Render Tests

Medium Cool + Studio Update

A lot has been happing in the past month. The week of February 11-15 I participated in the Medium Cool workshop here at UCLA. Four up and coming Japanese architects taught a fast paced design charrette looking at medium density housing solutions for Los Angeles. I worked under the direction of Kumiko Inui, who is well known for her simple, but elegant retail designs in Tokyo. The client was Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the LA Times, who owned a house in Eagle Rock (near Pasadena) and was looking to build a new house on the lot with potential for expansion. Working with two undergrads and another graduate student, our proposal created a micro-urban condition on the site with four separate buildings. We pulled the buildings in towards the center of the site, keeping the site corners as garden space so as to create a buffer between the street and neighbors.

The final review was filmed and covered by A+U Magazine (I should have a few quotes in the article when the issue comes out). The jury consisted of Greg Lynn, Sylvia Lavin, Neil Denari, Jeff Inaba, Hitoshi Abe, Christopher Hawthorne, Roger Sherman and Dana Cuff.







Below are a few images from midreview for my studio project. The design is driven by a continuous parking ramp which winds to the top of the building, feeding a central commercial core and infilled with residential units. Several "attractor" commercial programs such as movie theaters, atheletic centers and high end restaurants are strategically located within the structure. These attractors then serve to feed the secondary commercial programs and open spaces.
The images are several weeks old... Final reviews are in a little over a week and there is a lot to be done still.

Research Studio Update

Last fall we conducted visual based research on illusions of movement, specifically looking at classifying effects and the resultant affect. The quarter culminated in a small publication of found images and "recipes" of each type of movement (ie. contortion, billowing, turbulence, etc) and how to produce that illusion of movement.


This winter quarter we are doing brief computer modeling exercises to try to produce the same movement effects we studied in the fall. Nothing is meant to be "architectural" yet, it is designed to produce a arsenal of techniques which can be later used with greater rigor in an architectural project.

The effect I was attempting to produce was "contortion", as defined by moi:

Carries traces of a violent transformation. Registers primarily in a skin or surface. This movement appropriates the traits of other movements such as flow and bubbling. When light wraps the surface, it is caught between ripples and vibrates back and forth against dimples and pockmarks. This is not a constant speed, but flexes and releases with violent force, creating smooth flows punctuated by uncontrolled moments of release. Contortion bends and twists, appearing sinuous and muscular but frequently working a surface beyond its capacity, leading to misshapen lumps and tears. When viewed monocromatically, and broken down into its simplest elements, the movement can be seen as transitioning between point clusters and lines.

The techniques used were: Maya particle fields, Real Flow fluid animation, and Maya hair.

Tokyo - Vertical Urbanism

Arrived back in Los Angeles this morning after an overnight flight from Tokyo. I didn't have access to a computer while in Tokyo, so the plan for daily updates never materialized.

The density of Tokyo was different from anything I have seen in the US or Europe. This isn't high-rise density in the sense of NY city, but a vertical urbanism in which the street is carried up vertically through the buildings. In Tokyo there is a common building typology which positions vertical circulation on the front of the building, accessible from the street, and layers different shops and programs vertically. Each shop has its own signage visible from the street. This vertical ordering creates very interesting interior "streets" in which interactions can take place in a stairway or elevator lobby. In the US, it is not uncommon to see shops or restaurants located on the ground level of a building, and residential units located above, but the prevailing train of thought is that only the ground level of a building can function successfully as a retail space.



Another interesting result of extreme density is how Tokyo makes use of awkward and left over spaces to develop usable program. Some examples are: an outdoor soccer field on top of an 8 story retail building, a park and sports fields located between a train line and street, "golden gai" - a collection of tiny bars each of which can only seat about 5-7 people and are accessed by a 2 meter wide pedestrian street, and "memory lane" a collection of yakitori restaurants and bars located in a narrow alley behind a new retail establishment.

The Japanese also have an interesting habit of arranging objects or stores into highly organized similar collections. On an urban scale, Tokyo arranges shops which sell similar things into zones, ie: bookstores, music stores, motorcycle shops, bars, or sushi restaurants. This organization carries down to the object level, where similar objects are classified and organized by type.