Everyday life at the Institute for advanced architecture of Catalonia
The students following the Emergent territories studio are following as well some Processing sessions supportive to their studio. David Dalmazzo, as in last term, is following up with the students projects providing them with the knowledge needed for successful use of the software in order to reach the desired level that could visualize the complex strategies that their working on and introduce real data information to their projects.
RS2 had a workshop with an special guest, Oriol Carrasco. The workshop is considered as a laboratory for experimentation, in an effort to discover new ideas, materials and resources towards a more efficient and sustainable architercture. Another aspect of this workshop is about learning how to produce performative prototypes in limited period of time that would provide us needfull information for continuation of the design strategies. The students have been working in different approaches, from natural materials as bambú or clay to different wind, termal or pneumatic systems. The result was a variation of small performative models, that were able to provide some first answers.
RS1 Emergent Territories Studio went to visit “The old Port of Barcelona”, the chosen site where they will develop their projects. The students took an impressive boat ride along the port facilities to obtain a different understanding of the site from the water, in order to analyze the site dynamics and to identify relevant flows and fluxes related to sustainable strategies. After the boat ride, the group visited the “Castillo” located at the Montjuic hill to discuss general and particular issues related to the project.
During the final presentations the students presented a video with the process of their work during the last week of the intensive workshop with Gregory Epps. Many ideas and many prototypes were developed by paper while one piece of the selected project was fabricated in 1:1 scale by metal. The selected project is going to be fabricated in full scale in the following days at IAAC.
All student projects and videos developed in the above seminar will be uploaded in the IAAC blog the following days.
After the presentations of the students Gregory Epps presented the work being developed at Robofold . Gregory at the first part of his lecture highlighted the fact that robotics and software (as they have been developed at the moment) could be used with more intelligence, opposed to the way that they are used for massive production in the industries, and create complex results as we can see in several examples of work coming out of research centers, throughout the word, that are experimenting with the above technology .
How we can envision Barcelona for the next 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128 years?
How new space optimization could generate opportunities for the densification of Barcelona
Can we transform Barcelona (built and non built) into a networked city?
Can our city model be responsive to our behavioral changes over time?
Follow the link to view the projects of the MAA students developed at the introductory studio.
This week, the master students are working together with Gregory Epps from RoboFold in the prototyping and fabrication of a folded component façade system.
Starting from the paper model and going through the design and fabrication process developed during the last years by Epps and his colleagues, the workshop will go until the fabrication and assembling of real scale steel components. The students started working individually and their work has been selected in different phases so that, at the end, a single project shared by all students will go into real scale production.
Last weekend MAA 2011-12 students along with IAAC faculty and staff visited south Spain (Gandia,Valencia, Benidorm)
For 4 intensive days students visited building and masterplan projects, debated on architectural concepts and enjoyed local traditions.
The group had the chance to visit Sociopolis (Valencia) an under construction project fomented by the Generalitat Valenciana for the construction of a new model neighborhood of accessible housing, based on the local tradition of Valencias urban orchards, http://www.sociopolis.net