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EVDA 621 INTRODUCTION TO DESIGN THEORIESCASE STUDY: THE EMBRYOLOGICAL HOUSE, GREG LYNNPART-4: SPACE

Instructor: Graham Livesey, Vera Parlac, Joshua M. TaronLangjing XuDEC 06, 2011

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"I wanted to take a more biological approach, where there would be no discreet components. They'd all be in the same morphospace–the same form-space–so that a change in any component would inflect every other component within the system."

Lynn conceived the building's fenestration system as a series of shredded and louvered openings that "respected the soft geometry of the curved envelopes". Topological surfaces are modeled as curve networks: curves that pass through or hang from control vertices, or points, in two directions. The u and v directions describe the bias of the curves. By duplicating two curves in the same position and then spreading the control vertices apart, shreds or slices were able to be placed to pull apart and then fuse back together on the surface. In this way the geometry of the apertures and openings is coincident with the geometry of the surface. It creates different sensation of the space.

FORMAL LOGICAL

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MATERIAL

The inside of the Embryological House is like a car interior. You have a surface that is upholstered, carpeted, veneered and has instrumentation and technology built into it. The floor finishes include cork, artificial leather, wood, MDF, Maderon, stainless steel, rubber, carpet, fabric, ceramics, gel padding and plastic.

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SENSATION

"The whole biological approach, the whole ecological approach, is our last master narrative. Kids don't say prayers in school, but they talk about freeing whales. The Embryological House is invested in this master narrative. You really should feel as if you're living in an animal."

---Greg Lynn

The two space exist in mixture: smooth space is constantly being translated, transversed into a striated space; striated s p a c e i s c o n s t a n t l y b e i n g reversed, returned to a smooth space.

Smooth Space Striated Space

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Reference: 1, Lynn, Greg. Animate Form. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.2, Lynn, Greg. “Greg Lynn: Embryological Houses,” AD "Contemporary Processes in Architecture" 70, 3, London: John Wiley & Son, 2000: 26-35.3, AD. “Deconstruction at the Tate Gallery.” AD “Deconstruction” (1988): 7.4, Karen Burns, Greg lynn's Embryological House Project: The "Technology" and Metaphors of Metorsm of Architecture5, The Premise of Recombinant Architecture, Benjamin H. Bratton, http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0304/msg00011.html6, www.glform.com7, Anthony Vilder, "The Building in Pain, The body and Architecture in Post-Modern Culture"8, Lawrence Bird, " Re-Animating Greg Lynn's Embryological House: A Case Study in Digital Design Preservation, The MIT Press (June 2010).

REFERENCE