Making 2

My investigations into column architecture, and my making exercise 1, led me to explore means to remove the column from architecture and create a floating architecture, in my Making exercise 2.  The first exercise focused on replacing the column, a compression member, with tension members.  This investigation, originally starting out as column/mast structures, becoming a model in which the columns were completely suspended from the ground plane, continuing to act in compression, only be held in place by tension members.  My other investigations within this genre included using a tensile fabric combined with compression members to create floating architecture.  The surfaces stabilized the slab very well and proved capable of attaching to planes both above and below the surface.  The columns were not eliminated, only the means of tensioning was changed.

Parallel to this investigation was research into the history of floating in architecture; this categorizes and somewhat grounds my belief that floating is an inherent part of architectural expression after the industrial revolution.  With this interest in floating architecture, I created a few drawings to give myself some momentum and motivation within this experience.

My next investigations will consider material properties and their ability to float architecture.  This investigation will look primarily at the phenomenological aspects of floating, focusing on using materials that float planes.  

Making 1

My first series of investigations focuses on minimal column arrangements.  From the models, the obvious difficulties with a minimalistic approach is how to create spaces on the floorplan.  The columns create a dense field which, without structural analysis, or manipulating a physical model, is difficult to analyze where to place them.  These columns deny modernism in that they accept the condition of the field and prefer a dispersal of columns as opposed to singular, more efficient structure.  Perception plays a key role in this structural system, as it provides a point of incredulity; most students don't believe the thin columns to be paper, analog to the experience of the steel columns in the KAIT.  Further investigations would look at scaling up, using more real materials, such as metal to support a slab, and thinking consciously of both surface treatment and the roof plane, the basic components of this architecture.  An additional means of investigation would be to extrapolate this to the building scale, such as that of the skyscraper by Fujimoto.  I think these projects are essentially structure as a material effect.

With the surface investigations, the most interesting parts to come out of this are the "tail" columns, which use a surface to create a central support structure while also providing some part of the envelope or space defining enclosure.  Transformations of these focused on bringing surfaces together.  For these models, further investigation can be done into column, surface hybrid, including one that makes smaller, surface columns.  Investigations from the column end focused on motion as the surface quality to be investigated. 

For the fabric investigations, these were interesting looks at ways to create three dimensional grids and spaces.  Not particularly columnar, they should be investigated further using two sheets and a conscious methodology.

When you start again tomorrow, you need to redefine how you are measuring and evaluating the projects?  Should you start with "x" long piece of mesh, making the most possible vertical "columns"?, an horizontal orientation of the field? What does a field beam look like?  If you continue vertically, as you probably should, do you start to explore the formation of space between these, the idea of border or path? I think here you should maybe also have a fixed amount of material to play with.  With the column fields can you build upon the idea of motion?  For the fabric, continue using two sheets, but explore with alternative variations between these two models.

What is your primary position? To build dexterity in the use of, fabrication of, and conception of column in a wide and robust way.  Underlying this an emphasis on structure in architecture.