Oyster chair. Virtual reality meets furniture design.

ABSTRACT


Is it possible to imagine new ways for conceiving every-day objects like furniture? Is a CAD palette the only possible human-computer interface for designers? Oyster chair offers a look into the future of modeling, which has the potential to be much more intuitive and artful.


Arturo Tedeschi, Gabriele Sorrento


Geometry of the domes. 3D modelling aimed to interpret the domes’ shape in Guarini’s treatises.

ABSTRACT


The article describes and interprets from a geometric point of view the shapes’ inventions of domes, through Guarini’s treatises, using 3D modelling. It also recognizes these shapes in some guarinian buildings.


Roberta Spallone,
Politecnico di Torino - Department of Architecture and Design


Digital Computing as a tool for analyzing urban patterns. Comparing two neighborhoods built around Twenties in Rome and in Teheran.

ABSTRACT


This paper has the scope to test digital computing as a tool to explore the qualities of urban design and patterns in modern city neighborhoods. The long-term research question is to develop a comparative matrix between traditional urban design categories (urban density, road geometries, public-private space, housing typologies) and the possibility to identify new computational categories after proposing some tests on selected case studies. The tests will compare two neighborhoods Quartiere delle Vittorie (1921, 28,000 inhabitants) in Rome and Lalezar (1925, 28,000 inhabitants) in Teheran. The study will propose original digital drawings and comparative analysis on the science cases.


Anna Irene Del Monaco, Saeed Dolatkhah,
Sapienza Università di Roma


BIM (and) Design. Towards an integrated approach

ABSTRACT


The inclusion of design objects or artworks in the information model of a building today involves the selection and inclusion of loadable families. But the artistic object can also be modeled as a family internal to the project file (in-place model), revealing the potential of an integrated approach between BIM and Design.


Paolo Belardi, Valeria Menchetelli, Alice Franchi
Università degli Studi di Perugia, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Ambientale


Parametric design of a temporary transformable pavillion.

ABSTRACT


This work illustrates a parametric design experience of a temporary pavilion, designed to adapt to different types of pre-existence by modifying its formal and functional characteristics accordingly.

The research carried out is based on the definition of an algorithm managed with Grasshopper, assembled specifically to elaborate the project and its iterations; the algorithm allows to obtain geometries and analytical data in real time, reducing to a few hours a process that would instead take weeks with traditional methods.

The works of temporary transformable architecture and, specifically, the pavilion-type give the possibility to conjugate, in both conception and simulation, geometric and structural aspects. The prototype carried out is based on a kit-of-parts system of structural nodes and bars, easy to assemble and disassemble. By minimizing the variety of structural elements it is possible to contain costs, thanks to mass production, and to maintain a great freedom of formal expression.

Modelling is based on the intersection between an ideally unlimited spatial lattice system and a context-dependent volume of containment. The basic geometries, ie points, segments and triangles, are organized into groups of data and then statically analyzed.

This theme was addressed following some reflections on the shared features of temporary architecture, noting that usually you come across pavilions with extremely short life, or mobile architectures that do not allow modifications. The task was to approach an architectural object that was not temporally, spatially or formally limited.


Furio Magaraggia,
University of Trento


Spherical Panoramas for Architectural Surveying. From image to 3D model

ABSTRACT


The research proposes a method of survey and representation of architectural models starting from spherical images acquired with medium level 360 cameras. The procedure is based on the principles of projective geometry that regulate spherical images in which there is a main point O centre of the sphere, the spherical surface on which the image is generated and the real model. By having only the panoramic image and identifying the reciprocal position of the listed entities, it is possible to reconstruct three-dimensionally a portion of architecture represented on the panoramic image. The article illustrates an automated procedure using construction algorithms (related to geometry) and generative algorithms composed together using visual programming language (VPL); the case study for the validation of the procedure is a portion of Villa Giulia courtyard fence in Rome. 


Michele Calvano,
Dipartimento di Architettura e Design, Politecnico di Torino


Editorial Vol. 3

Working beyond the boundaries of known practices is a vital and essential activity for the researcher’s work.

An activity that requires a double ability for vision and innovation: one aimed at identifying the areas to be innovated; the other addressed to conceive new tools and methodologies to investigate them. For the past 50 years the digital aid has become widespread in every scientific field, declined in multiple instruments that we could define today of “common use”. On closer inspection, those who develop these tools seem to have always been aware that these were insufficient, tools not completely suitable to cover every need.

In fact, an open door to vertical customization has always been present within them, that is, the development of dedicated solutions to go beyond common operations. This fantastic freedom has never been – fully understood by the multitude of users – and still is not today; users who tended to interpret the personalization of digital tools by means of software development, instead of understanding the space of operational freedom offered by this opportunity, as an activity intended only for experienced users and of a purely technical nature. The growing computer literacy and digital knowledge, make the potential of software development more accessible to a multitude of “curious” researchers every day.

On this path a great help has come from the visual programming language that makes possible to solve problems by computer operating at the level of definition of the algorithmic solution of the problem, without going down into the syntactic and grammatical complexity characteristic of programming languages.

Block programming has recently entered fully into the creative spaces of our disciplinary know-how, approaching coding practices to something more similar to the modelling languages to which we are most naturally predisposed. The manipulation of the blocks has immediate effects on the generation of the form and offers versatile potentialities of access to all.

It is a “learning by doing” or training game that can free up infinite forms of in-depth analysis of the existing as a prefiguration or simulation of a future that is always different and declined case by case, in total conceptual freedom.

For this reason the Call for Papers to which this issue was dedicated wanted to investigate the concepts of “space grammar & procedural modelling” dedicated to the design of the new and to the survey of the existing .

The selected papers are for us representatives of original ideas, experiments and real applications at different scales, from the small one of industrial design to the large one of urban analysis and design, which together provide useful indications on the state of the art and on creativity in the construction of complex models, by means of personalized digital processing procedures.

In their sharing these procedure can open other ways to other generative methods in a multiplication of forms and experiments that are always new and increasingly interesting.

It is our wish that it could be possible to dedicate with recurrence an issue of the magazine Dn to this theme, we are full convicted that from the solutions to the singular needs, it is possible to significantly innovate the research methodologies , the work tools and – in this specific – the design of the new and the survey of the existing at the different scales.

 

C. Bolognesi, G.M. Valenti