I'm very excited be a part of the Big Egg Hunt in London.  The eggs went on display today all around London.  I was asked by fourfoursixsix to help with the design of their egg.  Dan Welham, with whom I worked, articulates our design approach quite well here.

The intent was to employ contemporary methods of design and fabrication to create an object that embodies a new form of digital opulence.  The egg demonstrates how these emerging tools can empower designers to challenge traditional conceptions of craft and in so doing reinstill form making with the delicacy and fragility that makes objects like these so alluring.  Our egg seeks to make this capacity apparent and announce it in this city wide celebration of public art.

Our egg is unique in a field of some 200 others in that it really questions the motivation to strictly treat the surface.  Instead we considered the egg as a spatial object with a tickened shell, and a variable aperture allowing views into its interior.  5 other architects were invited to participate including Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers and Wilkinson Eyer.  Great company to be in, and I'll put our egg up against any of theirs.

Big thanks to Dan Welham and fourfoursixsix for asking me to work with them on this project.  And great thanks to EOS, and Ogle Models for the role that they played in the fabrication and assembly.

More to come

I don’t know if it is a consequence of it being oddly housed is a series of Georgian mansions, or it is its position on Bedford Square, or maybe the bar - I suppose that it is all of these things and more that in the aggregate generate an emergent culture - whatever the cause, the Architectural Association has managed to become more than a school of architecture and is indeed a cultural force that continually drives and shapes the profession and academia.

It was very rewarding to have had the opportunity to be a part of this culture, even if for only a semester.  I’m confident that the intangible benefits of being immersed in a group of people dedicated to imagining new architectural futures have and will continue to pay dividends.

Looking at our studios work as a whole, it is difficult to extract the influences.  Obviously each of us brought something unique to the group, and surely Homa’s influence cannot be understated.  That being said, I strongly believe that the work was shaped by the halls that we walked (or at least the stairs that we climbed).  It was an honor to be a part of this studio and to have the opportunity to study at the AA.  I hope that my colleagues agree that being invited into this amazing school and vibrant culture was an exciting and enriching experience that has made us each more engaged and interesting architects.

Here is an animation from our final presentaion for the London Urbanism studio.  You can also find a project description below. There is another animation of the effect of the dynamic canopies on the "video" seciton of the website. I need to of course thank my partner Amanda Morgan for everything, this project would not have turned out as well as it did without her. And as always, comments please!

Cultural Concentrator - Overal Site Organization from Mark Nicol on Vimeo.

Project Description

As currently envisioned, the cultural olympiad exists as a series of disparate events spread around London in time and space.  Our response functions as a system for deployment and concentration of these events.  

By designing in a capacity for dynamism we were able to create an adaptive system that can respond to a variety of influences.  In addition to the ability for individual boats to migrate around the city to support various events and concentrate in different densities and configurations on the main site, each boat is equipped with a dynamic canopy capable of shifting its form.  These canopies can negotiate climatic impact by responding to sun, wind, and light, they can act as cultural amplifiers by responding to human activity, or their behavior can be choreographed to support the specific design intent for a cultural event.

These behavioral capacities exist at the unit level, but also take on entirely new aggregated effects when the units group together in larger configurations.  The result is a constantly fluctuating landscape, able to support a dynamic and varied array of events and activities.  This fluctuating landscape gives a presence and identity to the London Cultural Olympiad.  By concentrating dispersed events in one location it allows for a vibrancy that would otherwise be lacking.  The reverse is also true.  At times this landscape breaks apart and disperses around London utilizing the existing network of waterways as a tool to stitch together the cultural events which comprise the Olympiad.

Moving forward this system will remain vibrant because of its capacity to synergize cultural events.  It will exist as a series of ebbs and flows - fluctuating daily, weekly and seasonally as concentrations of cultural events taking place in London shift.  In its scale and composition the proposal blurs the lines between urban design, landscape, and architecture, while its dynamism, which is driven by human cultural interaction, blurs the line between the static built environment and fluid cultural actor.

Here is the beginnings of our studio project this semester.  I say beginnings because though we've been working all semester this design really came together in the last two weeks.  We were way frustrated for a long time and finally decided to just go for it.  I'm actually really happy with the way the concept gelled and I think that this is a great place to be at this point in the semester.

The studio brief calls for a pavilion which will be part of the London Cultural Olympiad, an ongoing program which runs in parallel with the 2012 Olympics.  What we have proposed doing is to create a fleet of floating pavilions that will be deployed around the aquatic network that binds London together.  These pavilions will dock at various positions along the river and canals to act as a venue for pop up cultural events.  They will then travel back to the main distribution site and recombine in this super-structure floating above a tidal wetlands to create a whole new spatial experience.  The main site therefore becomes a system for the concentration and deployment of cultural events - rhythmically fluctuating as units flow in and out.  Units exist in two distinct contexts - deployed & engage - each of which offers unique programmatic possibilities, spatial conditions and effects.

Big thank you to my partner Amanda Morgan who battle through a cold (which I've since come down with) the week prior to our review.  I am very proud of us.

Here is an abridged version of our presentation.

Here is a very rough animation which demonstrates our early thinking about effect and fluctuation.

I’m very happy to be studying this semester at the Architectural Association in London.  This was always a place that had almost a mythical presence in my mind, so it is really kinda weird to be here, yet here I am.  For the remainder of the semester I’ll be making regular blog posts on a tumblr site that was set up by the PennDesign students that were out here last fall.  The site is quAAkers.tumblr.com.  Please visit often, it will be much more casual that my postings here.  It will very much be a daily log of the work and travels of the whole group of us.  Should be fun to watch the work materialize.  I’ll of course though continue to keep this site active, so come back soon.

Again, congratulations on a great product and on all the well deserved attention that it is garnering.  Check it out on Gizmodo.

Just the other day I was fortunate enough to attend the opening of the Bartlett Summer show.  I was really impressed, no blown away, by the quality of the exhibition and event that the students put together.  They did an amazing job with the event and clearly understand the importance of projecting their work out into the world.  The relevance of a school of architecture rests upon its capacity to communicate what goes on within the studios to the world beyond, and the halls at Bartlett where packed with people discussing the various approaches of each Unit and debating their relevance to the broader pursuit of Architecture.

The exhibition operated at a number of scales.  First, it demonstrated the varied yet somehow cohesive approach to architectural design that Bartlett employs.  Next, it allowed for each Unit to stand on its own as a sovereign entity with it’s own agenda, history and identity.  And third, it was a forum for individual students to advertise themselves to the world that they are soon entering - in fact, almost every student had a stack of beautifully designed business cards at their display (I for one left with about 5 cards). 

As is the case with any experimental, progressive school of architecture there was some work that was brilliant and some that seriously missed the mark, probably more of the latter than the former, but the degree of care that went into the exhibition of it made clear that the school, the units, and the students owned the work were proud to be a part of the experiment.  As students of architecture we pour ourselves into what we do - we should all be so lucky as to have such a fabulous forum to show it off.  Thank you Bartlett for doing it right. 

Today is the 1 year anniversary of base-12.net.  I want to take this opportunity to run through some numbers summing up the year.  Number of posts - 20, not a ton, but i feel decent about that.  Number of comments - 11, apparently I need to give you something more to talk about.  Average unique visitors per day - 5, sounds pretty weak but it is steadily rising.  We’ve had visitors from 6 continents (not Antarctica), and over 30 states.  I find some of those numbers to be pretty exciting, but the most exciting number, due to its remarkable volume, is the number of times that I have been asked, "why did you call your site base-12?" - immeasurable.

It’s hard for people to realize that there is nothing divine about our base-10 counting system.  The thought that the names we give quantities are just that is a bit disturbing.  The prospect of forging beyond 10 is discomforting.  However, we do it all the time - as in a dozen eggs, a twelve hour clock, inches in a foot.  There must be something to this system if despite the cultural force of base-10, the number twelve keeps creeping into our lives.  In fact the ancient Egyptians regularly used a base-12 counting system.  Instead of counting ten fingers they counted 12 knuckles.  Try it, twelve on each hand (not including thumbs).  This observation demonstrates the logic behind base-12 - count each finger and you have 3, 6, 9, 12 - across each row of knuckles and you have 4, 8, 12 - each hand 12, 24.  The power in the system lies in its factorability.  This gets really complex so i’ll just say that twelve can be divided more regularly than ten and in more meaningful ways.  This is why base-12 is such a great system for understanding geometry - try describing a circle with each system and let me know which you think works better.

I’m not trying to suggest that base-12 is any more divine than base-10 - maybe more mathematically pure, but even that is not what interests me.  I’m interested in the idea of base-12 because it represents a fundamentally different way of approaching a problem.  If we continue to employ the same tools we risk a stagnant mind.  However, If we approach challenges with a more diverse toolset, then unexpected solutions will emerge.

Base-12, base-8, the Babylonian’s used a base-60 numbering system, and I don’t even know what you’d call the Roman system but they made it work - various numbering systems have been used throughout time, and to some extent those systems have both structured and reflected how those societies thought.  It is a healthy exercise for each of us now and again to take a step back from our conventions and consider new ways to approach problems.  A path that you never knew existed might present itself.

The image of above is of an endothelial cell - they make up the lining of your blood vessels - bound to its neighbors by extracellular matrix (ECM).  This matrix not only keeps the rest of you from falling to the floor into a messy blob of disconnected cells but it communicates to those cells where they and there by tells them what to do.  Thanks ECM! 

Below are a couple of sketches that I did studying how cells communicate with one another.  We identified two primary mechanism - though there are many.  On the left you’ll see a simulation of cells emitting a chemical attractant into their environment.  Each cell identifies the region with the greatest density of these attractors within a certain range and is attracted to it.  This leads to a bundling of cells over time.  This only tells half the tale though because in reality these cells are bound together by matrix.  The simulation on the right is an abstract representation of this matrix.  The idea being that all cells are bound together by a network of tensile forces so local stimuli has global affects.

Chemoattractants                                                         Matrix

The challenge next was to find a way to synthesize these two systems.  To allow the cells to emit chemoattratants but to bind them together in a matrix.  This matrix would not only restrict their mobility but would allow them to communicate with other cells through the tensile connections.  I would love to post the simulation, but it is way to heavy for a browser.  In fact as I write base-12 is experience its first down time because I foolishly tried to post this simulation and blew everything up.  An image is the best that I can do.  Maybe I’ll figure out how to create an animated gif next time.

Also!  I’m in the process of creating a new page to document research like this.  So check back soon to let me know what you think.  I’m hoping to have it up before my next post later this week which will honor the 1 year anniversary of this site.  And as always - share your thoughts!

One Hundred and Eight – Animated Patterns from Nils Völker on Vimeo. 

I'm not typically in the habit of posting work that is not my own, but Nils Völker has done something pretty excellent in this installation with what i assume is 108 plastic bags - make sure to watch it with sound.  As an architect I can't help but see this as some sort of dynamic reactive building skin.  Imagine if the microcontrollers could be linked to some sort of environmental sensor.  It could adjust the aperture to allow for changing light conditions or it could become a mechanical mirror of air movements on the exterior.

I'm thinking about this because I plan to design and prototype a experimental building skin with logic derived from studies in cellular biology (more to come on that soon) and this is a fantastic precedent.  If anybody knows of any other projects like this please let me know.

Check out more of Nils Völker's work here