11/18/2015
Precedent analysis

Henderson Waves
   Singapore
   Pedestrian bridge between parks
   Areas for seating gathering in small to mid sized groups and viewing

Sundial Bridge
   California
   Pedestrian Bridge across water
   Sensitive to solar activity, constructed with light under walkable surface, space underneath for
   small to medium events.

Juscelino Kubitschek Bridge
   Brazil
   Vehicular traffic bridge over water
   Curvilinear deck

Pont Gustave-Flaubert
   France
   Vehicular and pedestrian bridge over water
   Hydraulic bridge can raise and lower to accommodate ships passing underneath, gathering spaces at
   either end

Da Vinci Bridge
   Pedestrian bridge over highway
   self supporting structure
  

Octavio Frias de Oliveira Bridge
   Brazil
   Vehicular bridge over water
   Multidirectional traffic flow

 Gateshead Millennium Bridge
   England
   Pedestrian bridge over water
   Curved deck allows it to be able to allow ships through when tilted, has benches and viewing areas
   on either side and on bridge.

Tilikum Crossing
   Portland
   Pedestrian and mass transit bridge over water
   Newly completed bridge accommodates the existing tram lines and incorporates stations at either
   end of the bridge, pedestrian viewing areas also incorporated. 

Initial site analysis Portland

Site 1
   Burnside bridge
The Burnside bridge would be a very likely candidate for me because of its proximity to downtown, its location near the farmers market inviting further development and because of the complicated roadwork on the east side of the river.

Site 2
   Morrison bridge
The Morrison bridge would also be an ideal location for my project.  Though not near the farmers market it does allow for a more unique intervention on the surrounding areas.  The one qualm I have with this site is the number of connections to roads on the east side of the bridge.

Site 3
   SW Hawthorn bridge
This bridge has similar qualities to the first two however on its east side it passes under the interstate which could lead to a more unique design condition.  Also this location is not particularly close to transit lines but perhaps there is a need  then.

Potential option 4 being a new bridge in the downtown area though not likely.
All these sites I am considering.  I will need to do further research into each one in order to choose the best of them for a large intervention.  It may be found however that none of them are ideal and I will need to choose a new location along the river but I think each of these are likely. 

Potential Program

   Vehicular traffic:  although many of the interesting bridges that I have studied are pedestrian I think that the challenge in part comes from successfully combining the pedestrian and the vehicular.

   Pedestrian traffic:  this can allow for viewing areas and gathering areas.

   Mass transit/transit station:  Especially in Portland but also to add another dimension to the project as well as allowing for terminals or stations at one or both ends of the structure.

  Large gathering space:  This could manifest itself as an extension of the farmers market for the Burnside bridge or as a open air theater in the other sites.  The riverside park in Portland can help to accommodate this.
  

11/11/2015
     This week I wrapped my model and found that the shrinkwrap made the shape even more conventional than I expected.  I also was looking into programs for tensegrity and I am more convinced now than last class that the project should be more of a span than what I proposed as an addition to a span.  I started looking more closely into sites as well and settled on three that I thought held some potential.  Of those three only Missoula and Portland really interested me and I am leaning more towards Portland simply because there is more there to work with however I still think there could be potential in Missoula because of the historic nature of the surrounding area.  But the density and complexity of the Portland site may win out.  Boise I included for its close proximity to me.  I also think that it is as much the site surrounding the bridge, ie. the approach to and from, as it is the span itself.  I would very much so be interested in how tensegrity/modular deformed tensegrity can span and how it can activate its surroundings.

My model clad.

 

 

Doing some research the most literal example of a tensegrity model made into a bridge is the Kuilpa Bridge by Calatrava.  This bridge is probably the closest thing to a full scale useable tensegrity span structure around today.  



11/04/2015
Much of my time this week was spent modeling.  I attempted to join 8 deformed tensegrity models together to get a feel for how they would act, what sort of spaces would be created and how it would perform.  I selected the tensegrity model that I found last week to have the propensity for scale or what I thought was the most interesting model.  I chose this also in part because I knew that if I modeled the regular icosahedron the model would not fit through any doors on the way to class.  The model that resulted from this experiment was much more interesting than I had thought.  It was much more stable than I thought it could be even with the many imperfections that resulted from my building technique.  I am confident that given enough time it would be very possible to perfect the model.  However I ran into time constraints that if I have a chance I will remedy next week.  The results are still worth sharing however and noting. 

Also this week I began looking into site and program.  My idea for my thesis is to take a program that is defined by a regular shape such as a sphere of now as a result of my model this week a rectangle and begin to deform it in response to both external and internal changes.  It might behoove my project to select a program that needs to be flexible such as a library or multiuse building but I also think that it could be important to look at an inflexible program and see how it conflicts with the icosahedron and the site.  This could be a grocery store possibly or a government building though those are not particularly great examples of inflexible spaces.  As of right now I am leaning towards a multiuse building that performs more than one function such as an enclosed market and a series of retail spaces.  But that is not really appealing to me I think I would rather have one general program with the ability to add functions as becomes possible.  A new library or City Hall or brewery?

Missoula, MT is a city steeped with American tradition and history.  It has a general population of over 100,000 and contains a fairly well defined downtown area.  There are many historic and important buildings in the downtown area that are worth note.  However in the last few decades the city's downtown core has become somewhat derelict and abandoned.  I would like to research some methods for revitalizing the downtown core of Missoula.

How can improving the built environment revitalize the downtown core of Missoula?

                                What buildings can be preserved and renovated and what is the area lacking?

                                What can be done about the large transient population?

                                How can the street system be improved to allow a more pedestrian and cyclist                                  friendly environment?

This thesis will survey the current conditions of the city and downtown area.  It will compare the more successful areas against the unsuccessful ones, it will compare between cities and towns that have found solutions and revitalized their city centers.  By using this information possible solutions will be proposed.  The city center is Missoula is crumbling.  The area is aging and not being maintained because of a lack of funds and a lack of interest,  the transient problem is growing and the few facilities for the public are not being used as well as they should be.  This thesis will provide several possible solutions to this problem.

This city has a great potential in its downtown core.  There are many interesting and historical buildings, there is a riverfront park that could be great with some effort, the area is host to a large farmer's market and the history of the area is very rich.  If the area could be improved it has the potential to benefit the economy, strengthen the community, and encourage a healthy lifestyle.

Finally I also became interested in my example of scaled tensegrity from last week.  I would like to think that the principals that make the cam an effective piece of rock climbing gear could also be used to great effect in tensegrity possibly as connection points or in some other way.  It might be fun to try to build a tensegrity model using cams. 

10/29/2015

Looking a bit further into the work of Calatrava it was interesting to se how he used tension to express action.  In his book "Conversations with Students" there was an interesting example of his use of tension to hold up an object.  He built his model using simple objects and the form was very expressive for a simple action illustrating the further use of tension beyond just the dome and using more formal or regular shapes.

 

Also this week I wanted to develop several models of icosahedron tensegrity with the object somewhat deformed.  I settled of equal deformation rather than random in order to keep with the particular qualities of the icosahedron.  In my first model I shrunk 1 of the compression members by several inches.  The results sowed me that the model wanted to maintain an equilibrium.  That is to say that the member I shrunk more or less centered itself within the model.  When I shrunk to of the parallel members I found that I new regular shape emerged.  It was rather like going from a square where all sides are equal in length to a rectangle where half the sides are equal and the other sides are of the same, different, length.  The shape immediately reminded me of a building block of some kind because of its more rectangular shape and prompted my next model to be a simple joining of two blocks.  It might be interesting to take this a bit further and join 8 models together to see what the form begins to look like although it might be just as simple now that I understand the reaction of the icosahedron to deformation to model this in the computer and save myself the cost of the materials.  Also I used shrink wrap to clad the models which led to interesting shapes not entirely dissimilar from the soap bubbles but not entirely the same either.  They to me resembled soap bubbles on the upper side of my models while my model last week looked like the soap bubbles on the underside.

 

 

 

 

Finally this week I started looking into activated tension a bit more and perhaps because my knowledge base beyond architecture is somewhat focused of outdoor adventure sports I began to look for examples of tension, tensegrity and activated tension in the outdoor recreation field.  This week there were two examples of objects that stuck in my mind.  The first obvious example of tensegrity and geodesics was the backpacking tent.  It is one of the most explicit examples of geodesics in my mind today.  These tents have been designed for extreme conditions and are quite wind resistant.  However in my search I also found a new style of tent that claims to be super light and maximizes space and efficiency.  This being the point of the geodesic dome I was expecting to see another such shape however this design was not so much a dome as a rectangle with the compression members forming an obtuse angle with one another or in other words getting further apart as they move upwards.  As an outdoorsman I can think of several reasons this would not be the greatest tent for me but the principal behind it and the end form was really interesting especially when they compared it to the dome saying that this new tent was to today as the dome tent was to the 80's.

 

 

Also I thought of the rock climbing cam as an example of activated tension.  The cam is activated by compressing your fingers and increasing the tension on the device which shrinks its size allowing it to fit into a crack or rock feature where it relies on friction and a simple spring to hold it in place.  When a fall occurs the device cams or in other words is put into compression the rock surrounding it.  This way it absorbs the tension force of the fall.  I thought this an interesting scale for activated tension. 

 



10/22/2015
This week I began by documenting my previous work again with a bit more clarity especially with the soap bubbles.  Then I enhanced my icosahedron by cladding it to reflect the soap bubbles and cladding the entire model.  The unintended side effect of this was that the cladding itself gave the model much more stability and strength than the original tension wires.  This brings up questions like could this be a potential avenue to explore, structural cladding systems, or is it not a scale-able concept.  I also read more from Eisenman and began looking into Calatrava and his architecture which seems to go hand in hand with my "lightness, flight" observations.  His architecture though not precisely in the same area to my original concept is a very close example of what maybe is called activated tension architecture.  I am trying to find a copy of the book Santiago Calatrava: Sculptectures.  I think his work contains part of what I am interested in perusing.  Also in relation to Calatrava's work I am diagraming what to me seems relevant to my project in a hangglider. 

 

Eisenman as it is relevant to me:
     Eisenman is well known for his almost formal approach to architecture and his distance as it were from free-form architecture.  But in reading his book the "Formal Critique of Modern Architecture" I could see several similarities between his observations of form and tensegrity.  Firstly he talks a great deal about the volume.  This is very much so what geodesics is about as well.  Geodesics concentrates on how to make the volume efficient.  The apparent rigidity of geodesics if it could be called that is a fallacy.  The geodesic is all about the efficient transfer of load.  There is also much regularity and repetition of form in geodesics that is only now being capitalized on with the advent of computers.  Finally the icosahedron though irregular amongst tensegrity models is a very regular shape with its compression and tension members requiring precise lengths to achieve.  And though the tension wires form a somewhat cellular shape the compression members are very conventional. 
     Eisenman makes the comment in his book that the volume must react to external conditions as well as being able to adapt to various internal situations.  This to me seems to reflect the ideas of tensegrity and geodesics.  I believe the word Eisenman uses is deform.  This is something that can literally be accomplished in geodesics.  I would suggest that though Eisenman was not a proponent of free form architecture the inherent regularity of tensegrity when applied to free form is still along the same track of "Formal Critique of Modern Architecture".

Calatrava's Milwaukee Art Museum: Perhaps Performance Activated Tension
   The museum is basically inspired by flight and the ocean.  Part of it resembles the prow of a ship and the shading device obviously resembles a bird or some other object in flight.  The part of the project that interests me however is the tensional possibilities it suggests.  Though not directly communicating the ideas of tension the shading device indicates the use of the building.  When the wings are up the building is open and when the wings are down it is closed.  This building is a great example of how a building can visually show changing conditions.  Calatrava is influenced by many of the same architects and ideas that have captivated Norman Foster, Otto Frei, and Buckminster Fuller.  His buildings seem to be pushing in the direction I am interested in.