...Pattern Investigations Continued:

Further studies into a choosen pattern:

Josef Albers:
'Goldrosa', 1926, sand blasted glass with black paint

A key member of the Bauhaus, student & later a teacher.
This series of his work holds an mechanical technique, experimenting with a picture based on material and technical treatment. Eradication of the presence of the artists hand offers a clear composition & a very exact drawing, which range is limited from the technical process involved.

Examining the rules:

5 variations upon the Constructs:

1. Where as the original pattern follows a bar shift in alignment to either odd or even numbers, here at the catalyst of a 1x1 square the result is a flip in the axis, whereby a horizontal transitions into a vertical bar. The square almost acts as a hinge joint.

2. The constraint on the thickness of a bar is taken away inorder to achieve further variation. The result alters the perception of with row a bar sits on and also provides several unique distances (offsets) between bars.

3. The white and black bars still inhabit the odd and even rows respectively. However a shift seems to appear between which set of row each sit on due to the both the bleed in the red and the jaggedness of the bar.

4. The white and black bars still inhabit the odd and even rows respectively. The red bars take a prominent vertical axis and elements along the diagonal are permitted.

5. All initial constraints remain. However, a new background colour is added as two rectangles within the grid layered over the top of the existing black, white & red backgrounds. The grey solid background here gives the impression that a new set of bars are placed onto the grid.

Site Model 1:500

Unit 9's site model of the Greenwich Peninsula, 23.oct.09:

Odham's Walk Estate, 1981, by Donald Ball

Located opposite Covent Garden tube station.
As part of our Urban Ecology theory module we visited Odham's Walk, a social house scheme set above a podium of shops, addressing the shortage of quality housing & businessess within Covent Garden, aimed at supporting sustainable communities.

Elements of 'Mat' building typologies, which the unit is interested in this year, can be found within this project; showing signs of; varieties of space, repetative/iterative geometries, multiple level open public walkways, inbetween spaces, public coutyards & private patios, as well as multi programmed & sustainable social interaction, and it's setting within the city.

The conglomerate clusters and complex organisation of the spaces are a little unclear in my photos, so it is worthwhile others visiting at some point to experience these spaces. (axo to follow shortly)




above: taken from multi map

Pattern Investigation:

A collection of patterns between homogeneity & Heterogeneity:
Examing the rules that generate through a series of diagrams

Cecil Balmond:
'Fractile', V&A Spiral, Tile design
Based upon the work of mathematician Robert Ammann



Examining the rule:



M.C. Escher:
'Sky & Water II', 1938



Self examining the rule:



Foreign Office Architects:
Ravensbourne College of Design, Facade



Self examining the rule:



Josef Albers:
'Bundled', 1925, sand blasted glass with black paint



Self examining the rules:

Envision of a City Ideal: Draft 1

The Megacity Ideal

Density:

A city; a tight urban mass of complex spatial organisms and infrastructure, reaches its optimum prime as it approaches the scale of a ‘megacity’; a large collective hub of inhabitants and structures.

Tighter urban footprints can be achieved within megacities as structures within the city become cities within cities; larger mega-structures which house the complexities of all necessary functions. Vertical based structures with internal movements would eliminate the private vehicles from a large proportion of the city, & would hence reduce the footprint considerably further.

As the city grows to become more complex the city will suit a compact structure, with fixed boundaries and clearly define perimeters. Urban sprawl will be reversed, by which interconnections between existing buildings and communities will tauten and grow within pockets of the city boundaries, and mega-structures are expanded upwards & adapted to the larger increases of population. Networks will be sustained higher up in the field of the city which becomes ever more vertical.

Frugality:

Urban density = efficiency. The city becomes a collective whole, & the inhabitants become valuable as a group. Larger densities can sustain larger services and better public infrastructures which will not become weakened and strained by low density suburban patterns. More services are accessible to a larger amount of inhabitants. Everything & everyone within the city is able to exist close to its means.

Giving Back the Land:

As urban migration to the city increases, leaving only a few rural outposts outside the perimeters of the mega-cities, extensive amounts of land, now made available from the abandoned thin blanket of intensive suburban sprawl, can be reverted back to wilderness, restoring the world’s damaged natural ecosystems.

Although this tight urban mass at first seems to detach its inhabitants from the natural world, further insight would suggest an even greater contact with the extreme nature as proximity to true wilderness could be reached, linked directly outside the perimeter of the new tighter city borders.