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

The Fab City Symposium will take place on the 7th of July at the Disseny Hub Barcelona. It is a one-day event focused on the principles, applications and implications of digital fabrication. With special focus on rethinking the role of technology, policy and society in the development of Self-Sufficiency strategies for productive cities.

It consists of four sessions of keynotes and debates around:

- Advanced research on Digital Fabrication

- The role of industry and corporations in this moment of change

- The potential social impact of new technologies

- The governance of innovation and technology in future cities

Xavier Trias, Mayor of the City of Barcelona will lead the closing ceremony with other mayors from major cities of the world in participation.

Details about speakers and participants will be updated frequently on the FAB10Barcelona website and via our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter).

SEMINAR BRIEF:

Each day, the average computing power of any given device increases. Technologies that were visionary and innovative in the

past, might not have been birthed at the correct time in order to take full advantage of their potential. For example, Virtual Reality in the late 80’s or 90’s was little more than a gimmick as the real time rendering capabilities of computers was not up to par with the vision for the technology. Last month, Facebook purchased a startup company that makes the Occulus Rift Virtual Reality Headset for 2 Billion USD. The technology is the same, but the computing power is different.

Unity is a Game Editor, allowing artists and designers to have one common platform for the development of 2D or 3D games that are deployable across many platforms including Windows, MacOSX, Android, iOS, XBox, etc. This means we can create immersive environments with realistic shadowing, information overlay, animation, and much more and be able to run them on the phones most of us have in our pockets. The implications for how we present our projects are broad.

Objective:

Over the course of this module, we will learn the Unity interface, how to model for a game environment, how to create navigation systems, cameras, and gui elements. In the end of the module, each individual will have a game engine platform to use for the presentation of their studio project.

Tools:

- Unity 4.3.4 or latest version

- Rhinoceros 5.0 or any 3D CAD for modelling (Rhino will be used in any tutorials dealing with modelling for games)

- Grasshopper 0.9.0072 + Plugins

IaaC | Fab Lab Barcelona was featured in El Periodico as a central player for Digital Fabrication innovation in Barcelona, and in preparation for FAB10, the 10th International Fab Lab Conference that will be held in IaaC | Fab Lab Barcelona this year.

Barcelona is a city with an important and imposing industrial history, and that is currently supporting and pushing for innovation in many fields, including economy, culture and education. The main mission for the city of Barcelona is to redefine the future of cities based on a self-sufficiency model for the production of resources and social well-being.

In this sense, Barcelona will be the first city in the world to have a public network of Fab Labs, as part of the cities future plan, and in line with Fab10′s main theme: From Fab Labs to Fab Cities, by which the city of Barcelona aims to have at least one Fab Lab in every district. This implementation will allow to discover the talent present in the city itself, give the citizens and users the possibility to gain understanding and control of the technology available and its potentials.

Read the article here.

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.

We were invited to think about architecture in relation to biology, for example: plants share many of the same characteristics as buildings, they are fixed in their context, they must accept what nature and the environment throw at them, and they must adapt to survive. How can we learn something from biology, and apply this to the field of architecture?

The first point of the Lecture lead us to understand exactly what Biomimetics is. Prof. Jeronimidis noted that there are ibfact many ideas as to what Biomimetics is, but the one he relates most to is: “the abstraction of good design from nature” (J.F. Vincent).

Biomimesis should aim not to replace biology, but to understand the mechanisms that biology has developed overtime, and understand what we can then use these mechanisms for. Mimesis, not understood as copying, but as abstraction.

And there are many ways of referring to such a process, for example bio-inspiration, or the German term Bionik (from biology and technic).

There are of course diverse forms of applying biomimetics.

Form/shape biomimetics, taking its inspiration directly from the beauty of the form. Things that are beautiful, that also have a function, but inwhich we show no interest, inspire us. For example the columns in the Stuttgart Airport inpired by the form of trees, the connection between the tree and the structure is only the form, not the function.

Then there is functional biomimetics, a more interesting approach for Prof. Jeronimidis, that implies capturing the function of a living organism and translating it into innovative technology.

For one to approach biomimetics, one must understand biology. The combination of DESIGN DRIVERS OF “NATURAL” DESIGN (the changing physical and chemical environment, and the survival instinct) and NATURAL PROCESSES (adaption, evolution, natural selection, genetic variability, genotypes and phenotypes) make for SMART ADAPTIVE BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS.

But how do we do biomimetics? What is the plan of action for these technology transfer strategies?

The process starts with biology (biomechanisms, functional morphology and anatomy), without which we inevitably miss the basic information, allowing us to understand the principles, that will then be abstracted and technologically implemented. This process is of course a multidisciplinary process that starts with biology, to then shift to another field of expertise, such as engineering or architecture.

This process can lead to diverse applications from building systems inspired by termite mounds, to material systems inspired by plants (VELCRO, inspired by plant seeds), or also functional surfaces inspired by plants (Self cleaning surfaces inspired by the lotus leaf) or animals (drag reduction surfaces inspired by shark skin), as well as hierarchical structures (noise suppression inspired by owl feathers, then applied to wind turbines by Stefan Oerlemans).

So where is biomimetics relevant today? There are many application sectors for the diverse functional biological levels (molecular, cell/tissue, organ, organism), and of our interest in today’s lecture the application of cell/tissue and organ biological funtions to architecture, and that of the organism to the city. All of these can help us generate bioinspired tools to help shape our future applying biology’s successful design (evolution, natural selection, time, random mutations… + materials, structures, sensors, integration + efficient use of energy) to our field of interest.

So to sum it up, the lessons that we can learn from nature are:

_Inspiration, not imitation

_Highly integrated design – multi disciplines

_Simple materials – fibres – complex structures

_Adaptive, multi functional smart solutions

_Simple physics – smart implementation.

Tuesday 22nd of October 2013

George Jeronimidis

Lecture: Biomimetics and Bioinspiration - Smart solutions for functional architecture
@ 19.30, IAAC Auditorium
Open to the Public 

In his lecture entitled ‘Ending Poverty in 10 Years’, Mr. Negroponte talked about how technology can help developing countries fight against poverty by teaching kids means to educate themselves.  ”If you can learn to read, you can read to learn”.

Nicholas Negroponte is the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, and also known as the founder of the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC).

In 1967, Negroponte founded MIT’s Architecture Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank which studied new approaches to human-computer interaction. In 1985, he created the MIT Media Lab with Jerome B. Wiesner, a pre-eminent computer science laboratory for new media and a high-tech playground for investigating the human-computer interface. In 1992, Negroponte became involved in the creation of Wired Magazine as the first investor contributing, from 1993 to 1998, with a monthly column: “Move bits, not atoms.” Negroponte expanded many of the ideas from his Wired columns into a bestselling book Being Digital (1995), which made famous his forecasts on how the interactive world, the entertainment world and the information world would eventually merge. Negroponte is a digital optimist who believed that computers would make life better for everyone.

In 2006, Negroponte stepped down as lab chairman to focus more fully on his work with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) although he retains his appointment as professor at MIT.

On Tuesday, February 26^th, Nicholas Negroponte will be lecturing at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia – IAAC.

Nicholas Negroponte’s lecture at IAAC, will be streaming live in our youtube channel

]]> http://legacy.iaacblog.com/blog/2013/iaac-lecture-series-nicholas-negroponte/feed/ 0