Digital Archaeology: Unearthing Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel, Part I

 

This project began from a simple idea: to explore how the latest generation of modeling and animation software could be used to breathe new life into a legendary building from the past. Our aim is to demonstrate that the advanced tools of contemporary design—programs like AutoCAD, Rhino, 3Ds Max, VRay, and After Effects—also have the potential to transform how we understand, research, and teach architectural history. The choice of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel (completed in 1923, demolished in 1967) as a vehicle for this exploration was inspired by several factors. Key among these was a sense of the hotel’s critical importance both within Wright’s career and within the history of modern architecture in Japan. We were also attracted by the complexity of Wright’s space-making, the strangeness of his formal language and relentless ornamentation scheme, and the unfamiliarity of the hotel’s handcrafted construction technique.

All of these aspects clearly situate the project within a category of transitional or early modern architecture; yet the Imperial Hotel’s deft integration of space, structure, ornament, and daylight into a pervasive, complex-yet-logical geometric system might hold strong allure and relevance for architects today. And Wright’s emphasis on complex surface articulation and visual porosity might even be understood to foreshadow, paradoxically, the formal preoccupations of contemporary parametric design.

–Mark Mulligan, Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, Harvard GSD

Student Team
Andrew Bryan, Paul Dahlke, Nathan Fash

Digital Archaeology: Unearthing Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel, Part II

This project began from a simple idea: to explore how the latest generation of modeling and animation software could be used to breathe new life into a legendary building from the past. Our aim is to demonstrate that the advanced tools of contemporary design—programs like AutoCAD, Rhino, 3Ds Max, VRay, and After Effects—also have the potential to transform how we understand, research, and teach architectural history. The choice of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel (completed in 1923, demolished in 1967) as a vehicle for this exploration was inspired by several factors. Key among these was a sense of the hotel’s critical importance both within Wright’s career and within the history of modern architecture in Japan. We were also attracted by the complexity of Wright’s space-making, the strangeness of his formal language and relentless ornamentation scheme, and the unfamiliarity of the hotel’s handcrafted construction technique.

All of these aspects clearly situate the project within a category of transitional or early modern architecture; yet the Imperial Hotel’s deft integration of space, structure, ornament, and daylight into a pervasive, complex-yet-logical geometric system might hold strong allure and relevance for architects today. And Wright’s emphasis on complex surface articulation and visual porosity might even be understood to foreshadow, paradoxically, the formal preoccupations of contemporary parametric design.

–Mark Mulligan, Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, Harvard GSD

Student Team
Andrew Bryan, Paul Dahlke, Nathan Fash

Ceramic Futures

Martin Bechthold, Professor of Architectural Technology, and Christoph Reinhart, Associate Professor of Architectural Technology, with support and funding from the Spanish Ceramic Tile Manufacturers’ Association (ASCER), have developed a process for making an external shading system of unique, high performance, aesthetically pleasing ceramic tile louvers. The process marries design and performance to create a product system that has the potential to transform building façade cladding and mitigate energy consumption while improving the quality of life for inhabitants.

A student team led by Reinhart developed an early version for a new ‘form suggesting’ algorithm that optimizes the form of an arbitrarily shaped surface intended to be a shading element in consideration of annual heating and cooling loads. A prototype of the algorithm called ‘SHADERADE’ was implemented into the popular Rhinoceros/Grasshopper CAD Environment and was also linked to both the US Department of Energy’s Energy Plus and Radiance state-of-the-art simulation engines. A paper describing SHADERADE will be presented November 2011 in Sydney, Australia at Building Simulation 2011, the world’s premier building performance simulation conference.

After the surface has been transformed into optimized, aesthetically pleasing louver segments, each tile must be isolated and fabricated. Traditionally a custom mold needed to be produced for all individually shaped tiles. That created a high level of waste due to the number of molds that needed to be manufactured as well as the very limited applications for re-use. Additionally, there was a high level of production inefficiency resulting from the labor and time needed to produce the unique tile louvers. Responding to this challenge, another student team led by Bechthold developed a novel production technique for manufacturing the custom tiles using a variable pin mold and a robotically controlled ceramic deposition system. Due to its fluid forming properties, ceramic was considered an ideal material for the louvers. Both teams also chose to work with the widely adopted software platform Rhinoceros and Grasshopper to demonstrate that advanced parametric modeling and fabrication can be achieved through accessible and open interface software.

A sculptural shading screen was developed as a prototypical design experiment. Louvers range from near vertical to horizontal; their twisted and curved shapes make for a formidable fabrication challenge. The team, including doctoral candidate Jonathan King, research associates Anthony Kane and Justin Lavallee, developed a two-pronged approach whereby a variable “pin” mold was used to form a surface onto which a robotically guided extruder deposited ceramic material. The low-cost mold apparatus consists of adjustable vertical pins that can be positioned robotically with the same robotic work cell used to deposit the ceramic material. Software scripts automate the generation of the robotic instructions based on the optimized louver tile surfaces. Scaling the tile surfaces compensates for shrinkage encountered during the drying and firing of the ceramic. The software rotates and positions the louvers for virtual production, then generates the individual robotic code for actuating the pin mold. The ends of the pins replicate the tile surface and a proprietary cam mechanism locks the mold in place.

The robotic ceramic deposition system extrudes clay through a custom nozzle head attached to an ABB robotic arm. The position and path of the nozzle head is precisely controlled. The code needed to run the robot is, again, automatically generated using the team’s custom tools within the design software. The path of the clay extrusion can be precisely calibrated to produce robust tiles. The outer surface of prototypical production tiles was robotically post-processed to achieve a finish compatible with industrial standards. Using the industrial robot, the contours of the deposited, dried clay can be dimensionally rectified to accommodate for shrinkage during firing.

The current prototypical process will be further developed for potential incorporation—in part or as a whole—into low-volume industrial tile production settings. Ongoing work investigates new clay mixtures to produce fluidity with decreased clay water content. Nozzle and deposition methods are also undergoing constant refinements, targeting a finish quality that eliminates post-processing entirely. Finally, the team is looking forward to investigating new tile shapes in order to demonstrate the flexibility and appeal of this new and exciting ceramic fabrication method.

The processes and techniques developed in this project offer a way to reconcile performance and design so that they work together harmoniously to produce building facades that are both formally expressive and environmentally optimized.

For more information on this and other research projects in robotic fabrication, visit the Design Robotics Group .

Core Team Members:
Nathan King (DDes), Shelby Doyle (MArch), Anthony Kane, Jeffrey Niemasz (MArch), Justin Lavallee, Jon Sargent (MArch), Ben Tew, Corey Yurkovich

Special Thanks To:
Ana Martinez Balaguer and Pepe Castellano of ASCER as well as Javier Mira (Instituto de Technologia Ceramica, Castellon, Spain) for their support. Assistance was also provided by Forrest Snyder, Kathy King, and Shawn Panepinto from the Harvard Ceramics Program. Cameron Willard and his team in the GSD Fabrication Lab supported the prototyping efforts and production assistance was provided by GSD students Corey Yurkovich, Ben Tew, Arseni Zaitsev, and Alexander Watchman.

Rendering: Jan Kokol
Video Editing: Carnaven Chiu

Sponsored by ASCER (Spanish Ceramic Tile Association)

Appraisal of the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project and Its Environs in Seoul, South Korea

Although well known in Korean and East Asian urban design and planning circles, the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project had not received independent appraisal from the outside and not much attention in the West. Moreover, Cheonggyecheon and its environs appeared to embody a complex and complete set of issues present among similar undertakings, quite apart from its unique contributions to Seoul, South Korea. Following on from waterfront redevelopments, urban stream and river restorations have been moving to the fore as venues for improving cities’ amenities and reaching pressing environmental conservation objectives. Already in East Asia, there are a number of examples, including the Funanhe and Shahe in Chengdu, China, and Otagawa in Hiroshima, Japan. In short, The Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project, that opened in Seoul in 2005, formed a useful case study of this emerging phenomenon.

Conduct of this appraisal took the form of Faculty Research Seminar at the Harvard Graduate School of Design during the Spring term of 2010. This was followed by a summer of further work. The resulting monograph; A City and Its Stream: The Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project was published by the Seoul Development Institute in 2010.

Sponsored by the Seoul Development Institute