blind and shadow

ADAPTIVE BUILDING INITIATIVE

POLA Facade

adaptive fritting

Adaptive Shading Esplanade

facade pattern

[http://archrecord.construction.com/features/designvanguard/2009/09Min-Day/slide_9.asp

Image courtesy Min | Day

Min | Day pReflecting Wall Lincoln, Nebraska In collaboration with artists Leslie Iwai and Jamie Burmeister, Min | Day designed the surface treatment for a 1,000-foot-long and 18-foot-high retaining wall that runs along a flood-control plain between a park and the University of Nebraska. The team developed a system of stainless-steel tiles that will reflect changes in the sky, floodwater levels, and activity in the park. Inspired by the work of mathematician Roger Penrose, Min | Day devised a system that uses tiles of only two shapes to create a pattern that has a five-fold rotational symmetry but never repeats.

Tensegrity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensegrity

Special Grant 4th Student Competition“Textile Structures for New Building” 1997
Though old, this site has some inspiring ideas on movable structure at architectural scale. Could those be  future Archi bots?

Polyhedral toy

bio-tensegrity

Imagine covering these frame with elastic membrane in such a way that all surface are in tension, the resulting shape will 1)hold its own shape and allow huge deformation 2) have nice curves and edges like Mark Baskinger’s white balloon over metal frame
might I actuate it with linear actuators from inside and give it its own kinetics and shape its own world? another SMA gadget?

kenneths nelson, the inventor has some amazing experiment with different contraction forces.. not only a mater using the elastic ropes, he also discussed rigid connection, and magnetic connection.

could one change the direction of these magnets, and change the overall form?

Greg Witt’s amazing piece ” surface with sticks“

voronoi diagram

named after Russian mathematician Georgy Fedoseevich Voronoi

  The segments of the Voronoi diagram are all the points in the plane that are equidistant to the two nearest sites.

Voronoi diagrams are used in

•  
• find the largest empty circle amongst a set of points, and in an enclosing polygon; e.g. to build a new supermarket as far as possible from all the existing ones, lying in a certain city.
• computer graphics to procedurally generate some kinds of organic looking textures.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram]

Beijing National Aquatics Center by Vector Foiltec

The Texlon® cladding system The cushions are manufactured from between two and five layers of the modified copolymer Ethylene Tetra Fluoro Ethylene (ETFE). Originally developed for the space industry, the material is unique in that it does not degrade under Ultra-Violet light or atmospheric pollution.

• surface is very smooth and has anti-adhesive properties, Texlon® ETFE self cleanses under the action of rain.
• Texlon® combines exceptional light transmission with high insulation. We can even create cladding systems that react to the sun and change their transmission and insulation throughout the day.

[http://www.vector-foiltec.com/cms/gb/technical/technology.php]

Voronoi diagram generator in flash 

A Few Architects

Frei Otto

Otto is the world’s leading authority on lightweight tensile and membrane structures

 

Barry Beauchamp Patten

Sidney Myer Music Bowl

  

Fence

Urban Farming project at CMU (now unfortunately torn down)
 reminds me of Francois Roche’s projects .,.,,

Archigram

Archigram was an avant-garde ar­chi­tec­tural group formed in the 1960s – based at the Architectural Association, London – that was fu­tur­ist, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, draw­ing in­spi­ra­tion from tech­nol­ogy in order to cre­ate a new re­al­ity that was solely ex­pressed through hy­po­thet­i­cal projects. The main mem­bers of the group were Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Ron Herron, Dennis Crompton, Michael Webb and David Greene.
 michael webb

SUITALOON
Mike Webb, 1967

The Walk­ing City

HAUS-RUCKER-CO.

HAUS-RUCKER-CO.

 Viennese architectural and design group founded in 1967 by Laurids (1941– ) and Manfred (1943– ) Ortner, Günter Zamp Kelp (1941– ), and Klaus Pinter (1940– ), with others representing different disciplines. The group opened offices in Düsseldorf (1970) and NYC (1971), so quickly became international. Specializing in ‘disposable architecture’, pneumatic structures, air-mattresses, and life-support systems, its projects (often featuring plastics) have included Balloon for Two (1967), the external shell around the Haus Lange Museum, Krefeld (1971), and the Oasis 5 in Kassel (1972). Among unrealized projects that have received attention are the Pneumacosm pneumatic-cell expansion of NYC (1967) and an artificial cloud with a huge ladder for access (the Big Piano—1972). Cook has identified Haus-Rucker-Co as contributing to Experimental architecture.

 On the occasion of an exhibition was in the domed hall of the Kunsthalle in Hamburg installed . In the middle of a square pool of 6 m side length of white plastic tissue a steel tower stood at the top of a glass-cube, in which there were two barrels with natural greenery. On the front sides of the cube were two attached semi-circular, divided into chambers made of transparent foil cushion the lungs, which over alternately controlled blast from the green cube and breathes. Like the wing of a human lung, lifted and pushed by them and they lowered the air is filtered and flavored with artificial additives in a tube system, which led right through the building to a customer location on the square in front of the Kunsthalle.
[google translate from here ]