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about [animation] frames and projections:

PROJECT 1B: [ANIMATION!!] 2

I braved the snow today actually more like slush. [ANIMATION!!] 2 is here!!
Below is the camera path:



The movement through the model is less haphazard this time. It's still really hard to get into my model because of all the intract parts. I may have to rebuild the surface again for [ANIMATION!!] 3.


Click Photo below to begin animation:



or visit
www.archive.org/details/proj1b_animation_2

PROJECT 1B: [ANIMATION!!] 1

The [ANIMATION!!] 1 is here!!! Finally got the lighting and camera and rendering to work.
The movement of the camera is below.

The first animation is more of a"first-time" using the camera deal. Basically everytime I saw a cool shot I took it. Thuse the movement through the model is a little more haphazard than I had intended. Also, my model look broken up in the animation. But after three days of grief. I'm happy to submit this as a first attempt movie.

http://www.archive.org/details/proj1b_animation1

Click on the "256 Quicktime". It works on the MACs at school. Unfortunately slower computers will not be about to see the animation.


P.S. A really good non-profit site for archiving/posting movies, images, text, and audio is:
www.archive.org
They also do copyrighting when you post.
I was having trouble posting with the ftp on MACs, but it works really easily off the PCs with Internet Explorer.

PROJECT 1B: NEW MODEL (more process)

So in order to do this animation, I had to simplify all the lines and forms in my model.

The differences between the earlier Model 1B and this one are subtle. The three pieces had to become a single form. I did this by attaching the surfaces of the three. The "attach surface" function attached each part with a curve. This creates a nicer ribbon form, which allow for a better exploration of interior and exterior space.

PROJECT 1B: NEW MODEL

My new hot model with only two images (and colors that match the diagram and not the website). This time I am only exploring the idea of visual space. Whether or not lines in the diagram are visually closer or further away determine the third dimension of my model. The lines were redrawn as curves then "lofted" together. (Lofted being a cool MAYA tool that allows you to link two curves with a long ribbon.)


The red is relatively static in the diagram and only move back and forth along the picture plane. The green and violet forms are relatively more active. The proximity and visual contrast of the two central green forms pull those forms in the model forward. The violet in the diagram remains mostly hidden and mixed with the red, except at the very right of the diagram where the violet and red separate and we start to understand the two as separate entities.

"DEATH CUBE 'K'"

San Francisco Federal Building. Morphosis. http://www.pritzkerprize.com/164/pritzker2005/hires/sanfranciscofederalbuilding03.jpg

I'm feeling particularly old today. We had a discussion in lab class about "what books and theory articles do they assign in college TODAY". I'm starting to realize that the architecture theory readings that I read oh I won't say how long ago when I was 21 are no longer assigned as readings today: Alvar Aalto's "The Trout and the Mountain Stream" or his article "The Humanizing of Architecture" and Roland Barthes book Mythologies. What's even worse is my studio prof hasn't hear of Alvar Aalto's Mt. Angel Library or Alvaro Siza'a Leca Swimming Pools. Must be a "West Coast" thing.

At any rate, I hope that the above picture of Morphosis's San Francisco Federal Building and the mesh book back that fell in the middle of downtown Seattle are not indications of the type of architecture we do in the Pacific Northwest. We have a long proud tradition of tectonic architecture that comes from both Asian and Scandinavian influences, which should be separated from what THOSE Californians do.

(moving on . . . )

In the essay "Death of Cube 'K'", Anthony Vidler categorizes modern architecture into two poles: "archaisms with contemporary function and neoformations." Architecture is either copying classical building and giving them a new function, or it falls under the category of "neoformations": the result of a sort of backlash of psychologically oppressed society. According to Vidler neoformationsare Kafka buildings that represent the ideas and psychology of the modern age.

This is not a new idea. Architecture reflects the ideas of its society. Look at the early 1900's and the movie Metropolis (The probably don't show that film in architecture theory courses anymore either.) The idea that machines would someday run our cities. Machines would become dominant forms of architecture and eventually control the social structure of a society.

What was that great Japanese anime done by Osamu Tezuka . . . Metropolis.

http://www.sonypictures.com/cthv/metropolis/flash/main.html

Wonderful film about psychology and society. And as long as we are on the topic of animation:



Vidler discusses about the new language of Morphosis architecture as a forced "perspective of the paranoid". Spaces that are sloped, canted, fractures and broken rather than the traditional vertical and horizontal. I really don't see how that is any different from Russian Constructivism (or Deconstructivism in depending on the language); a movement that started in 1917.

Model of the Tatlin Tower, monument for the Communist International.

I think the only difference is the public acceptance of ugliness as architecture and the gave it a name: "neoformations". Honestly, the growing ego of architects to place "their" built form with no considerations to site or the people who have to use the building daily. Is disphoria something YOU want to experience daily? Do you live in the apartment across the street with your curtains draw due to the glare coming off some titanium piece of crap? Are you going to be here 100 years later when the materials from your building are causing some toxic reaction and have to be removed?

I think its great to have diagrams and form generators, but . . .

There is a another step that should be taken before you built what you see on the computer screen. That is the consideration of the client, no their needs, their egos or what they want, but their livelihood, the livability of your building, the impact (on the street-level) of the city, and the impact the building (and all its materials) have on the world.

So forgive me, if I missed the point of the reading assignment. There is nothing new about "Neoformations". It's just Russian Constructivism on egocentric steroids.

PROJECT 1A: MODEL (part 3: farewell oh model of mine)

Yes. Farewell to my model. Unfortunately, my model will not help me through the second part of this process. Tossed aside for something newer, shinier, younger and better looking.
So farewell . . . with some hot photos.
Finally got the lighting to work. (THANK YOU CARL!!!!!)


"i'm too sexy for this blog

too sexy for this blog


i'm . . . too . . . sexy . . . "

(and please don't ask for royalties)

PROJECT 1A: MODEL (part 2: process makes perfect)

"PROCESS"!!!
I suppose I had forgotten about that particular concept. I could flash a gazillion cool images and none of it would matter if you didn't understand the process.

(above) The diagrams are taken into MAYA (modeling software). Then a choice has to be made: how do you turn a two dimensional drawing/lines and turn it into a three dimensional computer model?
Somehow the third dimension needs to be represented. Things like time, sequence, visual proximity can spawn that third dimension in to reality. One can imagine how time can be extrapolated from the diagram by the amount spent in a certain position. Or how sequence can represent movement after movement elongated and chronological to the diagram. (see Project 1A: Diagrams)

Here I chose visual proximity and focal points of movement. More lines in one area create a stronger visual presence, which pulled parts of the model to the foreground. The opposite for fewer lines, which were pushed toward the background.
I also wanted to examine the focal points of movement. What was the crucial/apex/resultant point of all this foreground-background movement.
The result seen below:

GREG LYNN

bODY mATTERS and [ANIMAT]ion

One of my favorite projects is the Leca Swimming Pools in Leca da Palmeira, Portugal. The project was done by Alvaro Siza in 1966, (years before the Greg Lynn essays).

http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/leca/index.htm
(a web article with photos written by Tatiana Berger in 2003)

The project is located at the sea-wall at Leca and involves changing rooms, a cafe and a series of man-made tide pools which are naturally fed by the sea. Siza uses much of the original topography in his project, minimizing the intrusion of man made forms. (And why did I bring this up??!! )

In his essay, "Body Matters", Lynn discusses dissimilar objects connecting in nature as parasites, wasps, or viscous fluids. The ability for one form to evolve and flow in to the next.
In the same way, Siza's sea-wall connects two different entities. The sea-wall stand uninterrupted separating the city and the sea for miles. Siza's project becomes a seamless transition between the man-made sea-wall and the sea. Two entities which are naturally dissimilar connect thorough Siza's project.

The idea of forms that evolve and change over time is presented in both "Body Matters" and "Animation". In "Body Matters", evolution can happen within a second to over centuries: from before the two entities (as the wasp and the orchid) meet to how they affect the next entity (how the wasp affects the next orchid). In Lynn's essay "Animation", time is the controlling variable that slowed down allows us to understand movement and if sped up affords an understanding or evolution.

In Alvaro Siza's Leca Swimming Pools, there is a constant evolution of the sea eroding the wall and it's surroundings away. There is sort of futility of human labor to build forms to obstruct and oppose nature. By acknowledging nature, Siza's project becomes the a point of symbiosis between the civilization's sea-wall and the nature's eroding sea.


(All done without blobs or computers, but with a very exact measurement of site conditions. Siza measures every rock on the site. And it connects better to the site and the city then a stack of books covered in mesh or a smashed guitar. Do form generators really generate better cities and better buildings?)

PROJECT 1A: MODEL

Model of diagram 1 done completely in MAYA . I examined the most heavily concentrated areas and focal points of motion. The size of model area was determines by relative concentration of lines in the diagram. Whether the line in the diagram was in the foreground and background became a determinate of how far off the central axis a concentration was placed. Then I created several layers of connection from one point to the next.
I was trying to take some ideas from the Greg Lynn reading. The model tries to examine the natural topology of the movement and the diagram. The transition over distance from one form to the next.

(this is so dry. i had fun . . . really . . . after riping out my hair for 8 hours, I got 4 hours or productive work done. )

Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to fix the lighting, and keep my colors from bleeding . The above rendering was the only good shot I was able to get. It is however looking at the diagram right-to left verses left-to-right. (Not that the model retains any of the directional qualities of the original movement or the diagram.
Below, you can tell that I wasn't able to get the object back lit, and was force to do black and white, because the colors made me sick.

In retrospect, I think I would like to connect the three parts of the model more next time.

PROJ 1A: DIAGRAMS

Smriti and I did a trace study of the forms created by these three parts. The red becomes a rhythm that starts to bend and bleed in to the violet and green.

This is an extended version of the previous diagram. Each move was pulled out at equal lengths, stretching and extending the figure through space.

PROJ 1A: the KUNG-FU Chick

how do these things start??

some chick doing kung-fu in the architecture building.
i know . . . those crazy architecture students.

Some of the things that attracted Smriti and I to this particular sequence was the cross-over in timing and space between the movement of the upper body and legs, matching the subtlety of the torso connecting the two. The relationship and interaction of the three created a basis for our study.

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