Building Similarities

My poster of the Federal Building case study, now up in the box.



I realized how similar my design is to my case study. The height of the sffb in comparison to the other skyscrapers in studio must be the reason for the height or lack thereof in my current parcel design. The direction of my Valley is also based on the slopes of the Bay Area, and there are other relationships I see linked to my case study, like narrow buildings with long, flat facades. They were not intentionally related, though almost inevitable after the iterations. How similar are your buildings to your case studies?

This is my first diagram for the parcel design, building the valleys to create higher density without specific building geometries. The second is a later massing of a mountain of two buildings.

Strip Studies

Some images of the site and its program or zoning strips. They are rough sketches of potential layers in plan and elevation.





This diagram illustrates how program requires, or "attracts" and also "repels" other adjacent programs. Which programs can sustain others and how can two seemingly different functions, ex. airport and hospital, work together. It would be great for on-call traveling doctors, so more airports = more density

Mutation V

The last mutation moves the curtain wall to follow the sun, a point in space. In this model, I use two points on opposite sides, and the fins create alternating patterns.

Here are a few modeled diagrams. I started with a base of floor slabs that carry a few potential mutations, each will contain either one or more axes of rotation. This fan takes the parameters of one level as a variable for the other levels, so when Level 17 is set to x-deg, Level 16 is 2x-deg, and Level 15 is 3x-deg. The rotations are functionally linked, but I have to revise the slabs so that they're powercopied.





These prelim diagrams spun from the idea of breaking up the wall-like linearity of the building facade, creating more dynamic vertical space on the interior and exterior.

In order to conceptualize new diagrams in relation to existing ones, I listed the possible operations and relationships to consider.

*Operations: Multiplication/Repetition, Division, Addition, Subtraction, Symmetry, Rotation
*Relationships: Proportional, Geometric, Functional/Programmatic, Spatial (depth, height, etc)

I identified and chose a few modes of operation for my subsequent diagrams and will translate them in DP. The list is a brief and basic guideline, although in essence, there are many more operations, and all the concepts are fluid, changing simultaneously.

The elevator is a very important part of a building, so I considered height and repetition for this diagram. The elevator of the SFFB stops at every third floor, promoting health and interaction. If someone is going to the 4th floor, they may go to the 3rd floor and walk up one flight, or go to the 6th floor and walk down 2 flights. Let's assume they wouldn't go to the 9th floor to get to the 4th. I figured a set of formulas for each floor, which repeat every 3rd floor. Then I considered a 60-story building employing the same concept, but stopping at every 5th floor. Since we still want people to walk one flight instead of two, we would need 2 different elevators, where Elevator 1 stops at 5, 10, 15, 20,... and Elevator 2 stops at 2, 7, 12, 17,...

The higher the building design, the more distance between stops, and a 200-story building would have a 12-story skip with 4 different elevators, keeping the levels between stops at a maximum of 2.. This creates an entirely different facade which corresponds to the multiplying elevator lobbies of this system.

Our first project of the semester, Karl has us model an existing building on Digital Project and use the software as a tool to create iterations of rules within the design that will formulate new equations for a skyscraper design. My precedent building is the San Francisco Federal Building by Morphosis, which completed in 2007, is a model of green architecture.


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The library resources have been swept away, so Morphopedia is a great online source. The Phare Tower looks stunning, a beautiful result of parametric scripting.