AAI Scribblings

i think that this article displays the rift i would see between those architects who really care about their designs and those who are content to just build whatever the client wants.
and there is nothing wrong with either the world needs both types.

call it idealists versus pragmatists.

i would applaud bulchoz mcevoy and heneghan peng for their dedication to their profession and their designs. they primarily worked on competitions rather than chasing clients. far from wanting to live in a “safe” world of paper architecture as soon as they got the chance to build some of their designs they showed dedicateion in uprooting themselves and following the oportunities at any cost. now, i wouldnt say im alone in considering heneghan peng as the most promising exponents of architecture in this country for some years.

both of these examples of good irish offices along with O’Donnel Tuomey,Grafton Architects, Mc Coulough Mulvin, De Blacam Meagher etc etc. are all contributers to building material and by that very fact, display their interest in theory.

i would also like to say that i completely agree with the issue of competitions as being vital to an architects development. they are the only way in which the vast majority of us can do the kind of work we did in college(and keep ourselves sharp). i think they also display an undeniable interest in architecture as theory aswell as pure construction

good point on interaction with clients, but i would still say competitions are the way to go, they are often run by clients who are more open and interested in design rather than bang for their buck.
this http://www.ribajournal.com/story.asp?storyType=7&sectioncode=3&storyCode=1021062 might be an interesting link for you garethace

Want to scare your client? Some very modern interpretations of competitions here What?

Swanky Computer generated stuff

I remember I got the kansai competitions and yokohama competitions as study sheets in Bolton Street! I imagine this guy does realise alot more though.

Andre Duany

Never heard of him in Bolton Street though. Just not cool enough? 🙂 But I suspect, a lot of recent BM Materials is attempting to deal with problems defined at this ‘u-mungous’ scale. Ballymun is interesting, maybe. Docklands yeah, a bit.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

The whole Archinect thing though, was a nice idea for exchange of ideas – but seems to have developed into a Sci-Arc versus Columbia turf war these days. Oh well!

GL Form and all of that, I would rather learn about Architecture at ground level

Brian O’ Hanlon.

P.S. I am still turning over this statement in my head, and am just wondering if the people representing the use of computeristation and Architecture are really putting forward as bad an image as this one very intelligent poster at Archiseek seems to have gotten stuck with:

In one of your earlier posts you mentioned possiblity of thinking computers but perhaps we should be reminded that this is not the case yet- computers and they’re programs are created by us, written and informed by humanity. Every project developed in this way is coloured by someone elses preconceived notions. So my objection to complete computer design is that intrinsicaly it must breed homogeneity.

I mean, cast your mind back to Post Modernism, and all the other -isms in Architecture. And how the parrots of these ‘-isms’ always managed to spoil the original good the movement or thinking had to offer. You have made an intelligent point several times, about not swallowing things whole, about following up on strands happening around you, but not imitating them. Isn’t it really the slavish imitators who have arisen as ‘spokes-people’ for computers in Architecture. Isn’t it this people who have spoilt it as a movement for all of us?

I am very much reminded of a student in Bolton Street who decided to do his research topic about ‘writing algorithms to design architecture’. I mean that is the kind of opportunities that more conservative tutors standing upon some high moral ground love, to prove how useless computerisation actually is to the profession. Based purely on a very amateur and limited discussion of computers and architecture.

Your opinions on this would be valued.

Interesting reply, but I would like to refer to Tom Mayne’s lecture here in Dublin back in 1995, when he complained about having been ‘bunched in with the Coop Himmelblau’s’ by the same guys who write the glossy, expensive Dummies guides to De-Constructivism. The same ones that became so dog-earred, torn and grotty looking in many a college library around this globe. He also complained about he offering to give journalists/writers a guided tour of the Crawford house, they would all refuse point blank and just thank him for the permission to write about his architecture. As he said, ‘I have no idea what they are writing about’.

I have always been interested in models, be it cardboard, wood, CG whatever. And find it difficult now, being ‘lumped in’ with so many other (possibly very talented) GL Form Architects. Even though, GL Form, is far from the way that I personally discovered the computer.

Whenever I indicate I am interested in computers and Architecture, everyone automatically assumes they can confront me directly on the same theoretical ground as people like Greg Lynn. Peoples’ knee gerk reaction is simply to pigeon hole me into the same place as Asymitote. When I say I like Frank Gehry, they jump to the conclusion – curvy, computer generated form. I discovered Gehry after a long period of looking at Kahn, and noticed that Gehry isn’t afraid to be ambitious with openings to natural light – same as Kahn. Nothing to do with Gehry and computerisation.

Can one appreciate an architect who works with computers, just for the Architecture and leave the process out of it? No, not in this instance. Computerisation is just like an order Architectural Critics intellectual construct – like Decon, Po-Mo, Ec-Co . . . sounds like rolly toys doesn’t it? Architectural critics love creating glossy concepts, for the decade and then dragging all that through the muck. Tutors in colleges behave very similarly, since they spend so much time reading AR. Here is my best recollection of getting into computers,

In summer 1998, I told my auntie, I said Auntie, I cannot use a computer. She said, Brian, that’s silly, can’t you even use Windows? To which I replied, (aged 23) ‘What’s Windows?’ Having already done 6 six years of third level, by then.

Anyhow, I am more interested in the Architecture of Frank Gehry from a perceptual point of view, even though, I know loads about CATIA and his process etc. I have made some observations of an early Holl building, which explains my respect for Architectural perception. Have you seen the updated Steven Holl web site btw, check it out if not. You will not be disappointed by the new content, but the great watercolours seem to be gone now.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

CAD perspectives (I feel) do a bad selling job – often they’re so ‘realistic’ in the virtual sense, that their impact and cleverness falls flat and can even seem facile to the lay person.

I definetly do not intend making bad perspectives, if I know I can use a tool which cuts through the donkey work faster and better than anything I can do. I also believe that using computers to visualise Architecture has helped me to see the world around me, more clearly, to see Architecture, and therefore to improve my ability to draw it freehand if I wish. As with any good draughts person, it is more important what you do not draw, the parts of the paper you leave blank, as the lines you do make. Seeing Architecture through computer visualisation, has helped me to develop economy in my sketching, and be happy with a sketch sooner, rather than working it for hours, in a vain effort to make it deeply personal and deeply artistic in its own right. As someone who comes from an Artistic sketching background myself, a sketch is always a creation of love and care, like a poem, it becomes an end in itself. That is why I chose to stop sketching Architecture, and turn to something as artificial as a computer instead.

I envy those people doing architecture today, who never developed an emotional bond with the act of drawing – because it allows them to use sketching to design, rather than to express emotions through the strength of a line, the quiver of a wrist movement or the whites of the page, you did not touch. I tend to enjoy making very ‘expressionistic, emotional, El Greco’ types of representations of Architecture, which isn’t about dealing with clients, but about producing Art. I hate it when people reject, my sketches of Architecture, because to me, personally it feels like they have no respect for my Art!

Neil Downes once told a story about the famous Neo-Impressionist Painter Cezanne, reputed by many art critics to be the ‘father of Cubism’. How Cezanne was so sensitive about what he painted. If someone said it wasn’t good he would get mad, and want to know why. If someone, said it was a good painter he would say, “So you didn’t think I could paint like that eh!” 🙂

I love computers, because at least someone else wrote the computer software that produced the image, therefore I am not attached emotionally to it. Therefore I can adjust the design, recover from bad criticism of an image or visual, and in the end, produce a better design for my client, and for myself as an Architect. I was sketching like an adult when I was barely a teenager – I grew up with that ability, like other teenagers grow up with U2 or Nirvana. When I hear this:

In one of your earlier posts you mentioned possiblity of thinking computers but perhaps we should be reminded that this is not the case yet- computers and they’re programs are created by us, written and informed by humanity. Every project developed in this way is coloured by someone elses preconceived notions. So my objection to complete computer design is that intrinsicaly it must breed homogeneity.

I know that person was like most of the young people I did Architecture with in Bolton Street. Who never actually handled a pencil, or discovered the power of it, until they were in first year of an Architectural degree course! When ever I draw to this day, I become nervous, and my palms become wet – everything I am goes into the expression of the drawing, and hours fade away like they were seconds. So clearly sketching is not an option for me designing Architecture – to remain objective. That is why I hate Bolton Street’s insistence that I need to sketch rather than using a computer to design.

Because for me, sketching is like plugging directly into a high voltage power line, when all I require is a few amps out of a socket in the wall! Electric guitar filling a stadium with mega-watts of sound, as oposed to an acoustic guitar filling a room full of melody. Why do people assume a pencil, is always like the acoustic guitar? For me it is the electric guitar, and the computer is more like an acoustic guitar!

This Article of mine, attempts to show what computers could offer the profession. But taking a tool like a computer and sitting in front of it constantly is no help. Architect’s such as Tschumi, Holl, Mayne have brought it forward somewhat I believe. Since their theoretical foundations are based on how we see/experience the world around us, using such an artificial means to design it, isn’t such a big draw back. However, digging deep into the phenomenonological way of designing architecture, is theoretical and harder work than most people are prepared to do, in order ‘to design’.

I have spent a long, long time dealing with Architecture from the phenomenonological perspective, and I find the approach taken by Francis D.K. Ching, is far deeper and more complex, than his hand drawn sketching style would first tend to suggest. In fact, Francis D.K. Ching is often the ‘Basic Architectural design guide’ using by 17-year-old students years ago like myself. But the theoretical bedrock of Ching’s approach is to be found deep within the phenomenonological theory of design. Ching just added some pictures and made something very complex ‘appear simple’. Which is not in fact the case here.

All were more or less identical in terms of critical elements, broad appearance and layout yet the end result from these predetermined forms were quite different from one another.

Be very careful here, as I discussed in this thread people related to the world around them very differently in the old days. It was pedestrian transport generally, or horses which could navigate the narrow medieval ramps and streets. Look at some of the knight’s templar complex’s, which are wonderful piece of architecture to experience, but were the equivalent of a US airbase, and munitions store for a Desert Storm today.

Nowadays, peoples’ only relationship with space is either by (1)Cars or (2)Movies or (3)Internet. It is nice to think of the Washington monument ‘out there’ or Mogadisu (Black Hawk Down) ‘out there’ as places were great movie battles happen. Or the fantasy world’s created by Steven Spielberg in the movie AI. But as Tschumi rightly pointed out, Cinema did have a huge impact upon our perception of space and time. Le Corbusier, introduced things equivalent to medieval narrow ramped streets into his slab buildings. So does Meier and Holl nowadays. Louis Kahn worked hard to introduce back elements of the Knight’s templar kind of ancient Architecture back into modernism. Materials like stone, natural daylighting, a feeling of history and time.

In many ways predetermination is a virtue.I t takes the hard and sometimes pointless (re-inventing the wheel) work out of conceptualisation and focusses effort upon the real business of detailing, spatial juxtaposition and the always ephemeral ‘quality’ .

For example – I’m convinced it would be possible and perhaps interesting to make great architecture out of such a predetermined form as the semi detached, tile pitched house – of course it would take an enormous amount of effort – that was really the great strength of Grainne Hassetts Coill Dubh Credit Union – taking teh 70’s bungalow, turning it on its head and making it into a recognisably desirable architectural model.

Now you are really sucking diesel James. But you see Ching’s own approach was to look at simple spaces, simple architecture and analyse the conditions that made it exceptional. Natural Light, colour, texture, shadows, proportions, openings, views, circulation… most young architects are not encouraged to define themselve adequately in relationship to all of that. Because it is exceptionally hard work. What are the qualities that might turn simple boxes, or even bungalows into really nice Architectural experiences. One has to know the rules very well first, in order to break them. A lot of Kahn’s houses can be described very simply from a formal point of view. But he managed to get so much return from light, views and openings, that the Architecture rises above itself completely. Not many Architects I know can just pull that off as convincingly.

This Article of mine, attempts to encourage myself and other Architects to study these ingredients better.

I would be a big critic of Tom Power but that has been one of his strengths – looking for the magical in the ordinary.

And Tom would say himself, he does know when the Architecture is baked, which would suggest he spent a large portion of his time, learning to use the correct ingredients. Arnie Williams is a guy who writes for Cadence magazine, and has some interesting things to say.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

With flashbacks to the Glenn Murcutt lecture in Bolton Street DIT last year, I read this very informative account of an evening lecture at Columbia University! 🙂

Taking pity, it would grant three wishes, one for each: a limitless supply of disposable logic for the idle generation of form (Lynn), a probe to uncloak the mysteries of taste (Zaha), and a path through geometry to the unspeakable name of God (Libeskind).

Come and sample the atmosphere, of the changing of the guard at Columbia University. Like some platonic shifting of subterranean earth masses, the tremors will be felt in Ireland I am sure.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

The singer/musician Paul Brady said in a documentary last night on RTE what?, that people like a song, particularly when they sense you have taken a risk to do it. The audience can likewise sense when you have decided not to take that risk, and it is obvious in the resception from the audience. So I guess Architecture has its audience too, everyday, and people sense when the composer has played things safe.

as a presentation tool i would agree that many CG images are flat and unimaganitive looking. but i feel this is the fault of the creators of these images rather than the method used.

Zaha Hadid and Tom Mayne, have chosen to use computers as a tool yes. But you will notice, their computers images aren’t really 100% finished, commercially saleable images. To waste ones time producing good images is a waste of time. I don’t actually agree with showing Computer generated high quality stuff to clients. Even though I theoretised on this a lot. I would much prefer to see Architects using bland, flat looking computer models to investigate the geometry, construction and detailing of buildings amongst other architects, technicians and structural engineers.

There is a good article here, on how watercolours are still used in preference over computers, to visualise things like glass skyscrapers in the States, where the light and atmoshphere is constantly changing. Meaning that a freeze-frame computer generated still, will always fail. Hertzog and De Meuron always use a certain photographer, who digitally alters his images, to capture a little bit of that changing quality of their building’s skins at night, rainy weather etc.

Steven Holls web site, has quite a few computer generated images, which aren’t inch-perfect, but say something about the Architecture. Likewise the OMAs etc, are working in digital, and hand-drawn/digital hybrids. There are some nice hybrids here too, using sketch up software.

Often the computer model is cheaper, and quicker as you have said. But also, having made a really nice physical model of a building you cannot just rip it up again, without going to a serious amount of trouble, expense and time, which you simply don’t have. With computers, it is sometimes just possible to produce things, by the shere fact alone, it is so easy to edit a wall or opening or position of a door or column. We as a profession are still thinking in terms of physical cardboard models, and haven’t gotten used to the flexibility of digital modelling as yet.

Eamon O’ Doherty used always say in Bolton Street, use butter paper, it costs you nothing. If it isn’t right, crumple it up and throw it in the bin. That is the kind of attitude that needs to be cultivated with computer models – not the current ‘precious’ attitude that has filtered down from commercial visualisation, who regularly charge thousand per one good A3 image. Sure the Architects images might not be presentation material, but the would be cheap, easy and edit-able, or rubbish-able. Allowing the Architect to probe, and solve problems, not to set them in stone.

I don’t like that attitude, that everytime I sit down in front of a highend desktop system, with a sophisticated solid modeller like Z or VIZ, that my sole object is to produce a saleable ‘WOW’ image. Unfortunately that is how computer modelling is used now, and it is very similar to the old Butter Paper/Tracing Paper and Ink argument.

Most older architects, who aren’t familiar with computerisation do not understand that computer models are easy to change. And therefore are extremely reluctant to use computer modeling as a tool to generate, edit and change models on the fly. They think it would be just far too time and technically demanding for the limited word processing skills of their CAD using Architects. Another thing is having the raw computing power on your desk, and a stable system/software too. My learning to see essay does outline some of the demands placed upon an Architect using a computer to design today. Just like supercomputers are used to crack the great mathematical problems today, require a good formula to be written in the form of a program. The solving of Architectural problems via a computer requires the Architect to input information, based upon real world phenomena. While the computer is a way to visualize the world more realistically, it also requires us to observe the world more clearly too.

Architects who aren’t qualified enough with computers to pass any judgements, or suggest their proper usage, include most Architects from the age of 30 upwards, and all the ones who read Foreign Office Arch websites and Greg Lynn. There is nothing worse than good architects who can design brilliantly, and feel that gives them the right to talk as if they knew something about computers – leave computers to computer geeks like me, and the younger generations growing up. Watching 40 something well-educated, open minded, skilled Architects trying to sound computer-savy, is like seeing your Dad turn up to the rave party. And perhaps, if I ever learn enough about design, I can share with you all, how Architects could use computers. You need to spend a long time, not doing Architecture at all, and just doing computer modelling, to properly learn what a computer is and does. But Architects don’t have that opportunity – they need to look back in 10 years time on what they built/designed.

By far the most computer-advanced architectural practice in the world, Frank Gehry makes thousands of little study physical models on every project. And just photographs them every day, so that if the design team loses their way, they just track back through the archives of model photography, to find where they lost the design a bit. With computer models, dating and archiving of models should be done too. With Architectural technicians doing most of the computer modelling in practice nowadays, the architectural technicians don’t even hold onto a week old version of a digital model – they constantly edit and change the same model – and end up with ‘one file’.

The discussion here is all around these topics. I find it telling that in the 1960s, an engineer at Intel predicted something called Moore’s Law: That transistor counts and therefore computing muscle also would double every one and a half years. While this law has held true ever since the 1960s, Architectural projects move at a far slower pace altogether.

Personally I found it much easier to remain objective about design problems by using a computer. Because I understood computer models to be designed to be edited and changed. And therefore not really precious and ‘once-off’ like a physical model can be. It is hardly the fault of computer Architectural design advocates like myself, that computers are used precisely for the kind of highly-ray-traced images we are seeing now. I can take my computer model and delete half of it, like editing a word document, or cut it in half in seconds. Surely that must count for something?

I can also save several different versions of a design in computer model format, which would be difficult to do using physical models in most architectural practices in Ireland. But definetly, the disadvantage of the computer model, in giving you the ability to see the reality of a building, is having to observe reality more closely as a result. Learning to see.

Brian O’ Hanlon.