TUTORS: Anne Save de Beaurecueil and Franklin Lee – SUBdV

Environmental Synchronisation: The choreography of flow…

Diploma 2 will work on the synchronisation of both environmental and cultural flows, which involves defining a new aesthetic philosophy and social agenda for parametric environmental design.

Specifically, the unit will work on articulating spatial-ground systems to alleviate the climatic, circulatory and social stagnation that afflicts many global cities. The goal is to determine: how can one create a fusion between architecture, infrastructure, landscape, and contemporary art, through the environmental mediation of ground?

The linear ‘highway-building’ proposed by Le Corbusier for cities in the developing world (including Rio de Janeiro in 1929) inspired a new speculation on the potential of habitable infrastructures. Yet, in certain cities, these ideas were later translated into striated monolithic urban developments that privileged high-speed elevated connections between macro-zones and often caused residual areas of decay and congestion. Reacting to this, the unit seeks to re-work the linear infrastructure–architecture hybrid so as to create an articulated, multiple-scale inter-modality able to weave together local circulatory, programmatic and environmental systems.

With the impetus provided by Brazil’s recent economic boom, its hosting of the 2014 World Cup,and Rio de Janeiro’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics, students may work on architectural proposals for new programmes along Rio’s highly problematic elevated coastal highway, the ‘Via Perimetral’, which isolates the decaying port warehouses and docks from both the favelas and the established financial and historical centre. Alternatively, they can choose to work in any metropolis worldwide, creating articulated infrastructure-architectural hybrids to transform post-industrial and/or other partially dysfunctional urban landscapes. The unit will extend its previous years’ development of ‘Environmental Ornamentation’ to encompass an ‘Ornamentation of Flow’. Choreography and three-dimensional attraction-field scripting will be used to synchronise multiple convoluted spatial sequences with sensorial plays of diffused light and shadow, ventilating breezes and animated water flows. Continuous-surface design strategies for creating circulatory, programmatic, and spatial fluidity will be used in conjunction with component logics for structure, fabrication, and refined environmental mediation. The unit will integrate parametric methodologies with environmental simulation (including Rhino parametric scripting and Generative Components, Ecotect shadow/lighting analyses, ANSYS computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis), and extensive physical modelling, to calibrate iterative emergent spatial effects that can mediate structural, environmental, and circulatory flows, for the transformation of monolithic formations.

With technological development, scripted parametric systems today have brought about a sophisticated level of precision and control for fabrication, as well as for the simulation and mediation of environmental and structural forces. Yet somehow in this technological advancement, which is often defined by a ubiquitous proliferation of components for performative roof and wall systems, the mediation of ‘ground’, defined here as the larger circulatory systems that can manipulate cultural organizations, has been, to a certain extent, largely under-emphasized. Thus, the premise of the research is to find ways to mediate between both technological performance as well as the manipulation of grounds for social organization, with a specific emphasis on how to synchronize environmental and cultural flows. The ultimate goal is to augment established technical ecological-design strategies, and to bring conventional notions of ‘sustainable design’ a new civic and cultural relevance, through the emergence and development of flow choreography and ‘Articulated Grounds’ that can transform existing homogeneous programs, economies and contexts.

Main Consultants:

-Structural and Environmental Parametric Mediation Workshops and Reviews:

Lawrence Friessen, Buro Happold’s Generative Geometry Group

-Scripting, Parametric Modelling and Fabrication Workshops:

Adam Davis, Foster’s Specialist Modelling Group

-Environmental Mediation Workshops:

Joanna Gonçalves, University São Paulo Environmental Design (LABAUT FAU USP).

Sandro Tubertini, B.D.S.P. Environmental Consulting

Schedule Summary:

The unit is essentially focused on creating a performative architecture, using a methodology that combines research, the development of a personal thesis, agent-controlled formal experimentation, and rigorous testing to feedback the systems that are being developed. Slightly differing from previous years’ methodology, this year, the unit will first work on defining a design thesis related to a specific site problem and the developing of overall – or ‘global’ – Ground and Structure systems for a new proposed program that addresses the specific site problem. These will be informed and inspired by one’s personal research of an example that currently does promote a merging of art, architecture, infrastructure and nature: from carnival choreography and street art, to the surreal architectural-infrastructure hybrids in Tokyo. Through case study research, generative attraction field scripting, and iterative parametric modelling, the unit will start to develop hybrid Structure and Ground variations that are specifically articulated to respond to environmental agent forces. Besides the computational and structural tutorials from our consultants, there will also be weekly tutorials on physicalmodel fabrication, so as to build multiple-scaled performative physical models to physically test the structural and environmental performances of the parametric designs. There will also be seminars to discuss suggested readings to establish a historical and theoretical context for the design work that is being produced. The unit will then further adapt these Structural-Ground systems to respond to both specific environmental forces and basic program requirements. The end of first term will be spent conducting an initial general site analysis and then taking a unit trip to Rio de Janeiro (or one’s alternate chosen site), where students will choose and study a specific cultural phenomena relating to local materials, social activities, and/or micro-climates that will inform the refined ‘cultural component’ development in second term. After conducting this site analysis, second term will involve a precise programmatic definition, the development of plan organizations, and corresponding structural calibrations of the first term Structural-

Ground systems. The unit will conduct initial environmental testing of these overall global systems to inform their parametric calibration for specific environmental performances needed for each program type. Further refinement of the environmental and circulatory performances will be created through the development of differentiated and agent-controlled ‘cultural components’ for the internal and external wall and floor surfaces of the architecture-infrastructure hybrid. After more environmental and structural testing, multiple physical models will be built to develop material and fabrication strategies. Third term will involve further calibrating and detailing of the fully detailed plans, sections and large scale physical models, as well as more precise interior testing and overall fabrication system definition, as described in the detailed full year schedule below.

Tutors Bio:

Anne Save de Beaurecueil and Franklin Lee, based in both São Paulo and London, are directors of SUBdV architecture (www.subdv.com). They have practiced, lectured, and been exhibited worldwide,

including the ‘Raw, New Brazilian Architecture’ in the London Festival of Architecture this year, and will be exhibited in the Beijing Architectural Biennale in October 2008. They have taught at the Pratt Institute Graduate School of Architecture in New York and the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning (GSAPP). They both hold Masters’ Degrees from Columbia University (GSAPP). They have both worked for Ken Yeang, and Anne has worked for Zaha Hadid and Bernard Tschumi.