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v5: It is very beautiful. What are the different materials that we are looking at in this model, such as the middle gray and the mesh, do those textures have material consequences in the design?
RS: In fact there is a mock up that deals with chain link to try to create depth and shadow on the in-fill surfaces and the metal to represent the shell, which is somewhat of an analogy to the cracked cylinder of the vessels that originally occupied these atriums. We have delineated the perimeter shell versus in-fill and are trying to avoid the impression of a solid figure.
v5: How does the panel with the chain link work? Is there an acoustic back behind that?
RS: In fact it is a full wall assembly. One of the criteria for the atrium was that we could have no combustible, materials on the exterior of intervening objects. Also due to the length of some conferences, the client requires something of a living room type comfort for the auditorium interior. We are using perforated wood panels with acoustic batt insulation behind that so that the interior character and exterior are quite different. Partly because of cost we ended up with a scheme where we just have a dry plaster shell between the cylinder portions of the work. Then we dealt with the issue of how to make that in-fill relate to the industrial look which the interventions have in common. As we started to work on the stair balusters, we thought about using expanded wire mesh and chain link because it creates a rather nice relationship in terms of a variety of transparencies. So we to actually overlay some of this material with the plaster infill of solid objects.
v5: What is this Skylight configuration? A new type of glass that you are using?
RS: Yes, it is called lumitop, which is essentially a sandwich glass with a top and bottom layer that has a series of vertical glass ribs. It has the capability of redirecting sunlight up to about a sixty-degree angle and at the same time adds something of a diffusing quality without changing the light temperature or coloration.
v5: The color balance stays consistent.
RS: Yes, it stays totally daylight balanced.
v5: When they set the glazing, are you conscious of a cone of light below it?
RS: No, it actually works because it goes into a rectangular, glazing frame, just like normal glass, and it works in almost a linear, reflected direction. There is no widening or significant distortion. Of course, the key is that it be on a sloping surface and be oriented on a thirty-degree slant.
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v5: Is this glass available in the United States?
RS: I have not seen it advertised here. It is a German product and has only been on the market
for about eighteen months, so I think it will eventually be distributed here in the United States.
There is a slight fall off in light as it is redirected, but it is only about twenty percent.
v5: In looking at the interventions into the existing building, are they understood as a set apart from the building?
RS: They clearly are and one of the things this group has discussed a lot in the last few months is a fascination with the space between objects. It comes to the front in a project like this where the atrium is not large enough to ever stand away and understand the whole object. We are only able to do that because this is a sectional model and in fact since these interventions have no exterior, you can never really see it from the street or from the landscape. We focused on the fluidity between the spaces and the crevices between objects.
v5: Recognizing them as fragmented views.
RS: Yes.
v5: I think that is an interesting sort of an idea. Right now, certainly in all the schools, everything is so fragmented. What you are doing is creating a complexity of composition by controlling the viewing positions. Just by the nature of the conic perception of space they never see the whole. You do not have to break everything up because the viewer never has the ability of having an overall vision of the project.
RS: Right. In fact, we have all kidded ourselves substantially for the last few months, that this is the least attractive elevation. The one against the brick wall back there is absolutely gorgeous, but it is only a model technique and in reality there is a whole set of offices that clip forward into this glass object that then becomes the counter play to the solid object. It really is about that, a lack of necessity to fragment because spatially it does it already.
v5: What tools are you using as you make design decisions in this project. Clearly there is this large model in front of me, but beyond this what drawings and software do you use?
RS: We use Form Z to essentially work a millisecond behind this model. In fact all the sketching is done in physical model and then we go through a step of what I call a rationalization of form in Form Z. This means that we put these loose paper sketches together and they may be within x degrees of the true cylinder or within a few centimeters of a true cone. We then use Form Z to actually convert those into geometries that can be easily understood by the contractors and affordable by the client.
v5: Quantifiable.
RS: Yes, absolutely quantifiable. In fact, within an hour of a recent request from the executive architect to generate surface calculations on all these very complicated forms, we were able to comply. We “asked the machine” for it and with some skillful manipulation, we were able to give back both individual plots of the separate geometry components as well as their surface calculations.
v5: Will you eventually pass that database to the contractor for fabrication or do you pass on to them the working drawings in a sort of traditional sense?
RS: There have been two different ways we have done that and a lot of it has to do with whether it is a bid or negotiated contract, if we have a contractor to deal with up front and how sophisticated they are. On another project, which is for a recreation island facility, we were fortunate to be working with a contractor who is Form Z compatible. (laughs) They are salivating at the thought of being able to do their bids and takeoffs from our base and obviously we have to put a few disclaimers with it to cover some legal matters, but we were able to release the full Form Z model to them for estimating.
v5: That gave them a clearly competitive advantage.
RS: Yes, and saves them time and money relative to shop drawings.
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