A bit different from Alain Bublex’s work, “Parasitic Architecture” is an intriguing project by David Scott Taylor:

Wasp nest building simulator by Sylvain Guérin:

A simple simulator to implement stigmergic behavior A video is also there.

More about it: Bonabeau, E., Guérin, S., Snyers, D., Kuntz, P., & Theraulaz, G. 2000. Three-dimensional architectures grown by simple “stigmergic” agents. BioSystems, 56: 13-32.

A lift control panel woody-modified so that people only access few floors (seen in Utrecht):

A more structured summary of what I found interesting at the Crystalpunk workshop for soft architecture in Utrecht last week-end:

• Pablo Miranda’s talk targeted two aspects of architecture: being critical and projective. As for the critique part, a lot of things in architecture comes from the assumption that one can do stuff by drawing (before, people were building directly). The use of computer application has complicated this situation: new tools (3ds max, maya, catia…) gives a very important flavor to what’s been designed: so who is going to be the author of a project built using such a tool? the architect or the designers of the tool? Concerning the projects, he presented those of his group which are amazingly interesting, especially those playing with genetic algorithm in architecture.
• Adam Somlai-Fischer’s point was about ‘bionic spaces”, not smarthomes. Sdam is against smarthomes, makes you dumb and incapable to interact with reality (which I definitely agree with, I hate the crappy intelligent fridge idea that may be refilled when empty). For him, architecture is not the building itself, not the behavior, it’s not a dress code BUT the idea that space that surrounds us is a responsibility AND it’s a social process. He thinks that now that social software are paving this way (web2.0, flickr…), we have familiar ground to replicate this in architecture. He then presented his incredible projects.
• Jelle Feringa elaborated on Pablo’s critique about interactive architecture. For him, each architect style is bound to the software they used (marcus novak - mathematica /greg lynn - maya
  kas oosterhuis - virtools / frank gehry - catia). His critique was also that specific software designed for architects are regressive. For example piranesi is very limitative: the software creates romantic-sketchy-cheesy models that make architects bound to old-fashioned model to create architecture. For him, archiCAD is also regressive in the sense that it helps quickly resolve design dilemmas and site-constraints unique tu strict municipal-building codes and client requirements through its interactive abilities. One of the most interesting project he presented was a chair design produced with genetic algorithm. They started by asking a question: “what is the minimum volume defining a chair” which they try to answer using genetic algorithm techniques. For Jelle, this was a new way of designing by addressing a specific question before creating an artifact.
• Jonas Hielscher (Z-25) presented his project Dat-a: an installation based on RFID technology. The dat-a project allows to track people in an exhibit using rfid (you can see people’s name in different rooms). He said: “we are in effect creating and Internet of Things”. He and Pablo also mentioned this interesting fact after my presentation about blogject: we will get enormeous piles of data, how would we do deal with that (data mining gets hot as Jonas said).

Thanks Wil for all of this!

In the last issue of Metropolis Mag, there is an intriguing article entitled “Found in Translation: Laying the foundation for more sensitivity within a community’s public spaces”. It’s mostly about how urban designer can articulate residents’ design priorities.

What is interesting, is this project they mention: “Hester Sign Collaborative“:
Those students, interns with a nonprofit design outfit called Hester Street Collaborative, are investigating how Chinatown’s jumble of signs, icons, and sidewalk food vendors can reflect a look that residents actually want. With the supervision of Anne Frederick and Alex Gilliam, Hester Street’s full-time staff, students create “nonverbal tools” for residents who don’t speak English (or design jargon). Last year, intern William Chung designed a board game, Bad Design Darts, to serve as a community survey. Hester Street would post a neighborhood map at a town hall meeting and the block that residents hit most frequently with darts would receive a cleanup or gardening campaign initiated by civic groups.

Jenny Chin, another of the collaborative’s interns, developed Step On Your Neighborhood, in which the collaborative lends residents a small handheld paver. People would take the pavers around the their streets and stamp impressions of found objects in concrete. “Here’s this way of making things that could be beautiful and are entirely specific to that neighborhood,” says Gilliam of Chin’s innovation, “This is something many ages can do.”
(…)
The collaborative will soon install a ribbon of symbols to inject more immigrant histories into the flow.

Why do I blog this? I find relevant to study how people think in terms of urban planning/design ideas, especially in diverse neighborhoods. This idea of ‘non-verbal tool’ is simple and appealing. Besides, I really like this: “the Hester Street intern demonstrates how making casts of found objects can feed a useful English-free design lexicon“:

(Photos courtesy Hester Street Collaborative)

Alex Pang is working on the very intriguing topic of “The End of Cyberspace” (there is a short piece about it in Wired today). In one of his blogposts, he’s wondering about the names that we given to cyberspace (the ultimate goal is to find a new concept for what is now cyberspace: ubicomp…).

Concerning cyberspace names, I looked back at some old role playing games I had both in english and french, dated from end of 80’s and 90’s. There are names like ‘virtual world’, “the grid’, “the matrix”, “cyberspace” and so forth. Sometimes, the names of the artifacts gives the idea of the concept (in “information superhighway” that I really like, it makes me remembering by grandmother who kept asking me “where are those superhighways”).

An important thing I guess is the difference or the mix between the idea of a virtual space and its physical representation (as for instance a network of cable or fibers) and the virtual counterpart (information flow).

About this, it’s interesting to see that the first representations of virtual reality embed the concept of the cyberspace architecture (in a more perfect way of course). Networked virtual reality is made of wires/cables/fibers (to connect computers) and it’s really represented as a grid/matrix. Check those pictures (Space Harriers and Tron):

The ground of this virtual space is - actually - a grid.

The Ambient peacock explorer is a project by Cati Vaucelle and Philip Vriend which I like. It’s actually an interesting mobile unit that can be connected to an headquarter, here is the mobile unit:

mobile units: Independent from the headquarter / One shell per context of exploration / Shell inflated on top of the structure to indicate where the mobile unit is going / Context based shells per unitWater: Jelly Fish Organic Shell Countryside: Wooden structureCity: Inflatable ConcreteAir: Blimp

headquater Is composed of four gathering areas: the air, the countryside, the city and the water area, a studio and an editing room. Each wall receives life feed from the mobile units based on each unit context. Environmental data from sensing mobile units are also projected on the walls as meta information. The headquarter itself retro-project on its roof the life feed of its environment and on the external walls displays the video from mobiles units. The production centre also invites to discuss the documentaries and environmental issues and by that is also a showcase building.

The manual for micro-dwelling shows interesting new micro-dwelling development:

MICRO DWELLINGS is a system for making low cost dwellings of variable sizes for any number of persons. It consists of movable housing modules that can form different configurations on land, on water and under water. The system allows for a diversity of materials as well as changes and adaptations. The MICRO DWELLINGS are modular, can be scaled up and down, and expand and grow together with other systems into small communities. (…) An energy unit could be hooked on to the MICRO DWELLINGS, consisting of for example micro-windmills, solar panels and solar heat systems, heat pumps etc. (…) The MICRO DWELLINGS can be built onto rooftops of existing buildings or be suspended from a bridge or a wall.

Why do I blog this? I like the last point: living above a bridge… that sounds so William Gibson.

I am not a great fan of Dubai architecture craze; however, there is this interesting new project called ‘DUBAI HUB one‘ designed by GEORGE KATODRYTIS / STUDIONOVA, via Bidoun Magazine (Arts and Culture from the Middle East).

The proposal is for a series of cultural hubs which will act as focal points and public foyers where cultural programs can be plugged-in: art galleries, museums, libraries, performance stages, poetry reading salons, music recital spaces, art auction facilities, etc. The main lobby of the buildings is to be as public and accessible as possible, like a typical Dubai shopping center, with escalators and ramps leading to the upper levels, and to special rooms for additional cultural events. All events and items will be consumable: The aim is to convert the culture of shopping into shopping for culture. The external skin structure and glazing is designed using algorithmic weaving scripts.

Preserved TreeScapes InternationalTM (PTI), a company specialised in replica trees. They now expanded their products to phone mast disguised as trees:

Most recently, PTI has turned its experience and talents toward concealment solutions for the wireless communications provider. The tremendous increase in demand for wireless towers has generated great opposition to the use of conventional, unconcealed structures. Both community and zoning requirements for high quality concealment are on the rise. Today, concealment issues may be the greatest obstacles to obtaining zoning approval. PTI’s botanically correct tree tower products will help speed the approval process. PTI has an ongoing commitment to develop future products and concealment opportunities through design, research and testing.

Why do I blog this? this kind of today’s artefacts would definitely appear to be weird for time-travellers coming from the past.

A project from 1958 by Guy Riottier called “ARCHITECTURE EPHEMERE et de RECUPERATION“. I was interested by two amazing realisations. The first one (on the left) is a “holiday village made of old parisian buses (which price is way lower than real holiday houses as stated by the author). The second is a holiday village made of cardboard:

The Guardian recently featured a nice article about italian architect Renzo Piano. I was not so interested by his take on french’s so-called riot (even though his take about it is relevant: “The peripheries are the cities that will be. Or not. Or will never be”), rather his thoughts about space and emptiness are clever:

Piano wants to introduce the
European idea of urban planning to the British capital, ideas which he characterises as understanding the difference between a piazza (good) and a plaza (less good).

“A piazza is not a plaza,” fumes Piano. “The plaza is the theme park of the piazza; the plaza is the commercial version. A piazza is an empty space with no function. This is what Europeans understand.” A space without function allows one to be “in the moment”, he says, and to counter what he sees as a major flaw in modern life - the habit of interpreting all experience in the light of achievement, as a means to an end. We should, he thinks, learn to lighten up, and the creation of empty, purposeless spaces within cities might encourage that. “You don’t have to struggle to give function to every single corner. You can just wait and see and enjoy.”

Finally, one of the last quote in the article is a good food for thought that reflects all his thinking: ““Architecture in some way has the duty to suggest behaviour“.

Why do I blog this? I find pertinent to have insights from architect’s vision of space, how they think about it and how they envision spatial features as well as their connections with behavior. As a ‘user experience’ researcher, I am interested in how spatial features frame people’s behavior.

(via), FLIP seems to be the world’s weirdest laboratory:

The lab starts off as a regular ship but when it reaches its destination it ‘flips’ so that most of the ship sinks leaving the end of the ship standing above the water. Once flipped walls become floors and ceilings and whilst some furniture rotates during the flipping process others are built twice so that one of them is always in the correct position

It’s meant to be used by scientists who “needed a more quiet, stable place than a research ship to study how sound waves behave under water“:

When FLIP is in its vertical position it is both extremely stable and quiet. Since Drs. Fisher and Spiess completed their first tests, many other important data have been gathered using FLIP. The way water circulates, how storm waves are formed, how seismic waves move, how heat is exchanged between the ocean and the atmosphere, and the sound made underwater by marine animals are just a few of the subjects studied using the amazing FLIP.

While wandering around on the Web tonight, I ran across this Walking Cities project by Ron Herron (a member of the Archigram avantgarde group). In this concept, the city is a giant, reptilian structures which glided across the globe until its inhabitants found a place where they wanted to settle.

It seems that this concept is now forgotten, there are still temporary architectures but moving habitations (apart from trailers) are not really trendy…