Monday, September 28, 2009

BENAMOR DUARTE ARCHITECTURE – (DESIGN PRACTICE)

Studio description
Benamor Duarte Architecture’s work engage the ideas of recursion, adaptation and reconstitution of formal, informal and informational protocols in different contexts. The studio’s projects have been using the bi-dimensional transposition technique as a way to explore and investigate the prefiguration of his design concepts. This method aims to develop the idea of adaptation and scale by transposing the registers of the figurative and geometry drawing techniques to the materiality of a furniture piece, a landscape or a building.
The studio was found in New York by Eduardo Benamor Duarte where in addition to his professional practice he has collaborates with several academic institutions while, he is currently design studios at the California College of the Arts.

Statement on Digital Primitive
Starting from its etymological meaning, we’ll find that the association of the two words implies the coexistence of two different realities.
Digital, implies a code providing information to attribute meaning or action to a function; and Primitive, constrains each function to a reduced set of properties.
Once articulated, these two words create an unlimited set of interdependent tools that generate multiple design solutions. Nevertheless in every Digital solution, the limitations of its variations become restricted to the reduce set of properties offered by the Primitive condition. In this case its ultimate variation can only be achieved if linked to a process of repetition.


Project 1: Rapigattoli chair
Location: Product
Date: April 2008
Client: Limited edition for Zero2
Digital tool: Rhino 4.0
Author:
Eduardo Benamor Duarte with Caterina Tiazzoldi and visualization by Lorenza Croce
Design/ fabrication
Tietz & Baccon, LLC


Description
The Rapigattoli chair is an original prototype aiming to investigate the idea of adaptation and scale by transposing on the registers of the figurative and geometry drawing techniques on the materiality of a chair.
Originally, generated from a single profile configuration encasing the seat and back, the primal profile is arrayed along the perimeter of a circumference creating the necessary surface for use. Two legs are added strategically by mirroring the first profile 45 cm above the floor. The Rapigattoli chair is built in ¾ inch birch plywood generating a wood flexion and rib structure to enhance the chair softness and lightness while changing the framing of the surrounding space: A new type of transparency is constantly created while the perception of amount of surface material is permanently altered.
The accumulation and transformation of the same rib profile is processed through a set of iterations processed with computer numeric control (CNC) pantograph transforming the rough birch plywood of the Rapigattoli Chair in a design piece.

Project 2: Coney Island Parachute Pavilion
Location: Coney Island, New York
Date: April, 2005
Client: Van Alen Institute - Open competition
Digital tools: Maya 6.0
Author: Eduardo Benamor Duarte
Design/ fabrication : CNC Laser cutter

Description
Pattern spectacle
The site of the project is surrounded by a public landscape of leisure in an attraction park. The brief emphasizes the need for a physical relationship with the adjacent boardwalk and the historical parachute infrastructure. The Program area for the pavilion is laid into a new foil providing a filter to the major pedestrian fluxes in the site Its drawn as an artificial structural landscape of slopes coiled around two distinctive tunnels: One facing the top of the pachute jumping platform; another facing the ocean.

Pattern landscape.
The program is configured along a directional orientation knot drawn according to three major per formative principles: spreading; connectivity and aggregation.
These three principles are based on typological convergences, topographical restrictions and data densities. The resulting mass emphasizes the interdependency between each function while regulating the inflection and deformation of the pavilion’s perimeter.

Pattern recognition
The building skin is configured by replicating the geometry of the Parachute structure, recreating the daily performance of the user in the inside space, configuring alternative patterns of living. The shop and exhibition space are divided in zones that overlap topographies of enclosure and open air, in intervals of space between structural steel and concrete slopes.

Project 3: Europan 7 – International housing Competition 2004
Location: Budapest
Date: June 2003
Client: EUROPAN 7 - Open Competition
Digital tools: Maya 6.0
Author: Eduardo Benamor Duarte

Description
Domestic Landscapes
The site of the project is a mixed environment of a public landscape and industrial surroundings. The Program area is laid into a new ground providing the major core for urban activities.
Its drawn as an artificial landscape of slopes with different heights and inclination offering a multitude of scales and performances.
The necessary infrastructure for the housing program is covered with slopes containing parking

Block landscape.
The housing blocks are configured along directional East West orientations drawn according to three major patterns: spreading; connectivity and aggregation.
These three principles are based on typological convergences, topographical restrictions and data densities. The resulting block is a mixed-use fluid confining and merging different types, housing services and voids. Its interdependency regulates the inflection and deformation of the block perimeter.

Structural landscape
The construction of the site is processed with the development of structural steel frame of ribs that outline the form and skin of the blocks.
In order to achieve a notorious fusion with the environmental landscape the skin of the blocks is filled with a large percentage of translucent and transparent panels enhancing the structure’s lightness and clearance.

Apartment LandscapeThe apartment are configured according to the daily performance of the user in the inside space, configuring alternative patterns of living. The apartments are divided in zones that overlap topographies of residencies and services, in intervals of space between structural steel and concrete slopes.

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