Farewell!

What have we learned?

There are many people who have said it before.  There will be many to say it after.  You are not your job.  You are not your discipline.  You are not your GPA.  You are none of those things.  You will not all learn in the same ways.  You are greater than the sum of your parts.  Thank you for making the sum of my parts so much greater.

I never got a chance to ask you all the most important question I've asked every young artist, architect, designer or engineer I've ever worked with.

There are many elements to what you do.  There is historical reference.  There is context and site.  There are material choices.  There is geometry.  There are human factors.  Tectonics.  Craft.

What is the most important element of your work?

LOVE!!!

Not that you need to love everything.  Not that you need to love what I love.  But the single most important element in your work is that you love what you're doing.  This is a macro and micro filter.  Your choices, which are always yours and you are always free to make, should include the overwhelming sense that you love them.  You believe in them.  Everything else will come into place.  So from your career to your window mullions, love what you do.

See you around...



PPS:  If you any of you want to know what we're really up to, read THIS.

Eugene Jahng | BEST ASSIGNMENT EVER

One of the design aspects of my Cinematek was the use of ETFE cushions on the roof of the entire theatre building. ETFE is a transparent plastic membrane, which is why only the roof of the theatre had to be a different material. Since my theaters were stacked and only the second theatre's roof was visible along with the transparent cushions, I decided to mimic the appearance of the ETFE roof by having a wavy, undulating ceiling for the theatre as well. The ceiling is composed of a set of alternating curves that scale larger as it reaches the end of the theatre and creates an interesting pattern alike the transparent cushions.

Along the ceiling I added tiles that also copied the wave pattern, which would be used for the reflection of sound. These would be used every other 'wave,' creating a checkerboard pattern on the ceiling only visible to the audience. These tiles would be used to reflect sound, while the exposed bits of the ceiling would absorb sound. I would imagine the ceiling to be concrete to allow for blockage of exterior noises, then covered with another layer of absorbing material. The tiles would be suspended from the ceiling.

(Image from allnoisecontrol.com)

Madhura Kharche: Final Assignment

For my tile design, I created a unit that could be multiplied at different scales to fit together and create any desired shapes. The tile is a 1’ x 1’ square with .5” thickness. 

The square shape allows it to be versatile and fit together with any scale of the same unit. The tile itself has a convex top, a portion of which is carved out to form a concave form. 

This combination, coupled with the versatility of the shape of the tile, I thought, would help create surfaces that allow sound rays to bounce off of the surface. My findings from the first part of this assignment using sonic supported that convex and concave shapes greatly influence the way sound waves bounce off of a surface.

The tile would be used as cladding on the interior walls of the theaters.

I let the tiles be thin enough to work as cladding to save material and production costs. The mass of the walls may be built with fire rated gypsum board attached to steel columns, and the tiles will be clad onto the boards.

Unit 

The multi surface sonic study shows how sound can be contained within the room  and bounced towards the insides and the back of the room using concave shaped walls.

Shannon Earnest: Best Final Assignment Ever

It is important in architectural situations such as theaters or concert halls to consider the repercussions of the activities occurring in the spaces. These panels would be placed on the walls of the theaters to trap and absorb the sound of the films playing in the rooms. They are designed in a two-part system so that a pocket of space is created between the curved tile and the wall on which they are placed. By creating this pocket of air, sound can enter the pocket and reverberate around inside of that space and be absorbed rather than bouncing off of the wall and back into the theater or other adjacent spaces.

Like a few other people, I got home and realized that Rhino conveniently wouldn't load the grasshopper plug in. However, from my experience with SONIC in the past assignments and SONIC testing that I did with my first design, I can make an educated assumption as to how the sound waves would interact with my tile surface. I believe that the sound would hit the tiles and some of it would be reflected because of the convex curved surface and the rest of the sound would hit the wall and be redirected into the pocket space that I was talking about before. To minimize the reflection of sound on the curved surfaces, I would make these tiles out of a dense foam material and then cover them in fabric. From my research, it seems that this is one of the best and most common construction methods for making acoustic paneling that absorbs sound. 

The acoustic tiles would be attached to a concrete wall using a method similar to anchor bots in which the bolt or screw is cast into the concrete and the tiles have a void for the screw to fit into and are then hooked onto the wall.

Best Final Assignment Ever - Charmaine Y

So I apparently didn't realize that I did not have the grasshopper plugin on my Mac Rhino until after I left Pittsburgh for the other side of the world, spent a long time figuring out how to access a PC or get grasshopper on my mac but it just was not working out, so I could not complete the sonic aspect (sorry :/).  I created a modular tile with an asymmetrical geometry and I envisioned that the sound rays would bounce of the longer side of the 'bumps' on the tile, giving the sound rays a certain directionality.  When aggregated, these tiles can change in direction so that sound can be reflected on both sides of the theater.  This tile will be incorporated on both sides of the theater walls where I had designed walls that were not perpendicular to both be used for acoustic purposes but also to direct people down or up the corridors in the theaters because of the directionality it can provide.

I also imagined that these modules can change in size and scale vertically to create more dynamic aesthetics when aggregated but also enhance the directionality.

The thickness of the theater walls were designed to give the feeling of being closed off within the theaters and I initially imagined these to be poured in place concrete walls and the tiles can be incorporated into this by including the mold for the acoustic panels when setting the concrete for walls.

Yasmeen Almuhanna: Best final assignment ever

As shown above, a series of hooks and cabled would attach to the back of the tile and ceiling panels. This hook and cable would allow for easy interchangeable panel installations.

The acoustic panels were developed using sonic as an algorithmic digital modeling technic. The configuration of the panels aimed to produce multi-directional sound reflections from the variable concave and convex curves. The results from the sonic simulation showcased a dispersion of sound waved that would hopefully create a diffused sound landscape within the room. The proposed material would be some mixture of residual wood product due to it's low cost and lighter weight which would work well with the suspended hook and cable system. In addition, wood is a standard material used in acoustic settings.

Aileena Gray: Best Final Assignment Ever!

I did not create small modular tiles for the acoustics within the theaters. Instead I created large (somewhat) modular pieces that act as both one whole surface and individual-pair hubs of vibration. Similar to the effect of cupping ones hands around your ears, the curved surface redirects the vibrations closer to the outsides of the curve/furthest away from the deepest point of the curve; this is the (attempted) nature of these wall partitions. The climax of each arch correspond to a tier of three sweet spot rows (the ones that typically get filled first) that in theory make for good listening. The extensions of the curves create overlap and effectively muffle the vibrations allowing for minimal disturbances as people walk in and our of the theater.

Matthew Lin: Assignment 6B

For my ceiling condition, I designed a series of flat panels that cover the ceiling of the theater.  Each are angled 15 degrees steeper than the previous, causing the end result to take a curved shape. 

When flipped upside down to be a part of the ceiling and when the rays are displayed, this is the result.

The symmetrical nature of the rays allows for an even distribution of the soundwaves throughout the theater spaces.  The panels are made out of alder, and alder, being a warm wood, puts forth a more blended tone when sound bounces off of it.With multiple panels that blend the sounds together, the theater-goer has a pleasant listening experience.

William Aldrich: Best Final Assignment Ever

So for my acoustic tile, I figured I would continue a theme that had taken over a large part of my theater design: the rasterbation which has created my facade (the name is legitimate: http://rasterbator.net/).

This is the piece from my model

My intention was to create paneled walls which would try to reflect sound from the front, to the rear; and capture more of the sound in the back to reduce any echo. So I tried finding an ordinary film-like image that would be more dense towards the rear of the theater.

The image I used

Using this image, I created my rasterbation and used it to create a system of holes along the tiled wall I created. The tiles also begin to rotate towards the front of the theater as they move back in order aid in catching the sounds in the rear.

Top View of the Tiled Wall

Front View of Tiled Wall

I then tried my theory with Sonic, and found that it was not quite as successful as I was hoping, but not completely a lost hope.

The Tile Faces

Tile Faces with Sonic Action

When more of the rays are involved, some of them do get captured in the holes created by the rasterbation. But in order to be truly effective, a better image with more holes toward the rear would probably be needed.

Screen Shot of Tile

Rendered Tile

Kirk Newton Assignment 6B

The tile for my cinematheque is designed to mitigate the monolithic quality that the ceiling has for each individual theater. The first image shows show the single surface, representative of the flat concrete ceiling surface present in the original theater disperses sound in a method that only serves those sitting in the center well.

 The flat surface disperses sound too equally, while the distributed polygons of the tiles disperse sound in a way that disguises the source of the sound. The dispersion created by the tiles obfuscates the original source of the sound, creating an immersive sound experience for moviegoers not sitting directly in the center of the theater.

Notice how the monolithic theater ceiling condition--shown in the three images to the left--radially distributes the sound in the theater. Anyone sitting in the center of the theater receives an equal level of sound in either ear. Should someone sit to the left, the sound balance will be biased towards the right ear, and vice versa. Aural discrepancies in volume play directly into where people perceive a source of sound are; in this case the aural discrepancy will heightenan audience member's awareness of their less-than-optimal seat location. Inevitably, poor sound balance detracts from the movie experience, hence the inclusion of the tiles to disguise the sound source.

The above three images show how the tiles distribute the sound into overlapping packets. While the design does not entirely mitigate the effect of a single sound source, the overlap diminishes the intensity of it. Therefore the inclusion of the tiles has the effect of making the aural experience marginally more comfortable for viewers sitting further from the optimal center-line of the theater.

The following two images show details of the tiles and their tessellated layout. The small circular perforations help with sound absorption and reduce echoes.