Contemporary Processes In

Architecture

Unit-01
Introduction

Prepared by : Prof. Ar. Abita Robin

Contemporary processes in architecture
• Contemporary theories of media and their
influence on the perception of space and
architecture
• Technology and art
• Technology and architecture
• Technology as rhetoric
• Digital technology and architecture.
Architecture in the age of electronic media
Vision unfolding- Peter Eisenmann

• During the fifty years since the second world war , a paradigm shift has taken place
that should have profoundly affected architecture; this was the shift from mechanical
paradigm to the electronic one.
• Architecture has traditionally been a structure of reality, Metaphors such as house and
home, bricks and mortar, foundations and shelter attest to architecture's role in
defining what we consider to be real .“clearly, a change in the everyday concepts
of reality should have had some affects on architecture”.
• An example is established between a physical photo and a fax. Human vision controls
the photo, while the fax no longer requires a subject to interpret it. There is also a
blurring of boundaries between original and copy for the electronic paradigm; the
original fax is no longer distinguishable. Ultimately this questions the role of site as a
natural or given phenomena.
VISION UNFOLDING- PETER EISENMANN

• The electronic paradigm directs a powerful challenge to architecture because it

defines reality in terms of media and simulation.
• He states that since architecture has been dominated by the mechanics of vision,
which is the result of importation of perspective, it has resisted the change from
mechanical to electrical. In this case, Eisenman notes that architecture has attempted
to overcome its rationalizing vision from time to time.
• However, architecture never sufficiently considered the issue of vision because it
stayed within the concept of subject. “The hierarchy inherent in all architectural space
begins as a structure for the mind’s eye.”
• “Architecture will continue to stand up, to deal with gravity, to have “four walls”. But
these four walls no longer need to be expressive of the mechanical paradigm.”
• From time to time architecture has attempted to overcome its rationalizing vision ; for
example the church of San Vitale in Ravenna , the solitary column blocking the entry
or the incomplete groin vaulting is an attempt to signal a change from Pagan to a
Christian architecture.
VISION UNFOLDING- PETER EISENMANN

• Piranesi created similar effects with his architectural projections. Piranesi diffracted
the monocular subject by creating perspective visions with multiple vanishing points
so that there was no way of correlating what was seen into a unified whole.
• Equally cubism attempted to deflect the relationship between a monocular subject
and the object. The subject could no longer put the painting into some meaningful
structure through the use of perspective. Cubism used a non monocular perspective
condition : it flattened objects the edges, it upturned objects, it undermined the
stability of the picture plane. Architecture attempted similar dislocations through
constructivism and its own, Albeit normalizing , version of cubism- the international
style.
TECHNOLOGY and ARCHITECTURE
INTRODUCTION
The architect has to possess the faculty of scientific knowledge with that of imaginative
thought. He has to know all about building materials, their occurrence, characteristics,
treatment and use as well as the relative construction methods.
EGYPT
•The earliest civilization is attributed to Egypt and it was in this land that rectangular
architecture had its origin. They fashioned lumps of clay into bricks to build a wall.
• The great pyramid at Gizeh has been described as the greatest and most accurate
structure ever built. Each of its four sides is almost a perfect equilateral triangle, with its apex
481 feet above the base.
•This monument which is more like a mountain of stone would not have been possible, if the
Egyptians were not well up in their knowledge of menstruation and geometry to execute
such a huge and accurate structure confidently.
•In the Egyptian era and methods of construction alone imposed themselves as the basis of
design. In Egyptian architecture, we find the exposition of the post and lintel principle, with
a large margin of safety.
TECHNOLOGY and ARCHITECTURE
GREECE
•In the architecture of ancient Greece, we find the post and lintel principle as that of the
Egyptians but on account of their higher cultural standards and technical knowledge.
•Refinement in the proportion of every member which was further enriched by sculptural
decorations, Since life was lived out of doors, the Greeks designed for external rather than
internal effect of their structures.
•They employed the beam as a dominating clement in construction. Here was beauty
recognized as an adjunct of building called for in every structure.
ROMANS
•The achievement of Romans consisted in covering large spans. Inspired by the demands
for huge spaces where crowds could assemble, they evolved the arch and the vault.
•From the engineering standpoint the Romans made a wonderful discovery in concrete
and their concrete which was derived from volcanic products was exceptionally strong.
This enabled them to build cheaply and rapidly on a vast scale
TECHNOLOGY and ARCHITECTURE
Without technological development, the architectural requirements of Romans might
have remained unachieved .
MEDIVAL AGES
•The medieval engineers invented the domes as their new system of roofing over large
spaces. The arts of stone carving and glass painting were perfect with the sole aim of
enriching their structures. The medieval engineers showed better understanding of the
mechanics of construction than the Romans.
•The Gothic structural system was based upon a thorough knowledge of engineering
principles in general and their application to masonry practice in particular.
•Out of medieval structure emerged the important suggestion of skeleton framing, which
reappeared as a principle of building technique, which we find today in the practice of
modern architecture.
TECHNOLOGY and ARCHITECTURE
NINETEENTH CENTURY- INDUSTRIAL ERA
•There were huge requiring demand to enclose large space ,the concept of cast iron
and rolling sheet was introduced during industrial era to construct new structural
facilities, Factory buildings, warehouses and railway stations.
•Joseph Paxton, in his crystal palace built in the year 1851, showed how iron framing and
sheets of glass could produce a marvel of airy grace and speciousness by the use of
factory-produced building components. Through the Swiss Engineer Robert Maillart was
found reinforced concrete as a structural material of great elegance and plasticity.
TODAY

Today, we have structural systems, which can exercise complete control over space.
We can span huge voids, we can enclose vertical space to any height. New methods
of analysis have shown the way of designing structures as live structures, in which each
member contributes its share to the stability of the whole and this is made with the
minimum expenditure of material, without depriving modern architecture of its
expression.
TECHNOLOGY and ARCHITECTURE
•Modern trend in architecture is to give face treatment as a means to express the
purpose for which the building is created.
•In the olden days, the system of ornamentation, that was employed to cover up the
massive structure, was the result of the efforts of craftsmen, carving and modelling for the
enrichment of surfaces which otherwise looked depressing on account of the huge inert
masses, considered so essential for strength. With increased technological knowledge
and consequent decreased factors of ignorance, the structures have less inert masses
and therefore less need for such decoration. This is the reason why the modern buildings
are plainer and depend upon precision of outline and perfection of finish for their
architectural effect.
•There is a saying that necessity is the mother of invention. In Britain, during the second
world war, numerous prefabricated houses were put up to meet housing shortage. Even
in India, production of prefabs was given a trial to meet a similar situation.
TECHNOLOGY and ARCHITECTURE
SUMMARY
1. Technological progress has always influenced the architecture of any period.
2. Such technological progress has consisted in the periodical advent of:—
(a) new materials of construction—either natural or artificial
(b) new methods or processes or construction including finishing, etc.,
(c) new conceptions, theories, calculations and design principles, as a result of
the continuous research,
(d) new demands made by almost every sphere of human activity, from simple
protection for residential purposes to the most complex of industrial and other structures of
modern times.
3. Without the utilization of the results of technological development, the architectural
requirements of strength, permanence, beauty, economy and efficiency could not have
been secured in architectural work.
TECHNOLOGY and ARCHITECTURE
4. Architecture, without technological progress, would have stayed stagnant,
stereotyped and incapable of the many artifices, which impart truth, beauty and
goodness to structures.
5. Technology holds architecture in its grip and every architect has, therefore, to
remain abreast of all technical developments in the matter of design, construction
and materials, if he has to keep himself professionally up to date.
Technology and architecture
• Technology follows design demand, rather than design adjusting to available new
technology.
• The use of technologies in the designing process adds a new dimension to the
architectural product, which enables us to materialize our ideas that are not fully
expressed. However, the challenge enables us to hold on to our human identity and
not allow the technology to distance the architect from performing his/her original role,
which is the construction of Earth and making human existence on it safe and
constructive.
• When the architect uses the computer in the process of design and representation, he
connects to it creating a coupled cognitive system, where the man and the machine
exchange ideas and information. The elements of the system affect one another that
each changes by the change of the other. Thus, any change that occurs on the
computer or the designer leads to a change in the outcome of the design
Technology and architecture
• In Contemporary process- where the word “Process” implies a particular mode of
taught as well a particular technology or material method of production, to which it is
inextricably linked.
• Modern technology has shaped the world in which we live, For many architects,
modern technology is till indelibly associated with the architecture of the FIRST
MACHINE AGE.
• Architectural technology, or building technology, is the application of technology to
the design of buildings. It is a component of architecture and building engineering and
is sometimes viewed as a distinct discipline or sub-category.
Technology and architecture
• New materials and technologies generated new design challenges and construction
methods throughout the evolution of building, especially since the advent of
industrialization in the 19th century. Architectural technology is related to the different
elements of a building and their interactions, and is closely aligned with advances
in building science.
• Architectural technology can be summarized as the "technical design and expertise
used in the application and integration of construction technologies in the building
design process."The ability to analyses, synthesize and evaluate building design factors
in order to produce efficient and effective technical design solutions which satisfy
performance, production and procurement criteria.
Digital technology and architecture
•The digital design technology has facilitated the representation of the design and
architectural drawing which were accomplished manually before providing these
means. However, the major effect of this technology was on the design process itself.
•Nowadays, most of the architectures use programs not only to develop ideas but also
to draw and represent them. These programs can coordinate between several data
and different types of information with which the program is provided to form
streamlined and regular shapes without defining specific functions of them.
• They allows creating organic and dynamic in a precise and organized way, which
helps in transferring the ideas from the architect’s imagination to reality.
•The shapes are generated from information on the environment or any other source of
factors which could affect the design through converting them into formulations and
charts, then applying them on the design to change the shape. This leads to generating
new architectural patterns which have never existed before such as Folding,
Deconstruction, and Digital.
Digital technology and architecture
• For several years, many architects have been famous for being biased towards
computers and excellent in manipulating them to highlight their distinctive design ideas.
• For example, Zaha Hadid who has been very famous for her designs which gained
international acknowledgement and appreciation, and at an early stage of her
professional career, she could not use the computer in her designs as modern design
software was not available at that time.
•Zaha Hadid was expressing her ideas through drawings and works of art. However, by
developing design software and the possibility of its use in the design process, she has
been able to represent her designs more realistically through digital solids. This has
enabled her to transform her paintings into architectural designs including schemes,
sections, and all of the engineering drawings required for construction.
Digital technology and architecture
•Example; Architect Frank gehry, the famous designer of the Guggenheim Museum in
Spain, whose career path has been greatly influenced by the design technology in his
career.Gehry started by building models using cartoon, wood, and different materials.
Then, advanced devices scan the models and turn them into digital images. Images are
transferred to CATIA Program which is developed to manufacture aircrafts in Dassault Hall
Company in order that the design team are able to turn them into a digital models, and
then translate then into engineering drawings.
Digital technology and architecture
IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY
•One of the major impacts of technology on the digital design is the distance created
between the designer and the architect. Thus, the design becomes more and more
visual. Architecture as a profession has the implicit ability to create this distance as it
consists of drawing but not constructing buildings.
• However, the manual drawing and the building of solids help to build a bridge
connecting the architect and their building. Nevertheless, using computers limits the
interaction between the architect and their building to just moving the mouse and
pressing the keys of the keyboard.
Digital technology and architecture
RESULT OF TECHNOLOGY

•One of the major results of using the computer in architecture is that these programs
encourage the selfishness of the designer
• The architect use their designs and buildings as means to express themselves.
According to Fraud, the human being uses external tools to expand their Narcissistic
control over the world.
•The new tools have expanded the architects’ ambition to the extent that this becomes
sometimes at the expense of the design requirements.
• Many of the architects realize these risks but unfortunately not all of them do.
TECHNOLOGY AS RHETORIC
INTRODUCTION
Rhetoric is the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing , especially the exploitation of
figures of speech and other compositional techniques.
Following are few buildings which are rhetoric
•Jewish Museum –Berlin- Danial Libeskind
•Imperial War museum – Manchester – UK
•Portugal ;MAAT museum- A monument for Corporate ego
•National Holocaust monument- Canada – Daniel Libeskind

JEWISH MUSEUM BERLIN- DANIEL LIBESKIND

The Jewish Museum Berlin, which opened to the public in 2001, exhibits the social, political and cultural
history of the Jews in Germany from the fourth century to the present, explicitly presenting and
integrating. for the first time in postwar Germany, the repercussions of the Holocaust. The new building
is housed next to the site of the original Prussian Court of Justice building which was completed in 1735
now serves as the entrance to the new building.
TECHNOLOGY AS RHETORIC JEWISH MUSEUM BERLIN-
DANIEL LIBESKIND

The building zigzags with its titanium-zinc

façade and features underground axes,
angled walls, and bare concrete “voids”
without heat or air-conditioning. With his
“Between the Lines” design, American
architect Daniel Libeskind did not want
simply to design a museum building, but to
recount German-Jewish history.
The visitor enters the Baroque
Kollegienhaus and then descends by
stairway through the dramatic Entry Void,
into the underground. The existing building
is tied to the new extension, through the
underground, thus preserving the
contradictory autonomy of both the old
and new structures on the surface
TECHNOLOGY AS RHETORIC JEWISH MUSEUM BERLIN-
DANIEL LIBESKIND

The descent leads to three underground axial routes, each of which tells a different story. The first
leads to a dead end – the Holocaust Tower. The second leads out of the building and into the
Garden of Exile and Emigration, remembering those who were forced to leave Berlin The third
and longest, traces a path leading to the Stair of Continuity, then up to the exhibition spaces of
the museum, emphasizing the continuum of history.
TECHNOLOGY AS RHETORIC JEWISH MUSEUM BERLIN-
DANIEL LIBESKIND

Void cuts through the zigzagging plan of the new

building and creates a space that embodies
absence. It is a straight line whose impenetrability
becomes the central focus around which
exhibitions are organized. In order to move from
one side of the museum to the other, visitors must
cross one of the 60 bridges that open onto this
void.
TECHNOLOGY AS RHETORIC IMERIAL WAR MUSEUM
Manchester – U.K

•The Imperial War Museum North

(IWMN) in Manchester, England, tells
the story of how war has affected the
lives of British and the Commonwealth
citizens since 1914.
•The design concept is a globe
shattered into fragments and then
reassembled.
•The interlocking of three of these
fragments—representing earth, air, and
water—comprise the building’s form.
•The Earth Shard forms the museum
space, signifying the open, earthly
realm of conflict and war;
TECHNOLOGY AS RHETORIC IMERIAL WAR MUSEUM
Manchester – U.K

•The Air Shard serves as a dramatic entry into the museum, with its projected images,
observatories and education spaces;
•The Water Shard forms the platform for viewing the canal, complete with a restaurant, cafe,
deck and performance space.
TECHNOLOGY AS RHETORIC MAAT Muesum- “A monument
for corporate Ego”- Portugal
•During the 1960s, a record number of people—120,239—left Portugal and headed
east, to central Europe. young rural workers who left the country in search of better
living conditions, to escape a situation of social oppression and colonial war.
Male emigrants mostly took up construction jobs in their destination countries.
Emigrants were able to return to Portugal for summer vacation.
• During these stays, they started building houses in the same style as they built in their
destination lands, showing a complete disregard for the different local building
traditions and identities.
•The built “maisons” dramatically changed the rural landscape of the whole country,
to the point where whole villages in central Portugal came to look like suburban
developments on the outskirts of Paris, Frankfurt, or Geneva.
Migrants made use of the identity they had absorbed in central Europe, They built
these “maisons” as their own monuments to their achievements abroad. It is with this
history in mind that I see the new building of the Museum of Art, Architecture and
Technology (MAAT) in Lisbon: a sort of corporate “maison.” It is a building that exists, in
isolation, as the proud attempt to borrow an identity from an international sphere.
TECHNOLOGY AS RHETORIC MAAT Muesum- “A monument
for corporate Ego”- Portugal
Blending structure into landscape, the
kunsthalle is designed to allow visitors to
walk over, under and through the building
that sits beneath a gently expressed arch
– one of the oldest forms in western
architecture.

The roof becomes an outdoor room, a

physical and conceptual reconnection of
the river to the city’s heart – where visitors
can turn away from the river and enjoy
the vista of the cityscape, and at night,
watch a film with Lisbon as a backdrop.

Building on Portugal’s rich tradition of

craft and ceramics, three-dimensional
crackle glazed tiles articulate the façade
and produce a complex surface that
gives mutable readings of water, light and
shadow. The overhanging roof that
creates welcome shade is used to
bounce sunlight off the water and into the
building.
TECHNOLOGY AS RHETORIC National Holocaut museum-
Daniel Libeskind.

The National Holocaust Monument,

established through the National
Holocaust Monument Act by the
Government of Canada, will ensure
a permanent, national symbol that
will honor and commemorate the
victims of the Holocaust and
recognize Canadian survivors. The
Monument will stand on a .79 acre
site at the intersection of Wellington
and Booth Streets within the historic
LeBreton Flats in Ottawa,
symbolically located across from the
Canadian War Museum.
TECHNOLOGY AS RHETORIC MAAT Muesum- “A monument
for corporate Ego”- Portugal

•The Monument is conceived as an experiential •The triangular spaces are representative of the

environment comprised of six triangular, concrete badges the Nazi’s and their collaborators used to

volumes configured to create the points of a star. label homosexuals, Roma-Sinti, Jehovah’s

The star remains the visual symbol of the Holocaust Witnesses and political and religious prisoners for

– a symbol that millions of Jews were forced to murder.

wear by the Nazi’s to identify them as Jews, •Original, large scale monochromatic

exclude them from humanity and mark them for photographic landscapes of Holocaust sites –

extermination. death camps, killing fields and forests – will be

embedded in the concrete walls of each of the
triangular spaces. These photographic
installations will change with the light and with the
movement of the viewer.
•The National Holocaust Monument will be a
place of memory and mourning, honoring and
commemorating, a space for questioning and
learning.
Frank Gehry
• Frank Gehry has designed some of the most iconic
buildings of the past two decades, from the Guggenheim
Bilbao to Facebook’s new mothership in Silicon Valley.

• Gehry’s early work had a certain kind of anonymity

about it, though it was more the kind which goes with
blending seamlessly into local Californian vernacular. For Eg.
The Danziger house Gehry replicated the simple stuccoes
timber frames and cubic forms found everywhere in los
Angeles, producing a kind of stripped down Spanish colonial
style touched with modernist abstraction.

•From such modest beginnings Gehry’s work quickly

acquired a more artful character with more artistic content.

The Danziger house and studio, California

Frank Gehry
Guggenheim Museum
.
•The project that most captured both professional and
public imagination is the Bilbao Guggenheim , designed
in 1991.
•This project brought world wide attention to Gehry’s
design methods and to the catia process itself. The
process has been an interesting process, in the first stage ,
a specially devised laser tool is guided over a physical
model of the design, plotting the curved surfaces as a
series of digitized points in a three dimensional space and
feeding the results in computer.
•The same co –ordinates are then converted by the
computer into surface model that can be modified or
refined by the designers as needed.
•Next , the computer model is used with various- rapid
prototyping technologies to create a new physical model.
Frank Gehry
Guggenheim Museum- Eg for Digital technology and art
.
A series of computer models were produced for structural
and cladding studies , sometimes to even control robots
and other machines fabricating parts of building and to
produce the accurate cost estimates of the cladding
systems.
Conceived as part of a major Programme of urban
renewal, the museum was intended to raise both the
cultural profile and financial fortunes of the city.
At bilbao, the spatial separation of the main permanent
collection from the temporary collections- where
presumably greater artistic risk was afforded.
Whether sculpture or architecture, - Gehry argues both
togehther.
Frank Gehry
Der neue zollhof, Dusseldorf, Germany
.
• Geometry, massing and exterior material,
provides each of the buildings with a unique
identity. The project as a single entity, provides
a unifying urban complex through the
consistent application of identical window units
throughout and, a familial relationship with the
Der neue zollhof, Dusseldorf, Germany
ground plane.
• The warped cluster of medium – rise office
towers at Dusseldorf, with its asymmetrical
structures and tailor made windows is one of
the most interesting in Gehry’s architecture-
oeuvre.
Frank Gehry
Der neue zollhof, Dusseldorf, Germany
.
The construction of the walls involved cutting

the individual plastic moulds for the precast

concrete panels directly from three dimensional

models by the Catia process as well as

Der neue zollhof, Dusseldorf, Germany

producing three different cladding systems.

Frank Gehry
Vitra international headquarters, switzerland.
Frank Gehry
Villa olimpica, Fish sculpture, Barcelona Spain.
Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Norman Foster
• Norman Foster started as a modernist, producing a
series of elegant but anonymous steel framed pavilions
in the minimalist manner. His practice has grew and
spread outside the U.K to other, more exotic shores, so
has there been a broadening of expression and
response to place, climate and culture in his work.

Willis Faber & Dumas Headquarters, U.K

Norman Foster HONG KONG BANK, HONG KONG

•Through a meticulous process of questions and

challenges, including the involvement of a feng
shui geomancer, Foster + Partners addresses the
temperament of banking in Hong Kong and how it
should be expressed in built form. By doing so, it
virtually reinvented the office tower.

• The requirements to build in excess of one million

square feet in a short timescale suggested a high
degree of prefabrication, including factory-finished
modules, while the need to build downwards and
upwards in tandem led to the adoption of a
suspension structure, with pairs of steel masts
arranged in three bays.
Norman Foster
•As a result, the building form is expressed in a
stepped profile of three individual towers,
respectively twenty-nine, thirty-six, and forty-four
stories high, which create floors of varying width
and depth and allow for garden terraces.
•The essential difference between the past and
present work is that , instead of hand crafted,
this is wholly machine crafted building. Crafted
moreover, with combined CAD/CAM
technologies including robot welders and
computerized numerically controlled CNC
metal cutting machinery.
•The 'bridges' that span between the masts
define double-height reception areas that
break down the scale of the building both
visually and socially. Hong Kong bank, Hong kong
Norman Foster BRITISH MUSEUM

The glazed canopy that makes all this possible is

a fusion of state-of-the-art engineering and
economy of form. Its unique geometry is
designed to span the irregular gap between the
drum of the Reading Room and the courtyard
facades, and forms both the primary structure
and the framing for the glazing, which is
designed to reduce solar gain
Norman Foster NEW GERMAN PARLIAMENT, REICHSTAG, BERLIN, GERMANY
Norman Foster SWISS RE HEADQUARTERS, LONDON

•Foster has made a regular use of Dynamic

computer modeling techniques, such as
computational fluid dynamics, CFD, to test the
effect of different environmental systems on a
building’s energy efficiency.
•This modeling techniques played an important role
in shaping the office tower.
•Starting out as a pure cylinder, the bullet shaped
re morphed into its present form under the
progressive impact of different computer models.
•Norman Foster in response to the complexitiex of
the Swiss Re developed own customized software
tools for architectural production equivalent to
Catia.The Specialist Modelling Group (SMG) system
was created specifically to meet the needs of
Practice’s collaborative approach.
Norman Foster SWISS RE HEADQUARTERS, LONDON

•The Swiss e walls apparently follows a true

progressive curve with no single radius or
center, it is actually made up of numerous
different but regular arcs all joined together.
•Since each segmental arc has a known
center and radius, any offset in either
direction could therefore be easily
calculated.
•The SMG template converts geometrical
data into a form that can be readily
transferred between digital systems. Sectional diagram showing geometrical
•The position of each element is given precise composition of arcs forming curved wall
numerical co ordinates along with other
related data and presented on standard
excel sheet.
Reference:
Book Reference
•Contemporary architecture and Digital design Process By Peter Szalapaj.
•Architecture Technology and process by Chris Abel.
•Defining Digital architecture by Yu-Tung Liu.
Web site Reference
Arch. Daily
Danial Libeskind- official website pages.