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UDON Restaurant Madrid

Rodrigo — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:29:53 +0000

UDON , Madrid project was recently completed by architects Quim Girbau & Neus Mateu. For the design of the ceiling architects consulted Medio design and LAN for the implementation of parametric design and digital fabrication.

The ceiling elements were cut from Alucobond by CNC, it was an experiment in form and optimization. Rather than extracting the ribs from a free form surface which represented a 30% of material waste , they inspired in the work of Andrew Kudless’ Zero/Fold Screen.,and by constraining the overall geometry and implementing simple trigonometric functions, they were able to reduce material waste to 5% overall as well as dramatically decrease production time by 50%.As a result they obtained a very plastic and expressive form and great results in terms of time, waste and cost optimization.

Project Architect: Quim Girbau & Neus Mateu

Design Consultation and Fabrication: Medio Design

Parametric Design and Geometry Consultation: @LaN_Luis – LaN

OR2 by Orproject

Rodrigo — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:49:26 +0000

Orproject is a London based architecture and design practice set up by Francesco Brenta , Christoph Klemmt and Laura Micalizzi. Their work explores advanced geometries while also conserving an ecologic agenda.

Or2 is an innovative photo-reactive skin for external environments. It is a shading device which interacts with the changing position of the sun. Or2 is composed of photo-chromic polygonal segments digitally produced and waterjet cut . Direct sunlight renders Or2’s surface coloured and opaque; thus the opaque surface filters the direct sunlight flooding its surroundings with coloured hues of soft light. At night solar energy captured on the surface during the day powers LEDs scattered on the surface, turning Or2 into a photovoltaic chandelier.

Tape Installations by Numen

Rodrigo — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:35:50 +0000

For Use/Numen’s team have been doing some interesting installations using nothing but transparent packing tape to create some huge, self-supporting topologies that visitors (specially the children ) can climb inside and explore. So far they have four installations documented at their website.

I think the most interesting one would be the one they made at Odeon , Vienna for the “Quer” symposium of interactivity , where the idea for the installation originates in a set design concept for a dance performance in which the form evolves from the movement of the dancers between the pillars . so the resulting shape is a (tape) recording of the choreography, which I think is a very good example to remember us all that interactive installations can also be done without any digital media at all.

Temholf / Berlin 10
-240 hours work (6 people, 4days)
-700 rolls of transparent self adhesive tape ( 38 km , 56 kg)
- 380 Euros
International Design Festival DMY
Berlin, Airport Tempelholf

Mikser / Belgrade 10
-300 hours work (6 people 5 days)
-1000 rolls of transparent self adhesive tape (50 km , 86kg)
-500 euros
Mikser Design Expo , Belgrade

Odeon / Viena 10
- Dance performance in wich the form evolves from the movement of the dancers between te pillars .
- 530 rolls of transparent self adhesive tape (35km , 45 kg )

Assemblage in public

Rodrigo — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:14:38 +0000

Assemblage in public is an installation commisioned by the Chelsea College of Art and Design designed by Ola Wasilkowska and Michal Piasecki for their Parade event. The event took place on 21-23 May, 2010 at Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground in London.

The installation was made using computational design strategies with a low-tech assembly of repeatable components (4320 crates) on site. The project is rooted in an idea that a repetition of a few simple rules is able to construct complex geometry, which can host different functions.

The core structure of the intervention was obtained through multi objective optimization with genetic algorithms. The optimization was conducted with a purpose built software written in Processing. The goal was to distribute the components according to a predefined “shadow map” and to keep them structurally stable at the same time.

Radiance by Projectione

Rodrigo — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:15:01 +0000

Radiance is the newest project of Projectione a very interesting collective focused on the relationships between digital and analog processes in design and fabrication , they formed this collective as their thesis proposal with very interesting approaches to design projects.

Apparently as their thesis year has come to an end some of the members of the group will be looking to undertake personal projects while others continue with the project by founding a company with all the potentials developed during his years of thesis, let’s hope they continue to particpate together collaboratively since they are a great team.

DESCRIPTION (from the site)
Radiance covers a standalone brick fireplace in a mid century ranch home in Broad Ripple, Indiana. The clients rarely used their existing wood-burning fireplace and wanted to change its function. We proposed an ambient lighting piece that still hosts traditional qualities of the hearth. As an artist and an architect, the clients’ liberal and eclectic design aesthetic allowed for a great degree of freedom and risk-taking during development. They considered this project as commissioned artwork rather than a client-based architectural intervention, adding to their collection in the home. Radiance is intended to exploit the qualities of the hearth by re-centering the focus of the home and providing an ambient environmental effect.

DESIGN:
Radiance was inspired by various shelf mushrooms, based on their form, organizational structure, and component geometry. The mushroom has a distinguishing set of gills that alternate in lengths from the stem’s center point. The lengths of these gills forms a repetitive pattern intended to cover the largest surface area under each mushroom cap. This pattern has been abstracted into our system to arrange each pod, defined as a radial set of 16 plastic components with an LED placed directly behind each. The wiring for the LEDs is embedded within the surface of milled MDF, further expressing the pod’s organizational system. A Passive Infrared Sensor is located at the centroid of each pod, acting as the trigger for the parts around it.

INTERACTION:
There are two pulses that occur after triggering a pod’s sensor. A primary ‘pulse’, that fades to full intensity and quickly fades off, followed by a secondary ‘pulse’ which fades on quickly but dims slowly over nearly a minute. This pattern can be interrupted as new users trigger a pulse creating the dynamic lighting affect seen in our video.

Similar to the lighting effects of fire, Radiance creates dynamic changes in intensities across it surface. This makes the piece enticing to watch and because the pulses fade in and out so smoothly the lighting is not overbearing. There is a distinct difference in the lighting qualities throughout the day and into the night as the piece becomes more and more the central component bringing warmth and light into the home.

Radiance from PROJECTiONE on Vimeo.

Intensive Fields Conference 2009 Lectures

Rodrigo — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 04:06:14 +0000

Intensive Fields 2009 conference was undoubtedly one of the most important events of last year concerning parametric and computational design , which had the participation of those who are considered leaders in the theory and practice of these issues, last week I was lucky to find some of the lectures of these event and it seemed to me a good idea to group them together to share them here, I would like to thank the USC School of Architecture to make public the contents of this event.

Theorizing the Parametric – Manuel DeLanda

Parametric Techniques -Roland Snooks , Marc Fornes , Casey Reas

Parametricism – Patrik Schumacher / Zaha Hadid Architects

Machinic Processes – Francois Roche / Re&Sie

Geco GH3D + Ecotect by UTO

Rodrigo — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:08:15 +0000

Geco is a new set of components for Grasshopper created by [ u t o ] ( Ursula Frick & Thomas Grabner ) with the objective of sending data from ecotect to grasshopper and the other way around , there are some other experiments out there regarding this subject but this is the most formal one I have seen so far.

The plugin for rhino comes with several components performing different functions like exporting mesh geometries to ecotect , incident solar radiation analysis etc.. , I haven’t tried it yet hope to have some time this week to make a more complete post explaining how it actually works anyway this are great news for all Grasshopper enthusiasts .

Component List:

-EcoLink

-EcoMeshExport

-EcoSolCal

-EcoSolRequest

-EcoGridRequest

-EcoLua

-EcoDayOfYear

GH2Ecotect from [uto] on Vimeo.

Diagrid Boxes [Grasshopper]

Rodrigo — Wed, 19 May 2010 05:28:50 +0000

Many of us have probably used the popular method of proliferating a component over surface using the box surface and box morphing components which actually is very useful , however it has the limitation that you can only arrange your components in a quadrangular grid and there maybe sometimes we need a different arrange or sequence for populating our surfaces, last weekend I was talking about this with Marysol Kraviez a student of the DIA Master at Dessau of and she send me a discussion from the Grasshopper page of people addressing this problem, I found very good and interesting approaches and I decided to make a small contribution by making a definition based on one that I saw over there for creating box surfaces in a diagrid arrange using a VB script I have used for other works , hope you find it useful.

File Name: DiagridCladdingBoxes.ghx

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Rhino/Grasshopper Workshop May -June

Rodrigo — Sat, 15 May 2010 00:07:04 +0000

Continuing with the Workshops series orginized by Chido Studio and Plataforma de Arquitectura at Queretaro , Mexico . If your are interested in organizing a workshop at your univertity or studio please contact me.

Workshop Rhino / Grasshopper

Curso destinado principalmente a Arquitectos y Diseñadores interesados en el aprendizaje del diseño parametrico y la creación de algoritmos generativos para su implementacion en distintos processos de diseño ,s e explicaran los conceptos teoricos para abordar proyectos de diseño a través de algoritmos mediante programación. Se utilizara el entorno de Grasshopper y Rhinoscript como herramientas para desarollar los ejercicios . No es necesario conocimiento previo de Rhinoceros ni de programación.

Fecha y Lugar
Mayo 28, 29 ,20 y Junio 4,5,6
Instalaciónes Plataforma de Arquitectura (151-SA)

Cupo maximo
15 plazas

Costo
Estudiantes : $ 2,500.ºº
Profesionistas: $ 3,000.ºº

Importante
*Los participantes deberan traer su propia laptop con todo el software y actualizaciones (originales o verisones de demostración oficiales) previamente instaladas.(se fijara una fecha unos días antes para revisar que todos los equipos esten en orden y listos para trabajar)

Proceso de Inscripción
El participante debera pagar la matricula haciendo un deposito bancario a la cuenta que aparece a continuación.
Banco:Banamex
Nombre:Daniel Camiro Salgado
No.Cuenta:5204 1670 5605 3697
CLABE(transferencia interbancaria):002010437100818177

Una vez que el deposito se haya llevado acabo el participante debera enviar a cualquiera de estos dos correos electronicos: rodrigo@designplaygrounds.com – chidostudio@gmail.com la siguiente información.
-Nombre Completo
-Email
-Telefono
-Institución Educativa u Oficina
-Archivo adjunto de la copia del recibo del deposito bancario

En cuanto se reciban los datos inmediatamente nos pondremos en contacto para especificar los siguientes pasos a seguir.

Imagenes del Workshop anterior

CHIDO STUDIO + PLATAFORMA ARQUITECTURA WORKSHOP from chido studio on Vimeo.

Organizado en conjunto con:

Glassware Consultancy [Grasshopper]

Rodrigo — Mon, 10 May 2010 21:36:39 +0000

During the weekend I worked on a consultancy project for the industrial designer @linafuensanta who designed some glassware pieces which had some vintage diamond patterns on it , modeling this patterns by traditional techniques can be a little bit difficult and tedious, also the control you may have over the elements cannot be so accurate , to solve this I was asked to generate a small algorithm in grasshopper that allows the creation of these patterns in a more efficient way, for example to have control over the number of elements in each direction of the surface and the height of each component, this also allowed to make several tests in no time to find out the correct number of elements who best suited the design.

Often we tend to think that parametric design is for the exclusive use of complex projects with lots of variables and complicated morphologies, here is a simple example of how this methodologies can be also very helpful in more simple and traditional design processes.

The main part of the definition made for this project for creating diagrid patterns is available for download.
Don´t forget subscribing my RSS or follow me @Rodrigo_Medina to keep updated for similar projects.

File Name:DiagridCladdingSurface.ghx

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