SIFF Film Screening – Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry
This documentary film about Ai WeiWei, the Chinese contemporary artist, social activist and architectural design consultant, will be screened on May 18th and 19th as part of the Seattle International Film Festival. Check out the link for more information.
In a discussion that closely aligns with the ongoing discussion of craft in our region’s architecture, UW faculty member Jeffrey Ochsner discussed his new book Furniture Studio: Material, Craft, and Architecture tonight in Architecture Hall. This book told the wonderful history of the school of architectures’ lauded furniture studio taught until very recently by the renown Andy Vanags.
The studio’s origins were traced to the acquosotiom of a faculty member in the 60′s who came from a naval architecture background and brought many of his technical interests to the program along with some new shop tools that would form the DNA of the furniture studio. Throughout the last three decades, many local architects passed through these shop-focused studios. Pertinent to our discussion, the fifth chapter of the book highlights the effects of this shop and hand experienced design process on architectural design. An interesting set of theoretical articles compose the entire fourth chapter.
It is interesting to take note of the primarily wood and steel pieces catalogued and the relationship to the architecture our community is most noticed for in the global context. This was one of the first and is still one of few programs in the country to embrace such studios within its architecture curriculum and no doubt it is in the genetic code of many recent modernist buildings around.
With the transition of the studio in 2009 to the leadership of Kimo Griggs, the studio enters into the FUTURECRAFT discussion with the addition of new tools like CNC mills, and other computationally controlled tools. We have seen a lot of this topic in the last year so I will end it at that.
I look forward to hearing Professor Ochsner later in the year in our Millenium Talks’ series for 2012.
- Daniel Toole, Associate AIA
link to the book-
The salon began with an introduction by Rob Corser, AIA, recounting an experience he had while at Arup. A team there was working with a very powerful and advanced 3-D digital software, unlike anything seen in architecture before. The software was Catia and it was the 1990’s. Catia had been developed and used in the aviation industry since the early ‘80’s. Over a decade later, it was just starting to find its way into the realm of architecture, most notably in the work of Frank Gehry, permeating it’s way into the hands of other engineers and architects like Rob.
As we all know history repeats itself, and as he concluded his introduction he couldn’t help but point out that the aviation industry is yet again leading the way in technical innovation with the integration of carbon fiber technology in the 787. The rhetorical question we were left with was, how long will it take this time for architecture to follow?
Gregory Loreti then began his presentation, giving us an inside look at the fabrication and design of the 787. As he stated the benefits and improvements Boeing has realized with carbon fiber composites including fuel efficiency, greater fatigue and corrosion resistance, streamlined fabrication process, lower flying altitude, reduced cabin pressure (and the list goes on) it became clear that composites are not just the latest material fad but rather a material that has a broad base for application and a sustainable future.
The benefits of applying composites in architecture are very similar to those in aviation, including a streamlined ‘building’ process, its incredible strength and structural performance, light weight and maximization of formal possibilities. One startling example Greg gave from Boeing’s experience of the efficiency of composites in fabrication was, “The design and build process of the 787 has added further efficiency improvements. New technologies and processes have been developed to help Boeing and its supplier partners achieve the efficiency gains. For example, manufacturing a one-piece fuselage section has eliminated 1,500 aluminum sheets and 40,000 – 50,000 fasteners.”
Analogous to Catia in the 80’s, the 787 is the realization of a technology’s capabilities and benefits that is directly applicable to architecture. There is no doubt that we will see the widespread integration of composites in architecture someday. The benefits are too great, not only from a design perspective but also from an efficiency and economic perspective as well. The question we were left with was the one Rob had proposed at the beginning of the salon, how soon and in what capacity will composites be integrated into architecture? And, will we simply replicate the I-beam in composites or will we re-envision our whole building process?
The good news is that there are some instances where composites have started to find their way into architecture, in both very imaginative, highly conceptual ways as well very practical and pragmatic applications. Testa/Weiser’s Automorphic Strand Tower, part of the 2006 Skin+Bones exhibition at MoCA, ‘a robotically pultruded fiber structure’ explored new and innovative methods of fabrication. More recently the Guggenheim Lab project took advantage of the material properties of composites designing and building a ‘mobile laboratory’ that is traveling around the world, concluding in an exhibition at the Guggenheim in 2013.
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