Mohamed Hassan

I said in the first reflective blog that I was going to use the CAD programs more after the course, so I can enhance and improve my 3D design skills. I actually did this before I even finish the course. I was so impressed by my design skills at the end of the course. I am not being egotistical, I am sure I have a lot more to learn about 3D design. The more you know, the more you realize that you have a lot to learn. But honestly I wasn’t expecting to go through such an improvement in such a short period of time. When I wrote my first reflective blog, I was just an amateur who is trying to play around with SketchUp trying to design a 3D model. But after we have gone through our prototype phase in our group, I have seen that I made progress understanding the philosophy of the 3D software and I started to design better designs. Not just in SketchUp, but also I have been lucky enough to start using other software like MeshLab and Netfab in order to print out our prototype.

However, I haven’t been lucky enough to try the 3D Printer myself because of the unavailability of time slots at the school’s 3D Printer. But I feel I kind of recompensed this experience with the experience I had with Shapeways.com. Now on Shapeways.com I have my own models that I made, and anyone can download them and print them. I feel the joy I got from creating a model, and have it real in my hand is a reward to all those sleepless nights I have passed through during our group work, working on our solution and prototype.

I also really appreciate how the professors let us explore the subject that we want to learn through our blog. I thought I would never learn anything about architecture as I said in my expertise blog. But we had the chance to learn different topics in one course. An advantage that we as students do not usually have in other courses is to pick what we want to learn. The course let us individually choose something that will be our point of difference, even from each other. For example, I know more now about architecture and my colleague knows more about bio printing, but we are in the same class.  I think the course really deserves to be called special topics.

Besides my design work, I have learned how to be an entrepreneur. I have learned the skills that I can use to make my own design studio if I want to. I have learned how to make a viable business model and a pitch deck that I can use for my own sake or to help other start-ups later in my career. And the crowd-funding means available. Deadlines, presentations, teamwork, and interdependence are variables and factors that we all have in other classes. But combining these variables with the idea that we can make a business from a simple need, was a unique skill that I have learned in this course. I guess this is entrepreneurship.

A lot of things and problems were challenging to me in this class, from how to use the software and have a good business solution to how we can print our prototype at the end. But I think these challenges were necessary to learn. I think all those question marks we had at the beginning encouraged us to work hard.

If someone registered for the course the next time it will be offered and asked me for some advice, I would tell them:

First, have patience designers and innovators are underpaid for their time and hard work, but their successful findings pays them more at the end. The joy of making something and succeeding in getting it done is highly valuable. Practice, the more you practice the software, the more you become confident and have a good design structure. And finally, hard work pays off.

Through my six blog posts of “how to learn futuristic architecture in 6 weeks” I have made progress knowing the basic principles and fundamentals of architecture. I have also earned good knowledge about Futurism movement, and how architects used their own interpretation to express their thoughts about this Italian movement. I have explored other interesting types of architecture like Blob architecture and organic architecture. Moreover, I have also encountered the idea of “Sociocyberneering” or social engineering which I became very interested in. I am also excited to start reading and learning more about this idea of building the Utopian city and comply with people’s problems. I found some exciting books like “looking backwards” by Edward Bellamy and the Republic by Plato that will help me develop my own thought or interpretation of this idea. I am also planning on interpreting this interesting idea in the form of digital arts or graphic design in the near future. I was thinking of an idea that would put all people of a certain society or culture together to build their own dream city. I can have a website with Kinect interactivity that will let every person to design only one thing and have a combination of many people’s design insights on one canvas.

I have learned more about futuristic architects like Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid. I have learned some principles of architecture from Vitruvius. I have learned that there are some variables that any architect need to consider like lines, geometric shapes, shadows, light, and environment. I explored some of the most interesting CAD programs used for architecture besides SketchUp, like AutoCAD and Revit. These programs’ complicated interfaces made me curious to learn and explore them even more in the future.

I have accomplished my goal of starting my first architecture drawing. This design is not professional or ready for building but it is important to me because it broke my barrier to learn architecture. I have always thought I would never do any architectural work because I am not an architecture student. But just by surveying other great architects like Tadao Ando, I have noticed that it is not necessary to be enrolled in an architecture school to be an architect. Some of these famous architects taught themselves and have influenced the whole field of architecture. Studying architecture became very possible for me also when I found that amount of open source courses and communities I can use for learning.

In the future I am intending to read about architecture even more. Through my research, I have gathered some useful resources that I can use to be a professional architect. I have the programs already. I have some books that are recommended by architect reviews and forums. I can look for books that teach architecture from scratch. I know that this may sound funny to have professional architecture knowledge from reading books like “architecture for dummies”, but it’s a good start for now. Later I can build on that and learn more. But for now I am going to start a little by little, since I find architecture books are kind of hard to understand for now.

I found a master in architecture for people with no architecture background in The City College of New York. It is affordable and it is a three year program. So instead of studying architecture bachelor for five years, I can do it in only three as a master program. I am sincerely thinking about this program now since I am a senior and I am expected to graduate next fall.

I would be very enlightened if they accepted me, because it was my dream to transfer to an architecture major. But when I applied for architecture schools, they did not accept me because I am a transfer student with no previous architecture education and work.

Below are all the references and the resources I have used for my research and analysis:

http://plusmood.com/category/architecture/education/

http://architizer.com/

http://io9.com/search?q=architecture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blob_architecture

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

http://www.wfs.org/futurist

http://library.thinkquest.org/22866/English/Architecture/fundament.html

http://architecture.about.com/

http://archinect.com/

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/architecture/

http://documents.weber.edu/catalog/0910/pages/c~CDGT.htm

http://ssa1.ccny.cuny.edu/programs/m-arch.html

http://www.architectural-review.com/home/students/

Frank Lloyd Wright

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce9iyHM5Ge8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqQCLm7k_mo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvQZbC1OOZc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce9iyHM5Ge8

America best architecture

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zBG1xML8U0

Architecture Software

http://www.autodesk.com/

http://www.chiefarchitect.com/

http://architecture.about.com/od/buildyourhous1/tp/designsoftware.htm

http://www.vagueware.com/top-10-architectural-design-software-for-budding-architects/

http://www.archdaily.com/category/software/

After all that research, I started drawing in SketchUp. I tried to have my own futuristic design and try to draw my first building. It was very challenging due to number of reasons:

1- There are some aspects any architect need to put in mind when designing. It is not just put shapes together. But there are some principles like shape elements (triangle, square, circle) that need to be designed based on calculated geometry.

2- Other aspects needed to be considered are lightning and shadows.

3- How to make use of space available in the best way. To achieve the best result for a design, variables like construction, materials, negative space, environment, comfort and interior space need to be considered.

I knew it was going to be a big approach but I wanted to have my own design trial as the last outcome of this Blog.

One other thing I wanted to use but it turned out to be a challenging subject, was Rendering with V-Ray. There is a company called V-Ray that invented a plug in product “V-Ray” which renders model images in SketchUp that look real. An example of this is below.

These images are not of real built objects or buildings. They are just rendered with the plugin called “V-Ray” to have that realistic look. However, it requires more expertise than I thought. When rendering, you are using the lights available and put them in different places so you can have that final realistic beautiful result.

Now I am including my design experiments. I know that they are not professional but as I said, I thought I would only succeed in my mission if I put my hands on a design software and try drawing buildings. I tried to use V-Ray plugin as it available for 30 days free trial, but it wasn’t the result that I wanted after experimenting it.

This is a cafeteria design

This is a futuristic building design attempt. I designed the Dome on top because the Dome gives you less outside space, material, and cost plus maximum space inside. The building is a university building. It is going to be made mainly from windows that is why it does not have much openings as you go up. The inclined part is the escalators having made from glass and open it to the outside. This will have a nice look from the outside and also have a nice view from the inside. While going up or down, you can see the outside environment. My design can be easily 3D printed by NRI as when I went there I saw a couple of futuristic design prototypes that I thought it would be hardly printed.

There are plenty of software available for architecture drawing. Some of these are Autodesk’s popular ones like AutoCAD and Revit. Also there is a very good software according to architects’ recommendations which is called Rhino. There is also “Chief Architect” software for architecture drawing, and “Home Design” software for interior design from the Chief Architect company. There is a much user friendly free open software called ArchiCAD which is used always as a substitute to the other products. However, it does not include all the features other software have. Also SketchUp can be used for architecture drawing and modeling. SketchUp is not popular for professional use, because other software like AutoCAD include advanced architecture and geometry tools and features.

Based on popular architecture forums and reviews, the best software and the most popular ones used are AutoCAD, Revit, and Rhino.

Autodesk is more student friendly than Adobe for example. This is because Autodesk offers all of their products free to students. You just need to send your education proof of being a student. An example of this could be your transcript document or a valid school ID. Then afterwards, you can easily download the software from the website and start using it. Not just that, but also Autodesk offers an open community for students to share their work and thoughts about architecture models.

I downloaded AutoCAD and Revit from their website. However, I found it really challenging to use AutoCAD. AutoCAD is a drawing software that helps you as an architect to establish your model guidelines and basic flat drawing. Moreover, it is highly suggested to use a computer that has a good video card that it is not already built in the computer like intel. But rather have a computer that has a high video card due to the program’s high technology. A computer that is good for this kind of software could be Dell Alienware or ASUS Republic of Gamers.

As a result I chose to stick to SketchUp for now because of time and knowledge. But later I am intending to use AutoCAD community support and tutorials, and start learning how to draw in AutoCAD and Revit.

One of the best tools also I found useful for learning architecture is MIT Open Course. There are some architecture classes open for public offered by MIT. I can sit down and read their lecture notes and start to teach myself architecture. However, it might need some patience in order to grasp the material from scratch. But the good thing at the end, that it is possible.

Also there is a website called class-central.com which includes millions of other open courses offered by reputable educational organizations such as Harvard University, Columbia University, and Yale.

In this blog I did some research on the principles and the fundamentals of architecture. I tried to understand the basics that any architect should know before start modeling and drawing.

What is Architecture?

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing, and construction, usually of buildings and other physical structures. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as works of art.

In relation to buildings, architecture has to do with the planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambiance that reflect functional, technical, social, environmental, and aesthetic considerations. It requires the creative manipulation and coordination of material, technology, light and shadow. Architecture also encompasses the pragmatic aspects of realizing buildings and structures, including scheduling, cost estimating and construction administration. As documentation produced by architects, typically drawings, plans and technical specifications, architecture defines the structure and behavior of a building or any other kind of system that is to be or has been constructed.

The earliest surviving written work on the subject of architecture is De Architectura, by the Roman architect Vitruvius in the early 1st century AD. According to Vitruvius, a good building should satisfy the three principles of firmitas, utilitas, venustas, which translate roughly as:

• Durability – it should stand up robustly and remain in good condition.
• Utility – it should be useful and function well for the people using it.
• Beauty – it should delight people and raise their spirits.

According to Vitruvius, the architect should strive to fulfill each of these three attributes as well as possible.

Architecture went through different stages much like any other art form. It went through innovation in terms of the forms shaped and in terms of the materials used as civilization continues. Different stages and forms of architecture could be:

1- Ancient Architecture like The Pyramids in Egypt and the Vernacular architecture in Norway.

2- Asian Architecture like the Golden Pavilion in Japan.

3- Islamic Architecture.

4- The Renaissance period.

5- Early modern and the industrial age like the Paris Opera by Charles Garnier in France.

6- Modern architecture lead by the Bauhaus school in Germany.

There are different types of architecture like futuristic architecture, blob architecture, organic architecture, and sustainable architecture.

After understanding what is futuristic design and architecture, exploring some notable futuristic architects. I started to understand the concept and the philosophy of futurism architecture. I also have known other different types of architecture like Blob architecture and sharp edged architecture.

I thought about looking at different works and designs, so I can see these principles of futurism movement applied in architecture. I think the best way to understand and grasp a certain subject or idea is to train your eye using examples, and try to find the reason behind every design.

Examples of Futuristic Architecture and Designs:

This looks like some weird and possibly carnivorous alien plant — but it’s actually a high-tech “green” building, using lightweight materials from the “spacecraft industry” to make lightweight observation pods that glide up and down vertically.

Romanian architect Stefan Dorin won the “Taiwan Tower Competition” with this 300-meter building that will become a landmark in Taichung, Taiwan’s third-biggest city. In his proposal Dorin explains his design saying:

Starting from the ‘geographical’ visual of Taiwan – which is an island resembling a leaf – we have developed the concept of the technological tree: we have designed 8 spatial leaves (with eight being a propitious number in the local culture) in the form of zeppelin-like elevators which glide up and down the ‘tree trunk” and which serve the purpose of observation decks / belvedere. I have called these elevators floating observatories because each has a nacelle which can take 50 to 80 people; they are self-sustained by helium balloons and are built from lightweight materials (borrowed from the spacecraft industry) and are wrapped in a last-generation type of membrane (PTFE) and they glide vertically on a track positioned vertically in a strong electro-magnetic field. The building’s Eco-friendly qualities include a small footprint at land level, maximum green surface, natural ventilation thanks to the “chimney effect,” rain-water collection, and its own power generation via turbines and adjustable photo-voltaic panels.

The New Orleans Arcology Habitat (NOAH). This structure would house 40,000 people and utilize a multi-cavity “hull” as the foundation for the superstructure. They explain:

Noah, at its current height of 1,200 feet will rest up its triangulated foundation constituted to be a buoyant multi-cavity “hull.” This “hull” will consist of high strength concrete cells, forming approximately a 40×40 matrix. This matrix not only gives buoyancy to the structure, it also becomes the framing matrix for the steel framed superstructure. It is estimated that the combined weight of NOAH will draft 180 feet within the water-filled basin, allowing a minimum 50 foot space between the floor of the basin and the floor of the buoyant foundation.

Inverted Cube Houses These actually exist, and they’re part of a hair-raising gallery of “gravity-defying homes” over at Elle Decor. As Elle Decor explains:

Architect Piet Blom tipped a conventional house forty-five degrees and rested it upon a hexagon-shaped pole so that three sides face down and the other three face the sky. 

The Formodesign. Arch Daily explains:

The orientation was developed to maximize the use of solar energy. Strong decisions and consequence in driving its proportions guarantee the uniqueness of (formo)design. Dynamic and simple form are the result of the yach architecture interpretation. The core, made of concrete, is combined with steel cantilever structures. Foundation for the house is a concrete counterweight foot stabilizet with the sea bed pile system.The floating deck, which rises with the water level thanks to the railing installed in the core structure, leads you to the stairway. The top deck is available for the residents as well.

After exploring some of the futuristic designs out there in the industry, I think now I am a little ready mentally to design. But still I need one more thing, which is how to start. I need to learn some good basics and principles of architecture that will assist me while start drawing and designing. And also I still need where to go for drawing or modelling. I took an architecture class in high school but we drew the models by hand without using any CAD programs. But in this blog I am taking a challenge to actually use the software. So in the next milestones I will explore the software and how to start drawing.

Futurist architecture is an early-20th century form of architecture born in Italy, characterized by anti-historicism, long dynamic lines, suggesting speed, motion, and urgency: it was part of an artistic movement founded by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who produced its first manifesto, the Manifesto of Futurism in 1909. The movement attracted a number of architects who tried to interpret the movement in their own work.

Through my research for futuristic architects I found some inspiring architects like:

Tadao Ando: Ando has a strong background in Japanese culture. He was raised in Japan and lives there. Japanese religion and style of life strongly influenced his architecture and design. Ando’s architectural style is said to create a “Haiku” effect, which is emphasizing nothingness and empty space to represent the beauty of simplicity. He favors designing complex spatial circulation while maintaining the appearance of simplicity. A self-taught architect, he keeps his Japanese culture and language in mind while he travels around Europe for research. As an architect, he believes that architecture can change society, that “to change the dwelling is to change the city and to reform society”.

Arthur Erickson: Erickson’s buildings are often modernist concrete structures designed to respond to the natural conditions of their locations, especially climate. Additionally, Erickson is also known for numerous futuristic designs such as the Fresno City Hall.

Michael Graves:  an American architect. Identified as one of The New York Five. Graves was known first for his contemporary building designs and some prominent public commissions. Since designing domestic products sold at Target stores in the United States, he has become more widely known. Michael Graves has also become well known in the internet meme community for creating a tea kettle that supposedly resembles Hitler.

Cesar Pelli: an architect known for designing some of the world’s tallest buildings and other major urban landmarks.

Also when I was doing  my research I found another movement of architecture that could be mistaken with futuristic architecture called Blobitecture or Blob Architecture.

Blobitecture:

a movement in architecture in which buildings have an organic, amoeba-shaped, bulging form. The term ‘blob architecture’ was coined by architect Greg Lynn in 1995 in his experiments in digital design with meatball graphical software. Soon a range of architects and furniture designers began to experiment with this “blobby” software to create new and unusual forms. Despite its seeming organicism, blob architecture is unthinkable without this and other similar CAD programs. Architects derive the forms by manipulating the algorithms of the computer modeling platform.

Another subject I came through in my research,was the idea of Sociocyberneering.

Sociocyberneering:

is the application of technology and science towards problem solving. It is an approach of redesigning society in humanistic terms, and using design as a method of coping with problems of the society and people. So for example, instead of encouraging people to save water, a system is built and designed to already save water. An example for that will be the shift of the regular water faucet design to designing and manufacturing the sensor water faucets that works only when you put an object underneath the faucet opening. And then after you remove that object, it closes automatically.

When I was researching Architecture, I simply researched “Learning Architecture from scratch” and “Principles of Architecture” on Google. What was surprising is that I have found articles and blogs on a futurist and an architect called Jacque Fresco on the first page for both keywords on Google.  I thought that definitely this guy has to be a big deal. Fresco turned out to be a very inspiring futurist architect that every architect and designer should know about. When I researched him more, I found a documentary made by William Gazecki that surveys his design work available on Netflix.

The documentary is one of the most inspiring documentaries I have seen about futuristic design. The documentary involves thoughts about designing the future culture and society in architecture and other fields like products, landscape architecture, and urban design. The documentary surveys the idea of social engineering and the design work of the famous designer and architect, Jacque Fresco. Social engineering is re-designing the future to comply with people’s problems.

Jacque Fresco is considered by many to be a modern day Da Vinci. Peer to Einstein and Buckminster Fuller, Jacque is a self-taught futurist, structural designer, architectural designer, concept artist, and educator who describe himself most often as a student of many inter-related fields. He is a prolific inventor, having spent his entire life conceiving of and devising inventions on various scales which entail the use of innovative technology. As a futurist, Jacque is not only a conceptualist and a theoretician, but he is also an engineer and a designer. Fresco writes and lectures his views concerning sustainable cities, energy, efficiency, natural-resource management, cybernetic technology, advanced automation, and the role of science in society. With his colleague, Roxanne Meadows, he is the founder and director of The Venus Project. According to Fresco, his city designs are aimed to improve daily life and improve the standards of living for everyone. His proposal is for a worldwide system of resource control based on a science approach.

One of the most inspiring architecture projects Fresco has designed was The Trend Home. It is a basic regular home that is built mostly of aluminum and glass. The design was inspired by his surrounding environment of the depression. He was commissioned to design a form of housing under the conditions that it be low cost, composed of available materials at that time, and be functional.  It took 10 men eight hours to construct the Trend Home and it was a big deal on TV and in the architecture industry at that time. It was designed for rapid mass production.

Jacque Fresco is not the only architect or designer who thought about redesigning the culture or predicting the future design. There are some other futurist architects who contributed to the futurism movement like Antonio Sant’Elia, Tadao Ando, Wayne McAllister, Eero Saarinen, Cesar Pelli, Michael Graves and Angiolo Mazzoni.

A futurist is any artist, scientist, engineer, or sociologist who thought and worked on how tomorrow could look like. Like Fresco, futurists work on plans to build a whole new form that would be beneficial or trendy in the future.

I know that my first milestone could be felt that it is only about Jacque Fresco. But I feel that in order to understand a new subject to me like futuristic architecture, I had to breakdown the subject into examples so I can learn from them. Jacque Fresco was an example of what I want to do later in my career, so I had to study him a little more. In the next blog I am intending to research the concept of futurist architecture itself and what it is about. I am also going to research some of the futurists mentioned above.