Monday, July 9, 2007

Oakland Airport and the end of year two



Finally finished up second year, and the Oakland Airport project. For the last half of the quarter we zoomed in to a smaller scale of work, concentrating on only five jetways and a portion of the support core. The initial circulation and program studies were heavily interested in developing a skeletal sort of architecture drawing from examples in nature. The airport's circulation core, and support program such as shopping, dining and restrooms nested within a central spine, branching out to connect to the jetways.
Since the beginning, a series of linework diagrams informed the design process. The plan became a layering of slabs, structure and systems, with each part complementing the next. On a macro scale, the linework flow is linear down the length of the building, but at a detail level the plan starts to work laterally with flows fingering out from spine.
The project was developed primarily through polygon modeling in Maya, with a couple scripts being used to automatically generate the secondary structural system based off surface isoparms. Looking back, it would have been nice to use some of the animation tools a bit more. The process was always initiated through 2D drawings which meant a greater degree of control over the linework and plan, but perhaps animation could have introduced some nice sectional variation and a smoother flow between surfaces.













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