Featuring the thoughts and work of Architects Independent and Independent Architects - respectively Qatar & London based interconnected Architectural & Design R&D Practice(s)...
The project in this entry has already been floating around the blog-sphere for a while, but as it relates to some of the more recent posts dealing with a similar topic I though it might be worthy to also be included here (to access the original posts click here and here)... Apparently Philips Design in Eindhoven have also dabbled with some ideas relating to bespoke food production in the context of Additive Manufacturing. Somewhat suggestive of Heston Blumenthal's culinary inventions, this, still conceptual, project which is a part of the company's Design Probes scheme, which aims to explore and predict (guesstimate) how we might live in a decade or two. The design, which works in a similar fashion to a 3D Printer, would 'fabricate' (cook and assemble) a meal based on each individuals nutritional needs (which would be read through a 'scanning wand' nutritional monitor) and partly from food grown in ones own Home Farm...
A link to a related R&D project by Philips Design, which in this instance aims to 'enrich' the act of consumpting food through the stimulation of a more multi-dimensional perceptual realm, can be viewed by clicking here...
Our partner from the UK office, Paul Brady, sent us these photos of mushrooms which he thought looked like they could have been made through sone of the additive manufacturing processes, an interesting and astute observation, suggestive of something that could be termed 'reverse biomimetics', i.e. instead of a biological entity influencing a design, one designs a biological entity... There are a number of individuals who already have touched upon related/ similar ideas such as Francois Roche of R&Sie(n), Marcos Novak, Jonas Runberger and Marcos Cruz, to mention a few, and also, of course, some of the stuff in process at places such as the AA DRL, the Biomimicry Institute, and the Center for Biomimetics at the University of Reading.
As fleeting influences abound, why not learn from the core natural/ biological source which have had eons to develop the various most optimized solutions to the various bountiful queries we engage with daily...
Whilst flaneuring (as one does) around some residential neighbourhoods in and around Nizwa, I came across an abandoned village completely consistent of rows upon blocks of two floor, assumedly residential, mud houses. They seem to have been abandoned for a while, as much of the debris surrounding these, now mostly collapsed and fragmented, buildings showed decades worth of wear & tear. However, what was still standing retained its own kind of gentle and sparingly sublime presence. These types of building can be found scattered most residential neighbourhoods in Nizwa, but usually only as singles or in pairs. Their narrow and shaded passages held their own intimate charm, which in scale and proportion were clearly laid out for the benefit of ambulatory users rather than the more substantial, and somewhat crude, demands of motorized vehicles. In their dishelved state, the few blocks of the village become perhaps even more evocative and catalytic than they would be if pristine. As ruins the buildings leave room for the imagination to, literarily, fill the gaps. Here 'what ifs' abound. A collapsed roof becomes an eloquent pergola, a protruding beam turns into a (dust?!) diving board, a shaded cranny assumes the form of a cozy nook. The mud walls of the place engage a more intimate, perhaps even domestic, sensory paradigm, where the width of the passages separating the buildings is narrow enough to allow one to run ones fingers simultaneously across both of the flanking walls, catch an olfactory whiff (guided to you by these same walls) from the nearby date-palm plantation, and, even from a distance, apprehend the muffled, steel-framed, clatter of a bicyclist making his way across the adjacent gravel paved road...
The village captures and reflects some of the timeless qualities which remain essential in all typologies of building, regardless of age, style, culture, function, or status...
I found a displaced USB stick in a cranny of some jilted wardrobe, and came across a few, semi-blurry (atmospheric?!), photos of a forgotten vase design. The 'Comet' vase, which consists of a bundle of hollow, extruded tear-drop shaped, funnels vertically staggered so that only three of the pointed base-tips touch the ground (forming thus a tripod stand). The vase was made through FDM, and was designed over ten years earlier (during my Parsons days) but had to wait for over a decade to see the light of day...
There are two versions of the vase. Version 'A' (shown above and immediately below) is closest to the original intended version. It has a more slender and elongated silhouette and was actually fabricated after version 'B' (shown further below) which, due to a fault in the original design's STL-file, resulted in the heads of the cones unwinding (making them appear like 'albino-carrots'). This was originally considered a small calamity, but was eventually reconfigured as a fabrication-technique-specific trait and was even used as a intended feature (a 'designed' fault) in some related designs that followed...
Came across this project a few days back and found it worthy to include here. It's a project by Marcelo Coelho and Amit Zoran at the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT which allows one to 'print' ones favourite food. I've featured earlier projects by FIG on the Kuwait School blog, as they seem to have a knack for producing interesting projects. It also reminds me, a bit, of a another project, this time produced by us, which deals with various gustatory elements in the context of additive manufacturing...
The source of this submission can be accessed by clicking here...
I've decided to include the short video snippets above and below as an addendum and continuation to some of the themes touched upon earlier in this blog (click here, or scroll down a bit, and here for direct links). Beyond the fact that the gentleman in the video above sounds disturbingly much like Kermit the Frog, his presentation touches upon some potentially truly exciting stuff... How these technologies will eventually trickle down into how we actually design stuff with computers remains to be seen, however these initial currently game based technologies can e considered the foundations of a more mature rendition of the, so called, 'Digital Crafts' in the truest sense of the term. The begin suggesting an capability to design within a remit where true physiological/ empirical skills, perceptual nuances and intuitive physical dexterity (visceral idiosyncrasies) can begin to play a more enriching role when conceiving something through a computer... As these abilities advance in parallel with our capabilities to directly (CAD/ CAM) fabricate what's designed, one can truly begin to claim that a new paradigm of digital design is at our door-step (at least I'd like to think so) - Digital Design 3.0 (DigiDes. 1.0 = CAD; DigiDes. 2.0 = BIM; DigiDes. 3.0 = 'Craft-CAD')...
For some reason I'm not able to embed the NYT video, which is actually a bit more telling than the clip above, into the post, so instead it has to be accessed by clicking here...
There are a few of these buildings around various Kuwait neighbourhoods, but this one, in Raas Al-Salmiya, is probably my favourite, possibly because I used to live in Salmiya a number of years back and came across it almost daily, but also because it's amongst the few buildings in Kuwait which, due to it (at least at the moment) not having too much competition height-wise from its neighbouring buildings, can be easily seen from a distance and viewed from all angles, allowing for an inverted panoramic view, of sorts, to develop, with its tower acting as the districts center-point. Here its extruded blockiness is an advantage, as its fragmented concrete planes capture, and almost seem entertained by, Kuwait's roaming sun that provide it with a remarkable graphical (almost 'bitmap-ish', Hugh Ferriss-like contrast and) quality, something that makes its various sides clearly distinguishable from each other when viewed from the East, West, South or North...
I had the privilege of making the (virtual) acquaintance of the digital artist/ designer Mr. Muqeem Khan a while back, thanks to an introduction by architect Dr. Gisela Loehlein, who is heading the Development Office at AUS. Muqeem is currently a researcher and Assistant Professor at VCU Qatar, involved in some very interesting projects... The included clip above shows one of his projects he's been developing. What I find exciting about what Muqeem is exploring is how it provides a 'live' and dynamic link between the physical and virtual world. Also, with movies such as Avatar (which I haven't yet seen) and Gamer (which I have) currently on the movie-screens, which both provide suggestions for where research such as Muqeem's can eventually can take us, one has to wonder what impact this type of technology will have on our conception and realization of our built environments. From a more detailed perspective, This type of research (and the movies) also explore the, almost osmotic, transcendence of a more comprehensive perceptual merger of interfacing between the 'master-servant' (controller-controlled) roles, it's interesting to imagine how these types of interfaces will eventually affect and benefit the way we design, and theorize about experiencing, things...
This is a topic already explored a few years back by the author William Gibson (of Neuromancer & Johnny Mnemonic fame) in his book Spook Country, which seems now to be in the process of being actualized (a somewhat related topic was also explored a while back on the Kuwait School blog, debating a project by Dr. Pattie Maes, which can be accessed by clicking here).
I'm looking forward to the day (probably in the not too distant future) when, be it on a compact computer or a wide-screen mobile (cell-phone), one can get accurate and dynamic volumetric 3D depiction of a virtual object placed within a 'actual space' which responds and reacts dynamically (probably through GPS) to ones movements. In other words, say that you have designed a building and wish to gain a more direct (beta) experience of it before commencing with its construction. All you would have to do is download your design onto your mini-computer or mobile, and, once on site, view and 'walk around' and the even into your virtual building design in real time whilst observing (& snagging) its various spaces and features on the screen... Or it could also just provide a more direct guidance system (a better alternative to the plan-based , top-view, current GPS 's) for finding your way from point A to B (as seen in the image below)...
Just follow the (moving?!) arrows to your destination...
The clip below, particularly the last 30 seconds, touch upon the abovementioned, granted here through the medium of a photo-copy salesman (the first 3 minutes need only be watched by CAD-Heads). This example only seems to be able to apply 3D virtual objects to 2D images but, as said, I'm sure these will soon be interactive (a medium combining the responsive properties of the video above with the mobility of the clip below, seamlessly blending the qualities of both)... How these types of devices and interfaces, in combination with more logistical systems such as BIM and the various CAD/CAM fabrication methods will impact the way we design our environments remains to be seen. But the next decade or two will be interesting times to be practising design and architecture...
Two open areas, currently used as parking lots (but why not one day as, say, a place for a Organic Farmer's Market, or Second-hand Furniture Market - places that lend themselves for strolling, something this proposal aims to encourage...
A few additional panoramas of some of the plots adjacent to SAM (Salem Al-Mubarbak) Street, which introduce their own challenges and potentials to the development of the area. SAM St. and its surroundings contain so many interesting and unique qualities which are difficult to find elsewhere in Kuwait. As a district it still, even after some extended demolishing, a distinct character of its own that, as it stands, is hanging by a thread - if too much additional demolishing is done a threshold will at some stage be breached beyond which what this neighbourhood still currently is, will inevitably be lost...
The musings on this blog about SAM Street are an attempt to understand what makes this area so special, and an initial shot at proposing how what it has could be developed to accommodate a viable future...
The included panoramas start at the Eastern end of the proposed pedestrianized zone and move westward, towards the 4th Ring Road. The parking lot at the western end (by the large ad billboards) hasn't been included as I forgot to photograph it properly...
Please click on the images to enlarge them...
The demolished back lot behind the Educational Book-store...
Above and below - Two views of the demolished open area - one looking from, the other towards, SAM street - located roughly halfway down the proposed stretch of the SAM Street pedestrianized zone...
The paved central square between this stretch of the street's two U-turns...
This submission has also been featured in the Kuwait School blog.
Happy New Year Everyone... May the coming year be a merry one, and tomorrow, may your morning after the night before be like the day before the night before...
The other week I had the privilege of visiting the School of Architecture and Design (SA+D) at the American University of Sharjah (AUS). I attended two end-of-the-term juries. The first day was with Professor Mehdi Sabet, whose class of about ten Interior Design students had designed a set of proposals for a new Fashion Institute in Istanbul. The second day I attended a final, fifth year, class with Professor George Katodrytis (who also was one of the keynote speakers at the 2007 conference, Sources of Architectural Form, organized by Kuwait's own Dr. Hussain Dashti). His class, of about seventeen students made various experimental research/ design proposals for various locales in the Middle-East.
The AUS campus. The SA+D building can be seen to the far left...
Regardless of how one feels about the stylings of the AUS Campus, which touches upon a orientalist rendition of PoMo, the campus itself is impressive - with its vast vistas of granite paving, water-fountains, and regulated rows of palm-trees filling the views between the delicately bulky buildings. The SA+D building, which can be seen in the image above to the left of the central fountain, peforms the role of a Venturian (Scott-Brownian) 'decorated shed' of sorts, with an ornate outer shell within which a surprisingly ascetic, almost raw, but fully functional, interior is contained.
Above and below - Further views of the AUS campus...
The facilities of the SA+D are the most comprehensive (and impressive) I've come across in the region, with a generous allocations of studio spaces, wrapped around a central atrium (see image below) where each student has his or her own desk space, access to well equipped computer studios and printing rooms, a well outfitted wood-workshop, a number of gallery spaces, and 'crit' rooms designed specifically for the purpose of design jurys. They are also about to put down a considerable investment into developing and updating their digital fabrication lab, something I found particularly interesting...
Above and below - The cental atrium of the SA+D building around which the students' desk spaces are wrapped...
During my two days of juries I came across a vast array of striking work - imaginative and implementable designs, as well as more conceptual and explorative conceptions, most of which were realized and presented in a truly accomplished, comprehensive and well executed fashion. It's always a good sign when, even after an extended day of reviews, one steps out into the cool evening air still excited, and almost impatient to continue the discussions and discourses triggered by the day's experiences...
Above - Gestural feedback provided by one of the visiting jurors at Professor Mehdi Sabet's class. Below - A captured moment during Professor George Katodrytis' final review (GK, wearing black, can be seen inspecting a prototype in the middle)...
Other architectural schools in the region have much to learn form the SA+D at AUS. The facilities, the staff, programmes and research collaborations conducted with other international institutions by the staff and students of SA+D show a level of commitment and dedication to the advancement, exploration and inquisitiveness to the discipline of architecture which I haven't, as of yet, come across in the Middle-East. Polemic approaches are encouraged, experimental paradigms promoted, whilst still making sure the students are aware of the architectural basics. The level and passion at which the various discourses are pursued at the SA+D is something quite unique, and something which distinguish it from its fellow regional institutions. It is already dictating and cultivating its own agenda rather than merely pursuing and trying to catch up with the rest of the world - it's become a leader rather than a follower, and that's something truly rare here...
A big thank you also to Dr. Gisela Loehlein, head of the AUS Development Office for, well, everything...
Above and below - Samples of AUS SA+D student work...
A drawing class sketching one of the campus buildings...
A 'walk-through' installation located by the back entrance to the SA+D building...
This blog is maintained and predominantly written by Dr. Thomas Modeen, partner of Architects Independent, which he founded with his wife Maysaa Al-Mumin in Kuwait in the Fall of 2008. The practice also has a base, and its origins, in London, where it's known as Independent Architects, which is headed by Paul Brady and Eng Ling Ho. The blog aims to provide a personalized outline of all our practice and discipline related escapades.
ArchitectsIndependent/ Independent Architects are a research based architecture and design practice that retains a equal and collaborative footing within both practice and academia, with strong links to various academic and research facilities around the world. Our current interest involve the use of various computing based design methods and tools in the realization of physical builds (using both subtractive and additive CAD-CAM methods).
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