Academic literature on the topic 'Geometry rationalisation'

The emblematic entrance pavilion for the Expo 2017 in Astana is the so-called ‘Sphere’, which with its 80-m diameter is worldwide the largest closed sphere completely covered with glass. The continuous external surface of the Sphere was designed to be built with spherically curved glass panels of parallelogramic shape. The panels are fixed at their perimeter to a structural grid of bent round tubes of steel. This secondary grid is fixed in turn to a coarser primary structural grid at evenly spaced supports. The purpose of this article is to give insight into the constructive geometry design of the Sphere. One of the main targets of ‘geometric design for production’ is to specify the geometry of a construction in such a way that fabrication and installation procedures can be simplified and carried out with a minimum of effort, cost and time. The main measure for the Sphere was to simplify the basic grid by replacing all original three-dimensional free-form curves with series of interconnected circular arcs. Thus, a typical curved tubular segment could be bent on the plane with a constant radius. A further approach to get a simple and sound construction eliminating geometric torsion and minimising eccentricities among construction subsystems, for example, glazing, sealing, fixings and substructure, was the extensive usage of conical systems inherent in the geometry of the sphere for orienting and positioning the various subsystems components. These two geometric simplification measures were determinant for the practical and economic implementation of the construction, fabrication and installation of the Sphere.

Barely a month before the end of World War II, a technical report begun circulating among allied scientists: the ‘First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC’, attributed to John von Neumann, described for the first time the design and implementation of the earliest stored-program computer. The ‘First Draft’ became the template followed by subsequent British and American computers, establishing the standard characteristics of most computing machines to date. This article looks at how the material and design choices described in this report influenced architecture, as it set up the technological matrix onto which a discipline relying on a tradition of drawn geometry would be eventually completely remediated. It consists of two parts: first, a theoretical section, analysing the repercussions for architecture of the type of computer laid out in the ‘First Draft’. Second, a description of a design experiment, a sort of information furniture, that tests and exemplifies some of the observations from the first section. This experiment examines the possibilities of an architecture that, moving beyond geometric representations, uses instead the programming of events as its rationale. The structure of this article reflects a methodology in which theoretical formulation and design experiments proceed in parallel. The theoretical investigation proposes concepts that can be tested and refined through design and conversely design work determines and encourages technical, critical and historical research. This relation is dialogical: theoretical investigation is not simply a rationalisation and explanation of earlier design work; inversely, the role of design is not just to illustrate previously formulated concepts. Both design and theorisation are interdependent but autonomous in their parallel development.

Outcomes of innovative designing are frequently described as enabling us in achieving more desirable futures. How can we design and innovate so as to enable future processes of design and innovation? To investigate this question, this thesis probes the conditions, possibilities and limitations of toolmaking for novelty and knowledge generation, or in other words, it examines designing for designing. The focus of this thesis is on the development of digital design tools that support the reconciliation of conflicting criteria centred on architectural geometry. Of particular interest are the roles of methodological approaches and of biological analogies as guides in toolmaking for design, as well as the possibility of generalising design tools beyond the contexts from which they originate. The presented investigation consists of an applied toolmaking study and a subsequent reflective analysis using second- order cybernetics as a theoretical framework. Observations made during the toolmaking study suggest that biological analogies can, in informal ways, inspire designing, including the designing of design tools. Design tools seem to enable the generation of novelty and knowledge beyond the contexts in and for which they are developed only if their users apply them in ways unanticipated by the toolmaker. Abstract The reflective analysis offers theoretical explanations for these observations based on aspects of second-order cybernetics. These aspects include the modelling of designing as a conversation, different relationships between observers (such as designers) and systems (such as designers engaged in their projects), the distinction between coded and uncoded knowledge, as well as processes underlying the production and the restriction of meaning. Initially aimed at the development of generally applicable, prescriptive digital tools for designing, the presented work results in a personal descriptive model of novelty and knowledge generation in science and design. This shift indicates a perspective change from a positivist to a relativist outlook on designing, which was accomplished over the course of the study. Investigating theory and practice of designing and of science, this study establishes an epistemological model of designing that accommodates and extends a number of theoretical concepts others have previously proposed. According to this model, both design and science generate and encode new knowledge through conversational processes, in which open-minded perception appears to be of greater innovative power than efforts to exercise control. The presented work substantiates and exemplifies radical constructivist theory of knowledge and novelty production, establishes correspondences between systems theory and design research theory and implies that mainstream scientific theories and practices are insufficient to account for and to guide innovation. Keywords (separated by commas) Digital design tools, geometry rationalisation, second-order cybernetics, knowledge generation