Get Smart

Façade detail of the "Smartcity Barcelona" pavilion

A façade design in which photovoltaic panels end up casting shadows upon other photovoltaic panels does not seem to me to be the "smartest" design idea. "Form follows energy" is the catchy slogan of the "Smartcity Barcelona" pavilion's project statement (a research collaboration between Endesa and the IaaC), which attempts to explain an idea that actually makes perfect sense and that is indeed intelligent: why not use photovoltaic panels in conjunction with windows--as window awnings--so that solar heat gain into a building is minimized in summer and maximized in winter?

But because the windows of this façade are placed close together and staggered at different heights in a much more aesthetically dynamic checker pattern, some awnings end up casting shadows upon other ones at certain times of the day and year. If the windows and their awnings were simply lined up rather than checkered then this would not be a problem. But that would not look as sexy, would it?

All this becomes even more idiotic when we read in the statement that parametric design methods were applied here, presumably to optimize the placement of windows and the angles of their electricity-generating awnings. Looks like architectural form overshadowed, as it were, energy considerations. Are we before a new kind of façadism?

P.S. I'm getting really tired of the word "smart".

Gaudí's hanging chain models: parametric design avant la lettre?

Funicular chain model of Colonia Güell church project by Antoni Gaudí,
as exhibited at Colonia Güell Interpretive Centre.
Only the crypt was realized.

Interior view of Colonia Güell Crypt

It is known that Gaudí hated drawing and preferred to use models as design tools; especially ones made of chains hung from a ceiling, or strings with small weights attached. Through experimentation with such models, he discovered a way to use traditional Catalan masonry techniques in new, more complex ways. A chain suspended simply from both its ends results in a catenary curve that naturally distributes the static load--in this case tension--evenly between the links of the chain. When this shape is flipped vertically and the materials become brick or stone, then the static load--now compressive--is similarly evenly distributed, resulting in an optimally efficient arch. This was already known for centuries. What Gaudí did was to apply this tension-compression analogy to chains hanging from chains (or arches superimposed on arches) asymmetrically, permitting him to design a much more fluid architecture. 

Gaudí made the models of his buildings upside-down, then, using mirrors on the floor, visualized his designs downside-up. He also took photographs of these "wire-frame" models of sorts and "filled" them in with color to generate "solid model renderings", so to speak. All this has been well-documented in publications and exhibitions.

What is interesting is how, in the process, Gaudí effectively invented a kind of "parametric" design process long before the invention of the computer (let alone the development of software such as Maya or the Grasshopper plug-in for Rhino). One feature of so-called parametric design software is that it updates a complete three-dimensional digital model of a building every time any parameters are altered, allowing alternatives to be studied and compared in the search for a design that performs optimally (although to many architects who use this software it seems that the most important parameter is aesthetic form). Gaudí's hanging chains do exactly that: if a chain end-point is moved so as to enlarge or reduce, say, the floor plan in one corner, then the shape of the entire hanging chain model shifts and settles into a newly optimized catenary geometry. Of course, parametric design software does a great deal more, but at their conceptual root both of these modeling tools--one physical and the other digital--are analogous. 

Makes you wonder what Gaudí might have accomplished if he had had a computer. Or conversely, how Gaudí accomplished as much as he did without one.