Forms of Expression: The Proto-Functional Potential of Diagrams in Arctitectural Design _Greg Lynn

Most important points and reflections…

Diagrams as not just a drawing or vision of an initial idea or driving concept, but as a conceptual technique that should come before any particular technology.

Digital potential of virtual diagrams has brought to life new methods for getting ideas across in a potentially more powerful and complete fashion.

Newly emerging design process that is a more open correspondence between concepts and form.

Fact that sometimes this dimensionless environment is hard to understand from many viewers. The ‘vague essences’ created by work of this type will fall into the category of the anexact and for most architects and designers, hard to interpret from a lack of Cartesian orthogonality, however this process can still maintain the rigor used in the stereotypical design process.

However, this guy Van Berkel uses diagrams and systematic constraints to derive his forms and designs, and can therefore be unlinked with a simple sense of expressionism. His work involving the systematization of abstraction is very intriguing. This philosophy gives a means to his work which is many times lacking form less educated designers trying to embody these principles.

Systematic diagramming helps Van Berkel’s work incorporate urban influences from a surrounding context in his designs. The way he diagrams can take cues from outside forces (much like a meta-ball) and influence his designs. However, this method is highly regularized, yet unique. He finds urban infrastructure and incorporates these through various levels of information to develop conceptual diagramming for his designs. This is an interesting approach and I feel gives his ideas an atypical foundation for beginning. This approach will assuredly lead to interesting designs.

Diagram as an ‘abstract machine’ is a very fitting term for this process of design.

His method of bringing life into functionalism and formalism by using abstraction in a generative rather than reductive manner, as Lynn states, is truly remarkable. If we all could diagram with this much intensity and rigor, who knows what exciting architecture we might create. Although this is still only one way to approach a process, it is a new enlightening method which could be further enhanced by the plethora of digital media and simply the amount of information that is available.

Who knew that a seemingly simple process of diagramming could be held in a new light and expounded upon to such great detail as one such as Van Berkel has demonstrated?

Blob Tectonics, or why Tectonics is square and topology is groovy… Greg Lynn

Most important points and reflections:

Blobs have had a hard way merging with the tectonic nature of architectural expression, because of there innate nature of being ‘simultaneously alien and detached, however capable of melding with their contexts.’

The organization and conception of blobs has always fascinated me, and Lynn expresses in detail the different ways to begin to think about blob formation.

Ideal of blobs being so contextually intensive and dependant on external conditions for their internal organization.

Hollywood movie advent of blobs and their properties…they stick to things that are then slowly incorporated through their surface, they depend on contextual restraints or containment for their form, ability to absorb objects as if they were liquefied.

A blob is neither a single thing or a multiple of things, but is networked and can become multiplied and distributed…

Then this idea of Meta-balls or blob models and isomorphic polysurfaces arises. Their basic ideas include:
-objects defined in relation to other objects…
-field forces define and alter surfaces which are the controlling factors of these meta-balls

Preconceived notion since the beginning of time that buildings should stand ‘upright’ like the humans that inhabit them, and this has been a hard vision and idea to overcome in architectural design. This is a very interesting idea that I can imagine inadvertently directs our thinking and design methodology, which is fairly obvious by the ‘normal’ architecture being produced around the world. ‘Normal’ as in perpendicular to the surface of the earth.

Opposing analogy of the body more akin to a single cell blob than a symmetrically articulated upright man. This of course leads to a sort of methodology with which to begin to think about blobs.

Currently in architecture blobs have tended to be built strictly as alterations on roof surfaces. Lynn asks us to look to other way to incorporate these ideas elsewhere.

We can start looking at architecture requiring long spans that can lead to instinctively tectonic expressions of roof structure. This usually leads to expression or at least a way of thinking that tends to correlate structure with design. This can be applied to designs for blobs as well, but Lynn suggests has not been approached with much success as of yet.

Another way to look at blobs has been to install slight variation in systematic structural systems that eventually lead to undulating forms. This step towards blobular architecture has been undertaken many times and has been explored very successfully, especially with the use of ‘frames’ in architectural design. We can easily manipulate these frames, whether parametrically or just methodically, to organize obscure sites or create unique and flowing designs that imply movement or otherwise dramatic architecture. I still think of Grimshaw’s Waterloo terminal in London.