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Issue 12.11 - November 2004 Subscribe - save over 80% and get a FREE Gift!
Frank Gehry for the Rest of Us
Designed on a desktop, custom-cut with a laser, assembled on demand. It's computer-driven construction raised to high art.
By Jessie ScanlonPage 1 of 1
The village of Greenport sits at the northern tip of the North Fork of Long Island, a good three-hour drive from Manhattan. Once a bustling whaling port, Greenport today is considerably quieter, with a part-time mayor and none of the social cachet of the Hamptons. As the locals say, on the South Fork they call it sushi, on the North Fork we call it bait.
Story Images
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Rants + raves
". . .Gehry starts his design process with wooden blocks and sketches. Next, his model makers translate the designs into cardboard prototypes. Eventually these are imported into Catia, the high-end 3-D software Gehry borrowed from the aerospace industry more than a decade ago - and which licenses for up to $15,000 a seat, plus training costs. The end results are amazing but like haute couture, available only to the deepest of pockets: The Stata Center came to $400 per square foot, $650 when you include design costs. The industry average for design and construction of a new science facility is $260 a square foot.
By contrast, SHoP begins its projects in the virtual realm, using Rhino - a more modest 3-D program developed for Hollywood that sells for a sliver of Catia's price, less than $900 a seat - to rapidly make 20, 40, even 60 iterations of a building. Then the architects judge each version against the requirements - light, room size, zoning issues - for the particular project. From the outset, they aim to do more with less. For one installation, SHoP used fluid dynamics modeling software to create an undulating wooden "beach" from standard 2 x 2 cedar planks. For a museum now in development, the firm is designing a facade whose decorative skin does double duty as a load-bearing structure - a two-for-one approach.
When it comes to actual construction, SHoP reduces hard-hat hours by replacing onsite measuring and sawing with computer-controlled fabrication. And time is money - labor costs can eat up to 80 percent of a budget. The camera obscura's wooden formwork was milled in a single morning in Brooklyn; the steel was sliced by a plasma laser over two days in Commack, Long Island, and partially assembled upstate. Once the pieces arrive in Greenport, they'll be fitted together in about six weeks. . ."
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Issue 12.11 - November 2004 Subscribe - save over 80% and get a FREE Gift!
Frank Gehry for the Rest of Us
Designed on a desktop, custom-cut with a laser, assembled on demand. It's computer-driven construction raised to high art.
By Jessie ScanlonPage 1 of 1
The village of Greenport sits at the northern tip of the North Fork of Long Island, a good three-hour drive from Manhattan. Once a bustling whaling port, Greenport today is considerably quieter, with a part-time mayor and none of the social cachet of the Hamptons. As the locals say, on the South Fork they call it sushi, on the North Fork we call it bait.
Story Images
Click thumbnails for full-size image:
Rants + raves
". . .Gehry starts his design process with wooden blocks and sketches. Next, his model makers translate the designs into cardboard prototypes. Eventually these are imported into Catia, the high-end 3-D software Gehry borrowed from the aerospace industry more than a decade ago - and which licenses for up to $15,000 a seat, plus training costs. The end results are amazing but like haute couture, available only to the deepest of pockets: The Stata Center came to $400 per square foot, $650 when you include design costs. The industry average for design and construction of a new science facility is $260 a square foot.
By contrast, SHoP begins its projects in the virtual realm, using Rhino - a more modest 3-D program developed for Hollywood that sells for a sliver of Catia's price, less than $900 a seat - to rapidly make 20, 40, even 60 iterations of a building. Then the architects judge each version against the requirements - light, room size, zoning issues - for the particular project. From the outset, they aim to do more with less. For one installation, SHoP used fluid dynamics modeling software to create an undulating wooden "beach" from standard 2 x 2 cedar planks. For a museum now in development, the firm is designing a facade whose decorative skin does double duty as a load-bearing structure - a two-for-one approach.
When it comes to actual construction, SHoP reduces hard-hat hours by replacing onsite measuring and sawing with computer-controlled fabrication. And time is money - labor costs can eat up to 80 percent of a budget. The camera obscura's wooden formwork was milled in a single morning in Brooklyn; the steel was sliced by a plasma laser over two days in Commack, Long Island, and partially assembled upstate. Once the pieces arrive in Greenport, they'll be fitted together in about six weeks. . ."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- - -
Subscribers to Design List are required to list their actual names
during the subscription process. Names of known organizations are
accepted at the discretion of the list owner. All other listings of
subscribers are deleted from the list.
- - -
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html
