Hungarian House of Music
Architecture & Fabrication Design
Professional (2017-2019)
Overview
Office : Sou Fujimoto Architects
Team : Sou Fujimoto, Cesar Marquez Coiradas, Maria Biurrun, Rugved Rane, Roberto Sanz Asensio, Oscar Ruiz
Location : Budapest, Hungary
Status : Built
Tools : Rhino, Grasshopper, AutoCAD, Vray for Rhino
Phases : Design Development, Construction Design
Project Background
While working on the Hungarian House of Music, I coordinated with local architects and their engineering team to coordinate any roof changes that could affect the structure. Once we finished coordinating a method to build the double curvature roof, I focused on finding a way to rationalize the panels of the building’s leaf-like ceiling. This included understanding the main structure that holds the roof together and its relationship with the punctures in the roof and designing a system that uses the structure to hang triangular frames that had “leaf panels” pinned to them. I focused on creating a fabrication method by parametrically organizing every ceiling piece into CNC files in coordination with building instructions.
Photos
Below are photos of the Hungarian House of Music taken by Akos Stiller
Below are photos of the Hungarian House of Music taken by Palkó György
Below are photos of the Hungarian House of Music taken by Palkó György
Drawings
On the bottom left is a screenshot image from Rhino showing the process of understanding the relationship between the structure the local architects/engineers have made with the roof surface us designers have been tweaking. Every week, we would send the local architects/engineers updated roof and they would send us new structure that they predicted would fit below the new roof surface.
On the bottom right is a zoom-in of one of many Concave/ Convex Diagrams I would send the local architects/engineers of the roof surface overlaying the roof structure. The diagram conveys information about the relationship between the structure and the roof -- specifically it identifies where the structure intersects or is too close to the roof structure.
Roof and Structure
On the bottom left is a screenshot image from Rhino showing the process of understanding the relationship between the structure the local architects/engineers have made with the roof surface us designers have been tweaking. Every week, we would send the local architects/engineers updated roof and they would send us new structure that they predicted would fit below the new roof surface.
On the bottom right is a zoom-in of one of many Concave/ Convex Diagrams I would send the local architects/engineers of the roof surface overlaying the roof structure. The diagram conveys information about the relationship between the structure and the roof -- specifically it identifies where the structure intersects or is too close to the roof structure.
The roof is a complex 3D surface and its structure undulates to reinforce the form. The structure is made up of straight I-beams welded together. These sketches below were used to design a guideline using the blending points of straight I-beams to create a triangulated pattern that would allow the local architects to cover up the structure with entirely planar surfaces. Below are sketches used to figure out the building method. Then this was translated into a diagram of the roof structure with the triangulated pattern and was sent over to the local architects/engineers.
Below is a zoomed-out diagram of all of the blending points and planar triangulated surface on the entire roof. The blending points in the structure are shown in blue, the proposed triangulated pattern is shown in yellow and the outline of the roof/holes are show in red.
Leaf-Panel Ceiling
A main design component of the House of Music is the leaf ceiling that flows through and connects the entire ground floor. Because the ceiling is a complex surface, it was broken down into a triangular grid to create planar surfaces that a continuous structure could be based on.
Below are my sketches from when I worked on developing the drop-ceiling structure that leaf panels could be connected to. The idea was to create a parametric script that could be used to generate the leaf ceiling quickly any time we needed to make any adjustments to the plan.
Below are 3D Rhino screenshots I modeled that show how the triangulated structure elements area created around the skylight elements. And from these triangulated structures, the leaf panel elements are hung.
Below are my sketches from the process of figuring out how to parametrically build leaf panels. Once the parametric script was created, I developed a numbering system to organize and document the entire leaf ceiling.
Over time, the triangulated panel system was changed into a hexagonal panel system because the hexagons is a repetitive pattern that would simplify the fabrication process. Below is a physical prototype of how 2 different panels come together and a diagram of the new leaf ceiling system.
The final design is reflected in the rendering in the bottom left. The leaf ceiling with all the punctured skylights, held up by thin columns with an enclosed interior of transparent glass walls are meant to convey an experience of a vast tree canopy in the forest. The bottom right photo is a close-up of the leaf ceiling and one of the skylights.
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