The Digital Ornament using CAAD/CAAM Technologies

Russell Alexander Loveridge
2005
Journal paper

Abstract

New digital technologies are challenging the traditions of the architectural design methodology, the relationship between context and design, and the dependency on skilled workmanship for the fabrication of beautiful and complex architecture. Intellectually, applications of digital technologies are also allowing for the reinvestigation, reinterpretation, and redevelopment of historical concepts, theories, and skills. Our focus of ornament in this paper is presented as a constrained architectural testing ground, a reduced issue that still addresses the primary issues of geometry, aesthetics, individualism, and the transferal of design to materiality. Our work on digital ornament combines the traditionally intuitive skills of geometric & graphic manipulations with easily edited input (variables and digital images), control through parametric programming, and automated output (CNC manufacturing).The combination of these processes allows for efficient diversity and uniqueness of design, while also compensating for the increasing cost and declining availability of skilled artisans for the physical fabrication.The presented projects in teaching, research, and professional activities demonstrate our ongoing experiments with new technologies of programmed surface modeling and computer numerically controlled manufacturing (CNC manufacturing).This work has been incorporated in real world projects, both in the revitalization historic buildings, and in new applications of ornament in contemporary architecture.

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Russell Alexander Loveridge
2005
Journal paper

Abstract

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/163905?ln=en

About this result

Related concepts (7)

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Related publications (18)

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Design and architecture has always been used within film to engage the fantasy of the viewer. By providing both a sense of the familiar and by communicating complex information about context architecture and design enhance the believability of place and substance, and in turn this creates the stable foundation from which the viewer can engage “the fantastic”. Technologies employed in the film industry enable story tellers and film makers to set their scenes in convincing yet fictional environments. This longstanding symbiotic relationship between architecture, design, and film is increasingly being enhanced (or even supplanted) with the use of digital visual effects. As parallel yet associated development, computer aided design and visualization technology gives designers and architects the enhanced ability to create their own design fictions: Photorealistic designs, existing only in digital space, that are not encumbered by the limitations of real world constraints. Yet, just as with digital movie effects, the craft of design risks credibility when it is too heavily invested in appearance rather than substance. The origin of this investigation was an invitation from the Centre d’Art Neuchâtel (CAN) and the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF) to collaborate on a small and temporary architectural project to be installed at the fantastic film festival. The architectural brief was the starting point for this design-build project, but it was the notion of “the fantastic” and its relation to both the issues of fiction and design which became the driving interest of research.

University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland FHNW, Academy of Art and Design, Basel2010

Dynamic Ornament: The Design of Responsive Architectural Environments

Mark Meagher

This thesis study investigates the architectural potential of digital information, using case studies and prototypes to explore the integration of dynamic information in the architectural environment. Responsive architecture, a design field that has arisen in recent decades at the intersection of architecture and computer science, invokes a material response to digital information and implies the capacity of the building to respond dynamically to changing stimuli. One important function of responsive architecture is the communication of dynamic qualities of the environment, a function that has the potential to enhance the experience of the building by giving expression to its fleeting, changeable aspects. I have chosen to use the discourse of architectural ornament as a means of engaging the architectural roots of interactive intervention. Like responsive architecture, ornament addresses the integration of furniture and objects, and well as movable, mechanical elements in the work of architecture. This is a topic that I believe has particular relevance for computer-augmented architecture. In addition, the history of ornament offers into the integration of information in buildings, and can be mined for strategies that have the potential to inform the integration of dynamic data in the built environment. "Dynamic ornament" is a term that describes the subset of responsive architecture that I will investigate in this thesis. I have focused in the thesis on responsive components whose functionality involves the communication of dynamic information. The primary contribution of the thesis is the identification of design strategies for the integration of dynamic digital information in buildings based on the tradition of architectural ornament. A primary intention of the thesis is to rehabilitate the position of computer-augmented architecture by addressing some of the principal critiques made against it: rapid obsolescence, superficiality, and irrelevance to the central concerns of architecture. Like ornament, the digital augmentations of architecture are commonly treated as accessory to the central and lasting concerns of architectural theory and practice. It is my contention that the modernist debate over ornament is a persistent topic which has refused to go away, and which continues to influence contemporary discussions of architecture and digital technology. I hope to bring a new focus to the design of responsive architecture, one that emphasizes the symbolic aspects of digital interventions by engaging a neglected history of architecture augmented by technology.

EPFL2010

Practical and material orientated academic research has become increasingly important for architectural practice, due to several factors. First, it contributes to contemporary concepts in architecture and improves their implementation. Today’s architects are looking for a deeper understanding of technical and technological questions related to architecture: technology, construction methods and structural considerations are no longer seen as merely bothersome necessities, as was often the case in the past. The importance of such aspects and the potential of including them as active stimuli in the architectural design process are largely recognised. It is the limitations in time and capacities that more often than not confound the realisation of such ambitions. Academic research can fill this gap and provide architectural practices with the necessary resources. Second, research has a duty to address one of the biggest architectural challenges of our time, namely how to achieve sustainable building. Society’s burgeoning awareness of the urgent need to use renewable materials for building construction is an undeniable reality and has become an important parameter for architectural production. As a result, timber constructions experience a new popularity and the importance of research on timber has increased. The potential of this field becomes evident with some of its latest developments and innovations. Cross- laminated timber panels open up new dimensions for massive timber construction and prefabrication in context with the digital chain. Technologies such as wood welding and the densification of wood create new possibilities not only for architecture but also for furniture and product design. Timber as a building material is therefore capable of satisfying both the demands of contemporary architecture as well as the requirements of sustainable building.

Wiley-Blackwell2010

Dynamic Ornament: The Design of Responsive Architectural Environments

Mark Meagher

EPFL2010