Voronoi and Cellular Fragmentation

Voronoi: Mathematics and Architecture


A Voronoi diagram is the geometric partition of space into cells, (planar), where each cell contains a single point thats no closer to one particular object than to any others. Mediating boundaries and duals (Delaunay triangulations), they create cell-structure geometries.

Voronoi diagrams and logarithms have been recycled, generalized, reinvented and reimagined, being applied over a variety of fields and professions. Diagrams allow for "spheres of influence" to be formed. Its an active-reactive enviroment, where for every partition there is a sizeable increase elsewhere.

It is an interesting exploration in dual relationships.


Utilization


In the use of the Acrylic Cells, there needs to be some underlying logic of articulation. Cells can not be arbitrarily deciphered and redeciphered. The Voronoi diagram allows for a flexibility in surface to be maintained as well as an underlying structure.

In response to the site, the Voronoi will partitian to conditions present such as sunlight and circulation; partitioning further where sunlight is present and less where it is not.

Voronoi Cellular Application

The Voronoi algorithm creates a connective web, which is not quite what the acrylic cells dictate tactily. Instead of creating an informed web it will help dictate cell shape and their interactions.

Informing the Cellular Construction on Site

The use of the Acrylic Cell material (Made from PETG Sheets and then thermoformed to a proper shape), has many benefits and then many issues.

Unlike any other material available under use of the DA Architects group, this one offers versatility in many fields of examination. Considering that this project deals with visuality and negotiation, this material will allow for site conditions to negotiate their dual qualities. It also allows for an interactive visual game to be formed between passerbys. Cells can be molded smaller or larger in response to predetermined site conditions; smaller cells in response to sunlight, wind, rain, and larger in response to spacial necessity. It also initiates a game of peek-a-boo with others. Cars driving by will get glimpses of figures walking through/around/by these structures and visa-verse.

Acrylic cells are not there to necessarily create formal spatial moves, but to facilitate the entry into these spaces. When together, they make a continuous surface that intercepts pedestrians at points of friction within the site (usually points where the pedestrian must decide which path to take next, place of entry, and places of exit). This surface then will lead them to the entrance of Slocum Hall and into its confines.

The issues that arrive however is how it interacts with the already existing site. The requisite of a secondary, site-relevant material poses an intriguing question of action-reaction. Perhaps in the presence of this cellular material, other materials warp and lose their own focus. Perhaps those materials begin to skin the skin?

Additionally, nixing any previous thoughts of stairwells, perhaps this material sweeps up the building and begins to reskin the surface, allowing for an interplay of interior and exterior conditions. Surfaces begin to mesh and intermesh, creating an intriguing condition of who is what and which is where.

Material Selection: Acrylic Cell

Acrylic Cells
(Structural PETG Cells)
Description:
PETG sheet has high stiffness, hardness, and toughness as well as good impact strength.
Unstressed PETG exhibits good resistance to dilute aqueous solutions of mineral acids, bases, salts, and soap. PETG is an excellent choice for applications that require durability, deep draw thermoforming, and clarity.

Sheets can be molded either through heat or cold reactors, shaping and hardening into clear, translucent, or opaque shells.

Contents:
Glycolised polyethylene terephthalate

Applications:
a variety of signage, packaging, industrial, and medical applications: electronics, medical braces, guards, glazing

Types/Sizses
Sizes – Thicknesses of from .020-inch to .500-inch. Sheets in two sizes, 48 by 96 inches and 60 by 96 inches.

Environmental:
100%recyclable

Limitations:
You must add UV stabilizers in order to use it outdoors.

Site Conditions

Site
Slocum Hall Boundaries:
Diagram that observes and takes notes of observable site boundaries as well as visual boundaries. Pink=Site, Green=Visual Blue=Internal

Entry
Site conditions show that the East Entry (which I am studying) is a neglected entry. People would much rather deviate and use the side entrances due to ease of use. On average, people tend to leave the building through it's main entrance opposed to entering through it.

Topography

Using a method I developed during an earlier stage of the project, during the study of the Lemon, I diagramed the site in terms of circulatory density. Two diagrams, one of the Midday circulation density and one at night begin to give outsiders a view into exactly how the site reacts on a daily basis to the fluxuation of people. The red being the highest point of density and the violet being the lowest. It is a common theme that there is the largest accumulation of poeple around the busstop and the least, regardless of time of day, in front of Slocum Hall.

Material Use

Material use in this project is vital. A quick list of potential materials:

Plyboo:

Acrylic Cells

Aluminum

Tensile Rope

Homasote

Rubber

Polycarbonate

Defining Skin

Week of Sept 15:
I have identified the term "Living Skin" as the possible architectural theory behind what I am going to pursue for this Slocum Hall intervention. Without a doubt in my mind, what I do will have to do something one way or antoher with Skin; the concern left now is defining what skin is.

Dictionary gives 36 definitions of Skin,
-noun
1. the external covering or integument of an animal body, esp. when soft and flexible..
4. any integumentary covering, casing, outer coating, or surface layer, as an investing membrane, the rind or peel of fruit, or a film on liquid: a skin of thin ice; the aluminum skin of an airplane.
–verb (used with object)
16. to strip or deprive of skin; flay; peel; husk.

Lemon
Yet none of these begin informing what I have already learned through detailed studies of a Lemon and its skin. A Lemon Skin changes with time; morphing shape, losing flexibility, and all around reversing the qualities originally associated with a lemon skin.

Article
Using the article Digital Skins; The Architecture of Surface by Alicia Imperiale, I am confronted by a writer who uses language that helps describe this organic condition.

>"Skin is the space of flux, of oscillating conditions." p.55
>"Smooth exchange, flow, continuous surface, skin, membranes, bubbles..." p.55
>"Because the system is networked, a change in any component of hte system is registered in other parts of the skin." p.61
>"Today some architects compress allusions to the depth of the interior into the surface or skin of a building." p. 56
>"The living skin varies dramatically as it adapts to the exigencies of the body--thick where the skeleton needs some padding to soften contact, hardened in response to friction." p. 56
>"Deleuzean thought has promoted smoother transitions and interactive exchanges across surfaces through serendipitous, temporary links that exist within buildings and sites." p.62


The language here begins to develop into this creature that fluxates and reacts upon a continuous surface. It has depth and fragility, tension and limpness.

Human Skin
Skin also protects; from climate and external influences.. It experiences Sensation; nerves that react to heat and cold, touch, pressure, vibration, and injury. It stores nutrients and water.

Skin has 3 primary layers:
waterproofing barrier,reactive layer
provides sense of touch/heat/function
insulation

Skin is flexible and responsive,

Living Skins; Problems, Definitions, and Applications

A Living Skin can be seen as many different things. It is important to establish definitions as well as basis for further review so that critique will not be relative.

Problems of a Lemon applied to Skin
-Time affecting the nature of architecture; Shrinking and expanding according to time.
-Skin thickness in response to friction; lenses of site

Design informed by site, conditions, climate, time of year, time of day, circulation

A college can be seen as a living body, a living layer of the university.

Flux of Space, Flexible Design.

Ex. 2 Boundary Logics

Herzog and Demeuron; Screen Techniques that focus view on city and limit sunlight

Rebuilding, incorporating, connecting intensifying-these words describe not only the physical character of these projects but also their programmatic function. They are instruments, or agents, for unfolding new urban realities..." Alex Wall, Programming the Urban Surface, p244, in Corner, ed., Recovering Landscape

This exercise involves mapping a site, evaluating the different forces that play upon its boundaries, and situating a project within that site that will act as an agent of engagement. Ultimately, this will involve the creation of an insertion into an existing context, with he mission to increase areas of engagement of Slocum Hall into its surrounding context.

Herzog and Demeuron; Designing a continuous surface based on water molecules

Reworking the Entry:
You are asked to modify the threshold condition on one of the four sides of Slocum Hall in order to connect previously disconnected areas of the site through addition and subtraction of surfaces, determining a new pattern of organization for the site.
Some rules: Major work on the building per se, that is, addition or subtraction on the facade and nearby areas, may occur in a zone of five feet measured on either side of the center line of the building wall, that is, a ten-food-wide slot, centered on the center-line of the wall. Other surface treatments which extend beyond or into the building may extend as far as necessary for your project. You may ADD surface elements, such as ramps, stairs and benches, so long as they are conceptually a part of the ground/surface condition. You may subtract elements such as parts of existing walls and ground planes. you may layer surfaces. Your 'new pattern of organization' must make sense of, and extend the possibilities of, the logics you have uncovered on the site in part one of this exercise. Make maximum change with minimum of elements.

Herzog and Demeuron; Surfaces of Porosity

Programmatic Concerns
-Surface continuities/flows from inside to outside or across apparently disparate parts of the site, not towards the elimination of difference, but towards forming new pairings and logical continuities between the pairings.
-Systematic deployment of two primary materials: 1)One material that already exists in Slocum Hall and 2) Use of one new material used by an architect you study.
-Waiting, as in waiting for friends, smoking, or bus waiting; and watching, as in people-watching, small scale theater, video screens, exterior feeds of interior conditions, or of student work. You must consider dimensional logics of such elements.
-Movement, as in the movement of may bodies in and out of the building for class, movement of casual visitors to view the works inside the building or use the cafe, and the exiting of many bodies in case of emergency.

Each Scheme should consider, as appropriate:
-Handicapped accessibility

Process:
Use the same technique of carefully configured B+W photographs and diagrams to describe each design iteration.

Issued: Friday, September 12, 2008
Due: First iteration due Tuesday, Sept. 16
Final: Thursday, Sept. 25