HK-SmarTowers 2014
"Rethinking Figure Ground @ Smart Geometry 2014"
HK_smarTOWERS was one out of ten workshop clusters at Smart Geometry 2014 hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Drawing on the ubiquity of the high rise in Hong Kong, the cluster explored the opportunities of harnessing large amounts of data from this building typology and managing it by means of 3D geometry as a storage medium. The Cluster was divided into two groups working on two approaches:
Group1: Tower_Data Mining - focused on the gathering, analysis and visualization of complex data from existing towers. A UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), combined with light weight sensors, was utilized as a novel and affordable mean to harvest data from the urban setting.
Group2: Tower_Data Construction – looked at how graphical data such as figure ground conditions can inform tower massing strategies and structural organization to arrive at novel solutions that incorporate open space. The cluster was addressing issues of standardization, mass production and customization by utilizing intelligent digital design systems. The skins of the final tower outcomes were influenced and organized by the environmental data harnessed by Group 1. The final prototypes were built using 3d print and laser cut components.
Both groups used the Elefront plugin for Grasshopper, which through the embedding of information into the Rhino model allows for the collaborative creation of large, data rich models to be used for analysis and construction of architectural systems.
Credits:
Cluster Champions:
Christian J. Lange (Rocker Lange Architects),Assistant Professor at HKU
Jason Carlow, Assistant Professor at HKU
Ramon van der Heijden, Front Inc Hong Kong
Alan Tai, Front Inc Hong Kong
Gustav Fagerström, Buro Happold New York
Cluster Collaborators:
Marco Juliani, Megan Ng, Oliver Thomas, Piotr Baszynski, Luca Maccarinelli, Binsun Hu, Amos Chan, Vincent Ip, Albert Lo, Riyad Joucka, Mariane de Souza, Alison Li, Xinliu Huang
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