Bartlett B-Pro AD SuperCrit 05.07 - 07.07
Matter + Behaviour media + AI / Augmentation Platforms / Automation
05.07 10:15am13:30pm BST
05.07 14:30pm17:30pm BST
06.07 10:45am13:30pm BST
Autonomy + AI
0
1 1
Hybrid Event
06.07
14:30pm17:30pm BST
NOW 1
07.07 10:15am13:00pm BST
NOW 2
07.07 14:00pm17:30pm BST
Moritz Doerstelmann Jakub Klaska, Nils Fischer, Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Behnaz Ezio Blasetti, An Shajay Bhooshan, Theo Ludovico Lombardi, Jell Jelle Feringa, Jose Sanc Marios Tsiliakos, Philip Yuan, Patrik Sch Roland Snooks,Mario Areti Markopoulou,Robert S Georg Vrachliotis
n,Matias Maierhofer, , Paulo Flores, Casey Rehm, Farahi, Biayna Bogosian, nna Maria Meister Lalis,Martha Tsigkari, le Feringa, Theo Lalis, chez, Matias Maierhofer, , Maria Yablonina humacher,Alisa Andrasek, Carpo,Jose Sanchez, Stuart Smith,Daniel Kohler, s,Winka Dubbeldam
About B-Pro B-Pro is a group of five graduate programmes. These programmes welcome a diverse international student cohort, with highly structured access to the realisation and application of research, and the production of new schemes of conception and construction in architecture and urbanism. Throughout the year, B-Pro tutors and students develop numerous seminars, workshops, lectures and public events to encourage collaboration and the discussion of ideas which further our understanding of the future of design, the urban environment and architecture. Through a shared vision of creative architecture, B-Pro is an opportunity for students both to participate in a new community and to affirm the singularity of their individual talents. These programmes are not only an open door to an advanced architectural practice but also form the base from which each student can define their particular approach and architectural philosophy, in order to seek a position in the professional world.
Attracting high-calibre staff from all over the world and led by Chair of School Professor Frédéric Migayrou, B-Pro includes a number of research ‘labs’ dedicated to advanced experimentation in architectural and urban theory.
B-Pro Programmes: Architectural Computation (MSc/MRes) Architectural Design (MArch) Architecture & Digital Theory (MRes) Bio-Integrated Design (MArch/MSc) Urban Design (MArch)
B-Pro AD Research Clusters 2021-2022
RC1 Monumental Wastelands Design: Déborah López and Hadin Charbel Technical: Sherif Tarabishy, Zehao Quin Theory: Albert Brenchat Research Cluster 1 explores the imminent nature of the Anthropocene under the lens of ubiquity, examining the production of data, raw material, logistical processes and their impacts on contemporary scenes.
Focusing on two strands of research topics, ‘Cli-migration’ and ‘Au-
tonomous Ecologies’, speculations will be put forward that challenge current profit driven models, arguing for decolonisation, decentralisation, automation and participation, to collapse human and non-human perspectives. A methodology of preservation through adaptation, referred to as ‘decoding’ and ‘recoding’, deploys a combination of machine learning, generative algorithms and video game engines, moving away from a nostalgic return, and instead embracing the uncertainty and possibilities through practical yet sensitively tuned, contextualised strategies. This year the cluster is moving outside of the Arctic Circle, below the 66° line and into Europe, using Climate-Fiction (Cli-Fi) as a vehicle for these imminent realities to be researched, experimented with and projected.
RC2 softROBOTIC ARCHITECTURE Design: Valentina Soana Technical: Shahram Minooee Sabery, Emmanouil Dimitrakakis Theory: Provides Ng RC2 explores emerging design possibilities of lightweight robotic structures at architectural scale. For a long time now, designers have envisioned building systems that can respond and adapt to multiple human, environmental and structural conditions. Recent technological advancements in robotics enable machines to be self-aware, plan and react to undetermined circumstances. The integration of robotic solutions into lightweight elastic material systems can create novel intelligent structures that are able to self-form, reconfigure and achieve multiple states, leveraging material behaviours. RC2 questions the role of robotics in architecture beyond their use as fabrication and construction tools, moving towards a novel concept of architectural robots. The cluster focuses on the development of novel material-machine-kinetic systems where robotic operations are embedded within material systems and controlled in real-time by a cyber-physical network. Behaviours emerge, in turn, through negotiation between human, designer, material and machine interaction.
RC3 Living Architecture Design: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu and Philipp Siedler Technical: Panagiotis Tigas, Ziming He, Baris Erdincer Theory: Jordi Vivaldi Piera Research Cluster 3 interrogates the notion of ‘living architecture’ as a coupling of living systems with the continuous assembly and reformation of architecture. The research focuses on developing autonomously reconfigurable buildings with situated and embodied agency, facilitated variation, and artificial intelligence. The studio develops experimental design models embedded with the ability to self-organize, self-assess, and self-improve using deep learning to train assembly systems to improve at negotiating shifting architectural objectives. In parallel, we develop architectural robotics and intelligent simulation models in a tightly coupled feedback loop for an architecture that is self-aware. The studio reappraises linear building life cycles holistically, learning from living systems extraordinary scalable efficiencies of adaptive construction with simple flexible parts. This year, RC3 rethinks notions of “Home”, “Work” and “Factory” as separate building typologies. Projects will investigate new socio-economic models and scalable platforms that enable the formation of emergent communities through novel distributed living, working, and production models aligned with autonomously adaptive architectural systems.
RC4 Architecture and Automation Design: Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Gilles Retsin, Kevin Saey, Philip Singer Technical: David Doria Theory: Mollie Claypool, Provides Ng From tiny bits of matter to territorial-scale housing platforms, RC4 continues its agenda on housing and automation. Students look to find “Home”, as a condition emerging somewhere in between these vastly diverging scales. The cluster develops the imagination, tools and thinking to enable mission-driven, non-extractive, distributed and scalable platforms for housing, for a more equal, sustainable and inspiring build environment. Mindful of the social and political consequences of automation, students learn from emerging tech platforms to develop community-driven alternatives for homes and housing. RC4 looks at everyday automated workflows set in the present, while being invested in radical spatial and aesthetic agendas for the future. RC4’s research investigates new narratives for community, work, life and domesticity in an increasingly automated world; and questions topics ranging from life with autonomous entities, robots and artificial intelligence, mobile robotic mini-factories to viral platforms, primitive materials and activism. This Research Cluster is affiliated with Automated Architecture Labs.
RC5/6 Ordinary Materials Design: Guan Lee, Adam Holloway, Daniel Widrig Theory: Ruby Law Architecture of material is about engineering imagined opportunities, cooking with or without recipes, and construction of solids out of liquids. Whether designing or making, what we seek can transform the everyday and the ordinary. At the heart of a material-based practice is a commitment to stretch the bounds of experimentation and to fabricate purposeful trial and error. How can non-ordinary uses of material play a role in architecture and design experiments? What makes a material ‘ordinary’? How are the conflicts in use and design of material be considered ordinary in different situations? Do surprising outcomes in material use arise because of the ‘misuses of material’ or unexpected results must be attributed to ‘new material’? One can argue that each material has an ideal expression based on the material’s property and innate quality and ability to be. As we depart further away from the naturalness of a material, do we necessary arrive at innovative materiality?
RC7 Biospatial Assemblies Design: Richard Beckett Technical: Diego Pinochet, Ozruh Levent, Tony Lee Theory: Yota Adilenidou This year Research Cluster 7 will progress its agenda at the intersection of biodesign and architecture with a specific interest in the role of AI and machine learning for the conception of new building paradigms and the development of novel biofabrication technologies. Considering the contemporary understanding of the human as a holobiont along with shifting modes of biopolitics, students will develop novel biologically driven spatial assemblies to provide for multiple living agencies across a range of building typologies. Projects will seek to provide new narratives for urban living alongside radical solutions addressing issues including urban growth in the age of the Anthropocene, smart buildings and healthy urban environments. Topics this year will revolve around themes including bio-augmented design, resilient infrastructure, novel architectural tectonics and largescale fabrication.
RC8 Fused Space + Continuous Lifecycles Design: Kostas Grigoriadis Technical: Sam Esses, Alberto Fernandez Gonzalez Theory: Ilaria Di Carlo Research Cluster 8’s main research focus is multi-material design, and the wider implications that the use of multi-materials will have on architecture and building construction. We explore new procedures of designing and building with material gradients, aiming to rethink component-based assembly and the standard practice of twentieth century mechanical connectivity. In previous years, the Cluster investigated the use of robotic fabrication for the in-situ 3D printing of building facades and the fusion of materials such as metal and glass to generate component-less, materially continuous envelopes. This year students researched into the origins of the materials that make up larger multi-material topologies from recycled sources, and the end-of-life strategy of the buildings and structures that will be deployed across London.
RC9 Architecture for the Augmented Age Design: Alvaro Lopez Rodriguez and Igor Pantic Technical: Jose Pareja Gomez and Hanjun Kim Theory: Stephannie Fell Contreras As we immerse ourselves into rapidly developing Extended Realities (XR), the barriers between humans and machines are becoming increasingly blurred, with portable devices augmenting our perception of the environment. XR
have the capability to assist manufactur-
ing processes, enhancing human labour with data previously exclusive to machines while enabling seamless inclusion of intuitive decision-making and experience, often absent from automated construction processes. XR technologies can also radically change how we interact and experience the built environment by enhancing, altering or adding a new layer of information to our surroundings. Research Cluster 9 explores how the XR technologies can change the ways in which we design, build, and interact with the environment. Ideas like augmented manufacturing, gig economy or digital platforms for multi-player design and distributed manufacturing, as well as immersive experience and interaction with the built environment and the metaverse, will therefore act as the central core for all the research streams.
RCX Ecocentricism Design: Barry Wark Technical: Nayan Patel,Tony Le Theory: Andreas Korner RCX is driven by ecocentrism, an environmental position that give equal values to all matter, biological and otherwise, in the creation of the built environment. We consider where matter comes from to create materials, how it is shaped and arranged, and the life cycle of those materials returning to matter through use and post use as a building. The cluster explores the aesthetic and spatial possibilities of such an approach, celebrating weathering, aging and patina as a positive, promoting that building should be humble and more honest in how they display their interconnectedness with their environment. We explore these agendas through the creation of novel design tools, navigating both generative and AI computation. The projects ask questions about the role of the architect and how we balance the integration of data, human bias and choice in the creation of a build environment that moves beyond the tropes of sustainability towards an ecocentric architecture.
Matter / BEHAVIOUR 05.07 10:15am13:30pm BST
PANEL: Moritz Doerstelmann,Jakub Klaska, Matias Maierhofer,Nils Fischer, Paulo Flores
10:30 RC5/6 Rain, Willow and Mud Students: Siying Chen, Siyuan Meng, Shijie Wu, Xiangbayangxi Design: Guan Lee, Adam Holloway, Daniel Widrig Theory: Ruby Law This research works with key materials in Wattle and Daub, a traditional English construction technique. In architecture, Wattle and Daub combines lattices of plant-based strips with sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw. For centuries, timber framed buildings have this orderly woven material bound together with the irregularly applied admixture as infill. This project aims to rethink the process by using a digital basket weaving technique for additional structural performance and improved recipe of mud , so as to enhance its water resistance. Rain, Willow & Mud work together before and after, above and beyond inhabitation.
11:00 RC3 T.A.S. Students: Yining Tang, Junjie Wu, Yutonglong Wang, Xiaochen Wang Design: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu, Philipp Siedler Technical: Panagiotis Tigas, Ziming He, Baris Erdincer Theory: Jordi Vivaldi Piera T.A.S.(transformable architectural system) project inspired by the form of Jitterbug provides a transformable and reconfigurable inhabitable system aiming at the digital nomadic community utilizing autonomous embodied robots. The embodied robot consists of joints to drive the unit to transform, skin systems that allow the openness of the unit, locking systems which realize the connection between units to aggregate into a cluster. The system works in the form of aggregation possesses the ability to rotate, walk, bridge and expand based on the movement of the unit which is also reinforced with the aid of machine learning. T.A.S. is a self-aware and self-adapting intelligent inhabitable system responding to user requirement and environmental conditions.
11:30 RC4 terra Students: Du Li, Gareth Li, Anita Wesonga, Dayong Zhang Design: Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Gilles Retsin, Kevin Saey, Philip Singer Technical:David Doria Theory: Mollie Claypool, Provides Ng Terra is a sustainability-conscious nonprofit using a combination of automated rammed earth and earth casting techniques to create environmentally sustainable housing communities. Through automation of the ramming process, we are able to create a variety of typologies of buildings by a computational combination of limited rammed earth components and moulds. Our platform connects residents to a sustainable lifestyle by subscribing them to sustainable lifestyle platforms and binding them to a contract that pushes them to reduce individual emissions. Terra aims to create communities that have access to subsidised and environmentally friendly housing.
12:00 RC9 CastAR Students: Haodong Kong, Yu-Han Tseng, Xuqi Liu, Zihan Yuan Design: Alvaro Lopez Rodriguez & Igor Pantic Technical: Jose Pareja Gomez & Hanjun Kim Theory: Stephannie Fell Contreras CastAR proposes a fast and affordable system for building low-cost housing in Chinese rural areas, by wickering a series of complex moulds for spray-on GRC. Use of Mixed Reality in fabrication allows people without previous construction knowledge to engage in the construction of local communities. A Mixed Reality app for Hololens is developed in order to guide the construction process, in which the builders will create wickered formwork, and assemble the GRC panels in place following holographic templates.
12:30 RC5/6 small moves Students: Xiaohui Chen,Yutong Wu,Zheng Zhang,Yihui Zhao Design: Guan Lee, Adam Holloway, Daniel Widrig Theory: Ruby Law The focus is slight and incremental adjustments in earth construction. Building with earth is a cumbersome and tedious process. Instead of viewing this as hindrance, ‘Small Moves’ sees the disadvantages as key attributes to lower embodied energy construction. By limiting the amount of material transportation, architecture is more sustainable. Rammed earth is a well-established construction technique in different cultures. In order to sustain this way of making architecture, certain refinement is inevitable, however small. This research considers tweaks in the earth material recipe, strategic modification in methods of ramming earth and digital shifts in design language. By moving less, the material can go further.
13:00 RC7 Loofahtecture Students: Jinghui Wei,Junjie Lyu,Yuchen Qiu Design: Richard Beckett Technical:Diego Pinochet, Ozruh Levent, Tony Lee Theory: Yota Adilenidou Rapid urbanisation and increasingly sterile built environments associated with modernist architecture are isolating humans from green spaces and microbes. Microorganisms play a key role in the field of human health through relationships between the human
microbiome and the microbiome
in buildings. It is important to restore the microbial diversity in urban habitats to create a healthier living environment for the contemporary model of the human as a holobiont. The project explores the use of loofah, a natural plant material, to conduct building materials manufacturing and biological experiments. The purpose is to design a new grown building material, embedded with living organisms which combined within computational assemblies, to create assemblies that can be applied to architectural design.
biological
MEDIA + AI / Augmentation 05.07
14:30pm17:30pm BST
PANEL: Casey Rehm,Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Behnaz Farahi,Biayna Bogosian, Ezio Blasetti,Anna-Maria Meister
14:30 RC5/6 skin of flax Students: Solomija Bogusz,Sangwon Cho,Tessia Zachariah, Pinru Zhu Design: Guan Lee, Adam Holloway, Daniel Widrig Theory: Ruby Law What is the skin of architecture if made of plants? How would it feel to the touch? This project explores the use of natural flax fibre as a sustainable architectural material. Flax is primarily used in the textile industry, characterised by high durability, robustness, and great tensile strength. Through wet felting and moulding, this research inadvertently develops a cloak for buildings that is more animal than vegetal. This leatherlike material can be hairy or smooth, flexible and resilient. If the construction industry is supplied with a viable leather alternative, where can this material be applied? What would the skin of flax architecture look like?
15:00 RC4 EcoLocks Students: Aala Abbas,Dongxuan Cui,Yuan Geng,Yuchen Xue, Yunhao Zhong Design:Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Gilles Retsin, Kevin Saey, Philip Singer Technical: David Doria; Theory: Mollie Claypool, Provides Ng Ecolocks is a platform aiming to address the housing crisis and climate change. Our project applies automated technologies to community housing design, and uses recycled plastic as its main building material. It is a circular building process, where plastic waste is stored in housing projects as building blocks after its removal from the sea. In each one of the 10 HDPE blocks recycling intervals, Our platform provides people with free flexible housing that can be dismantled and rebuilt in a different location after contract end. Our proposal creates the opportunity for companies with high waste production to pay for the recycled materials in order to offset waste. HDPE has high feasibility, strength compared to common building materials. We have designed an algorithm to compute where and how to interlock building blocks, avoiding the need for traditional jointing or post-tension systems. Machine learning algorithm automatically generates the floor plans according to users needs.
15:30 RC9 skillcast+ Students: Ezra Oksuz,Misha Gliwny,Sarah Aladayleh,Yi Li Design: Alvaro Lopez Rodriguez & Igor Pantic Technical: Jose Pareja Gomez & Hanjun Kim Theory: Stephannie Fell Contreras Mixed Reality platforms provide the potential to bridge the gap of transferring skills from one user to another, through ‘doing’ rather than viewing. Archiving a repository of gestures can create a skillset, digitising recorded gestures. By combining MR-aided assembly with locally sourced materials of timber, sawdust, and fabric, SkillCast+ aims to enable downloading of construction skills through MR, based on archived gestures of bending, stitching, and folding. The MR platform of Skillcast + can optimise fabrication methodologies of rural housing for digital nomads, eliminating the need for skilled labour or outsourced materials.
16:00 RC1 Knowledge Decentralization Students: Yiqian Lu,Dong Yue,Peiyu Fu,Donghua Qu,Yongnan Chen Design Tutors: Déborah López Lobato and Hadin Charbel Technical Tutors: Sherif Tarabishy, Zehao Quin Theory Tutor: Albert Brenchat The world is rich in traditional forms of knowledge that are increasingly at risk of dying out. While generally associated to a particular place, the current notion of borders is questionable as the world is facing a global climate emergency. Does the current climate regime provide an opportunity for rethinking the vernacular? Knowledge Decentralization is an open platform for the storage, dissemination and generation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Using various forms of machine learning and virtual environments, the project aims to create a large database of various forms of architecture classified under material, social, craft, and aesthetic properties; forming a living and endlessly growing archive accessible to users around the world.
16:30 RC7 Biospatial Assemblages Students: Aya Ahmed,Keerthi Prakash Design: Richard Beckett Technical: Diego Pinochet, Ozruh Levent, Tony Lee Theory: Yota Adilenidou Building on the previous bio-receptive design approaches developed in RC7, we are looking beyond the material condition and instead looking to define new ways to plan building strategies to integrate living matter into buildings. Our proposed tool will allow environmental information to be embedded into any given structure, thus optimising building mass and form for maximal growth of natural diversity. This concept shifts the reduction of risk in human/non-human entanglements from purely behavioural factors to also include social conditions. We explore the potential of greening transport networks as a strategy for providing more equal access and exposure to nature in a new style of infrastructure dubbed ‘assemblage pods’. These structures will be autonomously operated and host spaces for gig workers, TfL users and local residents.
17:00 RCX Within Brick Students: Yefan Gu,Chu Heng Tan,Dongqi Ying Design: Barry Wark Technical: Nayan Patel,Tony Le Theory: Andreas Korner The project explores conceiving a building that is constantly being reconstructed over millennia, with elements being installed , dismantled and rebuild across a site area. The goal is to leave some areas for non determinate growth and colonisation and others programmed for human inhabitation.
In this endeav-
our, the project departs from the considering bricks not as static building elements , but as durable, reconfigurable elements that have both structural capacity as well as the ability to easily propagate vegetation and moss within and upon them. The ambition is to allow areas to be newly constructed and others to be unmaintained, displaying the structure interconnected with its environment, creating new kinds of spatial experiences in our urban environments.
Platforms / automation 06.07 10:45am13:30pm BST
PANEL: Shajay Bhooshan,Theo Lalis, Martha Tsigkari,Ludovico Lombardi, Jelle Feringa
11:00 RC10 Re:casting Students: Rachel George,Prathna Misra,Dushyant Wagh Design: Barry Wark Technical: Nayan Patel,Tony Le Theory: Andreas Korner Our project rethinks casting as a method of architectural production, and deploys generative design tools to make casting more ecocentric. We are interested in shapelessness, intricacy and coexistence with non human agencies. Casting as a method has the potential to help us achieve these qualities that we strive for. Moreover we use machine learning to incorporate the user’s demands in our design.
11:30 RC8 Vestriplas Students: Jingyan Liu,Basak Su Ozcelik,Surapa Phataraprasit, Mingze Tang Design: Kostas Grigoriadis Technical: Sam Esses, Alberto Fernandez Gonzalez Theory: Ilaria Di Carlo Plastic and sawdust are two environmentally damaging materials, with the latter almost always ending up in landfill. The fusion of these two materials in a multi-material forms the basis of our design explorations and approach. Using various digital design methods to configure the sawdust within the plastic matrix, we were able to generate floors and partitions of varying porosity, transparency, and thickness, to control internal comfort, visibility, privacy, and structural behaviour. These multi-material elements were placed within a lattice structure under a vacant bridge space in Shoreditch, London, and constantly reconfigured to accommodate a variety of artistic event programmes.
12:00 RC3 symbot Students: Dana Al-haj,Rhea Sethi,Dhwani Shah,Freya Xu Design: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu, Philipp Siedler Technical: Panagiotis Tigas, Ziming He, Baris Erdincer Theory: Jordi Vivaldi Piera Can humans and robots co-exist by developing a symbiotic relationship?
Symbot expands on the
values of living architecture by focusing on creating adaptable spaces guided by a bottom up system that enables self-organization, assembly and reconfiguration. This multi-agent embodied robotic approach comprises of four interdependent systems : Unit Nesting system, Modular Assembly robots, Furniture robots and Wheel robots. The multi-scalar system allows the user to adapt and reconfigure the units to create a variety of transformable multi functional spaces and also transform their spaces at the interior level. This reconfiguration is driven by a bespoke computational system that generates aggregations of unit clusters based on their ability to connect with neighbouring units in their expanded state.
12:30 RC1 Reversible Architecture Students: Mingmin Shen,Sitan Sun,Xinjie Wu Design: Déborah López Lobato and Hadin Charbel Technical: Sherif Tarabishy, Zehao Quin Theory: Albert Brenchat Extractive processes have led to resource depletion, material cost inflation, and a linear process that is essentially irreversible. The project responds by creating a decentralised open-source platform within the urban context with the aim of creating material transparency, construction reversibility, while embedding programmatic flexibility and user participation. London and Ukraine are taken as experimental sites where a gamified approach enables users to collaboratively design and construct each stage of their community. The platform uses a human-led bottom-up design strategy in collaboration with computer algorithms, in an attempt to create a community where materials are decentralised and autonomous and where building functions are reversible.
13:00 RC4 homelust Students: Yinzhe Cai,Yuran Ji,Guansheng Li,Xiaoyu Pan, Jingxuan Xu Design: Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Gilles Retsin, Kevin Saey, Philip Singer Technical: David Doria; Theory: Mollie Claypool, Provides Ng HomeLUST is platform dedicated to building city residences which simulate old villages with a relocation, reforestation, and recreation strategy, targeting rural ageing, environmental degradation and unaffordable housing. Currently, there are enormously depressed villages in the UK where only a few elders reside, lacking both mental and medical care. Responsively, HomeLUST proposes a future land planning that ‘relocates’ decaying villages to the city, giving the elderly new homes that feel like the original ones and settling a young cohabitant who struggles with housing as a caregiver. In order to provide a home-like experience. Starting with a scan from the original houses, CLT and glulam structures are automatically generated keeping the architectural typologies and homely features. The rural sites will be reforested, providing resources for future projects. When the elderly pass away, given sufficient care has been provided, the carers can inherit the houses and adapt them to their own needs.
Autonomy + Ai 06.07 14:30pm17:30pm BST
PANEL: Theo Lalis, Jelle Feringa, Jose Sanchez, Matias Maierhofer, Marios Tsiliakos,Maria Yablonina
14:30 RC9 athar Students: Armita Vajdi,Jiaming Ye,Maher Moghrabi,Yangcheng Qu Design: Alvaro Lopez Rodriguez & Igor Pantic Technical: Jose Pareja Gomez & Hanjun Kim Theory: Stephannie Fell Contreras Recent developments in the field of Mixed Realities suggest that in the near future, we will be living in a world of ubiquitous MR, completely integrated into our daily lives. This has the potential to change the way in which we perceive and interact with our environment, through fully digital overlay of information, over the physical reality. Therefore, AthAR proposes a game-like platform which enables the creative community to propose an interactive experience with their built environment through augmented reality, exploring new forms of art ownership. This approach opens up the aesthetic and semiological possibilities of architecture beyond the physical, and introduces time as a flexible variable in the customisation process.
15:00 RC1 iberaland Students: Jinghan Chen,Siting Wu,Chenxi Zheng,Qiniu Zhu Design: Déborah López Lobato and Hadin Charbel Technical: Sherif Tarabishy,Zehao Quin Theory: Albert Brenchat Currently, farming choices largely depend on market value which has resulted in ecological degradation. Two schools of thought dominate how to respond to the future of food; eco-romantics, who believe in small-scale individual actions through rooftop and balcony farming, and eco-modernists who believe in large-scale hi-tech solutions. Iberaland is a decentralized platform for negotiation and cooperation presented through a gaming environment that allows users to play as either Eco-Modernists or Eco-Romantics. It introduces Bio-Coin, a crypto-currency whose value is correlated to ecological health as a means to constrain market impact on decision making and to allow for the emergence of individual decision making through ecological simulations.
15:30 RC5/6 The corn factor Students: Hanzhe Bao,Zhengyou Chen,Zhenhao Jin,Qianyi Sun Design: Guan Lee, Adam Holloway, Daniel Widrig Theory: Ruby Law Corn, as an agricultural crop has significantly impacted human cultures and surroundings for over 10,000 years. With the increase of maize production, its negative effect including land loss has worsened. This research questions how we can live with corn not only for sustenance but also as a construction material. What if the entire corn plant can be utilized, the fruit, the husk, the cob, the stoke, the silk, the ear, the tassel and even the roots? How can this approach affect the ecology of cultivation and consumption of corn? What are the environmental factors that are at stake? What is the corn factor?
16:00 RC4 concreate Students: Nutnicha Attawutinun,Elisa Ballabio,Nazuk Beborta, Noor Mubesher Design Tutors: Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Gilles Retsin, Kevin Saey, Philip Singer Technical Tutors: David Doria; Theory Tutor: Mollie Claypool, Provides Ng conCreate is an on-going project whose goal is rethinking community housing towards affordable, sustainable, and inclusive living. Using recycled concrete, an automated design process, and a user platform conCreate encourages a relationship between community, architecture, and environment. Its “construction - on - reverse” process starts from the planned deconstruction of an existing concrete building, which hence becomes the quarry for conCreate design proposal. ConCreate is using Machine learning, analysis and combinatorial algorithms to achieve a unique, innovative and efficient result. Despite the users not being a part of this design process, they are essential to the life of the building itself. Through a phone application, they are able to live sustainably and feel part of a community, allowing conCreate to entirely fulfil its purpose.
16:30 RC3 see Students: Doaa Alqaderi,Hang Li,Sarea Fang,Tianyu Liu,Yuxuan Dai Design: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu, Philipp Siedler Technical: Panagiotis Tigas, Ziming He, Baris Erdincer Theory: Jordi Vivaldi Piera In an era of physical boundaries and limitations, many people refrain from joining newly formed communities and are unsatisfied with the living conditions. The most common issues encountered were time conflicts in shared spaces, incompatible neighbors, and inappropriate layouts. Through our project S.E.E (Social Engagement Explorer), we aim to provide users with the desired kind of virtual socializing experience. With SEE’s reinforcement learning platform, users can customize their living environment where an automated system of components and agents perform self-assembling and reconfiguring using autonomous robotic agents relying on machine learning to save human labor. Their living composition can be tweaked until they are satisfied by neighbors who share their preferences.
17:00 RC2 wings Students: Yuting Lei,Eduardo Nunez Luce,Yue Xu,Zhang Xiangyu Design: Valentina Soana Technical: Shahram Minooee Sabery, Emmanouil Dimitrakakis Theory: Provides Ng WINGS combines pneumatic elements with curve folding principles to generate adaptive and lightweight structural elements that change shape in response to human behaviour. This research focused on the exploration of different shapes, topologies and curve folding principles, generating a catalogue of shape-changing building elements. In parallel to the material development, a custom feedback control system was developed to sense humans’ motions and emotions and translate them into material states, in real-time. This work questions the relationship between humans and space, proposing a soft and responsive environment connected to humans’ emotions and perceptions.
now 1 07.07
10:15am13:00pm BST
PANEL: Philip Yuan, Patrik Schumacher, Alisa Andrasek, Roland Snooks, Mario Carpo, Areti Markopoulou, Jose Sanchez, Georg Vrachliotis
10:30
RC8 Completing London’s Modernism
Students: Mai Altheeb, Lawrence Hsu, Jiangjing Mao Design: Kostas Grigoriadis Technical: Sam Esses, Alberto Fernandez Gonzalez Theory: Ilaria Di Carlo We have worked on fusing two types of recycled plastic (PET and TPU) with different properties, to create a hybrid material that changes continuously from rigid to flexible and from transparent to opaque. These two plastics are combined to generate various spatial conditions (atmospheres) that achieve structural, privacy, and light gradation, and can be occupied by a variety of programmes that serve the public. We have applied our design methodology in vacant spaces in modernist buildings in London to alleviate some of the spatial and social problems found in these buildings.
10:40
RC5/6 Fast Fashion Architecture
Students: Chao-an Chang, Chung Yin Jeffrey Kwong,Taylor Leung, Chong Li, Jiali Yan Design: Guan Lee, Adam Holloway, Daniel Widrig Theory: Ruby Law This project seeks to develop a material relation between fast fashion and waste, textile and architecture. With increased and rapid expansion of the garment industry, its mounting by-products including offcut fabric have irreversibly affected our precious and natural environment. Fast Fashion Architecture aims to upcycle fabric made with non-biodegradable synthetic fibre. Woven strands of polyester yarns cannot be undone or refashioned. This research uses heat to bind used fabric as construction brick. Do speed and cheap production mean inferior in quality? Responsible use of material in architecture comes with a cost, one that cannot be hurried.
11:20 RC1 Climate Squatters Students: Nora Aldughaither, Bryan Velastegui Cordova, Xiaotong Lu, Arjun Prajapati, Tung Shiau Design: Déborah López Lobato and Hadin Charbel Technical: Sherif Tarabishy, Zehao Quin Theory: Albert Brenchat Happisburgh is a small coastal village three hours away from London experiencing aggressive coastal erosion. With no governmental support or compensation, the community is left with a “No Active Intervention” coastal management plan. With the only viable option being to abandon their lands, a migration system is created to enable the communities to travel intelligently as modern squatters through the use of a participatory platform for autonomous communal living, enabling them to be active agents in their process of relocation, habitation, and migration.
11:30 RC2 Tpop Students: Weichen Dong, Jiahui Li, Yuanxin Li Design: Valentina Soana Technical: Shahram Minooee Sabery, Emmanouil Dimitrakakis Theory: Provides Ng Tpop is a system of sound-responsive and lightweight building elements, designed to enhance the experience of music during concerts and performances. The aim is to augment the perception of sound with visual and spatial dimensions. The system comprises robotically actuated bending and inflatable linear elements and elastic surfaces. It can self-deploy and achieve multiple states. Different topologies and actuation sequences generate a wide range of shapes and behaviours. Custom algorithms were developed to compute system choreographies and control data based on music data. This approach allows the designer/choreographer to generate a continuously changing system by integrating design intentions, physical and sound feedback.
12:10 RC9 Mixity Students: Jill Lee, Yin-Chu Yu, Xiuyun Hu, Xu Zhang Design: Alvaro Lopez Rodriguez & Igor Pantic Technical: Jose Pareja Gomez & Hanjun Kim Theory: Stephannie Fell Contreras Mixity is a collaborative platform for users to interact with the cityscape in mixed reality. It strives to inject open-ended design into the immutable urban context, while boosting its dynamic and ever-changing quality. Mixity platform implements the notion of ‘remixing’ culture by providing open-source Kitbash and AI-generated libraries as the design tools to challenge the traditional ‘crafting’ and ‘creation’ methods at the intersection of traditional design and Mixed Reality. To investigate the potential of architecture in the digital age, we invited the crowds to play, create, and interact as creative users. Mixity aims to combat digital totalitarianism by promoting a commons-based collaborative community.
12:20 RC12- DEFI CITY Students: Wenbo Di, Angyi Li, Yutong Wu, Kerun Yu Tutors: Luke Caspar Pearson and Sandra Youkhana Georgios Tsakiridis [Theory]
What would a financial district in the Metaverse look like? Defi City critiques the skyscraper as a symbol of capital through a business district entirely defined by the highly volatile decentralised finance markets. As players engage with the city through cryptocurrency trades, they participate in an urban form shaped by the expansion of different competing blockchain technologies and the decisions of decentralized autonomous organisations. Skyscraper typologies are generated through individual coin technologies, demonstrating the blurred relationship between symbolic value, economic utility and even memes within the crypto ecosystem. Defi City examines how the metaverse may take symbolic forms from our real cities and subject them to the unstable forces of decentralised finance, creating a virtual city that is perpetually reshaping its own power dynamics.
now 2 07.07
14:00pm17:30pm BST
PANEL: Robert Stuart Smith,Daniel Kohler, Patrik Schumacher,Jose Sanchez, Georg Vrachliotis,Winka Dubbeldam Areti Markopoulou
14:00 RC18 CRYO-AUTOMATA Students: Yu Zhong,Jesu Koya,Raksiri Kaewtawee Tutors: Enriqueta llabres-Valls and Zachary Flukerwith William Sheng Yang [Theory] Freshwater is one of the vital resources that we cannot live without, and it is estimated that we will run out of it in 18 years. Cryo-au-tomata deals with the retreating glacial hinterlands of the Hindu-Kush Himalayan mountain ranges which serve as freshwater tow-ers for nearly 10 percent of the global population. By precisely intertwining the climatic and geographic data of these hinterlands, an ever adapting and self-evolving system is generated to grow and maintain the artif cial glacial landscapes. The design method follows three recurrent strategies of extracting, evolving and expanding the glacial landscape by using machine learning, climate sensing and digital simulations.
14:10 RC10 Neo Liths Students: Juan Cantu, Xianing Feng, Sukriti Garg , Jiacen Yao Design: Barry Wark Technical: Nayan Patel,Tony Le Theory: Andreas Korner Neo-Liths embraces the longevity of construction materials in architecture by developing a lithic structural framework that operates at an ecological time-scale. Through the use of procedural design and Machine Learning we developed tools that enhance our design capacities by embedding environmental intelligence to the act of drawing stone structural layouts while retaining authorship. Ecocentrism, or the de-hierarchization of all objects and organisms, is reflected in the openness occurring throughout the material layers of the project, which correspond to different time-scales. From the deployment of the stone structure in a stepped arrangement, that provides the possibility of future human-architectural intervention thanks to its longevity. To the porosity of high-resolution 3D printed textures that create a skin which promotes the diffusion of non-human organisms due to the exposure to different climatic conditions throughout time.
14:50 RC16- DECOMPOSING TEMPORALITIES
Students: Lesego Bantsheng, Vinay Porandla, Yuxuan Sun, Emily Fusilero Tutors: Filippo Nassetti and Claudia Pasquero with Emmanouil Zaroukas [Theory]
waste /we st/ (noun) unwanted or unusable material, substances, or by-products. (verb) use or expend carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose. Decomposing Temporalities is an inquiry on the underside of cities, where waste is concealed and confined to the periphery. In the face of climate change, extreme flooding threatens London’s wastewater treatment facilities. Therefore, the project exercises the extended mind theory through biological, indigenous and artificial intelligence to integrate wastewater treatment into urban morphologies. Through mycelium’s bio-intelligence and indigenous cosmotechnics, the project constellates waste treatment not as a utility under threat, but as an integral member of dynamic urban ecologies.
15:00 RC7 biohealer.ai Students: Yuqian Gao,Xiaoying Fu,Hangchuan Wei,Yuhan Wu Design: Richard Beckett Technical: Diego Pinochet, Ozruh Levent, Tony Lee Theory: Yota Adilenidou Biohealer.AI is a novel design platform for embedding non-human biodiversity into buildings through the use of ML techniques which integrates complex ecological data sets towards nature-based design strategies.
The projects utilizes these data sets to inform tectonics which
optimize the growth of microorganism upon the building substratum. These ecologies in turn engage with the material condition to inform the physical and aesthetic phenomenon of ‘building ageing’ as a beneficial condition. This approach rejects the sterile obsession of modernism and the expectation that buildings should exhibit aesthetics of ‘newness’. Instead the ageing and in some cases, ruining, becomes a planned condition which exhibits time based reconfigurations of material and space within the building as part of the mixed use program.
15:40 RC14 - MOOD-ULATED SUBTOPIA Students: Jiwen Bian, Trishla Chadha, Rajita Jain, Zhaoyi Wang Tutors: Roberto Bottazzi and Tasos Varoudis with Provides Ng [Theory]
The built environment has the power to manoeuvre a person’s emotions through its spatial-atmospheric configurations. A public space which is dynamic in nature evokes different emotions depending on visual-ambience induced parameters thus promoting social interactions and engagements between people and their environments. Mood-ulated Subtopia delves into the need to modulate the mood and emotions of the existing in-active built environment to augment the economy and development of the city. The technological interventions will act as socio-economic drivers in attention economies of Canary Wharf to give a fresh perspective of the city with refined emotional, social, and economic relations.
15:50 RC4 StoneShare Students: Zeynep Aydinoglu, Rocky Hossain, Evan Preuss Design: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Kevin Saey, Philip Singer Technical: David Doria Theory: Mollie Claypool, Provides Ng StoneShare, as a platform, examines methods of rental burden alleviation through the implementation of fractionalized payment models. By allowing residents opportunities to divide allotted spaces at their discretion concrete payment terms are eliminated, allowing for rent to scale based on circumstance. This fractionalization manifests through constructs consisting of a monolithic stone framework and rapidly reproducible 3d printed “stone” programmatic dividers. This bipartite system investigates disparate timelines in relation to its interior and exterior conditions. The interior demonstrates a plan in flux entirely based on the needs of the inhabitant while the exterior remains static, representing a multi centurial constant.
16:30 RC11- INFORMATIZING CITY Students: Yining Wang, Baitong Li, Zhiying Chen, Hao Ren Tutors: Philippe Morel and Julian Besems
The 21st century is undoubtedly the age of information, an information age represented by the explosion of information. While the information has almost revolutionised our cities and urban design methods, it also offers the possibility of making urban design more quantitative, more flexible, more adaptive, faster and smarter. We need to make data sing. To do this, we rebuilt La Défense from a new urban design method consisting of ICI and GAN2City. With the aim of enhancing the urban environment, we have created a new La Défense with this new framework. Next, imagine La Défense in a million different faces.
16:40 RC3 diffusive habitats Students: Eric Hughes, Faizunsha Ibrahim Ghousiaa, Lia Papoutsi, Sergio Eduardo Mutis Design: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu, Philipp Siedler Technical: Panagiotis Tigas, Ziming He, Baris Erdincer Theory: Jordi Vivaldi Piera Diffusive Habitats is an autonomous adaptable architectural system that looks to reassess the linear life cycle of traditional building practice. The project operates through an integrated platform engaged by the local community to both collectively and independently decide the present and future state of the habitat. As a part of the Living Architecture Lab, the project explores spatial configuration and negotiation through an agent based spatial planner algorithm which exploits reinforcement learning to respond to various situated volumetric conditions. Furthermore, Diffusive Habitats utilizes constraint solving algorithms to materialize the space and deploys distributed robots and AI to construct and reconfigure the result.
Bartlett B-Pro SuperCrit