Oversea在海外专辑NO.12—Hou Rui 侯睿

Womb of after Life Architecture and the Technological Artifact
“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and
present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our
future.”
-David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

0  Statement

Technologies and human behaviors have been mutually interacting with each other and affecting the paths they each evolve through since the time the first tool was invented. 3D print potentially as a powerful tool to re-shape the human world and a fascinating method to redesign almost everything will tremendously change our perceptions of life, as well as death.

As what this era has turned out to be, the domination of mass production is gradually altered by the appearance of mass customization. 3D print, as an acceleration of this process, gives individuals huge amounts of chances to get involved into the transformations of the world.

As the other side of life, death is usually ignored when people talking about how a person can change the world. Deaths, especially those of ordinary people were given much less notice during and before the era of mass production, when only those spirits of powerful elites could be written into books and passed on in histories; when only gravestones were left behind and vestiges of the mortal would fade away and vanish anonymously. Funerals should never have been the end of spirits. Cemeteries are for remembrance, instead of oblivion. It is time to reconsider the issue that whether we should keep dying faintly in old conventional ways or should we find a new fashion that involves every decedent into the continuity of life.

自从人类发明了第一个工具，人类的行为与技术就一直在相互影响着对方的发展。3D打印是一种强大的工具，它能帮助人类重新塑造这个世界；3D打印也是一种迷人的方法，可以帮助我们重新设计几乎任何东西——它不仅会改变我们对生活的认识，也能够改变我们对死亡的定义。

当大工业生产从历史中淡出，定制化产品开始占领市场的时候，3D打印作为这一过程的加速器给予了个体大量的机会参与到世界的变革之中。

当我们谈论一个人能对这个世界造成多大影响的时候，人们通常都会忽略死后，而只去关注这个人生前干了什么。大生产时代以前，普通人的死亡是没有多少人关注的，那时候只有精英才会被写进历史。对普通人来讲，只有墓碑能作为他活过的证据——而墓碑最后也会逐渐消失，什么也留不下。葬礼不应该是精神的结束，而坟墓也是为了纪念而非遗忘。在这个时代，既然每个人都可以拥有定制的生活，每个人也都可以拥有定制的死亡。我们可以不再继续苍白地死去，只要能找到一种方法，将逝者重新带回这个生生不息的世界。

Life could be considered as a process from birth to death, from the combination of matter, which is flesh, and spirit, which is soul, to the separation of the two. Only during this period, a person can be treated alive, when he or she is part of the functioning living world. Not long after the flesh is depleted, the person forever leaves the world and no longer changes anything. But very few of us can have a chance to make the spirit combined to a second matter – something like books, songs, films, paintings, etc. Thus to a certain extent, part of their lives continue existing on the earth.

This fact implicates a possibility of transmitting a spirit to a second life – if there is a proper matter that can carry everything which represents a person’s spirit, the person could be taken back to the world again. From both subjective and objective aspects, memories consist of vision, audition, olfaction, gustation and tactus, among which the first three senses in most of the time compose a lively person in front of others.

But only such integration of spirit and matter is not enough to bring back a person to “life” – to the human world, a person only exists when he or she is seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched by other beings, otherwise it makes no difference whether it is alive or dead or even is real – it has to change something. There hence needs to be a process to accomplish the transition to the second life, a process that assures the spirit of being known by others.

Julia Morgan’s columbarium is a significant inspiration to creating the matter and the process. Urns as vessels contain the remains of the dead, and the architecture makes it possible for the remains to be memorized by others. If the urns could carry instead of ashes, memories, which are able to interact with the alive, they would be an ideal matter to carry lives. Further, the columbarium that consists of those memory receptacles becomes a place that allows dead spirits back to life. With the help of multi-media, all the three senses are able to be contained into a physical vessel that plays the movie of the person’s life and the songs he loves most. Also perfumes give it a chance to put in the smell of him. Then when a person approaches his face to the receptacle, he feels the decedent, he knows what kind of person the decedent used to be, he learns lessons from the stories that are told, he gets inspired when starting a new journey of his own life.

生命是从出生到死亡的一个过程，从物质与精神（即肉体与灵魂）的结合到两者的分离。只有在这个阶段，一个人是活着的，他或她参与着这个世界的运转。当肉体消耗到极限，这个人便永远离开了活着的世界，而且再也改变不了任何东西。但是我们中有一些人有机会将他们的部分精神附到第二种物质上，比如书籍，歌曲，电影，绘画等等，从而在某种程度上将他们的一部分生命延续了下去。

这就暗示了一种延续生命的可能性，即如果存在这样一种物质，它能承载一个人所有的精神，这个人就可以被重新带回这个世界上。从主观和客观两个角度来看，记忆是由视觉、听觉、嗅觉、味觉和触觉组成的。而在大多数情况下，这其中前三种知觉构成了一个旁观者眼中真实存在的人。

但简单的将这种精神与物质结合并不令一个人起死回“生”——对于人类的世界而言，一个人，只有当他被看到、听到、闻到、尝到或者触摸到的时候，他才活着，否则他和死去或不存在没有区别——他必须得能改变点什么。所以就必须存在一个过程，能将一个人带入到第二次生命的转变，这个过程能确保一个人的精神可以被他人所了解。

Julia Morgan设计的骨灰安置所为这个设想提供了非常重要的灵感。骨灰盒作为容纳残骸的容器被安置在建筑中，使他人能够在这里缅怀死者。如果骨灰盒能容纳的不只是残骸，而是可以和他人互动的记忆，那么这些骨灰盒就变成了非常理想的媒介。从而装载着这些记忆容器的骨灰安置所也变成了一个能将死者的精神带回现世的地方。在多媒体的帮助下，死者生前的影像、他的体味、他的声音都可以装载在这个容器中。当某个参观者将脸凑近这个容器的时候，他将能感受到这个死者，他将了解到死者生前是什么样的人，他将聆听死者生前的往事，他将在开始下一段人生旅程之前收获启迪。

Berkeley Pier is such a great place in Bay Area to be renovated into a neo-columbarium. It stretches out into the water for 3000 feet with the ambition to elongate farther more. The extension of the line would reach the edge of the pacific gyre which allows the process of interacting with living people to expand into the world. Also Berkeley Pier as a heterotopia is a place of neither land nor sea, part of the city but a deviation from urban lives. The pier makes it possible for the memory receptacles to be at an in-between condition – neither dead nor alive.

WOMB OF AFTER LIFE re-imagines the Berkeley Pier as a columbarium, which is fabricated from plastic harvested from the Pacific Garbage Patch, and which stores the remains of people in the Bay Area in urns made of the same material. The urns, like drift bottles, eventually find their new lives after being put back into the ocean and picked up by other people, thereby transforming the immense Pacific plastic garbage gyre into a massive columbarium itself.

The world-wide oceanic columbarium gives a chance to both the alive and the dead to communicate, heart to heart; to continue our own legends, step by step; to birth our future, on and on.

伯克利码头为旧金山湾区提供了一个绝佳的地点来探索这个命题。这个废弃的码头在水中延伸出900多米的距离，而如果延长这条直线，将会到达太平洋环流的边缘。这也为该项目提供了一个更有野心的可能性——借助太平洋环流将逝者的记忆运往世界各地，触发更多随机的遭遇，让更多的人能看到前人的故事，被启发，被改变。这样整个太平洋将会变成一个巨大的“骨灰安置所”，就像社交网络一样，建立起生者与死者生生不息的联系与精神的循环。

太平洋环流中的废旧塑料将被回收作为新的建筑材料，利用3D打印技术进行建造；同时这些材料也将用来制造“骨灰盒”，储存湾区死者生前的记忆。骨灰盒与新码头（即骨灰安置所）一起成长，最后到达太平洋环流的边缘。这些“骨灰盒”最后会像漂流瓶一样在新码头的终点被放入太平洋环流，当它们到达它们命中注定的地方，被岸边的人拾起，逝去的记忆重新被播放的时候，这些精神就得到了再生，它们再次改变了这个世界。而新码头在这个过程中就像子宫一样，孕育着死者第二次的生命。在这个既不是陆地也不是海洋的异质空间（Heterotopia）中，死者给予了建筑生命，使它生长；而储存在这个安置所里的记忆此时既没有活着，也没有死去，而是等待着从死亡走向新的生命。

1  Neo-indigenous Language

At the beginning of the Womb of after Life, a new architectural language was introduced evolving from a digital design methodology which was woven with digital fabrication methods including laser cut and 3D print. In this case, a neo-indigenous form language is created, with which a coherent vernacular design process was able to be accomplished.

The form development began with the obsession of a locally grown cactus flower indicating a variety of spatial potentials which could be further refined as architectural spaces. With the help of Modo, multiple morphs of the original model were generated maintaining the same geometrical logic abstracted from the vegetation. Hereafter a series of double skin systems were generated from the research, with multiple fascinating combinations of different skin forms.

这个项目需要引入一种符合概念的建筑语言，一种同时考虑数字建造与本土性的数字设计时代的语言。创造这种语言的方法结合了本土材料、本土工具——包括来自湾区的数字设计软件与建造机器以及本土的形态学研究。最初的灵感来自于当地的一种仙人掌花，通过提取其几何特点重新建模得到了丰富的空间潜力。在Modo的帮助下制作动画进行更深入的观察，在保持原有几何规则的前提下进行更复杂的变形，从而得出6个基本型。在此基础上进行不同组合，发展出一套双层表皮系统，产生了多样化的空间形态。

2  Aggregated Assemblies

After the discovery of different double-skin systems, the prosperity of this new form language indicated an intriguing prospect of being translated into aggregated assemblies which could be mass-produced and made of components generated from previous models. I used cutting, slipping and reintegrating to alter the forms into components. The translation was followed by a pattern study from which one of the components was chosen to move on to evolve into an enclosure system.

The aggregation assembly is part of the prototype of a moveable wall which could be further applied to a real building. The wall finally should be able to be fabricated in 3D print way, which is a more customized method to construct. In order to develop a secondary language that allows 3D print to realize a macro scale fabrication, the receptacles were redesigned as bricks, with performing structures around which created a gap space and a hexagon shape, not only to meet the assembly requirements, but also to decorate the space from the beginning.

After the two aggregation systems were designed, the metal-ceramic system transformed to the real urns and the junctions between them and the wall. The ornamental brick system altered to be the structure that creates the space and light. In this way, the whole architecture language was created and finished coherently to represent the Womb of after Life.

在这些空间形态被发展出来之后，我们试图把这种建筑语言变成能够进行批量生产、组装的元件，作为下一步定制化生产的基础。通过切割、分离、重组，这些建筑词汇变成了组件，在进行了图案研究之后其中一种可能性被筛选出来进行更深入的设计。首先这个组件作为可以重复安装的系统被做成可变的墙壁模型，在随后的设计中演变为记忆容器的原型。

但是3D打印能做到的要远超过这种简单的机械组装，所以在下一个阶段一种新的更适于3D打印的组装方式被发展出来，结构与物体一起作为一种“砖”进行累加，变成最初的墙体原型。这种穿插在物体间的空间结构为建筑语言提供了新的潜力，在接下来的设计中演化为构成建筑的主要结构与空间形态。

3  Synthesis – Columbarium of the Pacific Gyre

Typically, the whole structure is made of repetitive cells composed by elements of the performing structure, abstracted and reunited in different positions and in variable scales to adapt differentiated functioning spaces. During the construction process, the main structure which is more customized is 3D printed with plastic gathered from the pacific garbage patch, meanwhile the floors which are much easier mass produced are CNC milled. In order to integrate those two means, a series of one-of-a-kind junctions are designed, which would be 3D printed with the main structure together. In the construction process, the foundation and bottom part of the main structure is printed firstly, then lower half of the timber frames are set in the junctions. Following is the upper half of the frames and floor planks, and then the paused 3D printer would go onfinishing the rest.

整体的结构由重复的单元组成，根据不同的空间需要进行变形。在可行性研究中，为了能快速地根据不同材料的特点进行建造，将建筑分为3D打印和CNC两部分。主体结构以及空间通过3D打印来完成，构成水平结构的桁架与地板则由CNC切割的木板组成。在小尺度上通过塑料3D打印机与laser cut模拟了建造过程。

Who:  Rui Hou  侯睿
Contact:  canlandeyituo@gmail.com
作品集: http://issuu.com/canlandeyituo/docs/rui_hou_portfolio
网站:http://www.hourui-architecture.com/