Axel Kilian
Axel Kilian is a researcher in computational design. He was a visiting Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the department of Architecture, an Assistant Professor at the Princeton University School of Architecture, a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT, and an Assistant Professor at TU Delft. In 2006 he completed a PhD in Design and Computation at MIT on design exploration. In addition he holds a Master of Science from MIT and a professional degree in architecture from the University of the Arts Berlin. Axel Kilian has lectured widely and published extensively. His publications include the book Architectural Geometry and he has been involved in the organization of conference series such as SmartGeometry, Design Modelling Symposium, and Advances in Architectural Geometry. His latest research focus is on embodied computation, the continuation of computation in the physical realm.
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Modern geometric computing provides a variety of tools for the efficient design, analysis, and manufacturing of complex shapes. On the one hand this opens up new horizons for architecture.
On the other hand, the architectural context also poses new problems to geometry. Around these problems the research area of Architectural Geometry is emerging. It is situated at the border of applied geometry and architecture.
A research area being so interdisciplinary as Architectural Geometry and involving fields as diverse as art and design, computer science, engineering and mathematics, needs scientific exchange.
Advances in Architectural Geometry 2008 is our first attempt in bringing together researchers from these fields to discuss recent advances in research and practice and to identify and address the most challenging problems. We aim at connecting researchers from architectural practices and academia.
AAG 2008 received 56 submissions which have been reviewed by the members of the Scientific Programme Committee. The specific cultures in the involved scientific communities often resulted in a high variation of grades the same paper received by reviewers from different areas. This made the selection process particularly difficult.
We decided to accept only a small number of papers for oral presentation, since a low number of presentations offers sufficient time for discussion, which is essential for this first conference on Architectural Geometry. At this point, we would also like to thank the members of the Scientific Programme Committee for their excellent and mostly timely reviews which had to be performed during a quite short time span. Extended abstracts of the 14 accepted oral presentations form the content of the proceedings. The copyrights remain with the authors and thus publication of the full version of the papers elsewhere poses no problems.
The variety of research areas and the balance between academia and architectural practice is also reflected in our choice of invited speakers: Konrad Polthier (FU Berlin), Carlo Séquin (UC Berkeley), Dennis R. Shelden (Gehry Technologies, LA), Charles Walker (Zaha Hadid Architects, London) and Arnold Walz (designtoproduction, Zürich). We are very grateful to them for accepting our invitation and for sharing their most recent research results.
This event would not have been possible without the help of many friends and colleagues. Special thanks belong to our conference secretary Natalie Klement for her help with all organizational issues and to our conference technician Ronald Haidvogl for his technology support. We greatly appreciate the important support in early organizational issues by Werner Purgathofer and Anita Mayerhofer.
Furthermore we would like to thank Martina Milletich from the Austrian Academy of Sciences for a very smooth handling of all our requests.
Last but not least we would like to express our sincere gratitude to the sponsors of this conference: RFR (Paris) and Waagner Biro Stahlbau AG (Vienna). Their generous support greatly reduced the registration fees and thus helped to attract many more, especially young people to this first conference on Architectural Geometry.
Architekturgeometrie wurde als Lehrbuch für Studenten der Architektur und des Industriedesigns geschrieben. In einer einfachen, auf eine Fülle von Abbildungen gestützten Darstellung werden Grundkenntnisse über geometrische Objekte, bis hin zu freien Formen, über deren Modellierung und digitale Bearbeitung vermittelt. Ebenso werden Querverbindungen zu wichtigen Fragen der aktuellen Forschung hergestellt. Die vorgestellten Konzepte werden mit der Mathematik so weit vernetzt, als es für den Einsatz von Skript-Methoden in parametrischer Modellierungs-Software notwendig erscheint. Das Buch ist auch als Nachschlagewerk für Architekten gedacht, für Bauingenieure und Industriedesigner als Quelle der Inspiration und für Wissenschafter die an Geometrieanwendungen für Architektur und Kunst interessiert sind.
This book has been written as a textbook for students of architecture or industrial design. It comprises material at all levels, from the basics of geometric modeling to the cutting edge of research. During the architectural journey through geometry, topics typically reserved for a mathematically well-trained audience are addressed in an easily understandable way. These include central concepts on freeform curves and surfaces, differential geometry, kinematic geometry, mesh processing, digital reconstruction, and optimization of shapes.
This book is also intended as a geometry consultant for architects, construction engineers, and industrial designers and as a source of inspiration for scientists interested in applications of geometry processing in architecture and art.
their full potential. The research efforts in the past decades have placed geometric design representations firmly at the center of digital design environments. In this thesis it is argued that models for design exploration that bridge different representation aid in the discovery of novel designs. Replacing commonly used analytical, uni-directional models for linking representations, with bidirectional ones, further supports design exploration. The key benefit of bidirectional models is the ability to swap the role of driver and driven in the exploration.
The thesis developed around a set of design experiments that
tested the integration of bidirectional computational models
in domain specific designs. From the experiments three main
exploration types emerged. They are: branching explorations
for establishing constraints for an undefined design problem;
illustrated in the design of a concept car. Circular explorations for the refinement of constraint relationships; illustrated in the design of a chair. Parallel explorations for exercising well-understood constraints; illustrated in a form finding model in architecture. A key contribution of the thesis is the novel use of constraint diagrams developed to construct design explorers for the experiments. The diagrams show the importance of translations between design representations in establishing design drivers from the set of constraints. The incomplete mapping of design features across different representations requires the re-description of the design for each translation. This re-description is a key aspect of exploration and supports design innovation.
Finally, this thesis stands for the development of design specific
design explorers that favor a shift in software design away from
monolithic, integrated software environments and towards open software platforms that support user development.