architecture Archives ⋆ X-Reality: University of Michigan XR

November 30, 2018October 8, 2020

Creating Cave-Like Digital Structures with Photogrammetry

Students in Professor Matias Del Campo’s Architecture Thesis class have been exploring organic, cave-like structures for use in a real-world underground architectural space.

His students were tasked with constructing textured surfaces reminiscent of cave interiors such as stalactites and stalagmites, rocky surfaces, and erosion using a variety of mediums-from spray foam to poured concrete.

These creations were then scanned at the Duderstadt Center using the process of Photogrammetry to convert their model to digital form. The resulting digital models could then be altered (retouched, scaled or mirrored, for example) by the students for design purposes when incorporating the forms into the planned space.

June 29, 2016October 8, 2020

Duderstadt Center Joins Local Artist to Re-Create the Gateway Bridge for Michigan Engineering

In June the Duderstadt Center was contacted by Michigan Engineering to assist with a special gift for an alumni donor. Their donor had been the designer of several bridges in the area, including the famous Michigan Gateway Bridge. The Gateway Bridge carries I-94 over eight lanes of US 24, Telegraph Road and is well recognized by commuters for it’s vibrant blue arches.

The Duderstadt Center was provided reference images and the original plans and specifications of the Gateway bridge. From this a 3D model was built and segmented to be printed on two different 3D printers: Our Dimension Elites were used to print the base, allowing for a sturdy, cost effective platform to hold the delicate arches in place. The arches, which required a much higher fidelity, were then printed in pieces using our new Projet 3D printer. The Projet is able to print at a much finer resolution and utilizes a wax support structure that can be melted away, making it the perfect printer for generating the tiny features that would be required for threading the suspension cables of the bridge.

These parts were then passed off to a very talented local diorama artist, Eric Hasiak, for further detailing, where the model was assembled, mounted, painted, had foliage placed and the delicate suspension cables strung.

May 22, 2015August 25, 2020

Breaking Ground at Taubman College

The Taubman College of Architecture at the University of Michigan is adding another wing to the college. Located on North Campus, the College of Architecture currently shares the 240,000 square foot space with the Penny Stamps School of Art and Design. The architecture studios itself, located on the third floor of the building, occupy a space of around 30,000 square feet, making it the largest academic studio space in the world.

After a recent gift of $12.5 million made by Alfred Taubman, the college plans on building a new addition which will be called the A. Alfred Taubman wing. The completed wing will be 36,000 square feet and will have new studios, new offices for faculty and new classrooms.

On April 25, 2015 the University of Michigan’s President Mark Schlissel along with Taubman College’s Dean Monica Ponce De Leon with donor A. Alfred Taubman present, broke ground at the site of the new wing. The ceremonial shoveling was preformed by Taubman College’s Kuka Robot, a robot designed for architectural fabrication research but today was modified to assist in the ceremony.

The Duderstadt Center helped program the robot for the ceremony by filming a human shoveling in the lab. The motion was captured in the lab by motion capture cameras and a program was developed for the robot to mimic the motion.

Integrated Design Solutions, a firm based in Troy, Michigan, along with architect Preston Scott Cohen are in charge of the design for the new college. The building is scheduled to be completed in 2017.

Click here to read an article about the ceremony released on Taubman College’s website.

May 2, 2014August 25, 2020

Massive Lighting in Sponza to Develop Global Illumination

Real light is a complicated phenomenon that not only acts upon objects, but interacts with them–light bounces off an object and to another object so that an entire scene is implicated. In graphical applications, however, usually only one surface is lit without taking into consideration the other objects in the scene. Ray tracing is sometimes used in graphics to generate realistic lighting effects by tracing the path of light through a scene and the objects it would encounter. While this creates accurate and realistic lighting effects, this technique is so slow that it is not practical for real-time applications like video games or simulations.

To create real-time, real-looking lighting effects, graphics engineer Sean Petty and staff at the Duderstadt Center have been experimenting with a publicly available and commonly used scene called Sponza to develop global illumination skill. The Sponza Atrium is a model of an actual building in Croatia with dramatic lighting. The lighting experiments in Sponza has helped the lab to develop a more realistic global illumination. Spherical harmonic (SH) lighting creates a realistic light rendering, using volumes to approximate how light should behave. While this method isn’t perfectly accurate in the way ray tracing is, algorithms are used to figure out which rays intersect objects and calculates the intensity of light going towards it, and emitting from it. This information is inserted into the 3D volume and overall virtual environment. These algorithms can then be applied in other scenes. Realistic lighting is vital to a user becoming psychologically immersed in a scene.

The Sponza Atrium is a model of an actual building in Croatia.

July 18, 2013August 25, 2020

Floor Plans to Future Plans: 3D Modeling Cabins

Initial floor plan provided by Professor Nathan Niemi

Nathan Niemi—associate professor for Earth & Environmental Science— approached the 3D lab with a series of floor-plans he had designed in Adobe Illustrator. Nathan and his colleagues (who research neotectonics and structural geology) are working on cabins to be built at their field station in Teton County, Wyoming. The current cabins at their field station are small, and new cabins would provide the opportunity for more student researchers to work the area. Nathan’s group wanted to show alumni and possible donors the plans for the cabins so they can pledge financial support to the project. Nathan was curious about how he could translate his floor plans into a more complete model of the architecture.

Working with Nathan and his colleagues, the Duderstadt Center was able to take his floor plans and create splines (lines used in 3D modeling) in 3D Studio Max. Using these splines, accurate 3D models of the cabins were created to scale. These models were then shown to several people in Nathan’s group, at which point Teton County noticed the slope of the cabin’s roof would not meet building codes for snow load in that region. By viewing their models in 3D, the group was able to revise and review their plans to accommodate these restrictions. These plans are currently being shown to investors and others interested in the project.

July 18, 2013October 8, 2020

Using the MIDEN for Hospital Room Visualization

How can doctors and nurses walk around a hospital room that hasn’t been built yet? It may seem like an impossible riddle, but the Duderstadt Center is making it possible!

Working with the University Of Michigan Hospital and a team of architects, healthcare professionals are able to preview full-scale re-designs of hospital rooms using the MIDEN. The MIDEN— or Michigan Immersive Digital Experience Nexus— is our an advanced audio-visual system for virtual reality. It provides its users with the convincing illusion of being fully immersed in a computer-generated, three-dimensional world. This world is presented in life-size stereoscopic projections on four surfaces that together fill the visual field, as well as 4.1 surround sound with attenuation and Doppler Effect.

Architects and nursing staff are using the MIDEN to preview patient room upgrades in the Trauma Burn Unit of the University Hospital. Of particular interest is the placement of an adjustable wall-mounted workstation monitor and keyboard. The MIDEN offers full-scale immersive visualization of clearances and sight-lines for the workstation with respect to the walls, cabinets, and patient bed. The design is being revised based on these visualizations before any actual construction occurs, avoiding time-consuming and costly renovations later.

May 21, 2013August 26, 2020

Hybrid Force-Active Structures and Visualization

Tom Bessai demonstrates using a Microscribe

Tom Bessai is a Canadian architect currently teaching at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning. This past year Tom has been on sabbatical working with Sean Alquist to research hybrid force-active structures—or structures that work under the force of tension. Much like a bungee cord, these structures have two forms: slack and taught. Sean and Tom have been researching material options and constraints for these structures, experimenting with rope, mesh, nylon, and elastic in various forms.

While these structures borrow from techniques seen in gridshell structures, they are entirely new in that they actuate material as well as the geometry of their design. These structures are first designed in computer-aided design (CAD) software and then are physically built. After building the scale models, Tom uses a Microscribe to plot the vertices of the model in 3D space. These points then appear in Rhino, creating a CAD model based off of the actual, physical structure. Tom can then compare his built model to his simulated model. Comparing the measurements of both structures identifies the relationship between the tension of the structure and the material used. By taking these measurements, the properties of the material can be more specifically defined, allowing for larger and smaller structures to be more accurately designed.

These structures are not only complex and beautiful; Tom imagines they could have a practical application as well. Hybrid force-active structures could be used to control architectural acoustics, create intimate or open environments, or define interior and exterior spaces.

June 30, 2012September 30, 2020

Generative Components and Genetic Algorithms

Genetic algorithms aim to mimic natural selection in the design process. A set of parameters or “genes” characterize a “species” of artifact. Individuals within the species express different values for those genes. A fitness function evaluates each individual’s health. The algorithm works by assigning random gene values for several individuals, evaluating them, discarding the weakest ones, breeding the strongest ones by interchanging genes, and repeating for successive generations. Genetic algorithms sometimes yield surprising designs that a strictly deductive deterministic design process might not discover.

This project uses Bentley Generative Components to script parametric designs for several classes of structures, including folded plates, branching columns, and geodesic domes. Bentley STAAD structural analysis serves as the fitness function.

Monica Ponce de Leon (Dean of Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning) is the principal investigator. Peter von Bülow (Associate Professor of Architecture) develops the genetic algorithms. Ted Hall worked with recent Architecture graduates Jason Dembski and Kevin Deng to script the structures and visualize them at full scale 3D in the MIDEN.

June 2, 2011September 30, 2020

Pisidian Antioch

From January 13 to February 24, 2006 at the Duderstadt center on the University of Michigan north campus, the Kelsey Museum mounted an exhibition on the Roman site of Antioch of Pisidia in Asia Minor (Turkey)—a Hellenistic city refounded by Augustus in 25 BC as a Roman colony. Located along a strategic overland artery between Syria and the western coast of Asia Minor, Pisidian Antioch served Rome’s military needs but also presented a striking symbol, from the Roman perspective, of the benefits that Roman civilization provided to local populations. The city is best known to the modern world as a destination on the first missionary journey of St. Paul and Barnabas in the 1st century AD, recounted in the Book of Acts.

Held at the Duderstadt Center Gallery on North Campus, the exhibition featured a physical model created with a University of Michigan Duderstadt Center’s Rapid Prototyping servces. Digital reconstructions of the buildings and topography, which were created with the help of internal staff working with talented students associated with the project, were displayed using the Virtual Reality MIDEN which conveyed a sense of the original monumentality of the site and the character of its setting.

January 7, 2007September 30, 2020

Aerial City

The way we stage, organize and construct our environment will determine what roles we play in society. If the arrangement is to maximize the revenue and return to bankers, then the society will become an investment game. The focus will become dollars or any number of sophisticated, market oriented strategic economic situations which essentially ignore the spiritual fulfillment of humans living in cities. To live above ground, in flexible, self-sufficient cities, through our technology in order to coexist with other living species on Earth is the core purpose of Aerial City.

Local architect and active member at the University of Michigan School of Architecture, Sahba La’al, has been working with the University of Michigan Duderstadt Center to visualize various concepts related to the Aerial City project including the creation of unique designs in various real-world locations.

The project has been featured at several international conferences and exhibitions and is under continued design and refinement.