DYNAMICS IN EXTREME ENVIRONMENTS

ETH CAAD and Chalmers Faculty: Manuel Kretzer, Stig Anton Nielsen

IAAC Faculty: Areti Markopoulou

IAAC Assistants: Alexandre Dubor, Carlos Bausa

External Guest: Raul Nieves, Prototipolab

In collaboration with: MaterFad

In traditional architecture, a change in a material’s property, such as its volume or elasticity, was generally seen as a potential problem affecting the performance of built structures. Static planar surfaces related with stability or even durability have long dominated the architectural vision. When, as a consequence to the introduction of domotics, design disciplines started to explore kinetic and dynamic performances to increase efficiency, this was done following mere rules of mechanical actuators and heavy motor or servo-based systems plugged-in in whichever material surface.

Today, progress in novel and advanced materials coming from disciplines such as medicine or aerospace engineering raise the challenge of adaptation following smart, active or reactive materials that are able to alter their properties reacting to external stimuli. Changes in state, colour, and volume take place with no need of any computing device or mechanical actuator; rather the material itself has all these functions programmed into its persistence on a molecular scale.

In parallel, the 21st century challenges related with global warming, i.e. global temperatures that rise and cause climate change and global urbanization, raise new questions regarding our way of building and inhabiting. Architecture, will have to respond to extreme weather conditions, especially the rise of temperature in densely urbanized areas and smart materials will play a critical role in the architectural process of dealing with the current challenges of the global context.

Which architectural systems can be dynamic and react to environmental conditions such as temperature shifts?

Can buildings and cities perform as environmentally integrated living organisms?

How can architecture remember and learn from previous experiences, therefore evolving with embedded intelligence?

The workshop introduced students to a series of “smart materials” such as polymorph plastics, shape memory polymers, bioplastics, thermochromic pigments, temperature-sensitive and electroconductive materials for 3d printing.

The project proposals explored active materials and developed dynamic architectural proposals for extreme environmental conditions where temperatures in urbanized areas surpass 70 or 80 degrees Celsius. Such extreme temperatures are able to activate a series of smart materials that can change state when heated in high temperatures.

Project 1

Project Name: Thermoteam

Students: Alina Kvirkveliya, Ji Won Jun, Josep Alcover, Jose Algeciras, Matteo Silverio, Yoko Gotoh

Project 2

Project 3

Project Name: Thermoluminescence

Students: Nina Jotanoivc, Panagiota Sarantinoudi, Farah Alayeli, Apostolos Apostolinas, Lubna Alayeli, Ceren Temel

Project 4

Project 5

In collaboration with: 

Friday 23rd of January 2015

Jelle Feringa

EZCT Architecture & Design research

Tuesday 27th of January 2015 - 13.00-14.30

Dave Pigram

supermanoeuvre, Sydney [UTS]

Tuesday 3rd of February 2015

José Luis de Vicente

Journalist, digital culture, arts & technology

Thursday 12th of February 2015

Andrew Watts

Newtecnic, façade system design

Thursday 19th of February 2015

Alfredo Brillembourg

Uban-Think Tank & ETH-Zurich

Thursday 26th of February 2015

Alberto Diaspro

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, advanced materials

Tuesday 3rd of March 2015

Rodolphe el-Khoury

Dean, University of Miami

IAAC Lecture Series is FREE and OPEN to the Public

Lectures are held @ IAAC Auditorium

19.30 – 21.00

(unless otherwise indicated)

For more information, contact: info@iaac.net

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!

Beijing Design Week 2014

This year Barcelona had the honor of being the guest city for the Beijing Design Week 2014, implementing the “Barcelona, a future inspired by design” exhibition in the 79-Tank, an impressive circular precinct in district 751. The Barcelona City Exhibition, designed by ExitDesign, won the prize for Best Exhibition of BJDW2014.

In this framework, the Institut Ramon Llull, content curators of the exhibition, invited architecture and design schools of Barcelona to develop a proposal for the realization of an installation, finally selecting the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia’s (IAAC) BB Make proposal, presented by Areti Markopoulou and Mathilde Marengo.

BB MAKE – BARCELONA BEIJING MAKE

The BB Make proposal, developed by IAAC, in collaboration with the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, explored the potentials of new technologies applied to design, through the generation of a participative collaborative structure, enhancing local materials with advanced technologies. The structure consisted in bamboo beams, a well known local construction material, held together with digitally fabricated joints, in particular 3D printed joints and CNC milled joints, fabricated onsite, allowing the joints to be easily customized, so as to deal with the irregularity of the natural bamboo material, and finally allowing the structure to grow easily.

OPEN AND PARTICIPATIVE DESIGN

The design phase of the joints was developed through a workshop, run onsite by IAAC digital fabrication and computation faculty Alexandre Dubor and Rodrigo Aguirre, during the week prior to the Design Week. The Workshop was held at the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts with 15 local students, giving the local students the opportunity to be introduced to digital fabrication techniques, as well as new software necessary for this implementation. Through the application of 3D printing and CNC milling a series of joints designed were elaborated. These designs were then combined and integrated to finally develop one single base joint typology. A press fit joint was developed, allowing easy customization and allowing to overcome the great irregularity in the bamboo beams, differing in size from 40mm to 60mm. For the final structure, 22 different joints were fabricated through the customization of the original design.

COLLABORATIVE MAKING

During the Design Week, the BB Make structure was constructed thanks to the participation and collaboration of the local visitors, and the CAFA students. The structure was composed of a primary structure, implemented with bamboo beams, and held together with the 22 customized joints fabricated onsite in the 79 Tank. On top of this, in the interest of allowing the local visitors to further personalize the structure, hence fully taking advantage of the perks of digital fabrication, and finally making the structure “theirs”, a secondary structure was implemented using split bamboo beams, where the visitors could CNC mill a personal message, and connect this to the primary structure through simplified joints.

The BB Make installation finally represented the physical implementation of an exchange of knowledge, as well as culture, thanks to the combination of local materials and participation, with technologically advanced fabrication techniques, one of the fields of investigation developed in IAAC. Towards facilitating the access of these digital fabrication techniques during the Design Week, IAAC generated a “popup” Fab Lab inside the 79 Tank, among which the user could access and use 3D printers and a CNC milling machine.

The collaborative implementation of the structure allowed people, from students and professionals of the fields of architecture and design, to the general public, to have the opportunity to be introduced to new digital fabrication techniques, with the support of trained professional, as well as having the opportunity of actually realizing their designs through these techniques, and finally constructing the BB Make structure throughout the duration of the BJDW2014.

IAAC Team:

Areti Markopoulou, Mathilde Marengo, Alexandre Dubor, Rodrigo Aguirre, Maria Kupstova

IAAC local collaborator:

China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA, Beijing)

Supported by:

Istitut Ramon Llull with ExitDesign.

IaaC’s Pavilion developed, with Anupama Kundoo, for BCN Re.Set installation, organized by the Fundació Enric Miralles in collaboration with Àlex Ollé, as well as the other BCN Re.Set pavilions are currently on display in Berlin at the Aedes Architektur Forum!

The Barcelona Re.Set Exhibition runs from the 18th of October to the 27th of November.

The IaaC & Anupama Kundoo installation, following the concept of FREEDOM, was located in the Plaça de Salvador Seguí. Knowledge provides freedom and progress; and the power of freedom is expressed through reading. This installation consists of three different trees which uproot the middle of Salvador Segui Square. The trunks and branches are made out of steel, the leaves of books, and the earth made of concrete. The public can sit beneath the permeable shadows of the trees to chat, read, and enjoy the gentle breeze created by the air passing through the leaves.

The idea is not to create scaled models representing concepts, but rather take forward certain parts of the team projects to prototype as proofs of concepts. Documentation of this work is being done through two products: 1) a dynamic scale model showing the generative strategy as distributed in Torre Baró and 2) a 1:1 ‘detail’ prototype showing the working energy apparatus to be distributed in the site.

For the development of this phase we have been joined by audio visual experts Ignacio de Juan Creix and Carlo Santi from TL3.

The groups then had the opportunity to work on their project proposals and initial prototypes, which were then later presented in the Mid-Presentation of the GSS.

In the evening, some of the IAAC Alumni presented the works they developed during the Masters in Advanced Architecture.

In the afternoon the students joined Jaume Barnada, the Deputy Chief Architect of the City Council of Barcelona, for a guided tour of the city of Barcelona.