Advanced Architecture Studio
Matias del Campo
Deep Ornament
- component driven architectures.
The Frauenhofer Salon, a showcase for science, research and design.
Synopsis
Deep Ornament explores the opportunities present in the morphologies of ornamentations as point of departure for the design of architectural conditions. Inherent qualities such as space articulation, components, organization, structure and circulation form the ground for a variety of speculations on spatial conditions. The sensorial and spatial experiences co-notated with the manifold qualities of contemporary, algorithm driven ornaments, from their topological qualities to the distribution of components and patterns forming the structural body, are scrutinized for their architectural qualities and incorporated in a project.
The speculations are casted in a project that serves as proof of concept. To get to this point the course relies heavily on computational design tools. The application of topological mesh modeling softwares as well as Algorithm driven, organic modeling programs will result in a manifold of projects based on the same set of rules. Finally the projects are presented with a set of, common ground, architectural representation media.
The project will be a showroom for the Fraunhofer institute, demonstrating the most advanced research and technologies developed in the respective labs.
A site will be provided for the design.
Blossom Store design © SPAN 2008
Studio Outline:
The studio comprises of three elements:
1: Discoursive Research
2: Speculations on opportunities in the outline
3: Design Elaboration
It is encouraged that the students visit the Advanced Technology Electives in order to elaborate an expertise in advanced design tools, and techniques, which will be applied in the Studio, such as Maya Fundamentals and digital fabrication techniques (Lasercutting, 3D printing, CNC milling etc.)
Lunch Talks:
The studio will include a series of lunch talks. Lunch talks are brief introductions into specific issues of the studios culture such as Design Rigor, A Brief History of Digital Design, introduction into Biomimicry, Advanced Fabrication Techniques, Vagueness and Spatial Conditions, Critical Design Culture, Topological Spaces in Architecture….
Blog:
Part of the studio culture is the application of ubiquitous communication techniques. The studio Blog serves as hub for information on the design task. Interesting sources on discoursive issues as well as technical questions concerning the design tools are also available on the Blog. It is highly encouraged that the students participate in the blog in order to create a basis
for the speculations present in the studios environment. The Blog also serves as communication tool with Prof. Matias del Campo.
Screenshot of the BLOSSOM blog, SS 08 DIA
Ornamental Manifolds
Akleman Pavilion, ornamented skin as structure. © SPAN 2006
Ornament has evolved into a new paradigm for the relationship between structure, form, and aesthetics in architecture. Architects and engineers are using patterns generated by algorithmic formulae, such as tessellations, subdivisions, as well as cellular and reticulated structures to formulate organizational systems. The smooth surface rendering that followed the introduction of the computer into the discipline of architecture has created a desire for surface articulation and depth, predominantly in an overall network of distribution, in opposition to the classical hierarchical organizational and proportional system of a façade viewed from only few controlled perspectives. Buildings are evolving a new relationship between skin (façade), and bones (structure), crossbreeding ideas of structure and concepts of decoration. On the one hand, the pervasiveness of so many forms of media has so dematerialized architecture as to separate Ornament entirely from structure, to suggest for the first time that structure may in fact be obsolete On the other hand, an emerging interest in structure as a generator of form, has resulted in structural skins functioning both visually and physically as supportive elements and surface,
evolving new typologies. The complexity of these new forms of structure and decoration, run deeper than the surface of either issue. The use of overt patterning in structural systems blurs the line between what is structural and what is decorative, and results in a third thing, a deep ornamentation— an ornament that is both below and in the surface, that creates spatial affects and comprises holistic atmospheres. The Studio will work on these ideas of the deep ornament as structure based on complexity and a common cultural interest in nonlinearity, nonlinear determination, and nature’s own organizational systems.
Repetitive Array as Spatial Structure
The repetitive array becomes spatial in two modes of operating. The first involves the use of patterning an overall field or system, while the second relies on an exo-skeleton of structural elements as decoration. In terms of pattern structures, recent projects have in common repetitive geometric elements, which are both comprehensive and expandable; they envelop space, but they also organize into forms that are self-generating. The systems, in as much as they affect a decorum can be seen as part of the origins of a decoration that relates to new ideas in society and science of complexity, an inside/outsideness, or intricacy.1 These arrays manifest a material surface structure rather than dematerializing structure by wrapping it in layers transparency, reflectivity, and mediation.
Exo-Skeletal Structure
The second orientation of deep decoration and structure emphasizes the exo-skeleton. Here the structure is the essence of the building’s exteriority in a paradigm closer to that of the Art Nouveau as exemplified in Horta
and Guimard’s organic structural elements for Metro stations in Paris, hand railings, and furniture. Structure in this orientation doubles as ornament. As Pierre Francastel wrote, “Everywhere there was an oscillation between the austere style of Mackintosh and the floral style of Horta. The interrelatedness of structure and décor is the most salient feature of this period.”...“Both of these
opposing principles—one seeking to integrate structure through the unity of surface ornamentation and the other seeking to maintain a strictly structural harmony—sprang from experiments carried out before 1880 throughout the
world.”2 The former is seen in Greg Lynn’s scheme for the Slavin House where the structure is based on a looped thread, closer to a form of decoration. The later is evident in the organically shaped highly integrated structures of Pier Luigi Nervi or Felix Candela, in which structure is also decoration as it is part of the building’s form, conveying a direct understanding of the operation of forces on the building. However, just because a structure is exposed does not mean it is decorative, nor does all structure immediately enter the conversation on decoration as
soon as it is identified in architecture.
Greg Lynn, Slavin House
soon as it is identified in architecture. Applied ornament that underscores structure is likewise excluded from this discussion as in Sullivan’s use of foliated ornament, which is an added surface that neither defined nor obfuscated the structure that it clad.
Biomimicry
Engineers, architects, and artists often refer to nature as a basis. Many engineers find their structural inspiration from plant life, in a spider’s web (often a reference for Peter Rice), a piece of coral, a beehive, or in the structural development of animals. Biomimicry is a particular moment in which architecture, engineering, and art converge as they are using the same inspirations. Joseph Paxton was inspired by the giant water lily, the Victoria Amazonina, which led to the development of the beam structure for the greenhouse at Chatsworth Park and the Crystal Palace (1851). With the publication in 1917 of D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form, the understanding of nature’s interior structures of cells, honeycombs, crystals, snowflakes, shells, even direct comparisons to skeleton’s and bridge structures, carried through to the formation of study centers for biomimetics.3 The links between nature and art were further drawn in studies of the
array such as those in Gyorgy Kepes’s New Landscape exhibition at MIT in 1951, and also included
in the Vision + Value series, as well as in new discoveries made possible through microscopic visual dissections of plant life and materials.4 These analyses indicate that with holistic structures in particular, such as crystals, there is no distinction between structure, decoration, and the thing itself. That is where there is a difference between the holistic structure and the more explicative structures of Nervi. Deep Ornament, the structure that influences form, is as much about interiority and affect as it is about the filling of space. Structure in this case is not opening up space, but becoming a part of it. Robert Le Ricolais (1894-1977) the noted French engineer who taught at University of Pennsylvania from 1954 until 1976, made a career in analyzing natural forms and incorporating their properties into the field of structural design. He revealed that when working with the structure of bone “If you think about the voids instead of
working with the solid elements, the truth appears. The structure is composed of holes, all different in dimension and distribution, but with an unmistakable purpose in their occurrence. So we arrive at an apparently paradoxical conclusion, that the art of structure is how and where to put holes. It’s a good concept for building, to build with holes, to show things which are hollow, things which have no weight, which have strength but no weight.”5 Le Ricolais was also fascinated with radiolara, “forms that encompass the properties of both stressed-skin and triangulated structures. They are just in between: configurations with multiple holes, a perforated membrane in tension working together with a triangulated frame. And this may give an analogy, based on a few topological notion for the arrangement and number of holes, that could bridge the gap between two kinds of structures, and possibly, the two technologies.”6 The discussion of decoration plays out in the arrangement of shapes, whether solids or voids, that form the spatial object in an aggregation. Today there are different uses of patterning at work that incorporate the structure, or even inform the structure. Questions can be asked such as: Does structure become decorative? Is it the array of a shape as it accumulates into a pattern that is what makes it ornamental?
Prominent among the dualisms that have regulated Western architectural thoughts has been the opposition between ornament and structure. The aim of this studio is to seek novel architectural potentials arising out of a fundamental reappraisal of the status of ornament and its implications for architectural organization. Axiomatic to this approach is the critique and ultimately the dismantling, of the dualistic structures that have heretofore regulated these conceptions. First and foremost, we assume, contrary to the classical formulation, that ornament is not subservient to structure, but in fact ornament is preeminently structure in itself. Furthermore, we posit that what classically would be understood as structure is an inherent subset of the general ornamental organization. This collapsing of the duality has potentially far reaching architectural consequences – though not, as one might immediately suppose, as a vehicle for producing yet another ornamentalized architecture. Rather, it employs the ornamental as a graphic instrument capable of engendering complex organizations and spatialities, i.e., those that would foster unforeseen interruptions of institutional forms and programs6.
The studio will rely on a set of terms in order to establish as specific ground for conversation and discussion within the scope of ornaments as critical design technique:
Plication, Venation, Plumage, Components
These terms oscillate between the disciplines of Geometry and Biology and will
Help establishing a language of design within the studio. Students are encouraged to pick up one of those terms as a leitmotiv for the rest of the semester resulting in an expertise in the specific discoursive as well as the
respective speculations on possible design techniques.
Juvenile Plumage of the Yellow Warbler
Acknowledgements:
This outline relies on the work of Nina Rappaport: Deep Decoration published
In the magazine 306090 in 2006 and the work of Reiser Umemoto, i.e. Ornament and Conformity, Columbia, Advanced Studio Outline.
1. Intricacy was used as a term by architect Greg Lynn to define
that complexity of surface and form and was an exhibition at the
ICA, Philadelphia, and Yale School of Architecture, New Haven.
2. Francastel, Pierre, Art & Technology in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries, Zone Books, New York, originally published
1956, this edition 2000, page 203.
3. See for example the Centre for Biomimetics, The University
of Reading, or work of Benyus, Janine M. Innovation Inspired by
Nature, Periennial Books, New York, 1997.
4. Kepes, Gyorgy, Editor, Structure in Art and Science, George
Brazilier, New York, 1965.
5. Le Ricolais, Robert, quoted in, “Structures, Implicit and
Explicit, Interviews with Robert Le Ricolais,” VIA, University of
Pennsylvania, 1973.
6. Reiser Umemoto, Ornament and Conformity, Columbia,
Advanced Studio Outline 1995, Index Architecture, MIT Press
2003, page 149.
