Jonathan Dessi-Olive

This paper discusses the contributions made by a seminar called MycoMatters, which introduced graduate level architecture students to the craft of growing structures with fungibased materials. Although mycelium's inherent structural, isolative, and fire-resistant properties suggest it is possible, beyond imaginative pavilions no one has yet grown an entire house out of mycelium. The central charge of the seminar was that innovation with this material is possible and to that end, focused on craft, design, and fabrication with mycelium-composite materials in the context of residential building structures. Students gained intuition for growing myco-materials, learned to conduct focused material and structural experiments, and built numerous prototypes of increasing scale.

This paper presents advancements in architectural-scale design and fabrication techniques of mycelium composite materials. A series of experiments and prototypes are presented in this paper which explore myco-materials in their intermediate stage of cultivation when they are alive and flexible. The prototypes were made through novel hang-dry methods, which permit myco-materials to take forms otherwise not possible or inefficient using typical casting, or formwork-based approaches. The craft and complexity of cultivating fungi-based structures will be discussed, the background and development of the novel methods will be detailed, and the limitations associated with growing mycostructures will be reflected upon.

A visual language for designs of acoustical arrays is defined by a shape grammar that deploys design rules using shape representations of acoustic panels with labels and weights to specify known formal and performative information. Reciprocal 3-D acoustic plots are computationally simulated using a perfectly matched layer finite element method and inform how the interactions of invisible sound waves are impacted by visual design decisions. This paper presents the results of this framework with 3 × 3 arrays of diffusers and absorbers, resulting in the introduction of an aesthetic value ̄E , incorporated with the diffusion coefficient, allowing for nuanced objective performative evaluation of these arrays. This ultimately leads to creative visual expressions of design rooted in acoustic theory and performance.

This paper broadens the scope of ongoing research that introduces rule-based methods for designing creative acoustic arrays: from single-frequency QRD-based panels to those which account for multiple design parameters such as frequency, absorption, and number of wells. Expanded parameters create more complex arrays that give acousticians a finely tuned and intentional acoustical response as it relates to these input rules. Numerical simulations show three-dimensional directivity responses for these shape grammar generated diffuser arrays. A visual complexity coefficient is presented to quantify the aesthetic component to designs of arrays of acoustic panels. Along with spatial simulated diffusion response, diffusion coefficients, and the visual complexity coefficient, designers and acousticians will be afforded ways to create both acoustical effective and visually interesting arrays.

This paper presents research on a hybrid structure system that extends the principles of active-deployed tensegrity structures through a series of prototypes that use inflatable compression struts. These structures combine the advantages of tensegrity and pneumatic structures, resulting in minimum weight with a maximal global volume change. Previous deployable tensegrity structures have been developed that demonstrate self-deploying behavior, but only at small scale. Prototypes that use commonly known three and four-strut geometries were built that use low-pressure inflatable struts, developed to maintain their internal air pressure, resist strut deformation that can occur during deployment, and resist buckling that results from loading the structure. The prototypes presented here precede a large-scale pavilion to be exhibited at the 2019 Form and Force Expo in Barcelona. This paper presents several development prototypes, design and analytical strategies for the inflatable compression struts, load-testing results, as well as drawings of the proposed exhibition structure.

This paper presents advancements in mycelium construction, demonstrated through a large-scale monolithic mycelium vault structure. In the burgeoning field of bio-materials, mycelium has emerged as a potentially viable building material because it is naturally occurring, demands little energy for its production, is lightweight, and completely biodegradable. Whereas, previous architecture-scale mycelium constructions used component-based techniques, this paper presents novel research on grown-in-place and self-supporting monolithic mycelium structures, achieved using techniques resembling common practices for cast-in-place concrete.

This paper presents research on a rule-based approach to designing creative acoustic diffuser arrays. A shape grammar-influenced design method is specified that uses shape rules to recursively design arrays of quadratic residue diffusers (QRD) in ways that are neither mechanical nor deterministic.

This paper presents research on contemporary tile vaulting, demonstrated through a large-scale prototype structure that minimizes formwork by using fiberglass splines. Autoclaved-aerated concrete (AAC) bricks, whose porosity maximizes cohesion with gypsum mortar, were laid over a hybrid steel and flexible fiberglass "spline" guide-work system, which offered significant advantages. Bent elastic splines can be used to approximate the desired construction geometry. This pushes the limits of compression-only structures that can be built efficiently, without compromising a desire for building evocative forms. The "Volta Porosa" prototype and its formwork system were researched, designed and constructed by students in an interdisciplinary workshop on thin shell construction. This paper will discuss the innovative combination of traditional methods with new materials, as well as the design and construction process for the prototype vault.

This thesis broadly fits into three areas of the discipline: history, construction, and computation. The objective is to demonstrate a way of working that promotes a greater understanding of the matter, shapes, and forces at play when designing architecture. The motivation for this project comes from an observation on the shortcomings of computation in design: the tools alone are not enough to produce creative work because they lack a means of working that is open-ended and based on visual intuition, rather than mechanical formation. This thesis takes a critical approach toward technology and proposes a slow computation methodology as a means promoting material and structural primacy in architecture design. At the scale of architecture, issues of material and structure are unavoidable. A greater understanding of the matter, shapes, and forces at play can be used to catalyze creative production of designs that can be built, making it possible to intuit and improvise structures by working directly with “stuff” of architecture.

The project will implement the theories and mechanics of shape grammars and graphic statics as a productive means of addressing contemporary issues in architecture through historic inquiry. Working between traditional architectural media - drawing and masonry construction - a new way of looking at unreinforced masonry structures will be presented that makes material, structural and constructive concerns explicit and visual. An inquiry into Andrea Palladio’s Villa Foscari, will seek to develop material, structural and constructive knowledge. From a scholarly perspective, very little has been done in terms of looking at the stability and safety of Palladio’s buildings as unreinforced masonry structures - and yet, the villas in particular were made primarily out of brick. Design rules will be extracted from this close study of Palladio’s villa to define the generative machinery for a slow computation design system. The new structural algebra defined by the design system (characterized by equilibrium constraints) permits architects and designers to work visually with material and structural primacy - to feel the forces in shapes. The contention is working this way offers a means of designing masonry structures that bares on contemporary disciplinary concerns by showing how designing within the constraints of a masonry arch does not have to be mechanical or deterministic, but rather is open-ended, imaginative and creative. To be clear: this project is not about finding compression-only forms - rather - designing WITH them. Although the methodology proposed does not extend to making designs of complete buildings, the way the rules are set up within equilibrium constraints results in the possibility to construct anything in the algebra of shapes. Furthermore, this way of working only produces designs that can be built, which in turn expands the capacity of what architects design in the future.

A builder’s tactile experience working with materials gives way to a visual understanding of the relationship between form and forces. This perceptual understanding of what materials to use and how assemble them in space is at the heart expanding the creative capacity of a contemporary designer. The current lack of integration of material and constructive intelligence in contemporary design methods has resulted in buildings that are overly structured and wasteful. Today it is ethical and essential to work toward designing buildings that are more efficient and constructing them with sustainable materials. Working immaterially is counter-intuitive and limits the capacity of what architects design and how buildings are constructed. Learning to compute with matter, shapes, and forces, brings to light the relationship between current design technologies and methods, and our necessity to make breakthroughs in techniques of assembly and construction.

Currently, many emerging design practices are generating immaterial forms, which produce a rift in the discipline of architecture between that which is being designed and its material and constructive capacity. This thesis presents an innovative process for designing high-performance thin-tile vaults that brings to light the relationship between computation and material construction.

Churches from the XVI c. built by indigenous people under the direction of Dominican monks are found in the Mixteca region in Mexico. These churches follow the principles of Gothic construction making them unique places to research ancient building methods in the Americas. While the principles of fabrication, geometry and design of Gothic churches in Europe have been studied extensively, there has been almost no investigation of these Mexican examples.

This project focuses on Santo Domingo Yanhuitlan, in Oaxaca, because its complex rib vaults provide an excellent context to use as a case study. The goal, here, is to analyze the construction of Yanhuitlan’s vaulting system, focusing on the links between geometry and design, while attempting to gain insight on Gothic constructive principles and their origins. Explorations of the vaults at Yanhuitlan are carried out through hand-drawn and computer-aided design studies. This project balanced iterations of these drawings and analysis rooted in the theories on Gothic buildings in Europe proposed by scholars such as Viollet-le-Duc, Robert Willis and Enrique Rabasa.

The process used for this analysis through the lens of Viollet-le-Duc’s proposed principles is applicable to other Gothic vaults. It provides evidence that the form of the vault was a consequence of the constructive methods used by XVI c. masons. This study also lays groundwork to draw other conclusions regarding the Gothic methods of construction and why they were a consequence of a constructive necessity.