Time moves fast as we stretch and bend ourselves into the 5th urban dimension in a pure act of mental yoga. Evening lectures by Yu Kui and Daniel Gillen (MAD), Christoph Klemmt (Orproject) and Eva Castro (Plasma + Groundlab) cast yet another light on Architecture in China – a light so intense it knocks some of us out… On to the finale!
A vast barren wasteland for a site, 2 hours away by car as we travel through a never ending city. Developer’s security guards scare away those curious about the virtually abandoned urban village in decay. A striking contrast with Beijing’s historic and recent icons!
Talking about intensity! On top of the non-stop intense tooling sessions and the conceptual mind bending in studio students and teaching staff are bombarded with eye-opening lectures and seminars by Yan Gao (dot-A), Brendon Carlin (AA), Kristof Crolla (LEAD) Rolando Rodriguez-Leal (Zaha Hadid Architects), Xu Feng (XWG), Chen Chen & Nicola Saladino (ReMix) and Xu Dongxin (Crystal). As the vivid debates bring the AA’s enthusiastic criticality to China, Beijing brings its unique position to the discussion table!
In its dark, hidden underground lair the feisty dragon slowly emerges from a series of uniquely shaped, CNC routed, intersecting plywood shells, all bent onto one single mold. Isn’t she beautiful – isn’t she grand?! Thanks so much to the spectacular team of students, collaborators, supporting institutes and sponsors for making this week possible! You area amazing! :-)
After intense nights of scripting the CNC machines are finally droning loudly as the first components are being shaped in a perfectly smooth cycle of cutting-heating-forming-checking-slotting-etc. Soon the first assembled layers will start to emerge!
This place rocks like granite: a ginormous CNC press is spitting out the first test pieces for a 1:1 prototype and we’re off to an all-nighter of scripting to implement joint optimisation and automate the geometry unrolling. 12h to go until the file-to-factory deadline – and that’s pushing it!
contact
By democratic vote a series of proposals has been narrowed down to a final pavilion design, now on its way towards full-scale construction. The material, UPM’s brand-new post-formable plywood sheets, is so fresh, unexplored and untouched that the close monitoring, guidance and supervision by their team of engineers is highly welcome. Constant design tweakings following feedback form physical component and material tests add to the caffeine-induced high... BOOYAKASHA!
The 3rd Finland Workshop kick-off opening lecture “Material Design & Digital Fabrication” by Sebastien Delagrange set the tone and linked favorite, highly-respected “oldies” with today’s ongoing architectural design debate. Laptops, knives and cardboard were introduced into the design arena the next day and off we go for a week of material design & digital fabrication intensity!
What a DAY! An avalanche of digital experiments filled the room, spawning captivating debates with visiting jurors on the various challenges urban design is facing and how explorative tools can help in broadening discussions and horizons. While outside the sun was burning one team after another passed the review presenting their visions for the future City on the Sea and at the end of the day, exhausted but satisfied, everybody finally submerged themselves into Shanghai’s vibrantly wild nightlife. What a DAY!
With one more day and night to go the tension rises…
The only change perceivable in the physical world seems to be the expressions on the student’s faces gradually growing more tired and intense and the thickening of the air in the humming studio hive… This however could not be further away from the digital reality brewing behind the screens: with “Density On The Sea” as a studio topic uncharted types of extreme urbanism are bravely being explored and fascinating interventions gradually emerge in response to Shanghai’s rising sea levels. 2 Days before the final jury and we’re building up some serious momentum!
As studio projects slowly take shape the Symposium “Rising Seas and the City” supplies an avalanche of data, facts and figures on the reality Shanghai faces in the next decades. Prominent agents like Hou Yiling of the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau, Wang Qian, of the WWF and Chen Weizheng, Tongji’s Expert in River Estuary City Planning share a mission to shape the future urbanism of China and present their speculations and projections, all moderated by Su Yunsheng, Nigel Reading, and Tom Verebes. MORE INTENSITY!!!!
A two hour drive through the countryside took 88 staff and students to the Venice of the east, the gorgeous watertown of Tong Li, followed by a trip to the overwhelmingly beautiful traditional Chinese gardens of Sushou. Boiling heat and a numbing humidity so badly took the edge off the most hardened local students only a massive air-conditioned group dinner fest succeeded in reviving the dampened spirits!
Intermediate presentations of students’ first dazzling digital design sketches spawned interesting debates on how these amazingly nimble and diversified freshly-learned tools can now be taken forward more concretely in the second part of the workshop. With all the teams reinforced with a second design tutor we shifted into a higher gear and evening lectures on own work by teaching staff Zhang Xiaoyi, Lydia Kim and Bittor Sanchez Monasterio broadened perspectives on where tools can be applied in practice. MORE INTENSITY!
Intermediate presentations of students’ first dazzling digital design sketches spawned an interesting debate on how these amazingly nimble and diversified freshly learned tools can now be taken forward more concretely in the second part of the workshop. With all the teams now reinforced by a second tutor we shifted into a higher gear and evening lectures on own work by teaching staff Zhang Xiaoyi, Lydia Kim and Bittor Sanchez Monasterio broadened the perspective on where tools can be applied in practice.
Evening lectures by Wang Xin, Immanuel Koh and Daniel Gillen were a fascinating yet short moment of relief for the 82 happy faces who cheerfully enter the first long "night before the presentation"….
All studios kicked off with fierce intensity, cramming as much tools and tricks into the limited time-frame as possible. Dazzled faces, confused eyes and racing minds process as quickly as possible as we gear up for actual design. Evening lectures by Kristof Crolla and Xu Feng discuss the challenges of applied digital tools in practise through a presentation of own work and the exhibition opening of “DigitalFUTURE” at Tongji University sets the bar of what is expected of this week by showcasing current work by digitally explorative practices in and around China.
Programme director Tom Verebes could not have wished for a more appropriate opening day for the City on the Sea workshop: tropically hot torrential downpours inundated the hotel area within minutes, forcing staff and students into acrobatics to make it to the workshop introduction in time. Studio brief presentations by tutors Ercu Gorgul, Wang Xin, Immanuel Koh, Xu Feng, Daniel Gillen and Kristof Crolla set the tone for what promises to be a week of intense submergence in the world of digital design. Tom Verebes’ evening lecture opens this week’s core debate by skilfully challenging today’s notions of Urbanism and Urban Design.
The HKU Summer Workshop "Digital Practice" is running full-force now! For daily updates: check the blog on www.dreamationworks.com/?cat=10
Please join us tonight for our closing presentation from 5.30pm onward in the lobby of the John Moffat Building at the University of the Witwatersrand!
The unforgiving nature of the material world can only be countered by the creative combination of inventive on-site re-detailing, power tools, stamina and brutal force. While packs of yelling Wits frat-students hold wild initiation ceremonies in the background we boldly hammer deep into the night with nothing but our high spirit and Joburg’s ruthless blistering winter cold to keep us company. 1 day to go until the final presentation!
Generative tools are amazing in generating vast amounts of highly complex components in the blink of an eye. Contractor Space however is a wee bit more resilient and the only way to find out – again – is the hard way. Over-stretched cutting times, underestimated component counts, citywide gasoline strikes and others competing for our machine time slots made the day “challenging”. Luckily the amazing karma of Geometry Gym scripting Guru Jon Mirtschin refuelled everyone’s blind faith in eventual success, leading to intense premature celebrations in the more notorious parts of town.
When Catherine O’Hara said “Night time is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep.” it was unlikely she was talking about entire teams of architects pulling through. With all of the cutting files for 1 structure sent through to the factory and the second structure's drawing set on the way the studio filled with a quiet uncomfortable calm.
Yet another gorgeous winter day with "Red Hot Pokers" brightly colouring the urban landscape. The designs are taking their final shape as construction and assembly challenges surface one by one through cardboard laser-cut test models. While parametric models are being fine-tuned test pieces return from the CNC factory: now we can start designing details that incorporate material and fabrication limitations. A long night ahead before final cutting files can start to be sent off to the factory tomorrow.
Yesterday local police used rubber bullets to disperse protesters in the township of Tshiame outside the Free State town of Harrismith as residents were furious that municipality expected them to buy vacant plots with only toilets (!) for R12000 each to build their slums. In the mean town we worked our way through round 2 of the designs, narrowing down the proposals for cheap housing solutions using parametric design and CNC technology to 2 projects. Public lectures by Jeroen van Ameijde and Kristof Crolla only fuelled the fire!
First sets of ideas were pitched and then mashed up in a high-speed Pecha Kucha style presentation that reduced 9 initial student teams into 4 groups for round 2. An inspiring lecture by Dr. Dustin A. Tusnovics on the challenges of social housing in South Africa set the tone for the afternoon where we slowly worked towards concrete project proposals.
A spectalicious group lunch in last year’s workshop location “Arts On Main” – the more artsy fartsy upcoming part of town – followed a second morning nicely packed with software tutorials. Home security, neighbourhood watch and personal safety promptly became key project drivers after our local students shared their recent family “anecdotes”…
Day 2: Our first African Wildlife experience! All through the day dozens of Grasshoppers and Rhinos were showing tips ’n tricks on our laptop screens and projectors – the only heat sources in these freezing wintery buildings. Heavily armed with and gently confused by our digital tools we stride on.
And we’re OFF! Day 1 launched itself with a workshop introduction to 20 students from 4 different continents, all cosily gathered in a design studio where walls actually DID speak of the intellectual torments that usually take place there – we’ll have to leave our tag! A visit to the again shocking Hector Pieterson Museum followed, combined with a ride through the once dreadful now vibrant “Soweto” (South Western Township). This “Blacks Only” segregation area defines the highly political heart and start of the uprisings that abolished apartheid - an outrageous story that hardly seems to have made it across the world in the horrific details it deserves.
Especially arranged to welcome our freshly landed HKU students at the airport arrivals: the sparkling colourful Soweto Gospel Choir! (strangely followed by Kylie Minogue who popped up out of the blue doing the locomotion). Then a tour to the gorgeous about-to-be-finished "Freedom Park" and a shocking confrontation with the Nation's violent recent history in the "Apartheid Museum" - omg: everybody should see that one as soon as possible.
There's no minute like last minute! A special "big up!" to both of you, the 2 London juvenile delinquents who permanently "borrowed" my laptop on my way here: it's extremely refreshing to be forced to rethink lecture content and topics under pressure. No seriously - it is! Also thanks, Hugh, for borrowing me yours: it'll be an awesome 10 days!
It's freezing cold and the crisp air shivers with excitement: with 3 more days to go the crew has landed in Johannesburg to wrap up final preparations for the "Digital Constructions" workshop! Keep your eyes open for daily updates!
And registrations are open for our 2nd workshop in awesome Joburg! Visit www.gsa.co.za to apply or check our research upcoming event section for more info. Images & video of our first South African workshop can be found here.
