Pamphlet Architecture 27

We all know that today's architectural design has moved from the sketchpad to the screen - the era of the Mayline and the drafting board now seems downright Paleolithic - but techniques for using the computer not just as a tool for rendering but as a generative instrument remain woefully unexplored. The technologically progressive young firm Aranda/Lasch illustrates how advanced computational methods and algorithmic codes can be used to foster architectural design. "Tooling" explores patterns generated by computer codes that in turn create an organizational template assembling projects. By openly sharing these codes, the authors seek to foster further investigation into their methods, allowing other architects to model and evolve more critical and insightful geometries and patterns.

This project has been generously supported by Capital Partners. After the devastating earthquake in Haiti, on January 12, 2010, Steven Holl had the idea of devoting the next Pamphlet Architecture book to solutions for rebuilding the architecture and infrastructure of the country. Going back to the origins of the series, which was founded by Holl in 1977, Pamphlet Architecture 31: New Haiti Villages presents Steven Holl Architects' vision for a new way of building in Haiti, with contributions from leading structural engineer Guy Nordenson and Matthias Schuler of climate engineering firm Transsolar. To avoid making architecture that would just repeat the problems of the past, Holl asked the following questions to guide his design: 1. How should Haiti rebuild? 2. If the political corruption before the earthquake was problematic, what now? 3. Can urban/architectural expression be by Haitians? 4. Will outside engineers build pragmatic strongboxes? 5. Can the poetry of Haitis wind and sea, its colors and vegetation, its sky, guide planners and architects? Holl attempts to answer these questions with his idea for "Dense-Pack Villages," a type of courtyard housing that could be built with recycled concrete from fallen buildings and steel and would be hurricane- and earthquake-resistant. Each "village" could house approximately 200 occupants, and the courtyards would be filled with greenery and fruit trees. Holl proposes that these houses use solar cells on their roofs to provide electricity, allowing the villages to potentially operate off the grid. Water can be supplied from desalinization plants in each village, and also from new reservoirs, replacing the outdated reservoirs that were destroyed in the earthquake. The architectural ideas present in sketches, scaled drawings, and models are given more definite form with scientific analysis and advice from engineers Nordenson and Schuler. Nordenson, with his colleage Rebecca Nixon, advises on how to improve the durability and safety of new buildings in Haiti through improved construction and structural engineering techniques. Schuler gives numbers and dimensions to the plans to use solar power, water desalinization, and gray-water recycling in the Dense-Pack Villages.

Architects Ken Kaplan and Ted Krueger present a blunt criticism of present social and political conditions. In response to the "dogmatic gas" that they perceive as invading today's architectural ideology, they attempt to find an antidote to the "deluded blather" through architectural experimentation.

This edited book gathers research studies presented at the 5th International Symposium on Formal Methods in Architecture (5FMA), Lisbon 2020. Studies focus on the use of methodologies, especially those that have witnessed recent developments, that stem from the mathematical and computer sciences and are developed in a collaborative way with architecture and related fields. This book constitutes a contribution to the debate and to the introduction of new methodologies and tools in the mentioned fields that derive from the application of formal methods in the creation of new explicit languages for problem-solving in architecture and urbanism. It adds valuable insight into the development of new practices solving identified societal problems and promoting the digital transformation of institutions in the mentioned fields. The primary audience of this book will be from the fields of architecture, urban planning, civil engineering, AEC, landscape design, computer sciences and mathematics, both academicians and professionals.

Holl focuses on a collection of peculiarly American house types. These building forms exhibit a simplicity and integrity of construction and expression that link folk to modern architecture, and they offer a framework for thinking about alternatives to suburban tract housing.

For the past 50 years, the advancements of technology have equipped architects with unique tools that have enabled the development of new computer-mediated design methods, fabrication techniques, and architectural expressions. Simultaneously, in contemporary architecture new frameworks emerged that have radically redefined the traditional conceptions of design, of the built environment, and of the role of architects. Cybernetic Architectures argues that such frameworks have been constructed in direct reference to cybernetic thinking, a thought model that emerged concurrently with the origins of informatics and that embodies the main assumptions, values, and ideals underlying the development of computer science. The book explains how the evolution of the computational perspective in architecture has been parallel to the construction of design issues in reference to the central ideas fostered by the cybernetic model. It unpacks and explains this crucial relationship, in the work of digital architects, between the use of information technology in design and the conception of architectural problems around an informational ontology. This book will appeal to architecture students and scholars interested in understanding the recent transformations in the architectural landscape related to the advent of computer-based design paradigms.

This full-color volume proposes an innovative methodology that uses the functional aspects of nature to inspire improvements in building design and form, encouraging designers to apply biomimetic principles to architectural processes. The book focuses on the analysis of various animal skins, translating the principles of communication, thermoregulation, water balance, and protection into the built environment. Illustrating how biomimetic principles can create a more sustainable way of building, this is the first time the author's new methodology-as well as the 12 case studies-has been published.