Architecture and its Environment by Architectural Form Design Method Using a Computer: Discussion of the Relationship between the Interior and the Exterior

A Case Study: Toyo Ito and Structural Designers (Cecil Balmond, Mutsuro Sasaki, Masato Araya, Masahiro Ikeda)

Keywords:　morphogenetic algorithms, nonlinear structure, Extended Evolutionary Structural Optimization method
　
This article is a part of studies discussing “architecture and its environment, and the relationship between the interior and the exteriorâ€ with emphasis on architectural form design method using a computer.
A conspicuous change is apparent in recent architectural form designs from the viewpoints of: 1) the relationship between architecture and its environment, and 2) the relationship between the interior and exterior of architecture. This article is intended to describe the directional character of a new architectural form design method, analyzing the change of form designs from those two viewpoints.
1. Concerning the relationship between architecture and its environment
Computer technology advances have changed the architectural form design method, facilitating the construction of various curved surfaces like those which are readily apparent in the natural world. These curved surfaces or basic shapes, which are created using morphogenetic algorithms or exist in the natural world, and are consequently observed from the outside to be integrated or embedded into the environment.  An example of architecture is the “Grin-Grin– City Parkâ€ (2005), as a collaboration by Ito and Sasaki. The architectural structure, which is formed with a series of spiral building frames, does not stand alone as an independent building; rather, it exists as one with its landscape providing a continuous space between indoor and outdoor spaces, through which people, light, and air can pass. The attempt to render flowing motion as a structure was realized using the program “Extended ESO methodâ€.

2. Concerning the relationship between the interior and the exterior of architecture
  As described in section 1, the rapid progress of computers and the advent of structural designers with a new perspective have cultivated the architectural concept of phase continuity, or identity, between the interior and the exterior. In the case of “TOD’S buildingâ€ (2004), the structural skin is so completely blended into the structure that the skin seems to ensure its “transparent layersâ€ as Ito calls it, when seen from the inside and the outside. Such an architecture attempts to connect, not cut, the inside and the outside. This kind of attempt has already been expressed as an architectural concept in the motto “let outside inâ€ 　  by Frank Floyd Wright, or  his apprentice E. Fay Jones. However, what we analyze as an attempt to apply the advanced computational capacity in this article is the work by Ito, who strives to construct a new design method as an architect through collaboration with structural designers who design structural forms from a dynamic standpoint. We attempt to draw a directorial character of new architectural form design method after systematizing Ito’s works designed during 2000–2007 by its structural designers and architectural form design methods to analyze them from two viewpoints of: 1), 2)
