Unsteady Architecture (2021)

Design Studio / ⤷ MIARD Archive

As an investigation into movement and flow, this project explores natural motion. The built world rarely reflects the unsteadiness we can observe, such as the movement of trees in the wind. Is unsteadiness in architecture a paradox? In an attempt to create a hybrid between the assembly of natural structures (forest) and the assembly of built structures (city), this project delves into nature as a term that manifests the illusion of division between humans (culture) and all other life (nature), and examines the possibility of the emergence of a new relationship.

Digital experimentation of translating natural data and parameters such as wind and air turbulence into movement affecting imaginary structures.

The question

Trees move in the wind all the time, while buildings are made to stand still. The project asks what architecture would be like if it were allowed to be unsteady, and whether that is a paradox: a structure that is built to last, but behaves like a forest.

How it was made

Natural data such as wind speed and air turbulence were translated into motion and applied to imaginary structures in a 3D scene. The towers above are stacks of irregular rings that sway as a group, so that a hybrid between the assembly of a forest and the assembly of a city becomes visible in a single image and in the video.

More experiments with wind

The same interest in translating weather into movement continues in Visualising Digital Dune Winds, and the inquiry into the relation between culture and nature in An Uncanny Valley. More small studies are collected in the archive.