I’ll be teaching GenerativeComponents this Saturday, Feb 7th, at the Product Architecture Lab at the Stevens Institute of Technology.
If you want to attend, contact me through this page for more information…
http://www.smartgeometry.org/user/3/contact
A technical-based article on EMPAC and its acoustics in the February Issue of Architectural Record. Excerpt and link below…
“And the award for best sound effects goes to …”
Acoustics get a staring role in the design of a new performing arts center
February 2009
By Josephine Minutillo
Acoustic surface treatments and baffles may work to improve the quality of sound transmission in ordinary spaces, but to create world-class performance venues where the need for pristine acoustics is critical, every aspect of the design—from formal and spatial considerations to structural and mechanical needs—are closely examined by a team of architects, engineers, and acousticians. The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) contains four distinct performance and recording spaces, each requiring first-rate acoustics—a challenge for any single building to accommodate, but one made even more daunting given this building’s dramatic siting in a hillside.
Grimshaw Architects was charged with designing this complicated structure, their first performing arts building, after winning an invited competition in 2001. Partnering with Buro Happold Consulting Engineers and architect-of-record Davis Brody Bond Aedas, Grimshaw’s New York office had to roll with the punches as EMPAC’s program evolved into a 220,000-square-foot building that includes a 1,200-seat concert hall, a 400-seat theater with a full fly tower, two black-box studios for experimental media, artist-in-residence studios, a dance studio, audiovisual production suites, and support facilities. According to RPI president Shirley Ann Jackson, “EMPAC is an extraordinary venue where science, research, and performance meet.”
http://continuingeducation.construction.com/article.php?L=5&C=483
I will be giving a lecture to MIT’s Computation Group at the department of architecture on April 17th.
Embedded Intelligence: Design-Driven Computation
Associative geometry and performative design have been core drivers in the architecture of Grimshaw well before recent software tools enabled a cleaner integrated modeling process. Computational tools do not present a paradigm shift so much as enable tighter feedback loops and embedded design processes. From the recently completed Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, the Museo del Acero, EarthPark, and numerous other projects, the lecture will present the design-driven workflow of Grimshaw’s Computational Design Unit in conceptual and built work. The CDU’s aim is to harness computation tools in a problem-solving capacity, resolving design parameters to a high degree of performance and attention to aesthetic elegance in form and assembly method.