DISPARALLEL SPACES is an architectural design exhibition showcasing creative digital design techniques. It explores how the coupling of architectural design with digital modelling and fabrication methods allows a deeper comprehension and experience of space and form. These novel designs are created with the freedom of innovation, interpretation, and definition without boundaries. The notion of non-conformity is the core of this collection of works, held together by the idea of spatial concepts in disparallel configurations and unconventional methods in the process of design. Creative use of computer-aided architectural design tools, scripting, parametric design techniques and fabrication, as well as a crossover media drive the works in its spatial and visual qualities. Knowledgeable employment of these tools in sophisticated and unorthodox ways has been demonstrated in the collection.

Credit: Students of the Bachelor of Architecture program at Sydney University
Studio instructors:
Dr. Marc Aurel Schnabel, Zayad Motlib, Patrick Keane, Damien Butler

In 1810, Goethe produced his “Theory of Colours”. Goethe ignored wavelength. Instead, his work was aimed at perceptual relations and particular phenomena. He described the experience of fixing his eyes on bright flowers, then looking at a gravel path and seeing it studded with spots of the opposite colours. The afterimage of marigolds is a vivid blue, while that of peonies is a beautiful green. This constant law of complementary colour phenomena was observed acting on the whole retina. Goethe wrote “If we look long through a blue pane of glass, everything afterwards appears in sunshine to the naked eye, even if the sky is gray and the scene colourless”.

Animated shadows is an experimental formation employing the reflections and refractions of the different colours of the light on a cliff face. By virtue of its orientation as well as its proximity to the ocean water, a cliff face can display variety of colours. Stone, metal, and glass are composed as interlocking blades, creating overlapping spaces animating the reflected light. Coloured shards of glass are inserted between them, filtering the sunlight into different colours, and patterning the walls with their effect. Each space begins as neutral space, silent space, animated through its specific light pattern throughout the day. A journey throughout those spaces is an encounter to Goethe’s “Theory of Colours” and its effect on a cliff face perception.

Project's team: Zayad Motlib

"The Basis of the Universe Isn’t Matter or Energy ... It’s Data"  - James Gleick - WIRED

The space where we live can be monitored in many ways and it appears, even more, to be in a state of flux - a gradient of data in continuous evolution and change. Our understanding of the surrounding environment is improving everyday due to our ability to scan and sample the environment around us at increasing resolution using better technologies and sensors. Hence the space is revealed, beyond its physical boundaries, as an ever-changing data field.

Dubai airport is evolving as a central aviation hub for the Middle East. Number of flights is continuously increasing towards Expo 2020. Inspired by the self-organizing principle of Stigmergy[1] as observed in social insects and human behavior, Aviated Stigmergy is a data-processing system designed to use public aviation data to simulate passengers and flights movements to different destinations. Throughout the integration of computer open-source software, agents –based system was generated to simulate passengers density, and configured to allow agents to move and interact based on the Stigmergy principle to connect Dubai with the different destinations around the world.

Project’s team: Zayad Motlib, Marta Krivosheek

Tashkeel Studio, Nad AlShiba -Dubai

A collection of 3d printed pieces, along with relevant sketches and rendering demonstrating process development from hand sketches, generation of 3d printed models for concept development, to final rendering showing the pieces in full scale. The collection includes a variety of pieces of different scale and nature from experimental studies, jewelry design, to furniture and architecture.

Part 2 of the exhibition is a dress design done in collaboration with fashion designer Kay Li. The dress concept was inspired by the voronoi pattern we designed for the open plaza of the Jumeirah Gardens mixed-use project. The pattern was modified for a dress design using the same algorithm that generated it, thus merging processes between fashion and architecture.