IAAC|Fab Lab Barcelona is pleased to announce the Smart Citizen Open Thursdays cycle.

The cycle will start next Thursday, November 13th, marking the beginning of a series of regular meetings of the SmartCitizen community.

These meetings will take place at Hangar and will be open for both users and the general audience interested in the SmartCitizen movement.

Open Thursdays will offer workshops and lectures on the different technologies, sensors and software used, as well as discussion forums, working groups and troubleshooting.

Where: at Hangar, c/Emilia Coranty 16, 08018 Barcelona, Spain.

When: every thursday from 19.00 hours.

In this first opening session, the Project’s Founders will present the Smart Citizen project, as well as explaining the hardware and technology used for the project’s development.

Join us!

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.

Nowadays the physical computation, the electronics and the new technologies every time have more presence in the architecture. Some items, like the systems of optimization of energy, the light installations that increase architectural elements with the use extended of the LED, or devices that extract information of the environment and apply it in a creative form to the buildings, and sensitive spaces that react to the persons, they are some examples of applications of the technology in this field.

Open source electronics such as Arduino and online communities have helped in the generalization and democratization of knowledge in the last decade. This technology has endowed architects, designers and artists with cheap, powerful tools, as well as being incredibly easy use towards the development of ideas in a rapid and efficient form without the need of contract the services to external companies or investing big quantities of money in environments of development that are expensive and inflexible.

Using these techniques the students presented their projects consisting in the design and development of a physical module with common elements creating an interactive application together, as well as a modular and scalable system.

Massimo Banzi is the co-founder of the Arduino project. He is an Interaction Designer, Educator and Open Source Hardware advocate. He has worked as a consultant for clients such as: Prada, Artemide, Persol, Whirlpool, V&A Museum and Adidas.

Massimo started the first FabLab in Italy which led to the creation of Officine Arduino, a FabLab/Makerspace based in Torino.

He spent 4 years at the Interaction Design Institue Ivrea as Associate Professor. Massimo has taught workshops and has been a guest speaker at institutions allover the world.

Before joining IDII he was CTO for the Seat Ventures incubator. He spent many years working as a software architect,both in Milan and London, on projects for clients like Italia Online, Sapient, Labour Party, BT, MCI WorldCom, SmithKlineBeecham, Storagetek, BSkyB and boo.com.

Massimo is also the author of “Getting Started with Arduino” published by O’Reilly. He is a regular contributor to the italian edition of Wired Magazine and Che Futuro, an online magazine about innovation.

He currently teaches Interaction Design at SUPSI Lugano in the south of Switzerland and is a visiting professor at CIID in Copenhagen.

Friday 28th of February 2014
Massimo Banzi
Lecture: Open sourcing innovation.

@ 19.30, IAAC Auditorium
Open to the Public

The GSS 2013 concluded today with the Final Presentation of the 6 projects developed throughout the 2 weeks of work. The Global School programme seeks to investigate common agendas in global localities.  The 2013 edition included the participation from institutes in Australia, Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, and North America, in particular: Mumbai, Tehran, Istanbul, Barcelona, New York and Lima.

The projects developed aimed to generate a new strategy to understand and facilitate the Production of the City in various aspects: Production of Knowledge, Prodution of Food, Production of Objects, and the Production of  Energy,  key elements which establish the basic necessities to create self-sufficient habitats, and allowing the Summer School to serve as the testing ground for the generation of project ideas. Concepts included sharing energy, sharing working experience, adaptable structures that combines data and visual illusions, sunshine sterilization installation, etc.

The projects were developed through a 3 phase process: Analysis, both on a global and a local scale, Digital Design, generating a programme and concept for the Project, and, finally, a Fabrication phase, in which a vision, through the generation of a prototype, and the project process were elaborated.

Each Group worked on a different square in the centre of Barcelona, generating interactive tools, through the elaboration of 1:1 scale prototype for each square. These facilitated the incremention of knowledge and facilities for the square in question, thanks to the use of the Smart Citizen kit and Arduino, that is associative tools that allow  to relate the projects to various internal and external dynamics of the site.

The Barcelona Group distribution was as follows:

Group 1: Plaça de la Merce

·         Daniel Villacis

·         Francis Goyes

·         Sara Infelisi

Group 2: Plaça de Salvador Segui

·         Gabriela Fichtner

·         Kritina Zubko

·         Necdet Yağız Özkan

·         Stephie Moukarzel

Group 3: Plaça dels Angels

·         Jordi Guerra

·         Sofia Li Xin

·         Tseng Tzu-Man

Group 4: Plaça Nova

·         Amro Kabbara

·         Anna Goga

·         Olga Tarasova

Group 5: Arc de Triomf

·         Alexander Plotkin

·         Misha Knyazev

·         Stas Kozin

Group 6: Plaça del Mar

·         Mattia Benatti

·         Olga Gorkaya

·         Sandra Poliakov

At the entrance of the Mobile Barcelona Festival booth (3C28 in hall 3) organized by mLove; IaaC and Fab Lab Bcn, together with MID and Hangar.org, features the Smart Citizen platform.

Smart Citizen is a device to generate participatory processes of people in the cities. More info here.

Come visit us!

This week MAA students from the Emergent Territories and Self Sufficient Buildings Development Studios took part in a workshop that gave an introduction to arduino, showing how it works, the connections that you can use, and the functionality of such things as light sensors, temperature sensors, and small motors that you can connect to the arduino board. This workshop will help the students make their interactive studio model for the final presentations at the end of this month.

Simulation of louver movement react to sun change. (watch a student video of the project in motion video-1 and video-2)

More information about the work students are doing for the Design Associativity Seminar can be found on the seminar working blog: legacy.iaacblog.com/designingassociativity/