Rethinking the fabrication process using the brick

BEHAVIOUR

Theodore Spyropoulos | Ryan Dillon | Doreen Bernath | Winston Hampel

CASE STUDY: Eladio Dieste’s Work // Flight Assembled Architecture

Andreas Y. Kyriakou

Architectural Association School of Architecture AADRL | Design Research Lab

2014 - 2015

BEHAVIOUR Essay | Andreas Y. Kyriakou

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Rethinking the Fabrication Process Using the Brick

00 | ABSTRACT Today, frontier research deals with the properties of materials and cover a wide range of areas like diagnosis of seismic behaviour, controllability of material damages, improve of the mechanical properties of traditional materials and the use of smart materials which interact with the user and create intelligent environments.

methodologies. The material in that case is the brick.

Although, the brick is a simple and conventional material with specific properties, the paper attempts to examine -in the first case- the innovative usage of brick by Eladio Dieste who spent his career building a fantastic range of brick-structures in a pro-digital era. Continuing, the second example refers to the “Flight Assembled Architecture” project by Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler who using a fleet of quadcopters and foam bricks, attempted to construct a twisting tower, bringing together robotics and architecture.

After the “high-tech” buildings, the virtual spaces and the buildings - “blobs” of 90’s, everything indicates that we return to materiality. However, this is driven through a different approach. The digital dimension of architecture supports the form, but it cannot fabricate. In other words, computers cannot build, but can investigate ways of fabrication and are able to drive the manufacturing process.

Target of that paper is to continue to a comparative study, investigating and analysing the similarities and differences of the two examples, considering the different methodologies which were followed to produce spatial structures utilizing however, the same kind of material.

Currently, materials are not limited to the two dimensions; they are not just surfaces that cover the building. Instead, they are three-dimensional and they occupy space. Or they are fourdimensional and evolve / are generated in time.

Or even, they are five-dimensional and able to transfer or transmit information. Additionally, investigations into materials and robotics in the field of architecture have begun to challenge the architectural discourse by proposing alternatives to conventional modes of practice through the adoption of new fabrication technologies.

The paper attempts to examine the fabrication process of two specific examples which use the same kind of material to produce architectural space in different periods, using different

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BEHAVIOUR Essay | Andreas Y. Kyriakou

OUTLINE | CONTENTS

00 | ABSTRACT

01 | INTRODUCTION

02 | ELADIO DIESTE’s (BRICK) WORK 03 | CHURCH OF CHRIST THE WORKER

04 | FLIGHT ASSEMBLED ARCHITECTURE 05 | THE NOTION OF DRONES SWARM

06 | COMPARATIVE STUDY

07 | CONCLUSION

08 | BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Rethinking the Fabrication Process Using the Brick

01 | INTRODUCTION At the beginning of last century, there were architects who started looking materials as dynamic systems and not only under their static conditions. The result was the developing of a different conception of the relationship of material with the form as the latter is not imposed from outside but emerges from an “active” material.

Manuel DeLanda notes: “Although some materials do have a range of loads under which they respond linearly (a small increase in load producing a proportionally small deformation) and also reversibly (after removal of the load the deformation disappears), even these simple materials display a critical threshold beyond which their behaviour ceases to be elastic and becomes plastic (…)”1. In other words, the material becomes active through crisis points, passing from one state to another. So each time, it is possible for the material to emerge properties which respond to the complex dynamic behaviour of its components.

Eladio Dieste belongs to this pantheon of great structural artists. Just as Roebling pioneered with wire cable, Eiffel with iron, and Maillart with reinforced concrete, Dieste led the way in developing economical, efficient, and elegant structures using the reinforced brick. Dieste’s detailed technical knowledge and extensive experience enabled him to extend vaulting in reinforced brick to a new scale. For Dieste, the brick was not only a local material but it had also a symbolic character. Beyond the innovative ideas of fabrication and the building construction, utilizing this specific material was the way for him to develop and demonstrate his social beliefs and maintain his ideas and theories about economy.

Originating from Uruguay, he grew up in a country with an immense high rate of poverty and social problems. He used to unfold also this sensitivity in his writings, speaking about the usage of the material: “For architecture to be truly constructed, the materials should not be used without a deep respect for their essence and consequently for their possibilities. This is the only way that what we build will have the cosmic economy that we spoke of and this cosmic economy is what sustains the world. When we use materials with this profound respect, we must be modest and be careful of our own esthetic refinement. It is not enough to use brick because we like its texture and that it is material full of historical references”3.

The period from the late nineteenth to the twentieth century is characterized as a time of great innovation, experimentation in structural form and the expression of structural form in architecture. Engineers such as Gustav Eiffel, Eugene Freyssinet and Robert Maillart worked with new materials and techniques to produce structures and buildings that were elegant, economic and structurally efficient. Moreover, they showed a great care for the expressive qualities of structures2.

On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the last years, the introduction of materiality in

1 Neil Leach, David Turnbull, Chris Williams, Digital Tectonics, in “Material Complexity” by Manuel DeLanda, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, GB, 2004 | p. 16

Standing Barrel Vaults of Eladio Dieste | p.2451 (article)

3 Eladio Dieste, Nicolas Ramirez Moreno, Eladio Dieste (1943-1996), in “Writings” by Eladio Dieste, Consejeria Obras Andalucia, 1998 | p.234

2 Remo Pedreschi, The Structural Behaviour and Design of Free-

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BEHAVIOUR Essay | Andreas Y. Kyriakou

digital design is accompanied by the evolution of manufacturing. Actually the digital design tool changed the way we perceive the production of the built environment which was traditionally autonomous (work distribution, recognition of roles, specialists and so on). The digital fabrication attempts a dynamic involvement in generative process of the form. Not only as a feedback factor in the manufacturing process, but it attempts to intervene in the design practice, taking on a greater or lesser extent, an active role.

Digital manufacturing tends to become an active participant in the morphogenetic process.

Moreover, the research focuses on the evolution of the tools, improving the time and the speed of construction machinery with more efficient usage of the available tools. This does not necessarily require the involvement of matter in the evolutionary process of the form genesis.

However, Robert Aish, suggests that “the creativity and experimentation of the designer should go as far as to interact and develop the machine in order to define the relationship between the computational abstraction and the design intent. He argues that tools have to be creative, intelligent and customizable. Tools have to embody conceptual knowledge and challenge the designers as much as the designer challenges them”4.

4 Ruairi Glynn, Bob Sheil, Fabricate: Making Digital Architecture, in “Forward” by Aish, Riverside Architectural Press, London, 2013 | p.

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Rethinking the Fabrication Process Using the Brick

02 | ELADIO DIESTE’s (BRICK) WORK Eladio Dieste was born in 1917 in Uruguay.

During the transculturation in Latin America countries, whose architecture has undergone a strong influence from European design principles, Eladio Dieste understood that the elements to define local architecture have to be from specific national resources of local materials and use of innovative construction methods. His opinion that architecture has to be innovative and by the urge of creating its own image for Latin American architecture, he redefined a new use of technology in construction technique that is based on material articulation and workforce.

Moreover, very soon he understood the need to develop appropriate technologies without limitations or barriers. Instead of adopting foreign solutions for the building environment, he tried to find alternatives in harmony with the social and economical context of the place.

Eladio Dieste (1917-2000)

What sets Eladio Dieste’s work as an innovation in construction is his ambition to deliver a new mechanical capacity that was little known in his days for local materials, in this case, bricks. A variety of complicated forms such as arches, curves, double curved surfaces, vaults and so on, are created to prove that “it is possible to combine austerity and beauty and to understand local conditions while experimenting rigorously”5.

Brick is a man-made material that is extremely accessible and affordable in Latin America.

Dieste’s ambition was to “surprise” the humanity by creating a new characteristic fabrication logic 5 R. Stephen Sennott, Encyclopedia of 20th centrury architecture, Fitzroy Dearborn, New York, 2004 | p. 362

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BEHAVIOUR Essay | Andreas Y. Kyriakou

Church of Christ the Worker perspective view

Church of Christ the Worker indoor space.

Pre-stressing jack designed by Eladio Dieste.

Eladio Dieste, Nicolas Ramirez Moreno, Eladio Dieste (1943-1996), in “Writings” by Eladio Dieste, Consejeria Obras Andalucia, 1998

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Rethinking the Fabrication Process Using the Brick

for this solid, unbendable material using nonlinear ways and methodologies, enhancing how people experience the spaces. The use of local material also highlights sustainable architecture from its long-lasting effects, moral familiarity to local people, and its flexibility to various natural conditions. Bricks “responded to deformations, sustained the test of time, and minimized maintenance (…) offers excellent thermal insulation. It is also inexpensive, acoustically resilient, and easy to repair or modify”6.

that could work horizontally”8. The similar invention logic was also implemented to the formworks. He refers that “for formworks of large dimensions like the ones we have used, which are up to 50 meters, the local hydraulic jack manufacturing industry could not give us the security that we needed.

We have used these jacks to raise and lower formworks but we have added braces to them, during the construction of the vaults, that would give us the security we needed”9.

From using bricks, Dieste experimented the two principle structural types of Gaussian vault and self-supporting vault. The general concept is, using a rectangular plane that folds up on one side, creating a series of catenary curves of varying rise with vertical plane moving along spring joints. In depth, his experiments in Gaussian vaults that rest on minimal support require that the vaults can resist bending forces.

“This Dieste accomplishes by introducing prestressing steel that pre-compresses the vault.

In cross section, the vaults are given the most effective structural form - a catenary”7.

03 | CHURCH OF CHRIST THE WORKER One of Dieste’s most notable buildings is the Church of Christ the Worker in Atlantida. Dieste began work for the church in 1958 which finished two years later. The church emerges different structural qualities from proportions, economy and elegance of materials and construction details.

Moreover, the way he enhanced the play of lights applied to the building, is impressive.

Furthermore, Dieste’s innovative techniques for pre-stressing the vaults directed him to develop very simple jacks, without hydraulicsm, which could tension a number of wires simultaneously.

As he note, “when we resolved the prestressing of the vaults for the first time, we could not find a jack with the adequate power and size in Uruguay

The astonishing detail of this structure lies from the curvilinear side walls and the connection between them with the roof of the nave. The walls were built in reinforced brick without formwork by using an undulating surface to provide lateral stiffness. The walls begin in two parallel lines and

6 R. Stephen Sennott, Encyclopedia of 20th centrury architecture, Fitzroy Dearborn, New York, 2004 | p. 362

8 Eladio Dieste, Nicolas Ramirez Moreno, Eladio Dieste (1943-1996), in “Writings” by Eladio Dieste, Consejeria Obras Andalucia, 1998 | p.250

7 Stanford Anderson, Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2003 | p. 33

9 Eladio Dieste, Nicolas Ramirez Moreno, Eladio Dieste (1943-1996), in “Writings” by Eladio Dieste, Consejeria Obras Andalucia, 1998 | p.252

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BEHAVIOUR Essay | Andreas Y. Kyriakou

rise upward in a ruled surface, following a series of parabolas in plan. The walls are topped with an edge beam in reinforced concrete that helps to transfer the load from the roof10. Additionally, the roof of the church is a Gaussian vault without glazing, is self-supported and is sitting directly on top of the sidewalls. Actually, it is made of a series of repeating brick vaults that contains steel reinforcement to reduce the thrust in the walls.

These two surfaces meet at the eaves, one undulating in a vertical plane and the other undulating in a horizontal plane. “The wall and roof work together, in effect forming a two-pinned portal frame”11. In order to fit the structure to curvilinear form, the whole building is considered as a representation of structural action of complex collision of two curved surfaces, in which “one of traditionally laid brick and the other of shell constructing using prefabricated formwork”12.

Church of Christ the Worker plan view and section.

Stanford Anderson, Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2003

10 Stanford Anderson, Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2003 | p. 98 11 as previously | p. 2 12 as previously | p. 2

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Rethinking the Fabrication Process Using the Brick

04 | FLIGHT ASSEMBLED ARCHITECTURE Continuing into the range of innovative fabrication and construction methodologies, we will examine the project “Flight Assembled Architecture” by Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler with the collaboration of the roboticist Raffaello D’ Andrea.

This impressive and innovative project is “the first architectural installation assembled by flying robots, free from the touch of human hands”, as it is noted by the coefficients. A group of quadcopters (they usually refer as drones) was programmed to lift and stack 1500 polystyrene bricks into a 6-metre high tower. The installation took place at the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France, in 2012. The aim of the project was the creation of a scale model (1:100) which simulates a tower which actually would have a 600-meter height, capable to host 30,000 people.

Considering that the task was implemented in an indoor space with available airspace just 10x10x10 meters, all the idea is even more impressive. In this space, up to 50 drones were able to cooperate, acting synergistically without conflicts or errors. Each flying robot had to know which brick was placed by the previous quadcopter to continue the construction to the next point. According to D’ Andrea, four flying robots operated at the same time. First the robots grabbed the foam bricks from a special brick container on the ground. Next they received the exact coordinates of where the bricks should go, based on a detailed digital blueprint of the tower and then they flied off. The robots flied autonomously, but they got help from the environment. The ceiling of the indoor space

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BEHAVIOUR Essay | Andreas Y. Kyriakou

A drone carries a foam brick.

Plans of the proposal of 600-meters height tower.

View from the assembling installation.

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Rethinking the Fabrication Process Using the Brick

05 | THE NOTION OF DRONES SWARM was equipped with a motion-capture system. A computer using the vision data, kept track of the quadcopters and told them where to go.

It is obvious that we speak for an extremely difficult project with huge demands both in software knowledge and the hardware programming. The completion of the project required high robotics technology knowledge combined with advanced artificial intelligence.

Although the bricks had to be made from polystyrene to be light enough for the machines to lift, the project demonstrates how drones might be used to construct actual buildings in the future.

On the one hand, the success of that project proves the future of the robots in architecture.

On the other, it is clear that the construction tool changes and the machines can cooperate to build spatial structures working on a real, human scale.

They can be programmed to be precise and efficient at the manufacturing process, but their greater benefit is the freedom at their movements reducing the limitations at the three-dimensions, increasing their efficiency in less time and of course the cost efficiency. The result could be much taller buildings and of course more complex structures.

Thinking more about the drones as a construction tool which in our case builds with the brick, it is easy to be characterized as an end-effector, a hand which is able to build in the threedimensional space. However, a swarm of drones can increase the potentialities.

Usually a swarm is a group of units, which is able to determine patterns and generally they have a minimum internal organization and limited capacity of action. Through the relationships that these units engage with each other and their environment, are able to achieve a result at a much larger scale than their scale. Although there is no central control device, which defines each individual behaviour, local interactions often lead to a strong overall behaviour. The result is a bottom-up process.

It is obvious that the swarm operates according to the human instructions. Each time the instructor (architect, programmer etc) has to confront some issues like the definition of the individual unit’s features, the connectivity of units between them (rules) and the changing characteristics of the form of morphology (feedback), and finally the question of how to achieve targets using an overall action which is associated with the individual intentions of the units. Ammar Mirjan suggests that “using drones to construct buildings in future could streamline the construction process.

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BEHAVIOUR Essay | Andreas Y. Kyriakou

06 | COMPARATIVE STUDY Studying the two projects, we understand that they have many similarities, especially in the domain where architects implement innovative construction methodologies, using the same material. Although, we try to compare a work which developed at the beginning of the 20th century, in a pro-digital era, with a project of 2012, we can locate common features.

be able to utilize common materials, investigating radical new ways of thinking, and materializing architecture as a physical process of dynamic formation.

As humanity evolves, such practices which utilize robots in architecture, obviously can be efficient and are possible to give solutions to other important and timeless factors which are relevant with the building industry like cost of the structure and time of fabrication.

On the one hand, we have Eladio Dieste who made a serious attempt, trying to understand the properties of brick, utilizing it in a nonconventional way to produce an architecture in the base of non-linearity. To achieve that, he invented the notion of pre-stressed steel to precompress the vault, using innovative tools like jack devices. He accomplished in forming a new system of structural art by practising with the idea of materiality and construction types economically, socially and morally. He conveyed architecture as an effective mean to not only solves engineering problems but also gives birth to spaces that are enchantingly beautiful in sophisticated humble manner.

On the other hand, Fabio Gramazio, Matthias Kohler and Raffaello D’ Andrea, living in a metadigital era and in a period where architecture re-investigate itself, tried to introduce new methodologies in construction process which reflects our days. They aimed to produce space utilizing the conventional brick -like Dieste- but using the full potential of the digital design and robotic fabrication, in our case flying robots.

Actually, they started to explore the possibilities of a revolutionary assembly tool/device which will

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Rethinking the Fabrication Process Using the Brick

07 | CONCLUSION It is obvious that speaking for the material, even in our days, the question for the fabrication process as part of the structuration has not so much to do with operations of the computers and the digitalization. Structure remains in a decidedly material domain and computer process is immaterial. Manufacturing process needs tools.

And of course, tools need rules, programming and guidance.

Moreover, trying to direct everything in autonomy and automation, we have to consider that there is a long way until a really viable result. In the case of “Flight Assembled Architecture� project we can conclude, quoting a couple of thinkings.

Considering that Dieste beyond the brick and the formworks, utilized the pre-stressed steel to reinforced in collaboration with his machinery and achieved his remarkable cantilevers and curvilinear vaults, how is the rest of the structure assembled with the drones? For instance, is it safe to build a 600-metres high brick structure with no other elements, like structural supports, joints and so on.

Additionally, is the control software stable enough for much larger robots that would carry actual bricks autonomously? But one thing is for sure. In a couple of years the architectural fabrication will not be the same.

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08 | BIBLIOGRAPHY Neil Leach, David Turnbull, Chris Williams, Digital Tectonics, in “Material Complexity” by Manuel DeLanda, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, GB, 2004 Remo Pedreschi, The Structural Behaviour and Design of Free-Standing Barrel Vaults of Eladio Dieste (article) Eladio Dieste, Nicolas Ramirez Moreno, Eladio Dieste (1943-1996), in “Writings” by Eladio Dieste, Consejeria Obras Andalucia, 1998 Ruairi Glynn, Bob Sheil, Fabricate: Making Digital Architecture, in “Forward” by Aish, Riverside Architectural Press, London, 2013 Stanford Anderson, Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2003 Gramazio, Kohler, D’Andrea, Flight Assembled Architecture, Editions HYX, 2010

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Rethinking the Fabrication Process Using the Brick

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London March 2015