Architecture

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's School of Architecture.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

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Now showing 1 - 16 of 16

An Architectural Implementation of Topology Optimization Guided Discrete Structures with Customized Geometric Constraints
(University of Waterloo, 2020-05-28) Woo, Soo Jung; Beesley, Philip
This thesis explores the use of Topology Optimization (abbreviated to TO) in architectural design by implementing a Bidirectional Evolutionary Structural Optimization(abbreviated to BESO) type TO script as a guide to create a composition of discrete members with complex geometries. TO is an efficient tool for generating an optimal spatial arrangement of structural members along a load path. In the field of computational design, TO has been employed for form-generation of a range of assembled structures that employ discrete units, as well as continuum structures that employ unified and continuous materials. The most advanced current architectural implementations for continuum structures appear in the design of connections, and for discrete structures within space truss designs. Yet, the use of TO in atypical discrete frame structures with complex geometries remain relatively undeveloped in contemporary practice. This thesis contributes a case study where TO is implemented at two key scales: at the component level, geometrically constrained discrete components are assembled using TO, at the macro level, these components are arranged over a TO-designed body. A review of literature from computational design and structural engineering fields, discussing current TO implementations, as well as presenting case studies, is included. The demonstration within the thesis presents a contemporary architectural design process by using existing Karamba BESO code components within a Grasshopper parametric script. Fine-grained components employed within the facade system are combined using TO to produce a cellular lattice architectonic assembly that refers to traditional Korean ornamental pattern found near the site. This demonstration is evaluated structurally and aesthetically. Analyses of comparative structural models with varying configurations are used to demonstrate the structural efficiency of the proposed design. For the aesthetic evaluation, a series of drawings are included to demonstrate what type of spatial qualities the customized lattice structure would look like. The goal of this thesis is to demonstrate architectural and structural qualities resulting from a hybrid exercise where a TO process is applied to geometrically constrained discrete structures. The approach in this thesis provides compromises where structural efficiency and aesthetics are both reasonably achieved, and may lead to novel designs. Future work could be to create a new TO algorithm that can automate this process for increased structural efficiency.
Architecture as Setting the Stage: A framework for architectural design of virtual reality places centering the concept of presence through Wideström, Hernandez-Ibañez and Barneche-Naya, and Slater
(University of Waterloo, 2024-05-14) Won, Meghan; Beesley, Philip
Architecture shapes our physical world – and it shapes our virtual worlds as well. Virtual architecture creates the place in which a participant in Virtual Reality (VR) can understand and be immersed in the VR experience. This research contributes a framework for conceptualizing how architecture can work in service of immersive VR experiences that evoke a feeling of presence in the participant. Presence is the sensation of “being there” in a mediated environment through the allocation of attentional resources perceived physically and psychologically. It is the authentic feeling of being in a world other than the one in which one is physically located – the ultimate goal for a heightened VR experience. Architecture as Setting the Stage highlights presence felt in a VR experience as the benchmark for a successful virtual space. The framework synthesizes the concepts of Wideström’s Stage, Hernandez-Ibañez and Barneche-Naya’s Virtual Utilitas, and Slater’s Place Illusion, centering presence within each. This research is prompted by powerful VR experiences that evoked presence in myself - like the cave setting in Scanner Sombre and the depictions of home in The Book of Distance. The latter VR project, The Book of Distance created by Randall Okita, is used as a case study in analysing how architecture supports engagement and connection between the participant and the virtual spaces. The concept of Stage, from the philosophical dissertation of A Seeing Place (2022) by researcher and lecturer Josef Wideström, provides language and philosophy in conceptualizing the relationship between the physical and the virtual. The metaphor of Stage positions virtual space as a stage, connecting concepts of how we understand theatre to how we understand VR. Stage highlights how audiences in theater and participants in VR negotiate their understanding of representations, whether physical or virtual, leading to agreements about their meaning and context. This research extends his metaphor of Stage into the language of architectural design. Hernandez-Ibañez and Barneche-Naya’s framework Virtualitas from their conference paper Cyberarchitecture (2012) addresses the need for the analysis and translation of established architectural theory into the realm of virtual architecture, enabling architects to approach virtual design with the same depth of consideration as physical practice. The concept of Virtualitas redefines the traditional architectural Vitruvian Triad - firmitas, utilitas, and venustas - to encompass virtual architecture’s broader considerations beyond aesthetics. Their contemporary framework informs the concept of Virtual Utilitas in this research, which centers presence as a key condition in VR architecture achieving Virtual Utilitas. Researcher and psychologist Mel Slater’s established concept of Place Illusion (2005, 2022) offers psychological insight into how the construction of virtual spaces are perceived, and its influence on achieving presence. Place Illusion describes the influence of the coherent and convincing creation of place on a participant in a VR experience. Architecture as Setting the Stage works as a conceptual bridge in understanding the properties of virtual architecture and informs three propositions of how architecture influences a participant; directing attention, relational meaning, and expression of boundaries. The propositions speculate how virtual architecture through design impacts presence. The framework and propositions are then applied to a VR experience case study, The Book of Distance (2020) by Randall Okita and the National Film Board of Canada. The Book of Distance is investigated through a first-person written account of observations and reactions to the experience. This descriptive passage aims to portray an authentic experience in VR. The passage is then followed by an analysis of the experience through the propositions informed by Architecture as Setting the Stage. VR holds exciting potential for defining new experiences that go beyond those constrained by our physical world. Architectural knowledge, when adapted and applied to a virtual context, plays a significant role to the creation of VR experiences. Architects must confront the complexities of VR through a language for common understanding and help shape our virtual worlds.
Assembling Memories: A Concept of the Architectural Worldmaking of Memories in the Metaverse
(University of Waterloo, 2025-01-22) Han, Kunheng; Beesley, Philip
This thesis explores the relationship between architecture and memory by investigating the use of immersive virtual environments (Metaverse), for recording and sharing memories by transforming personal experiences into collective architectural elements. Utilizing geolocation and augmented reality (AR) technologies, individuals document their memories of urban spaces through TikTok, which are then analyzed to extract significant characteristics to be transformed into architectural components. These digital representations are aggregated into a virtual collective memory world. Taking Japanese Village Plaza in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles as a testing ground, this thesis proposes a design concept for an architectural memory assembly interface within the Metaverse. Through virtual overlays, users engage with these spaces, creating a more immersive, dynamic, and collaborative memory experience compared to traditional preservation methods. The thesis outlines a framework for utilizing these technologies to develop a shared, evolving memory world, where users co-create spatial experiences that merge personal and collective memories in the Metaverse.
The Becoming
(University of Waterloo, 2022-01-26) Patel, Dhroov; Beesley, Philip
A child wanders into a thicket of northern red oak and black raspberry to soothe the wounds of the past. The child is plagued with the malaise of the soul, otherwise know as major depressive disorder, and seeks to heal. As the forest is a reservoir for encountering extrovertive mystical experiences in the form of epiphanies, the child sensitively roams the moist woodland terrain to gain insight into the sacred Truths of Being – notably of wholeness, love, awareness, and death of the ego and time – in order to heal his psyche and soul, and to access the Greater self. The child seeks for mystical experiences in nature through epiphanic phenomena by virtue of developing a ritual practice as a form of pilgrimage in the woodland, known as the mystic’s pilgrimage. The pilgrimage involves: entrance to site, path, arrival, mindfulness meditation, observation, documentation, creation, prayer, and departure from site; a complementary meditation hut, known as the mystic’s hermitage, is crafted for contemplation and meditation during the solitude. The ultimate goal of The Becoming is for the child to emerge from this pilgrimage a more peaceful, self-aware, and knowledgeable individual. This thesis is partially a feat of escapism – not in the sense of cowardice – rather, an opportunity to seek solitude from artefacts of anthropological phenomena and the ego in an in-situ, wiigwaam-esque dwelling constructed from the immediate resources of the forest. An act of deep observation, anecdotes and thick multimedia documentation of relevant abiotic and biotic material, ecological relationships, natural phenomena and mystical experiences will be developed to relay the intimate mystical experiences while acting out the pilgrimage in the woodland.
Contemplative Space: Design for Generative Parametric Tessellations Applied to a Shell Structure
(University of Waterloo, 2017-02-21) Torki Baghbadorani, Sara; Beesley, Philip
This thesis focuses on surface articulation of a shell structure constructed through a generative, parametric, modular design process. The shell form uses vault topology that adapts to varying site conditions such as topography and shape and that serves as contemplative space. Contemplative and aesthetic qualities have been achieved by analyzing aspects of spatial vernacular muqarnas and emulating aspects of their geometry within new surface ornament. By abstracting muqarnas, and exploring aniconic character informed by both vernacular precedent and contemporary parametric design methods, the design offers a specialized new interpretation of this historical type of ornament. The design proposes an expandable master system. Two strategies based on this system are illustrated, both organized with similar components: columns (load-bearing modules) and bridges (modules for covering spans). Different behaviours are exhibited: first, symmetrical and homogeneous form and, second, non-symmetrical and heterogeneous form. The second layer of this complex system uses the topology of a vault system. A decoration system proposed for articulating interior-oriented surfaces is based on algorithmic geometry. This system offers two different characters, first inspired by muqarnas as a specific vernacular ornament, primarily from traditional Persian architecture, and second as a non-cultural, neutral ornament originating from computational design and achieved by deformation of mesh division. Software tool use is illustrated, demonstrating how scripted Grasshopper software components hosting custom C# code passages are used within a multi-layer design process. Research informing this design focuses on historical and contemporary architecture. Contemporary precedents, “Arabesque Wall,” by Benjamin Dillenburger and Michael Hansmeyer, and “La Voûte de LeFevre” by Brandon Clifford and Wes McGee are described. An analysis of these precedents explores how emerging digital technologies informed by history, can create a new design ecology and culture. Additional discussion considers cultural and phenomenological observations and aesthetics of the design in its physical and psychological aspects, considered in contexts that range from topology of the form to visual perception of the internal “contemplative space.” This investigation indicates points of contact between arabesque art as vernacular ornament and contemporary, computer-based art. Computational and parametric design is considered with regards to its effect on contemporary design culture. Parametric strategies, software, and C# coding used in the thesis are illustrated. The spatial ornament known as muqarnas is analyzed as one example of algorithmic ornament, illustrated through a contemporary “art of the knot” designed using parametric tools. In the last part of the research, features of the vault system are demonstrated historically and through individual examples of each kind. In parallel, contemporary shell structure and form optimization by means of computational simulation and morphogenesis are investigated. The parametric system developed in the thesis design provides an opportunity to design a complex geometrical system that can be applied to shell-like envelopes. Design studies included within the thesis feature free-standing shelters capable of hosting a variety of public or private activities. Emphasizing visual and decorative qualities, visualizations of the applied design system are developed and positioned within sites in different locations.
Designing a living barrier fortifying the coast against extreme climate events to reharmonize the identity of people, land, and water on the Island of Efate, Vanuatu
(University of Waterloo, 2023-03-24) Mema, Iva; Beesley, Philip; McMinn, John
On the Pacific island of Vanuatu, the connection the islanders have nurtured with the land and water is both evident and fundamental to their conception of life and legacy -the spirits of their ancestors are thought to inhabit the island’s minerals and express themselves through the waves. Climate change has begun to sever the sacred unity between nature and themselves. This thesis will examine the severe impacts of climate change on island systems, riparian, coastal, and marine ecosystems. In evaluating these long-reaching effects, the thesis will provide insights into the following lines of inquiry, informing the solutions and recommendations arising in consequence. An island of people is at risk of losing their homes and who they are as a nation. While exploring the island’s history, the far-reaching effects of colonial influence and their reckless disregard for the natural environment will become evident. This thesis dedicates a large section to the research on the island, identifying a limited problem and then providing a larger-scale design solution. How can implementing foreign architectural systems improve the lives and conditions of all species on the island while ensuring that design remains unintrusive, that the natural environment is utilized sustainably, and that critical lessons can be made transferrable to other contexts? In the presence of chaos, how can designs leverage disorder to create a safer environment for adaptation? Natural living systems and geotextile design have been widely explored within the field of architecture, and precedents in their usage have been discovered, whether by intention or chance. However, the interfacing between these will become a key component in designing a natural floating geotextile ecosystem that begins to counter some of the physical effects of climate change on the designated site. Through the development of cell systems within the geotextile fabric, this thesis will begin to reintroduce a chain of ecosystems from land to ocean, supporting adaption in the hopes that the island will begin to heal itself, grasping the design intervention when grievous moments take place. Understanding the existing life systems within the island facilitates a turning point in the analysis, where the very assets threatened by climate change, the terrestrial and marine ecosystems, become the answers to addressing this threat. By analyzing these enfeebled ecosystems - their stories, art, facts, and texts -a holistic design addressing existential needs while respecting essential boundaries in the social and natural fabric can emerge into being. This story will be told through drawings and model simulations that articulate the solution to creating a resilient environment capable of seamlessly merging with the island, becoming the minerals in the soil, ceasing to exist but leaving a trace of history. The island’s dramatic edges will cease to exist, with the design working to blur the edge boundaries separating land, water, and people. By exploring native and external design concepts, this thesis aims to work with the land without disrupting local influences, utilizing natural design techniques to bring these three sources of nature together - land, people, and water.
Emergent Hybridity, Cyborgs in Architecture
(University of Waterloo, 2018-10-04) Kwok, Jeffrey; Beesley, Philip
This thesis examines architectural test-beds as an experimental and contemporary mode of creating architecture that realizes the potential of many of the connections and complexities found in living systems. It builds on the lineage of research from the Hylozoic Ground Environments and the notion of the chthonian, embodying the potent, hidden, and essential ingredients of life.1 From the notions of geotextiles and cyborgs, a new conception of architecture is uncovered at the scale of material compositions, wearables, and tensile structures in architecture. After a survey of precedents as well as their concepts, design processes, and cross-disciplinary inputs, the thesis concludes with the design of an interconnected human body that is, an expanded human physiology connecting body, site, and surrounding structure in the form of public space in the alleyways of the North Point Lowlands, Hong Kong. The design departs from the North Point Lowland’s reclaimed and constantly rehabilitating site features to generate a coherent public space. The design proposal utilizes bifurcative qualities found in living matter, solar energy, and physiological processes to inspire a physical structure and its inhabitants. The design proposal is a co-generated physical form arising from a moment of feeling peaceful and emergent while experiencing the hybrid qualities of life in the alleyways of Hong Kong, North Point. 1. Beesley, Philip, Rob Gorbet, Pernilla Ohrstedt, and Hayley Isaacs. “Introduction Liminal Responsive Architecture.” In Hylozoic Ground: Liminal Responsive Architecture, 12-42. Cambridge, Ont. Canada: Riverside Architectural Press, 2010.
Incremental Urban Vernacular: Portraits of Transitional Spaces in Taipei's Xinwei Building
(University of Waterloo, 2023-01-17) Yeh, Nancy; Beesley, Philip
This thesis investigates creative appropriation of the spaces within the Xinwei Building, a half century post-war walk-up apartment in the Da’an District of Taipei, Taiwan. The thesis expresses the ephemeral, liminal, and spatial layers that exist in the Xinwei Building. In a series of portraits, narratives, photographs, architectural illustrations and plan drawings constructed at various scales, the thesis builds up an alternative perspective on understanding architecture beyond its walls, how architecture can be understood through everyday vernacular materials, how it participates in a series of in-between spaces and how these ephemeral qualities can come together to create surprisingly coherent living patterns. The Xinwei Building, as one of the remaining 24 Refurbished Residences in Taipei, was originally built by the government during the postwar era. This was allocated for the sudden increase in population in Taipei. Units were planned to be small in order to achieve housing affordability during the 1960s -1980s. As a consequence of the constriction of the small units and crowded interior, residents began to extend their everyday activities into the hallways and outer edges lining the Xinwei Building, creating distinct kinds of communal space. This thesis uses concepts of transitional ‘liminal’ spaces derived from the theories of the 20th century Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck in order to value and focus on the significance of these spatial extensions. The study proposes that the Xinwei Building can be understood by closely documenting the accumulations of every-day articles, such as clothes hanging above households’ door entrances, impromptu tables made of cardboard boxes and gas barrels between the columns, and buckets of unwashed dishes stacking in front of rows of motorcycles. While these clusters of seemingly disordered materials may have often been overlooked, they can be seen as fundamental constructive elements of a distinct kind of architecture that creates intimate vernacular spatial configurations. The thesis unfolds the portraits of transitional spaces in a series of personal, building, and urban scales, highlighting the importance of traces and inhabitants’ adaptations that are accumulated through time.
A Journey to Shora: Expressing the Architectural Environment Behind A Door into Ocean
(University of Waterloo, 2019-05-23) Hassanzadegan, Parisa; Beesley, Philip
This thesis seeks to express the architectural environment behind Joan Slonczewski’s 1986 science-fiction novel, A Door into Ocean. The novel describes a water-covered planet called Shora; its inhabitants, Sharers; and their alternative way of life on living rafts. Building on Slonczewski’s writing, I present a series of digital paintings and a narrative to express what living on Shora’s rafts might feel like for its residents. Using case studies of existing projects and research into the world of living architecture and biodesign, I situate this project within contemporary architecture, attempting to envision how it might feel to occupy a world of living things. Life is characterized by the ability to evolve, metabolize, and reproduce. Throughout history, human attempts to provide a safe living environment have led us to a separation between the built environment and nature. With today’s environmental concerns, it is imperative for us to consider visionary approaches to imagine a living, instead of a non-living, architecture. Inspiration from and use of the living world in design is encompassed within a large body of work by designers and researchers. Biomimicry (mimicking features or behaviours of living things), biodesign (synthesizing new hybrid typologies by using living organisms as the main elements of the built environment), living and soft-living architecture (using living organisms or lively matters in design), and ecological design (minimizing design’s environmentally destructive impacts through integration with living processes) overlap and inform the efforts of many working in the field. These attempts at living architecture, however, remain mostly at a small scale in laboratories or at the scale of installations or concept designs. As the field grows, it is important to envision how the techniques being developed in smaller scales can affect a new way of life in the future. I am particularly interested in representing how architecture might go beyond biomimicry and use living organisms as the main elements of the built environment as described in Shora. A Door into Ocean is a compelling critique of human life, achieved through “rejecting the terrestrial” and refusing totalitarianism and dictatorship, all seen in Sharers’ way of life harmonized with their aquatic environment. Acting as a robust ecosystem for many different marine species without threatening their lives, Shora might represent the future biodesigners dream about. The Sharers use genetic engineering to enable the coexistence of different living materials and their hastened evolution as needed. They use scaffolding and weaving techniques to create semi-permanent structures covered with living organisms. Finally, they modify their own bodies to further adapt to their environment. Through all these techniques, the world in A Door into Ocean combines biodesign and living architecture to arrive at a balanced ecological approach to life with the natural world. Shora is a work of science fiction, set on a fictional planet. Arriving at Shora’s architecture today requiring systematic changes not just to our architectural systems, but also to sociopolitical issues. Shora can, however, act as a window to a possible alternative vision. In this way, my role as the architect is to express this world through drawings and narratives. Through this exercise of expressing the imagined, we might get closer to answering larger questions about living architecture: What is the quality of an architecture merged with nature? What are the characteristics of this kind of architecture? How does it feel to live in such a world?
MeasureIt-ARCH: A Tool for Facilitating Architectural Design in the Open Source Software Blender
(University of Waterloo, 2020-05-29) Cress, Kevan; Beesley, Philip
This thesis discusses the design and synthesis of MeasureIt-ARCH, a GNU GPL licensed software add-on developed by the author in order to add functionality to the Open Source 3D modeling software Blender that facilitates the creation of architectural drawings. MeasureIt-ARCH adds to Blender simple tools to dimension and annotate 3D models, as well as basic support for the definition and drawing of line work. These tools for the creation of dimensions, annotations and line work are designed to be used in tandem with Blender's existing modelling and rendering tool set. While the drawings that MeasureIt-ARCH produces are fundamentally conventional, as are the majority of the techniques that MeasureIt-ARCH employs to create them, MeasureIt-ARCH does provide two simple and relatively novel methods in its drawing systems. MeasureIt-ARCH provides a new method for the placement of dimension elements in 3D space that draws on the dimension's three dimensional context and surrounding geometry order to determine a placement that optimizes legibility. This dimension placement method does not depend on a 2D work plane, a convention that is common in industry standard Computer Aided Design software. MeasureIt-ARCH also implements a new approach for drawing silhouette lines that operates by transforming the silhouetted models geometry in 4D 'Clip Space'. The hope of this work is that MeasureIt-ARCH might be a small step towards creating an Open Source design pipeline for Architects. A step towards creating architectural drawings that can be shared, read, and modified by anyone, within a platform that is itself free to be changed and improved. The creation of MeasureIt-ARCH is motivated by two goals. First, the work aims to create a basic functioning Open Source platform for the creation of architectural drawings within Blender that is publicly and freely available for use. Second, MeasureIt-ARCH's development served as an opportunity to engage in an interdisciplinary act of craft, providing the author an opportunity to explore the act of digital tool making and gain a basic competency in this intersection between Architecture and Computer Science. To achieve these goals, MeasureIt-ARCH's development draws on references from the history of line drawing and dimensioning within Architecture and Computer Science. On the Architectural side, we make use of the history of architectural drawing and dimensioning conventions as described by Mario Carpo, Alberto Pérez Gómez and others, as well as more contemporary frameworks for the classification of architectural software, such as Mark Bew and Mervyn Richard's BIM Levels framework, in order to help determine the scope of MeasureIt-ARCH's feature set. When crafting MeasureIt-ARCH, precedent works from the field of Computer Science that implement methods for producing line drawings from 3D models helped inform the author’s approach to line drawing. In particular this work draws on the overview of line drawing methods produced by Bénard Pierre and Aaron Hertzmann, Arthur Appel's method for line drawing using 'Quantitative Invisibility', the techniques employed in the Freestyle line drawing system created by Grabli et al. as well as other to help inform MeasureIt-ARCH's simple drawing tools. Beyond discussing MeasureIt-ARCH's development and its motivations, this thesis also provides three small speculative discussions about the implications that an Open Source design tool might have on the architectural profession. We investigate MeasureIt-ARCH's use for small scale architectural projects in a practical setting, using it's tool set to produce conceptual design and renovation drawings for cottages at the Lodge at Pine Cove. We provide a demonstration of how MeasureIt-ARCH and Blender can integrate with external systems and other Blender add-ons to produce a proof of concept, dynamic data visualization of the Noosphere installation at the Futurium center in Berlin by the Living Architecture Systems Group. Finally, we discuss the tool's potential to facilitate greater engagement with the Open Source Architecture (OSArc) movement by illustrating a case study of the work done by Alastair Parvin and Clayton Prest on the WikiHouse project, and by highlighting the challenges that face OSArc projects as they try to produce Open Source Architecture without an Open Source design software.
Mediation: Resonating between the Organic and Inorganic
(University of Waterloo, 2020-05-29) Pervaiz, Muhammad Tahir; Beesley, Philip
This thesis emerges from the desire of unity between the intuitive and empirical expressions of nature. It argues for a greater understanding of 'patterns' inherent in nature and advocates for the need to see things as a whole, rendering the world as a continuum of interconnected, interdependent fields. In doing so, the work seeks connections by deploying the element of 'play' and the search for 'process' by developing organic constructions and apply those relationships to inorganic crystalline geometries which are linked through spatial, chemical, and material, and topological relationships. The project carries with it a personal journey which resonates between intuitive play and rational modular understanding. The synthesis of the research consists of three parts: the first, situates itself in the contemplative, intuitive aesthetics of Jekabs Zvilna, created by 'domesticating' nature's forces into an ensemble of two-dimensional 'organic' patterns. The second explores crystalline geometries for relationships described in nature, and as a result produce generative modular constructions. The third part appropriates the form languages at the Living Architecture Systems Group that allow a distillation of the organic and inorganic into a singular whole. They offer an alchemical transmutation – a synthesis of polarities that serve as a testbed for evolving geometries; that apply to mediation, interpenetration and integration of the natural and the technological systems. While there are notable differences in the works presented, there is significant common ground in their representation of form generative processes in nature. As the work offers insight into the emerging relationships between nature and technology, it invites us to reconcile the disparate aspects of arts and sciences and the practice of architecture. For this synthesis, the research resonates between poetics and ethics while speculating on the 'mediation' between the shattered demarcations: the animate and inanimate; the being and becoming; the essence and substance; and the natural and the technological. It engages past situations wherein artists, architects, art and architecture, were integral and largely inseparable creating context from Bruno Taut, Moholy-Nagy, and Jakebs Zvilna. The theoretical basis is situated in both architectural and philosophical traditions, recognizing mediation as the order of balancing the contraries, proposing the integration of systems and a new unified understanding of the world; a living world perhaps.
Motion with Moisture: Creating Passive Dynamic Envelope Systems Using the Hygroscopic Properties of Wood Veneer
(University of Waterloo, 2018-01-24) Augustin, Nicola; Beesley, Philip
This thesis presents research into the creation of an autonomously responsive envelope system capable of adaptation to variation in relative humidity through the use of wood veneer and its hygroscopic material properties. As an alternative strategy to the extensive, energy-intensive, technological systems characteristic of contemporary responsive envelopes, dynamic systems using hygroscopic materials are both low-cost and low-tech while also producing adaptation without consumable energy input or external control. Produced is a meteorosensitive, semi-permeable, passive facade that aims to enhance both the physical and physiological comfort of interior spaces through moderating airflow and light infiltration. The facade is an assemblage of expanding, hygroscopic tubes, formally based on the principles of fluid dynamics outlined by Bernoulli’s principle and functionally implemented by the Venturi tube, to orchestrate airflow from exterior to interior. The performance of the hygroscopic facade is tested using computational fluid dynamics software and is compared against the performance of a standard Venturi tube assembled in the same manner. The results of this testing show that despite a cross sectional difference from the standard Venturi tube, the hygroscopic mechanism is capable of increasing airflow into interior spaces through the purposeful creation of a low pressure zone within the mechanism. Optimizing the performance of the mechanism is done through a biomimetic transfer of both formal and functional intelligence from the biological precedents of the Ipomoea flower and the conifer cone as found by Ross Koning, Wouter van Doorn et al., and Kahye Song et al. As well as, material studies performed by Steffen Reichert, and Artem Holstov et al. are traced to understand the performance and characteristics of the wood veneer as a bilayer composite that allows the mechanism to undergo repeated transformations and achieve variability of expansion from one end of the mechanism to the other. The direct integration of biological precedents within architecture asserts that building materials can be seen as productive entities, passively attuned to the natural rhythms and variability of the external environment, while maintaining flexibility for functional implementation as self-sufficient, adaptive facades.
PTAF Polygon Tessellation to Approximate Frame. A Method for the Design and Analysis of Complex Frames
(University of Waterloo, 2019-09-23) Mui, Richard; Beesley, Philip
Complex frames are difficult to model because there are so many elements and redundant load paths. In order to explore the realm of complex frames, there needs to be a technique for approximate modelling to allow for rapid analysis with dependable accuracy. This thesis proposes the Polygon Tessellation to Approximate Frame (PTAF) method for rapid structural analysis of the Living Architecture Systems (LAS) group’s complex frames. The PTAF method uses the LAS composition design polygons as inputs for a parametric script that generates a simplified frame model. This model can be used for Finite Element Analysis (FEA) because it has perfect connectivity. By simplifying the model, the analysis can be run quickly on conventional computer hardware. In this way, structural performance can be evaluated without significant time investment. Especially in the early stages of the design process, it is important to quickly receive reasonably accurate predictions of performance because the design is constantly evolving. To simplify the model, each component of the frame are reduced to a few beam elements that closely approximate the behaviour of much more detailed models. The process of linear FEA relates the force exerted on a model to the displacement it will undergo by its stiffness. The detailed and coarse models were subjected to the same support and loading conditions so that the displacement could be measured, and a function of error between the two displacements could be made. By minimizing the error between detailed and course models, values for the equivalent stiffness of each component can be derived. By enforcing continuity, the behaviour at the component scale can be used to predict behaviour at the global scale. In this way, the global simplified model will approximate the behaviour of the frame. This research started through a collaboration with the LAS on the Amatria installation at Luddy Hall. The goal of the collaboration was to add value to the project through the addition of structural analysis in the design process. The frame of Amatria was immensely complex, full analysis of the frame would be prohibitively expensive, and add an unreasonable amount of time to the design process. This research was able to benefit the project by analyzing key components to ensure adequate strength and stiffness to facilitate ease of construction. Lessons learned from this projected helped inform this method’s development. This research provided the possibility of self-supporting LAS structures, based on the system of components currently being used in LAS testbeds. A pavilion study was used as a thought experiment of how the combination of parametric modeling and approximate analysis could be used to design a free standing pavilion with LAS component construction. Participation in future testbeds will undoubtedly provide invaluable information to refine this method.
Re-wilding the Neighborhood: Discovering Ecological Harmony Through Design with Habitats Along the Oak Ridges Trail
(University of Waterloo, 2021-11-19) Moseley, Emma; Beesley, Philip
This thesis is a reflection on the impacts of suburban sprawl on ecosystem health and biodiversity in York Region, using a design proposal to repopulate pollinator habitat within the fabric of an existing neighborhood. The key research questions concern both the environmental and social consequences of a monotonous suburban landscape on our collective sense of community and emplacement. Drawing on existing theory from both scientific and poetic disciplines such as the essays of Wendell Berry and Lawrence Halprin, the design seeks to contribute a model of rewilding based on public participation and cooperation with wildlife that has agency in the process. Using the conservation initiatives along the Oak Ridges Trail as a case study, the thesis will first explore the role of site study in the design process, understanding the landscape a living being with a history and future as opposed to a blank slate to be built over. Expanding on this idea, the design proposal will include a main public garden and designs for patches and channels of vegetation that will create a contiguous network. If successful, this proposal will act as a model which could potentially be replicated across multiple neighborhoods to impact at a regional scale.
Towards a Soft Architecture: Approachable Kit-of-Parts for Soft Interactive Architecture
(University of Waterloo, 2024-05-24) Chiu, Adrian; Beesley, Philip
This thesis looks at an approachable kit-of-parts that allows for the rapid prototyping and creation of a new interactive architectural tectonic that is decentralized and compliant by using distributed microcontrollers and actuators. How can an extendable open kit-of-parts allow for easy access in designing soft interactive architecture? Previous work has been proprietary, expert facing and had a high barrier of entry; this work explores how DIY, open source and digital fabrication methods allow for rapid prototyping and the exploration of interactive architecture to be more accessible. By using compliant patterns and digital fabrication, an aspect of this new tectonic would be the emergence of a distributed ‘soft architecture.’ This thesis seeks to examine the current exclusionary barriers surrounding interactive architecture and to disseminate a design framework that enables an increase of accessibility on who can participate in the design of responsive environments. By looking at DIY creation methods, open source and the use of compliant materials, this thesis explores an interactive soft architecture through the prototyping and creation of architectural fixtures that employ an approachable kit-of-parts framework which would be disseminated in a manual that documents its creation and methods.
The White House, and Other Counter-Narratives from the Lockdown
(University of Waterloo, 2022-05-17) Martin, Bianca Weeko; Bordeleau, Anne; Beesley, Philip
Contemporary emplacement demands movement, whether through migration, travel, or transcultural exchange. Identity, as positioned by the postcolonial writer Édouard Glissant, is linked fundamentally with change and contact with others, and yet the loss that these forms of movement demand begs the question of what—in the most ancestral depths of our being—still remains. Facing these depths, the idea of home offers a metaphor for grounding. The White House is my father’s colonial-hybrid ancestral house (bahay na bato) in Baliuag, the Philippines. The White House tells a story of a dwelling imbricated within both national and nationless histories. I position the site of the White House as a counterpoint to national official history and as the subject of multiple forms of exchange. Through the representational forms of drawing, writing, and digital space—media that I offer in response to the physical house—the architecture and the histories it embodies take on new lives across time and geographic location. The topology of a palimpsest becomes the source of inspiration for a drawing series of the White House, extending the tradition of architectural drawing and culminating with a large-scale canvas panel mounted and installed for public view in Toronto, Canada. In tandem, interactions between the palimpsest’s layers begin to suggest a contemporary framework for thinking about urban history. Through this thesis, I grieve the physical loss of a house from my memory, and its metaphysical loss in the face of emergent site-less hyperculture. Facing these losses, I freely confront the future holding aspects of deep cultural identity that might still resist change.

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