Project 2 | Final Poster

Project 2b | images

Project 2a | a new try

The previous study was narrowed down into a single cut of the whole scene, which I found difficult to have breakthrough for developing a surface. And therefore, I decided to start over again.

Going back to the very beginning idea of the story board (which i didn't post), I defined several parameters to describe each cut of the scene, such as number of frames, number of figures, FOV, framing components, etc.. I numerize the data and organize them as a matrix in an excel spread sheet. Using the "Surface" graph function, the data are represented as a 3D surface.



Another idea is to take the matrix itself to create pattern on a 2D surface by color coding the values. It then can also be transformed into 3D surface by extruding different tones by different heights.



Unfortunately, due to the limited manipulation of the surface graph in excel, and the incapability to export the excel graph to 3D model. I end up reproduced the graph in CAD which look like this:



If I knew how to do scripting, I would translate the excel data into digital model by whatever formula that I could invent... or may be I can write a function in excel to interpret the data, and reproduce the surface in CAD again... Anyway, given the limited time I have, I should model the surface for tomorrow printing now...

Project 2a | image 2

Further analysis of a particular shot:
- from corridor-center to figure-center
- perspectival lines slightly shifted
- the proportion of the figure relative to the frame grow

Project 2a | image 1

I picked several shots of the selected scence which primarily are perspectival view and they interested me with the movement of the camera (frame) relative to the character.

Versioning | Evolving Architecture

"Designing through versioning questions rather than consolidates architecture as a representation, as a linear progressing design process that traditionally was often erroneously presumed to begin as an idea/concept that would successively and adequately be translated into built form. Versioning suggests instead a nonlinear process. Desing - far from being a mimetical representation of a priori ideas/concepts or prototypes - may, through versioning, be comprehended as a differential process that tirelessly allows forms to evolve and dissolve out of the 'nothing', or, more precisely, out of the 'medium' - the fugitive and hence incomprehensible remaining differentiation."


This arcticle striked me with the suggestion of losing the design concept. In my previous training in architecture, whether a project is successful or not is always judged by whether one can carry the concept through the design process. It is better to have the final design more true to the original concept. But versioning suggests a design process that is never based on priori concepts. Forms are allowed to evolve and dissolve out of the 'nothing' in the differential process of versioning. Design parameters (or information, using the term in the arcticle) control the versioning process so that every version is a clear development of the previous version. Concept becomes only a variable in the design process instead of the driving force. The final design can be deviated from previous concepts through the versioning process. I found it quite difficult to fit in to many architectural education, at least from the final review stand point.

Project 2 | selected scence A

Curse of the Golder Flower
Directed by Zhang Yimou

Project 1 | Final Show

click to activate animation

Project 1c | take 5

After several tries for the movements of the black planes, I think this is the best one.

Project 1 | A0 - draft

This draft is a try to use minimal elements to summarize the project. I am tempted to add more images, but at the same time, I am also tempted to take away all the texts. Any suggestion?

Project 1c | Revised video

Project 1c | Section by Frame

Two black planes are placed facing the camera perpendicularly. Different parts of the construct are revealed as they move and rotate.

I tried to use flash instead of quicktime movie. It allows me to get rid of the blogger or youtube bar and the animation can really blend in the black background of this blog.

Project 1b | move^2

In addition to light, one more parameter is animated.

Greg Lynn | Probable Geometries

In this essay, Greg Lynn discussed the critique that writing is essentially an "anti-architectural gesture" defined against geometric purity. Philosopher Denis Hollier suggested that architecture is the discipline that resists the play of writing more than any other. In contrast to the indeterminate, nonideal, heterogeneous, undecidable and other vague characteristics of writing, architecture has historically linked with the complete, pure forms of exact geometries, and thus is critiqued as reducible, static, exact, fixed, proportional, and identically reproducible. But He argued that with the development and explorations of the measurement and description of amorphous matter through "anexact yet rigorous" geometries (surch as stereometry), architecture's fixed orthogonality is moved closer to vital matter while retaining a rigorous system of measure.

Project 1b | Lights Moving

Since I am interested in the effect that the construct is fading into the white background, I make an extended version of the animation to show how it is emerging from the white.

Fix camera, fix model, moving lights.

Project 1b | Framed Views

Since the video is fail...The images here are not captured from the video. It seems to me that the images are more successful in expressing the surfaces and void.

Project 1b | Compositional Frames

This video has 3 parts:

1. Following an EDGE; the frame expands and contracts in responding to the profile of the surface that attached with the edge.
2. Pan viewing a SURFACE; the original intention is to capture the light / shadow movements along the surface as the light source moves.
3. Flying through the SPACE; the lighted outer surfaces contrast with the shadowed inner surfaces give interesting figure / ground shapes.

However, it was over-exposed...light intensity was too high and I have no time to redo that yet.

Architectural Animation?

"Is there a danger that the medium has become the message? Is the employment of animatory techniques a triumph of style over substance?"

Neil Spiller raises his concern that "an all-too-eager appropriation of animation software ... is leading architects to abandon a rigorous approach to architectural space in favour of a fetishisation of surface imagery". He argues that architectural animations often divert their creator from creating architectural space. And the process of creating animations is actually static comparing to the moving pencil. It also limited the possibilities for imagination that sketches and drawings can provide, as everything has to be know in detail in order to put into the virtual. He suggests that the technology of the virtual and its applications must be woven into actual architecture, which is where the anima in animation should reside.

He may be overstated the situation, in fact, a skillful use of animation can do much more than just spinning around the exterior of forms. It can be more than just the representation of the final design. Woven the technology with the process of developing concept, finding form, creating space etc., is exactly what we are trying to do in our class.


OMA | REX - Museum Plaza, Louisville


Peter Eisenman - Casa Guardiola


Zaha Hadid - Parametric Urbanism

It's about...

Ok...now I know it's about form finding by utilizing the computational power of these softwares. For the two versions of model I have, I like the spatial construct model more than the temporal one. So I can probably further manipulate my loft surfaces, and adding thickness to it before starting the animation/framing exercise...

The problem is loft surfaces in Autocad2007 cannot be imported to FormZ directly... and thus can't be exported to FACT... I will need an intermediate step - 3DS. Anyway, may be I should practice more on FormZ.

Animation

still using autocad...
hopefully will try something on formz later on

Project 1a | Temporal Construct

This series represent the space between two legs at each interval of time, simply by lofting the left and right leg. It is interesting to see the turning of my body portraited in the model.

Project 1a | Spatial Construct

So I started my study from analyzing the motions of my legs. For each 0.1s-frame, the positions of my legs are documented, with yellow indicating right leg, and blue indicating left leg. The 3D model is showing the actual spatial traces of both legs.


This view is showing the first half of motion. Left leg (blue) is the pivot as my right leg is lifting and reaching the wall.

This is the second half of the motion, showing my right leg (yellow) swing down from the wall and land on the floor.


Here is the top view. Running toward the wall from the right side, bounce back from the left side.

Project 1 | Video + Frames

Run toward a wall, step on it, turn around, and rebound from the wall... Thinking about the analysis part, I will probably start from the legs and see what will I get.

Body Matters

Greg Lynn is suggesting an alternative concept of how bodies are composed, which focus on the heterogeneity rather than homogeniety. It is an approach from the base up versus from the top down.

What Greg called "Viscous Body" is an open systerm that emerged from a process of continuous differentiation of its base matters. Such process involves the interactions between the interior configurations and exterior forces, which occur at the different local surfaces of the body. He describes such interaction as "two-fold deterritorialization" that the body disperses interiors outward but simultaneously unifies a constantly shifting interior through the internalization of external forces. And he employed the concept of "parasite" to explaine how the differential process can bind disparate bodies into intergral unities. From my understanding, by using the parasite concept, he didn't imply a necessary host in viscous body.

Greg Lynn Form http://www.glform.com/

By the way, it's really a nice idea to have blogs setup for a class. I can see through our interactions, each of our blogs will come together and form a composite body.

great!

arch670 is started