Nature is the best designer 9

Living root bridge,Meghalaya, India

A Machine _ DOEsent WorC

[re]Blur 2.0

[re]BLUR 2.0 could be defined in two different ways.

Theoretically,

It is an initiative to help people nowadays to identify their physical presents from their digital lives.

It is a device with which people could discover the occupancy of the cybernetic part in their mind.

It is also an incubator that bring up the opportunities of encountering.

Formally,

It is a labyrinth built up with hundreds of the “water stalactites”.

It is  a container within which there are unobvious boundary between illusion and reality.

It is also an experiment field where the refraction of lights is manipulated following the design of the continuous transparent surface.

[re]BLUR 2.0 concept consists of three parts.

THE REFRACTION:

As the main and the initial point of this proposal, the refraction of water is our answer to the theme “BLUR” building. Not like generating mist from water in the original design, we take water itself as the main material of the building and design the interior space which could maximize the possibilities of people encountering each other. Since water is everywhere in the building, the blur effects derived from refraction  is ubiquitous. This ensures that while walking in the building, people always have an unstable, distorted image of their surroundings.

We were inspired by the  natural spectacle- The Ice Stalactites while we designing the building. The intricacy of the shape offers us a chance that we could possibly transform it and seamlessly match it with our initial idea – We want people to encounter each other as much as they can in our building.

THE SMARTPHONE APPLICATION:

As our reflection to the influence of the emerging Web2.0 internet technology in the last decade, the application here is established as a common social network service which is integrated with the real time GPS locating map. Our intention is to try to discover that when people have a chance to evaluate the encountering with another person, which will they prefer to believe? The image that they see with their eyes or the image that they constructed in the mind based on the social network information?  The scenario here does not just include encountering, it could extend to other scenes like people chasing others that they like based on the profiles on the application or people trying to avoid others that they don’t like. 

At the entrance of the building, visitors are given an option to register their own accounts on the customized smart phone application which is able to display the plan of the building with dots showing everyone’s movement and information. For each user, the system will evaluate the other people’s profile as they registered , then generate their “attractive” value based on the user’s interests . Each visitor could check on the application to see who are surrounding and how interesting they are . The whole interior space is built with all the water stalactites which is able to refract light to generate blurry images. So  before arriving at each intersection of the pathways, visitors could get a blurry or even deformed image of the people that they going to encounter coming from the other side . As a result, visitors will have opportunities to choose which do they believe if they want to make a decision of whether or not to encounter the person that they will run into based on the system’s inputs.  Will they believe the blurry image that they see through the water stalactites or the information that they get from the application?  The real input with inaccurate, unclear visual information or the digital input which is precise and detailed but sometimes can be just a guise?  

THE BIG HOLE: MEDITATION SPACE

Except the dual cores (the refraction effects and the smartphone application) of the concept, we also introduce a meditation space which is located on the far end of the building. It is a space with direct view of the sky and ocean. People could sit on the huge circular glass floor in this space enjoying the wonderful nature views.   Its aim is to offer people a place with least distraction that after experiencing the main part of the building,  they have a space for thinking and discussing. The space is intentionally designed to be as contrary as possible to the other part of the building so that the value of the real nature contacts in this space is maximized and visitors will be aware of the difference between the simple and straightforward lifestyle with just the true nature and the complex lifestyle that cause by the insertion of cybernetics. 


Link to the "beautiful" winning entries: Winning Entries of the "Blur" - Think Space 2012Below are the boards we submitted: 

China GSD Academic Chair...........

I don't like the name. But i do like what I am doing in that position. Ok, so I am now the organizer, moderator, poster maker(some of them), pizza&drink buyer of the China GSD academic activities : "WHAT CHANGES" Lecture Series and "WHAT MATTERS" Discussion Series
Below are the posters of the lectures we just launched recently...

Heading to ACADIA with our Pavillion

Presentation at ACADIA on Saturday,Oct 20, @CCA San Francisco
with Project: "Tectonic Tessellation -
A Digital Approach to Ceramic Structural Surfaces"

Something about digital trash

[iN]Visible Beauty

Some crazy works we did last semester...
I'll post a sum-up video afterwards... but you could check out the craziness here first............


WORKFLOW from I+GC on Vimeo.

Something Fun about Javascript

First Javascript Web Design from Qi Su on Vimeo.

C# Tutorial in Chinese

For those Chinese students who want to learn C# programming.
Here is a tutorial that I wrote along with the example files.
Link(all in Chinese) is here:
http://bbs.ncf-china.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=10651

Tutorial File: Grasshopper based C# Programming Tutorial in Chinese
Example Files: Rhino and Grasshopper Example Files

Nature is the best designer 8

Located within Iceland’s own Skaftafell National Park, the whimsical crystal cave is the result of centuries old ice coming down the slopes of Öræfajökull.

Nature is the best designer 7

Ice Stalactite

Nature is the best designer 6

Mammatus Cloud

Termite Swarming Structure

Using Panagiotis' millipede grasshopper plug-in to generate load density mesh for attractors of the termites(fishes).
Principle of movement: Termite eat out blue part of the mesh(less load baring)without touching the red part.

Trajectories are generated and one component is there re-evaluate the previous mesh afterwards.
Optimization are available by implementing galapagos trying to make the termite as efficiency as possible.....

More documentation coming later..............
Rhino Example File
Termite Swarming Structure Definition
You need Millipede to run the grasshopper file.
Millipede (by Sawapan)

B.E.D.

B.E.D.Building Emotion Detector is an initiative to help people understand their impacts to the surrounding space.By analyzing,recording,translating people s presents and volume of voice, the installation itself is able to give feedback to the occupants. It overthrows the general knowledge that buildings are cold,passive,incapable of having emotions and establishes a novel type of communication between people and architecture.

B.E.D. from qi su on Vimeo.

Pure Beauty