Andy VanMater, Cesar Martinez, Rony Ghadban, Maura Lazari

This project documents a computational investigation of the mathematical principles of reaction diffusion, which was first described by Allan Turing in his paper “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis” from 1952.

The pictures show how the system generated differentiated patterns. The patterns was controlled by using different values for the system variables F & k(se graph). The generated patterns was abstracted into a gradient from public to private space, i.e green to blue. Furthermore the F & k values was used to generate specific patterns, based on proximities within the site.

The abstraction resulted in multiple concepts for an architectural proposals, some of which is shown on site.

Jens Pedersen, Norman Hack, Mohamed Nabil Suleiman, Shanyun Huang

This work is an experiment on how to systematically approach urban design issues. It is an exploration of how the rearrangement of urban activities in space and time can generate a healthy urban tissue. With the interaction of four programme types [Institutional, commercial, single family housing and multi-family housing], new types emerge and the flows of the current tissue are subsequently altered. The design seeks to achieve a homogenous urban fabric through locally mixed heterogeneous programmatic spaces.

Erin Colshan, Ignacio Marti, Georgios Papadogeorgakis, Sherwood Wang

The city of London is still growing and needs to accommodate more people coming from many different backgrounds. This will enhance the cultural and demographic diverse urban scenario already present. As architects we have the responsibility to propose spaces that respond to this urban reality in an environmentally responsible way. This project is an opportunity to study these urban problems and it tries to propose a strategy to tackle the shortage in housing that the city faces today.

The model starts by identifying the least common multiple of the different structures that make up the city, the housing unit. In our understanding, a housing unit represents a group of people of similar conditions that occupy a singular space. All of these spaces share the same basic needs in different gradients according to their proximity to other units.

The system has one main rule: to grow, or to aggregate. To do this, the model needs to know were it can aggregate the next unit depending on the boundaries of the urban area of intervention, the environmental constraints, and the particular needs of each unit.

In computational terms, the system determines all the possible places were it could place the next unit and then calls a series of functions that check which of those places better accommodates all the requirements of the unit. These requirements include orientation towards the sun, the wind, the proximity to service nodes, the amount of communal spaces and the ratio of public to private space.

The project explores the idea that the particular adaptation of each component or unit of the system would generate significant differentiation of the emergent urban tissue. This document shows the each step of the development of the computational model and tries to explain the design ideas behind each rule of the system. this work is divided into three parts, the first deals with general growth rules, the second explains how the system adapts to a particular site, and the third part shows an evaluation of the obtained results fallowed by general conclusions.

Jeroen Janssen, Shanky Jain, Shibo Ren, Nicolás Villegas Giorgi

Before looking at any site considerations, assessing any notions of scale, or program, we began our discussion and critical thinking in regards to what brings life and interest to an urban environment. In this discussion we quickly found ourselves not discussing issues of buildings, density, program, climate, or for that matter any other key architectural issue, but people. With this realization, we looked to what we believe makes an urban space desirable – the flow, distribution, and behavior of its inhabitants. How does this flow occur? What key aspects? What other modes and types of flow dictate urban movement? For starters, we analyzed transport systems. Public, vehicular, pedestrian, and bicycle networks work to complement the flow of people, and yet do not always flow in the same path. Many cities are organized around a sequence or flow of public spaces. Energy flows, services, municipal water and sanitation flows are all crucial to the system. Lastly, leisure networks, parks, geography, and water sources all impact, drive, and control, and inform the flow people.

What can determine and direct these flows, while building a higher level of organization to the development of a network?

The main source feature that we felt was most unused and could be exploited was the neighboring canal at the edge of the site. How can we use the flow of water to assist, inform, and bring life into the flow and distribution of people?

With this notion of water, our aim is to deploy extracted water from the neighboring canal, as well as recaptured rainwater, throughout the site as organizing public flumes. Based on surrounding site influences, the accumulation, spacing, size, and flow of these linear elements with inform the flow of people through public spaces. Dependent on the opposing flow of people and water, different areas of the site will be activated as different streams, or portions of an individual stream, are activated. As the organization of public zones and varied scales of people distribution will be the motivating site force, temporary private and public programs will both inhabit the zones in-between, as well as influence the formation of the network.

Dominik Lisik, Yasaman Mousavi, Jacob Bek, Paula Velasco Ureta

The intervention was treated as a generator of program
within the urban fabric. Program in this case is apprehended as a
main contributor to the overall regeneration of the tissue in an attempt to reach stability within the tissue.
The urban farming in this case is heavily dependant on rainwater collection, as well as a generative set of rules, which would be set to work at a neighborhood scale. These rules are set with the intention of producing a new urban tissue that supplements the existing and breathes a new life into it.
The utopian idea of collecting rainwater to create self-sustaining environments has been explored architecturally in a number of precedent works.
These works revolve primarily around presenting theoretic and environmentally sustainable solutions to the urban environments.
The proposed topography adds an element of data collection that influences the overall form and system to enhance its performance. The proposed model is tested digitally to produce approximations of expected performance criteria. The data gathering process consequently commenced with a thorough study of the environmental factors affecting the climate of the UK and London in specific.

Fatemeh Nasseri, Mohammad Ali Mirzaei, Riyad Joucka, Pablo Zamorano.

This dissertation aims to investigate an adaptive living system which can transform to adapt to the changing water level in order to offer a stable living area in periodically fl ooding region. It works mainly as an infrastructure in rural area which accommodates various program requirements and provides with connections.

Periodical flooding is disaster to many river basin areas. The situations are even worse in less developed countries, like countries in Southeast Asian. Some of them are rich in natural source, but flooding brings a lot constrains to their development. The lack of an appropriate infrastructure and adaptive canopies for the residents which can response to the extreme environmental changes in these areas becomes an important issue.

Based on hydrological analysis and climatic analysis, a adaptive urban intervention is proposed integrating material, form, programs and water drainage system. Its adaptability relies on hydrodynamic change, and being a network of component-based system, local arrangements effect on the global organization.

In a digital booming era, from our point of view, the most attractive as well as challenging task will never be the digital technique itself. Oppositely, the non-digital field will block computer-mania going forward. Feeling, emotion and literature description are all in that catalogue. In another word, as an architect, the most ambitious part is to design a sort of image which delights people by a picturesque city; a kind of expression which cures people’s nostalgia; a stream of inspiration which enlightens a revelatory thought. Most believes that the emotion is generated by the outside stimulation, which gave rise to curiosity and an ambition of us to quantify a kind of feeling.

As the first time to approach this topic, we aim for only one pair of feeling — exposed in public and staying in private, which is one of the most important definitions in architectural field. All spatial design are based on and motivated by those two words. Quantified description for public and private is supposed to reveal an innovative thought of spatial definition, which finally could lead to a pioneering design methodology.

The use and application of free-form geometries has been a constant aspiration in the history of architecture. Nowadays, due to the appearance and development of powerful parametric tools and technologies, this aspiration has become reality. The amazing potential of these tools enables architects to produce and fabricate almost any imaginable form. The paradox lies on that, this capability to easily produce and generate complex forms, is directly related, in some of the cases, with a lack of understanding of the geometrical principles behind it. The designer doesn’t need to understand a form to produce it and, consequently, an enormous effort has to be made “a posteriori” in order to make these forms buildable and economically feasible.

On the other hand, there are many precedents in the history of architecture demonstrating that it is possible to build complex and interesting architecture by applying simple logics and smart techniques. Buildings such as La Sagrada Familia designed by Antoni Gaudí or La Atlántida Church by Eladio Dieste are good examples of it. Both buildings were designed and built without computers but with clear geometrical rules and structural understanding. In addition, both masterpieces were built in collaboration with very skilled man-power and a network of experienced fabricators. Moreover, La Sagrada Familia is a unique and paradigmatic case since its construction started by the end of the 19th century and it is still a work in progress project. Consequently, its construction process has evolved in parallel to the available tools, from crafts to digital.

Nowadays, there is a wide field to explore in order to find new methods of design where contemporary parametric tools are part of the design process. In this search, geometrical logics and principles can be applied to minimize or even avoid any translation between design and fabrication processes.

The aim of this research is to develop a form finding process by the use and application of simple geometrical rules and advanced material system in order to build a vaulted space. This structure will be the result of the fabrication and assembly of a limited amount of three-dimensional components.

Reducing the energy demands of cities will be one of the biggest challenges for architects and urban planners in the coming decades. Tackling the urban microclimate, by addressing the urban morphology in design processes, could play a crucial role in this process; it is likely the most suitable way to enforce means of passive energy saving onto urban agglomerations.

The design research project presented in this thesis investigates the current methods in microclimatic research and proposes how such strategies, which so far have only been used in urban analysis, can be implemented in design processes. The complex interaction of physical processes that result in urban microclimates leads to the adaptation of simplified morphological indicators. Such indicators that reveal latent microclimatic characteristics of urban morphologies will be analysed and further explored. Coupled with a genetic algorithm it is subsequently shown how they can be utilized to simultaneously generate and evaluate urban layouts as part of generative design processes.

The project thus introduces a bio-climatic approach to urban planning that incorporates microclimatic considerations. Throughout the project strategies are developed that approach urban design from the patch/block level. It will be shown how patch morphologies can be optimized according to microclimatic considerations and how such patches may aggregate to form coherent urban structures. By implementing different indicators at different stages of the design it is revealed how different parameters for evaluation might come into play at different stages of the project. The result is a hierarchical planning approach from schematic urban patches all the way down to the building level.

In addition, the method of using morphological indicators will be extended to draw conclusions about urban qualities inherent to patch morphologies. Together with microclimatic considerations it will be shown through a series of design experiments how these can be utilized as latent information within urban planning.