A4_TERANA

Reading Four

Blobs look all in the same, yet no two blobs are alike. If you ask someone to draw a blob, no one’s blob will be exactly like the others, but they overall will look the same. Topologies are disciplined mathematically and have families of sets of certain properties which are used to define a space. If you look at a topological map from New Orleans, you will be able to see a set of black contour lines on a white surface. The lines describe the different land levels. However, if you move a little over to the left, for instance in San Antonio, you will still be able to see a set of black contour lines, but they will be different, curving at different angles and there will be more lines. Topologies, just like blobs, are similar in that they all look the same, but are indeed very different. Unlike blobs, however, topologies have more of a geometric sense and can then, in return, be measured, calculated, and planned. Blobs are more likely to come out of the blue and just form. Whatever the artist or architect is thinking or feeling, a blob will form as a result of it. Another way of creating a blob would be, for example, to retrieve the already available topological map of the area and then somehow use the contours of the levels to, let us say, invert them and make a blobby space. You could then take the surface of the structure and transform it anyway you need – shifting, extruding, shearing, stretching, etc. There are endless possibilities for blobs in architecture, or for any specialty field or major profession in that manner. It would be difficult, I would say, to try to measure or calculate a blob. A blob always seems to be moving. There are convexes and concaves, which make up a blob, everywhere. Blobs in old horror movies are objects which are icky, gooey substances. Its inner is its outer and it can shrink into nothing or grow when it “eats” something in its way. A blob, therefore, is complex. It is not multiple, nor is it single.

A3_TERANA

Reading Three

When starting this reading, the first thing I recognize is it begins talking about design process and how digital software is made to assist architects design, and not use as a design tool. It was relevant to me because the last readings we have read talked about how architects use design programs as a designing tool. However, these tools are intended to increase the chance of random occurrences resulting in many more possible versions. This allows the designer to act as an editor and to apply intuitive, divergent, or aesthetic choices so as to both manipulate the model and develop additional options and subsequently select from among them. In other words, the design programs are used as part of the designing method and the designing process.
This article explains that we should use design computer programs as a design tool so as not to have the program design an architect’s project for him or her. Or else, we might as well design a computer program to totally design a building or object for us. What these programs that can design themselves take away from the architect is his or her self expression in the design; as Plato said, the object of thought was something artists and designers should then strive to recreate in its perfection (pg. 22). Or, as Deleuze says: “To think is to create. There is no other creation (pg. 23).”

Larry Sass Lecture

Larry Sass is an assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at MIT. While conducting advanced research and teaching, through working with paperless environments (totally digital), Sass has found a way to build spaces by literally putting every 3-D puzzle-like piece together you need and have, according to what the computer says you need. By making mini models, which can take two days to build after the CAD files are done, he can do the same with a 1:1 scale house, building up a house which will take two days and using only the materials he ordered to be cut. There will be no left over’s or no excess amount of materials. This makes his projects totally economical.