Abstract
Texture is properties of a material as we perceive it with our senses, by touch, sight, taste and to some extent hearing. Similar to how texture is used in cooking, as a tool for composition and a gage for identification and quality in raw or cooked material, texture could be used with materials for architecture. Experiencing architecture, just like eating food, is an experienced event that can be directed with texture as a narrating element.
The method developed within this thesis is a modelling tool that extends beyond modelling geometries to a detailed texture modelling scale. This thesis considers texture a variable equal, and similar, to form. Textures are made up by patterns that can be altered and describe different material properties. Applied on different geometries the combination of texture and form offers additional multisensory dimensions to a modelled form.
This thesis explores and creates textures, using digital parametric modelling tools and digital tools for texture creation. For texture building and editing, a software called Substance Designer is used. With this tool a texture is created using greyscale bitmaps and image editing tools to set up height-, normal-, roughness- and colormaps that describe a digital texture. Each map holds different attributes of a texture and by manipulating patterns and alternate its application in different maps, this method offers detailed control over texture properties and an alternative way of modelling digital representations of architecture.
The method is tested and materialized by experiments in a restaurant design testbed. A restaurant consists of different elements or settings that fill a role in a directed experience. Site and context, in part, offers reference materials as source for extractable properties to be used to create textures holding associative powers derived from multisensory experiences. Restaurant narratives and settings inform the layout of functions and spaces as well as forms and textures. The result of the experiment is architectural implementations of directing with form and texture, at scales ranging from building in a city scale to an intimate tactile scale.
Research Statements
Texture in architecture is either a conscious choice that determines material, or a consequence of material choices and techniques for working with those materials. Either way texture is linked to, or constrained by, physical materials and practical implications of working with physical materials.
Many materials for construction that are mass produced have quite poor textural qualities in the sense that texture quality is in many ways perceived by its complexity and variation. Naturally, slowly grown, or site specifically produced materials have the economical odds stacked against them compared to standardized and mass-produced products of the building industry.
These practical implications limit the creativity of a design process focused on texture in that it requires knowledge of and experience with working with a specific material and the financial means to experiment with expensive materials and expertise.
Cooking is in many ways not limited by this as cooks are by profession experts in their materials. Preparing food is all about chemical experimentation with materials to achieve specific textural outcomes. Raw foods are a lot cheaper than materials for construction and the costs for failed experiments are miniscule and part of any cooks training.
Digital tools for creating material representations are developing quickly both for industry and amateur community, supporting game development, the film industry and architectural and other visualizations. These tools usually center around creating accurate representations of real-life materials. As the tools have developed, with more detailed control over texture qualities and application on 3D modelled geometry, they have become more viable earlier in the design process, as a sketching tool for exploring and modelling.
Working with detailed maps of patterns that make up a texture is a way of familiarizing oneself to a material, similar to how sketching a portrait reveals delicate lines and features that make up the character of that person’s face. This intimate knowledge of material and texture is an integral part of any cook’s experience and would probably be useful to architects as well.
Research Questions
- Can attitudes and methods for working with texture in cooking be translated to architecture?
- How can texture, applied to form, be used to direct architecture?
- Can detailed and abstract texture creation and exploration give a more conscious and intimate knowledge of material design?
Aims and Delimitations
This thesis presents a method developed for directing architecture by creating digital texture and applying that texture to form. The method is tested and visualized on a restaurant design. This method seeks to avoid the practical limits of working with physical materials as the design process is entirely digital to lower the bar for textural experimenting. While also creating a more intimate knowledge of the properties that a texture consists of.
The method intends to create narrating architectural elements; that is built forms with texture, relating to space or enveloping space. Narrative in this context implies associations evoked by multisensory experience of said element. By creating textures by layering and tampering with patterns and properties, and by applying those textures to forms, representations of multisensory architecture is produced. After a digital texture is produced one could proceed to try and find a suitable physical material and techniques to achieve the desired texture. This thesis does not take that step but remains at creating digital renderings and representations. This is to avoid constraints connected to available tools for working with different materials, material cost and cost in time.
The aim/purpose of the method is to find ways to direct architecture:
- by exploring and producing texture and form, working in tandem,
- by linking some forms to certain textures while contrasting to other forms and textures, and
- by layering detailed patterns in different maps of properties, achieve complexity that spans through multiple senses. These maps contain properties that make up shapes of haptic information, surface tactility, color information and reflection or absorption of light.
The method is then tested at a restaurant design. The design focuses on different scales and spatial settings to visualize the diversity of applications this method can be used for. Developing the restaurant itself, as a typology, or the narratives that comes with it, is not the goal for this thesis. The restaurant as a design project was chosen because it is a complex building with regards to spatial setting and a multitude of relations to humans that work, eat, meet and enjoy themselves in the same building. This offers a variety of architectural elements that are programmable by texture and form.
Multisensory experience, as is implied within this thesis, consists of visual and touch (haptic, or kinesthetic and tactile) experiences. Taste, smell and hearing has been left out. The method developed in the thesis involves modelling architectural elements and texture. Visual and touch experiences relate to three dimensional forms that can be modelled whereas taste and smell relates to completely different dimensions. Hearing does relate to form, space and texture as well, but it involves technical knowledge and aspects that does not fit within the context of this thesis.