'How to create the ideal city using virtual technology' is the type of question being addressed by architects, working with mathematicians and scientists at a symposium being held at RMIT this week in Melbourne.
‘Designing the Dynamic’ is a week-long series of workshops that cut across multiple disciplines in order to tackle complex design problems in real-time interaction.
The event is hosted by the RMIT Design Research Institute (DRI) Future Fabric of Cities flagship and the School of Architecture an Design Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) in Melbourne, Australia.
The workshop, led by Hugh Whitehead (Director of the Specialist Modelling Group, Foster + Partners, whose notable buildings include the Gherkin in London and the Beijing Airport) consists of projects such as investigating the properties of textile materials to control the bending stiffness, stretch ability or torsion of composite materials. Aiming to achieve lightweight and flexible systems that can enhance architectural spaces.
During the workshops computational design will be used in the production and testing of physical artefacts that will bring together built environment designers with specialists from mathematics, engineering, computer and material science to explore the design and representation of dynamic systems.
The aim is to build virtual and physical design prototypes and simulation tools that represent complex tradeoffs in ways that support intuitive design decision-making.
According to Ben Doherty of BVN, one of the contributors to the ‘Designing the Dynamic’ Workshop and Symposium, technology will presents interesting opportunities to create model, or ideal, cities.
“For example you could model the impact of tilting the entire city towards the sun, which would mean tilting every building so that the sun beats down onto a small well insulated roof and not onto the whole wall of a building, that would reduce energy bills, but what other effects would it have?” said Doherty.
The one day symposium follows the workshops on Friday 25 November, with speakers including Hugh Whitehead.
Other contributors are Kristoffer Josefsson, Tim Black BKK, Mark Burry RMIT, Tom Kvan University of Melbourne, Andrew Maher Arup, Simon Watkins RMIT, Mike Xie RMIT.
Supported by RMIT, SIAL, Design Research Institute, Memko and BVN, further details can be found on www.designingthedynamic.com.
