This is a short test sequence showing the transition between the street and ground foyer. This is the ‘open’ configuration with shutters rotated to form a canopy above with the aim of drawing people in. The space is deliberately minimal and cavernous with a stair leading up to the existing roofscape level. The finish is predominantly masonry and fair-faced concrete with exposed corten steel beams. A roof-lit ‘slot’ runs along the far wall allowing sunlight to illuminate it for during the afternoon. It is my intention to put together a two minute film sequence to portray the materiality and character of the scheme for the final exhibition.

I have been exploring the use of Augmented Reality (AR), a pivotal part of my Thesis in terms of experiencing both the building and the city. This is a quick demo showing a range of geometries including simple animated content, which are being tracked simultaneously. I hope to use this technique not only to represent different aspects of the scheme interactively but also to portray different layers of the digital city relevant to the story and experience of my building. The big issue now of course is the interface…

Unity is a integrated authoring tool for 3D content visualisation capable of producing applications for Windows, Mac, Wii or even the iPhone. Although primarily conceived for the gaming industry, it has great potential for the distribution and experience of virtual content relating to the built environment.

Once the Unity Web-Player has been installed, the arrow keys and cursor can be used to navigate the virtual environment – in this case a demo scene of my evolving Thesis scheme.

http://unity3d.com/unity/

I began my detailed 3D model on Monday – these images show some of my progress to date. The design is by no means finalised; working at this detail is in fact beginning to pose more and more questions… This is an aerial shot taken just above the tower looking down onto the beginnings of the first storey with auditorium etc. There are three levels beneath – it is difficult to understand but I will post a section shortly.

This is an early shot of the street facade showing the cobbled street leading into the ground floor reception area. The two stairs in the distance lead the visitor up to the auditorium and second storey rooftop platform where the formal programme and viewing galleries begin. The upturned panel that resembles a canopy (repeated along the length) hints at a ‘shop-front’ that can be reconfigured to manipulate the boundary with the street. Openness is key: depending on the event, the public would be encouraged to wander in. This would obviously need to incorporate some glazed elements which is something I am currently brainstorming.

First floor sketch plan showing basic features.

And finally… a quick test (hence the poor quality) to check the ambient lighting above the entrance foyer. It is looking a little bleak as the model is nothing more than a fair-faced concrete structural shell. However it gives me a better idea in terms of internal finishes. The wall to the right is solid (it spans the foyer as a fin) which makes this front balcony rather gloomy although there may be an opportunity to introduce some translucency. In the distance and off to the left is the principal auditorium with a bar to the front and WCs around to the left; the ascending stair leads to the rooftop level, which is the first view of the city.

A few process photos of my evolving massing model which I am modelling at 200 scale. I have been using it to test ideas from the 3D computer model before repeating the cycle again, hopefully achieving more detailed resolution in the process…

This was a Thesis by Daniel Belcher for his Masters of Science in Design Computing at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Washington. I particularly like the demonstration where he manipulates the heliodon which in turn modifies the scene lighting in the rendered model. It is also worth looking at his ARchitecture Hall project which implies a link with BIM. Impressive stuff.

I have now managed to compile the ARToolKit which should allow me to begin considering AR for aspects of my presentation. The only hitch is of course the interface – without a suitable viewing device or head mounted display the interaction is interesting but less meaningful.

This animation shows the sunlight overshadowing (0400-2000h) with the proposal shown below. Admittedly it is the summer solstice but given that there is zero residential property within the immediate surroundings (the adjacent buildings are predominantly warehouses that supply Morgan arcade and the Hayes) the impact is reasonable.

A quick shot showing some design development. I have also been exploring this through physical modelling photos of which will follow shortly. The building is turning into something of a puzzle with interlocking volumes of varying height, scale and orientation. The circulation (limitation of) is now beginning to define the sequence of spaces in response to the specific views of the city.

These are the basic site sections showing the broader city context and relative scale.

These are abstract studies of the building’s form and materiality. There is still a long way to go, particularly with the eastern elevation (right) which is looking awkward.

The image above is a 360 degree panoramic from Baker’s Row taken approximately 35 metres above ground. I have re-projected the photograph using different techniques, which I intend to use to map the different views one would experience throughout the building.

This is my updated city dynamics sheet. A work in progress, it needs additional data as well as annotation to explain the various urban scenarios.

Over forty years later, Diller and Scofidio’s Blur Building was a unique sensory experience but it also featured technologically advanced ’brain coats’ – wearable raincoats with wireless communication devices that would inform an indication of either positive or negative affinity between different visitors, through colour change and sound, depending on an individual’s response to a predefined set of questions, i.e. Prince or Puccini.

I would therefore like to push this theme further by proposing that the interaction and ‘affinity’ could instead occur seamlessly via the Web, which isn’t so far-fetched considering the advent of Web 2.0 in 2004. Information specific to a given user could be pushed and exhibited interactively from a range of user content-creation sources.

I have begun to explore the elements of my programme that are to integrate with certain layers of the digital city as the spatial experience of my building will be defined not only by the physical architectural language but also through the use of virtual sensory ephemera. Two venerable precedents in this respect are of course the Blur Building (2002) by Diller and Scofidio and the Philips Pavilion (1958) by Le Corbusier.

The Philips pavilion – conceived for the 1958 Expo – was designed primarily by Iannis Xenakis, a Greek architect and experimental composer. The image below is a graph of Xenakis’ Metastaseis: opening glissandi which clearly references the Philips Pavilion. The audio sample beneath that is an extract.

The Philips Pavilion presented a collage liturgy for twentieth-century humankind, dependent on electricity instead of daylight and on virtual perspectives in place of terrestrial views.

[source: Marc Treib, Space Calculated in Seconds, Princeton, 1996, p. 3]

I would like to explore an architecture that enables, in part, a similar experience although it would instead draw upon ‘artefacts’ – both contemporary and historical – of the digital city. I investigated a similar idea with my Memorial Memory sequence, which was also turned into an implied augmentation for the closing seconds of my first Primer film. There is also a scene during my City 2.0 film that depicts a parade of 1932 from the British Pathe news archive turning the same corner in Cardiff.

Over forty years later, Diller and Scofidio’s Blur Building was a unique sensory experience but it also featured technologically advanced ’brain coats’ – wearable raincoats with wireless communication devices that would inform an indication of either positive or negative affinity between different visitors, through colour change and sound, depending on an individual’s response to a predefined set of questions, i.e. Prince or Puccini.

I would therefore like to push this theme further by proposing that the interaction and ‘affinity’ could instead occur seamlessly via the Web, which isn’t so far-fetched considering the advent of Web 2.0 in 2004. Information specific to a given user could be pushed and exhibited interactively from a range of user content-creation sources.

I am currently working up some site character studies along with material and architectural precedents in order to effectively explain my outline scheme for Monday’s crit. This is a high-res photo montage of Baker’s Row looking south comprising some twenty images.

This is the beginnings of my 3D investigation; each element has been modelled quite spontaneously based upon the programme requirement. Some of these are flexible, others bespoke i.e. some are mildly reconfigurable networked ‘event’ spaces, whereas others are far more specific in their architecture.

An updated programme diagram that includes relative areas prior to working in 3D.

These two sheets will eventually be ‘wired’ together (see sketch below) to demonstrate the potential for semantic city feeds that visualise the rhythms and fluctuations of the city. With suitable annotation they will also help to illustrate the open event initiative over time; the whole idea is that these patterns help to influence and inform a new urban cross-programming.

If I am able to convert the dataset into a 3D visualisation I could then potentially augment this over the digital city network map for an interactive exhibit.

This is my new city feed pipe diagram which describes the method for accumulating the dataset from a range of twenty existing Web resources. The current design fetches, regularises and truncates before filtering and sorting. The output is based on a 365 day time period. Theoretically, this would power the City Dynamics visualisation above.

This is very much a work in progress…a cloud diagram to map the extent of City 2.0. The backdrop is an extract from The Century is Over, an Evolutionary Tree of Twentieth-Century Architecture – published by Charles Jencks in 2000, which of course I have begun to extend…

Another extract from the sketchbook…this week will be spent formally planning my building. I seem to be developing a good mental image but will be interested to see how it pans out when I begin arranging the programme.

I am about to begin a site massing model at 1.500 but wanted to explore the aesthetic in 3D beforehand. This is a render from the model I will be printing from – the emphasis will not only be on the existing roofscape and massing but also the invisible cartesian framework as well as representation of the city event programme. The latter may be augmented rather than modelled physically, which is something I am currently trying to figure out.

To complement the city event ‘feed’ architecture I am preparing a hypothetical dataset of all major city fluctuations over a single year. The main graphical output will be that of a timeline with line displacement and moving average overlay.