A Change of State

A Change of State

year: 2005–2006

loca­tion: atlanta georgia

site: col­lege of archi­tec­ture south facade adja­cent to the col­lege cafe and lounge

client: ven­tulett research grant

size: 60’ in length

mate­r­ial: polycarbonate

con­tri­bu­tion: project coor­di­na­tor, designer, researcher

pro­fes­sor: nader tehrani

instruc­tor: tris­tan al-hadid

project lead: bran­don clifford

project team: richard aeck, jonathan baker, daniel baron, vish deo, brandi flana­gan, steven geor­galis, mohamed mohsen, lor­raine ong, vinay shiposkar

This instal­la­tion is the result of a one year research process with a core team of stu­dents as part of the Thomas W. Ven­tulett III Dis­tin­guished Chair in Archi­tec­tural Design at the Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy. The ped­a­gogy of the course focused on a series of for­mal exer­cises seek­ing to estab­lish an inno­v­a­tive rela­tion­ship between geom­e­try, mate­r­ial per­for­mance, and meth­ods of assem­bly. Specif­i­cally, the task of the fab­ri­ca­tion project was to ana­lyze and develop a three dimen­sional instal­la­tion whose method of fab­ri­ca­tion was lim­ited to two dimen­sional mate­r­ial sources such as sheet metal, air­craft ply, or poly­car­bon­ate sheets.  In so doing, our mis­sion was to rad­i­cal­ize the poten­tials of sheet mate­r­ial by pro­vok­ing it to take on struc­tural, spa­tial, pro­gram­matic, and phe­nom­e­nal dimen­sions while adopt­ing tech­niques that bring this vari­ety of agen­das into organic align­ment. From the per­spec­tive of tech­nique, the most impor­tant aspect of this project was the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that two dimen­sional sur­faces gain access to the third by way of the ruled sur­face. , In turn, since the ruled sur­face is the only way of cre­at­ing a devel­opable sur­face with­out the intro­duc­tion of ancil­lary geome­tries –such as tri­an­gu­la­tion or other tech­niques related to the break­ing down of com­plex geome­tries and com­pound surfaces—we could take advan­tage of this guid­ing prin­ci­ple to cal­i­brate the for­mal explorations.

Of the var­i­ous con­tin­gen­cies that helped form the instal­la­tion, the struc­tural imper­a­tive played the most salient role. If tra­di­tional cat­e­go­riza­tions have iden­ti­fied such vari­a­tions as form-active (arch) , vector-active (truss) and sur­face active (shell) struc­tural typolo­gies, the idea of this project was to develop a tech­nique that could seam­lessly nav­i­gate between these vari­a­tions through the inven­tion of a trans­formable geo­met­ri­cal code, some­thing with­out prece­dent. The aim of this geo­met­ric code is to oper­ate at a topo­log­i­cal level, accom­mo­dat­ing dif­fer­ence within a con­tin­u­ous and unmedi­ated logic. The logic of the geo­met­ric unit, then, was based on the intro­duc­tion and elim­i­na­tion of ver­tices– in com­bi­na­tion with sur­face rotation—in order to cre­ate trans­for­ma­tions in the struc­ture with­out suc­cumb­ing to the lim­i­ta­tions of con­ven­tional typolo­gies and the req­ui­site ancil­lary medi­at­ing details for joints and con­nec­tions. In this way, we were able to develop a strat­egy to cre­ate phase changes–metaphorically much like the way in which H2O can undergo tran­si­tions from water, to ice, steam, or snow.

After many tests and a dia­logue with var­i­ous mate­r­ial sup­pli­ers, poly­car­bon­ate sheets were donated by Bayer Films as the basis for the final instal­la­tion. This mate­r­ial demon­strated the pli­a­bil­ity to rotate and func­tion effec­tively for the pro­jected ruled sur­faces we had designed. So too, the mate­r­ial has the ben­e­fit of exhibit­ing a strange stealth ambi­gu­ity as viewed in dif­fer­ent light, between day and night– but the silence of its trans­parency was per­haps most sig­nif­i­cant because of the way in which it under­scored the pres­ence of geom­e­try, while eras­ing its mate­r­ial pres­ence. The poly­car­bon­ate is greatly impacted by the var­i­ous phase changes it under­goes from one end to the other, on its site in the south por­tico of the Archi­tec­ture Building.

Start­ing from the east, at its base, the struc­ture is orga­nized accord­ing to the stacked logic of masonry con­struc­tion. Dense like masonry, the stacked poly­car­bon­ate works in com­pres­sion, while its trans­parency forms a deep grey mass as the lay­ers amass cre­at­ing a long bench. Next, as the plates delam­i­nate, they rotate to form stacked box beams, vaulted on top of each other—akin to a form-active logic– whiling wrap­ping around one of the columns of the south porch. Undu­lat­ing in sec­tion and in plan, this por­tion derives a site spe­cific logic, while form­ing a strong base plate from which to ini­ti­ate a long span. Next, as the struc­ture lifts off the ground, the box beams tran­si­tion yet again, exfo­li­at­ing into dif­fer­ent vec­tors to pro­duce the com­pres­sive and ten­sile mem­bers of a truss. Maybe the most enig­matic of the var­i­ous phase changes, this seg­ment seduces intel­lec­tu­ally in the way it spa­tial­izes the sur­face, while offer­ing a beguil­ing visual phe­nom­e­non that eludes any ratio­nal under­stand­ing of it sim­ple vec­tor active geom­e­try. Span­ning about thirty feet, the unwound plates of poly­car­bon­ate reassem­ble to box beams to cre­ate a base for land­ing the span­ning truss on the sec­ond floor beam of the south porch. Finally, the geom­e­try of the plates undergo one last phase change to cre­ate a folded plate can­tilever at the west end of the instal­la­tion, bring­ing the instal­la­tion to a ter­mi­nus by way of a sur­face active con­di­tion that gains its rigid­ity through the geom­e­try of the surface.

Though the instal­la­tion is site spe­cific, the evolv­ing geo­met­ric and struc­tural trans­for­ma­tions sug­gests a broader and more flex­i­ble encounter with other pos­si­ble per­mu­ta­tions. Thus, the instal­la­tion was devel­oped as a sys­tem that can be con­fronted with a range of sce­nar­ios, and thus adapt­able. The sys­tem is bro­ken down into dis­crete twisted pan­els, each of which can be con­nected to neigh­bor­ing units by way of riv­ets. In turn, each panel is designed with a fam­ily of details that pro­vide for tol­er­ances that accom­mo­date for the vari­abil­ity of rota­tions, mate­r­ial flex­i­bil­ity and the desired effect of con­ti­nu­ity. In this instal­la­tion, the detail is the pre­req­ui­site to the form, and the pre­cise con­nec­tions, rota­tions, and joints pro­vide for the con­fig­u­ra­tive base from which the trans­form­ing fig­ures of the var­i­ous struc­tural con­di­tions emerge.