Eco_Logic Highrise

Spring/Autumn 2007

Introduction
Premise :
"How does a surrounding element, with its various specific characteristics, affect the general form we have been studying? How does the form, both determined and a determinant, assert itself against these elements? What manner of hard parts, soft parts, interior parts, and exterior parts are created in the form by this effect ? And what is wrought by the elements through all their diversity of height and depth, region and climate?"
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe





Growing structures:
This Atelier continues its research into multi-performance high-rise buildings as an opportunity to investigate on morpho-ecological structures.
We consider ecology as the study of interrelation between organisms and their environment in this sense the differentiation and performance of material organization will play a key role for a responsive architecture and its interaction with the built environment. Where the average of high-rise became a symbol of commerce, the ecologic high-rise can be seen as the physical representation of complexity.
Complexity it is not conceived as an aesthetical "capriccio" but as the final result of a bottom-up design process based on a cause effects relations between the prototype organization and the external stimuli. These may include environmental, structural, or other performing criteria, which are to be related to a spatial strategy, organisation and requirements.




Design as a process:
The Atelier is conceived as an advanced design lab.
We focus on an information-based design process in which site specific information will be produced and used as a generative tool.
Emphasis will be placed on form-finding techniques through the making of many evolutions and evaluations of physical and digital models. At the same time we make use of the latest computer capabilities (environmental simulations, generative scripting, parametric modelling) and rapid prototyping techniques (CAM methods).










Each student has developed a project of a performing high-rise prototype, through extensive physical and digital modelling, that will respond to site (Paris) specific conditions.
Workshop sessions in parametric modelling has been led by the atelier staff and invited guests.
The sites selected to reflect upon the question of the building vertical in Paris are the ones chosen on january 2007 by the committee of the 'Ville de Paris' and that could accommodate towers:
-la porte de la Chapelle (18th arrondissement)
-la porte de Bercy (12th arrondissement)