4d talk about updating system in architecture
DESCRIPTION
Frompasttopresent,Architecturalthinkingandpracticehasalwaysbeenmorebasedon3Dimension.Theconsiderofspatialformchangeandmaterialchangeintimescaleitisnotallowedingeneral3Dthinking,itisdoesn’tmakeanysenseaboutthestableofarchitecturesystem.Isitshouldbeorcouldbestaticforeverintheconcernof3Dscales?TRANSCRIPT
BEHAVIOUR
4D talk about updating system in architecture
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////ABSTRACT From past to present, Architecture thinking and practice more based on 3 Dimension. The 4 Dimension of timeline not include any concern about spatial system that is understandable; Form scale to material, here is seems no allowed for any change for this static system. However, The dramatically change of fabrication technology in industry area and the explosion of information revolutionary make it could be happened in this moment or next. This paper will address several concepts around the time scale, to driven what could make the happening of spatial form and material continuously updated. First of all, to question the certain kind of necessary of the involved of the 4 Dimension scales in spatial context. By the study of fuller’s 4D Time Lock. Understand the way of dynamic for system becomes more significance for the responsive of both internal and external environment. Following this, the material performance would make the dynamic change of system more possible and flexible, which could more lightful, more ecology, more economic way, or could assembled. In the part of Fabrication will talk about the start of use this method in architecture area by fuller, driven the limitation in that moment, and also explore the new practice and technology at today for fabrication. Seeing the possibility for further thinking of this way. The talk about assembly is the way of build, it is make the happened of time cycle for the way of our build and the way of our reuse, to response the different condition. Lastly, talking about the way of how systems works could be updated through the real-‐time condition respect. The dynamic updating of architecture system could driving by the real-‐time feedback loops; through the way of various material performance; systematic fabrication and computational operation; assembly and reassembly by driving the synergy system in 4D scale, to make the update happened through the dynamic response local and global condition.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////STRUCTURE
INTRODUCTION//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
1-‐Why should involve the 4 Dimension? //////////////////////////////////////////////// Ownership of Land and Soil Dynamic 2-‐The Performance of Matter in Time Dimension///////////////////////////////////////
3-‐FABRICATION////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Requirement of Prefabrication Limitation of Fabrication The Practice of Today for Fabrication and Prefabrication
4-‐ASSEMBLY//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
5-‐The Synergy System Thinking of Updating in 4 Dimension//////////////////////////// CONCLUTION/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////INTRODUCTION
“At the most prosaic level, 4D is a proposal for a new type of small house that Fuller earnestly hoped would be embraced by the building trades, the financial industry, and the architectural profession, 4D is not really about houses, however; it is a spiritual meditation on time, the supra material fourth dimension of experience and the true measure of industrial society.” 1-‐-‐Bary M. Katz
Fuller’s has first mentions about 4D in the Dymaxion House, it is appeared in his 1928 self-‐published manifesto 4D Time Lock. Before he tentatively using the name 4D since 1928, Fuller use the word ‘lightful’ to considered calling his project, in terms of this word he never clearly to definition the means of this. However, he had deeply interest in lightweight, light-‐filled, efficient, and also about the material being easy transported and constructed. This paper will examine several main concepts of 4D housing. It is become more clearly, about material using more effective; the way of produce be prefabrication; time saving of build and rebuild; also the way of build be assembly and disassembly and reassembly. All about the method of design be ecology and economically in the 4 Dimensional way of Material Performance and Prefabrication Technology.
1 Bary M. Katz, “1927, Bucky’s Annus Mirabilis.” New Views on Buckminster Fuller. Stanford University Press, 2009.
Fig.1. 4D Time Lock
///////////////////////////////////////////1-‐Why we should involve the 4 Dimensional? Ownership of land and soil/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// All this kind of thinking, the ownership for land and soil, influenced by Fuller’s personal life experience. When his young, he has several years living in an island, try to build many boats and begin to develop his strong affection for sea travel. After that, he also gets apprenticeship in factory, which reflects on his technical and mechanical learning. The few years traveling in the sea when he was a navy. Let him start to thinking about the ownership of land and the influence from the time for the using of space. For him, ownership means the using of the place just for a period. Which is means the land also available for others; here it is just about the time period issue. Compare to today, the advanced transport tools make the human activity becoming much more faster than before. The life for human becomes nomadically. For instance, Businessmen, they are living in hotel almost everyday in different places and different time zone, which probably not easy to feel the time in normal scale. All things been reorganized more parallel and dramatically. High and width of geometry context and also the time scale all be paralleled by use the transport and communication technologies. The time dimension may need involved and consider in each dimension for the better organization of today’s life. The Reorganized Movements in Both Digital and Physical//////////////////////////////
The movements of today, become dramatically change the way of human living. Not only the scale of geometry connection, but also the experience of time change. Somehow it is going to forward; somehow it is going to backward. The distinction of 3D and 4D become blurring. As we can see form fig2, it is showed all the air traffic in UK airspace in a 24 hours period. More than 7,500 aircraft crisscross the UK. 2The geometry and time scales be reorganized through the highly speed and linked, which produced a dynamic pattern of reformat and continuous updated behavior of movement.
2 The 24 hours air traffic in Uk, http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/stories/visualisations/planes.shtml
Fig.2. the air traffic in UK airspace in a 24 hour period
From the fig3 and fig4 showed the real-‐time Internet loops and Airline loops. This project by Chris Harrison displays the relative densities of both across the global.3 That is only about the connections, not the usage. Here, it is no country borders or geographic features; it is only about the routes of connection. The combine of those two real-‐time feedback loops shaped a new global behavior about activity in both geography (3D) and time scales (4D).
3Chris Harrison, http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/InternetMap
Fig.3. Internet Map
Fig.4. Airline Map
Dynamic////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Everything that Fuller thought of, that interested him, and that he researched was in some way dynamic. As His aphorism " In architecture, form is a noun; in industry, form is a verb". “He needed to imagine things in interdependent relationships, in dynamic patterns; any idea of a static order a priori was deeply implausible to him. “4 For instance, Project Tetra City as floating city with growing tetrahedral structure, which is following the method of dynamic changing. Only the individual disregards his fears and commits himself exclusively to reforming the human environment by developing tools that deal more effectively and economically with evolutionary to changes that are more favorable to human life, which was the task he set for himself. Moreover, the life in a time line for fuller, it is a strictly linear concept, in which there are no separated rubrics of "life" and "work," "private" and "public." The time line is one of the geometric coordinates that enable us to find what we seek. Similarly, in the conversation with Rem Koolhaas, Kiyonori Kikutake also mentioned about the life is a dynamic way.
“Speaking architecturally, what came to Japan was the pao, which is to say, a structure that you can repeatedly put up and dismantle. Because of their nomadic life, it needed to be lightweight, they had to build it very quickly, and they took it apart and rebuilt it over and over, it may be possible to say that this is the origin of Metabolism.”5
To translate phenomena form the world of solid bodies and static forces into phenomena with a regenerative pattern and energetic dynamics, it is become more important for the thinking of 4D in architecture, which need us to produce a deeper understanding of the behavior of dynamic systems. As we mentioned before, we know the mean of lightful, and the mean of increase speed of geography movement changes and also how the time scale works more parallel in all dimension scales. All of this, go through the real-‐time feedback loops of movements and time scale changes, the dynamic geo-‐time pattern emerged.
Here is an example, of the solution of modern nomadic life, be floating in the sea.6 Unlimited of geometry stable condition, unlimited the light condition during the day, and also the unlimited time zone crossing.
4 R. Buckminster Fuller Your Private Sky: The Art of Design Science, p13 5 Kiyonoei Kikutake, interview with Rem Koolhaas, <Project Japan, Metabolism Talks…,>, P143 6 The Lilypad, by Vincent Callebaut. Floating City for Climate Change Refugees
Fig.5.Tetra City
Fig.6.Metabolism talks
Fig.7.Lily Pad, floating city.
///////////////////////////////////////2-‐The Performance of Matter in Time Dimension
In his article: “Abstract design, harmony and fourth dimensional control”, he has mentioned the possible bring by industry to given one more dimension, which is time scale, in design, the fourth design. The technology development brings a lot of new fabrication technic and synthetic materials. Allowed us decomposition of elements, to perform best a given function. How long the material will stay there? The time will limit of its existence. “In the composition of synthetic materials, the fourth dimension is the most important.” 7 Form the view of time performance, the progressive design must be time saving. The separate of functions will be better for time saving.
“ As function are segregated and individually solved, involves exceedingly light weight materials. This saves in every handing form original source to ultimate disposition. As time is saved by progress, and time is in everything, all material products of industry must necessarily become lighter and lighter.”8
The well balanced of, the process of build be assembly, and the performance of material be lighter and prefabricate. It is will be the more ecology and economic way for design. As Fuller said, in his article about 4D, he understood the impact new materials could play in our lives. The aviation industry given him a lot of idea about those kind of materials, which promoted strong but lightweight and structures, also the way of construction could be more effective. By introducing prefabrication with these new materials, he believed that the previews idea of house should created uniquely on a site form conventional building materials would become a thing of the past. Factories produce line will create quicker and more accurately housing components, which will be assembled on-‐site as opposed to constructed in the traditional manner. It is the minimum use of energy and materials in design for maximum human benefit. One project done by OMA and AMO, which is the pavilion of Prada transformer, it is could the best example about the performance of material in today. It is use lightful material for covering; industry manufactory architecture elements are flexible for assembly and reassembly; the change of form is response the change of event and geometry scale, and also the scale of time.
7 Buck Minster Fuller, “Abstract design, harmony and fourth dimensional control”, Rethinking technology: a reader in architectural theory, By William W. Braham, Jonathan A. Hale, John Stanislav Sadar, p43 8 Ibid, p44
Fig.8. Prada Transformer
//////////////////////////////////////////////////3-‐The Certainly Need of Prefabrication
How we could achieve the minimum use of energy and materials and maximum human benefit, through the design of 4D system? As Fuller said, the system need be standardized. The standard unit of the system, through the industrial reproduction on standardized patterns will achieve the possible. This allowed personal choice without the considered of mass production problem, use the co-‐ordination of sub-‐units, by the standardized system.9 This system could be designed for easily set up and taken down.
The way of Prefabrication and the pursuit of lightness through cables were the main characteristics of the 4D thinking. And also, the word “DYMAXION”, which means: dynamics, maximum, and tension. He believed in the significant interconnectedness of all things and concluded that certain basic structures and systems underlie everything in our world. The first his patent application for the 4D tower, a lightweight, prefabricated, multi-‐storey apartment tower to be delivered anywhere in the world by airship. Once delivered the towers would generate their own light and heat with an independent sewage disposal system. It is best example about prefabrication.
Compare the view of Metabolism in Japan, as Kikutake mentioned about the necessary of prefabrication in the interview with Rem, “If you want to reuse components, you have to standardize them so they can be prefabricated...”
The Limitation of 4D House Fabrication/////////////////////////////////////////////////
From the beginning, Fuller had wanted to put the Dymaxion House into mass production. However, it wasn’t until after World War II that he made progress towards manufacturing. He found interested investors and entered into a deal with Beech Aircraft to manufacture 250,000 houses per year. Nonetheless, Fuller’s engineering acumen, visionary zeal, and big-‐picture efficiency weren’t enough to bring the house to the assembly line. Maybe Fuller, for all his empiricism, wasn’t willing to compromise his vision for the technical production requirements. Maybe the house wasn’t really workable on an industrial scale.
Whereas, Fuller considered it important was not a prefabricated house in the usual sense. The building trade defines as prefabrication the fabrication of panels and parts, that is, semi finished products, which are used at the construction site, that is, sub-‐assembled. The Fuller House, by contrast, consists entirely of industrial prefabricated units that are assembled at the site. That’s the most important thinking and also the goal fuller want to achieve. After the prefabricated house project, he spend his last life try to develop several geometry theory to support the way of lightful, flexible, and the prefabricated units, which will lead to the assembly on site. And also the reuse of those units is reassembly on other place.
9 R. Buckminster Fuller Your Private Sky: The Art of Design Science, p143
The Practice of Today for Fabrication and Prefabrication///////////////////////////////
LASER-‐CUT
One example about using laser-‐cut technology for prefabrication is the project Solar House. 10 Which is using the plywood paneling, it is can be assembled and transported to the site. The chosen of material also lightweight; making structural components is more manageable; reduce the cost and saving the construction time, which only take less than fifteen days. The distributable could be digitally organized. It also can produce by locally and individually by custom.
ROBOTIC
Another one about Robotic Manufacturing for pre-‐fabrication, it is developed by robolab in Germany.11 By using the analyzed and simulated through the computation way, both for the complex form and also the structural calculations; and then, it is produced with the industrial 7-‐axis robot; finally, be assembly on site.
3-‐D PRINTER
A designer Enrico Dini has created a prototype D-‐Shape12; it is allowed the 3-‐d printer machine could actually produce the entire buildings form the produce start form solid rock. Which could cut down a thousand-‐year-‐long process into a few minutes.
To sum up, all of those kinds of new fabrication ways combine with different machine technology and computation analyze software, for simulation the condition for both internal and external; calculation the structural before built; fabrication by the requires of material, cost, and the behavior of form to use certain kind of produce way; and also the management by computational for assembly and reassembly.
10 Fabrication laboratory, http://www.fablabhouse.com/ 11 Robolab, http://icd.uni-‐stuttgart.de/?p=6553 12 Enrico Dini, D-‐Shape, http://inhabitat.com/3-‐d-‐printer-‐creates-‐entire-‐buildings-‐from-‐solid-‐rock/
Fig.9.Solar House
Fig.10. Robotic pre-‐fabrication
Fig.11. D-‐SHAPE
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////4-‐Assembly
“Assemblage theory provides us with a bottom-‐up ontological framework for analyzing social complexity” —Manuel De Landa13
Assemblage theory allows the same component can play the differing roles in the global context, make this context become more dynamic and flexible. It is also kind of co-‐evolution for global behavior. Each component also can be different through the new way of fabrication technology in today, organized by computational, and also assembled by the organized of computational way. The dynamic global pattern could emerge by the signal local agents, through assembly and reassembly. It is also can be play more various global pattern and behavior by the distinction of materials. In the project of Fun palace, the structural grid of steel lattice columns and beams is the only stable element. All other programmatic elements would allowed to be movable or composed of prefabricated modular units that could be quickly assembled and taken apart as needed, all of this if it is required, could be assembled more quickly and disassembled and re-‐erected on a new site. By using the unenclosed steel structure, fully serviced by traveling gantry cranes the building comprised a ‘kit of parts’: pre-‐fabricated walls, platforms, floors, stairs, and ceiling modules that could be moved and assembled by the cranes. The difference for fuller, between subassembly and assembly is fundamental. In his view, only the assembly of fully standardized parts and complete units will result in the costs saving that come form mass production. The way of assembly is a process of time saving for build. Ecologic by assemble and disassembled though the period of functions and sites changing during the time. Be achieved the method of dynamic performance for time.
13 Manuel De Landa, A New Philosophy of Society – Assemblage Theory & Social Complexity, Continuum (2006)
/////////////////////////////////////////////5-‐The Synergy System Thinking of Updating Synergy is the only word that means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed behaviors of any of the system's separate parts or any subassembly of the system's parts. The synergy system could produced much more dynamic behavior for global. Moreover, through the conversation between signal local agents, the system could be updating due to the real-‐time loops.
Fuller went further in leaving behind familiar aesthetics of residential design. His vision was closer to the production of an automobile or an airplane than a durable building. Corbusier wanted to make a "machine for living in" by using machine processes to achieve aesthetic results that would please the inhabitant. Fuller wanted a "machine for living," a house that would function like a machine to improve the quality of the life of its inhabitants.14
As Lorance’s mentioned, The distinction between Corbusier and Fuller is, Fuller try to have a synergy machine system for housing, be more dynamic function for living. Some comment of Metabolism in the World Design Conference has also have some strategy of this kind of synergy system for architecture, how they could be working in 4 Dimensional scales. The most typical project is the Expo ’70 in 1970 by Kurokawa, which is a cubic space frame made form over 200 prefabricated, six-‐pointed curved crosses. The capsules that plug into the system are designed to fit in standard trucks for easy transportation. Construction-‐-‐a process merely of assembly and plugging in, takes six days. As with the Odakyu structure, further growth is projected (and implied by the extrusions that are left ostentatiously “incomplete,” as if caught in the process of replication), but not achieved.15
Moreover, the project Fun Palace, also achieved same proposal about time and place. It is a socially interactive machine, highly adaptable place. Where provide a framework for dynamic and interactive theater, it is by highly programmed. By assembling their pedagogical and leisure environments using cranes and prefabricated modules in an improvisational architecture. This synergy system allowed all components is updating though the changing of time dimension.
"It was well into the detailed design of the project that, at an alcohol-‐inspired brain-‐storming session off Times Square in 1962, we decided on the name Fun Palace for our short-‐life conglomerate of disparate, free-‐choice, free-‐time, voluntary activities, planned as a public launching-‐pad rather than a Mecca for East London." – Cedric Price16
14 Loretta Lorance, “Buckminster Fuller: Dialogue with Modernism.” PART: Journal of CUNY Ph.D. Program inArt History, Issue 7. http://web.gc.cuny.edu/dept/arthi/part/part7/articles/loranc.html 15 Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist, <Project Japan: Metabolism Talks>, Published by TASCHEN Books.p348 16 Cedric Price, from Talks at the AA, AA Files 19 (Spring 1990), p. 32.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////CONCLUTION
“A room should not be fixed, should not create a static mood, but should lend itself to change so that its occupants may play upon it as they would upon a Piano.” -‐-‐Fuller17
The ultimate goal was a building capable of updating in response to the changing requires of the system during the time. The synergy system may not just to response the requirement of function, or the best performance of material and form. It is could also be the conversation between system and users. The project of Fun Palace was also involved the committee of Cybernetics, led by Gordon Pask. Which was concerned with information, feedback, identity, and purpose, Pask examined such issues as how the human organism learns from its environment and relates to others through language. As we know, form the mention at before, the conversation happened through the real-‐time loops and the response between agents. It is make the evolved of the system.
If, as Price believed, “technology is the answer, but what was the question?” then the architect must undertake extensive research in order to truly understand and adequately respond to a project’s requirements. Try to build an architecture system could be more synergic effect; to response the real-‐time require changes form both environment and users. Base on this, the whole system could be updating during the change of time, though the response of feedback.
All of this, would be based on the flexible frame works, which need the balance between cybernetic system control works and dynamic response the real-‐time feedback loops, be more synergy effects. The combine of different technologies used in architecture fabrication system, and also the computational organized and conversation ways will highly improved the performance of both local and global behavior and pattern. Continuously, updating the system through the way of assembly and reassembly.
17 Fuller, ”Romany Marie’s” in : Chronofile 36/1929
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] Bary M. Katz, “1927, Bucky’s Annus Mirabilis.” New Views on Buckminster Fuller. Stanford University Press, 2009. [2] The 24 hours air traffic in Uk, http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/stories/visualisations/planes.shtml [3] Chris Harrison, Visualization, http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/InternetMap
[4] R. Buckminster Fuller Your Private Sky: The Art of Design Science, p.13 [5] Kiyonoei Kikutake, interview with Rem Koolhaas, <Project Japan, Metabolism Talks…,>, p.143 [6] The Lilypad, by Vincent Callebaut. Floating City for Climate Change Refugees [7] Buck Minster Fuller, “Abstract design, harmony and fourth dimensional control”, Rethinking technology: a reader in architectural theory, By William W. Braham, Jonathan A. Hale, John Stanislav Sadar, p.43 [8] bid, p.44
[9] R. Buckminster Fuller Your Private Sky: The Art of Design Science, p.143 [10] Fabrication laboratory, http://www.fablabhouse.com/ [11] Robolab, http://icd.uni-‐stuttgart.de/?p=6553 [12] Enrico Dini, D-‐Shape, http://inhabitat.com/3-‐d-‐printer-‐creates-‐entire-‐buildings-‐from-‐solid-‐rock/
[13] Manuel De Landa, A New Philosophy of Society – Assemblage Theory & Social Complexity, Continuum (2006)
[14] Loretta Lorance, “Buckminster Fuller: Dialogue with Modernism.” PART: Journal of CUNY Ph.D. Program inArt History, Issue 7. http://web.gc.cuny.edu/dept/arthi/part/part7/articles/loranc.html [15] Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist, <Project Japan: Metabolism Talks>, Published by TASCHEN Books.p348 [16] Cedric Price, from Talks at the AA, AA Files 19 (Spring 1990), p. 32 [17] Fuller, ”Romany Marie’s” in : Chronofile 36/1929
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////IMAGE GREDITS Fig.1. 4D Time Lock http://seedbankdesign.com/blog/wp-‐content/uploads/2011/02/4DTimelock50.jpg
Fig.2. the air traffic in UK airspace in a 24 hour period http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/stories/visualisations/planes.shtml Fig.3. Internet Map http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/InternetMap Fig.4. Airline Map http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=673 Fig.5.Tetra City http://www.fabiofeminofantascience.org/RETROFUTURE/RETROFUTURE14.htm Fig.6.Metabolism talks http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp-‐content/uploads/2012/03/1331137349-‐image003.jpg Fig.7.Lily Pad, floating city http://images.gizmag.com/inline/lilypad-‐ecropolis-‐4.jpg Fig.8. Prada Transformer http://iimd.nl/design-‐critique-‐2010/wp-‐content/uploads/Prada-‐Transformer1.png Fig.9.Solar House http://www.a10.eu/thumbs/file_2495/1008091240/style_popup/FAB-‐LAB-‐HOUSE_C21.jpg Fig.10. Robotic pre-‐fabrication http://icd.uni-‐stuttgart.de/wp-‐content/gallery/researchpavilion_2011_8/14
Fig.11. D-‐SHAPE http://media.bestofmicro.com/3d-‐printer-‐enrico-‐dini-‐d-‐shape,6-‐N-‐241295-‐13.jpg