Thursday 22 December 2011

Vacant PhD scholarship "Complex Modelling"

Though it is not specifically related to textiles, I thought I would just mention this great opportunity for PhD studentship as it might interest some of our architects and digital crafting friends. The PhD will take place at CITA, Centre for IT & Architecture, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture from the 1rst of April 2012. The Scholarship is for 3 years and fully funded. The position is placed within the framing research topic Complex Modelling.

A bit more content is provided below with introduction to the context of research but for full details about the application please visit this link.

Over the last 30 years, we have witnessed a large-scale digitisation of archictectural practice. Contemporary architecture is almost exclusively produced using digital tools, and the computer has become a key tool in the way architecture is thought of, designed and produced. Today, digital tools have an impact on architecture on the most simple level to the most complex one. If on the one hand, the computer is a simple drawing tool that we use to represent our surroundings, its is on the other hand also the medium through which we seek solutions to complex contemporary issues that our society faces. It is through these digital tools and their potential to compute large amounts of data with a high degree of complexity that we as a knowledge society seek to find solutions to the urbanisation of mega-cities, globalisation and sustainability.
This shift has placed new demands on our represenation forms. The new information models that are able to actively calculate the economic, environmental and spatial effects of a proposal, have transformed architectural representation into a dynamic and flexible medium that is able to interface directly with outside knowledge fields. However, information models also have there own inherent problems. They become larger because they contain data from the many practices that constitute the construction industry, they become longer because they are expanded to include several of the building phases and they become deeper because the specific volumes of information, which the models must be able to handle, are growing.
This results in a dramatic increase in complexity, and leads us to question the fundamental ways in which information models are organised. If we as architects and engineers must work with large datasets and must be able to simulate and analyse these in ways that make sense, it is necessary that we consider how these models may be presented.
Today, information models are reproduced in accordance with architecture’s traditional development in three dimensions. As an automation of plans and section views, the 3D model serves as a continuation of the traditional architectural drawing hall. This PhD project will explore how other forms of information organisation may help to create intelligent tools for architectural design, analysis and realisation. To manage these digital models concretely and optimally, it is essential to have a critical understanding of how parametric and generative computer models may be developed and monitored.

Applications are to be handed in no later than Wednesday 1 February 2012 at 12.00 noon.

Wednesday 14 December 2011

The Role of Material Evidence in Architectural Research: Drawings, Models, Experiments

The Role of Material Evidence in Architectural Research: Drawings, Models, Experiments, by Anne Beim and Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen is one of the recent publications of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Design and Conservation discussing what is regarded as valid evidence in arhcitectural research and how to evaluate these materials.

The publication gathers the results of the debates initiated during the seminar of the same name organized at the school in November 2010. It gathers texts and interviews from guest researchers as for instance Jonathan Hill discussing Design Research as a 500 hundred years tradition or Yeoryia Manolopoulou talking about Enaction Drawing. The book is also an introduction to on-going PhD projects at the school which range 'from tectonic inquiries into material qualities and properties to computational crafting and model making, to the creation and testing of theoretical models for simulation or articulation of tectonic principles in ordered pictograms'. A modest but rich contribution to the debate of practice-based research methodology.

With contributions by

Researchers
Jonathan Hill, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Peter Bertram, Billie Faircloth, Karin Søndergaard, Merete Madsen, Mikkel Kragh

PhD Students
Anne-Mette Manelius, Aurélie Mossé, Peter Andreas Sattrup, Ofri Earon, Nanet Krogsbæk Mathiasen, Jacob Riiber Nielsen, Søren Nielsen, Johannes Rauff Greisen, Jan Schipull Kauschen, Cecilie Bendixen, Tore Banke