Andrzej Zarzycki

Dynamics-based tools: an unusual path to design integration

New computational theories and technologies developed over recent years are expanding the formal language of architecture and renewing interest in the nature of the creative process. While they often depart from strictly Cartesian geometries and traditional architectural form, they frequently converge on broader aesthetics of contemporary design, taking cues from other creative disciplines such as product design.

Epic video games: Narrative spaces and engaged lives

Contemporary video games such as Mass Effect or Assassin’s Creed are emerging as a new form of media departing from traditional games purely seen as problem-solving exercises. They represent a new creative direction enjoyed by a broader audience, similar to those of TV and cinema. At the same time, they are significantly different from TV and cinema, since they place the user at the center of interactions, allowing content creation and forming strong emotional bonds. This article discusses the role of narratives in these new epic games as the main driver behind their social appeal and commercial success. It also poses a number of questions in the context of architecture and the possible fusion of both architecture and narrative.

Reflections on Computational Design Through Interactions With Materiality and Physical Mock-Ups

Introduction With computational tools firmly established in professional practice and academia, the question of the continued relevance of traditional physically based design methodologies is often overlooked or left unexamined. The unspoken assumption is that digital tools supersede analog modes of thinking and production in a simple one-to-one exchange, where analog functions are directly mapped onto their digital equivalents. However, a closer examination of these new digital modes of creativity, often reveal that these new methods are neither more intuitive nor more direct. Often they are confined to a machine-based logic, trying to recreate physical-world thinking within a digital framework, or they lack an intuitive interface between computer and human functions. While these present limitations do not diminish the opportunities associated with digital tools, they demonstrate a continuous need for better alignment between computation and creativity. In particular, they illustrate the need for a closer investigation of analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog phase changes, with an eye toward improving the development of computational tools and digitally driven creative processes. This article looks at the integration of physical and digital models in design practice and investigates the ways both design frameworks inform each other. The goal of this investigation, however, is not to justify why we need physical and traditional modes of thinking but, rather, to argue for the continued development of computational design thinking, which still lags behind traditional, nondigital design processes in many respects. Some of the issues yet to be addressed within the computational creative framework are the intuitive, even haptic, use of tools; a framework for conceptualization that more closely reflects physicality of final design. This article specifically looks at the embedded materiality of architectural models, their physically based behavior, and the haptic feedback designers and fabricators receive when interacting with their creations. The emerging questions are: what forms of digital software and interface would provide a comparative level of interactivity, software features and design interface would facilitate full virtualization of the design process?

Intuitive structures: applications of dynamic simulations in early design stages

Developments in digital design have brought a new design freedom into architecture. Emerging tectonic trends, combined with research into new materials and fabrication technologies, make it possible to pursue imaginative designs with new expectations of space and form. However, these innovative designs often exist exclusively as visual propositions, deprived of the deeper structural, constructional, or functional logic necessary for well-developed designs. Similarly, the proliferation of analysis software tools has helped engineers to calculate sophisticated structural models, yet this ability seldom translates back into architecture. Consequently, these two parallel developments, while promising in their individual capabilities, fall short in terms of synergizing into successful designs. To bring these two distinct components together, this paper discusses the strategies for generative design validation using dynamics-based modeling tools that realistically portray physical processes. Through the use of dynamics-based software, a promising direction for generative architectural design emerges. An architectural form not only can be analyzed based on its structural performance, but also can be derived through the process of structural simulations.

Designing with constraints parametric BIM

While usually associated with the back-end of the design process (implementation), building information modeling (BIM) could also redefine the way design ideas are generated by bridging formal creativity with design and technological innovation. This is achieved through a close integration of generative tools with parametric capabilities and intelligent database-enriched digital objects.

Describe, Explain, and Predict

E D TO R IA L Contemporary design practice and education aim to address pressing social, environmental, and technological problems. To realize these aspirations requires systematic and well-defined (re)search into human conditions, materiality, and the spatiality of architecture. This is achieved through innovative and rigorous inquiry based on repetitive results, the ability to validate them, and the transferability of the knowledge. While scholarly work describes and explains the nature of a process or a phenomenon, applied research also allows for the prediction of future outcomes—a projective explanation facilitating new discoveries. This predictability is directly tied to achieving repetitive results and advancing the broader design knowledge beyond a singular creative instance. Architectural research also needs to be directed and intentional. When mathematics found itself with a number of unresolved problems over a century ago, German mathematician David Hilbert proposed a collection of twenty-three problems that set the course for mathematical research in the twentieth century. Similar vision and leadership are necessary in our field today. Architecture has to develop a broad, socially supported, timely vision to direct our future efforts. The 2030 carbon-neutral commitment is an important part of this vision.1 However, it should be translated into discrete research objectives jointly supported and advanced by practitioners and academics. New knowledge needs to be developed and shared. The research-in-practice perspective offered by AIA past President, and current UIA President, Thomas Vonier advocates for research to take a more prominent role in professional practice. This research, he argues, should build on the unknown and fill expertise gaps while staying “focused on measurable results, demonstrable outcomes, and tangible benefits.”2 The current discussion of sustainability, resiliency, and carbon/water net zero buildings expands to include research into human factors and the ways people operate within the built environment. Designing for a statistically average person is no longer adequate or appropriate. Considering each and every person individually is necessary as is already accomplished in other media, design, and engineering disciplines. Mass-customization of products and services is being extended into the built environment with buildings anticipating and adapting to user needs. Internet of Things technologies combined with computer-human interactions provide new ways to interface with architecture and study occupancy patterns and behaviors. However, to be effective and protect the public welfare, we have to better understand scientific methodologies and frameworks that ensure that user-based research is conducted scientifically and ethically. Institutional review boards (IRB) provide such guidelines, as discussed in “Architectural Research Legally and Ethically Considered” by Lynne M. Dearborn and AnnaMarie Bliss. The tenuous and often indirect relationships between art/design and research are evident in the creative works of Theo Jansen. His sketches and studio setup reveal an in-depth engagement with scientific reasoning and technology. The “artificial life” forms are informed by highly analytical studies of nature with thoughtful and imaginative syntheses. Jansen’s work provides a good example of design supported and directed by research. The proof of concept manifests itself through fully accomplished and functional designs that are appreciated by the broad public and that advance our understanding of kinetic designs. The knowledge embedded in developments of analog sensors and actuators is transferable into other disciplines, however it awaits meaningful architectural responses and applications. Another of Hilbert’s achievements is the formulation of the concept of metamathematics—a mathematical reflection on the study of mathematics using mathematical methods. This disciplinary self-reflection differentiates between reasoning from inside and from outside of a system. It acknowledges that certain problems can only be understood and solved with an outside-of-the-system perspective. Interdisciplinary team research, evident in this issue of TAD, provides opportunities for both inside-out and outside-in reflection on architecture. Not only do these contributions reveal underresearched and unresolved problems but also define new disciplinary goals and challenges.

Mods, Hacks, Makers: Crowdsourced Culture and Environment

This paper discusses the role of prototyping as a vehicle to integrate electronic media technology, materiality, and physical computing into architectural design process and education. It connects a creating-making approach to a broader maker and hacker culture through adaptive and autonomous assemblies and embedded electronic systems. It recognizes the need for a new conceptual dis-course on what constitutes effective design methodology that nurtures innovation and considers all design factors: social, cultural, and technological.

Mom's tray: real-time dietary monitoring system

Moms Tray is a dietary monitoring system that integrates smart tray with embedded sensors, pre-arranged and RFID-tagged food packages, and a mobile app to provide a real-time feedback on food ordering and consumption in a school cafeteria setup.

Engaging maker culture with digital prototyping

Computation and electronic technologies combined with smart materials provide a new ingredient in the creating-making of a built environment. Understanding virtuality in the context of materiality and materiality in the broader intellectual, cultural, and social framework is critical for the integrity and future of the discipline. This creating-making tradition continues to redefine architecture as it is consistent with and representative of a broader current culture of makers and hackers: the culture that permeates all aspects of our daily lives with a shared DNA-like structure.

Augmented realty as virtual design interface

Augmented Reality (AR) increasing occupies an important place in manufacturing, transportation, branding, tourism, education, and many other areas of life. It finds its applications in a diverse range of disciplines from remote collaboration and navigation to interactive print and data visualization. Unlike virtual reality (VR) fully immersed in non-physical datascapes and often self-referential, AR closely correlates the virtual and the physical realities and makes them highly interconnected and interdependent through location awareness, enhanced data overlays, and user-focused content. As such, it provides a unique opportunity to seamlessly extend physical environments with virtual interfaces.