Dagmar Richter’s Dom-In(fo) House

The Digital Architecture of Dagmar Richter by Andy Chua

There are some forms of familiarity concerning non-standard architecture and digital architecture. For non-standard architecture, the use of digital tools and computation for architectural conceptual productions has been around for quite a while. In some areas, these boundaries are gradually softened, with schemes being metamorphosing and time sequences are slowly breaking down. The principles of interrelation, variability and simultaneity now immerse itself very much into the process of defining non-standard architecture.

The widespread use of application programs based on the algorithmic systems changes in design and production tools. To many practitioners, non-standard architectures are a self-reflection on the language of architecture and its applications. This is because we are basing it on the foundation of the convention of the digital elements. Many of the traditional construction methods can now be contrasted with production based on the prototyping of prefabricated architectural component; this is due to the fact that digital process enables the entire architectural ‘development’ visible enough, right from the conceptual stage. This is done through an assortment of experimental entities and prototypes. Thus, through this process a reinterpretation of the history of art and architecture in terms of movement and its nuance.

Many might enquire what does ‘non-standard’ consigns to? This eventually brings us right back to the world of mathematics, for their major theoretical breakthroughs (in which regards themselves non-standard) that cleared the way both for fractal and catastrophe theory and for artificial intelligence. The notion of ‘non-standard’ first appeared in the field of mathematics in 1961, with the work of Abraham Robinson[1]. Its implications are manifold and affect every discipline to which algorithmic systems can be applied, such as artificial intelligence or morphogenesis (the development of structure). Non-standard architecture can now be a part of history which is now being revitalised; this is credited to the development of propositions which were long muffled by the standardisation and technological limitations in the past. The scrawny form of the non-standard - variations from its many norms – has become fairly widespread, but the challenges for non-standard architectures are of a much more radical order: the generalisation of singularity[2], within a new order: the non-standard. Non-standard architectures too have a relationship with Unprocessed Architecture.

Organic architecture itself is a viewpoint in which it encourages social harmony between the human locale and the natural world. This is done through a series of design approach experimentations, in which this belief will then blend itself by accepting and well integrated itself with the surroundings and the furnishings, thus to become a part of a unified, interrelated composition of the universal environment. Architects such as, Gustav Stickley, Antoni Gaudi, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Bruce Goff, Rudolf Steiner, Bruno Zevi, Imre Makovecz and most recently Anton Alberts are all famous for their work with organic architecture.

The term “Organic Architecture” was coined by the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), though never well articulated by his cryptic style of writing:

“So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life, and to now serve the whole of life, holding no traditions essential to the great TRADITION. Nor cherishing any preconceived form fixing upon us either past, present or future, but instead exalting the simple laws of common sense or of super-sense if you prefer determining form by way of the nature of materials…”

- Frank Lloyd Wright, An Organic Architecture, 1939[3]

Digital Architecture too was somehow related to Non-Standard Architecture. The emergence of Digital Architecture is dated back in the year 2000. At the end of the 20^th century and the beginning of the 21^st century, the applications of computer have changed the entire design methods. This is evident in the areas of technology showcasing virtual reality, CAD/CAM technology and internet applications. It is through the usage of computers, it enables famous architects like Frank Gehry and Peter Eisenman to create many wonderful designs. Several of the architectural components had been redefined, as such that functions, forms, volumes and space are been experimented and tested out on digital platforms. This new type of structural design produced by the amalgamation of new architecture efforts and digital technology is generally called digital architecture. However, the debate of the computerisation has been shifted from its original focus. That is it has shifted its focus from the more technical issues into areas which relates itself towards the identity of digitally architecture issues and concerns, such as “is digital architecture a transitory phenomenon or a permanent revolution?”. Others might post this question such as “will digital technology hurt the architecture that we are not familiar with?”. Many architects and designers are also facing the real “threat” of revolution by digital architecture, as some of them are trained the conventional ways.

Many architects and designers are trying to demarcate the real definition of digital architecture. They are asking whether digital architecture is a form of new tools, new theory, new age or new revolution towards the conventional architecture. To be sincere, digital architecture in reality is a mode of new contrivance. However, if digital machinery does not manipulate the way we conceive design thinking, design methodology and eventually spatial theory, then this new tool can be classified as a form of new tool, which has little or no impact on the above mentioned items.

No doubt that digital technology is been regard as a breakthrough in architecture practice, on the contrary, it is just merely regards as a tool. However, this form of tool is far more powerful than the drafting invented during Greek Time[4] or the modelling in the Renaissance era. Digital Architecture might also be regarded as a form of new theory. As it is being used to aid and assist in the design thinking process. At the same time, design theory from the Renaissance period[5] will also be changed greatly by the computer aided design and the design with computer. On the other hand, if the design approach, thinking pattern and spatial theory are all changed by the digital architecture, digital architecture will be more than a hypothesis. The digital architecture might thus form a new age if it is considered to have an overall impact on architecture. We should pay more attention to it because if the digital architecture really forms an era, it will influence not only on architecture, but also the value system and aesthetics, as well. Finally, digital architecture can also be defined as a revolution. Every revolution changes human history and life style, agricultural revolution and industrial revolution. Since architecture is only a small part of the social evolution. We can only wait to see what drastic socio-cultural changes will emerge in the digital age.

However, there are gaps in digital architecture. It is not easy to predict the future of the digital architecture, although, it is still progressing with the full speed. There are still gaps between the architectural education, society culture, and digital architecture. The first lull identified here is the gap between professional and non-professional. Why these 2 words. The reason behind this is because, for the latter when it comes to design training, which has long existed without the aid of technology. And many of those who are trained in the various aspects of designs are done in a manual way. However, the former when it comes to training and thoughts are more “dependent” and thus could accept the advancement of technology. The second is the gap between two exiting generation and digital generation. We define the generation every 10 years. It’s not easy for the different generations to communicate with each other. The generation gap between the existing generation and the digital generation can be easily seen in the debate of architectural design process, presentation, space, volume, concept and aesthetics. Digital generation uses computer to white, thinking the traditional writing time-consuming, while the other generation criticizes the writing in the e-mail as “the writing without quality”. The third is the gap between the architectural and non-architectural field. Focusing more on the arts, history and culture, architecture always reacts slowly for the technology revolution. For instance, the communication has been totally digitalized, the architects still merely use metal and glass to express the avant-guard architecture, without digitalizing the design process. Meanwhile, the architectural education hardly puts any effort to keep up with the rapid change of the digital technology.

The last is the gap between digital technology and human science. Emphasizing its philosophical, historical, social and cultural context, architecture is always the essential part of the human science. However, I sincerely believe, the computation will enhance the cultural development a lot, same as the architecture. Thus this could be identified as a new form of revolution for design and architecture. And when it comes to defining architecture in the digital age, a new vision is heavily criticized by the contemporary society. Only few of these new visions can be confirmed and recognized as master pieces. The vision of digital architecture also needs both the personal creativity and the social appreciation. Many people are making their most efforts to define digital architecture. This is another form of digital revolution in digital architecture.

Dagmar Richter is one of them. Her continuous research into the usage of digital technology in architecture forms an invisible layer of revolution in the digital architecture community. She strives to reassess the commonly held notion of territory as an “extension” or “free domain” where architecture is enrolled for the development of town-planning requirements. Rather than using the concept of available space to ascertain the prior qualification of any zone, she substitutes the memory of the events comprising it. The immediacy of this archaeology constitutes the project’s basic material, in a renewed understanding of the urban approach. Beyond any post-modern assimilation, this relationship to history is directly material and tectonic, and it reconstitutes the ground in symbolic sedimentary layers which the architect then uses as a formal resource. To design in architecture is to transform found spatial structure. Dagmar Richter uses the example of the Le Corbusier[6]’s Dom-ino structure. Dom-ino concept was a simple statement about the possibilities of reinforced-concrete construction: a frame of six columns, set back from the edges not unlike the six dots of a domino piece, supporting floating floor and roof slabs, with a cantilevered stair linking the different levels to the ground and the roof. Experimentation with this model provided Le Corbusier with the basis for his Five Points of Architecture. This standardized prefabricated framework of floors, stairs and load-bearing columns were the only fixed parts of the house; everything else was non-structural and hence entirely flexible - allowing an open plan and non-structural façades. The walls, windows, etc were independent and could be added in any arrangement and style that appealed to the owner.

She chose Le Corbusier’s Domino skeleton to test out the spatial and material postulations which were deeply grounded in our design methods and design thinking. This was so; especially with Le Corbusier believe that he had originated a pure and total concept of construction. Dagmar’s research studio had started the process by looking at the construction in layers. The first layer, the hierarchy of the slabs, as the slabs formed part of the communication portion of the construction. The transformations of the layers allow us to take a closer look into the areas of the nomadic life cycles in a constructed environment and permanent constructed biography of the local context. Dammar transformed the found spatial structure and layers in an adaptable domain of changes where this spatial text put forward in different forms of representation, in forms of atmosphere, humidity, temperature, light, recycling, diagrams, photographic material, filmic material as well personal experience, which in turn is automatically transformed through the interpretations of digital technology. Thus the first layer is being break down into a form of skeleton.

As the next layer, the skeleton was extra been transformed into sections where further introduced as a transformative influence. These digital revolution changes of Le Corbusier’s Domino skeleton allow us to witness the different types of living prototypes of typology of living. This is been identified with an unswerving connection towards the surfacing new role of architecture in terms of the surface. The surface here refers to the performance level of the surrounding that has a contributing factor towards the skeleton structure. In which mass has an important factor in the transformation of the newly created digital form of the Le Corbusier’s original creation.

Another contributing factor that can be discussed here is the ‘veneer’ and the ‘furnishing’ aspect of the Dom-in (fo) House. Damgar had tried to demonstrate the development of the new conversion via the extensive application of facade created by her research team. This is done by generating fundamental geometrical prototypes and typologies. Testing them against various different performance criteria, such as visual access, filtering, shading, body support and the ability to contain and use water within a specific given dimension.

The test resulted with a possible solution in the stacking of a high-rise structure for either short or long term period. This is essential especially within the areas of metropolitan living are concerned. In areas where, dense living is an issue, the newly digital converted allows the structure to be connect through layers and levels of vertical cityscapes. The options of the low-rise construction methods through the single attached units in the suburban context also establish a platform to allow test for a duration between short and long term living. This second test platform allows, Dagmar Richter to test out the association of the recently designed digital domino assembly with a possible connection the surrounding landscape to the different living units, as well as interconnecting and interweaving water, the outside and inside, and neighbouring constructions. With the results of using digital technology, Dagmar Richter realised that they had experienced a massive paradigm shift in the deeply rooted modernist architectural ideology, in terms of logic of tectonics. The resulting models are attempts to illustrate a new prototype of a topology for living in this digital revolution era.

Let’s take a look at the planning model for Manhattan of 1997 by Dagmar Richter. The region between pier #16 and #18 at Lower Manhattan has been chosen for investigational analysis regarding the new use of digital technology in its relation to spatial zoning planning. The main idea was register on any changes of the society instantaneously to the dynamics of the city as an urban organism. To this area, around the East River, data was collected in terms of spatial and statistical, in which it was then transmuted into a cerebral animated 3 dimensional spatial atlas. These 3 dimensional digital animated layers were then used to understand the inherent and unpredictable dynamics of the city, understood as a large organism[7], influenced by inside and outside events, are the force that animates the model. This new 3-dimensional digital effort allows the creation of a more complex program for the relationship of the city’s section and creates the possibility of the expansion of more public space throughout the volumes of the buildings. Further zoning, was done to understand zone sponge around the areas surrounding the piers. This is to understand the meshing effect scenario on the types of programming that could occupy the data cape of Manhattan. The end results of these digital experimental, envisage that the resulting architecture would then operate itself within a given outline within its volume of the urban organism. This overall, new zoning model generated by digital means would provide a new re-programming and multi-programming within a section of a new urban fabric

Another project by Dagmar Richter; Shanghai Residential Design Competition 2000 was based her project on the tradition and design of Chinese garden when she came across a piece of Chinese painting. The entire reflection of the design scheme was based on the issues of cultural heritage and the precedence in the non-western cultures. This is because; many Asian cities that had been admit defeat to Western prototypes. And Asian architecture setups were just simply been regarded as an art of stylistic copy. First of all, she has interpreted the current situation as a complex network of complicated conduit which serves a wide range of varied communal spaces. Water and mountains, these two elements which are dominant in the Chinese gardens typology, which help her to create alternative solutions to the current well established western techniques of housing design. Instead of a direct translation of the formal vocabulary of the singular high-rise or low-rise building of the West, she used the old tradition of artificial hill construction to achieve dense and, in some cases, relatively high housing volumes by 3D animation means. Based on the symbolic magnitude of the pinnacle of mountains surrounding Shanghai, she distributed the densely spaces urban housing plan evenly. Water element was also used in order to create voids and distances, thoughtful mirror surfaces which divide evenly but not separate it from the local context.

Spatial and its formal forms are presently connect in an edgy investigate for solutions and experiments to vital questions about the natural world and the identity of the discipline, and digital technology is the prevailing agent for prevailing innovations in design methods and design process thinking. Although, this is really nothing new, as new technology has always been a catalyst for new ideas in design methods, design experiments and design process thinking in our daily practice as a designer or an architect. Digital spatial and formal forms have found it with new forms of digital representations, as information reconfigures into digital visualizations, and projects evolve further as digital fabric fabrications. However, a clear and critical definition of new principles has to be examined in the wake of these new tools driven towards our implementations of digital forms in spatial fabrications.

The digital box itself has gone from being an isolated box to become part of a gigantic digital network of networks, which shapes our collective future and helped in our creation of forms and spatial language. There are at least six digital phenomena that directly affect the architectural world: miniaturization, being everywhere, global, communing globally in real-time, networking everything, vitality and anamnesis. These phenomena have squeezed, stretched, restructured, reconfigured, and redistributed most major human institutions and architectural theories of the Renaissance period. Consequently, the world’s role in digital architecture and its importance and nature have changed over the years. Architecture has always been traditionally understood as a periphery before has been changed. Many practices now have, however, have been repositioning themselves to take advantage of the new opportunities beyond the bounds of traditional architectural practice with the help of these digital technologies.

To conclude, design, practice, fabrication and construction are increasingly becoming an affair of networking design lab in all design studios and design institutions. These new tools allow practitioners in the design and architecture scene, to be in touch constantly with connectivity and speed via experimentations before been realised in our daily practice. The digital architecture revolution has created a new world which has been recognised and conventional designers and architects are starting to take these transformations and thoughts differently in another mode as compared before the emergence of digital architecture.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Robinson
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_singularity
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_architecture
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_drafting
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier
[7] X Y Z, The Architecture of Dagmar Richter 2001:140