READING ROOM
CRC Funded Project



SIAL Team:
    Mark Burry
    Julian Canterbury
    Alison Fairley


Project Team :
Prof. Mark Burry, Alison Fairley, Julian Canterbury,

Special Thanks to : Dominik Holzer, Geoffrey Binder, Stewart Saunders, Dominka
Related links : Digital Mockups


In early 2002, a design studio involving students from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was run in conjunction with Gehry Partnersin Santa Monica. This studio was called Digital Mockups.

The studio considered the implications of introducing parametric design into the design studio as a collaborative tool. Using the parametric software Catia, the same used by Gehry Partners to realise the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao students were given very basic “paramorphs” to work with – a cube, a cylinder and flat terrain.

Paramorphs are forms that have consistent topology but unstable topography. For example, both a cube and a sphere have the same topology (one can be made from the model of the other) but they have different forms. Each student created a Reading Room using parametrically altered cubes and cylinders to form interior and exterior surfaces. The best designs were then selected, and the students were put into teams. Each team was given a design (not their own) to take to detailed resolution. In effect this second stage became about building blobs while still keeping the designs fully parametric. This work involved teams that spaned the globe.



The design of Dominique Ng (RMIT) was given to a team comprising two RMIT participants (Julian Canterbury and Alison Fairley) and three MIT students (Kyle Steinfeld, Xioyi Ma and Joy Hou). The team, inspired by the Herzog and De Meuron signal box at Aufdern Wolf in Basel (1989 – 94), decided to represent the curvaceous form by copper louvers. These louvers would approximate the form while still allowing openings between interior and exterior spaces. They were formed by dividing the warped surfaces along isoparms (lines on the surface in purely the U or V direction). The opening of the louvers was parametrically controlled at 3 points from a spreadsheet. This allowed the designers to make complex variations in the form in seconds.

The final composition saw the louvers raised at the geographical centre of each surface before tapering away being completely closed at the boundaries. These copper louvers were fixed to horizontal plates that represented slices through the area between the inner and outer paramorph surfaces. In resolution, the horizontals also function as seating. The entire structure is held together by laminate beams formed at the corners where two surfaces meet. These beams are also completely parametric, so that if the surface is altered the beams and laminates automatically update. This way the size of the beams and the number of laminates can also be easily altered.



The RMIT team has continued to work on the project. As there has there has been some interest in actually building the Reading Room, this focus has been on construction methods. Primarily, the feasibility of building the two-way curved laminated beams (the louvers) and the copper fins. By making models on various scales the team found that the beams and fins could be constructed by taking each component and “unrolling” it using the modelling program Rhino. This process takes each 3d louver or beam laminate and flattens it onto one plane; these shapes can then be cut out with a laser cutter. In order to reconstruct the beams from the cut outs, jigs had to be made.

These were part of the parametric Catia model, so they too are automatically updated as the specifications for the beams are changed. Once everything has been laser cut, each laminate must be placed in a jig and glued together resulting in a very strong beam that curves in both directions. This is very similar to the process used to create the beams in 1 to 1, and the models have been used to convince local manufacturers of the feasibility. Work is still continuing on the manufacturing technique of the copper louvers.