Week 11 final submission A3.2: Analytical Models of One Project

Jesse Reiser + Nanako Umemoto: O-14 Dubai

O-14 project by RUR Architecture PC is a 22 story tall commercial tower located in Business Bay in Dubai, The tower's concrete shell not only is the structure of the building but also open to light, air, and views from the façade. The facade is constructed from the extremely fluid perforated concrete of 400 mm thick. Reiser and Umemoto uses computer to numerically cut polystyrene void forms into the rebar matrix, and sided with modular steel slip forms prior to the extremely fluid concrete of 400 mm thick then flipped the skin to offer a new economy of tectonics and space. The space is nearly one meter deep between the shell and the main enclosure which creates a so-called “chimney effect”, the shell structure sustainable performance of the design which provides the passive cooling effects that allow hot air to rise and effectively cools the surface of the glass windows behind the perforated shell, this strategy achieves the cooling costs by 30%. 

The organisation of the design was well thought through, exoskeleton diagrid provides the structural integrity to the building, which means adding material locally where necessary and removing away where possible. The pattern design is a combination of a capillary branching field, gradients of vertical articulation, opacity, environmental effects, a structural field, and a turbulence field. Both Reiser and Umemoto focuses the project base on materiality, finding a way for the geometry and materials to work with each other to develop within the space. The exoskeleton diagrid is a management of relationship between the building geometry and its material behaviour. Architects and engineers consider materials as an important core to sustainability, which is related to Picon’s quote “with the research on composite and smart materials and the tendency to solve more and more problems at the level of material design rather than structural design” (Picon 2010, p.145).

The O-14 materiality as Resier keenly interested on the material effect and the abstraction materiality that isn’t just about articulation of parts or transmutation of parts but it would be the underline structure that would get express into the concrete.

Reference List

• ·      Reiser + Umemoto (http://www.reiser-umemoto.com)
• ·      Architizer (http://architizer.com/projects/o-14-tower/)
• ·      Picon, A 2010, ‘A Different Materiality’ ‘Material by Design’, Digital Culture in Architecture: an Introduction for the Design Profession, pp.143-169.

Week 11 Readings

Week 10 Readings

Practice vs Project – VI: Parametricism vs Parametric Thinking

The architectural relevance of cyberspace is a critical analysis of how cyberspace and the computers on the Internet and which applied to almost any virtual spatial experience created in a computer. The emergence of cybernetic and computer is starting to erased the social and commerce interaction from physical space to cyberspace. With this in mine, this transition of physicality in the virtual world is allowing us to extend our mode of operation in the physical world “Virtual worlds should not be seen as an alternative to the real world or a substitute, but as an extra dimension which allows us a new freedom of movement in the natural world”(Frazer 1995, p.49). This shift is effecting not just how we see the future but also is a new advancement of seeing the past, bring us to the point of self-consciousness to unself-consciousness and linear relationship to complex web. John Frazer also mention a key point about the ephemeralisation meaning that the technology advancement to do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing”.

Parametricism is the great new style after modernism, which Patrik Schumacher is known for. Schumacher mainly primary concern with surface and ornaments that expressing social order that indicating what the purpose of the building is. Ornament is a comeback through technologies by using varies digital tools and processers, he cast a key moments about the need for “tessellation became an opportunity for articulations”(Rivka & Oxman 2014), a component that is repeated slightly and modify driving the curvature to becomes the parameter.

Reference List:

• ·      Frazer, J 1995, The Architectural Relevance of Cyberspace, in M Carpo (ed), The Digital Turn in Architecture 2013, pp. 48-56.
• ·      Schumacher. P 2009, Parametric Patterns, in Rivka and Oxman R (ed), Theories of the Digital in Architecture 2014, pp. 143-152.