Computational Design Group Meeting at BVN Architects

The Computation Design Group is a collective of design professionals that meet regularly to present and discuss digital design in Sydney. It's worth coming to see how computation is being used on the cutting edge of Design practice and education, and to network within your field. There are always interesting presentations and a vibrant group of like minded individuals willing to have relaxed conversation over a drink!



6:30pm, Monday 26th September
BVN Architecture

The BVN Sydney studio is on level 11 of the Challenger building. You can either go in at 255 Pitt st, or through the Hilton Lobby. The lifts are secured after 6, so someone will let you in in the lobby.

Week 10 – Tasks for Studio and Independent Study for Week 11

• Receive your grades and feedback from your tutors on your first assignment.
• Gather up to 10 textures that relate to your ideas, and that you would like to use as materials in your redesign (you may have already started defining your materials), using concept development and your research so far as a basis for your material choice.
• During studio, and taking no more than half an hour, produce an A3 montage of your project as it currently stands. This should capture the feel and flavour of your concepts and development.
• Using your 150 word descriptive ideas for your direction for your building, your draft models, and your 10 image texture pallet, create an A3 expressive montage of your ideas. You should be able to use images mostly from your blog.
• Post a high quality jpeg of your montage to your blog. This should be a quick exercise, and will provide you with a snapshot of your development so far.
• Get feedback on your draft models and continue modelling your individual concepts and ideas, bringing your project to a high level of resolution, considering construction, site context, materials, details and any other aspects of architectural resolution that you believe are pertinent to your scheme.
• Based on your developing concepts and your preference for varying technologies, consider what required additional technology you would like to use to convey your project.
• Gather in small groups within your tutorial groups and present your projects to your fellow students to generate discussion around possible technologies that could be applied to your projects for best effect.
• By the end of studio you should have a firm idea for the third presentation format you would like to include in your project.

Independent Study

• Choose your third format of presentation for your final assignment, as stated in the Assignment 2 brief. Provide a synopsis or a case study (approximately 300 words) of the technology you intend to use, including images and examples. Provide properly referenced, verifiable sources.
• In addition to your case study, provide a brief explanation of the “why” of your choice, focusing on the benefits that you perceive the technology can bring to your project, and how you intend to use your chosen technology for your presentation.
• Consider limitations and opportunities to best engage the technology in a unique and interesting manner.
• Define a base grid layout for your 3 x A1 posters (I suggest using InDesign), using grid lines and solid blocks, starting to think about your content, and how you might like to arrange your pages. Think about page orientation, relationship between the three pages and grid sizes. Post images of your A1 grid to your blog.
• Conduct more detailed research on your chosen architecture, concentrating on styling and representation techniques (development sketches, techniques of layout, plans, axonometrics, perspectives, etc.). You will need to explore further than the internet do this. You will have to go to the library and search books and journals to find relevant content. Post your research to your blogs, including complete referencing for your material.

Week 9 – Tasks for Studio and Independent Study for Week 10

· Get your 2-Page interactive PDF marked off by your tutor. You will be given a mark out of 10 that will be recorded towards your course grade.

· Start exploring concepts based on your analytical research from last week, and begin to deconstruct your base model to test ideas and a possible re-envisioning of your planned building. Make sure to always save in separate version, so you always have the original base model to refer back to. Post any images of your progression, or influences to your blog.

· In discussion with your tutor, and focusing on your 150 word concept text, finalise your concept idea for the re-representation of your chosen architecture, thinking creatively, and using a combination of images, montages, sketches, text and quick models to highlight your ideas. Post all work to your blogs.

Things that need to be considered as you develop Assignment 2:

· The concept of your re-envisioned architecture

· Research into a case study building and how the representation styles used can influence your own work

· Highly detailed models of your design

· Animations and models to be incorporated into your Interactive PDFs

· Interactive PDF, and the way you intend to incorporate multi-media elements

· Print versions of your PDFs

· The third format for your presentations that you intend to use.

Independent Study

· For independent study, individually choose an additional building of your chosen architect (other than the building you modelled as a group) as a case study. Go to libraries to find books, journals, etc. about your chosen case study building.

· Post images and 250 words of text on your case study, concentrating on the representation used to present the building.

· Continue developing your re-interpretation of your building working from your 150 word concept, your analytical research and begin to consider a third representation format that you intend to incorporate into your final presentations.

· Bring a draft version of your intended re-interpretation of your architecture to class next week for feedback.

Week 8 – Tasks for Studio and Independent Study for Week 9

· Finalise your group model, attending to the fine detail of the building, and producing 4 photorealistic comparative renderings (2 interiors and 2 exteriors, see the task for over the break for details).

Create an A3 interactive PDF concentrating on one important aspect of your building such as circulation, spatial arrangement, site context, etc. This task is aimed at getting you fluid with the technology, and producing a poster document quickly. Discuss with your tutor the most important aspect of your building to analyse.

• To be completed in Studio today! All tasks from now on will be individual tasks!
• Do the interactive PDF tutorials, and read through the tips document. This can be found on emustore in …>Interactive PDF’s>Animations in PDFs. Do the “animations_in_pdf_guide.pdf” first, then the more complicated “cap53_indesign2.pdf” guide. There are also some other documents that may be of use in the folder.
• There are also other more specific tutorials available on the web, that outline more specific processes, such as using SWF files for your interactivity.
• Using the building model that you developed over the break, develop an A3 Interactive poster of your work.
• If you don’t have your building today, you can find a well known building form one of the following architects:
• Louis Kahn
• Tadao Ando
• Toyo Ito
• Frank Gehry
• Zaha Hadid
• Carlo Scarpa
• Le Corbusier
• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
• Make sure that you can find a textured 3D model of your building on Google 3D Warehouse (for the purpose of this task only! You will still need to create a 2 page A3 interactive PDF of your building concentrating on your chosen analytical aspect).
• Export/render 4 images of your model (think about framing from a human perspective, you can use the images that you produced over the break for the task).
• Also produce a 10 second animation that concentrates on your chosen analysis area.
• To get a 3D model into your PDF… Export the model as *.obj file format.
• Install Microstation v8i from the samples folder for this course. (ftp://emustore.fbe.unsw.edu.au/Resources/samples/Arch/ARCH1390 Representation Studio - Harkins\Microstation V8i)
• Open your *.obj file in Microstation, and export your model in *.u3d file format. (This is the file format that allows you to embed 3D models in PDF's). There are other ways to get models into PDF’s but this is the way that brings across the most information).
• Make an A3 PDF using a layout program (such as InDesign), considering placement of elements on the page.
• Your A3 PDF should include Title and architect of your building, some text about your building, (include the reference of where you obtain your text from), 4 image captures, 1 x 10 second animation, 3D model with 3 named and saved views, your name.
• Upload the single page PDF to a file sharing site, and include an image of your poster and a link to your PDF on your blog.

• Get feedback from your tutor on your poster design and the analytical element of your building that you are exploring.
• For independent study, explore the analytic element that you have chosen, and extend your 1 Page PDF from class into a 2 page A3 PDF using relevant images, interactivity and animations, where the first page is the general information of your building/architect (that you created during studio) and the second page is an in depth analysis of the important aspect of the building you are exploring. You may want to refine your PDF from studio to “fit” better with your 2 page poster.
• Post all analytical research to your blog.
• Upload the refined 2 page PDF to a file sharing site, and include images of your poster and a link to your PDF on your blog.
• Your tutor will give you a mark out of 10 in Week 8 Studio.