TRANSFORMATION OF FORM

INTRODUCTION
“Architecture is way of seeing the world, a way of understanding of how people,
places and things can operate together and enhance one another.”
Transformable architecture is a suitable strategy for buildings and architectural
structures that need to be reconfigured, either by being folded to a compact form
for ease of erection and transportation or by changing their geometry and shape, in
order to be able to respond to altering functional and aesthetic requirements. One
of the crucial needs for architecture in the changing world is to respond to the
changing requirements of its users and to allow them to experience their
architectural ambition in reality through involvement in the architectural design
process. Transformability can be considered as an important way to respond to the
building user’s ambitions. There is also a general trend toward the design of
buildings that interact with the environment so that they can save energy and
reduce running cost. Transformable architecture can create an innovative, dynamic
space in which users have more opportunities to effectively make use of changes in
their surrounding environment. It also opens a way to meet environmental needs and
even to generate unexpected situations. For example, designers can convey
historical, social and political messages through transformation. Therefore, it is
true to say that transformability is not only important from an architectural point
view but it is a crucial step toward improving human creativity and understanding.
In this paper the main characteristics of transformable architecture are considered
in two main categories of human perception and experiences and the creation of
intelligent spaces.
During the last two decades the history of modern architecture
has been one of sorting out, developing, and transforming possibilities implicit at
the beginning. What has changed more than architectural practice is the way we see
buildings and talk about them. Underlying the change is the feeling, widespread but
by no means is universal, that the modern movement in architecture as understood by
its pioneers now over. That change in attitude describes a hope (or a fear) rather
than a fact, and it also focuses attention on the nature of modernism. It is
unlikely that anyone can offer a definition of modern architecture to which there
are no exceptions. But at the beginning of the modern movement one commitment
emerged preeminent. Modern architecture, like engineering, sought to deal only with
the truths of structure and function. It wanted all architectural pleasures to
derive from the straightforward encounter with necessity. Architectural fictions,
the play of unnecessary forms with which the historic styles sought to transcend
necessity, were rejected as unworthy. That at least describes an essential
characteristic of what came to be called the International Style, to which the most
important exception was Expressionism in its various national modes— the loser, for
a time, in the wars of persuasion. But an architecture based on objective analysis
alone is impossible — emotionally, logically, and even technically. Modern
architecture has thus had a history of trying to escape from the internal contra
dictions of its own philosophy. Its forms have had to be justified according to
determinist doctrines which the forms themselves contradict. For the most part
those forms have remained within the reductionist parameters of engineering and
technology, modified from year to year by developments in modern painting and
sculpture, by the accelerated international publication of projects and built work,
and by a quantity of building activity around the world without precedent in human
history.
Modern architecture tends to develop by a process of
exaggeration. If the structural elements of a particularly striking work are too
thin or too fat, the first wave of imitations will make them thinner or fatter; the
second wave will try to do the same with all remaining elements.This process,
perhaps unconscious, exerts a centrifugal force on coherent systems of design and
ultimately reduces them to parodies. Attention then turns to the design of
individual elements that can be elaborated without dependence on any single mode of
architectural coherence. Windows, roofs, parapets -any element that can be isolated
from a larger system can also be made to generate its own system.
“Architectural form is the point of contact between mass and space … Architectural
forms, textures, materials, modulation of light and shade, color, all combine to
inject a quality or spirit that articulates space. The quality of the architecture
will be determined by the skill of the designer in using and relating these
elements, both in the interior spaces and in the spaces around buildings”.

Trans
All other forms can be understood to be transformations of the primary solids,
variations which are generated by the manipulation of one or more dimensions or by
the addition or subtraction of elements.Dimensional
Transformation
A form can be transformed by altering one or more of its dimensions and still
retain as a member of a family of a form. A cube, for example, can be transformed
into similar prismatic forms through discrete changes in height, width, or length.
It can be compressed into a planner form or be stretched out into a linear one.
Subtractive Transformation:
A form can be transformed by subtracting a portion of its volume. Depending on the
extend of the subtractive process, the form can retain its initial identify or be
transformed into a form of another family. For example, a cube can retain its
identify as a cube even though a portion of it is removed, or be transformed into a
series of regular polyhedrons that begin to approximate a sphere.
Additive Transformation:
A form can be transformed by addition of elements to its volume. The nature of the
additive process and the number and relative sizes of the elements being attached
determine whether the identity of the initial form is altered or retained.