I am taking a pause from blogging for a while to pursue and organize some projects.  I hope to be back with new things at the start of the next year.  Thank you to everyone who comes and visits.  And if you have questions or comments please still feel welcome to leave them.

Matei Denes

I currently have work in a show in LA.  It is organized by Superfront LA, a collective that promotes architecture through exhibits and publications.  I am very proud to have been selected along with some of much more accomplished designers, including Benjamin Ball, Brendan Mcfarlane, Craig Hodgetts, and Marcus Novak.

From the curators:

“Film has influenced architecture since the dawn of the modern era. The creative process for entertainment as well as spaces for life and work share common ground. Perhaps film influences the profession of architecture through its speculative spaces which are removed from the constraints of reality. These instances serve as inspiration in the creation of the architecture of tomorrow.”

I have three pieces in the show.  That are taken from projects that I completed in the last few years.  Here is the statement I submitted with the work:

“The images presented here are taken during the design process for various projects that I have done over the past three years. Their abstract quality removes them from this process. The usual sequence of idea becoming design becoming built artifact is interrupted at a point before the design materializes, between idea and realization. As opposed to traditional architecture and its forms of  representation, these images have no reference to time. Similarly they are framed to have no recognizable horizon or perspective rendering them spaceless. These images taken out of time and space remain frozen instances of the digital. They are spaces that would normally be folded into the final building. Extracting these images creates a new space and time for them to inhabit. That is the space of the viewer. And as they have no time or space of their own, their original references are lost. This gives the viewer the ability to project their own ideas. If we look at the design process as a temporal function, as the word process implies. Then these become still frames taken from that process. They have no inherent direction, either spatially or temporarily. But yet they remain tied to both space and time through exactly this incompleteness, needing the viewer to add these back into them to give them meaning.”

I have presented this work previously on this site in the Painting post.   The three images shown here are the ones that were selected for the show.  I have continued this work and have images from some of my more recent projects that are in the same style.

I would like to thank the people over at Superfront again for giving me this opportunity and hope that anyone reading this that is in LA before the end of August stops in and sees the show.

These images continue with the ideas that I began earlier in the Painting post.  They are from more recent projects.  If you go through the archive you may be able to match the images with the projects they are drawn from.  But that is not the idea, which is to create a new abstract space that exists on its own.  This allows these spaces to be reinterpreted and new ideas to emerge.

These images are more abstract than the previous series.  Patterns of repeating similar elements dominate these spaces.  This implies an infinite space that continues on past the edge of the image.  A continuous field is created from the object of architecture.

The design process produces many of these moments. And I believe that these moments are as beautiful on their own as they are a part of the final object.

Right now I am working on a design for a lamp for the Acadia 2011 Conference.

At work we have finished a competition for the Hong Kong – Shenzen Border.  But results will not be announced until July so the project will sit in storage until then.

And we are starting a new competition.  Which, for similar reasons, will not be up for a while.  But the work is being done.  This time an opera house in Korea.

I have updated the diagrid post with some new images.  Just to do something.

I also in the pipeline is a baby.  More on that later too.

And until I do have something to show you, please enjoy my good friend Diego Ricalde and his firm MMX’s new pavilion.

At the start of the year I participated in the ModeLab Hybrid Prototypes Workshop.  This gave me an opportunity to learn how to use arduino and its Grasshopper interface Firefly.  Arduino is a digital electronic interface which is a beginners introduction to working with electronics.  Firefly allows users to manipulate the input and output in Grasshopper and Rhino.  This can be a powerful tool to create interactive projects.

Because the workshop was only for a weekend we were able to develop only some basic prototypes.  We learned how to directly program the arduino board through an interface based on processing.  This was then integrated through Firefly into Grasshopper.  The possible uses are being expanded constantly with the implementation of web based sensor tracking and webcam monitoring.  The overarching principle is that the more we can connect different devices and create inputs and outputs, feedbacks and interactions, the more our environment will move away from a static model and become a dynamic space.

I was interested in the possible feedback mechanism that could be embedded into the prototype. I made a simple canopy that could tilt and bend.

The tilting and bending were controlled by sensors on the underside of the canopy.  One sensor measured the light and the other the bend of the canopy.  These sensors fed information into grasshopper and that was then optimized based on a given target value.

This  way I was able to control both the tilt and the bend based not on direct inputs, but based on feedback from the sensors.  If there was too much light the canopy would lower, or if the bend was too much it would open up.  As one parameter changed the other would adapt to compensate for the change.

The electronic setup and grasshopper definition were actually quite simple.   The next step with this project would be to feed the input through grasshopper’s galapagos evolutionary solver and kangaroo physic engine.  This would allow the prototype to self optimize for bending based on a desired lighting condition.  While I was not able to achieve all of that over the weekend, I do hope to add both those tools to my kit to go along with firefly that was a great start.  I want to thank the guys at studio Mode and Lift architects for the workshop.