ARCH Digital Ornament. Pohung Chiu. What is ornament?

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Pohung Chiu ARCH 7036 Digital Ornament What is ornament? In architecture and decorative art, ornament is a decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object.

1 Pohung Chiu ARCH 7036 Digital Ornament What is ornament? In architecture and decorative art, ornament is a decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. (Wikipedia) Ornament has been a main topic within architecture, what ornament implies, how it can be created and whether or not it should be used. In 1910, an architect Adolf Loos published a famous essay, Ornament and Crime, which explored the idea that the progress of culture is associated with the deletion of ornament from everyday objects. For Loos, one aspect is apparent concerning ornament, that ornament should not be used. Even though his essay might seem to imply that ornament is a crime, instead he explores how evolution of culture and use of ornament go hand in hand. Why ornament is crime? Fig.1 Ornament and Crime/Adolf Loos/1910 Since Industrial Revolution happened in 19 th century, science and technology change rapidly, appeared a lot of new technology, the birth of these technologies in various fields, in which, the development of new tectonic (steel structure or reinforced concrete frame structure, for instance) people attention, not just materials, but also because of the release of architectural form. Then, in early 1900s, a number of architects and designers around the world began developing new solutions to integrate traditional precedents (classicism or Gothic, for instance) with new technological possibilities, such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago and Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona etc. After that, World War I and II ensued. It was an era which was scarce in any resource. In the meantime, Modernism became popular and grew vigorously due to its main idea, Form follows function, which originally expressed by Louis Sullivan, meaning that the result of design should derive directly from its purpose. In

2 other words, ornament is unnecessary anymore, even a crime because it would be a kind of waste. Is ornament still crime now? In the past, ornament adopted in architecture such as the Corinthian column use many natural and decorative elements on its capital. The Corinthian, with its offshoot the Composite, is stated to be the most ornate of the orders, characterized by slender fluted columns and elaborate capitals decorated with acanthus leaves and scrolls. There are many variations. (Wikipedia) Fig.2 The capital of Pantheon in Rome In this case, architect had to work with craftsmen or sculptors and took long time to achieve this highly decorative column. Also, there is no way to preview the dynamics analysis or real geometry which means these experts only can rely on their experience to make it right. But, success always studies from the mistake and grows from the defeat. Therefore, it will waste a lot of time, labor and materials on testing and gaining those experience. However, with digital technology development continuously, computer has not only been seen as only assistant as a tool but also could be a media of design developing. Today, through Computer-Aided Design, architects are able to deal with linear information and calculation, also, it has the ability of nonlinear, interactive, blurry, dynamic which could go one step further to be a powerful role to help architects handle their thinking, visual sense, concept and execution. Thus, the architecture gain more opportunities to be designed in complex, organic or bionic ways by using parametric tools such as Autodesk MAYA scripting or Rhino with Grasshopper. Since computer technologies have made the progress of design and manufacture much shorter, ornament would not be crime anymore because architects will not waste many resources on thinking (time), designing (labor) and making (materials). Also, through parametric design, they are allowed to explore more possibilities.

3 How to apply digital ornament to architecture through parametric design? If ornament would be acceptable through parametric design because resources have been saved and the process is going to be efficient, architects get a chance to re-think how to learn from our nature, again. In fact, human is just one of creature in the world, and the knowledge we have learned usually got through observing every phenomenon in our nature. Moreover, it is not difficult to discover most ornaments in the past in architecture were inspired form natural pattern or texture. Over the past centuries, those ornaments almost work as decorative elements, not functional components, however, the time which ornaments could act both roles has come. How to learn from nature? For centuries, architects have been inspired by nature's forms and geometries. Their designs have been influenced by nature's structures, proportions, colors, patterns and textures. In 1968, the biologist Aristid Lindenmayer proposed a string-rewriting algorithm which can model plants and their growth processes. Since that time, Lindenmayer Systems or L-systems have evolved and found many practical applications in the computer visualization area. Generation of fractal diagram, realistic modeling and high quality visualization of organic forms. Fig3. The algorithmic beauty of plants/aristid Lindenmayer/1968 More recently, advances have been made in architecture in the field of modeling and visualization. Specifically, the integration of scripting languages into CAD applications enables direct visualization of objects generated using algorithmic processes. Therefore, L-system is ready to be a new tool for architects.

4 Why should architects use L-system in their work? 1. With L-system architects can easily experiment and visualize a very unique and exciting array of form and shapes that can be further manipulated with CAD. 2. L-system can assist in visualizing how form are derived and transformed. 3. L-system can generate 2 and 3-D geometries in a matter of seconds that otherwise would take countless hours to generate using traditional CAD approaches. Many of those form would be practically impossible to generate without such an assist. 4. L-system can be used to apply organic growth principles to architectural design. 5. A design can begin with a very simple set of rules and then experiment with countless forms, variations and transformations, all with very quick and simple changes in the axiom writing. 6. They are fun to play with. Lindenmayer System Experimenting with software string rewriting as assit to the study generation of architectural form / Antonio Serrato-Combe How to make L-system pattern and structure? Basically, Rhino and its plugin grasshopper could be a very good program to achieve this goal. Once the script has done, designer can easily to adjust the slide bar to see and evaluate various results. The L-system script can be found on Grasshopper official website which has developed by Rajaa Issa. Fig4. The script of L-system in Rhino/Grasshopper

$structure (fractal$ pattern) of L-system

5 Fig5. The tree structure (fractal pattern) of L-system and voronoi pattern in Rhino/Grasshopper/Rabbit Fig5. The L-system structure (Penrose Pattern) made by Rhino/Grasshopper/Kangaroo/WeaverBird/Edit Mesh Fig5. The L-system structure (3D print)

Michael Mitchell. Riverside, California: Ariadne Press, 1998. Fig.

6 Fig6. The L-system structure (3D print) Reference: Fig.1 Adolf Loos: Ornament and Crime, Selected Essays, Ed. Adolf Opel. Trans. Michael Mitchell. Riverside, California: Ariadne Press, Fig.2 Wikipedia / Corinthian Order Fig.3 Prusinkiewicz P, and Lindenmayer A.: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plans. Springer-Verlag, 1990

Expanding Design Boundaries

Expanding Design Boundaries Symmetry Experiments in Frank Lloyd Wright s Textile Block Houses Carlos Roberto Barrios 1, Christina Lemley 2 1 The Catholic University of America, 2 The Catholic University