BRIEF . Topic: MONSTERS. Limits, Extremes and Tolerance in Prototype Design. Accuracy VS Performance.

Explanation (Text 200-300 words):

This masterclass will explore the search for a radical Design Space Exploration in Prototypes through its limits. The exploration of limits in extreme simulations led to the frontiers of the possible. The main points are:

1-Research on hypertrophies in projects taken to the limit

2-The limit of the prototype defines the parameter that represents it; The limit of the prototype represents the condition to which it responds, it depicts the essential condition that makes it possible.

3- Discuss the limit as pedagogy of the essence that characterizes the project, opposed to the gesture that caricatures it, the limit makes metonymy present and goes beyond the metaphor.

Speakers: Sergio del Castillo Tello, Iago Romero Ogando, Daniel del Rey Hernández.

Miauhaus, miautics, offmiau, is an open research community. Our mission is to enjoy sharing and creating knowledge by means of creative digital instruments and computational design. Digital processes are project’s tools. They are as important as the project itself: they go alongside with it, they make it possible, they generate it, reinforce it, explain it, communicate it, they allow it to be collaborative, they connect it to its context, revealing links that are not visible at first sight. Digital processes are the support of the team’s intuition, they are the way in which decisions are taken in scientific research, and the communication media in the final decisions taken

During the masterclass, three prototypes will be shown explaining how the creation of monsters is based on the radicalization of several variables for prototype solutions that visualize extreme geometric or simulation problems.

Masterclass Explanation:

1-Intro (20min)

IMG MOD 00 INTRO. This masterclass will explore the search for a radical Design Space Exploration in Prototypes through its limits. The exploration of limits in extreme simulations leads us to the frontiers of what is possible or not. The 3 main points to expose here are: VID MON 00 Monsters Making Of

1- The fact that the research on hypertrophies in projects taken to the limit is an interesting way to find new radical or intense architectural solutions.

2- The fact that the range of the limits of the prototype defines the parameters that represents it; The limit of the prototype represents the condition to which it responds, it depicts the essential condition that makes it possible.

3- The relevance of the limit as a Pedagogy of the essential conditions that characterizes the project, and opposed to the gestures that caricatures it, the limit makes metonymy present and goes beyond the metaphor.

1.1- Background: Brutalism, Icons or Manifestos (5 min)

-The Brutalist divide: Concrete monsters or architectural icons? IMG MON 01 Atlas of Brutalist Architecture Phaidon 1 The architectural style of brutalism, with its exposed concrete, carry a dividing opinion for decades. Around the world, many of its examples were dismissed as monstrosities. Brutalist buildings are characterised by their massive, monolithic and ‘blocky’ appearance with a rigid geometric style and large-scale use of poured concrete. IMG MON 02 ATLAS PHAIDON 2 The movement began to decline in the 1970s, having been much criticised for being impersonal and inhuman, rigid and for being non adaptive solutions, despite the first idea of utopian public, popular, and social architecture that was associated to it. IMG MON 03 ATLAS PHAIDON 3

Reference: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1CPtMYghnVMJVv1YphFrWDc/the-brutalist-divide-concrete-monsters-or-architectural-icons

1.2 - Background: Hypertrophy, organic failure or excelence (5 min)

An Hypertrophy is an Enlargement of an organ or tissue from the increase in size of its cells, due to desease or overfunction; However, an organ can work over its capacities becoming an advantage or a singularity; In design, that´s the limit between excentricity versus strageness (rarity), a marvellous contrast. IMG MON 04 Another Scale of Arqutecture, Junya Ishigami

1.3 - Background: Extremes, exageration (mannerism) or radicalism (5 min)

There are two opposite concepts: Caricatures or mere Metaphors, versus Metonymy or radical interpretation of a main project condition. IMG MON 05 Metaphores in Architecture "The role of metaphors in the formation of architectural identity" Nezih AYIRAN . Metonymy is the substitution of the name of an entity by the name of one of its main attributes that characterizes it the most. IMG MON 06 Dali Elephants / IMG MON 07 Institute of Cultural Heritage Conservation and Restoration (commonly known as The Crown of Thorns) F.Higueras, he used a radial triangulated modulus as a recurrent resource for other several great projects such as Contest for Montecarlo´s Multipurpose Building 1969

1.4 - Background: Diagrams as Buildings (1 min)

The power, simplicity, elegance and purity of a simple form created that resembles a pristine idea that can be diagrammed and depicted clearly. IMG MOD 08 Siza The Sweeping canopy of the 1998 Portuguese National Pavilion SIZA PAVILLION 1 Diagram as Building / IMG MON 08 SIZA PAVILLION 2 Shadow as Superfunction / IMG MON 08 SIZA PAVILLION 3 Detail as Extreme Elegance. Siza´s Sweeping canopy of the 1998 Portuguese National Pavilion is an iconic structure made possible by a extremely thin layer of a prestressed concrete membrane (10 - 12 cm)

2- Proposal (20min)

2.1 - Intro:

At this point, we are able to introduce the idea of monsters as experiments of adaptation to extreme conditions, playing with the frontier of what defines the architectural solution. (5 min) IMG MON 09 MONSTERS VARIABLES-ACTION-TARGET

2.2 - Definitions: MON 10 SCRIPTING

MONSTER1 (M1): MEGALIFTED Monster exagerating the length of the supports in order to be stable at a considerable height, manipulating the degrees of freedom of support thickening and number of connectors, keeping the volume (and thus weigth) to be supported constant (explanation 5 min)

MONSTER2 (M2): HYPERINFLATED Monster exagerating the inflation of a textile bubble that is attached to the floor by catenaries with plastic anchors. (explanation 5 min)

MONSTER3 (M3): SUPERUNSTABLE Monster that check the equilibrium status of and organic shape, supported by unstable rounded supports, that can be deformed according to some directions creating protuberances as cantilevers. This mainly a gravity vs. balance problem. If the centre of mass projected onto the ground is inside the convex hull of the points where the shape touches the ground, it shouldn’t fall over, but we have to take into account also the overturning moment of the overall shape. (That´s what we call the Support polygon condition: For a rigid object in contact with a fixed environment and acted upon by gravity in the vertical direction, its support polygon is a horizontal region over which the center of mass must lie to achieve static stability). At least the support polygon represents the necessary condition for an object to be at equilibrium under gravity (explanation 5 min)

2.2 - Dynamic Conditions and Degrees of freedom: The three monsters can react to a manipulation within certain flexible ranges of free movement (3 min)

M1 MEGALIFTED - DOF Position of Shape (Volume to be supported) / Position of Supports / Scale of the Base of the Supports / Shape of the profile Supports (slenderness) / Global Supports Thickness Factor / BArs and Body collisions / Floor Collisions

M2 HYPERINFLATED - DOF Free movement and free deformation in space of the inflated bubble (Soft Body) / Supports as catenaries with Plastic Anchor Points (plastic means they have a break limit) / Hydrostatic pressure limits / Floor collisions

M3 SUPERUNSTABLE - DOF Rigid Body without any degree of free deformation / Free rotation and position of the whole shape / Floor Collisions

3- Tests and Practical Demonstration (20min)

3.1 Parts of the Scripting (10 min)

Three monsters work as experiments of adaptation to extreme conditions are programmed and shown. Everyone of them has Variables (values that may change to test the prototype), a Test Action to perform (the testing time to check how the prototype reacts), and a Target to be fulfilled (the objective or aim to be accomplished or at least satisfied). FInally all of the entities are ranked and sorted in the order they fulfill the target as they are closed to the limit without collapse, fail, or fall. Record and comparison of the results: number of iterations until they fail.

M1 MEGALIFTED - VARIABLES Shape / Height (position) / Supports Slenderness or Thickening

M2 HYPERINFLATED - VARIABLES Initial Overall Pressure / Number and Position of inner Anchor Points

M3 SUPERUNSTABLE - VARIABLES Number of Cantilevers (Shape Deformation) / Quantity of Deformation / Weight / Center of Gravity Position

3.2 Accuracy Vs Performance (5 min):

All of the prototypes are simulations wthin a certain logic framework conditions. They work with the selected dynamic constraints and they materials do not behave as real material but as what we call in computational design "Pseudo-materials" : the perform some pre-selected properties , but not all the properties of a real material, to simulate the proof of concept.

3.3 Ranking (10 min):

The final goal is recording several entities states that reached equilibrum or stability and compare among them to take design decissions or get some knowledge to start machine learning processes (such as evolutive algorithms), sorted in a catalogue that defines the deployment of the prototype what we call Desing Space.

M1 MEGALIFTED - RANKING LIMIT CONDITION TO TEST: if it lasts more than 1500 iterations and keeping the overall height more than 160.00ml

M2 HYPERINFLATED - RANKING LIMIT CONDITION TO TEST: if it gets the largest volume without lifting from the floor (releasing the anchor points)

M3 SUPERUNSTABLE - RANKING LIMIT CONDITION TO TEST: if it keeps stable without falling more than 500 iterations in every deformation configuration