Complex form with straight members
• How to check that it won’t sag to failure?
• Splicing long pieces
• 4 layer lath construction
• No bin packing due to unknown deliveries, more time and 3% wastage could go down even more maybe?

Sg kids

• Kids easily understood sketch up
• Using ar media to visualise designs

Transgranular perspiration

• Materials that sweat
• Using water migration to do things
• What intelligence can you wedge into a brick?

Form follows flow

• Exploring the flows around objects
• Modelling a 60 storey building in a wind tunnel
• Playing around in wind tunnel to see what really happens rather than relying on cfd simulation
• I want some helium bubbles!
• Using a neural network, but for what end?

• Branco koleravich (sp?)
• Anna dyson
• Martin Tamke
• nick Hacket

3 polemics to get the conversation going
Branco:
starts off with what seems to have become standard archi speak, dynamic… Adaptive… Flows…gradients… (did I mis this lecture at Uni)
Why is he showing these truncated cone? He says that it is dumb geometry. Intestine that they’ve really made it! They had trouble with friction, real life got in the way; so friction is a problem. Should we moe from mechanical actuation to biological actuation?
Adaptive building materials, intrinsically able to perform functions
Flexinol, national shape memory alloy wire allows material actuation.
These sorts of technologies don’t scale very well though. What other sorts of actuation is possible ? (I wonder if trying to scale is a mistake? Hairs on skin are very small, can buildings have very small adaptive components ?)
Book: smart architecture from tu delft 2003
(I wonder if he picked this font to be intentionally unreadable?)

Anna’s polemic

What we think is pertinent to today
Materials shaping energy flows
Radio frequencies and what they equate to in real life (scale) powers of ten still
We are stitching together single scale models to get multi scale models, not making smooth scaling models (Newtonian stops and quantum starts I suppose)
We have intuition about how buildings behave. Vernacular arch has a lot of that
Sharing skills through hive mind, can we use crowds to solve design problems fast? Too optimistic?
smaller scales higher embodied energy(? Per mass?)
Once we move small scale into larger scale we have a limited impact? (Are we straying into ID realms)
How do we move from low value add materials, steel, concrete etc. and add value through nano stuff
Why, what cost, to what end (good questions, not asked often enough)
Avoid fetishism

martin’s polemic

Why materials now?
What effect is digital’ having on architecture?
Research method of demonstrator objects address complexity directly
Making through code produces a design space, how can materials change that design space?
Materials Not new to design, but new to arch, aero has had it for ages
Scales introduce new design problems, but also ways of solving them.
(nice rough joint using the grain of the wood)
Material properties as a design parameter, find out through testing at a usefully big scale.
New methods lead to new processes: design AND validation
Design with aggregate behaviour and time based issues
Organisation of models? Not representational or hierarchical or linear, feedback loops as a way to do this? Agents etc.

discussion

Materials often exist in a vacuum
Discussion is usually about feelings and texture, not structure or behaviour
Mt: can I play? More analysis? Tools and design environments, materials have an impact on energy
.?: previously software and electronics was crazy, is designing materials less crazy? ( are we designing materials or designing with materials?)
Jc: is it about playing?
.: yes, it’s about engaging specialists to get them excited too. Specialists have a lot of embodied knowledge. They can move things along because new things excite them
A: academic specialisation is now looking at applying their specific knowledge to other fields. Hyper specialisation amight have run out of steam?
Bc: pro stealing from other disciplines. Students fine with geometry and micro controllers now, but they don’t understand thickness and tolerance. This is a really big challenge, councils for fundamental unrstanding of assemblies and how stuff works. Compound issues of many tolerances bite you before you get to the exciting stuff. Cover the basics.paradox
Jc: materials with static properties. What about intensive properties? ( are these properties of the material or the application?) how do we move forwards ?
Bc: working with air and hydraulics will be interesting
.: sg small projects, really interesting. Material scientist becomes interested in laser cutter, testing components
(is this discussion a dumb one that ID and engineering has had years ago?)
Bc: material based arch paradigm shifts, steel etc. what will dynamics do? Changing shape and properties
A: to what extent? Usually the same function, but better. New materials allow something new and different, not old but better
A: material conflicts? Are we working with compromises?
A: embodied energy, metabolic opera (wtf?) use old materials ina new way. Deep floor plate buildings uninhabitable, what to do with them?
Jc: energy implications?
Mt: is it ok to u high tech materials? Very high energy. What about time? What does thr mean? Interaction design, other fields can talk about this.
Q: can we educate people to be able to interact with mathematicians and chemists etc.?
A: performance the driver, interdisciplinary interaction. Can we be involved in development rather than consumers? PhDs are much less specialised and more integrative. Expert integrators and facilitators. How do we get to the next level? Is our best good enough currently?
.: digital false sense of security? Students don’t realise that hard questions are still messy, google can’t always help
Mt: research based teaching helps
Bc: can we use these things in developing econs? Arch doesn’t really care, but someone will

To nerdily categorise it all:

• Bodum columbia plunger
• Scales from K Mart
• Handmade cup from La Lied in Pai
• Coffee from Single Origin
• Hario slim hand grinder

I could do with resurrecting the thermometer & timer, and getting those graphs of going.

I’m just setting up the folders for this semester and I came across this booklet published by the department of defence in 1961. There are some great diagrams!
Fallout protection

All people of equal ability are of eligible to equal reimbursement for their labour, therefore any salary difference between you and your friends is the opportunity cost of your life decisions.

I’ll go on and make all my disclaimers after the fold.

So, that all seems a bit mean, but let’s see how we go here.
The first objection might be about how to measure “equal ability”: this seems to be a tricky one! But I think it can be solved reasonably easily. Two people would be equal if they had no comparative advantage over each other. This seems a bit too obvious, but in reality you probably have a feeling for a pecking order of capability amongst the people you know. If someone lower down the rank is getting more cash than you at the end of the month then you have either ranked them wrongly or they are paying in some other way (eg they work crazier hours than you, or they have to deal with some real arse holes every day).
The other objection is that this is so staggeringly obvious that it isn’t worth saying. Well this might be so, but everyone who I’ve mentioned it to seems to think it novel and entertaining enough to make them giggle a bit. I’ve always put it in slightly different (possibly less accurate) terms; something like “the difference between your salary and that of the guy at uni who you were smarter than is the cash value of your job satisfaction”.
The other thing that springs to mind is that it ignores the role of luck, but I don’t have much time for luck, you can steer it and make ‘lucky breaks’ more likely. That conference where you met that person who, a few years later turned out to be really useful… That happens all the time and is a life decision.
The job satisfaction point I make above is a bit too coarse to catch the full impact of this, but it does go some way to illiterating it, and a lot of things can be boiled down to job satisfaction I suppose!
I’ve started reading The Wealth of Nations and Case, Fair & Oster so that might be coming through here.
I’d be interestes to see if anyone can come up with a knock down argument against this, or a better wording to strengthen it (comments please).