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Close to the Body // Workshop

IAAC Advanced Interaction students along with ESDi students and Estruch artists participated in the Close to the Body workshop, with Oscar Tomico from the Designing Quality in Interaction Research Group at the Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, in order to research the design wearable’s, the material, the body and performativity

Close To The Body, a project that explores the emerging space offers smart textile technology to investigate the dynamic relationship between the body, textiles and the environment, investigated how the body influences the material and vice versa during the workshop.

Photo credits: Oscar Tomico

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NEWS INTERFACES SEMINAR // Final Presentation

The New Interfaces Seminar, led by Luis E. Fraguada, invited the MAA Students to Gamify their projects with Unity. This very interesting and fun four-day workshop was the first time Unity has been integrated in the masters program. The out come was a good dose of C# programming and some special effects, and the projects presented ranged from immerse environments to educational games that explain issues of the studio projects.

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Sense It 6-AXIS workshop // IAAC | Fab Lab Bcn @ RobArch2014

This year at RobArch2014, Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design, IAAC|Fab Lab Barcelona – Alexandre Dubor and Guillem Caprodon – along with Make it Locally – Gabriel Bello Diaz – and the University of Michigan – Ellie Abrons and Adam Fure -, are running the Sense-It 6-Axis Workshop at the University of Michigan.

Sense-It explores the potentials of materially-directed generative fabrication through an integration of research in robotic sensing, plastic deposition, and generative code. This approach tests the limits of a machine-material-sensor interface to act autonomously, without direct adjustments from an observing operator, and capitalizes on sensor responsiveness and material agency to produce unpredictable outcomes. This workshop moves away from optimization and efficiency as the primary drivers of digital fabrication in pursuit of a model where materials assume maximum agency in the fabrication process. Feedback loops between machining parameters, real-time sensors, and plastic deposition will infuse the workshop results with both intelligence and an intentional instability, where the outcomes can be guided but never fully predicted.

The Workshop participants are working in groups of three to four with Arduino microcontrollers, basic electronic components, and sensors to developing their own logic for the workshop’s unique sensor-deposition workflow. Manipulating simple code in Kuka Robot Language (KRL) and Arduinos, each group is testing physical deposition patterns using the sensor of their choice. Through design strategies comprised of small adjustments to the workflow’s many parameters—robot movements, speed of actuation, limits of sensor data, etc.—catalogue of possible outcomes is being created.

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PRACTISE FABRICATION // LIGHTWEIGHT STRUCTURES 1:1 // day 1 to 3

The Practise Fabrication // Lightweight Structures 1:1 Seminar, led by Silvia Brandi and Rodrigo Rubio, with the collaboration of Pepe Ballesteros (Prototipolab) and Maria Kupstova, is focused on the digital fabrication of lightweight 1:1 scale spatial installations, based on the expertise of Experimental Structures, and the further development of some concepts proposed in Public Space Capsules Seminar from Term 2.

The aim of the Seminar is to realize lightweight spatial installations (embedding textile materials) that are demountable, digitally fabricated, and eventually performative.

The students have formed 4 different groups, each one working on a different structural prototype implementation. In these first 3 days of the seminar each group worked their concept design, testing the structural capacities through the production of small scale prototypes.

The course counts on the collaboration of the company SERGE FERRARI, an international producer of flexible composite materials and membranes of high performances for architecture, who will provide the material for the construction.

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EXTENDED SKIN // EXPERIMENTAL TEXTILE DESIGN WORKSHOP

extended-skin_purple

IAAC | Fab Lab Barcelona with fabtextiles.org and pratipo.orginvite you to a first open and free session: Introduction and demo

We are proposing a workshop directed to all those who wish fully develop a project that combies digital fabrications technologies and interactive capacities (physical computation).

Since in the 30′s modern reprogrammable computers were theorised, these have gone from mainstream to cellular and from isolated machines to nodes of the Web. These two propoerties – miniaturization and hyperconectivity – announce a new state of invisible ubiquity for devices that consume+produce information. A state of fusion with a tangible world that surrounds us, where our body is the last border.

Digital fabrication technologies allow us to prototype this integration between wearables and technology towards information|interaction.

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PRACTISE FABRICATION // BRICK WORKS THIN-TILE VAULT // day 3

Day three of the Brick Works Thin-Tile Vault Seminar – and second day on the site – kicked off with a collective effort to finish the wooden formwork. Once finished, the wooden formwork was carried and installed to the site, a process that required a lot of manual labour. Laser-cut cardboard pieces that will be used as guides for the construction process were then attached to the wood. The concrete foundations were laid, always keeping in mind the protection of the soil, as the site is situated in the heart of the Collserola natural park. Sheets of plastic were introduced before the concrete was poured, in order to prevent contamination.

After a full day of hard work, students and staff set up a sunday barbecue in the Masia terrace, while the sun was setting behind Montserrat.

Most preparations are now over and construction with bricks can start in the next session, a week from now.

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ALFREDO BRILLEMBOURG // Radical Urbanism: A Search for a New Architecture

Tonight we had the pleasure of hosting Alfredo Brillembourg, as part of the IAAC Spring Lecture Series, presenting his concepts of Radical Urbanism  and the search for a new architecture.

Mr Brillembourg presented Urban-Think Tank (U-TT), an interdisciplinary design practice dedicated to high-level research and design on a variety of subjects, concerned with contemporary architecture and urbanism. The philosophy of U-TT is to deliver innovative yet practical solutions through the combined skills of architects, civil engineers, environmental planners, landscape architects, and communication specialists. U-TT’s work concerns both theoretical and practical applications within architecture and urban planning. Working in global contexts by creating bridges between first world industry and third world, informal urban areas, they focus on the education and development of a new generation of professionals, who will transform cities in the 21st century.

This was elaborated during the lecture through the presentation of a series of key projects regarding Public Buildings, Infrastructure and Housing projects, with the aim of confronting realities to create realisable utopias, pushing designers to step out of their comfort zones and onto the ground, giving up the concept of “signature architecture”, and ultimately designing structures that will be finished by others, according to the specific needs at hand, transforming architecture into a moderator.

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