AA Beijing Winter School

AA Beijing Winter Visiting School 2011 / 2012

Architectural Association School of Architecture Visiting School

In Collaboration with Tsinghua Architectural Design & Research Institute

Saturday 28 Jan – Sunday 5 Feb 2012

AA北京冬季访校2011-2012

承办：清华建筑设计研究院

Sponsors:

       

 

新城中心 Neo-Center
Tsinghua Architectural Design & Research Inst.

The East Gate, Tsinghua University

清华大学东门，清华建筑设计研究院
Agenda: Immersive Computational Design in environmental, social and economic dimensions

The purpose of this visiting school is to investigate alternatives to substantiate the intelligence and automation of computational design into more meaningful levels through experimentation on high density re-development for transforming Tongzhou (one of the existing downtowns of Beijing) into a new city centre in order to release burdens of the old city centre, which has reached a bottle-neck for the further growth in Beijing. Nobody can force citizens out to off-skirt suburbs unless they are well developed new city centres comprising sufficient job opportunities and vibrant economic activities, as well as social diversities.

According to the city planning policy, Tongzhou will be the first paradigm among all the 11 new city centres. In 2010 the local government chose a winning urban planning scheme, which embraces the history and culture of Tongzhou Cannel with the concept of River of Time and Space, which was unfolded into 4 analogical themes along the cannel, i.e. Shadow of Islands, Shadow of Pagoda, Shadow of Buildings and, Shadow of Trees. Rather than interpreting this granted scheme from a metaphorical perspective, this workshop aims to explore a series of adaptable & network models, which integrate parameters in the environmental, social or economic dimensions to investigate new topological models for city centre (more about the spatial order and sequence instead of form and dimension).

Our questions include but not limited to the following three:

1. What is the alternative to One-off Development through a computational process, which generates time-dependent outcomes according to changing conditions with minimal redundancy and maximal capacity?
2. How to use Computational Design to achieve Social Integration to share city resources to sustain the social diversity on the basis of communal integrity? And,
3. How to sustain Economic Growth through Computational Design, so that an economy-robust HDR could be stitched into the city as a positive node to a larger urban network, which may trigger more economic?

 

Beijing has become a metropolis increasingly occupied by vehicles, whose streets are wider and wider in order to relieve the profusion of traffic jams. Because of this the whole city fabric has been profoundly modified, with multi-ring roads each supporting a number of inter-connected highways in-between. Despite numerous infrastructural surgical procedures, the traffic situation is not getting any better. Beijing is slowly turning itself into a city that can only be experienced by car. One direct consequence is that crossing streets in Beijing is really quite hazardous, and can take a significant amount of time to successfully accomplish.

This AA Visiting School in Beijing will confront these issues, and will investigate alternative ways of navigating the streets. The conventional approach involves subways and elevated pedestrian bridges – purely functional facilities. In contrast, we will explore solutions to this problem in terms of expressive structures, urban icons, environmental devices and informational experiences.

Hyperlink, however, is not only an approach, but also a mechanism for evolving new computational architectural form. To assist in this, technical support (both for parametric software and rapid prototyping hardware) will be provided throughout the team-based design studio, and certain specific parametric design techniques will also be taught, enabling students to experiment with code-based modeling and simulation software. The programme will also give participants an opportunity to explore the city itself prior to the design studio, and will later be enriched by a series of related technical workshops, seminars and lectures.

Digital College of CrystalCG
and Tsinghua Architectural Design
& Research Institute

30 January – 7 February 2010

This studio-based course is open to anyone interested in the experimental design of architecture and will investigate emerging computational approaches in the context of Beijing, one of the world’s most architecturally eclectic cities.
As capital of the world’s fastest growing country, Beijing has become an experimental platform for many architects making grand statements encouraged by the obsession for
so-called iconic buildings. Does Beijing need more of these and do these projects respond to the city’s history and culture or create an entirely new context? This workshop will address these questions. The objective is to evolve a coherent architectural prototype by ‘Super-Blending’ conflicting elements co-existing in Beijing – hutong and boulevard, courtyard and skyscraper, culture and technology, old and new, nature and artefact, order and chaos.
Students will tour various parts of the city prior to working within a teambased design studio. A series of seminars and lectures related to computational design and contemporary architectural issues will also be offered.
The essential parametric design technique will enable students to experiment with code-based modelling and simulation following the workshop’s objective to challenge the iconic buildings of Beijing.
Participants will learn Rhino GH and Scripting, plus some Maya and 3D Max animation and
simulation techniques, as well as 3D printing of prototype models.