Vincent Huang黄 旭 维

Introduction My name is Vincent Huang, I’m a third year student of Bachelors of Environments in the University of Melbourne, Major in Architecture. I came from Guangdong China, a place which inherits the traditions from mainland China, at the same time receives innovations from all over the world. I came to Melbourne 5 years ago with my family, the beautifulness, the profound culture, substantial lifestyle made Melbourne became the next destination of my family, and I really love to live in here.

Unlike those people have a strong mind about their career, at the moment I still ha-ven’t make up my mind about my career, however, I have never felt lost. Because I believe I’m in a right direction. The most influential aspect that affect my on making the decision of studying Architecture is, I would like to think like an architect. A good architect should be creative, evolving, strict, logical, courageous and wise, passionate, assiduous, responsibly, these skills and attitudes will definitely enrich my career and my life, and I’m on the Way!

Digital Design Experience I have done Virtual Environment on Year 1, David was my Tutor at the time, and it’s very lucky to have David as my Tutor in Studio AIR again.

I firstly encountered Rhino in Virtual Environment, and I used to be quiet familiar with this software, however, I discontinued the exploration of Rhino afterward, instead of, I got to know about AutoCAD, Sketch Up, Illustrator, Revit, and other software. I may need some time to be familiar with Rhino again.

From what I have experienced with all these digital design Computer aided software so far, I feel like AutoCAD, Sketch Up are more tend to help to express or visualise a design, but Rhino is more likely to create something new and special, I look forward to explore more about Rhino and Grasshopper in this semester.

Week 1

Architecture as Discourse

In the reading of Greg Lynn, he raised a term Blobitecture, it’s a term for an architectural school in which organic shapes are the aim, bulging, cellular, amoeba-like build-ings its expression.

I found the Selfridge in Birmingham when I did the re-search about Greg Lynn’s article, and this building really impressed me a lot. This ‘strange’ shopping centre is locat-ed in Birmingham, and now it’s one of the landmark of the city. It’s design by an England architecture firm FUTURE SYSTEM. This building completed by 2003 and open to the public on 2014, and sooner became a well-known, one of the most popular shopping spot for Birmingham Citi-zens.

The façade of the building is very recognizable and unique gives scale, texture and an accentuation of the building curvature. And most of it is to do with the 15,000 alumin-ium discs and Yves Klein blue background on the surface. Seen from almost any nook and corner viewpoint in cen-tral Birmingham, this unexpected building - unclassifi-able in neat, art-historical terms - is all but guaranteed to raise a smile. An ersatz urban cliff, a giant sea anenome, a friendly, blob-like alien, the mother of all magic mush-rooms, this is the department store as unalloyed architec-tural entertainment.

Future systems’ vision was a building form that would fit the contextually diverse site, while embracing Selfridges’

SELFRIDGEBirmingham

require of an internally-focused, windowless box. Hence there’s no side window for the whole structure, however, huge are of the glass roof light makes this building more efficient in lighting. Without the restriction of the side window, the whole façade a playground for the architect.

Surprisingly such a stunning façade does not cost as much as we thought it would be. The varying curved geometry, and non-developable shape of the building has made the modularization of the structural components difficult and costly. And it prompted FUTURE SYSTEM to look at more homogeneous and unconventional methods of façade construction. In the end expanded metal mesh was used as the permanent formwork, they are bent on site fol-

site follow the curvature and supported by the floor slabs within the building using an adjustable scaffold system. Afterward, spray concrete was used for the membrane of the façade. This is an example of using a innovation meth-od on the traditional material to reduce the cost and make impression happens.

The building is a romantic metaphor machine, stimulating its creators and crit¬ics to call it a dress, a diamante bustier, a boulder, a sea monster, an alien, a cloud, even an insect’s eye” (Metropolis 125)

The second precedent that made me impressive was the Absolute World Tower, in Absolute World Towers in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. This building is design by a Chinese Architecture firm MAD Studio, a studio that builds futuristic architecture based on contemporary in-terpretation of the eastern spirit of nature. Ma Yansong was the founder.

This building is completed on 2012, it’s a winning project back from the worldwide competition on 2006. The design was recognized as the “Best Tall Building Americas” in the 2012 CTBUH Awards program. When the tower project was proposed to the public, originally with only one tower, the scheme was so popular that all unites sold out just days after the release of the building plans. According to this grateful response, the developer decided to buy an adja-cent plot and build a second tower to meet the demand.

Unlike the traditional of normal vertical high-rise build-ing, MAD’s design for Absolute World Tower did no fo-cus on the vertical lines, instead they designed a smooth, continuously balconies that wrap each floor of the building with glass, it gives a smooth misery look for the façade. One tower record height of 170metre and the other with 150 metre.

The concept of the tower at the beginning was very simple, we just wanted to make something organic but different, more natural and softer and not some-thing too strong that would remind people of money or power.

Ma Yan Song

ABSOLUTE WORLD

Mississauga

In height of 170 and 150 metres, the Absolute Tow-ers contain apartments on each of their oval-shaped floors. Most importantly, every storey of the apart-ment is varied, each successive level, the floor plate is incrementally rotate in a range of one to eight degrees, and it gives the building a curved and twisted outline.

The Absolute World Tower is definitely an impres-sive building. The buildings hope to provide residents with an emotional connection to their hometown and neighbours, and a local landmark to define the city. It’s been fondly dubbed “the Marylyn Monroe towers” by local resident in homage to the curvaceous appeal of Marilyn Monroe. That show how much the local people love and proud of their new landmark.

When I firstly found this building when reading a Magazine, it reminds me about another award win-ning project the Aqua Tower in Chicago, the Aqua Tower is another impressive building to me. They ob-viously has different design approach, but they both impressed me by their curvature body.

The orbis apartment is the one that closest to us, it’s under construction at the moment, and, and it will complete it mid-2014. The developer of the building is Arno Corporation, I believe this is one of the unique developers in Melbourne area, there project are all quiet special and eye attracting, such as The Face apartment in St Kilda, S Residences in Toorak, and of course, the Orbis apartment in South Melbourne.

Here is what the director of the Arno Corporation, Andrew Cook said “We want to create buildings that make people stop and look and have a point of differ-ence.”

The building is design my ARM Architecture, also a Melbourne based award winning firm. At the first glance, I felt like this more a sculpture rather than an apartment, the main façade of the building seem like the mark that a ball bounced on, and left behind. However the colour of the façade is well matched, the surface of the sphere area are paint gold, with the black balcony that really enhance the sphere sculp-ture. It’s like an art piece and my eye could not move away from it.

ORBIS Apartment

The design of the façade was inspired by the sculptures of Anish Kapoor, he has many sphere sculpture, such as the well-known ArcelorMittal Orbit in the London Olympic Park in 2012.

If the Selfridge in Birmingham is impressed because its innovation blobitectural façade, and the Absolute World Tower is impressed by bold approach of the twist form, then the Orbis Apartment is impressed by its irrational, randomness attempts. And it also in-spire me, for the project I do later on in Air Studio, also my journey as an architecture student, we always need some irrational, unconventional, impulse, inspi-ration, and guts to inspire our design.

Inspired by Anish Kapoor’s giant urban mirror form, we have built a sculpture in which to reside. It is surreal, like Magritte’s LaVoix des airs. It is new, it is unexpect-ed.”

McDougall

South Melbourne