Bartlett B-Pro SuperCrit 07.07 - 10.07
MATTER 07.07 1:00pm5:30pm BST
RC2,RC5/6,RC7,RC8,RC16
MEDIA 08.07 1:00pm5:30pm BST
RC1,RC9,RC12,RC18
AUTOMATIONRC3,RC4,RC11,RC14 09.07 1:00pm5:30pm BST
NOW 10.07 1:00pm6:00pm BST
All Clusters
livestream: Bartlett YouTube
PETER COOK, KAS OOSTERHUIS, KAREL KLEIN, MATHILDE M ULRIKA KARLSON, BRADLEY KUTAN AYATA, KRISTINA SCHINEG HEATHER ROBERGE, ROBERT ST MATTHIAS DEL CAMPO SANDRA MANNINGER, DAMJAN VIOLA AGO, RANIA GHOSN, FIO LEACH, BIAYNA BOGOSI MARGO HANDWERKER,DANIEL BENJAMIN BRATTON EMMANUELLE CHIAPONNEANTON GARCIA ABRIL, DANIEL THEODORA VARDOULI, MOLLY WRIGHT-STEENSON, ANNA-MA FERINGA, JOHN MAY, MICHAEL CASEY REHM, JENNY MARIO CARPO, PHILIP Y ANTOINE PICON, ALISA A KATHRIN DOERFLER, BARBARA CAMP MARTHA TSIGKARI, PEG RAWES ARETI MARKOPOULOU,THEO SP
, YAEL REISNER,TOM VEREBES, MARENGO, ROLAND SNOOKS, CANTRELL, ERSELA KRIPA, GGER, THEO LALIS,TOBIAS NOLTE, TUART-SMITH, SOOMEEN HAHM, O, WILLIAM LATHAM, JOVANOVIC, BEHNAZ FARAHI, ONA ZISH, RYAN MANNING, NEIL IAN,FARZIN LOTFI-JAM, BOLOJAN, PATRICK DONBECK N, MARINA OTERO, -PIRIOU, JOSE SANCHEZ, L KOHLER, MARIA YABLONINA, , ALESSANDRO BAVA, ARIA MEISTER, NADYA PEEK, JELLE , SHAJAY BHOOSHAN, SABIN, PATRIK SCHUMACHER, YUAN, FABIO GRAMAZIO, ANDRASEK,MARCELYN GOW, PBELL-LANGE, FREDERIC MIGAYROU, S, DAVID RUY, ANDREW WITT, PYROPOULOS, KATHY VELIKOV
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 Director: Professor Frédéric Migayrou B-Pro Deputy Director: Andrew Porter B-Pro AD Programme Director: Gilles Retsin B-Pro UD Programme Director: Roberto Bottazzi B-Pro Programmes: Architectural Computation (MSc/MRes) Architectural Design (MArch) Architecture & Digital Theory (MRes) Bio-Integrated Design (MArch/MSc) Urban Design (MArch)
MATTER 07.07 AD RC2 AD RC5/6 AD RC7 AD RC8 UD RC16
1:00pm5:30pm BST
The projects gathered in this section question received notions of materiality in the light of both technological and cultural transformations of how matter is defined and manipulated. By doing so, they address emerging environmental concerns and explore new aesthetic potentials in architectural and urban design. From hacking industrial techniques to directly designing with biological and organic matter, the projects presented explore a wide range of scales and approaches in which matter is engaged in order to blur the distinction between natural and artificial, mitigate local resource depletion, and rethink design paradigms.
PANEL: PETER COOK, KAS OOSTERHUIS, YAEL REISNER,TOM VEREBES, ROSS LOVEGROVE,KAREL KLEIN, MATHILDE MARENGO, ROLAND SNOOKS, ULRIKA KARLSON, BRADLEY CANTRELL, ERSELA KRIPA, KUTAN AYATA, FREDERIC MIGAYROU, KRISTINA SCHINEGGER, THEO LALIS
AD RC2 ARCHITECTURAL PRODUCTION: MANUFACTURING-LED DESIGN Stefan Bassing and Frederico Borello Theory: Alejandro Veliz Research Cluster 2 focuses on the utilisation of industrial manufacturing techniques for the development of architectural products. With digital tools and access to new forms of automated manufacturing, the role of the architect extends into that of the designer, engineer and entrepreneur, empowered to build their own production line to create new breeds of products suitable for architectural application. These new objects evolve in the form of architectural prototypes, designed at human scale, considering haptic qualities, lightness and strength, performance and assembly. This year, students in Research Cluster 2 will explore how design and geometric development are driven by materiality, manufacturing constraints and fabrication sequences. They will hack into existing industrial manufacturing techniques and develop their own, learning how process becomes an important driver in delivering data from the design file to the machine, establishing a direct relationship between digital input and physical output.
AD RC5/6 ORGANIC Guan Lee, Adam Holloway and Daniel Widrig Theory: Ruby Law What is an organic form? What can we learn from natural organisms? Can something that is digital be organic? Green design strategies and material performance aims must emphasise the ways in which our future architectural development can mitigate local resource depletion, global climate change and environmental degradation. This year, Research Cluster 5 & 6 will examine naturalness in material forms and design systems. Our students’ design projects will respond to the urgent call for a greener and more thoughtful approach towards the environmental implications of our actions as architects and inhabitants of our natural world. We will investigate and discover novel material processes and their architectural application though playful investigation and critical design experimentation. Through prototyping and computational simulation and modelling we will engage with digital processes across a variety of scales, from furniture to large scale public art and architecture.
AD RC7 BIOSPATIAL DESIGN Richard Beckett and Barry Wark Theory:Luis Hernandez & Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa Research Cluster 7 considers how advances in biotechnology, life sciences and engineering are affecting architecture. We explore new modes of biodesign workflows and digital fabrication methods, as well as advances in the field of synthetic biology, genetic engineering and material sciences. Our work questions modern approaches to integrating living matter into architecture, through a multidisciplinary approach to design for future cities in the Age of the Anthropocene. This year, students will explore novel approaches to integrating living matter into architecture. They will investigate new notions of space, concepts of inhabitation, and building performance for a range of building typologies that offer new strategies for resilient cities in the face of accelerating climate change. Our aim is to pursue architecture that uses computational methods and principles of biology for simulation and digital fabrication within real time environment engines. The outcome is to create building prototypes that look to provide radical solutions around issues including urban growth, smart buildings and healthy infrastructure.
AD RC8 MATERIAL MIXES Kostas Grigoriadis and Martina Rosati Theory: William Sheng This year, Research Cluster 8 will continue to explore new procedures for designing and building with material gradients, eschewing component-based assembly and the standard paradigm of 20th century mechanical connectivity. We will first explore the manufacturing of multi-material samples consisting of two or more fused sub-materials. The assimilation of graded information digitally and the simulation of material fusion will feed into, as well as be informed by, the physical material studies. We will then draw from these initial studies and use optimisation routines to design and build large-scale segments of building envelopes, rethinking this quintessentially component-based building element through the use of continuous materiality. The result will be prototypes and structures that are more than just a collection of individual parts, initiating a new type of non-discrete architecture for the near future.
UD RC16 POST-NATURAL CITIES Claudia Pasquero and Filippo Nassetti Theory: Emmanouil Zaroukas Contemporary design is plural, collective and mutant. In times of global climate change, we are told no ecosystem is unaffected by human actions, but which kind of change are we referring to? Aren’t change, transformation and adaptation all inherent qualities of the planet we inhabit? Our current stage of technological evolution is opening scenarios where the traditional dichotomy of the natural versus artificial becomes obsolete. If we look at large growing cities from a satellite, we realise that it is becoming increasingly difficult to define what is natural and what is artificial. From this perspective, global cities — despite being large artificial systems often depicted as the antithesis of nature — develop patterns of growth (or shrinkage) that recall natural formations of a radically di¬fferent kind. Cities appear as complex synthetic organisms. This year, Research Cluster 16 will explore how biotechnology and AI design are enabling a new vision of urbanity in which fungi, bacteria, spiders, swarm machines, and other forms of intelligence become ‘bio-citizens’, contributing to a new urban morphogenesis.
07.07 13:10 ALGAE AD RC5/6: Bryan Law, Eric Zhu, Dinel Mao, Jie Song Tutors: Daniel Widrig, Guan Lee, Adam Holloway, Ruby Law This research explores the structural, spatial and expressive potential of green macro algae as a multi-material fabrication system. Our research deals with the specific type of algae classified as green macro algae which can become a marine hazard through blooms, and should be exploited as a resource.
Through rigorous material testing and research, we were able to create a
lightweight, rigid component from compressing and curing green macro algae. Using this material to drive our design proposal, we propose a large scale eco village to be located in an existing village in Ningbo, China. Baiyucun and its residents are surrounded by an abundance of this algae; the architecture questions the existing relationship with the material and proposes alternative uses, exploiting algae as building material that can engage with structure, light and inhabitation.
07.07 13:20 BIOVELLUM AD RC7: Rui Duan , Haifeng Zhao, Zhuoyi Peng, Yifan Ye Tutors: Richard Beckett, Barry Wark, Luis Hernandez & Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa BioVellum experiments with biological polymers as a construction material for temporary, lightweight, semi-living architectures. A series of vegetable based polymer investigations led to a multi-material condition allowing for functionally graded variability in stiffness, transparency and ephemerality. Manual fabrication using spray based application on to inflatable skins provides a proof of concept for a computational workflow based on multifactored conditions. The group explores extended position based dynamics simulations to define habitable conditions which use rigid body, frameworks as a permanent yet reconfigurable structural scaffold to control inflation of and fabricate the biopolymer membranes.
07.07 13:50 BRYOPOLIS UD RC16: Catherine Anand, Saleh Anik,
Praveen Govindarajan
Tutors: Claudia Pasquero, Filippo Nassetti, Emmanouil Zaroukas The climate has changed through history with humans contributing to the emission of greenhouse gases causing temperatures to rise. Bryopolis – located in East London – focuses on refining the air quality and also being sustainable. This city is visualised as a canvas of Photosynthetic Voxels which are self-sufficient machines and use Moss as the bio intelligent material. These voxels are fused into a structure - Bryostructura, becoming a Unit growing to a neighbourhood. This forms to become Bryopolis, a post natural city with Moss (non-human) a Bio citizen and human interaction, thereby revolutionising living spaces and mankind.
07.07 14:00 GELATIN AD RC5/6: HAIYING WANG, MARIA GIANNAKOU, WEIJUE WANG, YANGQING LI Tutors: Daniel Widrig, Guan Lee, Adam Holloway, Ruby Law The focus of this research is the by-products of meat industries. There is a drive to challenge current perceptions of organic waste and to repurpose these by-products into attractive construction materials. A gelatin-based material is derived from animal by-products (skin, bones, tendons) and, by using the advances of binder printing technology, is formed and shaped in the desert environment as a landscape remediation program. This technique stabilises and remediates desert sand particles and transforms the arid environment for potential agricultural yield. The design proposal emerges through a synergetic process of the digitally fabricated space and the sand formation of the desert, highlighting co- existence and interdependency of the built and the natural environment. The protein-based material is designed to naturally decompose, adopting a “dust to dust� life cycle logic to pursue a symbiotic relationship with nature. Decay, as an inevitable part of this raw material, becomes integral to the design of the spaces.
07.07 14:30 SPLITKNIT AD RC2: GIANNAKOPOULOS TSELIKAS IOANNIS, MARIANNA BAGORDAKI, XIAQING JI, YINGJIE AN Tutors: Stefan Bassing, Federico Borello, Alejandro Veliz Split.Knit is a Rental Space Organizers Company which is creating flexible knitted structures with the ability to be transformed according to users’ needs. Split.Knit explores the synergy between CNC knitted membranes, active bending fiberglass rods as boundary supporting material, and elastic ropes as the main transformative parameter. In this context, traditional knitting techniques are revisited and enhanced through contemporary computer-machine logics as a medium for the exploration of their space making capacities. Split.Knit’s vision is to offer custom-fit products for indoor and outdoor spaces that need to be organized and transformable at the same time. Thus, the products are designed to be flexible, lightweight and easily assembled/reassembled.
07.07 14:40 CLAY&GLASS AD RC8: DAWEI XU, SHUAI YUAN, YAN ZHENG Tutors: Kostas Grigoriadis, Martina Rosati, William Sheng Our proposal for the redevelopment of Euston Station consists of fully compressive structures made of fused glass and clay bricks, the use of which improves lighting and structural performance and reduces cost and environmental impact. Salvaged bricks and glass from ongoing demolition projects across London are converted back into powder, transferred to site, and mixed in different densities with automated deposition techniques. These multi-material bricks are then used to build a series of vaults, the positioning of which corresponds to optimal circulation paths that are in their turn derived through iterative crowd simulation studies.
07.07 15:10 CITY IN BLOOMS UD RC16: XIAO WANG, MANYUN ZHANG, ZHONGXIAO WU Tutors: Claudia Pasquero, Filippo Nassetti, Emmanouil Zaroukas The project imagines a future of resource shortage and environmental pollution, which leads to the emergence of the photosynthetic infrastructure contributing to a self-sustained city. As the optimal photosynthetic source, microalgae are collected from the local algae blooms to be farmed and processed in urban space, creating the City in Blooms. Within the photosynthetic infrastructure featuring algae farming bio-pixels, food and energy are produced and generated. This synthetic landscape also brings a new urban morphology and post-natural spatial experience to the city as speculation to future urbanism and the reflection of reasoning in urban design.
07.07 15:20 FABRIC AD RC5/6: LEE TAI JUNG, JIAQI QU, XIN XIE, XINGE ZHU Tutors: Daniel Widrig, Guan Lee, Adam Holloway, Ruby Law Compressed waste fabrics have been transformed in this research into a brick like product through a process of research through weaving, heating and compressing. Ordinary waste materials are bound together without any additional binder to form a brick that has comparable structural performance to conventional construction materials. This research questions the relationship between urban waste and nature, tapping into the vast amounts of waste produced by the fashion and textile industries. The proposal is situated in a disused quarry in Caserta, Italy. Utilising the waste fabrics from the nearest town, the quarry is the site of transformation of the materials from waste to architectural products. The design proposes an ‘artificial quarry’ situated within the existing quarry, replacing the depleted stone stock with waste fabrics and plastic that over time are compressed into a new resource to be mined. The project proposes a future eco habitat mined and carved from the waste which becomes a new resource for future generations.
07.07 15:50 FUR-CRETE AD RC7: CHIA-WEN LEE, YE CHEN, DANFENG ZHANG, ANYUN JIANG Tutors: Richard Beckett, Barry Wark, Luis Hernandez & Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa The project explores robotic hotwire cutting to fabricate deep and intricate formwork for GRC panels. The research challenges the time intensive milling associated with robotic carving to quickly and cost effectively produce bespoke building elements. These pieces assemble to create ‘chasm’ spaces within buildings where the textured surface topologies create moments of water retention within the system.
This in turn creates opportunities for seeds blown into these ar-
eas to propagate non-determinate plant growth to create biodiverse, biospatial conditions in buildings.
07.07 16:00 OYSTER AD RC5/6: ANONGNAD SRISURAYOTIN, TAIMUZI FU, XUE ZHENG, XINZE ZHAN Tutors: Daniel Widrig, Guan Lee, Adam Holloway, Ruby Law This proposal looks at an alternative future for Sanjiao Island in Guangdong province, China which previously has been exploited by the gravel industry. Bio-rock mineral accretion technology is used to generate biomaterial Sea(crete) reinforcements: specifically, from the growing of oysters. Building components are designed as a kit-of-parts to be grown in an array in the bay. Over time these will be cultivated and mined for the island community and their infrastructures, whilst also contributing to the regeneration of marine ecosystem. The proposal becomes a factory in the landscape; a prototype of an alloplastic urbanism which, as it grows to benefit not only the human but also marine habitat. The design addresses the complex environmental and geopolitical features of the island and forms a direct link between the everyday life of the Island residents and the marine environments beneath them.
07.07 16:30 METAL&GLASS AD RC8: ZIZHEN WANG, TIANXIAO LIU, WEIRAN WEI Tutors: Kostas Grigoriadis, Martina Rosati, William Sheng Our project is a critique of discrete, component-based construction and proposes an alternative to that in the form of a materially fused canopy for Euston Station that consists of structural and transparent sub-materials. Initial studies of the fusion compatibility of materials such as glass, with iron, aluminium and copper were followed by path optimisation studies and sightline analyses to work out the optimal circulation flows for an improved passenger experience in the station. These paths also allowed us to define the touchdown points of the fused glass and aluminium canopy that covers the concourse, while also organising wayfinding through the station.
07.07 16:40 CARBONBUILD AD RC7: ROHAN ARORA, SYDNEY OTIS, KASHMIRA SONAR, ZHIJING WU Tutors: Richard Beckett, Barry Wark, Luis Hernandez & Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa CarbonBuild develops biochar as a novel material for integrating nature in to architecture. Biochar is a sustainable biomaterial proposed as an alternative to brick or stone where the raw ingredients are obtained from plant matter rather than mined. The material in its baked form exhibits porosity acting as a bioreceptive material providing a carbon source for the growth of photosynthetic organisms including mosses and ferns directly on the surface. The project explores computational tools and digital fabrication through the production of reusable, reconfigurable moulds based on packing logics. Aggregations of biochar are integrated with other more stable, inert materials, driven by environmental simulations of solar gain to propose temporal, reconfigurable spaces for application in architecture.
07.07 16:50 MATTER ROUNDTABLE PETER COOK, KAS OOSTERHUIS, YAEL REISNER,TOM VEREBES, ROSS LOVEGROVE,KAREL KLEIN, MATHILDE MARENGO, ROLAND SNOOKS, ULRIKA KARLSON, BRADLEY CANTRELL, ERSELA KRIPA, KUTAN AYATA, FREDERIC MIGAYROU, KRISTINA SCHINEGGER, THEO LALIS
MEDIA 08.07 AD AD UD UD
RC1 RC9 RC12 RC18
1:00pm5:30pm BST
Beyond its strict technical definition, the issue of media is here understood as a vehicle to engage emerging new architectural and urban issues. Immersive narratives on climate futures, the development of gaming platforms to engage people in the production of spaces, the co-existence of humans and machines in cities are all predicated upon challenging what role media can play in architectural and urban design. Machine learning algorithms, sensing devices, videogames, social media platforms, and AR and VR are some of the technologies explored by designers to speculate on how we will interact with space in the near future.
PANEL: ROBERT STUART-SMITH, HEATHER ROBERGE,VIOLA AGO, RANIA GHOSN, FARZIN LOTFI-JAM, SOOMEEN HAHM, MATTHIAS DEL CAMPO, WILLIAM LATHAM, RYAN MANNING, SANDRA MANNINGER, NEIL LEACH, DAMJAN JOVANOVIC,PATRICK DONBECK BEHNAZ FARAHI, TOBIAS NOLTE, FIONA ZISH, BIAYNA BOGOSIAN, DANIEL BOLOJAN, MARGO HANDWERKER, FREDERIC MIGAYROU
AD RC1 MONUMENTAL WASTELANDS: SPECULATIVE CLIMATE IMMERSIONS AND POST-ANTHROPO(S)CENIC ASSEMBLAGES Déborah López and Hadin Charbel Theory: Daria Ricchi This year, Research Cluster 1 will investigate the production of immersive narratives. Through mixing different representational and interactive techniques, we will explore what modes and forms of life will propagate in the near future. Using climate fiction as a vehicle, various realities will be researched, experimented with and projected. This year’s focus is on the arctic zones experiencing permafrost thaw as a result of warming temperatures. Various technologies will be hacked and synthesised using sensors, actuators and hybrid materials in producing a new series of sentient machines for scanning, sorting, organising, conditioning and producing in context. These small-scale prototypes will be appropriated and subsumed into larger speculative architectural assemblages, putting forward new potential forms situated between performance, sentience and intelligence.
AD RC9 ARCHITECTURE FOR THE AUGMENTED AGE Igor Pantic and Alvaro Lopez Theory: Clara Jaschke As we immerse ourselves into rapidly developing mixed realities the barriers between humans and machines are becoming increasingly blurred. While rapid advancements in automated construction give architects an unprecedented level of precision and control over the materialisation of their designs, the distinctive nuances and subtleties of traditional craft are absent from the artefacts of robotic production. Research Cluster 9 envisages a hybrid approach to making, that is neither purely analogue nor purely automated. We propose alternative strategies for the fabrication of digitally designed architectural structures, utilising wearable AR devices to holographically assist workers in the manufacturing process. This year, students will explore the balance between the roles of machines and augmented labour within the ‘all-inclusive’ approach to automation, aiming to develop new models for design and construction in the ‘Augmented Age’, resulting in 1:1 working prototypes of architectural elements.
UD RC12 VIDEOGAME URBANISM: PLAYING THE MACHINE ZONE Sandra Youkhana and Luke Caspar Pearson Theory: Agostino Nickl Research Cluster 12 challenges the media of urban design by using videogames as an alternative model of computation to address real conditions. Following Roger Callois’ assertion that ‘the destinies of cultures can be read in their games’, our research explores the critical agency of interactive game structures as new platforms for people to engage with the design and production of urban space. This year we will study games as architectures of communication, where advanced computation is combined with visual arts and user interface systems to produce synthetic worlds that are only fully formed by human interaction. We will compare this to real-world urban planning principles that have turned buildings and even entire cities into giant ‘machine zones’. Using the Unity game engine to design virtual worlds, students will examine the agency of game structures in relation to contemporary society, and will respond to real urban issues by developing experimental virtual worlds with logics and politics to be uncovered through their playing.
UD RC18 BRIDGING ACROSS MASS CUSTOMIZATION: FAB AND MEDIA URBANISM Enriqueta Llabres-Valls and Zachary Fluker Theory: Ilaria Di Carlo The over exhaustion of environmental systems has intensified our reliance on technology as an environmental substitute. In contemporary urban design, Research Cluster 18 believe the solution revolves around the construction value in the space of time through a symbiosis between different forms of intelligence. This symbiotic relationship widens the boundaries of how we conceive architecture and its role in city making. Within this relationship, architecture can sense and respond, playing an active role in a design process that is continuously revisited and reprogrammable. This year, Research Cluster 18 will investigate the new paradigm, which links digital fabrication and social media as an opportunity for urban hacking. Specifically, students will explore how social media is used to bridge the mass customisation of user products to pursue a collective project.
08.07 13:10 VIRTUAL ESCAPE UD RC12: MENGZHEN CHEN, JIN LIU, JIANGLIN QIAN Tutors: Sandra Youkhana, Luke Caspar Pearson, Agostino Nickl As we are confined to our homes during lockdown, we seek out forms of virtual escape as a way of connecting with others or living out experiences no longer available to us. Our home becomes a playground for imagination, seeking opportunities for within mundane moments like a dripping tap or a passing car. This game encourages players to interact with their immediate surroundings in unique ways to unlock shared virtual worlds as meeting points with other players. These spaces are defined by the invisible infrastructure that binds out domestic spaces together, emphasising this as a form of urban organisation foregrounded by the global pandemic.
08.07 13:20 AUTONOMOUS TRANSHUMANCE AD RC1: SITANAN BHENGBHUN, TUSHAR MONDAL, TASHI ZAIDI Tutors: Deborah Lopez, Hadin Charbel, Daria Ricchi “Autonomous Transhumance” offloads and augments the herding responsibilities of the ethnic Nenet population in the Siberian Yamal region. Permafrost thaw has caused subterranean methane to build up under the earth’s crust, resulting in the unpredictable formation and explosion of pingos. These geological blisters dot the landscape which when ruptured creates large craters, accelerating the thawing while releasing fatal bacteria. Using machine learning and a family of sentient machines, AuRoRa the herding robot, and AuReGa the landscape acupuncturist and regenerator, the uncertainty inherent in the terrain is adapted to, asking “do robotic shepherds herd electric sheep?”
08.07 13:50 STEAM.ME.UP AD RC9: CHENFAN CAI, YAXIN DING, ZIXUAN FAN, HONGHAO ZHANG Tutors: Igor Pantic, Alvaro Lopez, Clara Jaschke Inspired by traditional steam-bending techniques, the project explores methods for creating complex timber structures with the aid of holographic guides in the process of prefabrication and assembly. As the process of steam bending traditionally requires a series of precise molds, which limit the geometric language and increase fabrication time, the project proposes the use of adjustable molds, positioned using AR guides, around which 3-dimensional timber elements are bent. An AR application was developed in order to manage the fabrication process, including placement of the molds, fabrication and assembly sequence of timber elements and material management.
08.07 14:00 NAVIGATING CHANGE UD RC12: LU CHE, FAN FEI, CHENG-YUAN SHIH Tutors: Sandra Youkhana, Luke Caspar Pearson, Agostino Nickl This game explores the spatial implications of social distancing on our urban environments in response to the global pandemic. Players cooperate in a networked game environment to transform the city in accordance to government guidelines – working at large and small scales to manifest these changes. Through the response of AI agents, the city and its inhabitants’ happiness, health, and economy rise and fall in response to the player’s actions. The game suggests that governmental and social decisions at an urban scale can be tested, and strategies prototyped, through means of intelligent game simulations.
08.07 14:10 FROM GENERATOR TO SELECTOR UD RC18: BOYING XIE, QINGXUAN NIU, YIJIAO LU AND TIANCHUN WANG Tutors: Enriqueta Llabres-Valls and Zachary Fluker, Ilaria Di Carlo This projects redefines the ecology of food production in the age of digital fabrication. In line with London’s plans to implement a new system to tackle food waste, From Generator To Selector proposes to use social media as a mediating layer between us and food to sustain a low-carbon circular economy. How can we design these machine landscapes to incorporate people’s engagement in food cycle?
08.07 14:20 DISCUSSION
08.07 14:40 RESOLUTIONS OF STYLE UD RC12: HSIN LI, YIMING GUO Tutors: Sandra Youkhana, Luke Caspar Pearson, Agostino Nickl This project exposes the evolution of game style, and the virtual visualisation of cities across the past 30 years in response to advancing technological changes and subsequent aesthetic implications. In a two-player cooperative game, a city is composed from isolated perspectives, comprised of blocks of multiple resolutions and information. Players work from the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ in order to realise a city that grows through constant negotiation, accretion and renewal.
08.07 14:50 KNOWLEDGE OFFLOAD AND REAPPLY AD RC1: JIANG LEI, AN LUSHA, BO WENZHAO, REN YUE Tutors: Deborah Lopez, Hadin Charbel, Daria Ricchi “Knowledge Offload and Reapply” preserves traditional Inuit knowledge and activity in northern Alaska. The ice-covered region is actively read by locals in order to navigate during hunting activities, throughout which landmarks are erected to communicate information. Warming temperatures have accelerated transformations in the terrain as well as animal migratory patterns. By transferring embodied human knowledge into machines, the system hybridizes the decoding of the landscape and recoding of distinct environmental signatures in generating new landmarks. These low-res maps preserve the integrity of the hunt as a cultural act while feeding back and augmenting the human’s embodiment of knowledge.
08.07 15:20 METAFOLD AD RC9: XIN LU, ZEYUAN MENG, GUANYU SHI, JIENI ZHANG Tutors: Igor Pantic, Alvaro Lopez, Clara Jaschke MetaFold proposes a reusable and reconfigurable formwork system for on-site concrete casting. With AR technology, MetaFold allows for real-time exchange of information on construction progress through an augmented platform that provides instructions for prefabrication of formwork, its assembly and reassembly on site and subsequent casting of concrete. Formwork is produced from flat metal sheets, folded into shape following the holographic template. Once the casting process is finished, the formwork is removed, and pieces reused to create new casting templates, or form internal partitions. A design-to-fabrication app is developed in order to guide the users through the fabrication process.
08.07 15:30 MUSEUM OF FOLKSONOMY UD RC12: YIJIA HUANG, YEXIN XU, GUOLI ZHONG Tutors: Tutors: Sandra Youkhana, Luke Caspar Pearson, Agostino Nickl The Museum of Folksonomy is a procedurally-generated virtual environment that allows players to ‘curate’ the world around them based on their likes and dislikes. Using metadata to group different objects together, players share the same space but experience it differently. The project questions the future of the Museum as an open-access entity where anyone can consume culture despite their geographical location. The game prototypes a new form of virtual museum that becomes as ubiquitous as swiping left or right.
08.07 16:00 THE INFINITY CITY UD RC18: FRANKIE LUO, XIAOHAN XU AND ZIQI MA Tutors: Enriqueta Llabres-Valls and Zachary Fluker, Ilaria Di Carlo Infinity City uses recycled plastic as the basis for building structure to generate a machine landscape in constant transformation. Utilising machine learning to classify different types of plastics coupled with data from the urban environment and population data, we seek to produce a new constantly evolving landscape in the city.
Through a series of algorithms we envision a
re-coding of closed and open systems to redefine how the public regard with the hyper-dimensionality of plastic.
08.07 16:10 PROCEDURAL LIVEABILITY UD RC12: AAFREEN KIZHAKKEYVEETTIL, ABDUL RAHIMA Tutors: Tutors: Sandra Youkhana, Luke Caspar Pearson, Agostino Nickl As we question the resilience of our cities and their ability to adapt to the global pandemic, the project exposes the liveability metrics awarded to cities. Through the narrative of a ‘Liveability Drone’ which scans and learns these metrics from different cities, new procedurally generated urban spaces are created from the parts of others to satisfy criteria which determines how liveable a place is. By deploying the drone, players analyse a series of generative cities based on real urban models and apply their liveability approaches onto other global cities.
08.07 16:40 SVALBARD
DECOMMISSIONING
AD RC1: MAAYA HARAKAWA, NUTTHAPOL PIMPASAK, MO RAN, JIN WANG Tutors: Deborah Lopez, Hadin Charbel, Daria Ricchi “Decommissioning Svalbard” admits and confronts the paradox of the Longyearbyen, the largest city on the remote Norwegian island. Pressured by an increased number of avalanches destroying buildings and infrastructure while simultaneously being blocked from territorial expansion due to stringent environmental law, the total habitable area is continuously shrinking. The issue is further problematized by a political need to “man the island” in order to maintain national sovereignty. The strategy proposes a multiphased decommissioning plan using machine learning to dismantle buildings while recording their material and nostalgic properties which are then used in the generation of new familiar, yet odd typologies.
08.07 16:50 REBENT AD RC9: PABLO JARAMILLO, ZIQI SONG, HE XI Tutors: Igor Pantic, Alvaro Lopez, Clara Jaschke Project proposes a fast and affordable system for creating complex concrete structures, by weaving a series of bent tubular geometries (PVC Pipes and Rebars), which are used as a formwork for spray-on Glass Reinforced Concrete (GRC). An Augmented Reality app for Hololens is developed in order to guide the construction process, in which the builders will form the tubes in place following holographic templates. A feedback between the built structures and digital models is established by re-digitizing pieces which are already built in order to check for errors and inconsistencies, and update the digital model accordingly.
08.07 17:20 E-MOTION UD RC18: FEI CHEN, MOCHEN JIANG, YUANKAI WANG, HAOJUN CUI Tutors: Enriqueta Llabres-Valls and Zachary Fluker, Ilaria Di Carlo Nowadays in the age of pandemics and social distancing, the use of space for citizens should be more flexible and dynamic. Roads will also become re-programmable spaces as means of transport will miniaturise and walking will be incentivised. E-motion investigates the resurfacing human-centred cities based on new ideas of ecology and mobility. The project aims to redistribute and blur public spaces through pixel feature conversion and simulating the mobility habits of animals and humans to enhance the ecological corridors while advancing London’s productive and adaptive mobility for low-carbon travel.
08.07 17:30 SCREEN SPACE AD RC12: MENGHAN LYU, WANXING LE, WEIWEN FAN Tutors: Sandra Youkhana, Luke Caspar Pearson, Agostino Nickl Screen Space is a videogame that allows players to explore the spatial consequences of virtual Zoom backgrounds. As we migrate into a world of remote connections, the boundaries between public and private space have been blurred. Virtual backgrounds allow people to censor their domestic spaces and teleport themselves into an alternative reality. In the game, 2 networked players seek to find mutual connections between their backgrounds as a form of playful interaction. The project questions the perceived nature of how we view each other’s ‘screen space’, a world of objects flattened to create an illusion of one’s own.
08.07 17:40 MEDIA ROUNDTABLE ROBERT STUART-SMITH, HEATHER ROBERGE, FARZIN LOTFI-JAM SOOMEEN HAHM, RANIA GHOSN, MATTHIAS DEL CAMPO, WILLIAM LATHAM, RYAN MANNING, SANDRA MANNINGER, TOBIAS NOLTE, NEIL LEACH,DAMJAN JOVANOVIC, PATRICK DONBECK, BEHNAZ FARAHI, VIOLA AGO, FIONA ZISH, BIAYNA BOGOSIAN, DANIEL BOLOJAN, MARGO HANDWERKER, FREDERIC MIGAYROU
AUTOMATION 09.07 1:00pm5:30pm BST
AD AD UD UD
RC3 RC4 RC11 RC14
The diffusion of automated technologies is rapidly disrupting our societies: how will we work, produce, and inhabit cities? How will architecture and urban spaces look like? How will design processes change because of the introduction of learning algorithms and digital platforms? This open set of questions will animate the projects presented under the broad agenda of automation. Housing, public spaces, cultural infrastructures, and transport hubs will provide the testing ground for the design of flexible and autonomous spaces as well as for the implementation of new design and construction processes.
PANEL: BENJAMIN BRATTON, MARINA OTERO, EMMANUELLE CHIAPONNE-PIRIOU, JOSE SANCHEZ, DANIEL KOHLER ANTON GARCIA ABRIL,MARIO CARPO, MARIA YABLONINA,JOHN MAY, THEODORA VARDOULI, ALESSANDRO BAVA, MOLLY WRIGHT-STEENSON, ANNA-MARIA MEISTER, NADYA PEEK, JELLE FERINGA, SHAJAY BHOOSHAN, MICHAEL CASEY REHM
AD RC3 LIVING ARCHITECTURE: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND AUTONOMOUS GENERATIVE DESIGN Tyson Hosmer, Valentina Soana and Octavian Gheorghiu Theory: Jordi Vivaldi Piera Research Cluster 3 interrogates the notion of ‘living architecture’ as a coupling of living systems with the assembly and formation of architecture. Our research focuses on developing autonomously reconfigurable buildings with situated and embodied agency, facilitated variation, and intelligence. This year, students will develop experimental design models embedded with the ability to self-organise, self-assess, and self-improve, using deep learning to train assembly systems to improve at negotiating shifting architectural objectives. They will build architectural robotics and intelligent simulation models in a tightly coupled feedback loop for an architecture that is self-aware. Rather than optimising individual segments of this unsustainable life cycle, Research Cluster 3 will reappraise it holistically, learning from living systems’ extraordinary scalable efficiencies of continuously adaptive construction with simple flexible parts.
AD RC4 AUTOMATED LIVING Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz Theory: Mollie Claypool and Alessandro Bava Research Cluster 4 believes in the agency of architecture for change. Automation is not only about robots – it is first and foremost a design project. We are decisively critical but optimistic about automation. Aware of the political consequences of our tools, we develop platforms for automated living that increase access to high-quality housing. This year, students will build everyday automated workflows, set in the immediate hereand-now, which allow radical new spatial and aesthetic agendas. At the same time, they will develop new narratives for work, life and domesticity in a fully automated world. They will question autonomous life, from smart washing machines and HVAC units, to mobile robotic mini-factories, viral platforms and activism.
AD RC11 COMPUTATIONALLY INTELLIGENT ARCHITECTURE FOR EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT PEOPLE Philippe Morel and Paul Poinet Theory: Philippe Morel Houses and homes can symbolise freedom, ownership, privacy and intimacy, and have come to epitomise consumer society. However, the increasing number of households is now widely considered as one of the most challenging problems, with approximately 138.5 million housing units in the US alone, and predictions that another billion houses must be built by the end of the century. On top of this, and thanks to the home computer revolution, homes recently became fully fledged units of production. They are now integral parts of our a global and distributed ambient factory. They are also iconic architectural objects, but unfortunately, as technological objects, homes are primitive. This year, Research Cluster 11 will attempt to solve this critical issue, not only analytically but computationally.
AD RC14 MACHINE THINKING URBANISM – CITIES BEYOND COGNITION Roberto Bottazzi and Tasos Varoudis Theory: Annarita Papeschi Research Cluster 14 explores the role of algorithms in order to mine, analyse, visualise, and design with very large datasets to create innovative urban environments. This approach was developed in response to the complex, large scale issues that affect cities globally. From climate change to massive urbanisation, the speed and scale of these transformations calls for a conceptual approach, and design methods that are able to both capitalise on technological development and conjure up new methods for design. This year, Research Cluster 14 will use computation to expand design conversations to include urban elements that are either beyond human perception or have not yet been fully integrated in the design process. Students will use algorithms to augment the categories we use to interpret space. The consequences of these observations can be profound, allowing us to reassess the received notions of type, programme, site, representation, and inhabitation to give rise to more complex, fluid, open, incomplete, and embracing urban proposals.
09.07 13:10 PARALODGE AD RC4: OZGUN KARSLI, YIXUAN ZHANG, LINA FU, YIFAN ZHANG Tutors: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz, Mollie Claypool, Alessandro Bava Paralodge establishes a crown-funding platform where the trading of parts allows to dynamically alter the level of privacy of the space. This allows users to extend or reduce the space they own in relation to their needs. A spatial organisation driven by a minimal surface allows spaces to interlace with one another, facilitating a gradual mutation of their use. This spatial continuity eases the transition from private to public spaces and vice versa. Paralodge’s building blocks emerge through the use of a combinatorial algorithm that approximates their arrangement to the underlining minimal surface used as guidance. A discretized cable network is used to post-tension the building blocks, thus achieving structural continuity. The organisation of this network in relation to the blocks serves as well as an assembly sequence translated into an AR application with step-by-step instructions to be used by workers on-site to ease the construction process.
09.07 13:20 NECECITY UD RC11: SARAH ABIAD, NORA KATHARINA FANKHAUSER, KYUSEUNG KYOUNG, JIXUAN LIU Tutors: Philippe Morel and Paul Poinet NeceCity consists of socially and structurally flexible living concepts for displaced people in urban areas. It is set to provide them with the basic necessities of life in today’s contemporary context. The project is set in Istanbul and integrates displaced people in an urban environment while providing them with proper infrastructure and energy/water access points in the most efficient way possible. Following an optimised modular system of agglomeration, the aim is to design a socially, functionally, and structurally flexible mega-structure that is connected to the city and accommodates displaced people while maintaining their feeling of integration and strengthening their sense of community and identity.
09.07 13:50 ORIGAMING AD RC3: PENGMIN ZHONG, QIYU WANG, RUIJING LIU, YI ZHANG Tutors: Tyson Hosmer, Valentina Soana and Octavian Gheorghiu, Jordi Vivaldi Piera Origaming is a robotic curve folding system for medium to large scale spatial structures. The research explores the latent potential for the constraints of curve folding geometries to effectively enable the reconfiguration of inhabitable spaces. The project leverages a simple tensile actuation system integrated with elastic materials applied with curve folded geometries. This extends previous geometric research in curve folding to build a methodology for developing a deployable system of robotic parts. The research methodology involved developing both robotic material prototypes and a methodology for testing the degrees of freedom of curve folded geometries through a bespoke physical simulation system.
09.07 14:00 IIT - INTELLIGENT INTERGROWTH UD RC14: JIE CHEN, HUIYU FAN, XUEQING WANG, JIALU YU Tutors: Roberto Bottazzi and Tasos Varoudis, Annarita Papeschi The increasing presence of AI and automation in cities calls for a new model of co-existence between machines and humans. Located next to Tilbury dock and Amazon warehouses, IIT integrate urban life and logistics into a hybrid building that merges infrastructural and civic functions, whilst integrating it in the urban fabric of the small satellite community of Grays. The final proposal for a transit-oriented development changes its function, usage and porosity according to different needs and data feeds.
09.07 14:30 LITH AD RC4: MUKUL GUPTA, RAZAN JAWAD, SINEM GORUCU, SHUYAN YANG Tutors: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz, Mollie Claypool, Alessandro Bava LITH is a publicly owned automated living platform for space sharing enabled by a localized FDM printing farm, it is aimed towards decommodification of gentrified neighbourhoods and to provide affordable long-term homes for at-risk members of the community, as well as to provide a platform for artists and artisan been displaced due to gentrification. The automated LITH printing farm works tirelessly around the clock for the production of serialized 3d printed formwork which can be incrementally cast to produce an intentional community, where spaces are designed, shared and managed via the LITH platform
09.07 14:40 DE-GENERATE UD RC14: HONGSHOU DAI, YIFEI SONG, JINGZHE XU, NING ZHAO Tutors: Roberto Bottazzi and Tasos Varoudis, Annarita Papeschi Stratford has been facing rapid urban growth due to the regeneration since London Olympics. However, this rapid shift has also increased housing prices, crime rate and pollution through the well-known phenomenon of gentrification. The project aims at reversing re-generation into de-generation, aiming to offset the disadvantages and give the locals back what they used to have. De-Generate propose a community for local artists shaped by analysing data on pollution, wind, and human perception.
09.07 14:50 NEW HOUSING MODE UD RC11: RENYUE CAO, ZHAOLU LIU, JIE XIAO, DEWEI ZHAI Tutors: Philippe Morel and Paul Poinet The “New Housing Mode” proposed to solve the housing crisis in the current dense world. It analyzes the global data in many aspects, including population, city, and family, and trying to define a new type of housing for different areas. It combines public space and private space, making it grow vertically from 2D to 3D. The project responds to people’s behavior patterns and provides a variety of activities and living spaces to meet different people’s needs. It will generate a network that will connect each housing system over the city.
09.07 15:00 DISCUSSION
09.07 15:20 ELEMENTABLE AD RC4: TAO LI, YUSHAN SUN, XIAOHAN WANG, SHUYU ZHANG Tutors: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz, Mollie Claypool, Alessandro Bava Emerging as a response to the current housing crisis, ELEMENTABLE is a 24-hour automated housing platform which aims to reduce the cost of housing through space flexibility and cooperative ownership. The 24-hour flexible space is linked with the ELEMENTABLE users’ timetable. The schedule data is sent to robotic doors that are inserted in a fixed corridorless matrix which constantly reconfigures the plan according to the users’ needs. Space ownership in Elementable buildings is assigned to the E-users community, who can actively renegotiate and trade their allocations, allowing them to only pay for the time and space they plan to occupy, liberating the remaining space to be rented out to other users.
09.07 15:30 TEMPO AD RC3: CHUN-HAO HSU, MARIEM AFIFY, NIU HANRUI, RAISYA HIDAYAT Tutors: Tyson Hosmer, Valentina Soana and Octavian Gheorghiu, Jordi Vivaldi Piera The project investigates autonomous spatial embodiment through a robotically controlled hybrid tensegrity system. The project is considered as a second order cybernetic architecture made self-aware through a sensory system that provides feedback of the spatial body’s internal state and environmental state. Tempo is a continuously evolving spatial system that self-adapts in relation to quantitative and qualitative elements of human and non-human behavior, constrained within the material body’s degrees of freedom. The research is investigated through the parallel development of robotic material prototypes, sensor actuated control systems, and the development of a bespoke simulator to be trained using reinforcement.
09.07 16:00 WALDO AD RC4: ALEXANDR LALA, JIER ZHOU, MARIO SERRANO, YUAN-HENG SHIH Tutors: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz,Mollie Claypool, Alessandro Bava WALDO aims to address the issue of dying villages in South Europe by offering invigorating hubs for innovation that support existing inhabitants and attract new populations. The main tools to achieve that is enhancing local food tradition while introducing a new rural lifestyle, for which WALDO creates infrastructure and accommodation on site. Rural landscape is treated as a canvas that serves as an open-air concrete prefab factory on which automated machinery operate co-ordinately to carve out and cast in the ground architectural components. To do that, additive and subtractive sets of toolpaths are introduced - the former inform the excavation of the voids that are used for casting and the latter generate 3D printed elements that adapt to the geometric imprecision of the cast-in-the-ground components. These are combined and assembled into inhab-
09.07 16:10 CONNECTIVE COLIVING UD RC11: AARON GIBBS, JIAMAN HE, BINGLI LIU, YIMING QIU Tutors: Philippe Morel and Paul Poinet In our increasingly over-connected society, data shows more people are living alone. Despite these trends, social connections are still an important contributing factor to our well-being. It is through these connections that computational design forms a dynamic urbanization; constant changes in the degree of connections, in the types of spaces one connects through, and what form this takes on. China’s urban villages are dense multistory collectives that house a poor, floating population. This particular urban example can prove to be a testing ground for a new housing model by eradicating the strict separation of private-public space and fully optimizing the vertical to allow a denser urban village that prioritizes connections.
09.07 16:40 GAME OF ROBOTS AD RC3: YALU LIN, YOUDAN ZHANG, ZHUO CHENG, ZHILONG YANG Tutors: Tyson Hosmer, Valentina Soana and Octavian Gheorghiu, Jordi Vivaldi Piera Game of Robots is an autonomous distributed multi-agent robotic system for the assembly and reconfiguration of architecture. An ecology of simple robotic agents that collaborate to distribute a series of simple parts through intelligent sequencing to construct spatial structures. The project aims to break the traditional linear life cycle of buildings, introducing an autonomous architectural system capable of continuous reformation at multiple scales. At the building scale, a spatial assembly algorithm is used to generate effective assemblies, while at the smaller scale, portions of the design goal are distributed in a real-time communication with the physical robots.traces of the carving process create a new rewildened landscape
09.07 16:50 IN|BETWEEN UD RC14:CHIA HSUN CHIANG, EIRINI TSOUKNIDA, XINZHOU ZHAO, KRISHAN SHARMA Tutors: Roberto Bottazzi and Tasos Varoudis, Annarita Papeschi The project imagines to turn the river Thames into a cultural infrastructure for London. By combining the analysis of large datasets on cultural life along the river and machine learning categorisation, In-Between develops curatorial strategy to manage multiple events simultaneous taking place in different locations. The new cultural landscape unfolding over several kilometers of river front is the set for the complex, interacting, and dynamic cultural life of London.
09.07 17:00 AUTOMATION ROUNDTABLE PANEL: BENJAMIN BRATTON, MARINA OTERO, EMMANUELLE CHIAPONNE-PIRIOU, JOSE SANCHEZ, DANIEL KOHLER ANTON GARCIA ABRIL,MARIO CARPO, MARIA YABLONINA,JOHN MAY, THEODORA VARDOULI, ALESSANDRO BAVA, MOLLY WRIGHT-STEENSON, ANNA-MARIA MEISTER, NADYA PEEK, JELLE FERINGA, SHAJAY BHOOSHAN, MICHAEL CASEY REHM
NOW 10.07 AD UD RC 1-18
1:00pm6:00pm BST
Bpro Now is a special event, now in its third iteration. The day provides a cross-section through the work developed both in Architectural (AD) and Urban Design (UD) Programmes as each of the thirteen Research Cluster part of AD and UD present one selected project. The ambition of this final day of the SuperCrit is to provide an overview on this year production in BPro and spark debate on the role and agency of design experimentation in architectural and urban design.
PANEL: JENNY SABIN, PATRIK SCHUMACHER, MARIO CARPO, PETER COOK, PHILIP YUAN, FABIO GRAMAZIO, ANTOINE PICON, CARMEN ANDRIANI ALISA ANDRASEK,MARCELYN GOW, KATHRIN DOERFLER, BARBARA CAMPBELL-LANGE, MARTHA TSIGKARI, PEG RAWES, DAVID RUY,YAEL REISNER, ARETI MARKOPOULOU,THEO SPYROPOULOS, KATHY VELIKOV, ANDREW WITT, FREDERIC MIGAYROU
10.07 13:10 IMFAB AD RC2: JACKSON BI, ETHAN DING, SU HAN, YINGYING YU Tutors: Stefan Bassing, Federico Borello, Alejandro Veliz imFAB [incremental metal fabrication] is a product company that provides a synthesis of services including digital-fabricated products, application designs and construction. Founded upon the innovative fabrication techniques, imFAB products specialise in dwelling and infrastructure applications that integrate architectural services, cost-efficient manufacture process, customisable modular design, fast-assembly, self-stable and volumetric stacks approaches. imFAB is closely aligning with and complementary to the robotic fabrication, digital design and distributed project delivery methods to bring the pre-fabricated products directly to the terminal market. imFAB offers a variety of design solutions through standard module kits and a customization platform to meet broad contextual demands.
10.07 13:20 METAPLAS AD RC8: MARWAH OSAMA, BETTY CHAVEZ ANGELES, PRAPATSORN LERTLUECHACHAI, WISNU HARDIANSYAH Tutors: Kostas Grigoriadis, Martina Rosati, William Sheng A comprehensive model able to unify design and fabrication through digital tools is often missing from contemporary design-and-build methods. By combining rigid and flexible recycled plastics we have developed a folding multi-material panel that can be 3D-printed flat and then made three-dimensional through an integrated patterning system, thereby embedding assembly instructions into materiality. Additional micro-patterning for structural reinforcement and shading eliminates the need for secondary structural and light control elements. This reduces weight, cost, and fabrication and assembly time and allows the decentralised production of the panels that form a new canopy for Euston Station to take place in 3D-printing shops and facilities scattered across London.
10.07 13:30 PAPER AD RC5/6: JIANBIN SUN, JIAHE CHEN, JUNYI LIU, MOHAMED ABDELNABY, SIYANG ZHANG Tutors: Daniel Widrig, Guan Lee, Adam Holloway, Ruby Law This proposal has sustainable construction and material efficiency as its main driver. Our project focuses on paper industry as a whole including production of pulp and paper recycling. We made paper bricks by folding and compression of wastepaper. At the end of its ‘useful life’, paper can become a construction material. Through compression of paper in different thicknesses and colours, our paper brick has variegated grain not unlike its predecessor: wood. This new material informs our design research into buildings of different scales. Our main proposal sits in a context of a paper factory in Finland. With strategic planting and construction, we respond to the social and cultural dimensions of urban life as well as advocating sustainable material use. The construction processes also integrate a variety of cellulosic materials, logging trees and pulp.
10.07 13:40 DISCUSSION
10.07 14:10 BIOCOENOSIS UD RC16: OSCAR VILLARREAL VIERA Tutors: Claudia Pasquero, Filippo Nassetti, Emmanouil Zaroukas The Anthropocene epoch has proven damages to the ecosystem by gaining control over the non-human habitat thus affecting biodiversity. With the human invasive interaction, zoonoses such as Covid-19 arise. In order to restore the damaged habitat and avoid future viruses, the Biocoenosis Nest uses climate change processes to envision a flooding scenario that generates a marshland boundary between humans and the other. Slime mould is used as a bio computer to develop a nutrient distribution network that is tested with GAN to generate the MarshCity: a marshland distribution that organizes the Biocoenosis Nest along East London
10.07 14:20 LIGAPRINT AD RC7: LIU XIANGYU, XIAOYAN ZHOU, CHENSHU LI Tutors: Richard Beckett, Barry Wark, Luis Hernandez & Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa LigaPrint explores a novel approach to concrete fabrication through 3D freeform liquid printing techniques towards environmentally driven biospatial configurations. Material led investigations were explored in tandem with robotic extrusion techniques to produce freeform, semi-structural components that are extremely fast to produce with no limitations to variability.
Toolpath driven computational techniques were developed in re-
lation to the fabrication process which are then driven by site specific environmental simulations to produce density differentiation relating to thermal comfort, visibility, privacy and microbiological diversity. Process and assemblages are explored through new approaches to creating healthy workplaces whereby environmental exposures are prioritised over fixed spatial provision.
10.07 14:50 A.C.R.E AD RC1: JIALEI HUANGFU, MINGYANG LI, KE LIU, WEN LUAN Tutors: Deborah Lopez, Hadin Charbel, Daria Ricchi “A.C.R.E” assumes that non-human interest will continue to be an afterthought when implementing new legislation. Holes in carbon-offsetting logic are as prevalent as those in the o-zone layer, a reflection of the fickleness inherent in any climate accord that is echoed by the capacity for nations and governing bodies to ‘opt-out’ at will. Adopting the idea that consequences of climate change can and do afford new opportunities, the Autonomous Colonizing Robotic Ecosystem uses a combination of machine learning and landscaping machinery to pervert human-made laws imposed on ecosystems that allow it to govern its own decision making.
10.07 15:00 ODDSTUFF UD RC12: YUTING PU, ZICHUNG YANG Tutors: Sandra Youkhana, Luke Caspar Pearson, Agostino Nickl This project explores the endless possibilities of co-operative play within a networked multi-player environment. Building upon studies into the semiotic flexibility of objects in game worlds, the project presents an online sandbox for playing with the meaning and affordances of urban elements. By synchronising these connections across the network, players are able to move objects, change their properties or even inhabit their being. Players work together to achieve objectives set by the community, producing weird and wonderful spatial consequences. ODDworld is a freespace for imagination and creativity, seeing virtual spaces as the new form of social media.
10.07 15:30 RE-SURGE UD RC14: ABDIMAJID ADEN, YUBIN LIAO, MOHAMMED PUTHIYAVEETTIL, NANXI ZHOU, KEYU SU Tutors: Roberto Bottazzi and Tasos Varoudis, Annarita Papeschi Whilst connecting cities, regions, and even continents, large infrastructural systems such as trail lines and highways divide neighbourhoods otherwise connected. Re-Surge tackles this growing concern around urban fragmentation and explores prototypical urban design strategies that can be implemented in multiple cities across the globe. The project aims to identify underlying patterns and interactions related to the cause and effect of the fragmentation, and develop solutions through a structured computational approach driven by collecting, visualising, analysing and simulating data.
10.07 15:40 CEARAMICS AD RC9: RAHAF ALDABOUS, SARA ALDABOOS, JIAXIANG LUO, EFTHYMIA MASTROKALOU Tutors: Igor Pantic, Alvaro Lopez, Clara Jaschke Project questions traditional ways of ceramic making, proposing a system of sticks and weaved rope which act as a substrate to which the clay is applied. This allows for mass customization of components, and creation of intricate geometries of varying densities, which is typically limited by traditional ceramic forming processes and the material itself. The system argues for an AR assisted crafting process which is not limited to only high skilled workers. An Augmented Reality app is developed, which allows the users to design, classify and fabricate the elements, by following simple holographics instructions.
10.07 16:10 IRSILA AD RC3: ELAHE ARAB, BARIS ERDINCER, YIFEI JIA, GEORGIA KOLOKOUDIA Tutors: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu, Valentina Soana, Jordi Vivaldi Piera IRSILA is an autonomous architectural machine capable of continuously adapting itself to negotiate the dynamically changing goals of a near-future cultural centre. The building physically reconfigures through a multi-agent robotic system that inhabits it and its library of simple connectable parts. Machine learning is applied to both reconfiguration and spatial scale planning. The building learns effective collaborative sequences of reversible assembly within the physical constraints of the robotic system. The building calculates the reconfiguring organization of its spaces with an intelligent spatial assembly algorithm to determine each new goal state based on multiple evolving objectives including occupancy, physical stability, and spatial distribution.
10.07 16:20 HOUSING PRIME UD RC11: SHIYUAN HUANG, YI LI, ZIDONG LIU, HUIYU PAN Tutors: Philippe Morel, Paul Poinet The housing crisis is a serious phenomenon worldwide that may lead to severe problems for society. Though, in the information age, the design approaches in housing seem still remains stagnant and unable to adapt to the dynamic changing human activities. The project aims to develop an application for both architects and users to create an agent-based platform to build a complex adaptive housing system. Through the application, customers are able to design their own customized housing with the help of architects in the back end, so as to combat continuously changing demands and expectations for evermore and better in homes.
10.07 17:00 CREATIVE CYCLELAND UD RC18: HUI ZHAO, XIAOXIN YANG, YAN LYU AND YU LUO Tutors: Enriqueta Llabres-Valls and Zachary Fluker, Ilaria Di Carlo Creative Cycleland is a new paradigm for recycling urbanism investigating the contradiction between the architecture of culture and recycling. UK households produced about 27 million tons of waste in 2017(409 kg per person_ two-thirds of which are sent overseas. In line with London’s plan to approach waste as a resource part of a circular economy, Creative Cycleland proposes to treat waste both as an economic and cultural problem. By employing AI algorithms, the project redefines spatial paradigms able to manage the complex relation between cities and waster and consider architecture as a component of a circular economic system which contributes to the cultural and environmental quality of the city.
10.07 17:10 PUBLIC PARTS AD RC4: KESHAV RAMASWAMI, DAVID DORIA, XUAN ZHANG, SHAN GUO Tutors: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz, Mollie Claypool, Alessandro Bava Public Parts is an AI-managed platform for autonomous communal living. To subvert neoliberal platforms that currently control the gig economy, with a resocialised stance on social housing, the platform utilizes automation and machine intelligence to produce buildings capable of spatial reconfiguration for housing cooperatives. “We seek to discretize and decentralize the typical apartment to minimize fixed ownership and maximize access.” Public Parts’ AI manages a gigbased construction of discrete parts, automated spatial reconfiguration, communal upkeep, and a domestic task pool which operates as socio-economic infrastructure. The result is an environment that adapts to the behaviour of its inhabiting community while providing gig-work opportunities.
10.07 17:20 B-PRO NOW ROUNDTABLE PANEL: JENNY SABIN, PATRIK SCHUMACHER, MARIO CARPO, PETER COOK, PHILIP YUAN, FABIO GRAMAZIO, ANTOINE PICON, CARMEN ANDRIANI ALISA ANDRASEK,MARCELYN GOW, KATHRIN DOERFLER, BARBARA CAMPBELL-LANGE, MARTHA TSIGKARI, PEG RAWES, DAVID RUY,YAEL REISNER, ARETI MARKOPOULOU,THEO SPYROPOULOS, KATHY VELIKOV, ANDREW WITT, FREDERIC MIGAYROU
Bartlett B-Pro SuperCrit 07.07 - 10.07