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[reference to :There is a Timeless Way of Building- patterns of events]\\ | [reference to :There is a Timeless Way of Building- patterns of events]\\ | ||
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- | ===== There is a Timeless Way of Building ===== | ||
- | [[Pattern_language]] can be a tool for finite combinatory systems which allow us to create an infinite variety of unique combinations, | ||
- | Before I’ll come to patterns specified for inflatable structures, which can be useful for anyone interested in building ‘living inflatable structures’. First I like to summarize Alexander’s -Pattern Language-. This -Pattern Language- had its influence not only in architecture but as well on programming language design, software engineering and other design methodology in computer science, even The Wiki was based on his design patterns. | ||
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- | //‘There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.’ [Christopher Alexander]// | ||
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- | ===Being alive=== | ||
- | Places which have the quality of being alive, invite this quality to come to life in us. And when we have this quality | ||
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- | ===Patterns of events=== | ||
- | Those of us who are concerned with buildings tend to forget to easily that all the life and soul of a place, | ||
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- | Compare the power and importance of these events with the other purely geometrical | ||
- | {{gd14.jpg? | ||
- | //One can focus on the ‘pure aesthetics’ of a place, or on its dynamics// | ||
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- | The world does have a structure, just because these patterns of events which repeat themselves are always anchored in the space. The action and the space are indivisible. | ||
- | The specific patterns out of which a building or a town is made may be alive or dead. To the extent they are alive, they let our inner forces loose, and set us free; but when they are dead they keep us locked in inner conflict. | ||
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- | “The sunshine shining on the windowsill, the wind blowing in the grass are events too-they effect us just as much as social events. A field of grass is given its character, essentially, | ||
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- | {{luois_le_roy.jpg? | ||
- | -Louis le Roy-// | ||
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- | ===How does it feel=== | ||
- | Imagine someone who proposes that modular aluminium wall panels are of great importance in the construction of houses. Simply ask him how he feels in rooms build out of them. He will be able to do dozens of critical experiments which “prove” that they are better, | ||
- | It is not the same as asking someone his opinion, someones taste or what a person thinks of an idea. In short, the scientific accuracy of the patterns can only come from direct assessment of people’s feelings, not from arguments or discussions. | ||
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- | Each pattern should be a source of life, a generative, | ||
- | It comes about because our feelings always deal with the totality of any system. If there are hidden forces, hidden conflicts, lurking in a pattern, we can feel them there. And when a pattern feels good to us, it is because it is a genuinely wholesome thing, and we know that there are no hidden forces lurking there. | ||
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- | ===The process of making things=== | ||
- | If we compare the buildings of today with former times, | ||
- | The character arises of the old buildings is not because of the history, or because the process which built them were so primitive. These buildings have this character | ||
- | {{local_symmetries.jpg|}}\\ | ||
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- | Local Symmetries, Organic, small-scale symmetry versus an average dutch house in a average vinex council estate | ||
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- | ===On modularity=== | ||
- | The idea that a building can-and ought- to be made of modular units is one of the most pervasive assumptions of twentieth-century architecture. Nature is never modular. | ||
- | Nature is full of almost similar units (waves, raindrops, blades of grass-) but though the units of one kind are all alike in their broad structure, no two are ever alike in detail. | ||
- | 1. the same broad features keep recurring over and over again. | ||
- | 2. in their detail appearance these broad features are never twice the same. | ||
- | On the one hand all oak trees have the same overall shape, the same thickened twisted trunk, the same crinkled bark, the same shaped leaves, the proportions of limbs to branches of twigs. On the other hand, no two trees are quite the same. The exact combination of height and width and curvature never repeats itself; we cannot even find two leaves which are the same. | ||
- | modularity is just a concept.\\ | ||
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- | //The quality of places is never twice the same, because it always takes its shape from the particular | ||
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- | {{turkey.jpg|}}\\ | ||
- | 1.[Uit: L. Carl Brown, From Madina to Metropolis. Princeton, 1973] de stad Tunis | ||
- | Modern governments in Turkey have build next to the traditional cities, new districts with a total different character: lang straight boulevards and a regular pattern of cross-streets. | ||
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- | 2. [Uit: Metin Sözen, Diyarbakir' | ||
- | The same contrast is clearly seen on this old birds-eye-viewpicture of Diyarbakir, Turkey | ||
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- | ===Differentiating space=== | ||
- | Within this process, every individual act of building is a process in which space gets differentiated. It is not a process of addition, in which pre-formed parts are combined to create a whole: but a process of unfolding, like the evolution of an embryo, in which the whole precedes in parts, and actually gives birth to them, by splitting (so becoming different in the process of growth or development) | ||
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- | {{quercus_rubra_20020829_06.jpg? | ||
- | //Only a process of differentiation, | ||
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- | Patterns have a certain order in a design, so you have to understand which features are dominant, and which are secondary, | ||
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- | Get rid of the ideas which come into your mind. Get rid of the pictures you have seen in magazines. Insist on the pattern, and nothing else. The pattern and the real situation, together, will create the proper form, within your mind, without you trying to do it, if you allow it to happen. There is no reason to be afraid of giving up your control over the design. If the patterns make sense, you do not need to control the design. | ||
- | As the design unfolds, and new patterns our brought into play, the entire design has to shift and resettle itself in your mind with every new pattern. Each new pattern in the sequence transforms the whole design created by the previous patterns- it transforms it as a whole, it shakes it up, and realigns it. This can only happen if the design is represented in an utterly fluid medium; it cannot happen in any medium where there is the slightest resistance to change. A drawing, even a rough drawing, can be very rigid-it embodies a commitment to details of arrangement far beyond what the design itself actually calls while it is in an embryonic state. The only medium which is truly fluid, which allows the design to grow and change as new patterns enter it, is the mind.\\ | ||
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- | {{maria_b_1.jpg? | ||
- | //Maria blaisse, a dutch designer/ | ||
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- | ===The building process=== | ||
- | It is essential that ‘a builder’ works only from rough drawings: and that he carry out the detailed patterns from the drawings according to the processes given by the pattern language in his mind. This is common place in nature. When the spider builds its web, the process is standardized; | ||
- | {{spiderweb.jpg? | ||
- | //generated spases: spider web,// | ||
- | Or for instance waves; the actual concrete waves themselves are always different. This happens because the patterns interact differently at every spot. They interact differently with one another. And they interact differently with the details of their surroundings. So every actual wave is different, at the same time that all its patterns are the same precisely as the patterns in the other waves. | ||
- | In such a system there is endless variety; and yet at the same time there is endless sameness. No wonder we can watch the waves for hours; no wonder that a blade of grass is still fascinating, | ||
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- | ===When a group of people try to do something together=== | ||
- | When a group try do do something together, they usually fail, because their assumptions are different at every stage. But if they come from language the assumptions are almost completely explicit from the start. Once they agree about a language, the actual emergence of the form is simple and fluid. In the building stage the group uses the site “out here in front of them” | ||
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- | ===About beauty=== | ||
- | How was it possible that any simple farmer could make a house or a barn, a thousand times more beautiful than all the struggling architects of the last fifty years would do. Well they simply copying the other barns in their neighbourhood which function.\\ | ||
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- | {{zeeland.jpg? | ||
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- | //This is a very typical farmhouse in Zeeland an area in the southwest of Holland. | ||
- | These farmhouses are completely demountable (a technique blown over from the Vikings) so one could take it apart, transport it over Zeeland’s rich waters and settle one island further if you want. The roof is from straw, which grows in that area, it gives a lot of comfort: it keeps warm in the winter and stays cool in the summer. | ||
- | People made their own paint from fresh oxblood en lijnolie so all the barns had this typical ox-red color in their interiors, and outside they paint their barns with black tar, with white frames around its doors, so one could find the opening when coming home drunk in the dark. Though still one had to watch out; to enter one had to make a high step; this was made to prevent the waters coming in at high tide. | ||
- | All its patterns were worked out well over time for that specific area, so it was worth to copy the patterns and these rooted farmhouses can be seen all over Zeeland.// | ||
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- | ===The multiplicity of living patterns=== | ||
- | The more living patterns there are in a building and its environment -the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has this self-maintaining fire, which is the quality without a name.The quality without a name occurs not when an isolated pattern occurs, but when an entire system of patterns, interdependent, | ||
- | A building in which all the patterns are alive has no disturbing forces in it. The people are relaxed; the plants are comfortable; | ||
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- | {{buckminster_fuller.jpg? | ||
- | //" | ||
- | I know it is wrong." | ||
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- | =====An Inflatable Pattern Language===== | ||
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- | Architects of Air [UK] are creating every year a new inflatable structure where people can be moved to a sense of wonder at the phenomenon of light it aims to bring a visual surprise and excitement into the everyday environment. There structures are working quite well. I'll describe the patterns they have deepened over the years quite distinct.\\ | ||
- | {{balloon3.jpg? | ||
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- | // | ||
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- | ===Co-structors=== | ||
- | Even when an inflatable has been in situ for several weeks there is still maintained the element of surprise for those traveling to work, going shopping or to school. People walking by are drawn to discover what is within. They can see the movement of the structure caused by people walking around inside, they can see the outlines of visitors’ bodies as they lie back against the sides, they can see the regular inflation and deflation of the airlock as it swallows and disgorges groups of visitors. Once inside, visitors can enjoy the unique nature of the structure. No two visits to a structure are the same, the atmosphere inside alters according to changing weather, the changing light and the experience is also very much affected by the other visitors inside and the way that they relate to the Luminarium. The visitor’s are co-structures of the space. | ||
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- | ===Natural coloured/ | ||
- | The experience of light and colour inside is purely created by the daylight shining through the translucent parts of colored plastic - a plastic made especially for Architects of Air-. Luminescent light will add special life. | ||
- | The raindrops on the outside can be experienced on the inside through its semitransparent plastics. | ||
- | One can place an inflatable under a tree to create filtered light. Light filtering through a leafy tree is very pleasant - it lends excitement, cheerfulness, | ||
- | An object which has small scale patterns of light dancing on it is sensually pleasing, and stimulates us biologically. Some filmmakers claim the play of light upon the retina is naturally sensuous, all by itself.\\ | ||
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- | {{column.jpg? | ||
- | //Daylight grading down a column, The ceiling with blue luminescent stripes of 1,5 cm gives a strong luminescent effect.// | ||
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- | //Frank Lloyd Wright describes his use of the canvas roof, in the very early structures at Taliesin West: | ||
- | . . the Taliesin Fellowship (is a) desert camp on a great Arizona mesa which the boys, together with myself, are now building to work and live in during the winter-time. Many of the building units have canvas tops carried by red-wood framing resting on massive stone walls made by placing the flat desert stones into wood boxes and throwing in stones and concrete behind them. Most of the canvas frames may be opened or kept closed. . . . The canvas overhead being translucent, | ||
- | there is a very beautiful light to live and work in; I have experienced nothing like it elsewhere except in Japan somewhat, in their houses with sliding paper walls or " | ||
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- | ===Sitting alcoves=== | ||
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- | {{17.jpg? | ||
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- | //There are ‘pods’ or ‘holes’ where you can sit dow, lie back, play and hide// | ||
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- | ===Disorienting and comforting=== | ||
- | The space is simultaneously disorienting because of its libarynth set up and at the same time its soft topological inner space provides a comfortable feeling. | ||
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- | ===Entrance transition=== | ||
- | The transition space before entering the main-entrance helps to slowly come to a different mindset. At the main entrance were two columns inflated on high pressure. Most people touched these columns before entering inside and entering the first, where one could take of their shoes, was a space still open to the outside air so | ||
- | there wasn’t a certain abruptness about suddenly stepping in, from the outside, directly to the inside…it is subtle, but enough to inhibit you. This is psychologically half way between indoors and outdoors, and makes is much easier, more simple to take each of the smaller steps that brings you into the inflatable. | ||
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- | ===Ceiling height variety=== | ||
- | The vaults helps to create the ceiling height variety of the different spaces inside. | ||
- | Low spaces are more intimate and high more formal. | ||
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- | ===Columns=== | ||
- | Columns are influencing the space around them, and then we are talking about a | ||
- | circle shaped area with a radius of about 1,5 meter. Column preferably should be a thick ones. | ||
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- | ===Different paths to walk=== | ||
- | When a space has crossing paths from different ' | ||
- | there, so it becomes a pleasant customary place to be. One can resolve the forces for | ||
- | themselves. | ||
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- | ===The skin=== | ||
- | Our contact with the world takes place at the boundary line of the self through specialized parts of our enveloping membrane. There is a very special beauty about inflatables. It has a softness, a suppleness, which is in harmony with wind and light and sun. It will touch all the elements more nearly than it can when it is made only with hard conventional materials. It can be used to filter very bright hot sunlight or to make total darkness, protect from wind meanwhile showing a little breeze and it can hold off a drizzle. | ||
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- | ===Portability=== | ||
- | They are build to fold away, being carried and are easily to set up. | ||
- | in combination with tensile structures [with pulling forces – in the construction] one can make strong, lightweight and portable structures. | ||
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- | ===The more problematic patterns=== | ||
- | * To me the space is too blobby round.\\ | ||
- | //[When we look at the human-power working on a space, we see that a social space should have a form in | ||
- | between | ||
- | best on us if a space is about rectangular. Even the strange geometry of a dome can be experienced as a | ||
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- | of 180-210 cm and rizes 13 till 20 percent of the smallest diameter of a space.]// | ||
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- | * It became very hot when its warm, or freezing when its cold. | ||
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- | * The PVC material which is especially smell-wise very dominant in its odeur and very toxic in its nature, so not so beautiful in the end. | ||
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- | * For me the fixed choice of colors was very dominant; it was impossible to put you own fantasy to the color, a blue was so blue, that it only gave its impact on you. In the areas where colors started to mingle were more interesting. | ||
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- | * People inside became very sleepy after a while; it´s a passive space aswell the ongoing ambient music makes you murf and maybe it was as well the dose or flow of oxygen which slows you down.\\ | ||
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+ | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||
+ | == more on inflatables== | ||
+ | *[[An Inflatable Pattern Language]]: A despription of the patterns based on the structures of `The Architects on Air (UK), which can be useful for anyone interested in building ‘living inflatable structures’. | ||
+ | *[[Design Considerations For Inflatable Structures]]: | ||
+ | * [[Inflatable Inspirations]]: | ||
+ | *[[Inflatable structures]]: | ||
+ | * Related reading notes: [[The Timeless Way Of Building]] by Christopher Alexander, [[Cradle to Cradle]] by [[William McDonough]] & Michael Braungart, | ||
+ | *[[Research Report Cocky Eek]]\\ | ||