AcousticSpace_about the form

 I want to explain the process which is being developed by the design group: I want therefore to explain the way that has led us where are we now.

1_choises

The very first model was not parametrical, I found very difficoult to make two bases of a loft rotate. When Mario talked me about the idea of a torsioned space, both of us agreed that the perception of a torsion in the space was given by the edges of a structure, the one that in my model was a loft. Thus the very first form had a number of sides: it was a rotating octagon.

Another thing has always been very clear to us: since the hangar has its entrances on the long sides, the new space generated by our object had to be eccentric. Thus we would have been able to create a filter space, something in-the hangar but out-of-our-space. In this limbo, people can see the object from the exterior, before joining its space, something which is  positive for us.

Eccentricity was the first thing I’ve gained when I’ve started designing the parametric model. The bases of the loft are inscribed in circles which are as close to one side as possible: these circles’ ray is free to vary, but the center always lies on the bisectrix of the two side I want to be close to (these sides are the real structures that exists in the hangar). It’s easy to understand why: each point of a bisectrix has the same distance from the sides of the angle. When we put the ray in relation with the base loft edge, we clearly see that this circle id the widest and closest.

In order to make the bases rotate, I had to draw a vey complex geometry. That’s because revit does not recognize polygon as entities, but only as sum of reference lines. I had therefore to generate a polar array of reference lines around the center of the circle, while their offset form the polygon I want to draw. There is only one ref. line which rotates, while others are(explicitally)  constrained to. Two loft bases are contrained by a math law (linear), by the usual marker structure.

After discovering how to generate the parametric geometry, we realized a very important thing: it’s the deformation of a surface, not the movement of one edge, to give torsion perception. The octagon become a pentagon at first.

We had a very intense meeting on this point. From that moment on, we've decided to be radical: the form of our rotating structure had to be a square. The torsion of this solid is really dramatic. We are used to live in box-like spaces, parallelepiped. The perception of a right angle rotating in the space should be really great, it was what we were looking for. The parametric model I’ve realized gave us the opportunity to discover and explore this new idea. It is a loft whose bases are rotating as usual; I’ve drawn them in plan rather that in elevation, because for revit it is far easier to accept objects’ rotation in the xy plane, rather than in the third dimension (to use it in elevation, just host it on a vertical ref.plane).

The new consciousness brought us to another important decision: to make the section wide vary in plan as well, in order both to have a bigger hall and to define the filter space better

2_variations

After realizing the model, we’ve started exploring it’s variations which are 1. Rotation 2. Enlargement 3. Last two sections grows higher to give space to the stage.

In an elegant design, variation work is intended to be mild but effective. We understood therefore that the very best thing was to make our object start as a regular portal, and make it end as another regular portal, rotated by 90°.

This solution is good indeed because of its rationality: entering in a space which starts and ends with “regular” structures highlights the torsion. This “rational” solution is, according to me, really good and hard to beat. On the other hand, it has a very significant problem. It generates a succession of section like this: Portal-Hut-Portal. The portal section is efficient, it make possible for people to sit close to edges, while the Hut one is not and produces a big loss of floor. Since at one side of the hall is intended to be the entrance, while on the other there is the stage, people should sit in the middle, where we find Hut section. The loss of floor in the “rational” solution is dramatic. We need to overcome this problem, since one of the project features is a certain amount of seats.

We are starting now on working on the theme of not-wasting floor. We’ve abandoned therefore the good idea of enlargement variation, since it is very hard to reach the number of seat. But, as you can see, the Hut section is closer to walls than the Portal does (that’s because geometry: diagonal is longer than the edge…). Therefore, although this road is 99% closed, we could keep on working on the filter space by using the proprieties of our sections.

One possible variation to explore is to create an “irrational” space, by  the sequence Hut-Portal-Hut. Hut sections shall avoid to be 45°, which is the least efficient configuration. I would like to keep on working on this path.

On the other hand, it is possible to think about other ways of producing the variation, like using a sin-law, for instance.

The sin-law space produces a “drunk” space, according to me; otherwise, it is higly efficient. We’ve realized a model of this solution to explain the project, but we need to work more and more, because this solution produces a total loss of the very first idea of torsion, according to me.