SuperStudio

Seeking for solutions for my project I tried to look for different possibilities for several aspects of my current state.

• different attractor geometries using a GH definition -> what happens if the attractor would be a line, curve or even a surface and not only a point as it has been so far?
• different sizes of the facetting -> larger triangles would need another (smaller) structure for filling up the surfaces, but smaller facetting might need a supporting structure. Both possibilities would be possible, but they need different kinds of detailing and would give a different appereance of the tower
• analyzing some possible forms I can produce, using the current GH definition

In general I’m inclined to go for the smaller facetting because it gives a smoother appereance and consists in only one structure all over the facade instead of having a main structure and then a kind of filling structure. To avoid a supporting structure for the small facettes, I’ll try to “touch” the existing structure as often as required.
The different attractor geometries – I analysed in a seperate GH file – have to be developed to be used within my project. Concerning the final overall form of the facade, I think I leave this at this point for a while and come back to it, when I know more precisely what I want and for which reasons.

As introduced in the last post the aim of this facade proposal consists in the integration of the tower in the urban context on two levels. Interacting with its surrounding context it brings together places which are today separated by busy roads or visual factors. And changing its form on the top it links to important places whithin a bigger urban context.
The so called attractors transform the existing outline of the tower to achieve the integration of the tower in the city of Piraeus and Athens.
As an exampel you can see in the next image how the skin could link the existing market with the tower’s ground floor to allow more fluidity on this level and bringing together shops on the street with the ones in the building.

As you see in the drawings, the skin doesn’t follow the tower’s outline almost at all. This doesn’t only allow the interaction introduced before, but it also connects the two volumes of the tower and lets them appear as one unity.
The structure, as it is shown now, doesn’t represent the final intention, it is just an approximation of what I’m trying to achieve. Taking the principle of reinforcement from the precedent exercise I tried first to take a main structure (actually the one in the drawings and image above) and then reinforce it where the structure demands it. But while working on our case study, which analyses the growth of lichen, I came up with the idea of combining main structure and reinforcement and taking density as factor for the structure. As I already mentionned I haven’t suceeded yet to build this but in the following images I give an idea of what I’m willing to do. A curfature analysis of the transformed skin should show where more structure is needed and create it with more density at that points. An image of the curvature could be used as image sampler which densifies the structure where a certain colour is shown. Doing so, I could have a more uniform structure which would help the appearance of the tower in its context.

Finally the space between the structural elements can be treated differently. The space can be left open, closed by glasing or even with opaque materials. A possible solution for this could be the following detail, where covering elements are squeezed between metal tubes which go around the structural beams.

As analyzed in the x2 the CCTV consists in a quite complex structure. In this case I tried to understand the connection of the different beams – vertical columns, horizontal perimeter edge beams and diagonal members. As the load on the structure changes from one point to another, there are several sizes of the columns, of which the smallest is 110 x 100cm.

There are many layers for the whole structure which are shown in the following drawings and images which I took – as the other illustrations – from the book CCTV by OMA, A+U, 2005

To allow the joint to connect beams comming from different directions, there is a additional element which takes over this function. Two connecting plates, which are also made of steel, are attached to the colomn and allow to fix the other structural members squeezed between them as shown in the drawings. To protect the steel structure in case of fire it is completely covered with a fire protection layer and a top coat.

The three main elements have different functions but only work together:

• the vertical columns bring the forces directly down to the foundation.
• the diagrid helps descend the forces but it’s main role is the bracing of the building – it is the part which gives the building its stiffness.
• last but not least there are the perimeter edge beams which follow the edges of the concrete slabs and create the connection to them

This joint allows the connection of different inclinated elements. But all of them have to be nearly coplanar that they can fit between the two connecting steel planes. This fact limits the use of the element to places where the beams come together in a more or less flat surface.

In the continuation of my first ESQUISSE I translated the attraction idea further.
The main deformation principle is, to take the skin of the existing tower and attract it from different reference points. So far there are two distinct levels of attraction. On the lower part of the tower – around the base – the skin is deformed by places which are in direct interaction with the tower, places where people move from one to another. This deformation integrates the tower in its direct context. It’s not anymore a gigantic lost building in the middle of the urban fabric, but it becomes a part of it.
On the upper level, where the tower is somehow alone due to it’s dimension, the skin is deformed towards important places which can be seen only on this hight overlooking the city. So the tower is not only integrated within the direct context at the base, but as well in the city scale context where the deformation creates visual links between important sites of the City.

Finally the skin will be triangulated into a three dimensional truss which then can be closed or open depending on what is desired on each location. As there might be some structurally critical parts, a new kind of attractor will reinforce the truss at weak places. This last reinforcement step is not yet translated into the design process and can’t be seen in the following images.

DLA-simulation from The Computational Science Education Reference Desk (CSERD)

Our translaiten into parametric design

In the two following GIFF-animations you can see the same amount of particles in two different areas. If they are growing in an area of 50×50 the result is much denser than in the one of 100×100.

2D GH definition
VB-component script_2D

3D GH definition
VB-component script_3D

And again, two questions!
Actually what I asked two days ago worked very well, but while continuing with the work I got 2 problems:

1. I tried to put several attracors into one vb-component. I set the input as list of On3dPoint and then tried to loop the whole script I made as many times as there are attracors in the list. So the idea is that the script runs for the first time with one attracor and puts the moved points into the m0 list which is saved temporarely in the list m1 and then cleared that I can use it again as empty list for the next attracor. Somehow this doesn’t work at all and gives me an error I don’t understand because it is located in line 0 which I couldn’t find!
   I was also thinking about puting the generated lists of moved points after each loop into a listarray, but then I got confused and couldn’t control the list indexes within the listarray anymore.
   see file
2. The other problem which came up when I wanted to bake the geometry, was that the latter one doesn’t match the GH-geometry. Some triangles are baken very well and the others seem to be quite strange. I tried to define and bake it in many different ways as well as baking the triangle and the offset seperately and then trimming or splitting in rhino. But neither of them worked yet…
   see file

Would be very nice if you could help me out again! Thanks!

I took the tower volume into GH and set up a point grid from which i create some horizontal polylines. The idea would be to change these points in a way, that the polylines change with them – again with attractors.
I tried doing it with only GH, but this messes up the whole order of the points, what leads to strange polylines. I tried to rearrange these points with some path mappers but couldn’t manage.
I think a VB.net component would be a smarter solution! But so far I haven’t managed to controll the tree of points in VB. If I flatten the tree the small script works perfectly but the output is a simple list which doesn’t generate the polylines I’m looking for. I have to do it with the tree as input to the VB-component but I don’t know how to “treat” a tree within the script.

any solutions?

THE STRUCTURE
The main structure of the CCTV is a continuous grid of diagonal steel beams – called structural diagrid – which cover the whole building. Where the loads are too big, the diagrid is doubled or even quadrubled. In addition to this structure there is a orthogonal structure which consists of vertical load-bearing columns and horizontal perimeter edge beams. These two grids penetrate the concrete slab in a certain distance from the façade. The diagrid is repeated on the outside where it holds the windows in place – this is actually what we see from the outside.