Month: December 2019

iA#1 | iA#2 | iA#3 |iA#4 | iA#5

Style

Why is the body of the iWEB [completed 2002] not a simple box? Why not a symmetrical ellipsoid, why not optimized to lead forces down along the shortest route? In other words, why does the iWEB have style?

The answer: there was a motive, a motivation to allow external forces to intimidate the body. The soft, mouldable building body of the iWEB was placed in a force field where several forces were operational at the same time, all of them motivating the shape of the body.

Vectorial body

As a designer, I needed a vector. I wanted the body to be a vectorial body, a body with a direction, with intention. I wanted it to feel as if it had entered a force field of strange attractors, active both inside and outside the volume of the body, driving the body towards a new formation: nose down, tail up, slim hips.

The language I use for describing the forces are inspired by car design and car styling. Cars are bodies designed with speed in mind; cars in speed are bodies in motion. Our building bodies are not bodies in speed, but certainly they are motive bodies, they certainly are bodies with an intention, a vector.

As I explained in the “Vectorial Bodies”essay [Archis, 1999] the fundamental characteristic of a vectorial body is that the driver / user enters from the sides. The user steps sideways into a body that has the intention to go places. Stepping into a car may take you places, literally. Stepping into a building body like the iWEB, you are absorbed into a spatial experience that takes you places mentally, and, additionally, through the spatial environments projected on the interior skin.

Gina

Once the designer of building bodies – the stylist formerly known as the architect – has learned to give style to the body as a whole, the word “stylist” no longer has the negative connotation of being just a decorator. The stylist becomes the designer who imposes intention and emotion to the otherwise apathetic body shape. The stylist knows how to work with the concept of Powerlines [visual artist Ilona Lénárd], as developed by ONL in the past decade, empowering architecture and  art projects.

in the interview with car designer Chris Bangle, he states that architecture is decades ahead of car design when it comes to imposing emotion on the bodywork. I have the opposite impression: doesn’t Bangle realize how advanced his styling work is, and how far architects in general are from getting there? Just look at Bangle’s Gina prototype [2001], and then look at the BMW World by Coop Himmelb[l]au [completed 2007], both conceived in the early post-2000 years, roughly during the same period that I designed he iWEB.

The BMW World building, to me, is best characterized as a complicated roof design, a talkative cover on top of an otherwise not so eloquent building. Being experienced with the design and fabrication of nonstandard structures like the iWEB, I know that the structure, as elaborated by the structural engineers Bollinger and Grohmann, has been extremely labor-intensive, and therefore, a traditional engineering task. Because of the irrational nature of the design, the structure could not be scripted. The design intent of Coop Himmelb[l]au is metaphoric, that of a vortex cloud originating from a tornado. The emotion imposed is purely superficial, inside, there is not a cloud and there is nothing that feels like a tornado. The narrative power of the metaphor has passed away in the process of engineering and in the fabrication. Emotion has not moulded the fabric of the building. BMW World is NOT an emotive building body.

Emotive styling

But Gina IS an emotive body indeed, decades ahead in styling intention and emotive expression as compared to BMW World. Gina literally has actuating motive parts in its body, its body shapes gradually changing configurations of hood, doors, butt, eyes and seats, resonating with the mood cq the preferences of the driver. Mind you, this IS emotive behavior, completely different from a door, that just swings to open, or a hood, that opens on pushing a button. The very shape of Gina’s body re-shapes, adjusting itself to changing circumstances, expressing different emotions.

For me, it is very reassuring to see that Gina was developed in the same period as I designed the iWEB. Strangely enough, Bangle and BMW kept their prototype as a secret for years, only to be revealed years after the BMW production models [BMW Z4 and the BMW 1,3,5 and 7] had been launched. In retrospect, it is clear that the styling of the new BMWs has been derived from the expressive power of the emotive prototype Gina. Their curves act upon their mouldable bodies in a special way that only can be reached by the forces pushing from inside the body, which is composed of stretchable material, as literally is the case with Gina’s body.

The design approach for the iWEB was right on time, but indeed years or even decades ahead of mainstream directions in architecture. While architecture, as taught at the Faculty of Architecture in Delft was predominantly late modernist at the turn of the century [as in many other faculties in the world], and has shifted backwards to critical regionalism and sideways to conservative greenish strategies, reflecting the narrow-minded, xenophobic nationalist wave that has infected so many creative minds, ONL / Hyperbody still rocks, proudly standing up and pursuing interactive emotive design.

HyperWall

Fortunately, Hyperbody is not alone, we have strong ties with innovative forms like Festo, the world’s leading fabricator of actuators. Festo has commissioned Hyperbody to design the behavior of the interactive HyperWall, based on their Finray principle. Festo applied their Finray invention earlier, in their swimming and flying Air_ray, Aqua_ray and Aircuda objects. The HyperWall combines FinRay technology with Hyperbody-embedded behavioral programming and actuating techniques.

HyperWall and Gina.

The embedded computing technology is there, the design attitude has matured so much that we may embark on a truly emotive architecture, a professional approach towards motive styling.

My inaugural speech at the TU Delft from 2001 had as i’s title: E-Motive Architecture, emphasizing that emotive is not only about emotion but also deals with the ICT-related and kinetic aspects of design.my inaugural speech was proactive and challenging, based on my experience with, among others,the interactive interior environment of the Saltwater pavilion in 1997 and the Trans-Ports installation at the Venice Biennale in 2000.

It is reassuring to see that – against all conservative forces at the Faculty of Architecture to bring nonstandard complexity and emotive architecture to a halt in favor of of backward-looking critical regionalism – emotive architecture is firmly rooted in a ever-growing international movement that promotes customization in all its aspects. Motive styling is an under-appreciated field of study that needs to be critically examined in the professional setting of Hyperbody’s education curriculum.

Kas Oosterhuis, 2010

Professor Hyperbody Chair TU Delft

iA#1 | iA#2 | iA#3 |iA#4 | iA#5

The below text is the introduction I wrote in 2008 for the second issue of the iA series of Interactive Architecture.*) It was one year after the fire and we were discussing how to rebuild the new faculty. There was an international competition launched, but soon the idea of a new building was rejected, and it was decided to renovate a century old building closer to the city center of Delft instead. In hindsight, the renovation was a very costly operation, yet considered successful by the majority of the users. We as Hyperbody lost our unique iWEB as our state-of-the-art laboratory, while it was cut off from the grid and TU Real Estate did not intend to connect it again due to – presumably – excessive costs. We ended up with having our Hyperbody / Protospace 150 m2 lab inside the renovated building. The renovated building was partially extended with a sixties style large hall and was eventually far more expensive than a fresh new structure would have cost. Some of the points I argued for below were realized, but all in all the faculty became a more traditional place after the fire. I considered it the victory of the traditional over the new, and that became symptomatic for the Hyperbody years to come, whereas our budget was drastically cut, year after year. We had to reduce our staff from 12 people to 4 in the years between 2010 and 2014, while we were expelled from Architecture and re-positioned within Architectural Engineering. Not surprisingly, we were not amused, yet continuously thankful for the support we had been given in the years between 2000 and 2007, that is, until the fire broke out.

*) The complete iA series iA#1 – iA#5 are available at www.japsambooks.nl

iA#2 Introduction / editorial

In Delft, we will remember 5/13, rather than 9/11. the day the Faculty burnt. The day that chaos theory was applied in real life. Water leaking from a coffee machine, setting fire, and eventually burning down the complete faculty building. All was lost, except digital data, which was stored on the BK server back-up tapes. And miraculously the iWeb survived. I took a picture of the iWeb after the fire; it looked  like a scene from a Star Wars movie, titled the “Battle of the Theories”. Swarm Architecture beats Architecture-As-We-Know-It. To begin an open discussion for possibilities for the new faculty, I have put together scenarios for 12 possible faculties.

01 | The burning faculty

“Architecture Muss brennen” stated Wolfgang Prix in 19968 when the student revolution was unleashed. At exactly that time, the faculty was built, and forty years later, it took fire literally. Now, Coop Himmelb[l]au statement is more relevant than ever. How can we make architecture relevant and actual? What kind of faculty would stimulate that?

02 | The swarm faculty

The complete staff and all three thousand students spread over the city, hosted by other faculties, in tents, in apartments in the city, in private offices, The faculty swarmed out and yet was connected via the Internet and mobile phones. In a sense, many people were mentally closer to each other than they were before, when they were physically close, but with back turned to each other, looking outside the windows. Now, we had the experience of looking towards the essential inner kernel of the faculty. We were living in a swarm. What kind of organization of the new faculty would support this kind of emphatic swarm behavior?

03 | The digital faculty

All people were rescued but their books, their personal memories, and their works of art. All these were claimed by the fire. but everything digital was rescued, the back-up tapes which were stored outside the faculty were OK, and all digital files of staff and students could be recovered safely. Had this fire occurred ten years earlier, it would paralyzed the people, now it activated many people to continue immediately with augmented energy.

04 | The 24-hour faculty

Opening hours of the faculty are limited. There was not much activity during the evenings, and on the weekends it was completely closed. I always wondered, why? both staff and students work almost continuously on their ideas and projects. The bad plumbing job probably revealed itself during the weekend, but there was no-one to witness it. The new faculty must be a 24-hour faculty; the designer’s mind never sleeps. I receive approximately fifty emails per day from my Hyperbody staff, some of them posted very late. The work always goes on.

05 | The adaptive faculty

After my thesis project in 1989, I came back twenty years later to invent the chair of Interactive Architecture, In those twenty years, virtually nothing had changed in the building,as if it had been asleep for that many years. Only during the last years were serious attempts at a real change made by the Dean: finally we had good coffee and more comfortable furniture, but its efforts were stranded in the fire. we need an adaptive, flexible faculty, a faculty that allows itself to be reinvented every seven years of architecture generation.

06 | The mobile faculty

We need a faculty that is open to the world outside the faculty. Students and staff have been too much encapsulated by the solid structure of the faculty. Imagine a faculty where 50% of the structure is fixed, while the other 50% is located in mobile units, either motorized or erected in places around the country. Naturally all mobile units must be equipped with wireless communication. We must see the factories, the building sites, the political rallies, settle in the Vinex locations for a while, travel the highways, and explore the highways. We must come closer to to the design offices, plug in to other faculties, or find a place on the beach. In these places, we can continue to work on our projects and design and discuss with anyone.

07 | The laboratory faculty

Staff and students must go to the factories, but the factory must also come to the faculty. The production machines inform us of what can be made. Staff and students must know what the machines are capable of/ with these, there is much more possible than is actually used. In general, a machine user [computer] only uses a few of all  . The same is true for machine in the workshops; their potential is far greater than is generally known. Knowing the potential stimulates the imagination of the designer. Think of the IO [Industrial Design Engineering] central Hall at the TU Delft Campus, but imagine it covering the whole site.

08 | The robotic faculty

Now the faculty has 3D milling machines and machines for model making in general. We can learn from the ETH Zürich where they have installed robotic equipment to build prototypes on 1:1 scale. Their robots are generic, they are equipped to assemble complex brickwork as well.Using robotic equipment includes old materials but opens the way for experimenting with new materials as well. New robotic technology does not replace traditional technology. but adds another layer of intelligence to it – it is inclusive.

09 | The 1:1 prototype faculty

Staff and students should focus on 1:1 prototypes. This is the latest and most reliable way to understand the full potential of building. There should be a yearly contest to build 1:1 prototype, similar to the Stylos pavilion, but more related to CNC [computer numerical control] production methods using robotic equipment.

10 | The augmented faculty

The faculty must be emotionally linked to leading faculties worldwide. We need to experience on a daily basis what they do at the ETH, at MIT, Harvard, La Sapienza, TU/e. We could place webcams and install augmented reality interfaces, not to see out faculty being taken down, btu to see what is built up at all other faculties. We can embed the interfaces in the furniture, in the lounge spaces. There should be a permanent, real-time connection to talk, communicate, retrieve information, and send information in the augmented, networked swarm of faculties. Augmented reality does not replace physical reality. it adds another layer of intelligence to it. It is nothing to be afraid of.

11 | The sustainable faculty

Sustainability will continue to be a major issue. Sustainability is greatly facilitated by new technologies like wireless connections, CNC production methods, and  C2C [Cradle to Cradle] concepts. Each of these new technologies require less energy and they are virtually waste-free. All production is controlled and waste will be recycled and/or function as food / fuel / fodder for other processes. Sustainable C2C and CNC production will be exercised in the prototype Factory.

12 | The theatre faculty

The faculty is a theatre where the renowned and unknown stars perform. They will capture attention and inform staff and students of their designer’s intentions. The new faculty could be a true theatre complex, with rising and falling stars attracting larger crowds, while new experiments are shown in intimate off-off theatre niches, the obvious and the fringe in one big complex. This theatre faculty should be open to all public, not only staff and students. It would certainly have cultural relevance to the general public. It could be rum as a commercial enterprise. The faculty could charge money for the lectures of the big shots, thereby financing more intriguing fringe activities.

We can make them all. Way superimpose all twelve faculties into one compound exciting new faculty, half fixed, half mobile, half prototype, half concrete, half augmented, half frozen, half interactive, half analogue, half digital, half manual, half robotic, half fixed work desk, half flex space, half burning, half wet. The momentum is here, the only thing that is badly needed now are the right programs for the right faculty, the right juries, and the right timing.

Kas Oosterhuis | Professor Chair Hyperbody TU Delft

iA#1 | iA#2 | iA#3 |iA#4 | iA#5

Flashback 2007 | iA#1 Introduction / editorial

Below is the text of the introduction that I wrote for iA#1, the first in a series of 5 iA bookzines [Interactive Architecture], to report on the innovative work at Hyperbody TU Delft. The iA#1 Introduction is written in 2007. iA#1 ISBN 9789059730588 is available at Episode Publishers / Jap Sam Books]:

https://nl.japsambooks.nl/collections/architectuur?page=4

What is Interactive Architecture?

Let me first clarify what is NOT.  Interactive Architecture – from here on abbreviated as iA – is NOT simply architecture that is responsive or adaptive to changing circumstances. On the contrary, iA is based on the concept of bi-directional communication, which requires two active parties. Naturally, communication between two people is interactive, they both listen [input], think [process] and talk [output]. But iA is not about communication between people, it is 1] defined as the art of building relationships between built components and 2] as building relations between people and built components.

iA is the Art of Bi-directional Relationships

The Center for Interactive Architecture [CIA], Hyperbody’s research center, regards all iA built components as, essentially, input – processing – output [IPO] devices. iA theory includes both passive and active IPO systems. Let me clarify this with a classic example: the door. The door in the building functions as a switch. The door is either open or closed. When we add a lock to the door, it is either locked or unlocked. and the one who has the key is authorized to lock and unlock the door. The door functions in the building as a semipermeable membrane for the two spaces A and B at either side. The door allows people or goods to go in or to go out, which is as output from room B and input from A. Input and output are clarified now, what about the processing? The door processes people but also goods carried by the people, airflow, dust particles and smell. When the door is opened, the two systems find a new equilibrium: number of people, goods, light, temperature, and data. The door processes by counting what passes through the opening.

Input Processing Output Machine

In iA we do exactly that our iA software counts every change that occurs in the position and configuration of any IPO object. Each object that is defined in Protospace software [developed during the past few years in our CIA, behaves in time and keeps track of change. Each object is a kind of IPO machine, an agent communicating with other agents. An example of this type of communication is a bird communicating with other birds in a swarm. Birds are complex adaptive IPO systems, They receive signals and they send signals. They respond bi-directional in real time. birds follow some simple set of rules. Swarm behavior forms the basis of iA / Protospace software.

Repetition No Longer Beautiful

iA is not possible without an understanding and adoption of the new rules of nonstandard architecture [NSA] in the design process. NSA means that all constituting components of a built construct are principally unique. They all have a unique number, position and shape. If two components are the same then it is pure coincidence and NOT a simplification of the structure. In the design process and in the mass-customized file-to-factory production process, all components are addressed individually. Repetition is no longer the basis  for production and therefore, no longer the basis for design. Repetition is no longer beautiful. In NSA, the unique characteristics of the components are perceived as natural, logical and beautiful.

Proactive Building Components

What is the relation between nonstandard architecture [as we know it from the past decades] and iA? What does iA exactly has to add to the masterpieces of NSA? Despite all the achievements of NSA in the dynamic design process, the built product is still static, just like the repetitive modernist buildings based on mass-production. Our exemplary door is, in static architecture, operated and set in motion by a human. But watch it: the operation of doors and locks is undergoing significant changes. Doors have become automated and and locks pro-active. Soon doors and locks will open and close as they wish. But don’t worry: they will also open when YOU wish them to open. What will added to a passive behavior of is that the door will become aware of changing circumstances themselves, and they will act accordingly without instruction from a single human or a single sensor. Doors will become active building components, and so will each of the thousands of individual components, which assemble the built construct. Once electronics sneak into the building components, the next inevitable step is the doors will be programmed to respond selectively, based on a complex evaluation of many impulses. As a logical next phase in the evolution of doors, they will become proactive. They will propose changes themselves. Again, this is nothing to be worried about, humans will co-evolve like they co-evolved with dogs and other domesticated life forms. In fact, people will like it.

Complex Adaptive System

While iA is NOT just responsive and adaptive, it IS proactive. iA, in fact, proposes actions. it proposes new configurations in real time, all the time. Sometimes these propositions are unnoticeable slow, sometimes faster than you can see. In iA software, active behavior is built into the scripted code of the design. Each component is calculating in real time [that is, many times per second] its input and is producing its new output / behavior,continuously changing the state it is in. This ever-changing state acts as a new input into the IPO system of other components and so on. The functionally related group of components together display swarm behavior. The consistent set of thousands of active components is the complex adaptive system [CAS] of the building. Interactive architecture is the art of conceptualizing the CAS and the art of imposing style on the active building materials, being aware of the fact that many of the constituting components are programmable actuators.

The Information Architect

In iA, the architect becomes an information architect. The information architect is sculpting data. [S]he designs the flow of information and constructs IPO components selectively – transmitting, absorbing, transforming or simply bouncing back the information flow. My question will always be: c an iA be beautiful? I believe that it can. Object in [slow] motion get more attention than static objects – iA object are constantly in motion. Humans relate more to dynamic structures rather than static ones. It is simply more fun to watch live action than to watch paint dry.

Post Scriptum

The iA bookzine series was intended to consist of twelve issues bi-annually published over a period of 6 years. Each issue would have at least one scientific paper on a particular aspect of iA, one iA-driven MSc project, one iA-inspired case study from practice, one interview with a renowned researcher / practitioner, and a blog by myself. The blogs would be regularly published on the iA website. Eventually, Hyperbody published 5 iA bookzines between 2007 and 2013. Now, 12 years later, lest we forget, I will publish the introductions of the 5 iA bookzines here on this site in 5 consecutive blogs.

Kas Oosterhuis, editor iA bookzine series | Principal ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd] bv | Emeritus Professor Faculty of Architecture TU Delft [2000 – 2016]| Director Protospace Laboratory 2003 – 2016