Hello all, this is my last blog post for this semester, I can't believe its already over. Here are my thesis prep presentation and book. I will be continuing this blog next semester to continue documenting my thesis progress. I will probably post a few blogs over break, on Mondays and Thursdays, as I will be doing some thesis work.

My review on yesterday went well, I thought. There were some critiques with my presentation, I thought I would leave out labels and legends as I would be there to explain what the diagrams were, but I was told to keep them in. The critics appreciated the fact that I got so specific and was able to have an outline for next semester, but now that I am at this level I should present everything through the lens of daylighting. The way I present my project should match the nature of the project. Since I am planning on designing a dynamic facade that is extremely changeable, my presentation has to show that, as of now it is very homogeneous and static. A few suggestions of how I might do this were to drop the diagrams, do and show different experiments on how daylighting works, show advanced computational models and daylighting studies, and have more real data showing what I want to show. Over the break I am going to read all I can about different studies on daylighting and see what programs I will be able to use to do daylight studies. Two people I will have to look into are Victor Olgyay and John Carmody, both have done extensive research regarding daylighting.

I have all my diagrams done in my thesis book. All I have left to do is small things, lining up different diagrams, making sure everything is the right colors and line weights, and adding more text and placing myself in the discourse. After that is done it is just printing, binding, and preparing for my review on Wednesday.

Sorry for the late post. My Thesis book is pretty much done, I've updated all my existing diagrams and synchronized the color scheme, font, and layout across the entire book. I say it is pretty much done, because while it could be complete right now, there are still some diagrams that I want to add to it. Tomorrow I am meeting with my thesis adviser for the last time before my final review on my book. Hopefully tomorrow everything will be green-lit and I can print and bind my book. (The pictures in the linked book are a bit odd, it might have happened when optimizing the PDF.)

Today I've found out when my thesis book is due and when my final book review is next week. A digital version of my thesis book is due On Wednesday December 4th at midnight and physical copies are due Thursday December 5; my review is on Wednesday December 11th. All I have left to do for my book is adding more text and making several small changes.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US viewers! Unfortunately I didn't get as far as I wanted to in my thesis book. I did get pretty far though, I just have a few more diagrams and some text to add in, then it is just minor changes. I have my next and final meeting with my thesis adviser a week from Friday, by then I will have my entire book complete. So right now it is just another week!

For today I have been working on fixing my existing diagrams and making new one, following the list I talked about last time. I have a plan to cross off three things off the list, and that should get me to finish all the major things until Thanksgiving; it helps that I'm off from class this week, so I have more time to work on them. My book is almost there; right now it is just the final stretch. One of the new things that I included in my thesis book is a basic week by week schedule for next semester, so I know what I want to produce and have at the end of thesis. Right now it is looking like a new dynamic facade that influences the interior spaces and responds to both environmental and employee conditions and specifications. For now though, it is just to get this book as complete and well-presented that I can in the remaining few weeks.

Today I talked to my thesis adviser today before Thanksgiving break. There are several things that I have to work on in my thesis book. Things that I have to work on are: quantifying my design and performance criteria, finish my environmental data diagrams and do environmental diagrams for my specific floor plate, reorganize my context pages, fix some of the existing diagrams, make my tree and food web diagrams relate more to an office, start designing my dynamic facade and see how it affects the space, and lastly outline my what I am going to work on next semester to finish my thesis. Doing all that will complete my thesis book, then I just have to add page numbers, make everything refer to my color scheme, and figure out how to bind it.

Since Thursday I have been working on my thesis book. I've drawn an axon around the Willis Tower, started making the weather data my own by re-diagramming it into a more readable format, and I have done some work on the precedent diagrams. By Thursday I plan on having very close to my entire book complete, so that after that I just have to work on small things. Overall I think it is coming out nicely.

Sorry about the really late post tonight. Today I spoke with my thesis adviser and I have a clear path to finish my thesis prep book. The project that my book will lead to next semester is a dynamic facade that responds to environmental conditions, user specifications, and plays a part in heat gain of the space. For next Thursday I will get my book as complete as human possible so that I can get feedback on the entire complete book and make minor changes to it until my final review. Aside from completing the book, there are some "minor" things that I need to complete by next Thursday as well, namely putting a scale on the plans and making the weather data my own diagrams and more readable - I plan on doing this by incorporating this information into the site plan.

Over the weekend I didn't do too much for thesis, as I had other projects that I had to do work for. However I did find some new precedents that look exactly at what I am looking at: day-lighting. These include:

Office Building of the Future, by William McDonough+Partners

(http://www.mcdonoughpartners.com/projects/view/office_building_future)

Sinosteel International Plaza, by MAD Architects

(http://www.arch2o.com/sinosteel-international-plaza-mad-architects/)

Institute du Monde Arabe, Jean Nouvel

(http://www.archdaily.com/162101/)

One aspect of those projects is that the facades play with the day-lighting. I have also begun mapping out the area of Chicago inside the "loop", so that I can see how the Willis Tower relates to the greater city area, and how one influences the other. For Thursday, I plan on having my mapping of the "loop" complete, and to have at least what else I need to make my project richer.

Yesterday I had my second thesis review. I thought it went better than my first one; the conversation about my project was a lot more focused. I now need to focus on a few things, the first being how the Willis Tower relates to the whole city of Chicago - I have weather data for Chicago so I need to relate that to the city and to the Willis Tower. I need to have my work present biomimicry not as a metaphor for sustainability, but as a tool to accomplish sustainability. Some of my diagrams are overly simplistic, so I need to add the appropriate complexity to them. I need to focus exactly on what I think is important for an office space, so far it is day-lighting and how it affects the interior of the office and the people who work there. And finally I need to decide what it is exactly that I want to design, currently it is looking like a responsive facade. I'll use the specific office that I chose as a testing ground for the facade and show how it can be applied to the building and see how that affects the city. This will bring my research full circle.

Sorry for posting so late again. For today I have been working on new diagrams and my book layout. I have a different color scheme, and the general feel of the book is different now, I think it's a marked improvement. So far it is still a work in progress, but by my review on Wednesday I will have more diagrams and have the layout more finalized. Not all the pages have been converted to the new layout, and for one of the "chapter" pages I am trying out an idea (the image does not belong to me). For Wednesday all the pages will follow a single layout instead of the testing ground of layouts that they are now.

For today I updated many of my diagrams in my thesis book, even adding some new ones. After speaking with my thesis adviser about them, I am going to make them even clearer. I also am going to update the environmental diagrams that I have, remake them so they go better with the rest of the diagrams, and create more diagrams relating to what I mentioned last time. Overall I think I am going in the right direction with my diagrams, right now it is just producing more of them and redoing the awkward looking ones. On Wednesday, November 6th is my second thesis review, so for my Monday post I will have a majority of all my diagrams done.

Another thing that I am going to be trying to do for Wednesday is to work on my layout more, make it relate to biomimicry and make it flow more. The most recent idea that I've had about the layout is to use the Fibonacci Sequence/Golden Ratio in some way, since it is found in many place in nature. For now, though, I am open to suggestions on making the layout even better.

This is gong to be a short post because I haven't done much over the weekend with my diagrams due to other classes. Currently I am in the process of cleaning up the diagrams I already have for Thursday. Like always I will link the updates to that post. One thing that I did find while doing research for another class is how plants move water and nutrients through them. The phloem, is essentially a layer between the bark and the wood itself. It is incredibly fortunate that I found this, because it will definitely help with the diagrams that I am going to be doing for a week from Thursday.  

Today I had a meeting with my adviser about my thesis book draft. Overall the critique was good, but one thing I do need to work on is my diagrams, I need to really clean up the ones I already have and I need to do more diagrams. For next week I am going to clean up my existing diagrams and for the following week I am going to work on my natural process diagrams. I already have a basic diagram of how a tree gets nutrients, aside from cleaning that up, I am going to do a diagram of a complete food chain diagram and relate that to how energy is distributed in an office environment, I am also going to look at the layers of a temperate broadleaf forest and apply that to the spatial organization of an office. I am going to relate the tree diagram to how during the changing of the seasons, solar shading devices can also change and collect energy.

Over the weekend, I didn't do too much in the terms of research; I was focused on starting my thesis book. For this draft I mainly focused on layout and the placement of the diagrams that I already have, because then it will be easier for me to see what else I need in order to make my idea clearer. I didn't focus so much on the text (most of it is filler text), but for next time I will have text that relates to each of the pages.

Of the research that I did do, it was mostly about natural processes, such as how a tree collects nutrients, and how a tree can survive the winter. I diagrammed these and included them into my book draft.

For next time I plan on having more complete diagrams, more relevant diagrams, and text that adds to the diagrams and explains them.

For today I came up with several diagrams that states my exact location in the Willis Tower and the exact type of office that I am going to look at. As stated before, I am going to be looking at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning on the eighth floor of the Willis Tower. Because I couldn't find very many plans or sections of the building, I had to use the plan for Suite 710 as a surrogate for the area that the planning agency uses. Over the summer I interned at the Nashville Civic Design Center, and I diagrammed out the basic layout of that office to get an idea of how the CMAP could be laid out. I diagrammed the precedents that I found last time, (the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture office in Doha Qatar, Skygrove in New York, NY, and NOAA's Pacific Regional Center in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.)

Next week I have my thesis book draft due, and in order to get that ready, I have to do more diagrams on the Willis Tower such as entry conditions, energy usage, wind flow around the building, I have to do more diagrams of the precedents and see how they function while improving the ones that I already have, and diagram the environment, such as how a tree can survive the changing of the seasons, or how a tree collects and uses resources.

Since last time, I have done quite a bit of research to narrow down my location and program. I decided to locate my office to be a planning commission firm in Willis Tower (Sears Tower) on the 7th floor, based on the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning which is located on the 8th floor of Willis Tower. I have made a basic plan of an available suite in Willis Tower, and a basic plan of the Nashville Civic Design Center to get a basic layout of how planning commission firms were organized.

I've looked at different precedents to see how they create office spaces that integrate the building facade and space to improve employee productivity, health, job satisfaction, and collaboration. In this research I've found the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture office (located in Doha, Qatar) which uses biomimicry to make the integration of facade and space more responsive to the environment and to the employees.

(from http://www.designboom.com/architecture/aesthetics-architects-go-group-minister-of-municipal-affairs-agriculture-building-doha-qatar/)

Skygrove (New York, NY) focuses on how each floor can be responsive and self-sufficient.

(from http://ny.curbed.com/tags/skygrove)

NOAA's Pacific Regional Center (Pearl Harbor, Hawaii) focuses on how a space can be responsive and more productive for the employees.

(from http://www.hok.com/design/type/government/national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration-noaa/)

Next I will look at the different systems and processes in the ecosystem around the north United States/Illinois area.

Sorry for the late post, I've been busy with my thesis research. Last time I had decided that I was going to do an office space in Chicago. Now I've put the office space in a specific location: Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower). In preparation for today's thesis meeting, I prepared several boards showing the different spaces required for an office space, the environment information specific to Chicago, information relating to a deciduous temperate forest, and precedents that show both typical and biomimetic office spaces.

For my next thesis review I am going to create the specifics of the office (what kind of office it is, the energy consumption of that kind of office), I am going to use the sears tower as the control for my project (the ceiling heights, the different programs inside the building, the energy use, the water use, the occupant satisfaction), I'm going to delve into the biology aspect, and critically diagram the specific precedents that I find.

Since last time I've been looking at getting specific with a program and a site. I've decided that doing a prototype office floor. I decided on this because there are a lot of problems with offices, the employees don't really enjoys working in an office environment, they are they are pretty unsustainable. With this program it gives me an opportunity to focus on making a dynamic space and responsive facade that can be sustainable environmentally, economically, and socially. I started off by looking at a "typical" office space and seeing what spaces are needed for an office to function, then I looked at what people thought of the office that they work in and what improvements they would like to see made. Lastly I looked at an article comparing different office configurations and how they rank with job satisfaction and overall health, overall open offices of medium size ranked the worst while flexible offices ranked the best. Afterward I started looking for a site to begin with. The two parameters that I began with are that the site had to be a city and it had to have the same climate as Syracuse, with these two parameters I chose Chicago as my beginning site.

I now see myself beginning an analysis of the environment of Chicago, such as sun patterns, wind patterns, indigenous species, and different process of the natural world. After this I will apply these systems and process to the prototype office, then to make it more comprehensive I will choose another site of a different climate and tweak the prototype office to fit within those systems. Once I have these biomimetic offices, it will be easy to compare to a conventional office.

Yesterday was my first thesis review of the semester. I met with both my primary and secondary advisers; both of them had generally the same comments about my project so far. Some comments were that because the subject of biomimicry is very broad, it is a good thing that I distinguished between biomorphism (just copying the shape of something in nature) and biomimicry (copying the function of something in nature). The precedents that I had, the Industrial Eco-park, Eastgate, and the Esplanade, weren't at the scale that I seem to be going which is possibly a prototype space. I should find more relevant precedents that are closer to the scale that I want and diagram how they work so that I can glean an insight from them. My primary and secondary advisers gave me different but related ways of thinking of thesis: as a science experiment, where I set up the hypothesis, the givens, the test, and the predicted outcome, and as three questions: What is your specific topic that you are interested in engaging? Why is it relevant? How can you contribute to the topic and through what means?

My trajectory that I am going to work toward for the next review is to:
1) define a specific location, determine the site constraints and research natural processes that are specific to that location,
2) define a specific program, determining the criteria relevant to the program that I choose,
3) contrast the processes and systems of the site and program,
4) find specific precedents that are relevant to my program and scale
As of now, I am considering my program to be an office space, though I am not sure of the location as of yet. Michael Pawlyn has done some analysis of a typical office space and how to make them more sustainable, and I am going to look through his analysis and see if an office space is the program I want to stick with.

Over the weekend I prepared for my first thesis review on Wednesday. I prepared a short PDF presentation to discuss where I want to situate myself in biomimicry, a new thesis statement, and where I see myself going.  To do this I used four precedents: the Industrial Eco-Park at Kalundborg, Denmark, Eastgate Center in Harare, Zimbabwe, the Esplanade Theatre in Singapore, and Lotusan paint. In my presentation I am going to discuss how each function as biomimicry: the Industrial Eco-Park uses the principles of a mature ecosystem, namely using its own waste as a resource.

Eastgate functions the same way a termite mound does, by using the buoyancy of air, the heat generated by the occupants, and the way it releases the stale air to the outside.

The Esplanade Theatre mimic the shape and texture of the skin of the Durian plant and uses this as a sun-shading device to protect the interiors of the building from overheating.

Lotusan paint looks at how the lotus plant's leaves are self-cleaning because water runs off of them and cleans the leaves of dirt; the paint does the same thing with concrete and stucco.

After this research, my updated thesis is "By first looking at biological processes, which can then be applied to design, architecture can become more dynamic and sustainable." I see myself going down one of two routes with this project: either looking at a natural process (such as how squid can change the color and texture of their skin) and developing a responsive facade or by looking at different ecosystems and developing dynamic spaces based off those principals.

Over the past two days I have talked with my associate dean and thesis adviser about my thesis abstract and how i should plan on moving forward. My associate dean liked how clear my abstract was, but said that I needed a clearer direction, which my thesis adviser agreed with. Some ways in which to do this would be to pick a natural process or processes that interest me and apply that to architecture, as opposed to picking a problem in architecture and finding a way biology can deal with it, the second way would be to find various precedents to find out where in biomimicry I want to situate myself, and the third thing is to make a physical aspect of building, such as a building skin, to demonstrate how biomimetic principals would influence architecture and make it more sustainable. To start with I am going to look at precedents and compare how biomimetic they are to how biomimetic they say they are, find natural processes that interest me, and place myself in the biomimetic discourse.

Next week I have my first thesis review, I am going to present my position on biomimicry, my new thesis statement, and where I see myself going with this project. I am going to do this through the use of useful precedents and what positions they have taken on biomimicry.

Over the weekend I have found articles and books that describe, promote and are against biomimicry. Biomimicry is in itself, a way to look at nature and imitate the forms, process, and systems found there. This mimicking of nature can be used in sustainable design. While biomimicry is separate from sustainability, the two are generally seen as going hand in hand by those who propagate it. Those who are in favor of biomimicry and sustainability say that this is the next logical step in design, because the lifestyle of the developed world cannot continue as is and needs to become more conscious of its actions if it is to continue. Those opposed to biomimicry claim that it idolizes nature and diminishes human achievement; while the main arguments against sustainability is that it is too vaguely defined (allowing for people to misuse it) and that socially it keeps the rich on top and the poor on the bottom.

-The Biomimicry Institute http://biomimicryinstitute.org/about-us/what-is-biomimicry.html

-Sustainability is bad for the devolping world http://www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/SustainableDevt.pdf

-Sustainability Sparks Innovation by Lay Ying Lim

-A Paradigm Shift: Biomimicry by Philip A Reed

-Never mind all that environmental rubbish, get on with your architecture http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.884/abstract

-Against Biomimicry http://alevin.com/weblog/archives/001989.html

-Biomimicry vs Humanism by Joe Kaplinsky

-Does Biomimicry as a Tool=Sustainability http://bouncingideas.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/does-biomimicry-as-a-tool-sustainability/

Through this research, I found that it is clear that in order for Biomimicry to not become "just another fad" it has to be looked at carefully and implemented into design in such a way that it makes sense. An example of this is the Industrial Ecopark in Kalundborg, Denmark.

Today, I met with my thesis adviser to go over my abstract stating my ideas for my project. Some suggestions she had were to get more specific with my topic. As of now my thesis statement is "Biomimicry [biomimetic technology] can make architecture that is more dynamic, responsive, and efficient." One thing I have to do is come up with five extremely specific thesis statements to help direct my research. She also suggested to look at Prototypes I-III by Tom Wiscombe (http://tomwiscombe.com/project_16.html). Over the next few days I will be developing these thesis statements to narrow my research down so that it can easily be applied to an architectural project.  

I am a 5th year architecture student at Syracuse University. I'm at the beginning stages of my thesis research and have started this blog to keep track of my thoughts and ideas that I have about my topic. I'll be updating my blog twice a week, Monday's and Thursday's to document what I've researched and how I've decided to forward my thesis. I welcome all comments, suggestions, and ideas.

First starting out with thesis, I didn't really know how to begin. Eventually I figured out that I wanted to do something with technology and architecture, one idea that I had was interactive architecture and sustainable architecture. Eventually, this lead to biomimicry and the way in which it can help architecture. 

I chose to go with how biomimicry can help architecture, because it is still relatively new to architecture and it has great potential for architecture. Through my research, I've come across several different forms of biomimicry, some of which are biomimetics, bionics, bio-engineering, and biomophism. Two of these forms that I find particular interest in are bionics and biomorphism. So far several precedents that I've come across that deal with these two forms of biomimicry in vastly different ways are the Gherkin in London, Hylozoic Ground by Philip Beesley, and Syph by Arup Biomimetics. Each of these use biomimicry as a process, as something that can be created using modern technology, and something that can take the form of nature. 

Eventually, I see myself doing a large-scale project, something along the lines of an airport or a cruise ship. I'm imagining something along those lines because many people congregate there and they are not very sustainable, something which biomimicry can help with.