GREG LYNNGenerative models in architecture

Presented byG. Aiswarya. PSaroja. A

ABOUT

Born: Ohio 1964

Undergraduate (Design): Miami UniversityGraduate (Architecture): Princeton University

Employed: Antoine Predock ArchitectsEisenman Architects

In 1992 Lynn founded

GregLynnFORM and currently has an

office in Venice, CAand Hoboken, NJ

Time is a factor allowed by animation software which permits the possibility of key-framing and it allows 'objects to interact dynamically with one another'.

Topology is the area that allows surfaces to be formed using splines instead of points and lines. Splines are formed by the continuous sequence of vectors that define their shape, exhibiting.

Parameters provide the rules under which the subject will deal with the passing of time and its changing topology. Parameters can be used to introduce a field with certain qualities to influence the form and generate an emergent new result.

“As the study of motion, Lynn sees no other way forward than through the use of computer technology, it's environment providing 'a new medium for design'. His work also investigates the use of computers to manufacture the complex results of his process, such as his utilization of computer numerically controlled milling techniques to produce the work.”

Goals

•to rethink the idea of house typology beyond the modernist "kit of parts" model to an organic, flexible, genetic/generic prototype from which an infinite number of iterations can be generated.

•to extend the interplay of "generic" and "variation" implied in this rethinking to notions of product "branding" and the satisfaction of individual desire through consumer-specific, unique versions of the product.

•to push the capabilities of existing automated manufacturing technologies for the production of non-standard architectural forms.

Body

Greg Lynn’s work the – “The Embryological House” is a postmodern, organicist style inspired by evolutionary biology and the science of turbulence and made possible by the computer's ability to generate warped or fluid forms. The relationship between architecture and the body is apparent at many levels in this example of his work. The Embryological House is suppose to trace the evolution pattern of the human embryo.

At the prototyping stage Lynn defined this project in stages and each mutation was considered a stage in evaluation, none of the mutations were considered perfect.

The Embryological House was an attempt to participate in that economic reality, but with a completely different implicit lifestyle and relationship to the environment. Lynn wanted to take a more biological approach, where there would be no discreet components.

“The concept was that system had the same morphospace–the same form-space–so that a change in any component would inflect every other component within the system.”

Design Development

First, a set of vectoral forces is applied to a primitive shape and permitted to generate a group of what Lynn calls "gastrulated rooms" (an analogy with the biomorphogenctic process by which an embryo folds on to itself to form a gaster, or "stomach").

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Microstation and Maya

Design Development

From these Lynn chooses the six showing the widest variation and invents a structural system that can accommodate them all. The six volumes are then developed through interaction with forces applied to an arbitrary ground plane: while deforming the volume, the ground also deforms, nesting the volume in a folded plinth.

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Design Development

The house volumes can now be brought under the influence of a particular site. To provide local conditions for the houses, Lynn chose the sites of 12 Palladian villas in the Veneto and translated the particularities of each-topology, orientation, barrier, and access-all into vectoral information.

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Design Development

When one of these sites interacts with one of the nested house volumes, mutual deformation results in the creation of an interstitial zone for transitional amenities such as grotto, garden, or patio, which can be rendered in glass so the ground turns transparent and the house appears floating above it.

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Design DevelopmentAt any stage of the process, other kinds of information can be permitted to influence the form. In one house, for example, the path of the sun on a given is translated into forces that subtly deform the surface. As the sun passes around the solar vault, it registers the areas of light and shade along the buildings irregular dents, leaving patterns like moss on rocks. They are turned paradoxically into shade panels of three-dimensional light, or so it seems, made from golden ribbons of photovoltaics bonded between urethane and flexible stainless-steel sheets.

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FabricationAt the end of this embryology appears a series of unique houses of a generic proportion, 30 feet high (2 stories), 30 feet wide, 50 feet long, that can swell or shrink, depending upon the site. Computer-aided manufacture makes the houses an aesthetic bargain by producing within its parameters the series' multiple, singular units without specialized machining and in relatively little time.

At the Venice Biennale, Lvnn illustrated this means of production through a 30 percent scale model made with 5-axis (three orthogonal plus clockwise and counterclockwise) CNC (computer numerically controlled) milling machine.

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ProductionFrom a gantry arm moving back a forth within a 30-by-20-by 6-foot range, first thicker, then thinner drill bits milled the form from 3.2-foot-thick slices in less than a week. As a mode of distribution, Lynn envisions a kind of "mail-order" business that could deliver these house-parts to any site on the globe.

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What does this project mean to us?

Though several of the iterations were developed far enough that their potential for manufacturing could be tested, no built version of the House was ever realized. Instead the House remained a conceptual project, as intended from the beginning. It was realized most completely in digital form. It is its conceptualization as a purely digital project which makes the Embryological House such a compelling case study.

Our Views•Small firm – principal practices and teaches.

•Cyberspace practice - computer is inherent in all phases of practice and forms the designers pedagogy and practice methodology.

•The computer is utilized as both form generator of the idea and facilitator for manufacturing of the physical artifact at the micro and macro scale.

•Experimental use of technology and software.

•Designs in digital environment – high tech media presentations.

•Successful use of technology to meet tight budget and time.

•Direct link of creative genesis of idea to digital environment - manufacturing and construction.

•Computing is inherent in the rationalization of project design forces.

•Computing is an inherent component of the interplay of geometric form and spatial discovery in the design process.