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.

IAAC Winter Lecture Series 2015

Friday 23rd of January 2015

Jelle Feringa

Lecture: The Evolution of Work

@ 19.30, IAAC Auditorium

Open to the Public

JELLE FERINGA

Jelle Feringa is co-founder of EZCT Architecture & Design research and Odico formwork robotics, he is currently finishing his PhD thesis at Hyperbody, TU Delft. The work of EZCT is part of the permanent collection of the Pompidou Center and the FRAC Orléans collection. Recent expositions on the work of the office include “Naturalizing Architecture”, Archilab, Orléans,“Out of Hand”, MAD museum, New York (2013-2014), the “Multiverses Créatives”, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2012) and Salone del Mobile, Milan (2012).

Jelle lives in Rotterdam, where his robot workshop is located in the harbour. His current research is focused on the development of original robotic fabrication processes for architecture, considering materialization an inherent aspect of architectural design. These efforts have accumulated in an investor backed startup, Odico formwork robotics, based in Denmark. Recent fabrication experiments include the exploration of stereotomy in vaulting structures and cutting large marble volumes “traites” to which end he developed a large robot diamond wire saw in Carrara, Italy. Jelle is also currently collaborating with IAAC.

The aim is to give an introduction to robotic fabrication, focusing on setting up processes and tools to be used with the robot. The students are learning and practicing how to teach and offline program the robot’s movements and tool-paths. In fact the first couple of days of the workshop have been dedicated to the student’s understanding and manipulation (manually moving the robot) of the Kuka Robot.

The ambitious objective of the Seminar is to mass-produce wooden chairs, where the robot will handle all steps, from shaping the elements to applying the connections, with the aim of integrating digital planing and production into traditional craft.

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.

IaaC, in collaboration with Map13 Architects: Marta Domenech, David Lopez, Mariana Palumbo, and BLOCK Research Group, ETH Zurich, are happy to announce the inauguration of an intensive, 2 week-long workshop where a team of 27 Students will design and contruct a thin-tile vault in our forest campus in Valldaura.

Advanced digital tools along with traditional century-old Catalan masonry techniques will be deployed in the process, with students seeking to re-engineer, compute, and eventually construct a Vault in the forest.

IaaC is also furthering this research investigating in the field of advanced robotic fabrication techniques towards the implementation and automization of these complex catalan vault forms.

On the 26th of June in IAAC from 02:00 pm to 09:00 pm

Tutors:

Claudia Pasquero
Marco Poletto

International Jury Board:

Manuel Gausa – IAAC Dean
Areti Markopoulou - MAA Director – IAAC
Thomas Ermacora – Lime Wharf
Ulrika Karlsson – Stockholm Faculty of Architecture
Neil Leach – University of Southern California
Jaume Avellaneda – ETSAV-Department of Construction
Juan Carlos Sanabria – Veritas University in Costa Rica
Edouard Cabay - AA School of Architecture
Jordi Pagés – Max de Cusa Architects
Manja van de Worp – AA School of Architecture

in Architecture

Computation, in its most basic meaning, refers to the processing of information. In this way, both machinic processes operating in the binary realm of the digital, as well as material processes operating in the complex domain of the physical can be considered computational. The lecture will introduce Achim Menges’ work on exploring the territory where machine computation and material computation potentially overlap, where they not simply co-exist but intensely interact in the design process. He will present the related design research – conducted at the Architectural Association, at Harvard University and at his new institute at the University of Stuttgart University over the last ten years – along a series of constructed prototype buildings. This will include the institute’s latest research pavilion, which was entirely constructed by robotic carbon and glass fibre filament winding processes.

Lecture “Material Computation in Architecture”
3rd of June // 19:30 // IAAC Auditorium // C/Pujades 102 BARCELONA

Achim Menges, born 1975, is a registered architect and professor at University of Stuttgart where he is the founding director of the Institute for Computational Design (since 2008).  In addition, he has been Visiting Professor in Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (2009-10), at the AA School of Architecture in London (2009-current) and at Rice University in Houston (2004). Achim Menges graduated with honors from the AA School of Architecture in London (2002) where he subsequently taught as Studio Master of the Emergent Technologies and Design Graduate Program (2002-09) and as Unit Master of Diploma Unit 4 (2003-06).
Achim Menges practice and research focuses on the development of integral design processes at the intersection of morphogenetic design computation, biomimetic engineering and computer aided manufacturing that enables a highly articulated, performative built environment. His work is based on an interdisciplinary approach in collaboration with structural engineers, computer scientists, material scientists and biologists. Achim Menges has published several books on this work and related fields of design research, and he is the author/coauthor of numerous articles and scientific papers.  His projects and design research has received many international awards, has been published and exhibited worldwide, and form parts of several renowned museum collections.