DESIGN & FORM- SKYSCRAPERS

Posted in | at 4/29/2010 11:42:00 PM

Skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. Steel, glass, reinforced concrete and granite are the main materials of a modern skyscraper. Obviously, a tall building must have the equipment such as water pumps to supply water to the top of the building by pressure. Besides that, skyscraper also has elevators to bringing to any floors without climbing the stairs. Before the 19th century, skyscrapers that are up to six stories are few due to the insufficient water pressure that can pumps water up to 50 meters. During 17th century, the new steel frame that fireproof was introduced to made modern skyscrapers in England. Take an example, in 14th century, The Great Pyramid of Giza was 146m tall and its height was unsurpassed until at least thousands of years.


          




Steel, which is the major component of any building. The concept of skyscrapers is made up of many small boxes to form a large steel box. skyscraper could be built with both horizontal and vertical supports throughout by using steel. The first building that supported by a steel skeleton of vertical columns and horizontal beams is the Home Insurance Building in Chicago.
                                        Home Insurance Building in Chicago

The second component of a skyscraper is reinforced concrete. Reinforced concrete is to give extra strength to the building. The building would fall down if without reinforced concrete. Reinforced concrete is the combination of the plain concrete and steel bars. The main function of this combined material is to provide the strength in tension. The second way of reinforcing concrete is prestressing. According to Portland Cement Association, compressive stresses are introduced into the concrete to reduce tensile stresses resulting from applied loads including the self weight of the member. Pre-tensioning is a method of prestressing in which the tendons are tensioned before concrete is placed and the prestressing force is primarily transferred to the concrete through bond. Post-tensioning is a method of prestressing in which the tendons are tensioned after the concrete has hardened and the prestressing force is primarily transferred to the concrete through the end anchorages. The first reinforced concrete skyscraper in the world is The Ingalls Building, built in 1903 in Ohio. This building is designed by Cincinnati architectural firm Elzner & Anderson and was named for its primary financial investor, Melville E. Ingalls.
The Ingalls Building

Elevators are a kind of machine that bring people to any floor. The lifts believe that were began by a simple rope that either pulled or pushed up the platform by hand or by animals. The traditional lifts were controlled by steam or water hydraulic pistons. Hydraulic lift is pressurizing the piston to raise or lower the lift. The new technology includes permanent magnet motors, machine room-less rail mounted gearless machines, and microprocessor controls. Different type of lifts will install into the building due to different factors. Hydraulic lift is suitable with the building that not more than 7 stories because hydraulic lift is usually slower than traction lift. Elevators are important in a tall building because it can reduce their footprint. Nobody willing to climb all the stairs to their destination, more elevators should install into the building as the building is taller. However, more elevators installed in the building will decrease the consumable space which can reduce the profitable. According the research from researcher, buildings such as the former World Trade Center Towers use Sky Lobbies, where express elevators take passengers to upper floors which serve as the base for local elevators. This allows architects and engineers to place elevator shafts on top of each other, saving space. Sky lobbies and express elevators take up a significant amount of space, however, and add to the amount of time spent commuting between floors. In 1857, the installation of the first passenger elevator in the Haughwout Department Store in New York City made it possible and practical to construct buildings more than four or five stories tall.
First Elevator

Curtain wall is like a transparent glass, metal or masonry attached to a building’s exterior structural frame. The curtain wall usually aluminum-framed wall. The main function of curtain wall is resist air and water infiltration while allows the natural light can penetrate into the building. During winter season, curtain wall allows the penetration of the light into the building, this can save the energy and electric to give warms to the building. In addition, curtain wall also designed to thermal expansion and contraction, thermal efficiency for cost-effective heating, cooling and lighting in the building. The first metal framed glass curtain walled building is Oriel Chambers in Liverpool. This building was designed by Peter Ellis.
 

Oriel Chambers
BY LIEW JIM CHIN






Portland Cement Association. http://www.cement.org/buildings/design_aids.asp

ecandd.com, http://www.elevatordesign.ca/

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Woodbridge, S.B., W.M. John. 1982. Architecture San Francisco—the Guide. San Francisco: 101 Productions.

Dennis, S. 1990. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual History. New York: Facts on File.

Frampton, K., F. Yukio.1945. Modern Architecture

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DESIGN & FORM

Posted in | at 4/29/2010 10:42:00 PM

· Arts and Craft

By the mid-19th century, a few people had become profoundly disturbed by the level to which style, craftsmanship, and public taste had sunk in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. It was instigated by the artist and writer William Morris and was inspired by the writings of John Ruskin. It influenced architecture, domestic design and the decorative arts, using simple forms and a medieval style of decoration.

Arts and Crafts objects were simple in form, without superfluous decoration, often showing the way they were put together. They followed the idea of "truth to material", preserving and emphasizing the qualities of the materials used.
Widely exhibited in Europe, the Arts and Crafts movement's qualities of simplicity use of materials inspired by some designers like Henry van de Velde and movements such as Art Nouveau, the Dutch De Stijl group, Vienna Secession, and the Bauhaus. The movement can be assessed as a prelude to Modernism, where pure forms, stripped of historical associations, would be once again applied to industrial production. 
 
· Machine Aesthetics

Machine Aesthetics. Architecture that suggested something machine-made, acknowledging industrialization, mass-production, and engineering, a fact that contradicted demands for honesty and truth in architecture, and denied the logic of structural principles.

By 1913 the machine had been in existence in everyday life for a century. It had been the founder and securer of the modern age. Life in the 19th century could be seen to be lived in the present; experience ran from day to day. The sense of experience illustrated in art of the Futurist movement is a development of this sense of security, exhibiting the feeling of rapid progression to a state where experience itself could be surpassed.

In 1920s and early 1930s, American art and design reflected the proliferation and primacy of the machine. Coupled with an influx of European avant-garde styles, the machine challenged design and the period was one of experimentation and invention. Throughout the 20th century perceptions of the machine’s role in society changed. So inevitably, the content of this machine inspired art changed throughout the century. 

· Organic (Gaudi)

More than green, Organic Architecture describes a way of thinking about design that transcends the common, everyday buildings around us.

ecological + individual = organic

Organic Architecture describe the environmental concerns, it embodies the human spirit. While Organic Architecture describe an expression of individuality, it explores our need to connect to Nature. A building or design must grow as nature grows from the inside out. Nature grows from the idea of a seed and reaches out to its surroundings.

In the later half of the 20th century, Modernist architects took the concept of organic architecture to new heights. Modern organic buildings are never linear or rigidly geometric. Instead, wavy lines and curved shapes suggest natural forms.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

The term organic architecture was coined by the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), though never well articulated by his cryptic style of writing:
"So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life, and to now serve the whole of life, holding no traditions essential to the great TRADITION. Nor cherishing any preconceived form fixing upon us either past, present or future, but instead exalting the simple laws of common sense or of super-sense if you prefer determining form by way of the nature of materials..." - Frank Lloyd Wright, written in 1939.
Organic architecture is also translated into the all inclusive nature of Frank Lloyd Wright’s design process. The idea of organic architecture refers not only to the building’s literal relationship to the natural surroundings, but how the building’s design is carefully thought about as if it were a unified organism. Everything relates to one another, reflecting the symbiotic ordering systems of nature.

A well known example of organic architecture is Fallingwater. It stands as one of Wright's greatest masterpieces both for its dynamism and for its integration with the striking natural surroundings. The house is well-known for its connection to the site: it is built on top of an active waterfall which flows beneath the house.

ANTONI GAUDI

Antoni Gaudi was born in Reus, Spain in 1852. He was a Catalan architect who belonged to the Modernist style (Art Nouveau) movement and was famous for his unique and highly individualistic designs. Gaudí's first works were designed in the style of gothic architecture and traditional Catalan architectural modes, but he soon developed his own distinct sculptural style.

Some of his major works :
Casa Vicens (1884–1885)
Palau Güell (1885–1889)
Crypt of the Church of Colònia Güell (1898–1916)
Casa Calvet (1899–1904)
Casa Batlló (1905–1907)
Casa Milà (La Pedrera) (1905–1907)
Park Güell (1900–1914)
Sagrada Família Nativity façade and Crypt of the Sagrada Família church (1884 until his death in 1926, although still under construction as of 2010)

La Sagrada Familia, Monumental church dedicated to the Holy Family, Gaudi's most famous work, the finest example of his visionary genius, the worldwide symbol of Barcelona and the Cathedral of the third Millennium. The uniqueness and complexity of the project, make practically impossible to give a precise date of time necessary to build the remaining ten domes.


· Digital Computer


Computer-aided design (CAD) was the original type of program an architects used, but since CAD couldn’t offer all the tools that architects needed to complete a project, CAAD developed as a distinct class of software. Computer-aided architectural design (CAAD) software programs are the repository of accurate and comprehensive records of buildings. In a more general sense, CAAD also refers to the use of any computational technique in the field of architectural design. For ex. Special software developed for computer animation industry (Maya and 3DStudio Max) is used in architectural design.

All CAD and CAAD systems employ a database with geometric and other properties of objects. CAAD system differs from other CAD systems in two respects:
•    It has an explicit object database of building parts and construction knowledge.
•    It explicitly supports the creation of architectural objects.

CAAD has two types of structures in its program. The first system is surface structure which provides a graphics medium to represent 3D objects using 2D representations. The second system is deep structure which means that the operations performed by the computer have natural limitations. Computer hardware and machine languages that are supported by these make it easy to perform arithmetical operations quickly and accurately.

An architect’s work involves mostly visually represented data. Problems are often outlined and dealt with in a graphical approach. Only this form of expression serves as a basis for work and discussion. Therefore, the designer should have a maximum visual control over the processes taking place with in the design continuum.



* Acadia. 2010. http://www.acadia.org (accessed March 27, 2010).
* Curl, James Stevens. 2000. Machine Aesthetic: A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape  Architecture.  Encyclopedia.com. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O1-MachineAesthetic.html (accessed March 25, 2010).
* Casa Milà - Barcelona, Spain [Image]. 2007. http://pakhipakhi.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/casa-mila.jpg (accessed April 13, 2010).
* Dee, Sarah. 2005. The Role of the Machine in Twentieth Century Art. Threemonkeysonline.com. http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/als/_the_role_of_the_machine_in_twentieth_century_art.html (accessed March 26, 2010).
* Falling Water [Image]. 2005. http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/mellin/arch671/winter2005/student/sbouchard/image%20precedents/falling%20water%20.jpg (accessed April 13, 2010).
* Frank Lloyd Wright (1954). The Natural House (New York: Bramhall House), p. 3
* Gaudi's Casa Batllo [Image]. 2009. http://www.perfecttravelblog.com/desktop/SP-CasaBatllo.jpg (accessed April 13, 2010).
* Grand Palais [Image]. 2008. http://lh3.ggpht.com/Mom25dogs/ROvU928zUI/AAAAAAAAGXE/xutIwAKXORw/s400/Art+Nouveau+Grand_Palais_Interieur+in+Paris.jpg (accessed April 13, 2010).
* La Sagrada Familia [Image]. 2010. http://www.gaudidesigner.com/data/article/16.jpg (accessed April 13, 2010).
* Machine Aesthetic [Image]. 2009. http://www.cnccookbook.com/MTMachineAesthetics.htm (accessed April 13, 2010)
* Modern Design and The Machine Aesthetic. 2010. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Lisle/30home/modern/modern.html (accessed March 26, 2010).
* Organic. 2007. Organic Architect. http://www.organicarchitect.com (accessed March 27, 2010).
* Pevsner, N. 2005. Pioneers of Modern Design, Yale University Press, ISBN 0 300 10571 1

By : Shally Novia

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CONSTRUCTION PRINCIPLE

Posted in | at 4/29/2010 10:40:00 PM


In 1926, Le Corbusier established five points as the core of his design language he called them ‘Certainties from discoveries to date’. Le Corbusier’s design for Villa Savoye is a unique work of domestic architecture. Villa Savoye is a clear example of a building incorporating  five points of construction principle. Villa Savoye was designed as a weekend country house and is situated just outside of the city of Poissy in a meadow which was originally surrounded by trees. The polychromatic interior contrasts with the primarily white exterior. Vertical circulation is facilitated by ramps as well as stairs. Each detail of Villa Savoye was carefully planned in order to fully experience Le Corbusier’s ideal for the home. The Five Points of New Architecture are open plan, roof garden, curtain wall, free facade and pilotis.


Open Plan
Definition: Flexible method of space layout where divisions between separate areas are implied by easily movable elements (such as screens and skeletal construction components, and modular furniture) instead of being defined by permanent walls and fixed shape furniture. Based on the ideas of the US architect Frank Lloyd Wright and French architect Le Corbusier (who called it 'Leplan libre'). A building plan with a minimum of internal subdivision between spaces designed for different usage, having large rooms with few dividing partitions. This type of design creates spacious areas and can be applied to both residential and commercial dwellings. Examples : Cliff House in Auckland by Fearon Hay Architects.

Advantages:
-make spaces more versatile.
-it reduces space constraints.
-open plan offices are more economical.
- communication is obviously easier between work stations and departments.
- shared conversations can lead to faster recognition and resolution of issues.
-you are able to provide more work spaces and place more employees in an office.

Disadvantages:
- open space offices are noisier and can be more chaotic than closed plan offices.
- people passing to and fro can also cause distraction of employees.
- privacy is difficult to obtain with an open office plan.
- sicknesses and infections can spread like wildfire in an environment like an open office plan

 Open plan of  Villa Savoye:
The support system carries the intermediate ceilings and rises up to the roof. The interior walls may be placed wherever required, each floor being entirely independent of the rest. There are no longer any supporting walls but only membranes of any thickness required. The result of this is absolute freedom in designing the ground- plan; that is to say, free utilization of the available means, which makes it easy to offset the rather high cost of reinforced concrete construction.


Roof Garden
Definition: A roof garden is any garden on the roof of a building. It is  a rooftop layout of vegetation, a growing medium, and a water proof membrane that protects the actual roof. Other components can be added, such as an irrigation system and root barrier drainage system. It can be used in industrial settings, residents, offices, and any property that has a large flat roof. Example: Chicago City Hall, Mountain Equipment Co-op store ,Canada.

Advantages:
-as decoration
-architectural enhancement
-create green open spaces
-provide diverse habitats
-modify urban micro-climates
-improve air quality
-retain and manage rain water

Disadvantages:
-  higher initial cost.
-  installing adequate waterproofing systems and root barriers can increase the initial cost of                                                                             the roof

Roof garden of Villa Savoye: The roof terrace satisfies both demands (a rain- dampened layer of sand covered with concrete slabs with lawns in the interstices; the earth of the flowerbeds in direct contact with the layer of sand). In this way the rainwater will flow off extremely slowly. Waste pipes in the interior of the building. Thus a latent humidity will remain continually on the roof skin. The roof gardens will display highly luxuriant vegetation. Shrubs and even small trees up to 3 or 4 meters tall can be planted. For Le Corbusier, roof gardens were a way to reclaim the spaces lost in built-up areas of the cities. Corbusier believed in compensating for the loss of ground space by creating gardens and terraces on roofs and extending the living space inside.

Curtain Wall
Definition: Curtain wall is a term used to describe a building façade which does not carry any dead load from the building other than its own dead load. These loads are transferred to the main building structure through connections at floors or columns of the building. A curtain wall is designed to resist air and water infiltration, wind forces acting on the building, seismic forces, and its own dead load forces.  An exterior building wall which carries no roof or floor loads and consists entirely or principally of metal or a combination of metal, glass, and other surfacing materials supported by a metal frame.  Examples:  Staatliches Bauhaus , Germany and  88 Wood Street,  London by Richard Rogers.

Advantages:
-daylighting
-environmental control
-Heavy-duty-allows for innovative and prestigious design possibilities for all types of buildings.
-High performance-offers a highly efficient and economical solution where the utmost in energy efficiency is required.

Curtain wall of Villa Savoye: Free composition of the exterior curtain walls that correlated to the open spaces inside. The curtain walls and ribbon  windows present a neutral screen to the world, a kind of blankness that create a sense of tension and anticipation, a mysterious presence  more typical if the erotics of the surrealist object poetique than the purist object type. The landscaping also extends under the outline of the house, albeit in gravel. This gives the impression that the connection between the house and the landscaping is to be tightly and rigorously controlled. The randomness of nature is ‘controlled’ in its interaction with the house.

Free Façade
Definition: A building’s façade that is not attached to load-bearing columns. Examples: Farnsworth House by Mies Van Der Rohe.

Villa Savoye free design of the façade: By projecting the floor beyond the supporting pillars, like a balcony all round the building, the whole facade is extended beyond the supporting construction. It thereby loses its supportive quality and the windows may be extended to any length at will, without any direct relationship to the interior division. A window may just as well be 10 meters long for a dwelling house as 200 meters for a palatial building (our design for the League of Nations building in Geneva). The facade may thus be designed freely.

Pilotis
Definition: Pilotis, or piers, are supports such as columns, pillars, or stilts that lift a building above ground or water. They are traditionally found in stilt and pole dwellings Beyond their support function, the pilotis (or piers) raise the architectural volume, lighten it and free a space for circulation under the construction. They refine a building's connectivity with the land by allowing for parking, garden or driveway below while allowing a sense of floating and lightness in the architecture itself. In hurricane-prone areas, pilotis may be used to raise the inhabited space of a building above typical storm surge levels. Examples: Museum at Ahmedabad , The Cook House or Maison Cook in Boulogne-sur-Seine, The Homewood in Surrey, England.

The pilotis (supporting columns)of Villa Savoye: Raised above the ground on pilotis, the villa appears as a floating box that is surmounted by curvilinear volumes. The house is firmly driven into the ground - a dark and often damp site. The reinforced concrete gives us the pilotis. The house is up in the air, far from the ground: the garden runs under the house .


*http://www.designcommunity.com/discussion/11869.html
*http://www.archinnovations.com/featured-projects/houses/le-corbusier-and-villa-savoye/
*http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/savoye/index.htm
*http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Piloti
*Negotiating domesticity: spatial productions of gender in modern architecture  by Hilde Heynen, Gülsüm Baydar
*http://oneexwidow.blogspot.com/2010/03/great-buildings-1-villa-savoye.html
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aDT9xesSZc&feature=related




By : Sin Sook Fun

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CONSTRUCTION SYSTEM (MODERN)

Posted in | at 4/28/2010 11:45:00 PM

POMPIDOU
Paris. It was designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo piano.Basically, the building would be turned inside out, so liberating the interior spaces from the everlasting accommodation of circulation and servicing. Besides, there are spreading vertical circulation parts across the length of a pedestrian plaza on the west side and its mechanical workings across the long east street side elevation. This open display of parts is enclosed by an exposed steel skeleton and diagonal bracing. The external display of structure and services is actually powered by programmatic requirements for flexibility of the interior spaces. These machine frameworks were moved outside the glass skin to leave unobstructed and adaptable interior volumes. The external zone of the structural frame is there to produce tension forces outside the main volume's external columns, pulling the cantilevered horizontal members downward to decrease the bending forces on the floor span. This complementary structural strategy eliminate the strength require to hold all the columns across the unencumbered interior span of 157 feet (53.3 meters). The mechanical and air-conditioning services are then placed in the exoskeletal frame, leaving the interior expose and adaptable.
Hong Kong and Shang Hai headquarters

For the Hong Kong and Shang Hai headquarters which situated in southern side of statue square near the location of the old City Hall, Hong Kong, it was a building which built with 30,000 tonnes of steel and 4500 tonnes of aluminium. The latest building was designed by a British architect who is Lord Norman Foster and engineers Arup and was built by Wimpey construction. The building achieved 180-metres of height with 47 storeys and four basement levels. The modern construction system was applied in the building through reflection of sunlight with mirrors to save the energy usage. The external facades is fulfil with sun shades to reduce the excessive heat in the building due to direct sunlight. On the other hand, the flooring made with lightweight adjustable panel for the instalment of equipment like computer terminals in the shortest of time. It consists of eight groups of four aluminium-clad steel columns which ascend from the foundations up through the core structure, and five levels of triangular suspension trusses which are locked into these masts.


Buckminster fuller dome
The Buckminster fuller dome (Montreal Biosphère) was located at Parc Jean-Drapeau. It is a museum in Montreal commit to water and the environment. It originally created an enclosed structure of steel and acrylic cells, 76 metres (250 ft) in diameter and 62 metres (200 ft) high. The complicated system of shades was applied to adjust the heat inside. Basically, it is a structure which design according to the geodesic dome. A geodesic dome is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure or lattice shell according on a network of great circles (geodesics) placed on the surface of a sphere. The geodesics cross to produce triangular section that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the tension over the rest of structure. When completed to form a complete sphere, it is known as a geodesic sphere. The term "dome" based to an enclosed structure and should not be mess up with non-enclosed geodesic structures such as geodesic climbers found on playgrounds. Typically the design of a geodesic dome start with an icosahedron inscribed in a sphere, tiling each triangular face with smaller triangles, then projecting the vertices of each tile to the sphere. The endpoints of the links of the completed sphere would then be the projected endpoints on the sphere's surface. If this is done exactly, each of the edges of the sub-triangles is a slightly different length, so it would require a very large number of links of different sizes. To minimize the number of different sizes of links, various simplifications are made. The result is a compromise consisting of a pattern of triangles with their vertices lying approximately on the surface of the sphere. The edges of the triangles form approximate geodesic paths over the surface of the dome that distribute its weight.Geodesic designs can be used to form any curved, enclosed space. Oddly-shaped designs would require calculating for and custom building of each individual strut, vertex or panel—resulting in potentially expensive construction. Because of the expense and complexity of design and fabrication of any geodesic dome, builders have tended to standardize using a few basic designs.



Foster ‘Gherkin’

The foster Gherkin known as the Gherkin and the Swiss Re building which was located 30 St Mary Axe, City of London, England. The current tower was designed by Norman Foster. The uses of energy-saving methods is applied in this building which enable this building to use half of the power of alike tower that in use. There was a gap in each floor that provide six shafts to act as the natural ventilation system for the whole building. In addition, a double glazing effect produced by the shafts, the air is trapped by two layers of glazing and cool the office space inside. On the others hand, the shafts enable the sunlight to pass through the building to provide the natural light inside the building and save the cost. The main ways for manipulating wind-excited sways are to add on the flexibility or increase the damping with tuned. “To a design by Arup”, Swiss Re’s fully triangulated perimeter structure makes the building sufficiently stiff without any extra reinforcements. Despite its overall curved glass shape, there is only one piece of curved glass on the building – the lens-shaped cap at the very top.”



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/Centre_Georges_Pompidou_Fieldhouse.jpg
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-6/Geodesic-Dome.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_St_Mary_Axe

prepared by: Ooi Jun Keat

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