Potential Architecture

The exhibition brings together new work: sculpture, drawings and models created by Lucy + Jorge Orta during their research on new organic and modular architecture as a result of their collaborations with the Greenham partnership and other communities across Europe. Lucy Orta’s practice from the early 1990s began with a series of artworks that combined architecture, fashion and social intervention. Produced in collaboration with her partner, these works took the form of temporary refuges, prototype survival clothing, portable shelters, and tent villages for symbolic emergency situations exploring notions of identity, architecture and communication through workshops and community based actions. In 2002, Orta began working on a series entitled Totipotent Architecture marking a shift away from the body and the transient shelters, to more permanent proposals for sculpture and interventions in urban space. Totipotent Architecture is a reflection on the process of differentiation the human cell undertakes from its embryonic state, to a defined cell structural organism, the wonderful building block of our body

Space time pixels

This paper reports the design of a networked system, the aim of which is to provide an intermediate virtual space that will establish a connection and support interaction between multiple participants in two distant physical spaces. The intention of the project is to explore the potential of the digital space to generate original social relationships between people that their current (spatial or social) position can difficultly allow the establishment of innovative connections. Furthermore, to explore if digital space can sustain, in time, low-level connections like these, by balancing between the two contradicting needs of communication and anonymity. The generated intermediate digital space is a dynamic reactive environment where time and space information of two physical places is superimposed to create a complex common ground where interaction can take place. It is a system that provides awareness of activity in a distant space through an abstract mutable virtual environment, which can be perceived in several different ways – varying from a simple dynamic background image to a common public space in the junction of two private spaces or to a fully opened window to the other space – according to the participants will. The thesis is that the creation of an intermediary environment that operates as an activity abstraction filter between several users, and selectively communicates information, could give significance to the ambient data that people unconsciously transmit to others when co-existing. It can therefore generate a new layer of connections and original interactivity patterns; in contrary to a straight-forward direct real video and sound system, that although it is functionally more feasible, it preserves the existing social constraints that limit interaction into predefined patterns

Lucy + Jorge Orta, Potential Architecture

Cells are a part of the human body; they are at the origin of its being, its feelings, its emotions, and its sufferings. Thus, they speak the language of the body. There are also cells of habitation. The relationship between people and their habitat is formed in this metaphorical cell. Living and being become a single and unique life experience. Cristina Morozzi Potential Architecture explores artists Lucy + Jorge Orta’s recent architectural endeavors that derive from their fascination with cell biology and the process of differentiation. Through drawings and sculpture, the artists conceptualize the communication process the human cell undertakes from its embryonic state, and the infinite transformations that lead to defined structural organisms. This new body of work draws from Lucy + Jorge Orta’s artistic practice, grounded in the universal concerns of community, shelter, migration, and sustainable development. Potential Architecture is a powerful rejoinder to the arbitrary boundaries that define art, architecture, and design

Agility, Adaptability + Appropriateness: Conceiving, Crafting & Constructing an Architecture of the 21st Century

Architectural design in our current times has tended to generate buildings which, despite their aesthetic qualities, frequently prove static, rigid and intractable. The intense and significant production of architecture around the planet has created a situation whereby modification of the existing building stock is costly, difficult and at times implausible. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century architects began to more seriously question narrow design approaches and in response explored more open, mutable and responsive ways of building. Architects such as Kisho Kurokawa and Cedric Price, in an effort to envision more resilient & robust solutions, explored methods of design and construction which afforded greater user control, modification and customization of environments. As opposed to buildings in which users needed to adapt to environmental constraints, these progressive designers imagined spaces that adjusted to user needs. A significant challenge to these visionaries was a lag between thinking and technology – quite simply construction proved unable to fully address concept. Today the world has changed in dramatic ways, with advancements in technology, expectations of society, and a quest for greater sustainability all driving a push for more agile, adaptable and appropriate Architecture. The present paper critically contemplates the condition of contemporary building design, examines emerging trends, and postulates an innovative model & philosophy for realizing a more responsive, responsible and fitting Architecture for the 21st Century. While considering historical initiatives, theories and practices, the paper also examines contemporary applications and future possibilities, arguing that many forces hold promise to align in ways before unimaginable. Advancing from the established foundation of Open Building (OB) research and practice, and building upon a holistic and inter-connected strategy (Sinclair 2009) for environmental design, the new model places emphasis and effort on heightened agility, adaptability and appropriateness – all urgently needed in our current, uncertain and tumultuous times

Training Designers of the Future: Reflections on a Didactic Case ‘Made in Italy’

Focusing on a specific case, the postgraduate course Product Service System Design taught in English to Italian and international students of the Design Facult y at Milan Pol ytechnic, the author reflects on the present and future of designers as ‘reflexive professionals’ (to quote Donald A. Schön1) called upon to act in uncertain and vaguely defined contexts, tackle problems in highly original ways and come up with wide -ranging, experimental and innovative solutions resorting to complex and hybrid techniques and tools either purposely designed or taken from other fields

A Novel fMRI Paradigm Suggests that Pedaling-related Brain Activation is Altered after Stroke

The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility of using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure pedaling-related brain activation in individuals with stroke and age-matched controls. We also sought to identify stroke-related changes in brain activation associated with pedaling. Fourteen stroke and 12 control subjects were asked to pedal a custom, MRI-compatible device during fMRI. Subjects also performed lower limb tapping to localize brain regions involved in lower limb movement. All stroke and control subjects were able to pedal while positioned for fMRI. Two control subjects were withdrawn due to claustrophobia, and one control data set was excluded from analysis due to an incidental finding. In the stroke group, one subject was unable to enter the gantry due to excess adiposity, and one stroke data set was excluded from analysis due to excessive head motion. Consequently, 81% of subjects (12/14 stroke, 9/12 control) completed all procedures and provided valid pedaling-related fMRI data. In these subjects, head motion was ≤3 mm. In both groups, brain activation localized to the medial aspect of M1, S1, and Brodmann’s area 6 (BA6) and to the cerebellum (vermis, lobules IV, V, VIII). The location of brain activation was consistent with leg areas. Pedaling-related brain activation was apparent on both sides of the brain, with values for laterality index (LI) of –0.06 (0.20) in the stroke cortex, 0.05 (±0.06) in the control cortex, 0.29 (0.33) in the stroke cerebellum, and 0.04 (0.15) in the control cerebellum. In the stroke group, activation in the cerebellum – but not cortex – was significantly lateralized toward the damaged side of the brain (p = 0.01). The volume of pedaling-related brain activation was smaller in stroke as compared to control subjects. Differences reached statistical significance when all active regions were examined together [p = 0.03; 27,694 (9,608) μL stroke; 37,819 (9,169) μL control]. When individual regions were examined separately, reduced brain activation volume reached statistical significance in BA6 [p = 0.04; 4,350 (2,347) μL stroke; 6,938 (3,134) μL control] and cerebellum [p = 0.001; 4,591 (1,757) μL stroke; 8,381 (2,835) μL control]. Regardless of whether activated regions were examined together or separately, there were no significant between-group differences in brain activation intensity [p = 0.17; 1.30 (0.25)% stroke; 1.16 (0.20)% control]. Reduced volume in the stroke group was not observed during lower limb tapping and could not be fully attributed to differences in head motion or movement rate. There was a tendency for pedaling-related brain activation volume to increase with increasing work performed by the paretic limb during pedaling (p = 0.08, r = 0.525). Hence, the results of this study provide two original and important contributions. First, we demonstrated that pedaling can be used with fMRI to examine brain activation associated with lower limb movement in people with stroke. Unlike previous lower limb movements examined with fMRI, pedaling involves continuous, reciprocal, multijoint movement of both limbs. In this respect, pedaling has many characteristics of functional lower limb movements, such as walking. Thus, the importance of our contribution lies in the establishment of a novel paradigm that can be used to understand how the brain adapts to stroke to produce functional lower limb movements. Second, preliminary observations suggest that brain activation volume is reduced during pedaling post-stroke. Reduced brain activation volume may be due to anatomic, physiology, and/or behavioral differences between groups, but methodological issues cannot be excluded. Importantly, brain action volume post-stroke was both task-dependent and mutable, which suggests that it could be modified through rehabilitation. Future work will explore these possibilities

Artificial Patterned Landscapes and Reciprocal Learning

ABSTRACT The paper explains the organisational framework for creating three-dimensional patterns representing artificial urban landscapes as a design aid for architectural students to analyse, interpret, visualise and manipulate the complexities of the urban environment. The educational module is initially both a CAAD and an urban design teaching tool, and becomes, through these, a visualisation and realisation model and finally a design aid and platform for the manipulation of the urban landscape. The organisational framework to construct the representative three dimensional artifice utilises 14 different layers of interconnected, three dimensional patterns as an information base. The classification systems of the framework are intended as an educational tool for analysis, discussion and consequent comprehension of the real as it is formed into a representative artifice within the computer. The inherent facilities of the CAAD software programme (in this case Archi-CAD) are utilised with an adapted logic, specifically the software’s ability to create three dimensional library parts and place these items in various layers of the framework allowing variable permutable displays of the pattern items and consequently their interfaces. This categorised framework is a three-dimensional representative artifice enabling the ‘pregnant’ potential(s) of what the city can become to be anticipated as ‘nth potential’ scenarios or ‘mightlyhoods’ (1). These are applied to the artifice through the formulation of manifesto aims, producing innumerable potential future scenarios for the city, which can be reciprocally assessed through the inherent visual permutability of the layers within the software

Flexible architecture for a liquid society: the case of Bourofaye Community, Senegal, Africa

Qualificació obtinguda: 8,5 Màster universitari en Disseny -- Contemporary DesignThe work explores the potential of flexible architecture as an agent in response to the needs of a community deprived and in constant flow of change, located at the periphery of Ziguinchor, Senegal, Africa. Studies on humanitarian architecture provide the basis for understanding the real needs of the human being. In this community, they are manifested in a floating way, by factors such as family, climate, people mobility, work, agricultural production, among others, as the Liquid Societies described by Zygmunt Bauman. In this way, the work will seek in the writings of Luis Arenas, Toyo Ito and Ignasi de Solà-Morales, an approximation about the definition of Liquid Architecture, that refers to the constant transformation of space, which in an unstable condition like that of liquids, is able to absorb the needs of the human being. As a way of concretize this concept, there are found in the flexibility, architectural solutions suitable for application in the design of a Community Center for Burofaye

Dynamic building enclosures : the design of an innovative constructive system which permits mechanically-driven, computer-controlled shape transformations to the building envelope

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (p. 85).Dynamic Building Enclosures is a system of prefabricated, lightweight, kit-of-parts wall and/or roof elements. This system has the unique capability of dynamically altering, or mutating its shape in reaction to changing user requirements or site climate conditions through the manipulation of a mechanically-driven, computer-controlled frame. The system's ability to actively accommodate multiple functions (potentially with high-performance specifications) within a single space would make it appropriate and desirable for application to a broad spectrum of building typologies. It is postulated that industrial fabrication of standardized elements will increase its economic viability-especially when compared to the multitude of expensive, static, specialized building components it would replace. Since it reacts to optimize environmental performance (temperature, humidity, acoustics, ventilation, and lighting) in changing site conditions it will also be more environmentally responsive and energy-efficient than conventional systems. The objective of this research is to explore the potential gains to users and the building industry of developing an industrially produced building system without the generally associated drawbacks of monotonous, repetitive layouts; inflexibility to changes of use, and the inability to adapt to varying site conditions. The prefabricated kit-of-parts which comprise the system will overlay the complementary structural behavior of form-active structures (cable, tent and arch systems), and vectoractive structures (trusses and space trusses) . The building system design will include: a strut; a node, which will allow the rotation of the struts to accommodate non-regular geometries, and an enclosure system which maintains the desired separation of interior and exterior environments for the various spatial configurations.by Eric Nelson.S.M