Archives / 2012 / February

Pietilä Prize 2012

Rakennustietosäätio [Building Information Foundation] has awarded the 2012 Pietilä Prize for architect Eero Lundén and architect Toni Österlund. The Rakennustietosäätiö’s board of directors award the Pietilä Prize every other year to a young architect or a group in recognition of the remarkable work done in reforming architecture. The prize is awarded from the architect Reima Pietilä’s fund. This year’s jury included architects Pauno Narjus (Chairman), Anssi Lassila and Jukka Kullberg.

More information in here (in Finnish).
More pictures here.

Valotarina [LightStories] website launched for controlling street lights in Oulu

The Valotarina website [LightStories] opened finally today, allowing people to control and tell strories using the Pakkahuoneenkatu luminaires at the city of Oulu, Finland. Valotarina is part of the Adaptive Urban Lighting – Algorithm Aided Lighting Design research project.

The set up of the Valotarina site and the linkage of the site and the lighting control unit has been an exiting task that has demanded to search for and develop a common interface for these two elements that normally are unaware of each other’s existance. The process has required extensive scripting on the lighting control unit in order to create the different effects that users can select, their functionality and interactivity.

Here is an excerpt from the English press release:

Would you like to tell a story or send a message using light? During February (5-29 Feb 2012),  the LED stripes of the Pakkahuoneenkatu street lights in the city centre of Oulu are telling the stories, messages or greetings of city inhabitants in the form of LightStories. Anyone can book a time slot of one hour to design their own lighting scheme.

Each participant can create their LightStory with an easy-to-use web interface (www.valotarina.fi), where they can book a suitable time for their story and create a lighting design by choosing the colours displayed, as well as how and at which tempo they change. Additionally, users write a story, a message or a greeting, which relates to their lighting design. These stories are visible on the LightStories website and on the public UBI touchscreens in the city centre of Oulu. Real-time video of the street is also displayed to illustrate the current story for the website and UBI touchscreen users.

Rakennusfoorumi [Building Forum] discussion event

The Finnish Rakennustietosäätiö [Building Information Group] is holding a discussion event called Rakennusfoorumi [Building Forum] 7th of February 2012. The topic is Jäähyväiset laatikoille? – uutta arkkitehtuuria etsimässä [Goodbye to boxes? – in search of new architecture] and the speakers include Tapani Launis, Tomi Henttinen, Toni Österlund and Eero Lundén. Rakennusfoorumi is an unofficial discussion event, where the speakers raise issues, provide questions and even provoke to challenge the view’s of the audience.

More info in here (in Finnish).

The presentation can found here (in English)

Workshop11 completed

The Digital Design & Research – workshop11 has now been completed and with great results! 15 students participated and acquired skills necessary to use new digital design methods and software.

This year’s workshop was a part of a continuum of workshops, held at the University of Oulu, architectural department since 2008. This year the workshop focused on the use of Rhino+Grasshopper in ecological architectural concept designs, where external environmental forces are used in the creation of architectural concept. The workshop participants also studied the digital design of complex steel structures and facades, and the manufacturing process of them. The results from this year’s workshop are very promising as this is the first year, this workshop has been taught using Grashhopper, previously it has been taught using Rhinoscript. Results of workshop11 will be added later to the workshops part of the portfolio page.

Workshop11 was a part of two course combination, where participants learned to use digital design methods, algorithmic thinking and parametric modeling. The first exercise focused on mapping the existing parameters of a building location and their use in the formulation of a building concept. The second exercise was to study the pavilion concept further, paying close attention to the manufacturing possibilities and modeling accuracy of the construction components in the manufacturing level . These components will be later manufactured into physical objects to test out the link between digital design and digital manufacturing.
 

Digital Design & Research:

Rhino+Grasshopper basics course was taught by architecture student Tuulikki Tanska.
Workshop11 was taught by architect Toni Österlund and tutored by architect Sauli Kosonen and architecture student Tuulikki Tanska.