agenda.

Relating “new diagrammatic techniques for handling programmes and spatial adjacencies” and “resonance with a material system” in a design for a new fashion school along Northbank. Drawing from our previous research and experimental work, we were drawing on ideas of Fever, Fashion and Tension Membranes.

In terms of applying Tension Membrane as an architectural design element, the question is what can we do with it? Is it only purely structural? Or is it only purely formal? Or is it confined to neither but is rather a culmination or synthesis of both applications? What can we use it for? How, as a building element, will it enhance the architecture, design and usage of the building as a fashion school?

How can we look for these answers? Is it in the further testing of what the system can do for us – in physical model testing as well as digital model animation? What is special and unique about the tension membrane system? What can it do for the architecture that other conventional building systems cannot do?

So far we have struggled to push for what else Tension Membranes can be. Maybe it is about time we just let the material system be as it is and choose to expand on what it is as it is. And from there, we take what it is onboard to develop and enhance our programmatic analysis and understanding of a fashion school.

Perhaps our final outcome may be a series of fabric tension membranes that frames and separates activities and functions throughout the building. It might be that we choose instead to simulate the carved spaces of the tension membranes with thin concrete instead. Whatever we end up with, the step to first take is to allow the system to be as it is and not be too ambitious in having it look like something never seen before. In doing that, (hopefully) we will end up with an architecture that has never been seen before.

Post-war one

We will have this breakthrough of translating

1. Kinetic Model,

2. Static Model,

3. Energy Data Diagram and;

4. Human Ergonomic Diagram

into one unified, and justified language in 7 weeks. Perhaps Tokyo is a proper break without a break for us? Time to refresh, re-strategize and rework.

I must admit, this is my best experience in architecture so far and I am glad you guys are on board.

Special thanks goes out to Julie Eizenberg from Koning Eizenberg Architecture, Stanislav Roudavski, Tom Kvan, Justyna Karakiewicz, Eugene Cheah and Steve Hatzellis for participating in our crit. I've recorded the one hour conversation for reference without you guys knowing. ; )

the interim post-mortem

What I emptied out from my brain post-crit while I was still reeling with adrenaline:

"What can you do with Maya that you can't do with the physical model?" - Julie Eizenberg

For starters, we can first try simulating the deformation without the stitching of the cloth to a boundary.

One of the constraints that was problematic for us in the making of the physical model was that we felt the need to stitch it's edges to a frame. We were striving to break away from a conventional minimal surface model, and yet we ended up settling for and conforming with the "traditional" set-up.

Now that we can use Maya to further our investigations, perhaps it would be worthwhile to explore the possibilities of a tension net structure:-

1) with or without a perimeter framing
2) types of frames; and,
3) comparing the results regardless of whether we get to an eventual result that we can predict will be useful to us or not.

Better to have a tested experiment that has failed us than a neglected unexperimented hypothesis, no matter what it is still will be a worthy outcome.

DON'T PANIC

We will "ving-it" fellas!

interim and beyond

Everything that has happened is as we predicted. We knew what we were getting into as a group. This is boring. When was the last time surprises in design were in fashion? (no pun intended ha)

When the concern for the final outcome overshadows the concern of the self, magic happens. I want magic and I want it with fire. And I want the crits to leave without their jaws. Time to push.

manipulated cloth

one pinch point and three circular incisions
were made on a rectangular cloth
we then animate it with gravity
and apply three sets of deformations
it needs more control
especially in terms of the validity of the 'emergence'
and function, of course
but it gives an idea of what we can achieve