Jane Burry

Designing Architectural Morphing Skins with Elastic Modular Systems

This paper discusses the issues of designing architectural skins that can be physically morphed to adapt to changing needs. To achieve this architectural vision, designers have focused on developing mechanical joints, components, and systems for actuation and kinetic transformation. However, the unexplored approach of using lightweight elastic form-changing materials provides an opportunity for designing responsive architectural skins and skeletons with fewer mechanical operations. This research aims to develop elastic modular systems that can be applied as a second skin or brise-soleil to existing buildings. The use of the second skin has the potential to allow existing buildings to perform better in various climatic conditions and to provide a visually compelling skin. This approach is evaluated through three design experiments with prototypes, namely Tent, Curtain and Blind, to serve two fundamental purposes: Comfort and Communication. These experimental prototypes explore the use of digital and physical computation embedded in form-changing materials to design architectural morphing skins that manipulate sunlight and act as responsive shading devices.

Understanding visual scripts: Improving collaboration through modular programming

Modularisation is a well-known method of reducing code complexity, yet architects are unlikely to modularise their visual scripts. In this paper the impact that modules used in visual scripts have on the architectural design process is investigated with regard to legibility, collaboration, reuse and design modification. Through a series of thinking-aloud interviews, and through the collaborative design and construction of the parametric Dermoid pavilion, modules are found to impact the culture of collaborative design in architecture through relatively minor alterations to how architects organise visual scripts.

Energy-Oriented Design Tools for Collaboration in the Cloud

Emerging from the challenge to reduce energy consumption in buildings is the need for energy simulation to be used more effectively to support integrated decision making in early design. As a critical response to a Green Star case study, we present DEEPA, a parametric modeling framework that enables architects and engineers to work at the same semantic level to generate shared models for energy simulation. A cloud-based toolkit provides web and data services for parametric design software that automate the process of simulating and tracking design alternatives, by linking building geometry more directly to analysis inputs. Data, semantics, models and simulation results can be shared on the fly. This allows the complex relationships between architecture, building services and energy consumption to be explored in an integrated manner, and decisions to be made collaboratively.

Software openness: evaluating parameters of parametric modeling tools to support creativity and multidisciplinary design integration

The ubiquitous computing era has pushed the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry towards new frontiers of digitally enabled practice. Are these the frontiers originally identified by the pioneers in the field? Architectural design has progressively shifted from two-dimensional paper based pencil sketched models to digital models drawn in various Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools. The recent adoption of parametric modeling tools from the aerospace industry has been driven by the need for tools that can assist in rapid flexible modeling. The adaptation of parametric modeling has reformed both pedagogy and practice of architectural design. The question remains if parametric design has answered all the requirements specified by Steven Anson Coons in his 1963 proposal for a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) system. Given the growth of computational power and ubiquitous computing, how has CAD met the visions of its pioneers with respect to the flexibility and ease of communication with the computer and support of simultaneous design conversations with many designers working on the same project? This paper will revisit ideas conceived by the early inventors of CAD, explore the opportunities for advancing parametric modeling with the existing ubiquitous computing infrastructure, and introduces the notion of software openness to support creativity and multidisciplinary design integration.

Modelling hyperboloid sound scattering: The challenge of simulating, fabricating and measuring

The Responsive Acoustic Surfaces workshop project described here sought new understandings about the interaction between geometry and sound in the arena of sound scattering. This paper reports on the challenges associated with modelling, simulating, fabricating and measuring this phenomenon using both physical and digital models at three distinct scales. The results suggest hyperboloid geometry, while difficult to fabricate, facilitates sound scattering.

Dynamical structural modeling: A collaborative design exploration

This study is based on a generative performative modeling approach that engages architects and structural engineers in close dialogue. We focus on knowledge shared between engineers and architects to apply the Finite Element Analysis based structural design technique Evolutionary Structural Optimization [ESO] as a way to understand or corroborate the performance factors that are significant in determining architectural form. ESO is very close conceptually to the dynamical system of matter and forces of growth itself. It has parallels both mathematical and metaphorical with natural evolution and morphogenesis so it has been poignant to apply the approach to a formal architectural case study in which the generative influence of these processes is inherent.

Design Environments for Material Performance

The research project that induced the Dermoid (Fig.1) installation investigates the making of digital tools by which architects and engineers can work intelligently with material performance. Working with wood as a material, we were especially interested how the bend and flex of wood, can become an active parameter in the digital design process. Traditional building structures facilitate load bearing through a correlation of compressive and tensile forces passing loads linearly through the building envelope. However, materials hold internal forces that can be incorporated into structural systems thereby reducing material use and leading to a more intelligent and potentially sustainable building practice. [2] [6]

Shared Design Space

Collaborative design activity that involves remote multilateral, multidisciplinary communication has become more commonplace with the electronic means to communicate across any distance in real time. The communication itself can be both an important repository of project information and an important part of the process of conceptualisation and design development. This research has explored the apparent shortcomings inherent in commonly used means of communication and how these impact on the design process. This paper describes research that has taken as a starting point the analysis and observation of actual design communication from the archive of an internationally published collaborative project involving disciplinarily diverse and globally scattered participants. Through the analysis, we have identified characteristics of communication tools or information environments that would address the particular issues found to impede collaboration while fostering those aspects that support it. The findings have been used to inform the design, specification and implementation of collaborative information spaces based on Wiki software.

Fabpod: Universal Digital Workflow, Local Prototype Materialization

This paper reports on a research project with the dual aims of 1) linking acoustic simulation to complex custom surface design and 2) realizing a full-scale prototype meeting room within an open knowledge work environment at a very high level of craft, engineering and material specification and differentiation. Here we report on the outcomes of the novel design and materialization processes.

Automated Shape Design by Grammatical Evolution

This paper proposes a automated shape generation methodology based on grammatical genetic programming for specific design cases. Two cases of the shape generation are presented: architectural envelope design and facade design. Through the described experiments, the applicability of this evolutionary method for design applications is showcased. Through this study it can be seen that automated shape generation by grammatical evolution offers a huge potential for the development of performance-based creative systems.