Jesse Reiser claimed at his lecture that the exoskeleton of the O-14 Tower in Dubai is partly designed according to forces, which give the facade a pattern of holes in various sizes. I am not sure whether that's exactly how they designed it. But at least it made me think deeper on structural patterning. The pattern here is basically a dia-grid. Different size holes yield different size members. Hmm... seems too trendy and I am tired of it.
He said what they did is the opposite of World Trade Center, of which the pattern is constant but the alloy is changing to accomodate different strength requirements. But to me, O-14 and WTC belong to the same family - changing members in a rigid pattern. Just Reiser chose to express the difference with the various thickness, thus the various holes, as opposed to change the mix of the concrete. It's like the MIT dorm where Holl decided to express the changing steel reinforcements with color coding from the stress diagram.
The real opposite, I think, should be the same members with changing density. This is way more interesting! Use the same thing over and over again, and just put more when it needs to be stronger. I think this is a great idea! Don't really know which building actually does that (please comment if you think of any), but I guess CCTV started doing it. Not quite the same members though...
1 comment:
novel point of view
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