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Tackling their own designs

While renderers and animators proliferate, other architects design entirely computerized constructions of their own that stretch the architectural imagination and even inspire (gasp!) real structures. “I think students coming out of school realize not everything we do has to be [in] physical [space],” says Peter Anders, one of the organizers of the 2001 Association of Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) design competition, which Ahlquist entered with his design partner, Ryan Spruston.

“Vision 21” power plants, 2000 (top and bottom); Desert H2Ouse, 2000 (left) Digital design firm KDLAB got free reign to imagine what clean-energy-producing substations would look like in the year 2020. Their photorealistic film featuring a virtual residence in the desert has been shown on the animation-festival circuit for the past two years.

The ACADIA competition challenged contestants to build a virtual civic gathering space in Berlin called “Inforum.” Ideas were posted and judged on the Web. Ahlquist and Spruston’s building, which Ahlquist describes as “a wrapper that captures exterior space and carries it inside,” has winding, unevenly shaped rooms and hallways that are intentionally difficult to earmark for usage. “This is a building that’s amorphous. Different uses can develop over time,” Ahlquist says. Thanks to the designers’ skillful use of lighting and their attention to material detail, viewers are treated to stunningly realistic perspectives of the virtual glass, metal, and stone edifice, and the mesmerizing sky behind it.

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Alquist designed his entry on his desktop PC using Autodesk Viz 4 (a 3D modeling program that adds architectural tools to traditional 3D graphics programs, like 3D Studio Max), and RHINO, a form-modeling program used frequently by mechanical engineers, which tackles engineering and fabrication. The folds in the building’s glass and metal, Ahlquist explains, could not be rendered in 2D drawings or CAD files. “There’s no way I could sketch this out for the client, let alone me, to understand,” he says.

Sean McCormack and Andrew Karlson, young architects from Environs Development and Earth Tech, in Chicago, designed their expansive model for the 2001 ACADIA competition by converting the sound waves of a squealing modem connecting to the Internet into CAD files. The result is a rounded, multilayered, glass-and-steel superstructure.

Some architects have even started their own firms that take on technology-focused projects that would be unusual for a traditional practice to handle. Dean Di Simone and Joseph Kosinski, who met while earning master’s degrees in architecture at Columbia University, are founding partners of KDLAB, a New York digital design studio. “In a typical architectural practice, you have to put in a handful of years under a licensed architect and end up spending 10 percent of your time designing. In our practice, we’re able to spend a much larger portion of our time designing rather than administering our projects,” says Di Simone.