This presentation will discuss current research on architecture and urban density through topological optimization and solidThinking Inspire \ Morphogenesis.

1. Peter Macapia labDORA
Pratt Institute/SciArc
Responsibly
Imprecise
Topology, Engineering, and the Politics of the City

2. Agenda:
The relationship between Topology,
Structural Design, The Space of the City,
and Geopolitics.

3. Libya Crisis Map
My Friends on Phone
Tahrir Square

4. 50% world population in cities
50% on mobile

5. It seems as though all cities
Are in 100% conflict. Not with
Each other, but within themselves.

6. How do you design for the city of today?
And tomorrow?
And what means Responsibility
And how do we use Precision?

7. Topology has been formalized as a
way of thinking about
connectedness.
Today the idea of “connectedness”
is as political as it is formal.

9. Euler’s Königsberg
Bridge Problem
Silk Trade Route Topological Optimization
Social Networking, Crisis
Mapping, Google Earth

10. Two of the most important aspects of
computation today involve algorithmic
combinatorials (which produce
connections)
And emergent networks (which
produce e.g. commerce, new forms of
social organization, and self-organized
political awareness)

11. Early Work:
Topology, Structures, Singularities,
Sustainability
(geometry and topology of
matter/energy relations)

12. Dirty Geometry Pavilion: Case
Study with a structure conceived as
topological network.
Stochastic Primary Structure,
Building to suspend over vacant lot
in order to free up urban space for
random public use.
Design based on capturing thermal
gain from existing building surfaces
in order to ventilate the pavilion by
bringing cooler air off the shaded
ground and through the structure
through convection.
Problem was the concept of
structure.

18. Topological Tower: Generative FEM analysis and topological network
tower. Secondary structural network has flexibility in Primary
structural network.

20. Combinatorial Module Tower:
topological network + generative
combinatorial algorithm

22. Responsibly Imprecise 1: The Sciarc experiment with
SolidThinking/InspiredMorphogenesis
The research involved taking a class of students who
would
A) develop schemes for a large cantilever in front of the
school.
B) select a project,
C) Materialize the Morphogenesis diagram into a
construction logic that transformed the pictorial logic of
the Morphogenesis results into something else.
D) The “something else” was a fiberglass/composite
series of panels, the seams of which would provide a new
structural network.

32. Responsibly Imprecise 2: The Audi
Experiment
Asked by Audi to redefine the city for 2030, the
agenda was to lift buildings off the street in
order to generate as much urban public space
as possible while allowing the mixture of
pedestrian and auto traffic throughout based
on embedded sensor technology within the
road surface which communicates directly with
automobiles.
The entire endeavor was inspired by the Stevie
Wonder Video Living for the City
The Structural Insight came from
Morphogenesis.

43. Responsibly Imprecise 3: The United Nations
Center for Performing Arts.
A theoretical project that would allow the
building to function as an open public space
situated in the middle of a roadway, that would
encourage an intersection between global
politics and performance art, open to
dictatorships and democracies around the
world.
Here the structural base rises up through the
building in a really intense and almost
impossibly gross manner from which to
cantilever performance platforms inside and
outside

55. Responsibly Imprecise 4: The Pratt
Experiment
Find a way to use Morphogenesis such that it
raises two questions:
1) how to rethink the relation between
structure and building in terms of space?
2) how to rethink the building in terms of
public urban space.
The move takes us from the practical to the
political.
Imprecision here means: you are free to
interpret the use of the technology for things
other than its intended use.

56. Joy Tennanbaum: An open air birdcage prison structure for
convicts specializing in performance art, constantly
surveyed by the city. Calatrava meets Foucault meets Elvis

59. Dan Coughlin: The
conversion of the Citicorp
building into a national public
park.

63. Vivi Wei: The universal church which turns the Gothic cathedral
inside out for open air public space. Christianity meets Hinduism
meets Judaism meets whatever you want for religion on that day
of the week.

67. Vida Chang: An aspiring Super Hero converts the top of a
building for today’s politically and environmentally
conscientious youth, all of whom are unemployed or really hate
their jobs.

70. Towards the next step: Irresponsibly Precise
We have at the moment no “logical” way to treat the
Morphogenesis results as a material fact.
This means we need to experiment wildly with materials and
construction techniques.