Tonight we had the pleasure of hosting Jelle Feringa as the first of the IAAC Winter Lecture Series 2015. Jelle spoke about the evolution of work, recovering lost ground through the simultaneity of craft, economy and design. In particular in a context where the real-estate and following financial crises has made terrible onslaught on architectural practice.
Now, there is an emergence of new architectural practices whose new found modus operandi has a strong technological basis. A number of promising practices have been surfacing over recent years, leveraging architectural robotics beyond mere conceptual merit and stepping into the industrial arena.
In 1996, Bernard Cache’s company Objectile set up a factory utilising CNC milling machines. In 2000, architect Bill Massie built the Big Belt house, and more than a decade later companies like Facit Homes are revisiting the idea of the house as a product, where CNC is the enabling technology. Do these projects suggest a reconsideration of the objectives of early Modernism, to provide affordable and modern houses of architectural ambition? Where novel manufacturing processes, ranging from CNC to robotics are here to anew the architectural profession. To what extent is architecture’s the newfound vicinity of construction desirable, can architecture recover lost ground?
After the lecture Jelle, along with Dave Pigram, and IAAC Robotic Fabrication expert Alexandre Dubor, will all be developing a Robotic Fabrication Workshop, developing hot-wire cutting processes with the Kuka robot.