Deposition
From Scripts
to Applications
Is the widespread adoption of existing design software appropriated from other
disciplines limiting architects’ potential for pattern-making? Could the
development of complex code applied to equally complex pattern problems open
up alternative avenues of expression? Mike Silver illustrates work by himself
and other architects and artists that suggest that new kinds of software-driven
pattern recognition and simulation computer models are opening up the field.
We need to take the computer back from the large developers that control the software most artists use.
— Golan Levin, ‘High-Bandwidth Magic Show’ (Interview), RES Magazine, 2006, p 801
The building that houses Pixar Animation studios in Emeryville, California, is divided down the middle with artists occupying one half of its interior spaces while the other half is filled with computer programmers. The plan of the complex institutionalises the connection between art and engineering, producing a collaborative model typical of the many disciplines dependent on the production of new and constantly evolving software. This culture of exchange, customisation and craft has been adopted in recent years by sculptors who build computer- controlled art, and by artists who make drawings with home-made algorithms rendered on software platforms of their own creation. (Daniel Rozin, Casey Reas and Ben Fry immediately come to mind.)
In architecture, however, the rote operation of existing software appropriated from other fields has delayed the radical integration of computation and design. In a very real sense computers have not really entered the discipline as a transformative medium because designers and engineers do not write programs together. Limited to the constraints of borrowed code, most architects today are forced to squeeze their imaginations through the prefabricated structures of existing protocols. To a certain extent this situation has begun to change with the introduction of custom scripting where designers are able to tweak the constraints of their tools. But even these developments are at best a contingency aimed at the deeper, more comprehensive practice of full-blown application development. Through this approach, the production of complex code, designed from the ground up, offers architects an opportunity to engineer tools that facilitate creativity while engaging the myriad challenges of building design and construction.
Casey Reas, Process 14 (Image 5), 2008 Drawing made using Java-based code.
Undermining the move towards a broader, more empowered culture of architectural programming is the avant-garde’s fascination with rule- based patterns and their decorative functions. One of the guiding principles motivating a new generation of computationally inspired architects is the idea that simple programs can produce complex forms. From flocking patterns to fractal geometry, the reduction of complexity to a single set of abstract rules has shifted attention away from the messy, embodied realities of existence towards the very real need to create working methodologies that are inclusive, process based and physical. Emblematic of this emphasis on mathematical
abstraction is Stephen Wolfram’s extensive study of simple programs or cellular automata (CA). In a recent review of his book A New Kind of Science,2Ray Kurzweil writes:
There is a missing link … in how one gets from the interesting, but ultimately routine patterns of a cellular automaton to the complexity of persisting structures that demonstrate higher levels of intelligence … Wolfram would counter that rule 110
automaton could be used as a ‘universal computer.’ However, by itself a universal computer is not capable of solving intelligent problems without … ’software.’ It is the complexity of the software run on a universal computer that is precisely the issue.3
The projects below explore the development of complex code applied to equally complex problems. The aim here is to open up alternative avenues of expression and new ways of working with the computer as a design tool. Perhaps it is only a question of time, as the careers of Reas and Fry suggest, before the programmer and the architect become the same individual and when the ability to write code replaces ‘drawing’ as ‘the true mark of one fully socialised into the profession’.4
CAD/CAM in an Expanded Field
Mike Silver, Architects’ first attempts to build a full-scale brick wall with simple programs (CAs) employed a set of 17 templates repeatedly used to determine the position and state of individual masonry units. Expert masons devised a technique that limited the influence of errors to single masonry units and horizontal courses. (These mistakes could be detected late in the construction process and corrected even after the mortar of the wall was dry.) The system allows workmen to build complex masonry patterns without literally executing a cellular automaton program on site. A ‘Run Length encoding’ (RLE) module was written into the latest version of AutomasonMP3 so that encoded information could be stored as audible files played on a mason’s smart phone or digital music player. With a bluetooth headset, workmen can access block-stacking commands leaving their hands free to do physical work. The production of a-periodic masonry patterns is therefore based on an efficient technical synergy employing home- made code, traditional materials, local craftsmen and existing computer technologies. In other words, simple programs require elaborate software that makes complex architecture easy to build.
Daniel Rozin, Wooden Mirror, Israel Museum of Art, Jerusalem, 1999 Rozin’s mirror uses computer software, servo controllers and wood blocks to create a pixellated reflection of its viewers.
Mike Silver, Architects, AutomasonMP3 software, 2009 An iPhone digital music player displaying a class 4 cellular automaton. AutomasonMP3 is a free, stand-alone application that was designed for constructing complex brick buildings in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The tool was developed for the International Masory Institute by Mike Silver, Architects in collaboration with programmers Yee Peng Chia, Eric Maslowski and Chipp Jansen.
Mike Silver, Architects, Java-based taping patterns for an s-glass fibre-placed truss, 2008 With a reusable mould, a variety of patterns can be produced by simply varying the data that drives the fibre-placement process. Increased fibre plies in section help mitigate surface buckling while allowing for a less densely packed fibre layout in elevation. Here, the window and the wall, the frame and the panel no longer exist as distinct systems. The resulting penumbra (top image) also provides a flexible way to control natural light.
for free by simply changing the data in the taping software. In this way the internal stresses of the truss became visible as an
expressive field of both straight and non-geodetic lines (the corners of the truss are curved). Instead of pursuing patterns that tend towards excess – solutions that create more problems than they solve – robotically fabricated composites facilitated an organic complexity through integrated geometries that achieved more with less but without standardisation. In other words, diversity was produced through the conservation of mass and energy.
Supercomputation
Applied to problems that require complex calculations, supercomputers have been used by scientists and engineers to study a wide variety of environmental and spatial phenomena ranging from climate change and weather forecasting to nuclear explosions and urban traffic patterns. Supercomputers have become the technical benchmark by which we judge advances in processing speed and power. With the constant introduction of new machines and new technologies, the development of ever more complex and computationally sophisticated simulations will continue well into the future. This steady increase in power is revolutionising the way we understand different patterns of behaviour and their real-world consequences. Projects like
Complexity Without Excess
Fibershop Version 1.0 (beta) was developed in collaboration with artist and programmer Chipp Jansen and was used to robotically produce high-strength, composite skins for spanning the courtyard of the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio. Because fibre- placement machines are traditionally used to construct aeroplanes, new code was needed to make components for use in buildings. The limits of the existing composites software necessitated the creation of complex
visualisation and fabrication tools designed from the ground up. Through a collaborative process of testing, coding and recoding it was possible to build an ultra-light, ‘frameless’ truss incorporating windows, walls and structure into a single design.5This was achieved by
controlling the variable deposition of individual fibre- reinforced plastic strands laid down on a reusable mould.
Rather than producing components that were homogeneous and structurally overdetermined (I-beams, T-sections, bearing walls and so on), this design achieved its efficiency by increasing material density where stresses were high and decreasing them where they were low. The complexity of the final component was produced
Andy Lomas, Aggregation 27, 2005
left: 3-D diffusion limited aggregation (DLA)
model produced by artist and visual effects supervisor Andy Lomas. This simulation is based on the same algorithm as lighting. Mike Silver Architects,
Fibre-placed truss, 2007
right: Robot laying down strands of s-glass
tape on an aluminium mould. This small- scale prototype was produced by New York- based composite manufacturer Automated Dynamics. The final production part, spanning 30 metres (100 feet), would be 10 times lighter than a conventional concrete beam and 1.5 times as strong.
AECOM Consult, Inc, TRANSIMS project, Atlanta, Georgia, 2009
opposite top: Traffic volumes on
roadways in Atlanta generated using the TRANSIMS output visualiser. While both images display a common morphology, their embodied reality is quite different.
Roadrunner supercomputer, Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, 2008
opposite bottom: The Roadrunner
supercomputer is used to create high- throughput, interactive simulations.
TRANSIMS, a high-throughput simulation of the vehicular infrastructure of Atlanta, Georgia, have allowed programmers to visualise and experiment with complex patterned systems that exceed the operational scope of traditional media. Each vehicle in TRANSIMS, for example, ‘is coded for operating characteristics … such as engine type, exhaust system, tire pressure and speed’;6as virtual cars (modelled according to real-
world census data) circulate through the traffic network they generate emissions that are processed by a program responsible for calculating air quality. An increasingly sophisticated understanding of how large urban settlements impact the environment, changes in their patterns of use, as well as new insights into future design strategies are especially important features of these new kinds of models.
At first they appeared on his fingernails as small white blotches. Eventually, minute patterns began to form in legible rows of finely hollowed points. These grew from underneath his cuticles and inched their way slowly across the soft corona of pale tissue that beamed like an eclipse most prominently on his thumbs. From the
trimmings of each nail, coherent forms could be assembled, piece by piece, into a translucent mass. Over time, one could discern the contours of a miniature landscape, crystalline shapes and even the city with its street-light glitter, floating in storm clouds like a distant nebula. 4
Notes
1.Golan Levin, ‘High-Bandwidth Magic Show’ (Interview), RES Magazine, Vol 9, No 4, 2006, p 80. 2. Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media (Champaign, IL), 2002. 3.Ray Kurzweil, ‘Reflections on Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science’; see http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0464.html?printable=1. Accessed June 1 2009. 4. Reyner Banham, ‘A black box’, in A Critic Writes, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1996, p 10. A stress on applications does not necessarily render the use of conventional software tools obsolete. For instance, if an architect needs to draw simple plans and sections then AutoCAD is quite sufficient. However, the development of new tools will help the discipline break free of the operational limits of existing code.
5. The surface strength of a fibre-placed membrane is produced by laminating fibre- reinforced plastic strips. The strength and stiffness of composite shells are acquired through the precise control of their fibre’s orientation and density. With these materials and manufacturing techniques a complete enclosure is created without structurally distinguishing frame from infill.
6.John Casti, Would-be Worlds: How Simulation is Changing the Frontiers of Science, John Wiley and Sons, Inc (New York), 1997, p 133.
Text © 2009 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 95 © Casey Reas; pp 96(t), 97, 99(l) © Mike Silver; p 96(b) © bitforms gallery nyc and ITP – NYU; p 98 © Andy Lomas, 2006; p 99(tr) © AECOM Consult, Inc. Atlanta TRANSIMS Implementation sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration 2007–2009; p 99 (br) © Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), photo by RC Robinson, LANL