Kas Oosterhuis – Page 3 – kas oosterhuis

026 | Settling down in Doha, Qatar

Assessment

Having assessed our police clearance, diploma’s and marriage certificate by the Dutch authorities, and having these assessed again by the Embassy of Qatar, and having them accepted by Qatar University’s HR department, we got our one way tickets to Doha. Sounds easy but it took us almost three months to get everything done correctly.

Location of the Qatar University campus, adjacent to the Doha Golf Club

Hitting home

We sold our beach house in the Netherlands, sold our car, packed and went for Doha to find a place to call our home the coming year[s]. When we arrived in the middle of the night we were most courteously welcomed by a hospitality service bureau who led us through customs in a most smooth way. Then another hospitality service drove us to the temporary housing they had reserved for us. Being tired and expecting a nice suite, instead we ended up in one of the compounds hired by Qatar University. “Compound” meaning a gated community with joint facilities, sharing almost everything from kitchen to front door, with 3 very Spartan basic suites behind the shared front door, felt like regular staff housing, desolate yet spacious. Not exactly what we expected, so we called it off and asked us to drive to a the Mövenpick Hotel in West Bay instead. From there we moved to the massive Ezdan complex in West Bay containing a more 3000 units and an Olympic sized swimming pool, ca 300 QAR/night. We heard that many staff of Qatar University and other companies actually live their expat lives there. We stayed for 10 days, had many viewing in West Bay and the Pearl, we were determined to find the best option. Finally we hit home with a furnished 1 bedroom apartment in Falcon Tower on Diplomatic Street in West Bay, an absolute premium location for a reasonable price, coincidentally managed by the same Al Mirqab company that manages the first compound we found ourselves dropped into.

Location of Ezdan Towers in West Bay with the Olympic size swimming pool

Getting licensed

In the first two weeks in Doha we managed to go through all process to get the Qatari ID, residence permit, bank account at QNB to do our shopping, the chequebook to pay the rent, the driving license. Most people were surprised that we managed to get all licenses, home and car within the span of two weeks, it turned out to be extremely effective, we spoke to a number of people who said it could take months. Since the job at Qatar University – and therewith the first payment – first starts the 10th of September, we pre-invested a lot of money for one month rent, complete the furnishing of the otherwise furnished apartment and daily living expenses before settling down. Before we could rent the car we used Uber for almost all trips. Uber service is great here, usually 3 minutes before they arrive on your exact location, only 2.50 € for a city ride using the simple UberGo, driving economy cars like Honda City, and max 10 € to bring us to the outskirts of the city, which we had to do quite frequently to get our licenses.

Location of the Medical Commission in the south-eastern outskirts, closest to the residential areas where most Asian expats live in Doha City

Medical check

The first thing we had to do is to have a medical examination at the Medical Commission, which is as we found out a state-owned facility at the south end of Doha, adjacent to a not yet developed part of Doha’s rocky desert. Early morning we took off on a 30 minute ride with a driver from Qatar University [they have 20+ Toyota Avalon luxury cars available for staff transportation], expected to be delivered at a modern hospital of some sort as we had seen under way, but it turned out to be a rather nondescript low-rise facility, processing all immigrant expats. We are workers after all, and all workers are treated equal. To be processed one has to know a number of things in advance, which we had to find out ourselves: first, dress according to formal Qatari rules, meaning covering legs and arms completely, and second pay by special credit card. Ilona was not allowed to enter, the from Sri Lanka originating QU driver took us back, Ilona got changed, returned again we bought credit on a temporary card, and went through the blood sample and X-ray tests. Passing the test means becoming eligible for getting a residence permit. All in all it took us a day, and gave us a first-hand experience of how the Qatari community operates.

Location of the Forensic Laboratory out there in the desert along Salma Road, which leads to Saudi Arabia

Fingerprints

After medical check we were sent the other day to The Forensic Laboratory to take fingerprints. They took all our fingers, left and right, and as if that is not enough evidence, they copied our hand palms as well. You give them one finger, they take the whole hand. We are definitely in the system now. As we heard later, all personal data are connected to one’s Qatari ID. All information on any expat worker is available to the authorities. I know my ID number by heart now.

Location of Flashback photo studio in residential neighborhood

Qatari ID

Before we went we were told to bring enough portrait photo’s, which we had made in the Netherlands. So we went well prepared to the HR Department at Qatar University to apply for the Qatari ID. However the rules for the formal portrait photo’s had changed recently and to get our Qatari ID they told us that we would need a photo with a clear blue background. They could not tell us where to get those, they suggested one place in a nearby mall, but the driver of Qatar University got confused, and I was able through Google Maps to find one not too far from where we were lost in some residential neighborhood. Luckily the found studio that was specialised in bridal reports, could help us and one hour later we got our portraits with the mandatory clear blue background, by contrast giving more color to one’s skin. The photo’s were accepted, we handed in our passports to HR and we could fetch our residence permits some days later.

Not The Pearl

To rent an apartment and to apply for a driving license one needs the Qatari ID first. We used the days in waiting for our ID’s to contact some property agents through propertyfinder.qa and went to see apartments in the Zig-Zag towers at the Lagoona Mall first. At first sight from a distance rather tempting, at closer inspection the rooms were not sufficiently spacious, great views but no balconies, but the main problem obviously was the quality of maintenance, especially with respect to the cooling. So we continued our search, guided by a young Moroccan broker girl, who showed us a rather nice furnished apartment in Tower 21 at Porto Arabia at The Pearl. But, small balcony, neighboring tower too close, so we continued our search through a number of other agents. After having viewed almost ten other apartments in The Pearl, we almost signed up for an unfurnished one in Tower 3 with a very large balcony.

Falcon Tower !

The very afternoon that we were on our way to signing the contract to a Algerian agent working for the Majestic managers, we spotted browsing propertyfinder.qa for a last check an apartment in West Bay that looked attractive. We made an appointment for viewing directly with the Al Mirqab management that operates the Falcon Tower, and yes, this definitely was the right choice, spacious 1 bedroom with splendid sea view overlooking the whole 7 km long Corniche bay, great balcony, big 25 m pool, cooling sea breezes, and in very good condition. This apartment in the Falcon Tower, perfectly located between the Hilton and the Four Seasons, felt immediately like a home due to its high level of finishing, more modest and intimate dimensions of the entrance hall, corridors, and the apartment itself, much better than most hastily finished apartments in the Pearl towers. Just in time, we have hit home, otherwise we would have lived in the Pearl which feels like an artificial environment yet without an identity of itself, while West Bay has that Metropolitan feeling of living in a vibrant city.

Driving license

Rules keep changing. Now having acquired the Qatari ID my Dutch driving license is declared no longer valid. I found this out when signing in for a one year leased car. They told me to go Traffic Headquarters, a brand new classical brownstone building at some other outskirts westwards of the fast expanding city of Doha. Not knowing what to expect exactly, we went there hoping to get the license on the spot. Not so, after having paid 90 QAR or so for the intake document, they told me to go one of the private driving schools to do the “test”. The first driving school we went to was a private facility run in chaos probably by Egyptian staff, after strong persistence especially from Ilona’s side I could go through the so-called Signal Test, 20 multiple choice questions on specific Qatari traffic sign that I had never seen before. By calculated guesswork I passed nevertheless without any mistake. So I thought that was it to het the license in the neighboring building of a local traffic department, it was in the Khalifa district near the Aspire Dome. Not so, they gave me an appointment for a Road Test for the 24th of October. But I needed it the next week, so we asked around whether we could speed up, one younger English speaking staff advised us to go to the United Driving School in another district close to the Villagio shopping mall. The regular staff in these rather shabby sheds told us the same: 24th of October, or otherwise talk to the Captain. That we did, and after some more massaging, I could do the Road Test the next morning. I miraculously passed in the automatic geared car, as all cars are here, by driving two times round the corner in a quiet residential neighborhood, I did not even had to start the car, but as was advised on internet sites I took care of adjusting the mirrors, keeping my two hands firmly on the steering wheel and extensively looking into all possible mirrors, left, right and middle. Next day our car, an almost new Honda Civic model 2015, was delivered to our residence with a half full tank.

Location of the Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani Museum in the heart of the desert

Under permanent construction

Now having got a feeling of how Qatar keeps going thanks to 2.2 million expats, predominantly from Sri Lanka, Philippines and India, having the car we are using it intensively to do further shopping at Carrefour in the very well functioning City Center close to us in West Bay, the giant Mall of Qatar 20 km west of West Bay, the IKEA 20 km north-west. All roads between West Bay, Katara, The Pearl and Lusail are heavily under construction, meaning that each day the route can be different. In fact the whole country is under an intense reconstruction, to be continued at least until the Football Games of 2022, and up to the years of harvesting and consolidating after the Games. Google Maps updates only once a month and does not give correct info, instead we use the app Waze which gives much more accurate information based on daily feedback info from its users. Our longest trip so far was 30km westward to the extra large museum collection of Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani almost in the exact middle of the Qatar peninsula, stand-alone in the desert. Non unlikely the now isolated museum lot will be urbanized within a decade. Sheikh Faisal is assumedly the richest member of the ruling Al Thani family. Sheik Faisal owns many large real estate projects in Doha, both lowrise and highrise, and owns a variety of companies in construction, hospitality, trading, transportation, entertainment, education, services and information technology. He is the personification of diversifying the Qatar economy, and in his personal life he is a vigorous collector of almost everything from cars to carpets, art to complete house, from weapons to symbols of a broad scala of religions other than Islam. This is makes his enormous, to a large extent undocumented collection, very special, as explained to us by the new Dutch director Kees Wieringa, who is also a professional classical piano performer, whom we know from his famous recordings of the piano works “Proeven van Stijlkunst” of Jacob van Domselaer, as he gave us the full tour. We have hit home indeed.

025 | The Open Mosque

A380 feeding on passengers to fly to dubai

Full Professorship

Coming years I will find myself in a challenging new position, while I have accepted a full professorship at the Qatar University in Doha. I intend to give a renewed boost to Hyperbody there at the Qatar University after the inevitable closing down of Hyperbody at TU Delft. At TU Delft one ‘s contract simply expires when you’re 65, independent from whether one heads a successful master design course track or not. It was decided that my chair will not be continued. Then Qatar University has been eager to have me, to assist them in redefining their architectural and engineering curriculum. In general the Gulf Region definitely has a more ambitious forward looking state of mind than the cynical, polarizing scheme of things the West has adopted in the past decades.

qatar universitymain campus building | 1983 | architect kamal el kafrawi

Mosquephobia

On the 5^th of May I was invited to lecture at the 2^nd Mosque Design & Development Conference in Dubai. My participation was kindly sponsored by the Dutch Creative Industry PIB progam. A small conference but in many ways worth the attendance. It provided for ample insight in the normality and daily use of mosques, deepened by a number of both historical analyses and forward looking concepts for mosque designs. There were a number of presentations that were straightforward critical on how mosque design has been trivialized in recent years, especially in the West. Prof Ali Alraouf evaluated the growing Islamophobia and Mosquephobia in the West, and blamed the mosque designers and builders to have triggered the phobia by adopting utterly cheap and banal imagery for the mosque designs. From the side of the investors a cool proprietary wind has blown into the functioning of mosques, and hence in mosque designs, supposedly reducing them to places for efficient 10 minute prayers and the Friday elevation speech, no longer functioning as the active colorful social hub that it once was.

opening speech mosque design & development conference | dubai 3 may 2017

This down-draining of the social function of the mosque reaches its extreme in the prayer spaces in the shopping malls. A researcher of The American University of Sharjah identified the problem and became interested in how take avoid crossing people flow in the dark backspaces of the shopping malls as to enhance the efficiency, avoid queuing and jamming at the ablutions spaces. But all of that without even considering the design concept, therewith assuming that nothing more could be done than a flow diagram in a black box away from the public. Therefore his research becomes instrumental in institutionalizing the pitiful situation. The mono-cultural segregation of functions that devastated western urban planning and building concepts has obviously done its destructive work the Middle East as well. There is a clear relation between poor downward cycled mosque design and the blind attraction that some of these places have to more traditional interpretations of the faith. Poor backward looking designs by and large go hand in hand with societal narrow-mindedness, and therewith give rise to further segregation and polarization. In this context it is instructive to read Marwa Al Sebouni‘s book The Battle for Home on the relation between poor urban planning and building in Homs in Syria and the heartless fights between the various political factions in recent years, where she finds herself caught in the middle of it. In her view urban segregation accelerated political polarization and eventually destruction.

professor ali alraouf from doha discussing mosquephobia

There was inevitably a strong emphasis by most speakers on sustainability, circular building, energy saving, retrofitting etc. But again without much relation to the design language and syntax itself, while it must be obvious that the very first design thought is the most important to define the possible success of any green building concept. Some presentations rightfully argued for the integration of large surfaces of running water for natural cooling purposes, therewith doing away with the need for air-conditioning, which usually feels either too chilly or not cool enough.

architect ahmend al ali | mosque design | abu dhabi

Social hubs

The common opinion at the 2^nd Mosque Design & Development conference was that the mosques should become social hubs again, attracting a variety of activities and functions, well integrated in the social fabric, while the design of the mosques should take advantage of the most modern technologies available. A rather nice example of a modern approach to mosque design is the Center for Islamic Studies in Qatar Education City, designed by architect Ali Mangera. That impressive building features dynamic sweeps to define the rocketing minarets and the swirling domed interior spaces includes everything that defines a social hub: café’s, outdoor meeting places, library, place for prayer, place to play around, a park to stroll around. The modern mosque is an open mosque, every aspect of the design is open for design, and open for social interaction. It is a true relief to see such optimistic forward looking approach in built form in the heart of a country, which is in the western world considered as conservative. In reality Qatar is a country of many speeds, both more advanced and more rooted. To feel the manifold of speeds in development makes it a dynamic society, open for innovation and respect for the old at the same time.

Building relations

According to the conference management team my lecture was considered the most interesting contribution. My examples of built projects based on parametric design – which I explained as the building of relations between people and things – data driven building techniques like parametric design, file to factory processes, design to production, mass customization, robotic building, 3d printing and adaptive environments was generally accepted as the way to go. When asked to design a mosque – as a matter of fact I am currently pitching for one particular one – I would, from the very first conceptual idea, establish dynamic links of social, spatial, climatic and financial parameters to the swarm of constituting building components as to be in dynamic control of the design & development of the mosque, as to be prepared to guarantee the desired performance, both socially, technically and aesthetically.

After having completed the LIWA tower some years ago in Abu Dhabi, and after having been commissioned several urban design studies by project developers like Aldar Properties, I am looking forward to contribute in further design development for building in the Gulf Region. A lot of innovations still have not infiltrated the building industry there yet, but the general mood is one of an open eye to radical new developments. At the same time one should become aware of the severe constraints to innovation by relying on cheap labor too long. Robotic techniques will replace the cheap workforce in due time, while prefabrication – including 3dprinting – will eventually replace the now dominant technique of on site pouring of concrete.

It was a real pleasure to meet like-minded designers and researchers in that fascinating part of the world, which superficially seems to be at odds with the western world. I am convinced that the power of a game changing design proposal can make a substantial difference, as to start constructing and synthesizing a new precious inclusive societal fabric, not only for mosques, but basically for every building project.

kas oosterhuis | written in A380 flight from dubai to amsterdam| 5 may 2017

024 | Body Chair @ Design Days Dubai and Salone di Mobile 2017

Body Chair BYYU 30.1 fabric | design Kas Oosterhuis | production BYYU | 2016

The Body Chair is shown at Dubai Design Days in Design District D3 from 13-17 March 2017, presented by the Dutch Creative Industry [DCI] in 3 bespoke configurations: BYYU 30 FABRIC, BYYU 60 WOOD and BYYU 60 MONDRIAN, and at the Salone di Mobile from 4-9 April, presented by Masterly at the Palazzo Francesco Turati in the center of Milan.

The Body Chair is produced by BYYU ltd, a company of Hieselaar Nederland bv in Schoonhoven, Netherlands.

Body Chair BYYU 60.2 wood | design Kas Oosterhuis | production BYYU | 2016

Body Cahir BYYU 90.2 raw | design Kas Oosterhuis | production BYYU | 2016

anonymous quote: “The Rietveld Chair of the 21st century”

contact details

Kas Oosterhuis architect | email oosterhuis@oosterhuis.nl | web www.byyu.eu | www.onl.eu

press kit available on Dropbox: https://goo.gl/xBCwyC

023 | Swarm Architecture

Some days ago I shared a video of a swarm of thousands of starlings. This shared video quickly has over hundred likes, it sure appeals to people’s expectations of what is beautiful. I added two words: swarm architecture. In other words I linked the image of the swarm to architecture, notably my own.

No metaphor

Now how can a recording of a dynamic swarm possibly link to something that is as static as architecture? [the answer is literally blowing in the wind]. I certainly did not refer to the swarm as a superficial reference only, and it is explicitly not meant as a metaphor. I hate metaphors, my design attitude is based on what it is, not what it looks like.

point cloud of reference points | waterpavilion | design kas oosterhuis | 1997

So what is the swarm in my architecture? It really started 20 years ago when we were designing and executing the Waterpavilion at Neeltje Jans in Zeeland. To actually build the steel structure we found out that describing [scripting] the exact geometric relations between the reference points on the control curves would form the best basis for the communication with the production machines. We realized that CNC production machines do not read drawings but process data instead. So we decided to produce data which were directly used by the algorithms running the machines. It was the birth of deep parametric design to production.

Dynamic system

Now we learned how to describe the relations between reference points of the point cloud, we realized that we were actually doing something very similar to what birds do in a flock. The birds follow some simple rules as to form the flock. Yet the birds execute their rules as a player in a running complex adaptive system, similar to being a player in a game. This triggered me to think of architecture as a dynamic system, not only in the design phase where everything is still moldable, but also in its behavior as a built structure. That being noted, I invented the Trans-Ports multimodal pavilion in the years 1999 – 2000. The Trans-ports pavilion is a structure that changes shape and content in real time as to accommodate changing use over time. Keywords that I used from then on: time based architecture, real time behavior, multimodality, interactive architecture. The nodes of the dynamic structure act as in a swarm, they look to their immediate neighbors as to change position and information content.

realtime behavior| trans-ports version 3.0| design kas oosterhuis | 1999

In that same year I was invited to make an interactive installation for the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2000. As proof of concept for multimodality and real time behavior I designed together with Ilona Lénárd the interactive painting titled Handdrawspace, 360 degrees projected on the 3 curved screens around the central arena for the interaction with the public. The public would move between center and periphery of the arena and trigger arrays of sensors informing the algorithms. The algorithms controlled the number of dots, the size of dots, and the background colors.

Everything we have done since, whether interactive installations or built structures, notably the Web of North-Holland, the A2 Cockpit, the Bálna Budapest, the LIWA tower in Abu Dhabi are further steps in the development of that basic concept of the swarm. Without compromise, the logic of the swarm functioned as the very genetic material facilitating our design language.

NB: I have written since quite a number of articles on swarm architecture [google entry: swarm architecture kas oosterhuis].

022 | Making Ends Meet

sketch of the information omniverse | Kas Oosterhuis | 2017

Powers of Ten

Knowing the Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, zooming out into the macrocosmos, zooming in into the microcosmos, the feeling which it leaves behind is the experience of vast seemingly empty spaces. Empty between the stars and galaxies, empty between the atoms and quarks. At the same time the feeling imposes on us that in effect matter does not exist, it only exists because we are built the way we are built. Meaning that we see and feel matter as matter since our sense organs are evolved as to feel what we feel, and see what we see.

The earth, the cosmos and the nano worlds are seen by our sense organs and the instruments lifeforms like people have built since ages. So this is the extended reality that is created to be seen by our eyes only. Let’s have a look at a smaller creature, for example a bacterium, what does a bacterium actually senses, feels, what does it see without having eyes? One thing is sure, they explore their environment in similar way as we do, while they see different things, they have a different worldview, not per se more restricted, but different.

Processing information

Let’s apply this methods of empathy to other scales on the bandwidth from macro cosmos to micro cosmos. What does a galaxy feel, how does it explore its environment? You may already notice that I assume that a galaxy indeed actively explores its environment. For sure it exchanges information with other nearby galaxies, for sure it absorbs information, it processes information and it sends out information in a customized format. Like any vehicle – people, bacteria, cars, atoms – a galaxy processes information.

So all people, bacteria, cars, galaxies, atoms etc are information processing vehicles, with their own particular way of seeing, feeling, sensing, living in their own information bubble, exploring their own worlds within their sensing boundaries, developing their own worldviews. At the same time they are intensively interacting with innumerate other information bubbles. This way of looking at the world, on any imaginable scale, is the basis of swarm theory, which I have embraced in my architectural theory and practice.

Back to the Powers of Ten, I have been wondering for much of my life, to start with my essays in the Dutch magazine Wiederhall in the eighties, whether the seemingly empty space on the macro scale somehow could be connected to the vast empty space on the micro scale. What is particularly difficult for our limited worldview is that we ourselves are caught in our [extended] worldview. We are sort of flatland people, not equipped to see or feel beyond flatland. Yes, we can extend flatland almost endlessly but it will never become spaceland, or any other dimension we would wish to reach out to.

Spaceland

My hunch is that that unreachable spaceland is the realm of information. Information as a primary driving force of what we may label as the omniverse, and of which we see and feel only a section. Very much like plans and sections of a building are mere one-dimensional cut-outs of an otherwise three-dimensional space, a single section can never include the amount of information the three-dimensional model has. Information as a primary driving force I consider as something similar to the concept of Richard Dawkins selfish gene. So I am tempted to develop empathy with the selfish information. Information that can not stand still, but always is on its way the be read, processed and passed on in tweaked form. Information as an executable, as suggested by Stephen Wolfram.

Omniverse

The above speculation means that we are living on a delicate membrane in an information omniverse which bridges both far ends of our extended human vision. Imagine that from our own randomly local, temporal position in the information omniverse our outward vision propagates on a curved flatland surface, as on the surface of a doughnut, climbing up and curving downward towards an imaginary equator. Now imagine the same for our inward looking vision, looking deep into each and every atom, imagine a downward curving surface of the same doughnut, eventually curving up towards its equator. Now connect the upper and lower half of the doughnut.

There we are, making ends meet, trying to live with our limited ability to understand the endless world of information. I have always had the feeling that macro cosmos and micro cosmos must be two sides of the same coin. That coin being the for us people unfathomable universe of selfish information. That coin being inflated to become an endlessly scalable doughnut. The crux of this thought experiment is that the two ends will actually merge in the world of information [but not in our flatland view, while one can imagine any life form on any location perpendicular to the surface of that doughnut. Other lifeforms are perfectly possible on other sections, forms of life that we can not see or feel, neither would we be able to understand alien crystallized form of information.

Increase in information content

This speculative thought experiments does not give a clue to what life actually is, but it teaches me that life as we know it is only one of many possible crystallized forms of accumulated information, increasing its entropy level by consuming certain crystalline forms into higher organised forms of information. In the same way as we people process food to feed our brains. The second law of thermodynamics goes hand in hand with the unlikely increase in information content. This for sure we experience on an everyday basis when we achieve something, preparing our food, designing our buildings, writing our blogs. We process information and bring it to a higher level of organisation, thus contributing to the increase of entropy of what is left behind.

It would not be overly audacious to consider information processing as the deeper form of life and assume that after a very long period of time all we sense as tangible matter will eventually be converted into an highly organised highly unlikely immaterial form of information. Than indeed what we experience as ourselves in relation to matter is in fact a transitory phase in a giant information processing machine called the information omniverse. Whatever, I like that idea, and it makes me feel perfectly at home in the universe. All we have to do is making ends meet.

021 | The Erosive Glamour of Lowres Architecture

MVRDV’s Ravel Plaza

Ravel Plaza Amsterdam | design by MVRDV | 2016

My attention was triggered when reading on Facebook a discussion between Archis / Volume critic Arjen Oosterman and Geert Bekaert Prize winner Mark Minkjan. The discussion circled around the value and misleading tendencies of architectural rendering, taking a MVRDV project as an example. Although I sympathize with Arjen Oosterman, who rightfully was blaming Minkjan for an easy twist of populism, my immediate professional reflex was: why not discussing the meaning of the design itself instead? The architectural discourse should in my opinion address the inspirations, intentions and possible implications of the actually proposed design as to be able to discuss in public the impact on the design practice. Therefore, to put the money where the mouth is, here are my observations of the very design itself, interlaced with some explicit opinions.

Real science fiction

Knowing the MVRDV lead designers – Jacob van Rijs en Nathalie de Vries invited me to be their design tutor – I wish to take their design intentions seriously. I am familiar with their original fascinations for bold design concepts, very much encouraged by myself back then in the early nineties, and I have seen how they were subsequently influenced by OMA’s hyperbolic turbo language and lightweight cynism. The Ravel Plaza design stands for something I think is worthwhile reflecting upon, however not for the reasons Mark Minkjan was awarded his prize for.

When looking at the design I am not shocked by the abundance of greenery on the balconies, neither on an assumed absence of balustrades, but I am not so much shocked as well as straightforwardly disagreeing with a design intention that destructs, collapses, erodes and explodes. I simply can not raise empathy with the act of eating away bits and pieces of a World Trade style tower. Instead of developing an original concept for a residential tower with lush balconies, which would be an absolute important thing to do, they chose to erode something they criticize as to define their design goal. Therewith the design intent becomes a built form of critique of something they do not want. But, if one doesn’t not want it, why taking that as a starting point at all? Just to to tell a story? But what story? Looking at the design, I see a resemblance with the crash of the World Trade towers. Why taking a disaster – whether an unconsciously or consciously made design decision – as the inspiration for the visual effect? Having watched many sci-fi movies and having seen the twin towers coming down as a real form of science fiction, I realize that the visual impact of the image of destruction can be so strong that it somehow burns into the designer’s mind. Somehow there is no escape from it, at least not when takes a straightforward tower design as the starting point for the storytelling. My critique on MVRDV’s design is that it confirms a destructive Hollywood driven self-fulfilling prophecy rather than offering an alternative tio it.

Erosion and explosion

As to indicate that the Ravel Plaza design concept is not an isolated incident, I refer to other recent designs featuring similar gnawing characteristics. OMA’s Asian spin-off Ole Scheeren [OS] has designed an evocative MahaNakhon tower in Bangkok, Thailand, indeed evoking the erosion of a once-has-been straightforward tower design. Needless to say that it evokes much more emotion than the simple rectangular tower would have been able to produce, but that is not the point. The point is what sort of emotion Scheeren – using the power of the proposal – has chosen to trigger. He chose to snag modernism, which I consider as a form of violation, meaning that first he needs something he is critical of to violate, and only then be able to then tell his story of erosion and destruction.

The extreme version of erosion is explosion, which is the design story line MVRDV has chosen when designing their Cloud tower in Seoul. An exploded mid section, spitting out the low resolution voxels into all directions, strongly reminiscent of the effect of the violent Ground Zero impact. Although Winy Maas denies that there is such direct relation, it is obvious that the image of violent destruction has captured the designer’s mind, and that he unconsciously can not do otherwise than express the sign of times in this way. My own scheme of things tells me that the design for a skyscraper should come from the internal logic of the design to production process itself, rather than wrapping an otherwise traditional tower with a cosmetic intervention based on lighthearted storytelling. In my worldview a good design will express itself, instead of being an illustration to a story.

Poisonous combination of erosion and voxelisation

What troubles me particularly is the poisonous combination of the erosive approach to design with the aesthetics of voxelisation. Both the designs of MVRDV, OMA, OS and BIG share the same fascination for what is often referred to as pixelation, which is in effect is voxelisation in a very low resolution. Not surprisingly the Why Factory led by Winy Maas asks their students to build towers using white lego blocks. These lego towers are built up using structural voxels. In contrast, my own scheme of things is based on high resolution complex geometry combined with a strong internal structural logic, a well balanced marriage between top-down and bottom-up approach. Now what is popular among OMA and their spin-offs MVRDV, OS, BIG and many more – while these successful offices jointly have been dominatoing the architectural discourse for decades – stands almost opposite to what I stand for. The road I have taken, together with many of my peers of the Transarchitectures movement formed end of nineties by Marcos Novak and Odile Fillion and the participants of the earliest Archilab Conferences, headed by Marie-Ange Brayer, Zeynep Mennan and Frédéric Migayrou, who is now Head of Architecture at the Bartlett in London, is the interlacing of digital technology with architectural theory and practice. It is instrumental to note that these truly new fundamental developments were completely ignored by Rem Koolhaas in his 2014 “Fundamentals” Venice Biennale. His timeline of – in his view – relevant movements in architectural theory ended when he left the AA, that is end of eighties. Everything that happened after that was not included nor respected, neither in the selected “fundamentals” in that particularly retro-active Biennale. my base point of critique that the selected subjects like stairs, walls, ceilings, balconies etc are derivates rather than fundamentals. He intentionally missed the point by completely ignoring the richness and beauty of dynamic adaptive systems and complexity, which fields of research and practice – ONL’s LIWA tower serves as a representative of applied complex adaptive systems cq associative information modeling – are dealing with fundamental issues in architectural theory, understanding and working with the actual state of digital technology.

LIWA tower | Abu Dhabi | design by ONL / Kas Oosterhuis | 2014

In conclusion, I consider voxelisation for design concepts on the grand scale of architecture as a deceivingly reductive simplification of building technology, counterproductive to present advancements in architectural theory and practice. The combination of sympathy with destruction and erosion with voxelisation is outright alarming for its uncanny parallels to populism in politics using hyperbolic forms of expression in combination with simplified language.

20 | The Inevitable

My notes by page number reading The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly

9 becoming
10 continuous updates
13 protopia
18 ted nelson: hypertext 1984, intertwingularity, transclusion
19 hyperlinks enabled sharing
21 the web merged in physical world
21 anticipate intentions
27 2050: AI in everything
30 cognifying by distributed intelligence
33 AI enlivens inert objects
34 tools first were electrified, now are cognified
38 AI breakthrough unleashed by 1) neural networks 2) big data 3) smart algorithms
48 our human job is to create alien intelligence
50 robots are inevitable
53 cheap robotic production favors local production to cut transportation costs
62 the flow of copies is inevitable
64 from batches to daily to real time
65 nouns become verbs
65 flows, tags, clouds
66 everything yhat can be copied will be free
68 72 immediacy personalization interpretation authenticity accessibility embodiment patronage discoverability
76 as music streams it expands, as design streams it will expand and become abundant
83 the soft will trump the hard, knowledge will rule atoms
89 screening = reading + watching
93 ebook connects readers, authors, characters, ideas, facts, notions and stories
93 books are byproducts of the booking process
102 all linked words and texts form the umiversal book
104 screening nurtures thinking and acting in real time
110 accessibility replaces ownership
111 software eats everything
112 services disencourage ownership
113 alvin toffler: 1980 prosumer, consumer acts as producer
113 product becomes service
115 matching pros with joes
116 crowdspring bid with a design
117 a connected crowd of amateurs can be as good a the average solo professional
124 firms, marketplaces, platforms
125 platforms are factories for services
125 services favor access over ownership
125 the cloud is almost organic healing
127 where does the I end and the cloud start?
128 the cloud is the Backup
133 without ownership one is free to move like the hunter gatherer
144 increased sharing is inevitable
154 decentralised connected dumbs things can become smarter than we think
156 millions of niche markets
156 crowdfunding funds the creative niche markets
160 can a crowd make a car? 150.000 car fanatics designed 3d printed electric car for Local Motors
162 micropayments, electronic voting
164 we share the process not just the end product
164 share not only success but also failure
174 my avatar is managed by Universal You
176 information consumes attention
207 we will record everything, creating a new culture where everyone’s past is recallable (total recall)
215 cellphones saved VR immersion
217 presence in VR is the basis for interactivity
217 interactivity spreads out to the rest of the tech world
223 if something is not interactive it is broken
226 more sensors more intimacy more immersion: technology becomes a second skin
235 your body is your password
236 our interactions will become our password
232 buildings will be reskinned with altermative facades inside VR
232 the city will look different each time you walk through it
230 my quantifiable self
241 a quantifiable-self experiment is n=1
257 information is epandong faster than anything else
259 bits want to duplicate, replicate, be linked
260 david brin: the tranparant society 1999
260 civilising coveillance
262 vanity trumps privacy
264 tera peta exa zetta yotta bytes
265 bits can be arranged into complicated structures just as atoms are arranged into molecules
266 by raising the level of complexity we elevate bits from data to information to knwlowledge
266 bits want to be linked
266 unbundling allows the elements to be rearranged into a new chemistry
268 machine readable information
271 can wikipedia be mapped to political governance
271 radical embrace of the common wealth
273 technium is the modern system of culture and technology
277 the improbable is the new normal
278 mass media make people ready to try something extraordinary
279 because of global connectivity all facts have their antifacts challenging the truth and reality
280 superlatives and extremes are the new normal
279 certainty about anything has decreased
279 requires constant questioning, leaping into scenarios, provisional beliefs, subjective hunches
280 roaming the web is like tapping into our collective unconsiousness like dreams
284 knowledge is expanding exponentionally, questions are expanding exponentionally faster
284 science is a method that chiefly expands our ignorance rather than our knowledge
289 a good question is the seed of innovation
289 questioning is more powerful than answering
296 we can’t live without what we’ve made
297 the beginning is just beginning

019 | Parametric design is not a style

The title of this blog leaves no doubt. I am not a fan of parametricism, while everything we do at my innovation studio ONL and at my chair Hyperbody at the TU Delft is fundamentally parametric. I will explain why. I do not think that it is a matter of definitions, but a matter of understanding of what parametric design is about. It certainly is not a style, and it should never be seen as such. In his lecture at the symposium Artificial Intuition [1990] of which I managed the content at the Faculty of Architecture at the TU Delft Robert Aish told us that parametric design was something he was doing already back in the seventies while working for a Polish shipbuilder. Since a ship does not have a repetitive section through its body due to the streamline of the ship he developed a detail of which the values would adapt to their changing position in the body. That is parametric indeed, although Aish had a better word for it, he named it Associative Modelling. Parametric design means modelling associations between the components, which a ship or a building is made of. Associations are a form of dynamic entanglement. When one part changes its values, the associated parts change with it.

Bidirectional relationship

Since the early nineties my short definition of parametric design is the art of establishing dynamic relationships. Adaptive relationships of parts to parts, of things to things, of objects to objects, whether in the virtual realm or in the materialized world. Related to parametric design, but not the same, is interactive architecture, which I define as the real time relationships of people to things, and the other way round. Relationships are per definition bidirectional and never static. Relationships are constructed by acting in a complex adaptive system. Such is the case with parametric design, a parametric relationship acts both ways and in multiple ways.

Apollo < > Soyuz

An associative relationship does not necessarily mean that the neighboring part is similar in its shape or dimensions. Entangled parts can be of a different family and of a different order. I can illustrate this with my favourite yet one-dimensional form of a parametric relationship, which is the relation between the Soviet Soyuz and the American Apollo capsules docking in space. This happened back in the seventies of last century and it was a huge accomplishment, and of high political and technical importance. American and Russians embarked on a shared process of exchanging visions, views and data, eventually leading to the agreement on one single common docking ring. It basically meant that the Soyuz and the Apollo fitted exactly, in one moment in time, at one specific location, with one specific set of shapes and dimensions. It is this exactness of the association that is key to parametric design. In the world of parametric design one establishes exact relationships between parts, entangled as to adapt to the variations of the neighboring part.

Waterpavilion

While designing the Waterpavilion [ONL, 1997] we linked the reference points on the main 8 curves, define the geometry of the sculpture building, to the reference points of the steel structure, to the skin and the continuous variable fins gradually emerging out of the main body to emphasize the curvature. Structure, skin and featured fins were linked into one coherent parametric system. Associatively linked since in each instance on the curve the relative values of their mutual distances and angles would change with their positions along the curve. These relationships were not modeled in a existing CAD program but scripted from scratch using Autolisp routines. Drawings and 3d models are meaningless in a dynamic parametric world. The associations are defined with formulas and algorithms, describing their mutual relationships. Scripting is a very lean method of design, consuming very little data, exported to and retrieved from a database.

Patricism

What is often considered as a parametric design is mostly nothing more than a fashionable form of tessellation of the surface, covering only a literally superficial part of the design / building. The real power of parametric design is to link all constituting components to each other, including floor, wall, roof such that when And staying within the limitations of such a mono-culture of similar yet not the same parts, one could indeed speak of a style, largely subject to fashion and voluntary follower of built-in commands of certain design software. Yet it would be unjust to the full potential of parametric design to declare the superficial qualities of being similar yet not the same a mainstream design movement, whether or not labelled as parametricism. To do that is a populist act, not respecting what are the underlying values. I remember having stated in my letter to Alvin Boyarsky describing my vision as unit master at the Architectural Association [AA] in London [1988-1989], that I reject all -isms. Then my rebellion was against modernism and its counterpart post-modernism, constructivism and its counterpart de-constructivism, both of which were deeply adhered to at that time at the AA. But I wanted no more -isms. So it may not be surprising that I became allergic to the term parametricism, which is nothing more than an attempt of Patrick Schumacher to become the founder and leader of a populist movement, feeding upon the supramatist sometimes bigoted calligrahic sweeps by the late Zaha Hadid [read my blog Calligraphic Sweeps]. His attempt to establish a mainstream movement would be more appropriately labeled patricism, more than anything else.

LIWA tower

While modernism is an attitude which attempts to look modern, yet in its essence is not modern but retro-actively looking like something modern, and constructivism is an attempt to look like a logical structure but in fact isn’t, the container term parametricism is fit for designs that look parametric but not necessarily are parametric. I feel that it is important to make the distinction. For example the Reiser Umemoto Swiss Cheese tower in Business Bay in Dubai [2014] may be considered parametric, while it is not parametric at all. Yes, it features 5 different sizes of openings in the concrete exoskeleton in a seemingly random fashion, but that is exactly why it is not parametric. In a parametric design all openings would have been unique in their shape, any sameness would be a pure co-incidence. at the other end however, ONL’s LIWA tower is by and large parametric, linking the curved geometry drivers to the Gross Floor Area [GFA] calculations, to the steel structure and to the skin in one coherent relational system. All windows of the LIWA tower are unique in shape and dimensions, all structural X-crosses are unique in shape and dimension, and both systems are parametrically linked to each other. Changing the position of one reference point on the curve changes all windows and steel components on at least two ruled surfaces of the body wrap, while maintaining the set value for the GFA.

Genetic structure

Parametric design systems must and can be developed further, until the point that all constituting components have become an acting part of the system. Building components are seen as actors in a dynamic and open relational design system. The design that comes close to this point is ONL’s BYYU Body Chair, where all bits and pieces are associated part in one coherent complex adaptive system, where at the front end the customer can set individual preferences, while at the back end the design is directly linked to the data driven robotic waterjet-cut production of the pieces. Only when having a fully functional parametric design system one can establish such direct link from design to production, from customer to end-user, which explains the relevance of treating parametric design systems not as something it looks like, but as something what it is deep down in its genetic structure.

018 | Body Chair @ Dutch Design Week 2016

Body Chair | design Kas Oosterhuis | Dutch Design Week 2016

The Body Chair is a radically parameterized design for a family of Made to Measure comfortable lounge chairs. The Body Chair consists of 28 pairs of 56 triangular base components, parametrically designed as to allow for endless geometric variations. The revolutionary asset of the Body Chair is that all constituting components such as the legs, the seating and the back, are all members of one and the same design system, based on one parametric detail.

Body Chair detail | design Kas Oosterhuis | 2016

This user centric Make Your Own shaping process is driven by the web based application at www.byyu.eu, allowing the customers to shape their own personal chair. The customers become co-creators shaping their personal geometry of their personalized chair. From the web based app to the production of the 28 components the design to production process is fully automated.

go to www.byyu.eu and shape the chair that suits you

017 | Automotive Styling | Wiederhall 12, 1990

Luigi Colani | Jumbo carrier | 1978

The linear one-dimensional movement along the highway is broadened to the second dimension when turning off or filtering in · Driving along at a regular speed one feels the line-movement, the movement intersecting the landscape and zipping it open · The car and its driver are the point that is multiplied one dimensional to form a route · While overtaking and turning off, one moves away from the straight line movement for a second, the first dimension is being stretched to the second dimension, for a moment the line is granted the sensation of the plane

Dimensional sensation

When the road rises (on a dike for instance) or even more clearly when the road crosses a road below by means of a bridge construction, then the sensation becomes three dimensional · By moving sideways and upwards one feels the elasticity of space: the traffic junction with its fly overs · The three dimensional sensation is created by movement, by the system of roads and bridges, slip roads and exits · The monotony of the straight line is as essential as the fact that it may be widened (and become a plane) or deepened / heightened (and be turned into space) · The moving particle, the car, stretches dimensions and is even able to interweave them at certain points · In a joint venture with the cars the road system represents the elasticity of space · The details designed by the Department of Public Works add to the overall picture · As far as design is concerned items like barriers, white lines, graphics, dikes, the long rows of lights, all fit in very well · The disarmingly effective way in which the barrier rises from the asphalt or grass, is excellent in its simplicity · The broad white lines which divert at the exits and meet again at the slip roads guide along the continuous stream of driving, small, streamlined containers

Messengers

The boxes on wheels seem to be mesmerized by the point perspective they have to reach · Apart from some dissidents, they feel the inward need to move along the road, faithfully keeping between the long white lines or the dotted lines, all of them with a different speed · The driver gets in his car at one of the innumerable ends of the many-branched road system, he takes part in the system, to wander away again to one of those numerous ends, to his temporary destination · The car and/or its driver are the messengers, linking point of departure and point of arrival · In between there is the road system, an open network, available to anyone who owns some means of transportation, knows the rules and wishes to conform to them · The road system and the car literally belong to the same system · Without cars there would be no smooth asphalt roads, without roads cars cannot function · Ecologically speaking they belong to the same organism

Voluntary prisoner

It is difficult to determine whether the driver decides for himself where he wants to go or has become part of a mechanism following its own laws · When the driver gets in his car and enters the system, he becomes its voluntary prisoner · During his journey he contributes to the preservation of the system, but his place is interchangeable: his place may be taken by anyone else · The driver has swapped his individuality for a collective contribution to the further development and complication of the physical communication system · More and more energy is being dissolved for the further evolution of the road system as a building · Each individual contribution adds to the total amount of energy condensing in the communication network, each contribution adds to the intensity of the earth encompassing movements

Pump up the volume

The original surface of the earth is being transformed in a continuous acceleration into an artificial landscape with artificial objects and events, linked by the visible communication cords · The compact energy of the fuel and ores is set free and rearranged into much lighter, airier volumes · When compressed, the basic material of a car takes up no more space than a small cube of 40 x 40 x 40 cm3 · To turn this cube into an industrial object, the chemical structure of the various basic materials is purified and turned into a plate-like or fluid half-product · Then it is spatially transformed into hundreds of parts which are assembled according to a particular pattern and turned into a complex artificial organism · The volume of the car is increased more than a hundredfold compared to the total volume of the compact basic materials · The simultaneous explosion of space (pump up the volume) and implosion of knowledge, laid down in the form of a car, represents the elasticity of constructional space · This process seems to be characteristic of products of our culture: do more with less material

Informed by the speed of light

Yet at the same time: the more effective the use of material, the more energy it takes to reach such levels of effectively · The ability to move fast, and some simple inventions, have had a snowball effect on daily life, from sport to transport · And from physical transport to electronic transport · Nowadays we are informed with the speed of light (radio, TV, computer), the time that is needed to transfer information has been reduced to practically nil · We transmit and receive almost simultaneously · We cannot observe the transportation of this instant communication with our senses · Although the atmosphere is being riddled with a permanent, seemingly structure-less network of all sorts of radiation, we cannot observe this presence · Had our sight been turned in to a different wavelength, even then it would be impossible to detect any structure because of the jumble of waves

Reducing the drag

Inspired by the speed of electronic communication, we have felt the need to move faster ourselves, to take a seat in a mechanical device (train, car, plane), which compresses the length of the journey · Sport, in origin a means to spend one’s leisure time, becomes a speed race · New sports are being invented, based on the elements of speed and streamline · The demand for speed becomes a compelling factor in the design of objects which may move · Science and design are closely linked · Moving objects face a certain amount of drag from the matter surrounding them: air, water, ice or asphalt · More and more effective designs are invented to reduce the drag in these objects pulling themselves along · It is evidently a matter of the utmost importance to perfect the form, thus reducing the drag · The streamlined form uses less fuel, leads to better performance, is in short economically more effective

Irresistible dynamic

All the new theories from aerodynamics and aqua-dynamics, together with the professionalization of leisure activities, have yielded the evidently communicative objects but also a number of fascinating new sports: windsurfing, hang-gliding, throwing frisbees, skateboarding · Existing sports like ballooning, flying kites, skiing, cycle-racing, sailing and speed-skating are being subjected to an aerodynamic metamorphosis, as a result of new theories about drag and transfer techniques and as a result of the availability of new materials, generally developed in space travel odes with their high-standard materials · Technology is facing the challenge of further reducing weight and drag and improving performance · The new shapes of the new and renewed sports are inviting: even when these objects do not move they carry an aura of irresistible dynamic · The surfboards, the ski-boots, the frisbees, the skateboards, they are the equipment of a new way of life: leisure activities have been professionalized, leisure time has become a profession

Streamline

The new professionals surround themselves with bright colors and fresh air, they are constantly moving on, under or in their streamlined fetish · They are the new nomads, the exempted who have released themselves from labor ethics and the principle of usefulness · They are not only the consumers of these attractive new objects, they are also their provokers · Because of their lifestyle, developing these new objects has become a serious and flourishing industry, into which science, technology, stylizing design and professional pleasure have been combined quite naturally · The streamline is halted, the movement is caught in the slender, tense volume · When at rest, the surfboard seems to be a bit unbalanced, but it seems eager to move · The object has a built-in tension, which is only released when it moves full speed ahead in the water, when it may use its streamline to the full · In the exuberant trial of strength between the concentrated energy of the streamlined object and the drag of the water, the surfboard seems to relax, it seems to feel perfectly at ease, like a fish in the water

The stylist

When at rest the Citroën CX is like a tense bow and arrow, which need no longer control its subdued energy when it is ‘shot’ along the road, its elastic form showing out well in just o matter of seconds · The CX designer has tried to capture the caged tension of the formal concept in every little detail · The tension which keeps the arrow to the string of the bow has been caught in the design of the muscled sides of the car · The roof line is as tense as a bent steel spring · The back-window has been made concave to accentuate the curvature of the roof line · The nose has been pushed forward very far and has been pointed, to add to the tension in the bow · The stylist has abraded the frontal volume near the headlights, thus anticipating on the erosion which speed will cause · The sidelines, the folding lines in the tinplate, seem to have been drawn apart · The stylist makes the two loose ends of the line meet again in the undefined middle area of the side in a sort of whirling movement · In the formal concept the volume is taken as a whole, not interrupted by details · Our attention is not drawn to the various parts of the car (headlights, doors, windows), it is the object as a whole which calls up the image · The stylist uses quantitative data from technology (cx value), sound of the wind, comfort) to add to the subjective and individually-intuitive formal concept · Intuition and science are combined to increase the expressive qualities of the object · The stylized volume is measurably effective, the inherent tension visibly active

Built-in tension

The revolutionary proposals of Luigi Colani for a large transport plane calls for a shift to a different scale level, the volume has been increased with a factor of one thousand compared to the car · The science of air-traffic provides the designer with other data influencing the form of the object · There is more formal freedom, driving a car imposes far more formal restrictions · The volume of the car is like a stylized cockpit with engine, the large transport airplane is more like a flying container of enormous size, in which the ergonomics of the cockpit hardly influences the form as a whole · Fascinating about Colani’s design is the fact that he designs the giant object (which has the size of a building) as a single volume, without any additions · The form integrates the landing-gear, the separate parts merge very smoothly · Only the counter-rotating propellers are still clearly recognizable as separate elements · The volume rather looks like a streamlined potato, it does not remind one of an airplane at all · The movement-factor has made the stylist provide the volume with a built-in tension · When it is moving, it sets the external forces in motion, it intersects the mass of the atmosphere

Continuous surface

The streamlined container increases its internal tension at the expense of the external tension · The smaller the drag, the external forces working on the surface of the volume, the stronger the designer’s wish to increase the internal tension of the object, as if to maintain the difference in potential between the two · The technician aims at drag reduction, the stylist aims at giving maximum expression to his individual styling · A non-streamlined volume would only be confronted with external tension, bombarding the square volume with its airy matter · The volume has to defend itself and has to gather all its material to withstand the attack · The stream-lined volume, however, has anticipated the attack by building up an internal tension, equal to the external tension to be caused by its speed · As a certain amount of tension between dimensions pervades the road-system, so the tension between the non-moving environment and the moving object might be seen as the tension between volume and time, between third and fourth dimension · The tension between space and time is increased in the object at rest when the forthcoming movement is anticipated on · The volume is stretched in time · The object anticipates in time, time becomes part of the design · The stylized volume does not resign to the restrictions of its physical three-dimensionality, but tries to break through the boundaries of its own volume · Paradoxically the volume can only be set free and become an ‘open’ container when the restricting surface becomes continuous and homogeneous, like the loose elements in the time-space continuum (De Stijl), like a comprehensive constructive network (Frei Otto) or like a stylized, glove-like membrane (Philishave)

Kas Oosterhuis, Wiederhall 12, 1990