Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa

Gaudi’s NYC Skyscraper: Inhabiting the city skyline, 2024

Robotic Incremental Metal Forming Installation

Arts in the Park Program, NYC Parks

May 18th 2024 – May 19rd 2024

New York, New York, May 19th 2024 – #Art in the Parks Program: Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa’s research on robotic metal forming was developed as an ultra-thin shell structure installation implementing Big Data, Simulation and AI including along the process a group of research students. The installation was inaugurated this Saturday May 18-19th 2024 in parallel to NYC Design Week and as part of the Art in the Parks Program.

Gaudi’s (1852-1926) 1908 skyscraper for NYC is reinterpreted as a prototype based on concatenated structural catenaries actualized as signal feedback simulation/optimization across generations conforming an Artificial Neural Network. Gaudi’s catenaries are a form of evidence based analog design simulation in which a catenary of gravitational forces is inverted to design a structural form finding process. New York City can be defined as an ideal city in search for vertical infinity. Several buildings like the Chrysler building define such ideal in different forms, from aluminum reflective multiple generations of crowns and spires accentuating the vertical perspectival illusion. The installation expands critically the ideal search for vertical infinity that defines New York City’s urban project of the fields of skyscrapers in Jersey City, Manhattan and Brooklyn viewed from the Stapleton Waterfront Park. Sometimes people may wonder what it would be to live in a building’s crown, cupula, or spire. Critiquing the utilitarian aspect of skyscrapers as real estate optimization and the social segregation of vertical class stratification, the installation proposes an ideal different skyscraper structural typology as a functionally voided structure-space-envelope, making the skyline buildings top inhabitable, reachable and experiential displacing it into a social and visual art piece being able to inhabit a building crowning, cupula, dome or in this case a catenary-based dome like structure. The installation also proposes a different structural prototype for a skyscraper based on Gaudi’s explorations that can implement catenaries to optimize a construction system based on catenary slabs. The skyscraper is redefined by a catenary vertical curvature unreachable infinity.

The installation reinterprets Gaudi’s skyscraper project for NYC through survey and analysis of his work, including simulation of catenaries and concatenated catenaries activating problems of simulation of simulation including signal feedback aiming at activating an Artificial Neural Network. The installation develops a critical analysis of Gaudi’s work: comparing survey evidence in his built Sagrada Familia in Barcelona in relation to evidence-based computer structural simulations and AI simulation predictions. The project integrates mathematics, physics, and AI (data + model). It integrates Machine Learning repository training, Generative AI DM and 2D to 3D estimation and prediction as well as AI features. These features also index the signal of their robotic construction system. In addition, a virtual catenary is present but not built and tensions structural stress adding inertia to the structural performance of the installation proposing a set of infinite generations of concatenated catenaries accentuating a perspectival vertical growth. The installation includes machine vision direct signal survey, indexed signals from a 3D scanning of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia 3D photogrammetry and generative AI. These various methods applying multiple definitions of AI are integrated into a form of anaesthetics both researching latent problems in Gaudi’s work, developing a data repository and training, and opening them up into an expanded set of possible futures, aiming at critiquing current issues of authorship and biases raised by the current Big Tech’s Digital Feudalism.

The installation proposes a simple three support system canopy that spans 8’ in length by 6’ wide and 12’ height through a thin shell structure-envelope. The installation activates a thin shell structural typology but also its tiling subdivision increases the structural inertia of the thin shell surface through origami folding. The installation is based on a non-standard customized robotic incremental metal forming technique which actualizes catenary forces through the robotic movement and forces pairing computational signs and computational simulation signals into actual fabrication robotic physical signals. The robotic signals activate a structural reality expanding and critiquing the digital computational design process making it real performative. The material is 100% recycled aluminum alloy of 0.022” thickness, making the thin shell structure extremely thin and efficient as well as a high-technology performance structure due to the capacity given by the incremental forming. The incremental forming activates a type of site-based computation in which each signal activates the context for the following signal creating the catenaries. The tiles increase the lower dimensional mesh subdivision that optimizes a stress diagram into a double curvature higher dimensional panel. The fabricated tiles activate catenaries at various scales from conforming larger catenaries increasing the double curvature dimension of the installation to individual tiles curvature deviating from the main structure to add inertia, to crease folds, to buckling including at the detail level which are visual features that have structural capacity.

For more information and details about the research please refer to the book: Lorenzo-Eiroa, Pablo “Digital Signifiers in an Architecture of Information: From Big Data and Simulation to Artificial Intelligence”, Routledge, London 2023.

The installation which was possible thanks to the Art in the Park program by NYC Parks was installed in Stapleton Waterfront Park this past weekend May 18th-19th in Staten Island looking to the skylines of Jersey City, Downtown NYC Manhattan, downtown Brooklyn and Verrazano Bridge.

#ArtintheParks
Gaudi (1852-1926) 1908 skyscraper for NYC is reinterpreted as a prototype based on structural concatenated catenaries actualized as signal feedback simulation/optimization across generations conforming an Artificial Neural Network.

Credits:
Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa (artist, PI, copyright, photos);

Mike Saad (RA); Yashraj Chauhan, Arefin Chisty, Selin Dastan, Jacob Sam; Meraj Nasir, Karan Patel, Alejandro Romero, Amisha Bavadiya, Jahan Selim, (RS) MS ACT Program SoAD NYIT.

Sponsored by NYIT ISRC

NYC Parks Senior Public Art Coordinator: Elizabeth Masella

Acknowledgements for the OSPAR team, Vice Provost for Research Jared Littman, Senior Grants Manager and IRB Administrator Eileen Gazzola; Dean of the School of Architecture and Design Maria Perbellini and the Fab Lab team at the SoAD at the New York Institute of Technology for the support provided.
 

The installation as an empty skyscraper envelope measuring NYC skyline through its void

Measuring NYC skyline spires, crownings from Stapleton Waterfront Park

The installation ichnography measuring NYC skyline domes, cupulas, crownings, spires

Inhabiting NYC skyline through "Lobotomy" interior dome

2D to 3D perspectival estimation and prediction AI: original index signal LiDAR 3D scanning from Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, AI DM 2D interpolation generative AI

Metal forming physics data deviating from simulation ideal model: Form finding site-based physical computation signal processing against originating 3D ideal simulation model

2022-02 Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa's Research on Artificial Intelligence activates Generative AI discovering clues to activate emergent programming through feature recognition and convolution in Diffusion Models. The work of Gaudi is expanded in this repository searching for clues to activate structural feature recognition and 2D pixel to pixel 3D spatial simulation. Installation building for NYC, 2022. MJ, DM, Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa

Diffusion Models AI images retrieved via API through MidJourney. We understand that MidJourney breaks international copyright laws by retrieving copyrighted material. We did as much as we could to work out images we know are of free copyright in this case to expand the work of Gaudi through our own images as prompts.

For more information and description of the research and findings refer to the book "Digital Signifiers in an Architecture of Information: From Big Data and Simulation to Artificial Intelligence", Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa, Routledge, London 2023 and different media features of the project: