our vision of mobility

Another piece by Umberto Boccioni named Elasticity shows mobility through a repitition of imagery as shown in the horse's legs.

Futurism is greratly concerned with mobility, speed and technology as a means of triumph over the natural world. Through their pieces they show movement.

Umberto Boccioni - Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913).

funktionide

I think I've got something to interest you Harjeet, and others as well. This is a concept by Stefan Ulrich of a shape-changing object to relieve loneliness. The object would be made of electroactive polymers, which change shape when electric current is applied. This movie explains the technology:




The second movie explains the concept:





The question is : is it possible substitute a human being with "this"??

I'm still unsure, but the technology if introduced to architecture, can change the static (or static-mechanical) form of architecture into shape-shifting.

Jakub

Ordered complexity - examples

These are exaples of natural structure digital visualisations

a) visualisation of the flight path of a flock of birds

b) digital human brain network showing connection
c) Marek Kolodziejczyk, wool-thread model to compute

optimised dtour path network

d) after collision behaviour of digital galaxies

io

kinetic sculptures

Susan Robb's "Warmth Giant Black Toobs" Mohsin

Susan Robb is a Seattle-based artist whose work includes these 50' long, air-filled, sun-powered sculptures made out of garbage-can liners:

At first the tubes seem to be moving in slow motion, but when humans enter the frame it becomes clear that the video's speed isn't manipulated.

Susan Robb’s says more than a billion tons of trash are dumped into the ocean every year. Oceanographers have found a swirling miasma of consumer plastics‚ plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic toys‚ the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean. Plankton, fish, birds, and marine mammals all ingest these plastics (and the chemicals they contain and leach), which in turn we ingest. Scientists are just beginning to research the long-term ways in which the chemicals used to make plastic interact with biochemistry, uncovering how plastics not only effect planetary health but are also linked to cancer, diabetes, and endocrine malfunctions. Like Andy Warhol said, we are indeed (and literally) all becoming plastic. In Warmth, Giant Black Toobs, I use solar power and ambient breezes to give life to the ever-present black plastic garbage bag. Polypropylene garbage bags, 50 feet tall by 30 inches in diameter, are inflated with air by allowing the wind to fill them or by running with them. One end is staked to the ground; the other end is free. The sun does the rest. Employing a similar principle to that of hot air balloons, the sun heats the air inside the toobs, and since hot air is less dense then cold air, the toobs become buoyant. Solar-produced buoyancy, breezes, and internal convection work to transform this symbol of the (American) cycle of consumption and waste into seemingly sentient creatures, live plastic hybrids whose choreography brings to mind the very sea creatures our epoch's mass of waste effects

Another kinetic sculpture i really liked by Dutch artist Theo Jansen called Animari.

You don’t really appreciate his kinetic, walking sculptures till you watch a video.

Dutch artist Theo Jansen creates amazingly moving and a little bit weird insect- like sculptures, built from only plastic tubes and lemonade bottles.

Jansen wasn’t always a creator of life. He once studied physics, later quitting to become a painter. He caused near-panic in a town with his homemade “UFO” and invented an amazing painting machine in the following years. In 1990, he found the happy medium between physics and art with the creation of Animari. The number of tubes and the length of each tube determines the genetic “code” of each strandbeest (or beach animal), dictating how it will move and interact with its environment. Jansen wasn’t always a creator of life. He once studied physics, later quitting to become a painter. He caused near-panic in a town with his homemade “UFO” and invented an amazing painting machine in the following years. In 1990, he found the happy medium between physics and art with the creation of Animari. The number of tubes and the length of each tube determines the genetic “code” of each strandbeest (or beach animal), dictating how it will move and interact with its environment.

Let me know if you think he’s kinetics are amazing guys??? Mohsin.

Ordered complexity

Due to the fact that our civilization is changing dramatically rapid in a global scale and in all sectors (economical, social, cultural, etc), and it has evolved to heterogeneous society, digital technologies might give the solution to architecture and urbanism to organise the increased complexity of the post-Fordism epoch.

Digital technologies promotes the theory of 'ordered complexity' which argues to Modernistic approach of geometrically ordered cities and circulations within them.

Digital tools are offered to designers to analyse, understand and appreciate the chaotic complexity which constitutes nature in terms of ther underlying logic and rationality. Systems like swarm intelligence and phenomena that constitutes by local correlations and interactions are now researchable and their attributes might be used in the future.

We are, daresay, towards to a new architectural movement which drafts its principles from natural structures and settlements and intends on dynamic and adaptive urban environments, as well as single buildings and interiors.

io

mobility: adaptability:

Adaptability + Climate change = Mobile world.............

Hi guys.....

Mobility to me means being able to freely move from one place to another (via, motorways, roads, aeroplanes, communicate by email, phones, text messages etc...) and being adaptable to make the world mobile regardless of the challenges thrown to us by the climate change. Climate change is one of the biggest issues to solve and to ensure that human mobility and comfort is not affected, thus, I think it is very important to understand the scope of mobility in relation to climate change.

Mobility means “being able to move freely and easily” within daily routes. But it is also important to think that the devices (machinery) we use to move across easily can have a negative effect on our environment. DO WE NOT THINK THAT IF WE CARRY ON LIKE THIS WHAT EFFECT WILL IT HAVE ON OUR FUTURE MOBILITY.........? However, I was also thinking about alternatives to more sustainable transportation, social networking, architecture/ landscape architecture......

HYDROGEN cars to make sustainable transportation from one place to another...

Sustainable social healthy environment where people can communicate and be able to move freely and easily (landscape design to accommodate risks of flooding, green house effect etc (design to benefit the planet)......

Sustainable architecture ( use of wind turbines, solar panels, underground heating system to increase human comfort level naturally to provide safer mobility to human and environment.....
Keeping that in mind I started researching about options available to us in future and started thinking about Mobility in future and came across what mobility means to architects, scientists, designers, urban planners etc....

This video explain and gives food for thought on mobility in future....

· Methods to go from place A to place B via foot (great way) to experience and explore social spaces, help environment and personal health (Mitchell Joachim, ARCHITECT, URBAN DESIGNER)
· Teleportation
· Megnaticlevation
· Unlocking gravity
· Learning to ADAPT with the planet





This video clearly explains my idea of mobility and futurism.... Hope you guys like it... HAPPY SEARCHING ;)

MOHSIN.....

It is not all about the looks

Relative to Jakub' s Prada Transformer, for my point of view and relating to my posts this is a very small representative example to show the necessary trend for flexibility and quick adaptability of our building environment. Human needs change rapidly so there is a necessity for architecture to change in the same rhythm intelligently without wasting matter, time and energy. It is not all about the looks it is all about the necessity of adaptability.

prefabrication

Another example that shows the trend of flexibility and adaptability is the rotating buildings by Dynamic Architecture of David Fischer. Although it looks like a threat to me it is based upon ideas of adaptability. It is based on the general and initial idea of the introduction of the fourth dimension to architecture: Time. Also it is a self-sufficient building relating to its needs in energy using wind turbines and solar panels and in addition it is programmed to be built entirely from pre-fabricated parts that will reduce construction time offer substantial cost savings. And I am sure that in the same easy and quick way it can be demolished and recycled, too.

io

Flexible cities

On this post I have attempted to relate the outcomes of my older posts to conclude to some basic ideas that picture the evolution of architecture in megacities and urban design in extend.

The current architecture and urban development of megacities is characterised in terms of mobility by:

· the mobility of the citizens using several modes of transportation through well designed networks of transferration and semiotics which ensure the ordered, quick, secure and efficient mobility.

· the mass plyletic movements to the cities which is responsible for the multidiversity of needs, historic and culture backgrounds as well as the architectural styles in the cities.

· the rapid transferration of materials in abundance through great organised networks of transport and delivery.

· the direct (in speed zero) exchange of knowledge and information as well as the new technologies and techniques.

· the evolution of the direct internet communication through computers and handhold devices that has modulated the everyday needs for mobility.

· the form of everyday activities of the citizens and their needs to mobile according to those.

All the above guide to the passage from the mass production to the flexible and individual production not only in architecture but in design in general as well. It is a necessity to consider our cities as living hypostasis that never remain stable but adapt and vary according to the each epoch needs. Architecture should not be a result of static volumes and masses, we should emphasize on relations instead of mass in architecture and to consider that these relations might change during the time.

io

prada transformer - OMA

One of my first thoughts about mobility within architectural context was work of Rem Koolhaas - prada transformer - a temporary pavilion put up in Seoul, Korea.

At first, some may say, that it doesn't fit within great, fancy pavilions built these days, but is it all only about the looks?

Certainly, when it comes to function, Koolhaas's pavilion beats up all the competition. It has not two, not three, but four different functions, which can be achieved by setting the structure on one of his four walls, each being a different geometrical shape to deliver a best possible performance for a particular use.

It takes 4 cranes, a couple of hours and a refit to change the program which include: fashion exhibition, art exhibition, cinema and a catwalk for fashion shows and special events.

Whole structure is wrapped with PVC type of material, which because of dirty Seoul's air looks more like a stretched vellum .

Here is a time lapse movie showing the transformation itself, which unfortunately is not part of a public show, despite being probably most exciting one.

Jakub

my playground

According to what you have posted Io, about a new way of overcoming urban obstacles, here is something, that may interest you and all of us.

This is a teaser of a recent movie, where freerunners interact with the recent, modern architecture (mountain dwellings by BIG) + interview the architects and urban planners.

That would be interesting to get a full copy of this movie to see, what space designers have to say.

Jakub

mobile urban architecture

Pretty interesting stuff here. Can't get anymore mobile in architecture than this.

http://weburbanist.com/2007/09/17/mobile-urban-architecture-from-portable-housing-to-temporary-hotel-rooms/

kinetic architecture

http://www.kineticarchitecture.net/

and this

Io

dynamic architecture

http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/home.html

have a look on that, i m waiting for your comments!

Io