Capturing a Ripple. 01b
MA Architecture: Intro to Fifth Year.

This is a short one week project to get us warmed up for the academic year. This project follows on from Capturing a Ripple 01a. This set of exercises aim to predict the behaviour of a ripple through geometry. If we can predict its behaviour we can begin manipulate the ripple to act how we want and cause effects that we want.

here are a few images from the second week of the 2 week project we had at the beginning of the new term…

Above: these are a series of playful tests trying to understand the behaviour of the water. By obstructing the path of water the ripples can be dictated. Each series of images represent just under half a second of time.

by tracing the ripple I worked out how the ripple behave relative to the obstructions – so I decided to create a random situation by placing the different obstructions into random places within the boundary. I then predicted how the ripples would behave by following the rules I had made from the previous drawing. Below are the results….

verdict: it was close… enough! the prediction I made following the rules I had made from the previous experiment actually produced a quite accurate prediction – however, it did not take into account the interference caused by the more perpendicular obstructions. Also, these experiments were not carried out in any lab conditions (far from!) so there were many variables (amount of water poured, accurate water entry etc…)

switching the scale.

applying the same principle into the urban fabric. ok – I have fabricated a fake scenario (one which is unbelievable – well at least seems so at the moment!)

the idea behind this was to show how the urban fabric would begin to adjust/adapt itself to the forces created by the ripples. Where there places of ripple shadow would be places of opportunity for easy construction. However, the idea of the ripple and its shadow can be multi scalar and self initiated. The scenario above shows a scenario closer to a massive bomb in a flooded copenhagen, but the ripples can be caused by a leaf falling on the water, and the shadow can be made from a door frame.

and as a very loose link – but to something that I find interesting… how can I three dimensionalise this idea… maybe like this!

This is non-newtonian fluid. It reacts to the different frequencies pumped through the speaker. My initial thoughts were can you dictate the “flow” of this semi solid/fluid material by simply created a frame work that is needs to grow around to create space? Along side this thought was the idea of the composer. By playing different frequencies you can achieve different effects (I have never done this but I am assuming the different effects would be related to growth speed, height of growth etc.) This means you can begin to create different spaces depending on the different frequencies played. The architect must compose a track of different frequencies to achieve different things – or maybe has to compose a track of varying frequencies just to keep this fluid erect as gravity is always working against it. Obviously, these experiments are on a very small scale, and I highly doubt you can achieve something like this at a much larger scale… but ideas have to start from somewhere!

If you want to see what this can achieve on a larger scale see the video below! I was thinking, why don’t they just use this in gyms!? Why do we use treadmills when you have non-newtonian fluid where you have to keep moving on it, otherwise you will be eaten by the ground… haha!