On Modelling Complexity and Urban Form

As generators of new cities or extensions of existing ones, algorithmic urban models provide a means of designing urban forms of a new complexity. They have the capacity to produce extremely intricate architectural forms, but also to be responsive to scenarios and constraints. M Christine Boyer , the William R Kenan Jr Professor of Architecture at Princeton University, reflects on how ‘architects acting as an interface between data sets and computer algorithms’ might shape distinctive urban environments that lead to the mass customisation of cities.     

Optioneering: A New Basis for Engagement Between Architects and Their Collaborators

Conventionally, architects are somewhat tardy when inviting engineers to join their projects. By only introducing consulting engineers to participate in the later stages of the design process, engineers are commonly assigned a fixing role. This provides little opportunity for creative engineering solutions at the generative stage. Optioneering, a new business management model, however, offers the possibility of a new collaborative method for interaction between designers and their partners. Dominik Holzer and Steven Downing describe how a research project between the Spatial Information Research Laboratory (SIAL) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and the engineering firm Arup investigated the capability of this new form of collaboration. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fibrous Tectonics

Living nature is characterised by ubiquitous and all-pervading diversity. Over the course of evolution, highly differentiated and infinitely varied systems have emerged in biology. Given the vast range of natural variation, it may come as a surprise that almost all load-bearing biological structures are fibrous composites. Guest-Editor Achim Menges , Director of the Institute for Computational Design (ICD), and Jan Knippers , Director of the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE), both at the University of Stuttgart, have conducted several research projects exploring how the principles of biological fibre systems can be transferred to architecture. Based on advanced design computation, simulation and robotic fabrication, these explorations not only open up a new approach to fibre-reinforced composite structures, but also enable the discovery of novel fibrous tectonics.     

Transcending Type: Designing for Urban Complexity

David Grahame Shane , the author of a major new study Urban Design Since 1945: A Global Perspective, looks at type with the benefit of historical hindsight. Warning against its potential inflexibility and its use over the centuries as a reductive instrument in city creation, he is insistent that type should only be applied if deformed to respond to the informal patchwork of hybrid urban conditions.     

Changing Building Sites: Industrialisation and Automation of the Building Process

The introduction of robotics in construction is part of a much longer history of industrialisation and automation on the building site. Thomas Bock of the Technical University of Munich and Silke Langenberg of the University of Applied Sciences, Munich, highlight how the Industrial Revolution and the development of a transport infrastructure in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe first triggered the shift in the building trade from a largely localised industry into a national and mechanised one, leading to the highly advanced automated construction techniques that continue to be developed in Japan and other Asian countries to this day.     

Unified Frontiers: Reaching Out with BIM

Coren Sharples is a partner of SHoP Architects in New York where building information modelling (BIM) has become integral to the fluid promotion of communication between contractors, consultants and clients on a project. This is exemplified by two projects in the city: the reconstruction of Rector Bridge, where BIM enabled SHoP to work seamlessly with a firm of custom boat builders and other contractors, and the speculative development at 290 Mulberry Street, where it became a significant means of disseminating key data to the client for marketing and financial planning. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)

A new generation of architects, urban designers and planners are rethinking the city. Bill Menking describes how the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) has orchestrated a number of art-based collaborations in the New York boroughs that enable the community to participate in the reimagining of urban space. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Membrane Morphologies: Heterogeneous Forces and Articulated Material Form

Material behaviour is induced at the moment a structure, with its accompanying system of energies, is assembled. The research introduced here by Sean Ahlquist , Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, in textile manufacturing and membrane structures challenges the concept of assembly in an architectural context, where form emanates not only from the integration of forces and differentiated materials, but also through the pervasive influence of structural action at the moment of fibre construction and composition.     

Structural Stone Surfaces: New Compression Shells Inspired by the Past

Much of our architectural heritage today is built out of unreinforced masonry. It is often unclear why historic masonry structures still stand when conventional analysis tools have predicted their failure. In order to ensure the safety of these existing structures, there is an acute need for innovative tools that can accurately analyse their stability. Associate Professor Philippe Block, Tom Van Mele and Matthias Rippmann of the Block Research Group, part of the Institute of Technology in Architecture at ETH Zurich demonstrate how computational form-finding methods and design tools for masonry structures that stand in pure compression, such as arches and vaults, make it possible to design expressive and efficient surface structures that can be built with very little or low-quality material. By studying the techniques of medieval master builders, the Block Research Group has also developed new ways of building with masonry, enhanced by current construction and fabrication technologies. These new tools and reinvented construction methods can be applied in different contexts: for instance, by studying the structure of Gothic cathedrals, they manage to dramatically reduce the use of materials in office construction.     

The $300,000/Year Architect

Could building information modelling (BIM) shake up not only design and delivery processes, but also be set to redefine the construction hierarchy? Could it shift the architect's position from near the bottom of the current food chain to one nearer the top? Urs Gauchat , Professor and Dean of the School of Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, outlines the architect's place in a complex future where there is an increasing demand for buildings but a demise in available materials and conventional energy sources. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is There Something Beyond ‘Outside of the Box’?

Here, architectural and scientific researcher Rachel Armstrong questions whether the definition of ‘experimental’ green design presented here goes far enough. She urges architects to not dwell on evaluation processes, performance and ‘strategies’ and to seek a far more radical solution to sustainability, which abandons the current emphasis on industrial technologies and the existing educational and professional frameworks. In its place, she envisions employing biology as a driver for wholly new living materials and systems. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emerging Technologies and Drawings: The Futures of Images in Architectural Design

Mark Garcia , Senior Lecturer in History and Theory in the Department of Architecture, University of Greenwich, explores the technologically mediated future of drawings in architecture ‘without hands’. He highlights how multiple technological innovations are putting us on the brink of an exploding spectrum of possibilities for the image, and looks at three distinct areas of potential: new media and materials; emerging and future technologies; and theory embodied in fiction and art.     

That Old Thing Called Flexibility: An Interview with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown hold an unrivalled position within architecture. Now written several decades ago, their classic books Learning from Las Vegas and Complexity and Contradiction remain unsurpassed for their ability to shock and overturn current architectural thought. Francesco Proto talks to Venturi and Scott Brown on their present thinking about iconography, transparency, spectacularisation, architectural pornography and the contemporary architectural avant-garde. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.