The Pylos Research project, developed by IAAC Fabrication Researcher Sofoklis Giannakopoulos, supervised by Areti Markopoulou, with the Robotic Supervision of Alexandre Dubor, is currently being exhibited in the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens as part of the 3D Printing Exhibition ”An exhibition from the future… now”.

3-D printing, of everything from houses to hearts and pretty much all you can imagine in-between, is the coming revolution. And not only for industry, but culture and creativity too.

In the first major exhibition in Greece dedicated entirely to this amazing technology, more than 100 pieces by luminaries of Art, Architecture, Fashion, Science, and Product design combine to hint at the transformed commercial, public and private spheres of tomorrow.

In the first stages of the Pylos research project a new protocol has been set up towards the investigation of the material chosen, soil, and the relative science, both physical and chemical, connected to this material.

Earth, or Soil, as a construction material, has been used since Neolithic times. The advantages of an earth – soil structure are primarily related to both environment and economy, being both secure and environmentally friendly. These constructions also offer the benefits of natural insulation, fire protection, air circulation and more, with regards to their comparison to conventional building techniques and typologies.

The project focused on the behavior of the soil when mixed with other ingredients, towards a better understanding of the material and potential composites. Each sample developed showed different behaviors, all of which have been recorded, also through the testing of their tensile strengths, to then compare these results towards the development of a prime material. So as to fulfill this phase of the research, a crash machine was developed and built. Graphs were then implemented showing the results of the relative material testing, generating a comprehensive analysis of the materials and results.

The interest to develop additive manufacturing, specifically 3d printing, as a construction method, moreover when printing with natural materials, particularly in this time of economic and environmental crisis, is undeniable. The material results obtained through the development of the first phase of this research project are extremely promising, and consequently push the interest towards the further development of the machine itself.

Digital Fabrication

Wednesday, 10th of December 2014 // 10h00 – 14h00, IaaC Main Hall

Senior Faculty:

Alexandre Dubor

Assistants:

Sofoklis Giannakopoulos

Anna Popova

Jury:

Areti Markopoulou, IAAC Academic Director

Silvia Brandi, IAAC Academic Coordinator

Edouard Cabay – Appareil & IAAC Faculty

Pablo Martinez Diez – 300.000Km/s

Luis Fraguada – IAAC Computational Expert

Luciano Bertoldi – Fab Lab BCN Manager

Anastasia Pistofidou – Fab Lab BCN AMO director

Rodrigo Aguirre – IAAC Computational Faculty

 FAB FESTIVAL

e-NABLE 3D printed prosthetic hands & 3D printing party Kachina Gosselin and Jon Schull & 3D Print Barcelona

FAB FESTIVAL

Poppy project: open-source 3D printed humanoid robot and the FabLabs Lapeyre Matthieu

DEMO @ 10:00 – 20:00 SAT, 5 JUL

“The Poppy project (http://www.poppy-project.org) aims at building an Open-source humanoid platform based on robust, flexible, easy-to-use and reproduce hardware and software. In particular, the use of 3D printing and rapid prototyping technologies is a central aspect of this project, and makes it easy and fast not only the reproduction, but also the development of morphological variants.

Poppy responds first to the scientific objective to study the role of morphol- ogy in cognitive development, in particular for motor control and human-robot interaction. It appears today that a suitable design of a robot morphology can greatly simplify control problems, increase robustness, and open new modes of interaction with the physical and social world. Thus Poppy aims to enable and simplify the experimentation, the reproduction and the modification of the mor- phology in research laboratories. It also allows collaborative working, sharing and replication of the results on these issues between laboratories. The ambition is to become a reference platform for benchmarking and dissemination of scientific results.

Thanks to its properties, this platform also meets a growing societal need: education and training in technology combining computer science, electronics

and mechanics, as well as a training tool to the emergent revolutionary 3D printing process. With its openness, its design and its rather lower cost, Poppy provides an object and a unique context for experimentation and learning of these technologies in a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach. Several experiences with Poppy in colleges, high schools, Science museums and Fablabs in France and abroad are already underway and will be discussed in the incoming sections.”

DEMO-Day @ DHUB

22nd of March

The Auditorium of DHUB will be dedicated to the elaboration and discussion of new perspectives, the relationship between user and object and new productive scenarios regarding the themes ofGLOBAL – DATA – EDITION – PROCESS – MATERIAL – HIGH vs LOW.

4pm -5.30pm // MATERIAL

IaaC will be featured in the MATERIAL section of the Day during which Masters Director Areti Markopoulou will give a talk regarding the potentials, research and investigation of 3D Printing applied to the architectural field.

IaaC will be feature along side MaterFad and HYBRIDaSCP.

We hope to see you there!

For more information on DEMO-Day, please visit:

demo.adifad.org 

Tonight at IAAC, Enrico Dini, an italian civil engineer, gave us a lecture explaining how he developed his idea of printing houses. Enrico showed some images about his first attemps, and then he explained how he figured out the whole process. Finally a debate took place and several students could ask and comment some of the issues that the lecture rise up.

3D Printing applied to a large scale is a new Construction Science.
The pages of this book are all blank and need to be written from scratch.
Building through 3D Printing means : a new machine; but, what embodiment? how big? How tall? How fast? How accurate?
A new process using new materials or old materials in a new way, but what binders? what fibers? what additives? What methods to achieve structural performance?
A new Building technique : just one? Maybe many? Which should be adopted first?
But the biggest question is : what should be done with the 3D printer, a new tool for a new architectural language? what to print? what to sell? How to design?
Freedom of Creation:
Is it really true? What are the constraints? How to solve practical matters? Printing on site or off site?
Enrico Dini has spent the past seven years facing hundreds of questions and answering roughly just a few of them.
During his lecture Enrico will explain the story of a challenging, painful, exciting invention process, still on going and full of surprises, mistakes and discoveries.
He found his way: mimicking nature.

Enrico Dini at IaaC

Lecture: “D-Shape: petrified algorythms”
30th of May // 19:30 // IAAC Auditorium // C/Pujades 102 BARCELONA

Enrico Dini is an Italian civil engineer who spent most of his career in automation and robotics for the footwear industry.
Since the late 90′s Enrico came into contact with rapid prototyping techniques used to facilitate the design of the shoes.
In 2003, while he was 3D printing a shoe sole, Enrico had a vision of this technique applied on a large scale and imagined a new free form architecture. Enrico decided to return to its original skill enriched by his experience in robotics and since then has devoted his life to developing a new construction technique based on the principles of stereolitograpy. In 2007 helped from his trusted brother Riccardo, Enrico tested successfully his large scale D-Shape printer prototype and the following year he printed the Radiolaria, the first free-form building structure ever. Today Enrico Dini is immersed in developing D-Shape, 3D Printing Building technology to bring innovation to the architecture and construction industries.

IAAC Students developed this amazing projet within the IAAC OTF program: MATAERIAL, the revolution in 3d printing! Also published in DEZEEN.

“MATAERIAL is the result of the collaborative research between Petr Novikov, Saša Jokić from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and Joris Laarman Studio. IAAC tutors representing Open Thesis Fabrication Program provided their advice and professional expertise. During the course of the research we developed a brand new digital fabrication method and a working prototype that can open a door to a number of practical applications. The method that we call Anti·gravity Object Modeling has a patent-pending status.”  Saša Jokić and Petr Novikov

MATAERIAL – a brand new method of additive manufacturing. This patent-pending method allows for creating 3D objects on any given working surface independently of its inclination and smoothness, and without a need of additional support structures. Conventional methods of additive manufacturing have been affected both by gravity and printing environment: creation of 3D objects on irregular, or non-horizontal surfaces has so far been treated as impossible . By using innovative extrusion technology we are now able to neutralize the effect of gravity during the course of the printing process. This method gives us a flexibility to create truly natural objects by making 3D curves instead of 2D layers. Unlike 2D layers that are ignorant to the structure of the object, the 3D curves can follow exact stress lines of a custom shape. Finally, our new out of the box printing method can help manufacture structures of almost any size and shape.

To check the participating Fab Labs: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2013/labs/index.html

To check student’s personal websites: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2013/students/index.html

To access to the video archive of the class: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2013/videos/index.html

To access to the Fab Academy 2013 content: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/2013/schedule/index.html

Fab Academy Barcelona first Class from Fab Lab Barcelona on Vimeo.

If you have any enquiries about the Fab Academy, please send us an email to: coordination@fabacademy.org

IAAC and the Fab Lab BCN were recently featured in a story about the future of 3D printing on TV3 Televisió de Catalunya. Tomas Diez, Project Manager in the Fab Lab BCN, and Marta Malé-Alemany, Co-Director of IAAC’s MAA Program, explained the work that went into the current exhibition on display at DHUB Barcelona, Full Print3d.

This exhibition will be on view at DHUB BCN until 22 May.