Toyo Ito - Breaking the Grid

I found this video about Toyo Ito, how he design his building. In this video he said that he interested in designing his building using a grid system, but from that grid system it can create another irregular form. because for Ito, irregular space inside a building can make the people who use the space can relax.

Web reference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c_v7dRhooc

Serpentine Gallery by Toyo Ito & Cecil Balmond

Inui: When you say spaces that cannot be imagined beforehand, you are no doubt including “Serpentine Gallery Pavilion.” Looking at the photographs of the realised interior, I felt that effects not anticipated in the model were achieved. Would you discuss the circumstances of the project a little.

Ito: there was little time to design that project. We first decided on a volume with square plan and a height of 4.5 meters, and then considered what could be done with it. We began with two images: the image of a straight line continuing forever like the path of a billiard ball, and an aluminium honeycomb structure that was an extension of what had been tried in the “Bruges Pavilion.” To this, Cecil responded with dozens of ideas for structural systems. That was our first meeting. The idea of a spiralling square was subsequently conceived. I felt it could be more random, but was quite particular about algorithm based on a spiralling square.

In the case of “Serpentine,” it was simply spiralling of a square, but in “Selfridges,” which is being designed for Glasgow, the algorithm he proposed and we have adopted is based on what he calls ‘dancing columns’ – columns that slant at different angles depending on the floor. The department store is arranged on a grid of eight meters by ten meters, because of a relationship between sales area and passageways. We could not design much else except the facade and the location of the core. I considered how, under these constraints, this could be made into architecture.

The townscape around this project consists of four-and five-story buildings. It is an area of just small-scale buildings. The city asked us from the start to consider vertical articulations because a single volume with a 130 meter long facade would be disruptive to the townscape. We therefore considered a facade that is vertically articulated – a facade, moreover, that bends and distorted the grid. We proposed columns that bend to make this facade match the internal space, and Cecil developed the rules of the way the columns bend. Nine grids were established around each column, and he proposed an algorithm for deciding which grid the column ought to go on the next floor.

I believe these dancing columns will generate an entirely new space, but in the course of this project i asked Cecil why he was so obsesses with algorithms. He told me that randomness human beings are able to conceive is limited, and that things we had not imagined are more likely to occur using algorithms. I thought at first that he was obsessed with reason of Western rationalist s tend to be, but when I realised that was not the case I began to find his idea extremely interesting. Creating a certain rule and playing by that rule may lead to spaces we had not even imagined at the beginning. It seemed to me that that could be the way to go beyond expressionism.

Rendering showing the mathematical algorithm basis at the pavilion structure.

Biblography:
Inui, K. (2004). Interview with Toyo Ito: Persuit of an Invisible Image. Architecture & Urbanism (U+A) , 11.

CHROMOGENIC DWELLING

2005
Proposal for the Octavia Boulevard Housing Competition, San Francisco, CA.

A strategy was invented for situating large buildings that maximize real-estate potentials into smaller neighborhoods through utilizing an electronic version of camouflage. Unlike most camouflage strategies that match context through representational mimicry, we propose the use of the opposite tactic: bold patterns radically blanket an object to be disguised, rendering it difficult to discern as overall perceptual patterns are disrupted. Known as Disruptive Patterning System camouflage, or DPS, larger forms dissolve into a broad visual noise of indefinable geometries.

To create its DPS skin, the Chromogenic Dwelling uses Electrochromic glass to create a real-time changing texture of visible solids and voids. In response to climate, light effects, and privacy requirements the building’s occupants electronically switch the thermal glass into an opaque, transparent, or translucent exterior surface. What emerges is a cumulative building image constantly on the move, and a virtual fragmentation of the building's mass.

Web page reference: http://www.faulders-studio.com/proj_chromogenic.html

The Aegis Hyposurface

Description


The Aegis Hyposurface is a dECOi project, designed principally by Mark Goulthorpe and the dECOi office with a large multi-disciplinary team of architects, engineers, mathematicians and computer programmers, among others. This team included a Professor Mark Burry, who was working at Deakin University at the time, along with various others from Deakin, including Professor Saeid Navahandi and Dr Abbas Kouzani. Please see below for a full list of the members of the project team.

This project was developed for a competition for an interactive art-work for the foyer of The Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre. The piece is a facetted metallic surface that has potential to deform physically in response to electronic stimuli from the environment (movement, sound, light,etc). Driven by a bed of 896 pneumatic pistons, the dynamic ‘terrains’ are generated as real-time calculations.

The piece marks the transition from autoplastic (determinate) to alloplastic (interactive, indeterminate) space, a new species of reciprocal architecture.

The idea behind is, that due to the different positions of the small metall tiles, the reflection of the surrounding light is changing. In this way a tremendous poetic way of displaying patterns and shapes is possible.The Prototype consists out of about 1000 of these metall tiles. They are moved by “telescopic fingers” which reach a speed up to 60 km/h and have a stroke of 50 cm.
In 2001 the Aegis Hyposurface recieved the Feidad (Far Eastern International Digital Architectural Design). It is still a remarkable design approach.

Skin in Architecture

Manufacturing/Material/Effects



The Serpentine Pavilion in London (2002), designed by Cecil Balmond and Toyo Ito.

The pinwheel aperiodic tiling in the patterned skin of the Faderation Square buildings in Melbourn, Australia (2002), designed by LAB Architecture Studio.

The Airspace facade in Tokyo, Japan (2007), design by Thom Faulders Architecture.

Chromogenic Dwelling, proposed by Thom Faulders.

The structural enclosure of the Japan Pavilion at Expo 2000, Hannover, Germany, designed by Shigeru Ban, is made from paper tubes.

The dynamic skin of the Aegis Hyposurface, designed by Mark Goulthorpe/dECOi.

Miran Galerie, Paris by dECOi

The dECOi atelier, winner of the FEIDAD International Digital Design Award 2005, specializes in speculative and experimental architectural design. Above is of a theoretical fashion showroom.

dECOi

In 1991 mark goulthorpe established the decoi atelier to undertake a series of architectural competitions, largely theoretically based. these resulted in numerous accolades around the world, which quickly established a reputation for thoughtful and elegant design work suggestive of new possibilities for architecture and architectural praxis. significantly, such work was presented under the rubric decoi, which was intended to allow for possibility of collaborative practice, and which has latterly become essential to a digitally-networked creative enterprise. decoi has received awards from the royal academy in london, the french ministry of culture and the architectural league of new york, and has represented france at the venice biennale and the united nations. based in paris, decoi has developed a supple working practice to be able to bring its design skill to bear effectively in an international arena.

http://www.newitalianblood.com/showg.pl?id=519