Patrick Tighe:
Urban, Green, and Socially Conscious
Patrick Tighe likes the play of opposites. The young architect wowed visitors attending the 2006 NeoCon West trade show in Los Angeles with his intepretation of Fine Living: 2026, a 1,300 square-foot concept environment produced by L.A. Mart Design Center, LA Architect and LA Inside magazines. A bold exercise in the yin-yang of design and technology, Tighe was charged to envision the urban live/work dwelling 20 years hence, unleashing his passion for architecture that’s built upon, and closely integrates, technology.
Throughout his installation Tighe set up a series of contrasts. “We started with two very different forms — a sensuous ellipse and an angular canopy — and created a dialogue between them to create the living and working spaces,” says Tighe. “We used both high-tech and sustainable materials. And we carried the idea through to the media wall, where we used extreme close-ups — like plant and blood cells — that could seem like technology images, because they’re just these beautiful abstract shapes, but they’re actually from nature.”
Giant Media Wall
Tighe’s dramatic media wall featured 15 twenty-three-inch Cinema Displays running on seven Power Mac G5s. “You walked into the installation and that wall just blew you away,” says Tighe.
Functioning as both a giant art gallery and an extension of the installation’s control center, the media wall at times featured a single, enormous tiled image; at other times it was programmed to display a constantly-changing series of pictures.
“The media wall displays both the desktop and the entertainment center so it reflects the whole live/work focus,” explains Tighe. “And being so versatile, it helped us show the whole idea of this ever-changing loft space.”
A separate Power Mac G5 and Cinema Display in the control center were conceived to work alongside third-party systems to power entertainment features, like art and music, and core functions such as lighting, security, and HV/AC. “It’s the whole smart home thing,” says Tighe.
Visitors were invited to play with it by changing the color of the LED lighting — programmed in eight modes from calm to vibrant — that defined the installation’s three live/work zones, or by choosing a song from the iPod-based music bank, easily accessed via a virtual iPod menu screen.
When set to display the control center desktop, the media wall showed visitors the active application. “We’d have someone from my firm working on Maya, so people could see our 3D model of the installation all around them on the media wall,” notes Tighe.
Integrated Technology
“I see technology as an integral part of architecture,” comments Tighe. “And it played a huge part in this installation. The Mac was fully integrated with the entire home automation scheme, so after you spent the day doing office work, you used the Mac to adapt the environment to suit another mood or another need for living.”
Of course, the Mac also helped Tighe create the Fine Living installation. He designed it in Maya on his Power Mac G5 and generated computer numerically controlled (CNC) files for his millworkers to laser-cut tricky building elements such as the 64 ribs that ring his signature ellipse. “It would have been very difficult to create that flowing, curved wall without the computer,” says Tighe.
In fact, he adds, “without the Mac, we could not have done this project.” Tighe began his brainstorming on paper, making freehand sketches and physical 3D models. Then he scanned his ideas into the Mac, where he manipulated them into more sophisticated forms. “We used Maya and PowerCADD to create drawings, render 3D models, and make construction documents,” says Tighe. “Then we did our layouts and graphics in Quark and PowerPoint. We took them everywhere — to the client’s office, the construction and engineering firms we work with, the job site — to do presentations on our PowerBook.”
