Erik hoffman hts2

Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

Synchronic Integration Industry 4.0: The Digital Artisan & the Electronic Craftsman

Histories & Theories Term II


 Tutor: Zaynab Dena Ziari

Erik Hoffmann

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

03/2016

Table of Figures Figure 1

Jaques de Vaucanson. 1739, Canard Digérateur

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Boulding, Kenneth E, , 1953, Mechanised Production

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Braumann J. and S. Brell-Cokcan., 2012, Robotic Automotive Manufacturing

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Figure 4

The Robotic Touch, 2005-2013, End-effectors

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Figure 5

Gramazio & Kohler, 2005, Brick-laying end-effectors

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Figure 6

Gramazio & Kohler, 2008, Designer at the remote controls

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Figure 7

Gramazio & Kohler, 2012, Granular deposition end-effector

Figure 8

Gramazio & Kohler, 2005, The Programmed Column: prototypes

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Figure 9

Gramazio & Kohler, 2005, The Programmed Column: close-up

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Figure 10

Gramazio & Kohler, 2005, Gantenbein Vineyard Façade: ex-situ fabrication

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Figure 11

Gramazio & Kohler, 2005, Gantenbein Vineyard Façade: pre-fab. modules

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Figure 12

Gramazio & Kohler, 2005, Gantenbein Vineyard Façade: Interior

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Figure 13

Gramazio & Kohler, 2005, Gantenbein Vineyard Façade: Exterior

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Figure 14

The Robotic Touch, 2013, In-situ Robotic Fabrication Unit

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Figure 15

Gramazio & Kohler, 2011, In-situ experiment: The Endless Wall

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Figure 16

Gramazio & Kohler, 2008, Structural Oscillations

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Figure 17

FRAC Centre, Olréans, 2012, Flight Assembled Architecture & Quadcopter

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Figure 18

FRAC Centre, Olréans, 2012, Flight Assembled Architecture

Figure 19

ICD/ITKE, 2013, Internal elytron architecure in a flying and a ground beetle

Figure 20

ICD/ITKE, 2013, Integration of multiple process parameters

Figure 21

ICD/ITKE, 2013, Dual robot fabrication setup

Figure 22

ICD/ITKE, 2013, Dual robot interaction

Figure 23

ICD/ITKE, 2013, Lightweight assembly process

Figure 24

ICD/ITKE, 2013, The Beetle Pavilion

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Figure 25

Achim Menges, 2011-2013, HygroSkin: Aperture adapting to weather changes

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Figure 26

Achim Menges, 2011-2013, HygroSkin: Robotic fabrication

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Figure 27

Achim Menges, 2011-2013, HygroSkin: Meteorosensitive apertures

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Figure 28

Achim Menges, 2011-2013, HygroSkin: Meteorosensitive Pavilion

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Figure 29

Mediated Matter, 2013, Silk worm: 3D Motion tracking experiment

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Figure 30

James Weaver, 2013, 230X SEM micrograph: bisected Bombex mori cocoon

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Figure 31

Mediated Matter, 2013, Maltese Cross study series

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Figure 32

Mediated Matter, 2013, Overall aperture and density distribution

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Figure 33

Mediated Matter, 2013, Spring steel CNC threading tool and silk thread

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Figure 34

Mediated Matter, 2013, Temporary aluminium scaffolding

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Figure 35

Mediated Matter, 2013, Pavilion view & silkworms skinning structure

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Figure 36

Mediated Matter, 2013, Silkworm reinforcement

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Figure 37

Hartmut Bohnacker, 2009, Generative Design process endless feedback loop

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Figure 38

Robert A. Freitas Jr, 1981, A Self- Replicating, Growing, Lunar Factory

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Figure 39

Grason, John, 1970, “Approach to Computerised Space Planning Using Graph

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Theory.”

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Erik Hoffmann

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In 1739, Jaques de Vaucanson’s Canard Digérateur illuminated the ideal of a performing mechanical device produced to imitate a living being. The Digestive Duck was the first automaton coming to existence with the sole purpose of automating digestion. Constituted of a thousand parts, the duck was designed to give illusion to the casual observer that it was acting under its own power.1 While automatons can be seen as the early predecessors of today’s robots, their creation starting in the 18th century showcase engineering feats with the sole dream that human and mechanical tectonic assemblies could make self-sustaining androids. Such an ideal was executed to tremendous, never before conceived scales in the industrial revolution starting in the same century. Automation came to life as highly performative renderers of products and processed materials in the result of a massive shift of our built environment, responding to sociological reforms around urbanisation. Fordist organisational systems around the mechanical sphere revealed a new order of refinement, where regulating manufacturing processes for a wider appreciation and consumerism was exponentially accelerated2 . Dictating a new collective potential in society in the mass provision of much needed bulk production, the practice of repetitive homogeneous tasks depleted a millennia of craftsman culture. The loss of the aura, much argued by Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction3 , whereby the absence of traditional ritualistic value and its context was lost in the shift to a political practice of large scale fabrication. One were individual expressionism was once much emulated in the role of individualistic small scale heterogeneous artisans. Such a diminished role in the craftsman was due to the increasingly mechanised environment whom procured enormous enthusiasm from humankind.

After two decades of evolving mass production from assembly lines to productive automatons, industrial capitalism has bridged new technologies. Absorbed multi-disciplinarily by various high-tech services from medicine to primary manufacturing automotive industry, the rise of bespoke automation—referred today as robotics—entered the european markets in 1973 with KUKA and ABB robotics4. Although highly specific in its labour intensive and mind-numbing tasks such as spot welding and milling, the robot contents its much appreciated exuberant accuracy.

Along with other rapid prototyping methods of production such as 3D printers and computer numerical controls (CNCs), the materialisation of the digital finally becomes concrete and tangible5 . Lagging two decades after the introduction of the first robot in the manufacturing sector, architects and artists have finally—and inevitably— drawn such tools in their repertoire of skills.

Much critique has risen in the digitalisation for architecture, a conception of dematerialisation in the profession into infinite data flows—seeming to exploit mathematical algorithms to over complication and unsuccessfully bridging material and binary in realistic scales. Nonetheless, “the robots brings forth a comprehensive digital basis for construction that, since the beginning of building industrialisation, has been more dreamed of than realised”6 . The digital revolution brings 1

Kang, Min Soo. The Automaton: A Historical Study of a Cultural and Intellectual Symbol. 2004. Print

In a fast-moving global landscape fraught with geopolitical and environmental uncertainties, how must large organisations change to stay ahead of the curve? Boulding, Kenneth E. The Organisational Revolution, a Study in the Ethics of Economic Organisation. New York: Harper, 1953. Print.

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Benjamin, Walter, and J. A. Underwood. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

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Braumann J. and S. Brell-Cokcan. (2012) Association for Robots in Architecture . Digital and physical computing for industrial robots in architecture.

In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, CAADRIA, Chennai: 317-326]

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The Robotic Touch: How Robots Change Architecture: Gramazio & Kohler, Research ETH Zurich 2005-2013. Zurich: Park, 2013. Print.

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The Robotic Touch: How Robots Change Architecture: Gramazio & Kohler, Research ETH Zurich 2005-2013. Zurich: Park, 2013. Print.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

Figure 1: Jaques de Vaucanson’s Digestive duck. Duck would ‘feed’ on grains and pre-stored faeces would give illusion of digestion

Figure 2: The mechanisation of society. The new order of mass production.

Figure 3: Six KUKA robotic arms simultaneously placing, welding and assembling automobile. Automotive industry has benefitted of robotic technology for at least two decades before the construction sector.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

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today a new industrial revolution, whereby their fusion has given birth to a new line of highly skilled manufacturers: the digital artisan. Increasingly affordable rapid prototyping and robots allowing the intricacy of a digital project constituted of complex parameters to be simulated, tested and executed in collaboration with realtime action-reaction machines of mass production.

The degree of flexibility and opportunity from such tools is reintroducing the individual expression once lost with the death of the craftsman, into a digital artisan working multi-functionally on several design platforms from CAD and AAD softwares to the practical aesthetics7 of material systems and their inherent logics.

With the rising access of tools informing designers with new possibilities, the question of authorship becomes ambiguous. Who gains authorship of such architectures? The architect, the computer scientist or the robot? In pursuit of capitalising robotisation to be growingly autonomous, the autopoiesis of machines able to contextualise its ability to behave and design, re-iterate endlessly in infinite feedback loops is either a foreseeable architectural fulfilment, or the consequent death of the architect8 . In such future occurrence, once again, machines could rule out human capacity in consequence of our apparent “unspoken horror loss of control over human error”9, potentially acquiring full authorship on design and construction. The bridge between information technology and mechanisation though artificial intelligence seems to ultimately pave the way for subsistent ‘digestive mechanical ducks’ to be a concrete realisation.

A new creative moment brought by emergent technologies and a maturing new industrial revolution merging with the digital insurgency sees the craftsman anchored once again at the core of the making process. With the ability to free the confines of mass production and moving towards an independence from socio-contextualisation, individualistic expression is achievable at a mass scale. Flexibility of end-effectors10 hackable and mountable on machines ranging from cartesian two axes to robotic arms of seven axes, modulation and variation of a single robot is ample. End-effectors ranging from 3D scanning and printing, milling to controlled deposition of granular material have extended the potential of construction, whereby the precision of the robot capitalises an ‘aura’ through the robotic DNA backbone imprint to the project, “as if architecture was about to speak”11 of its highly specific configuration and quality of construction. The result is ever closer to the architects obsession to realise the building ‘as designed, as build’, along with wide ranging applications extensively tied with computational processes. Recent CAD plug-ins developed for designers such as Arduino, Grasshopper and other CFDs allow the artisan to program the process of construction, visualise and optimise it. Collectively designing with the robot with real-time results has let to the tangibility of such technologies for designers using the better of both worlds: the inextricable accuracy of the machine with the intuition and creativity of the human mind12 .

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Cf. G. Semper, “Der still in den technischen und tektonischen kunsten oder praktische asthetik”, 1860.

Patrik Schumacher, Clemens Weisshaar, Francesca Hughes, Ryan Dillon, Francesco Catemario Di Quadri, and Jakob Skote. "Arkitek Ist Tot. (The Architect Is Dead)." AAgora. Architectural Association, London. 29 Jan. 2016. Debate.

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Hughes, Francesca. The Architecture of Error: Matter, Measure, and the Misadventures of Precision. 2014, Print.

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Jin, David, and Sally Lin. Advances in Future Computer and Control Systems. Heidelberg: Springer, 2012. Print.

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Antoine Picon argues that architecture should always be ‘about the speak’, in the sense that materialisation of architecture being too literal loses opportunities. "Architecture and Materiality in the Digital Age." Advancements in Computational Design, Architectural Association, London. 19 Feb. 2016. Symposium.

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Braumann J. and S. Brell-Cokcan. (2012) Association for Robots in Architecture . Digital and physical computing for industrial robots in architecture.

In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, CAADRIA, Chennai: 317-326]

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Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 4: Portion of the ample end-effector catalogue used by the ETH’s research agenda.

Figure 5: Brick-laying end effector

Figure 6: The architect at the remote controls of the robot

Figure 7: Procedural Landscapes, 2012, granular deposition end effector allowing control of unpredictable flow constant. Through the precision of the machine, new construction methods emerge.

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Erik Hoffmann

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The first architectural research lab dedicating an entire program on such technology was the ETH Department of Architecture, Zürich 2005, were Gramazio and Kohler have compiled over a decade of research in the scope of robotic fabrication. The department argues through its research that one can now regard computer programming and architectural construction as conditional upon each other, whereby their reciprocity is fundamental to architecture in our digital age. “The intention is never to rationalise or automate current construction processes, but to investigate the design implications of bespoke robotic construction”13. In this way, design is following construction14, and the rise of specialised laboratories erect a new line of architectural and artistic expression—one which even the most tradition-rich, mundane construction element such as the brick cannot escape digital fabrication technologies. The first architectural scale construction using a robot is the Gatenbein Vineyard Façade in 2006. Through one to one anthological prototypes developed in pursuit of understanding the restriction of robotic construction and its opportunities, Gramazio and Kohler robotically prefabricated seventy-two façade elements, transported locally and assembled. The pivotal importance of this project comes from its expression of an extensively intricate, highly differentiated bricklaying process unconceivable by human hands due to its tremendously complex offsets and angles.15 The spatial reach of the robot becomes a predominant parameter to the project, by which the Gatenbein Vineyard Façade was built ex-situ and assembled in-situ. Nonetheless, immediate action to evolve the robot’s reach has been developed, such as mounting the robot on mobile track platforms enabling in-situ production with the robot in site. This was achieved in the Structural Oscillations, Venice—and even further with quadcopter in Flight Assembled Architecture, FRAC Centre in Orleans, raising new paradigms for construction in achieving not only what the human hand cannot make, but also where it can’t reach. In what can be perceived a exclusively heavy industry tool, becomes a poetic, programable collaborator informing new construction processes inextricably tied with our digital ambitions.

In parallel discourse, new found anti-capitalist ideologies aiming in taking advantage of automotive potential to provide ‘luxury for all’ such as the FALC (Fully Automated Luxury Communism) aims to fully automate labour endeavouring mass produced luxury in an even higher affordable manner. Nevertheless, such theories do rely on certain sense of communal consideration in a constantly variating socio-economical spectrum, but aim to fix the economic gap through robots.16 As Guy Debord proclaims in The Society of the Spectacle, “automation, at once the most advanced sector of modern industry and the epitome of its practice, confronts the world of the commodity with a contradiction that it must somehow resolve: the same technical infrastructure that is capable of abolishing labour must at the same time preserve labour as a commodity—and indeed as the sole generator of commodities”.17 Such statement indulges that robotisation is still under utter control of the human, informing the question of authorship in machine constructed works.

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The Robotic Touch: How Robots Change Architecture: Gramazio & Kohler, Research ETH Zurich 2005-2013. Zurich: Park, 2013. Print.

Antoine Picon. "Architecture and Materiality in the Digital Age." Advancements in Computational Design, Architectural Association, London. 19 Feb. 2016. Symposium.

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Pell, Ben. The Articulate Surface: Ornament and Technology in Contemporary Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2010. Print

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"Fully Automated Luxury Communism." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 18 Mar. 2015. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

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Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red, 1977. Print.

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Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 8: Experimental Programmed Column prototypes. Four meters tall and self-standing. Pure robotic brick-laying.

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Figure 9: Close-up of the middle Programmed column.

Figure 10: Ex-situ fabrication for the Gantenbein Vineyard Faรงade 72 modules

Figure 11: In-site assembly of the robotically pre-fabricated modules

Figure 12: Interior luminous effects of intricate brick faรงade.

Figure 13: Exterior view of the Gantenbein Vineyard Faรงade

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

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Herbert Read in Art and Industry proclaims that “in a sense, every tool is machine—hammers, axes, chisels—and every machine is a tool… the problem is to decide wether the objects of machine production can possess the essential qualities of art”18 . In 1936, these words remained in the question of how beautiful could machines be both in their process and their executions for individualistic expressionism. As experimental research proliferates around rapid prototyping production—and most excitingly robotic production as the ultimate polyvalent mechanical tool— Gottfired Semper’s practical aesthetics concepts can be widely observed in the new industrially digital revolution. His experiments related the fact that materiality and appearance are strictly entangled to questions of their making, turning against idealist aesthetic practices. His goal was to develop an understanding of things as they actually appear and originate, and believed it was the material capacities and its processing possibilities that accounted the ‘inherent logic of things’19 . As architecture and its material expression cannot be simply invented, one could see the robot as a form of practical aesthetic whereby the material explored in-hand with the digital possibilities intertwines materialistic and organisational systems—new logics of assemblies are possible for expression, with the machine being an instrument of mass production. Henceforth, questioning authorship between the architect and the machine should aim to be understood and treated as in the aura of its context and capability, the computer being an evolutionary accelerator and generative force20 for contextualisation and materialisation executed through the robot.

Reliance of the machine to receive input action still relies on the designer. In this case, it is fair to say the robot is far from leaving the architect redundant—the authorship and aura of the work is embedded in the human and non-human symbiotic process, practically, and aesthetically.

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Read, Herbert. Art and Industry, the Principles of Industrial Design. London: Faber & Faber, Limited, 1934. Print.

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Cf. G. Semper, “Der still in den technischen und tektonischen kunsten oder praktische asthetik”, 1860.

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"An Evolutionary Architecture - John Frazer." An Evolutionary Architecture - John Frazer. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2016

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Figure 14: In-situ Robotic Fabrication Unit

Figure 17: Flight Assembled Architecture, FRAC Centre, OrlĂŠans, 2012.

The flying quadcopter autonomously assemble a six metre high tower structure. The machines operate beyond the conventional workspace, expanding the scale of digital fabrication.

Figure 15: In-situ application of the robot: The Endless Wall, 2011

Figure 16: Structural Oscillations, 2008. A 100 meter long brick wall as a research and exhibition project for the 11th Architecture Biennale in Venice.

Figure 18: Weight and form of modules directly derived from the payload capacities of the quadcopter flight.

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Erik Hoffmann

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The question of authorship could nonetheless be of greater accountability in a methodological context going further than construction logics achieved with the machine. Other architecture institutional research groups carrying wide degree of interdisciplinary collaboration in ranging fields of study are raising new biological paradigms and their emergent logics. Fusing the inherent logics of materials, robot and morphospaces21, programs such as the ICD (Institute of Computational Design) in Stuttgart are pressing to understand architecture through nature’s constructive systems. The schemes used in morphogenesis of biological composites—that is the continuous change in materiality and stresses in a living organism process of developing its shape—are studied to a microscopic level using advanced computational technologies. In the age of digitalisation one can now ‘navigate’ through a micro-organism and simulate the development of prototypical forms, which are then evaluated on the basis of their performance in simulated environments22 . Visualising it, testing it computationally and through the robot, able to bio-mimic construction in understanding of optimal methods of applying materials. Research projects in the ICD/ITKE, Stuttgart, from 2010 have annually inaugurated bionic research pavilions dedicated to such understanding and application of multi-disciplinary research to the built environment. Projects such as the Beetle Pavilion in 2014 bio-mimic the beetle where a partnership within a range of disciplines of students, teams of palaeontologists, biologists, architect and engineers have investigated natural fibre-composite shells along with novel robotic manufacturing for fibre-reinforced polymer structures23 . The beetle’s protective shell and abdomen provided a logic based on differentiated morphology in the fibre arrangements for underlying structural principles. The result was a double curved structure woven jointly between two robots. Based on unique coreless geometric modules, the two robots wove fibres with custom made steel frame end-effectors between them, catching the fibre from a continuous resinated feed line. The specific sequential layout of of winding syntax allows the control of the material driven process24, a highly interactive collaboration between two machines to achieve intricate differentiation in a highly programmed robotic fabrication. Laying fibres only where necessary results the project weighting roughly under six-hundred kilogram in a fifty meter square area.

While these research projects are the constituted in their deep-rooted research, not much has seemed to be done to automate construction to an ‘affordably luxurious level for everyone’ (recalling FALC’s ideologies)—just yet. The greater interest in intelligent mechanic fabrication seems to have been on achievable intricacy ranging from the ponderous brick to the kilometric woven application of fibre composites. The notion of individualistic expression emerging from such research projects reflects the greater good of investigated manufacturing logics along with its material rationale, in the manner that: “it is impossible to accept to view that any essential antagonism exists between art and industry, between beauty and the machine…but it is necessary to reintegrate the worlds of art and industry, for only on the basis can we progress towards new and vital civilisation”25. When collaboration between various disciplinary units occurs

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In theoretical morphology, morphospace represents all the possible form an evolving taxon might take from a given set of initial parameters.

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Achim Menges. "Coalescences of Machine and Material Computation." Open Lecture. Architectural Association, London. 23 Jan. 2016. Lecture.

ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 2013-2014. Inst. of Computational Design (prof. Aches Menges), Inst. of Building Structures & Structural Design (prof.

Knippers), Stuttgart, publication.

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Achim Menges. "Computational Material Culture." Advancements in Computational Design. Architectural Association, London. 19 Feb. 2016.

Symposium.

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Design research Unit, 1942-1972, Johnston, Lucy. Digital Handmade: Craftsmanship and the New Industrial Revolution. 2015, Print.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

Figure 19: internal elytron architecure in a flying and a ground beetle.

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Figure 20: Integration of multiple process parameters into a component based construction system.

Figure 21: Dual robot fabrication setup

Figure 22: Core-less filament winding between the two interactive robots.

Figure 23: Assembly process of 36 lightweight fibre composite components on site.

Figure 24: ICD/ITKE: The Beetle Pavilion, Research Pavilion, 2013-2014

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—in amalgamation to a poetically synchronic interaction between two robots—all in aim to approach ‘nature’s perfection (in one of its many testimonial organisms), it is clear that the pursuit of next generation fabrication is blurring the boundaries of authorship. The level of feedback information interpolated between the disciplines approaches an outmost inquisitive nature of the inherent logics of fabrication and material composition. In this instance, the most advanced cyber-physical tool of the contemporary world—the robot—seems to be the most competent contester to mimic natural assembly patterns. The robot is the recipient allowing the materialistic application of the digital world in an architectural scale. While the highly specific application of every fabrication element, from the creativity and social interactivity of humans in control of the process, through programmed robots able to act conditionally upon each other and the inherent logic of the beetle’s fibre composition, authorship becomes of greater regard. While the human mind has accomplished the compilation of logics, the beetle provided the reference, and the robot bridged human architectural tectonics with bio-composite morphogenesis. The relationship between the human, the non-human along with nature are all too intertwined to necessitate a single authorship, and rather dictates its aura as the symbiosis of all three, with the architect at the core of the gesture.

Whilst the robot has so far been described as the bridge between natural composition and and human architectural tectonics, additional projects have observed the life of a certain material in attempt to liberate architectural actions from mechanical operations. HygroSkin in the Meteorosensitive Pavilion26 by in the FRAC, Orléans, explores a mode of climatic response in architecture. The project uses the responsive capacity of the material itself (in this case timber) and matches its relationship of instability to moisture to render a meteorosensitive skin able to autonomously alter its aperture. The response to climate occurs in the change of weather, so that the energetic operational cost of the action is purely driven by the material structure27 . The robotically manufactured composite laminates responsive to relative humidity open the door to impressive ecologically embedded logics of the material, extensively analysed and computed to understand its underlying structure. A new line of architectural life, where the method of fabrication is the culmination to the projects performative potential. The realisation of the intelligent composite panel is inherent to its constitution, where the sole performative actor is the material itself, referred by some as material ecology28.

Oliver David Krieg, and Steffen Reichert. "Achimmenges.net - Achim Menges Design Research Architecture Product Design." FRAC Orleans, Institute of Computational Deisgn. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

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Achim Menges. "Computational Material Culture." Advancements in Computational Design. Architectural Association, London. 19 Feb. 2016.

Symposium.

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Neri Oxamn. "Material Ecology." Matter Media (2010):. MIT Education. MIT publication. Web accessed.

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Figure 26: Robotic fabrication of HygroSkin panels.

Figure 25: Biological principle of shape change induced by hygroscopic and anistropic dimensional change. That is, response to relative humidity.

Figure 27: Close-up of HygroSkin apertures

Figure 28: Meteorosensitive Pavilion in Stadtgarten, Stuttgart, 2013.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

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As we seem to be able to use robotic manufacturing to get ever closer to biological paradigms and their fabrication methods, a perplexing research achievement by Mediated Matter in MIT ultimately fuses robotic manufacturing in a core process to inform and control actual ‘biological 3D printer’ such as a silkworms to create a human one to one scale pavilion. Inspired by the silkworms ability to generate a cocoon out of a a single thread containing various material properties created by controlling proteins, the behaviour of the worm was studied in their ability to manufacture their enclosure for morphing29 . Controlling the dictating parameters by which a silkworm fabricates, such as sunlight and geometric density, algorithms were developed to assign continuous silk threads of varying densities on twenty-six polygonal panels by a CNC machine. A swarm of silkworms was then deployed on the bottom rims of the spinning silk-thread dome and the worms reinforced the gaps across the CNC-woven silk fibres. Desired light effects on the pavilion were informed by the material organisation across the surface of the structure and the worms migration towards desirable cooler areas, thus manipulating it in biologically printing over the structure. This further results in moths able to produce 1.5 million eggs, rendering the opportunity to construct two hundred and fifty additional pavilions of this kind30 .

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Neri Oxman. "Design at the Intersection of Technology and Biology." TED. Mediated Matter, Mar. 2015. Web. 14 Feb. 2016.

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Neri Oxman, Markus Kayser, Carlos David Gonzalez Uribe, and Jorge Duro-Royo. "Mediated Matter." Silk Pavillion Environment. MIT, 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2016.

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Figure 29: 3D Motion tracking experiment using magnetometer sensors to magnetically track the silk cocoon construction and translate the point coordinated into a digital 3d model

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Figure 30: 230X magnification plan view SEM micrograph of an equatorially bisected domesticated Bombex mori cocoon.

Figure 31: Maltese Cross study series. Surface morphologies vary in sectional height from 0 (flat) to 25mm beyond which a 3D cocoon is spun. Variations in surface morphology yield corresponding variations in fibre density, property and overall organisation.

Figure 32: Overall aperture and density distribution

Figure 33: Spring steel CNC threading tool and silk thread end-effector.

Figure 34: Digitally fabricated, temporary aluminium scaffolding structure with woven silk.

Figure 35: View through pavilion apertures as the silkworms skin the structure.

Figure 36: Bombyx mori silkworms deposits silk fibre on a digitally-fabricated scaffolding structure.

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The emancipation of human tectonic manufacturing through the employment of intelligent robotic and natural organism sets a new epitome in construction and its recipient author. The symbiotic processes between the machine and bio-composite systems is genuinely realised through the robot, by the architect, whereby the substructure of the robotic composition informs the living organism’s action. Whether computed materials such as the HygroSkin manipulated to work around its own material logic, or living silkworms ‘tricked’ into building for humans are the next generation of industry 4.0 31, there is conditional dependence between the human’s need for the robots performance in the quest of intricate systems of complexity, and the rising obsession for architectural performance resembling the natural world. The illusive paradox between the nonhuman and the organic have evolved to be conditional upon each other, and so rises the question of the role of machines and artificial intelligence in our increasingly technological and scientifically informed profession. Does the machine actually have the potential to overtake complete control over design, given a moment where their autonomy could attain a certain level of conscious associative learning through its application?

Pursuing a formulated response to this question requires one to define machine intelligence. Artificial intelligence should be understood as an organisation of knowledge derived from the way we understand our own intelligence. When one speaks of mechanic potential, we enter into a realm of speculation, whereby the robot’s capabilities and roles seem infinite.32 The use of sensor technology nowadays allows increased autonomy in machines: Intuitive simulation and robot control. Nonetheless, it is of outmost importance to reciprocate the potential of the robot with how intelligent they should get33. Understanding and contextualising intelligence they carry is crucial, as some suggest artificial intelligence carries the potential to learn and apply learning continuously, creating endless feedback loops of data constantly informing the machine how to improve and re-iterate endlessly.34 As proposed by Patrik Schumacher in the Autopoiesis of Architecture, “the notion of a self-contriving system can and should merge with the theory of social systems”35 . This view agues for the autopoietic potential of the machine able to study socio-behavioural patterns and change the environment. Human autonomy from architecture is thus human autonomy in the ‘burden’ of socio-contextualisation, where society can start devoting itself to other than building. This entails accepting that robots can bring the ‘betterment of our society’36 and that their capability to evolve will be solely dedicated for the human environment, in absolute hope that we understand their intelligence and still be the sole commodity generator to the machine. The notion of leaving the machines’ fate to its tremendous ability to process and execute reaches an exciting turning moment in the construction sector, although much attention must be dedicated in carefully monitoring their trajectories in the risk of a total loss of control over the mass-scale manufacturer and information processor the robot is. A day where the machine is capable of optimising itself under its own action and reaction—continuously—is the epoch of the 31

Industry 4.0 refers to the new industrial revolution, a collective term encircling contemporary automation, manufacturing technologies and data exchange. ”Industry 4.0: It's All about Information Technology This Time | ZDNet." ZDNet.. 2016.

Patrik Schumacher, Clemens Weisshaar, Francesca Hughes, Ryan Dillon, Francesco Catemario Di Quadri, and Jakob Skote. "Arkitek Ist Tot. (The Architect Is Dead)." AAgora. Architectural Association, London. 29 Jan. 2016. Debate.

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Braumann J. and S. Brell-Cokcan. (2012) Association for Robots in Architecture . Digital and physical computing for industrial robots in architecture. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, CAADRIA, Chennai: 317-326] 33 33

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Generative Design Process and Endless Feedback Loops. Hartmut Bohnacker, Julia Laub, Benedikt Groß and Claudius Lazzeroni, 2009.

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Schumacher, Patrik. The Autopoiesis of Architecture. Chichester: Wiley, 2011. Print

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"Fully Automated Luxury Communism." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 18 Mar. 2015. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.

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death of the architect, whereby the robot’s performance will have depleted human design. The machine will finally have gained full authorship in its ability to design and possibly study sociological and biological paradigms better than humans. Perhaps, the real betterment of our worlds will come from machines dictating construction, and even service sectors in an understanding of the natural and human world that is greater than we ourselves conceive. The terminus of such an outcome is either the complete automation of our lives, or the depletion of the human race, thus leading trail to the next generation of immortal machines. The balance between the digital artisan and his revolutionary tools is hence the key answer in organic and automatic symbiotic authorship.

Figure 37: Generative Design process endless feedback loop

Figure 38: Approach to Computerised Space Planning Using Graph Theory.

Figure 39: A Self- Replicating, Growing, Lunar Factory.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

03/2016

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