Responsibly

Peter Macapia labDORA

Pratt Institute/SciArc

Topology, Engineering, and the Politics of the City

Imprecise

Agenda:

The relationship between Topology,

Structural Design, The Space of the City,

and Geopolitics.

Libya Crisis Map

Tahrir Square

My Friends on Phone

50% on mobile

50% world population in cities

It seems as though all cities

Are in 100% conflict. Not with

Each other, but within themselves.

How do you design for the city of today?

And tomorrow?

And what means Responsibility

And how do we use Precision?

Topology has been formalized as a

way of thinking about

connectedness.

Today the idea of “connectedness”

is as political as it is formal.

Silk Trade Route Topological Optimization

Euler’s Königsberg

Bridge Problem

Social Networking, Crisis

Mapping, Google Earth

Two of the most important aspects of

computation today involve algorithmic

combinatorials (which produce

connections)

And emergent networks (which

produce e.g. commerce, new forms of

social organization, and self-organized

political awareness)

Early Work:

Topology, Structures, Singularities,

Sustainability

(geometry and topology of

matter/energy relations)

Dirty Geometry Pavilion: Case

Study with a structure conceived as

topological network.

Stochastic Primary Structure,

Building to suspend over vacant lot

in order to free up urban space for

random public use.

Design based on capturing thermal

gain from existing building surfaces

in order to ventilate the pavilion by

bringing cooler air off the shaded

ground and through the structure

through convection.

Problem was the concept of

structure.

Topological Tower: Generative FEM analysis and topological network

tower. Secondary structural network has flexibility in Primary

structural network.

Combinatorial Module Tower:

topological network + generative

combinatorial algorithm

Responsibly Imprecise 1: The Sciarc experiment with

SolidThinking/InspiredMorphogenesis

The research involved taking a class of students who

would

A) develop schemes for a large cantilever in front of the

school.

B) select a project,

C) Materialize the Morphogenesis diagram into a

construction logic that transformed the pictorial logic of

the Morphogenesis results into something else.

D) The “something else” was a fiberglass/composite

series of panels, the seams of which would provide a new

structural network.

Responsibly Imprecise 2: The Audi

Experiment

Asked by Audi to redefine the city for 2030, the

agenda was to lift buildings off the street in

order to generate as much urban public space

as possible while allowing the mixture of

pedestrian and auto traffic throughout based

on embedded sensor technology within the

road surface which communicates directly with

automobiles.

The entire endeavor was inspired by the Stevie

Wonder Video Living for the City

The Structural Insight came from

Morphogenesis.

Responsibly Imprecise 3: The United Nations

Center for Performing Arts.

A theoretical project that would allow the

building to function as an open public space

situated in the middle of a roadway, that would

encourage an intersection between global

politics and performance art, open to

dictatorships and democracies around the

world.

Here the structural base rises up through the

building in a really intense and almost

impossibly gross manner from which to

cantilever performance platforms inside and

outside

Responsibly Imprecise 4: The Pratt

Experiment

Find a way to use Morphogenesis such that it

raises two questions:

1) how to rethink the relation between

structure and building in terms of space?

2) how to rethink the building in terms of

public urban space.

The move takes us from the practical to the

political.

Imprecision here means: you are free to

interpret the use of the technology for things

other than its intended use.

Joy Tennanbaum: An open air birdcage prison structure for

convicts specializing in performance art, constantly

surveyed by the city. Calatrava meets Foucault meets Elvis

Dan Coughlin: The

conversion of the Citicorp

building into a national public

park.

Vivi Wei: The universal church which turns the Gothic cathedral

inside out for open air public space. Christianity meets Hinduism

meets Judaism meets whatever you want for religion on that day

of the week.

Vida Chang: An aspiring Super Hero converts the top of a

building for today’s politically and environmentally

conscientious youth, all of whom are unemployed or really hate

their jobs.

Towards the next step: Irresponsibly Precise

We have at the moment no “logical” way to treat the

Morphogenesis results as a material fact.

This means we need to experiment wildly with materials and

construction techniques.