HYBRID

Van Berkel and Lynn's articles presented two specific sets of hybridization that had resonance to me: virtual and real, & animated and static. Virtualization has played a large part in my design education; whether it's due to specific professors pushing a certain method, or my own tendencies towards these technologies, I find that it plays an integral role in my design process. In fact so much so that as I design, I can no longer fully understand spaces in plan or section - that I actually rely heavily on a virtual 3 dimensional representation of my scheme to further develop ideas. The idea of hybridizing virtual and real is probably as old as civilization. As soon as the first cave drawings appeared the concept of representation was created. Historically architects have been masters of virtualization - conveying real space though 'virtual' media of plan and section, a projection or flattening of real space on two dimensional medium. But this hybridization between virtual and real becomes more and more intense as virtual technologies approach reality. With current 3D software the ability to convey a space realistically sometimes exceeds our mental capacities to distinguish virtual from real. The weakness in virtualization however, as Lynn points out, is that traditionally it has only been used for "rendering and imaging" rather than a "tool for design".

Virtualization becomes a much more powerful tool if used actively to modify or create new spatial realities, rather than being a passive/receptive mechanism to convey existing realities. This leads to the ability to "animate form", as Lynn saids, not as a literal movement of a discrete object, but a dynamic shaping of such by taking into account the forces that act upon the object. Many of Lynn's examples of digital techniques are instantly recognizable as ones found (but not exclusively) in the Maya software - his reference to 'inverse kinematics', 'keyframing', 'dynamics', 'deformers', 'expressions'. In my years here at Berkeley my studiomates and I alike have questioned the usage of Maya as the 3D component in design. The frequent argument was why use Maya when the rest of the industry was using either FormZ or 3dsMAX? The reason only became apparent as I began to touch upon ideas like linked nodes, shading networks - foreshadowing the realization that the program's nature was parametric. Parametrization essentially allows the existence of a feedback loop in which virtualization can actively and dynamically modify the output, or eventual reality of the design. It has taken a while, but parametric software in the field of architecture has finally come about recently. And embedded in that shift in ideology is the realization hybridization and parametrization creates opportunity for different systems (ie circulatory, structural, and programmatic - in FOA's port terminal) to interact and react to each other for a more compelling architecture.