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Prefabricated Construction using Digitally Integrated Industrial Manufacturing
Get PDFThe paper describes research being carried out in relation to prefabricated high density affordablehousing under a grant from the Partnership for the Advancement of Technology in Housing(PATH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the USA. The objective is to demonstratehow a new paradigm for the conceptualization and construction of buildings can be conceivedof as an entirely factory based process that creates advantages for construction through industrialsystems technology transfer. Our approach is intended to transform design methodologythrough demonstrating how alternative construction concepts, using entirely pre-manufacturedvolumetric units, can be adopted. This involves digital modeling that facilitates parametric variationsfor creating customized prefabricated products from design conceptualization through tofinal product delivery. The paper discusses key areas under investigation in relation to a manufacturingparadigm used in the automotive industry that integrates virtual prototyping and industrialmanufacturing systems. Our research explores a type of monocoque volumetric unit prefabricatedin steel, which will be pre-finished as part of a modular factory-built approach usingindustrialized methodologies that will facilitate customized manufacture of a high quality energyefficient product for affordable housing.The paper addresses the automotive industry methods of manufacture that have served increasedautomobile performance and economics through mass production for over a century. In starkcontrast, the building industry and in particular the housing industry is still a century behind. It issuggested that a move away from tradition will require an industry wide initiative, just like HenryFord led the way with mass production. By embracing the increasing sophistication and capabilitythat digital technology offers, it is shown how digital tools are implemented towards masscustomization in house design using virtual modeling in the context of a prefabricated manufacturingapproach. This includes industrialized modular sub-assembly design, where the informationon parts, assemblies and modules can be transferred to digital and robotic technology, asseen in the automotive industry, as well as achieving enhanced production efficiency through a‘supply chain' process, which is condensed. The paper discusses how these models for manufacturecan be transferred into the housing market in order to revolutionize the cost and qualitybase of construction. Our research objective is to disseminate knowledge on this process, andshowing how through integrated transfer of automotive technologies we can implement an industrializedfabrication process for mass housing, not previously known in the building industry
The Planetary Collegium: Master Plan for a Distributed Mixed Reality Campus
Get PDFThis paper describes the design for a Mixed Reality campusfor the Planetary Collegium. The Collegium is an international research network centered at Plymouth, U.K. Its plans call for seven sub-centers, or nodes, to be builtin different parts of the world. These nodes would be linked by shared virtual spaces and digital networks. The paper describes how the Collegium's seeming contradictions (distributed/unified, simulated/physical, local/remote) can be reconciled. The resulting project is a mixed reality that transcends scales from global to local and, ultimately, to the constituent buildings and their digital spaces
Digital Gaming and Sustainable Design
Get PDFThe American building industry is one of the major consumers of energy. Buildings use 39% of thetotal energy consumed in the United States, significantly impacting national energy demand andcontributing to global warming. The vast majority of architectural practice in US leads to construction of buildings with a little concern to sustainability leading to environmental degradation. Although the bulk of architecture practice continues to produce unsustainable buildings, there is growing stream of exemplary models of sustainable design. Examining the success of suchpractices leads into two a two-folded finding; first that achieving sustainable design is closelylinked to "integrated Design”1 - a type of practice in which various disciplines involved in building design work together to achieve efficiency and other synergetic benefits. Second is that theadvances in computing and simulation algorithms are paving the way to achieve "integrateddesign”. These technologies are enabling the designers to collaborate, visualize, foresee, andmodify building performance with relatively high accuracy. They are increasing used to analyze complex systems to achieve streamlined structures, reduce dependence on mechanical systems, produce more effective construction processes, and reduce waste.If such practices were to become widespread, the architectural education needs to be restructured.The traditional American architectural curriculum that is based on a schism between"design” and "technology” is inherently in conflict with the principal of integration. Though largescalereform of architectural curricula is a complex, ongoing, and difficult debate; producing teaching tools that can simulate integrated design can impact and promote an understanding of sustainable practice in architecture. The proposed paper will present the progress of a multi-disciplinary team of faculty who arecollectively working on the completion, implementation and evaluation of a simulation softwarepackage in an interactive game format. The project teaches the concepts of "integrated design ”through immersing students in a virtual world that imitates the complexity of the real world of decision-making and material choices in design. The project accomplishes this by harnessingthe capabilities of simulation and dynamic modeling programs as well as powerful game engineswhile creating compelling and rewarding reasons for student's engagement in the learning process. The project is funded by the US Department of Education for the period of 2007-2010
Semiotics of making: beginnings of a theoretical frame
Get PDFThe contemporary problem of semiotics in architecture is an inherited struggle, not a chosen one. We consider the question of architectural communication because we inevitably recognize its centrality to the problem ofarchitecture itself. While the twentieth-century impact of Saussure and his birthing of structuralism gave architecture a new ground from which to reconceive its own semiotic functions, it was probably never possible that such a synchronic and undialogic theory would suit such a disparate and intersubjective activity. This is not to say that semiotics offers no guidance for the problem of architecture. It may say, however, that to use semiotics productively is not to start from its constructs but instead from architecture's own.To that end, this study intends to establish a conceptualbasis for communication and meaning in architectural form by an inquiry into making. The initial judgment about why making might prove to be more useful than otherarchitectural characteristics is due to is its essential dialogicnature; it already is a semiotic. In that sense what follows is an opportunistic examination. It arises from what should be considered a powerful”if somewhat neglected”text on making: Elaine Scarry's 1985 The Body in Pain. A deeper consideration of this work is long overdue. While Scarry'sbook seems to enjoy a rather wide readership, its potential impact has been largely unrealized since few scholars have developed its implications. Given the extraordinary originality of its argument, the artful construction of its prose, and the complex sophistication of its logic, it offers a rich”albeit demanding”place from which to begin.The objective of this study is to schematize Scarry's theory of making such that connections to a semiotic understanding of its potentials may be realized. Following this effort, a short examination of one particular semiotic aspect of making will be argued as a tentative ground from which to guide further investigation
The simultaneity of complementary conditions: Re-integrating and balancing analogue and digital matter(s) in basic architectural education
Get PDFThe actual, globally established, general digital procedures in basic architectural education,producing well-behaved, seemingly attractive up-to-date projects, spaces and first general-researchon all scale levels, apparently present a certain growing amount of deficiencies. These limitations surface only gradually, as the state of things on overall extents is generally deemed satisfactory. Some skills, such as "old-fashioned” analogue drawing are gradually eased-out ofundergraduate curricula and overall modus-operandi, due to their apparent slow inefficiencies in regard to various digital media's rapid readiness, malleability and unproblematic, quotidian availabilities. While this state of things is understandable, it nevertheless presents a definite challenge. The challenge of questioning how the assessment of conditions and especially their representation,is conducted, prior to contextual architectural action(s) of any kind
Pop-tech-flat-fab
Get PDFThis paper for the EAAE / ARCC 2008 addresses the theme of simultaneity between the digitaland analogue by examining the production of two projects. These are: a pair of prototype busstops built in Sioux City1 and a shade structure for downtown Phoenix in the USA. The conceptual basis for both these projects coincides with the question of how "phenomenon attached toa certain locality”2 might be created through advanced methods of digital fabrication. Both projects offer an apology for rapid prototyping techniques applied to an understanding of "contextualism”3.Both projects are presented first as a contextual and symbolic response to an interpretation of"locality” and then re-appraised in technical terms. In both projects these technical aspects aim to advance not only the methods of physical production but also the transition of design methodsto 1:1 fabrication. In the case of the Sioux City Bus Stops this idea is represented throughan analysis of two-dimensional cutting techniques and developable surfaces. In the case of thePhoenix Shade project this idea is then developed through fully associative digital models. Togetherthese projects attempt to accelerate the physical production of their symbolic and contextualcontent through a discussion on parametric modeling that allows an efficient productionof a set of different permutations. By associating the symbolic/contextual with the parametricthese projects suggest and alternative procedure to the traditional and prevalent trope of "digitalarchitecture” and its co-dependence upon explicitly biomorphic, computational and quasinaturalistic language.
Learning from Beirut: From Modernism to Contemporary Architecture
Get PDFThis paper will discuss the developments in architecture in Lebanon in the second half of the Twentieth century. Lebanon presents one of the interesting ‘laboratories' of the different tendencies and movements of this pastcentury, beginning with Modernism and its gradual assimilation, to Postmodernism and more current trends,in a context that presents a fertile field for experimentation. The questions of meaning, context, relations to place and tradition, have all played a part in the development ofarchitecture in Lebanon, without necessarily achieving their desired goals, especially in the current climate of globalization. The loss of material identity that many regions around the world have experienced is reflected in the case of Lebanon, exacerbated here by political and social conflicts. This paper argues that the attempts to reinject material forms with a measure of ‘communicative' symbols or forms fails in the end to answer to this perpetual desire for ‘identity'
Thermal Comfort in a Naturally-Ventilated Educational Building
Get PDFA comprehensive study of thermal comfort in a naturally ventilated education building (88,000 ft2) in a Chicago suburb will be conducted with 120 student subjects in 2007. This paper discusses some recent trends in worldwide thermal comfort studies and presents a proposal of research for this building through a series of questionnaire tables. Two research methods used inthermal comfort studies are field studies and laboratory experiments in climate-chambers. The various elements that constitute a "comfortable” thermal environment include physical factors (ambient air temperature, mean radiant temperature, air movement and humidity), personal factors(activity and clothing), classifications (gender, age, education, etc.) and psychological expectations (knowledge, experience, psychological effect of visual warmth by, say, a fireplace). Comparisons are made using data gathered from Nairobi, Kenya.Keywords: Comfort, temperature, humidity and ventilatio
Light-zone(s): as Concept and Tool
Get PDFDaylight is essential to the experience of an architectural space. Nevertheless, amongst the handful of predominantly scientific methods available to assess daylight in architecture, there are only a few considering the spatial and form-giving characteristics of daylight. This paper investigates light-zone(s) as concept and tool, which can be taken as a point of departure for a new method to perceive, consider and analyse daylight in architecture. As concept, light-zone(s) are areas, fields or zones of light. It is a way of considering a space's daylight as (forms of) bubbles or spheres of light, which as light-zones can be compressed, expanded, combined, exploded, etc., all according to the character of 'the meeting' between the light-zone(s) and the space itself (inclusive of the space'scontent). Thus, the daylight in a space can be regarded asa composition of light-zones.As tool, light-zone(s) are (spatial) groupings of the lightingvariables (intensity, direction, distribution and colour), whichare significant to the space and form-giving characteristicsof light. That is to say, the light-zone(s) tool is the point ofdeparture for a method of creating a spatial ‘grasp' on daylighting variables in a given space. The relation between the light-zone(s) concept and tool respectively can be described as follows: On the one level light-zone(s) can be explored as an architectural idea or notion, thus belonging more to the field of architectural theory. On another more practice-driven level, light-zone(s) can be articulated and specified in relation to lighting technology
Education, Environmental Attitudes and the Design Professions
Get PDFAs the concept of sustainability continues to become more popular within society, a number of different professions are called on to help champion the movement. With the resources train inflicted by the construction industry alone, dedicated architects and interior designers are important players in forward progress. Though many organizations and associations have been created to help the building industry embrace sustainability both practically and theoretically, theactual implementation of green building practices in construction has been minimal. The main focus of this study is to look at the influence of undergraduate education on designers' interest in sustainable design. Additional research interest was in environmental attitudes and the impact of interpersonal relations on those attitudes. Self-proclaimed practitioners in the green building industry were surveyed through a specified email list of the U.S. Green Building Council. The survey was web-based and addressed issues including environmental attitudes, undergraduate education and professional training. Dunlap and Catton's widely-used New Ecological Paradigm scale was included to measure proenvironmental orientation of the professionals. Contrary to the main hypothesis of the study, undergraduate education was not seen by subjects to be a fundamental force in the decision to concentrate on sustainability. A number of educational elements typically seen in environmental education, including interpersonal interactions, were mentioned by subjects as substantially influential and are therefore explored.Keywords: ethics, attitudes, design educatio