Ex Silico Ad Vivo: Computational Simulation and Urban Design at Foster + Partners

What makes a successful city? Can this be replicated simply by following tried-and-tested urban typologies? Francis Aish, Adam Davis and Martha Tsigkari of Foster + Partners' Applied Research + Development (ARD) group argue that technology allows other approaches to urban design. They explain that computational simulation is increasingly valuable in predicting how the dynamic and complex systems of a city might play out in an urban context, forging an exciting new alliance between computation and intuition.     

Integrated Computational Design: National Bank of Kuwait Headquarters

Foster + Partners' design for the National Bank of Kuwait Headquarters is for an environmentally responsive building and a complex geometry. Dusanka Popovska , a design system analyst in the Specialist Modelling Group (SMG) at Fosters, explains how the group was introduced at an early stage in the bank's design process to develop a parametric model that was capable of integrating various performance parameters while continuing to investigate geometrical solutions.     

Performative Urbanism: An Emerging Model of the Gulf

With the largest stretch of desert sand in the world, the UAE has an extreme climate and arid ecology. Previous to the postwar discovery of oil in the region, the built environment developed with low or no energy to be responsive to extreme climatic changes. Guest-Editor George Katodrytis looks at the ways that a more performative approach might be employed in contemporary architecture to make it more culturally and climatically relevant.     

A Sense of Coherence: Supporting the Healing Process

Can patient recovery be actively aided by a well-designed hospital setting? The evidence is that it can. Drawing on sociologist Aaron Antonovsky's concept of salutogenesis, architect, industrial and interior designer Giuseppe Boscherini argues that an environment which balances calming reassurance with constructive stimulation can help instil the positive mindset that people need in order to overcome illness. Referring to buildings by practices he has worked for, and a student project he has led, he shows how light, sound, texture and colour can all contribute to health-giving architecture.     

A New Overground Line and the Sense of Place

Robert Harbison describes how the upgrading and extension of the old East London Line, which connects the city east and south, enables new explorations and insights. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Drawing on Sand: Cities in the Making

Steven Velegrinis , Director of Urban Design for Perkins+Will in Dubai, and Guest-Editor George Katodrytis liken Gulf cities to the shifting sands that they sit upon. Showing urban development to be in a constant state of flux in the region, they highlight four key eras in the unprecedented rapid development of these cities.     

Design for the Future: Educational Institutions in the Gulf

Despite a distinguished heritage of learning in the Middle East, the expansion of provision for higher education is currently at an unprecedented scale. The Gulf States, in particular, are seeking to keep up with accelerated population growth and a demographic ‘youth bulge’. Guest-Editor Kevin Mitchell describes the architectural approaches employed in the design of institutions in the region from the first universities in Saudi Arabia to Foster + Partners's ground-breaking sustainable design for the Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi and future projects.     

The Evolution of Tall Building in the Gulf: From the Sensational to the Sensitive

In just 35 years the built environment in the Gulf region has evolved so rapidly that it has gone from having no high-rise buildings to having the world's tallest building — SOM's Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Terri Meyer Boake , a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and specialist in steel construction and skyscraper design, provides an overview of the fast-paced development of this building typology.     

Fast Forwards: 10 Years of Sustainable Initiatives in the Gulf Region

Over the last decade, sustainable initiatives have proliferated in the UAE through a disparate range of public and private sector efforts. Jeffrey Willis , Sustainability Leader for Arup in the Gulf, provides a comprehensive review of these enterprises, highlighting how momentum has been clustered in three distinct periods of activity: previous to 2006 ; 2006 to 2008 ; and then since the global financial crisis in 2008.     

Recent Developments at Foster + Partners' Specialist Modelling Group

Established 15 years ago under the leadership of Hugh Whitehead, the Specialist Modelling Group (SMG) at Foster + Partners has an unrivalled reputation internationally as an in-house research group. It provides Fosters with expertise in computation, geometry and fabrication, as well as in environmental analysis and simulation. Xavier De Kestelier, co-head of SMG and partner at Foster + Partners, describes how the group has developed and expanded over the last few years, growing the range of its specialist knowledge that informs projects as diverse as the YachtPlus Boat Fleet (2009), Kuwait International Airport (2009-) and Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (2010).     

Versatility and Vicissitude: An Introduction to Performance in Morpho-Ecological Design

The dictionary explanation of ‘performance’ is to ‘carry out an action’ or ‘to fulfil a task’. Invariably, this definition seems to invoke a tired utilitarian debate on the correlation between form and function. Here, Michael Hensel and Achim Menges explain how in this issue of AD they aim to move the debate on entirely. In so doing, they redefine form not as the shape of a material object alone, but as the multitude of effects, the milieu of conditions, modulations and microclimates that emanate from the exchange of an object with its specific environment – a dynamic relationship that is both perceived and interacted with by a subject. Performance evolves from the synthesis of this dynamic, while morpho-ecological design concerns an instrumental approach, making form and function less of a dualism and more of a synergy that aspires to integral design solutions and an alternative model for sustainability. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Architecture and Mathematics: Between Hubris and Restraint

The introduction of calculus-based mathematics in the 18th century proved fatal for the relationship of mathematics and architecture. As Antoine Picon, Professor of History of Architecture and Technology at Harvard Graduate School of Design, highlights, when geometry was superseded by calculus it resulted in an ensuing estrangement from architecture, an alienation that has persisted even with the widespread introduction of computation. It is a liaison that Picon characterises as having shifted between hubris and restraint. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Drawing in Time: Processes of Design and Fabrication

Drawing embeds time within itself, notating changes in space and duration. For Babak Bryan and Henry Grosman , founding partners of BanG studio in Long Island City, New York: ‘The drawing is a result of process, but it also describes process.’ It is only through this temporal practice that an essential connection is developed between drawing and building. With the widespread adoption of building information modelling (BIM), linear graphic representation finds itself in crisis, challenged by the static inertia of the model. As Bryan and Grosman describe, the well-crafted drawing remains essential to their studio's approach informing the method of ‘making and remaking’.     

Structured Becoming: Evolutionary Processes in Design Engineering

Computational design techniques are changing the role of analysis tools in collaborations between architects and engineers. Digital feedback loops of synthesis, analysis and evaluation establish a ‘process of becoming’ in which structural solutions evolve and adapt to specific requirements. Highly differentiated constructions are possible when digital techniques are fully integrated in design and production. Klaus Bollinger, Manfred Grohmann and Oliver Tessmann discuss these novel paradigms in relation to recent projects from engineering office Bollinger + Grohmann. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parametricism: A New Global Style for Architecture and Urban Design

Though parametricism has its roots in the digital animation techniques of the mid-1990s, it has only fully emerged in recent years with the development of advanced parametric design systems. Patrik Schumacher explains why parametricism has become the dominant, single style for avant-garde practice today and why it is particularly suited to large-scale urbanism as exemplified by a series of competition-winning masterplans by Zaha Hadid Architects. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cities and Grids: In Search of New Paradigms

The wider global influences of expanded populations, new technologies and economies in both Europe and the Far East are having a direct impact on the pattern and planning of urban form. Joan Busquets , the principal of B Arquitectura I Urbanisme (BAU) in Barcelona, and Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), describes how the urban grid is continuing to evolve with these changes, becoming ‘a matrix for innovation within urban development, allowing the creation of sustainable and compact cities’, enabling the forming of ‘new networks and innovative city systems’.     

CONTINUUM: A Self-Engineering Creature-Culture

An interdisciplinary design research collaborative led by Alisa Andrasek, CONTINUUM emerged from a series of design research seminars at Columbia University's graduate school of architecture. Working collaboratively with Robert Aish, Andresek's workshops explored the potential of the new Bentley Systems' GenerativeComponents design software, which at the time was in beta testing. CONTINUUM was formed to extend the possibilities of such collaborations and has expanded its network, occupying an interesting and unique territory of intersecting interests between academia, corporate practice and the companies that create design tools. Traditionally understood as antagonistic, commercial and progressive interests and intentions find common ground in their shared need for research into advanced design software that will enable the retooling of architectural practice. Here, Pia Ednie-Brown, with illustrations by Alisa Andrasek, examines the unique ways in which CONTINUUM enfolds diverse professional and academic practices. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

New Patterns in Urban Design

Brian McGrath and VictoriaMarshall discern the newly resilient urban patterns that are emerging in the meta-city, shifting and adjusting to changing local and global conditions. Based on smart infrastructure, self-sufficiency and hybrid local models, highly adaptive design patterns take the form of responsive micropatches rather than overarching masterplans. As demonstrated by the featured projects, ‘pattern recognition’, sensory mapping techniques and sensitivity to a city's ecosystem are becoming essential tools to the urban designer. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.