Program Visualization

Interesting find: Modifying Temperature and Humidity to Alter the Experience of Space at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale

I visited the Biennale and found this project by Transsolar and Tetsuo kondo architects.

“By controlling the microclimate of the space in the arsenale building, a layer of artificial clouds is made to hover above the ground level, remaining in balance above the heads of the viewers.”

The installation certainly awed the visitors. I have made a small film trying to convey the experience by altering the red color filter intensity trying to associate the visual perception and the thermoception.

Transsolar Cloudscape at 12th Venice Biennale from Differentenergy on Vimeo.

Updates - Interview with a visually handicapped patron at the Carnegie Library for the Blind

 

Published with the permission of Mr. Wassermann

On 13-10-2010 I had an interview with Mr. Wassermann at the Carnegie Library for the blind. I asked him a set of 21 questions in a 60 minute session, attempting to understand how one experience a space without relying on vision. The interview session was incredibly informative, I can say it has profoundly changed the one I starting to notice things I never noticed before.

Below are some of the excerpts of the interview. 

 Me: When you walk inside a room, what is the first thing that is most noticeable to you? The temperature? The floor? The noise or?

Wassermann: Probably (I'm) most aware, to the best I am able to discern it i s the size of the room I am in. Probably because of the ambient noises and a little bit of air flow. You know right now I am picking up a little bit of noises from a ventilation system or whatever, any of those noises, start to give you a little bit of the size of the room, or either the lack of or the presence of things between me and the next obstacle

 ...

 Me: Where and when do you ever feel too hot or too cold?

Wassermann: anything that's asphalt, that's black top on it, you will get lots of heat reflected off of it.

...

Wassermann: I don't think we will able to control nature, there are lots of things we should concentrate on, other than nature.

Me: For example, what should we focus on?

Wassermann: Human relations.

I will be re formulating my questions to get more specific answer on the thermal experience of the built environment, and indoor environment. I would love to have some suggestions.

Thermoception

In sensing architecture

I am changing the direction of my thesis due to a weekend trip to Toronto, where I questioned how do we experience the city, architecture. Partly because I took the trip with a medical researcher working at a Cornell Laboratory, where I learned about the sensors of the body from a chemical biology point of view.

I am arguing that your eyes can fool you, what is the state of being? What is the purpose of architecture but to create shelter, and all experiences arrise from that.

road map

THE PROCESS

IDENTIFY THE ISSUE

STUDY PEOPLE

PROJECT SCOPE

RESEARCH

PRESENT SOLUTIONS

THESIS DESIGN

1 + 3 retake

After last discussion I feel the need to give my thesis more focus.

1
Today’s urban built environments fragment the components of personal life. Better architecture can rectify this vulnerability living in our society by implmenting efficient urban planning, sustainable architecture, and legislative control over real estate.

3

• The death of cities are due to the fragmentation of living and working components of our life. People no longer live close to where they work, yet the need to earn an income is great, so most people choose to commute to work.  This action created huge ineffciencies in a person's limited days of life, and the infrastructure built to support the commute and the energy exhausted in transportation emit large amount of CO2.
•  
•  
• Due to the progress of climate control system in buildings, a vital component of personal life - the access to nature is completely severed off. Side effects from sealing inside an enclosed space include sick building syndrome, energy waste due to inefficient thermal performance of buildings and lowered quality of life. Urban environments must have better access to nature.
•  
•  
• To rectify this vulnerability, first, I propose people to live where they work this will decrease the time and energy wasted in commute; second, improve the quality of urban environment, meaning living in a pollution free, crime free and inspiring city; third, create better envelope for buildings to lower energy consumption and decrease urban heat island effect; lastly, people must be able to afford the price to live close to where they work, this can be achieved by regulation on housing prices.

Experience

21st century architect

1 + 3 + 9

                                                       
A study of the contradiction between the user’s perception about architecture and the architect’s intention.
      

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•    How successful is it for architects to anticipate, predict user’s perception and experience in built environments.
•    Investigate the area of separation between architects and users.
•    What are the capabilities of roles in architectural design and latter performance?



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1.    Architecture is meaningless if without of participation of users, then users perception should dictate the creation of architecture.
2.    Architecture therefore is about user’s perception, furthermore an architect must be aware of the users’ limitation on stellar concepts.
3.    Architects are sometimes trapped in their own minds; therefore tend to manufacture ideas out of their own perspective that’s disconnected with the user public.
4.    Users perceive the building beyond the basis of form and function, and adds more personal emotion to a space.
5.    Users go through a learning process when experiencing a building, and this initial learning experience will judge the perception of the architecture.
6.    Users of one building have a huge wide variety of socio background,  how should architects treat this over complexity of demand, or ignore it.
7.    Architects with innovative ideas, designs and proposals must also be based on the acceptance of users, but at the same time challenge/enthrall the user’s senses.
8.    Architects can possibly drastically improve the energy efficiency in buildings when they are informative to their users on the inner workings of the building.
9.    Users will experience a high quality of life and improved efficiency in a building jointly designed by the architects and users. Who is the architect? The user? or the architect? or both?

Architecture is a matter of life and death

Simply put, architecture is an inseparable part of our life, every single physical construction, no matter buildings, roads, doors, steps, benches, gutters on this entire world composes the meaning of architecture. It does not have boundaries. You can not identify where architecture stops from your neighbor's house to your own, as long as you are in side a built environment, an intentionally man-made environment.

Man can only survive in the element for so long, architecture is the art of creating a shelter that provides a higher quality of life. Its basic purpose is to serve the occupant to its needs.

As the world is keep changing, new challenges arises for the occupants and architects of architecture. Natural disasters is a more powerful existence that rises to crush our existence, because we have underestimated the strength of nature when we encroached on its territory, expanding our built environment into the wilderness. The planet is only so large, so when we create architecture, we annihilate traces of wilderness.

Architecture is depended on resources to construct and to operate, in fact it consumes 52% of the world's raw materials and emit over half of the total CO2. It is a principle culprit of the climate change, scientists view climate as the biggest threat to the survival of human species. Climate change became an unexpected consequence from human action exploiting fossil fuels, harvesting natural materials. So much of these resources were meant to generate a better standard of living for men, yet it comes back to hurt us.

Remedies:
Architecture shall be able to cope with the weather abnormalities induced by climate change.

                                             Photo of the Katrina Hurricane left the city devasted

Architecture shall be earthquake proof.

                                              Photo of Wenchuan Earthquake that killed 69，226people,
                                              and still 374,643 are unaccounted for.

Architecture can use alternative source of energy.

                                                Photo of Intelligent Workspace.


Solutions:
Decrease the demand of energy use in buildings, emitting significantly less CO2.
Use planning to regulate sites safer for building buildings.
Use planning and legislation to allow people to work close to where they live not having to worry about the price of living in urban environments.
Ultimately make architecture do its job to provide a truly healthy environment for its occupants.

                                             Photo of a Chinese village, where the main
                                                architectural form is the court yard house
                                                all houses have favorable solar orientation.
                                                Farmers work close to where they live, and
                                                valuable culture is being preserved.

7 sins of architecture

I'm attempting to understand how architecture has gone wrong. Just some thoughts to share.

People employ architecture for special means, thus we may see the evidence of 7 sins shown in architecture. (In my understanding, every building is part of a larger sense of architecture. Architecture includes whole industry, the practice and everything else)

1) We know that climate change is caused by too much CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, and according to EPA that the buildings sector account for over 52% of CO2 emissions in the construction and operation of buildings. (Gluttony)

2) Urban decay happens in the peripheral of cities, is architecture of those neighborhoods to blame?(Despair)

3) In areas of high economic growth, we see ultra extravagant buildings going up, behind it is a huge waste of resources and an attempt to be seperated from the rest of the world.
(Pride)

4) Land is the asset of the real estate industry, architecture is just the icing on the cake. The capital is using architecture as a tool to achieve capital growth. (Greed)

5) There is an ongoing competition to build the tallest building, tallest structure on this planet, when a country or a city builds one to be called the tallest, soon another will compete to build an even taller one. Thus the forever perpetual competition.   (Evny)

6)  Architecture has become obsessed with form and have forgotten the importance of the function. The mundane skyscrapers with glimmering glass facade has become symbol for success and wealth.   (Vanity)

7)  Architecture dominates the city, sometimes giving a cold austere experience to strangers with a sole purpose that is to daunt! (Wrath)