Parametric Islamic Design and Geometry It is commonly Beirut or Cairo that we think of as the centres for creativity and design in the Middle East, but we might soon have to think again. A new hub for creative contemporary design is emerging in Egypt’s second city, Alexandria. ENCODE, or Egyptian Node for Collaborative Design, was founded by a small group of architects, most of which are graduates from the University of Alexandria. More than a design studio, ENCODE is also a research lab where the new IT techniques applicable to design are explored. Investing their own savings in the project, Ebtissam Farid, Mohamed Zaghloul, Ahmed Hassan and Ahmed Abouelkheir founded it with only what was at hand. Last July, they presented their work for the first time within the framework of the exhibition Design is a Verb, organised by Library of Alexandria’s Arts Center. Much of their work has been made as part of a research program called Ornamatics.
Structural Tessellations and Morphologies | 74 FOOTWEAR DESIGN CONSULTING The honeycomb is probably the epitome of structural efficiency. Bees have been creating hexagonal comb structures for millenia and humans inspired by the incredible structural strength to weight ratio of their combs have joined them. It is said that the first man-made honeycomb was made by Daedalus using gold by lost wax casting more than 3000 years ago. In 1859 Charles Darwin said that “the comb of the hive-bee, as far as we can see, is absolutely perfect in economizing labour and wax”. Little noticed is that even the the closed ends of the honeycomb cells are also an example of geometric efficiency as their trihedral shape allows two opposing honeycomb layers to nest into each other, with each facet of the closed ends being shared by opposing cells. 50 years later D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson discovered that bees build their honeycombs first as cylinders and as they push more wax onto the inside surface they also push the soft sides out and up against the neighboring cylinders.
The Evolution of Urban Planning in 10 Diagrams - Design Le Corbusier’s plan may not have had such power if he hadn’t put it on paper. The French modernist architect wanted to reform the polluted industrial city by building “towers in a park” where workers might live high above the streets, surrounded by green space and far from their factories. His idea was radical for the 1930s, and it was his diagrams of it that really captured the imagination. "It swept everyone along," says Benjamin Grant, the public realm and urban design program manager for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. Le Corbusier’s iconic plan for his "Ville Radieuse" was an obvious choice when Grant and SPUR began to curate a new exhibition, "Grand Reductions: Ten diagrams that changed urban planning." The exhibition’s title – Grand Reductions – suggests the simple illustration’s power to encapsulate complex ideas. 1. Courtesy of the Town and Country Planning Association This diagram was published in Howard’s 1903 treatise “Garden Cities of To-Morrow.”
Inside Smartgeometry Inside Smartgeometry: Expanding the Architectural Possibilities of Computational Design Edited by Brady Peters and Terri Peters On behalf of the Smartgeometry group, we would like to invite you to the launch of "Inside Smartgeometry: Expanding the Architectural Possibilities of Computational Design" edited by Brady and Terri Peters and published by John Wiley & Sons. The richly illustrated, hard cover book features 24 original texts from members of the SG community. It provides both a history of the past ten years of SG, and offers ideas for the future of computational design in architecture. To celebrate the book´s release, join us for drinks and a few words by the Smartgeometry Directors. 21 March 2013 6.30 pm The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, Royal Ear Hospital Ground Floor, Capper Street (corner of Huntley Street) London, WC1E 6AP Smartgeometry (SG) is a key influence on the architectural community who explore creative computational methods for the design of buildings. Robert Aish
International Collaboration on Urban Development in Alexandria by Rebecka Gordan Nine months after the Egyptian revolution last year, the Stockholm-based Färgfabriken Center for Contemporary Art and Architecture organized a three-day workshop in Alexandria with Gudran Association for Art and Development, the local Swedish Institute and the department of architecture at Alexandria University. Participants included municipal administrators, architects, artists, urban planners and students, from Alexandria, Cairo, Amman, Beirut, Istanbul, Damascus and Stockholm. The program was part of a larger project called New Urban Topologies. The aim of the workshop was to create a holistic view of the city based on a shared platform for discussing its identity, history and future possibilities. The layers in the title refer to physical and mental traces left throughout the city by people of diverse cultures who have come together there for thousands of years. Credits: Images from "Alexandria. + share
Artists | codedchromics I hadn’t heard about this before but fist (whoops, mean first) saw this earlier this month mentioned on Syuzi Pakhchyan’s blog Wearable Technology (always an inspiration!) Sophie de Oliveira Barata offers a ‘real’ option ‘surreal’ option and an ‘unreal’ option – you’ve just got to love that! Here are some of the incredible decorated and unusual prosthetics from The Alternative Limb Project - “The Alternative Limb Project offers a personal and friendly bespoke service, which provides unique prosthetics to blend in with the body or stand out as a unique piece of art, reflecting the wearer’s imagination, personality and interests. Read more about what they are doing here Like this: Like Loading...
Neighborhood Boundaries Download original report (pdf) Prepared by Jerrold R. Allaire The concept of the city as a whole, containing a group of component neighborhoods is not new, nor is discussion of neighborhood related problems a recent advent to planners, sociologists, traffic engineers, realtors and others closely involved in the patterns of urban land use. The subject bristles with opportunities for research and discussion. Mr. Thirty years later, the subject still "bristles with opportunities for research and discussion." The main purpose of this report is to gather in a single reference the most important methods of neighborhood delineation and to examine how and to what extent they are used in the field. Background If the origin of the generally conceived neighborhood prototype can be traced to a single source, the credit (or blame), depending on one's point of view, goes to Clarence A. 1. 2. 3. 4. Illustration 1 The Neighborhood Unit as Seen by Clarence A. 5. 6. V. C. Controversy Illustration 2 Mr. 1. 2.
no boxes! Fritz Obermeyer’s Jenn is a nicely crafted java application that allows a playful examination of structures in non-Euclidian space, more specifically Coxeter polytopes in stereographic projection. These complex geometric structures are the 4-dimensional Sisters to the polyhedra and have, what seems like, recursive interiors and packing formations that resemble bubbles in foam. The applet allows you to fly through these structures and orient the camera view according to your whims; other controls include toggles for the kind of rendering display settings. The word ‘polytope’ was introduced by Alicia Boole Stott , the daughter of logician George Boole. You might experience a feeling of non-Euclidean déjà vous while roaming around Jenns polytope space , the experience of space is a lot like being in one of Escher’s drawings. Inspired, Escher used this figure as a source for his series of ‘Circle Limit’ etchings.