Bartlett B-Pro AD SuperCrit 13.07 - 15.07
MATTER + BEHAVIOUR MEDIA + AI
13.07 10:00am13:30pm BST
13.07 14:00pm17:30pm BST
AUGMENTATION + AUTOMATION HOUSING + PLATFORMS Livestream: Bartlett YouTube
14.07 10:00am13:30pm BST
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14.07
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NOW 1
15.07 09:30am13:30pm BST
NOW 2
15.07 14:00pm17:30pm BST
ALISA ANDRASEK, KRISTOF CR KARLSSON, FAYSAL TABBA WINKA DUBBELDAM, M.CA FARZIN LOTFI-JAM, YARA F MARINA OTERO, JELLE FERINGA, ELISE HUNCHUCK,IMMANUE ZEINA KOREITEM, JOSE THEODORA VARDOULI, DANIEL KOE WIKSTROM, R LEV MANOVICH, PHILIP YUAN, GEORG VRACHLIOTIS, BARBARA CAMPBELL-LANGE, PH ALEJANDRO ZAERA-POLO, MARC NEWELL, JENNY SABIN, KRIS
ROLLA, MAJA OZVALDIC, ULRIKA ARA, MORITZ DORSTELMANN ASEY REHM, KAREL KLEIN, FEGHALI, SANDRA MANNINGER , HANIF KARA,MATHILDE MARENGO, EL KOH, GONZALO HERRERO E SANCHEZ, VIOLA AGO, EHLER, DAMJAN JOVANOVIC,LINDSEY RYAN MANNING YAEL REISNER, ROLAND SNOOKS, ,ANNA-MARIA MEISTER, HILIPPE MOREL. MARIO CARPO, CELYN GOW, PETER COOK, CATIE STY BALLIET, ANDREI MARTIN
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)
B-PRO AD RESEARCH CLUSTERS 2021-2021
RC0 STUDIO MEDITERRANEO Design: Alessandro Bava and Tobias Jewson Theory: Julian Siravo Digital technologies are radically reshaping how we work, and in turn how we inhabit the planet. If working from home – away from the office – is the ‘new normal’, how does the home have to change to accommodate it? If cognitive labour is the raison d’etre of the contemporary Western city, and its capacity to aggregate is no longer needed by this form of production, is the emergent condition of remote work going to engender new forms of governance and new forms of life? Research Cluster 0 makes the case for a near future where workers can move away from the global metropolis towards the province, adopting an ethos of redistribution enabled by digital technologies. We will be working in the Mezzogiorno of Italy, where we will make hypotheses for new domestic and (sub)urban typologies suited to the needs of remote workers. We will explore the intrinsic formal and spatial qualities of algorithms, and design new domestic typologies, replacing the analogue standardisation of modernism with a computational (non)standardisation.
RC1 MONUMENTAL WASTELANDS Design: Déborah López, Hadin Charbel and Joris Putteneers Theory: Daria Ricchi Research Cluster 1 explores the imminent nature of the Anthropocene through the lens of ubiquity in the production of data, raw material, logistical processes and their impacts on contemporary scenes. This year’s focus remains on the context of the Arctic, where global warming has caused permafrost thaw, effectively disrupting and displacing existing modes of life through what has come to be known as ‘Cli-migration’. Understanding that such changes pose threats while simultaneously affording new opportunities, projects speculate on imminent realities and respond by proposing methods for radical preservation through adaptation. Research is conducted through a process of ‘decoding’ and ‘recoding’; a multi-directional workflow that combines research, machine learning, procedural and algorithmic processes that are tested between interactive world-building and narratives in the form of short films.
RC2 ROBOTIC ARCHITECTURE Design: Valentina Soana and Georgia Kolokoudia Theory: Alejandro Veliz Reyes Research Cluster 2 explores the emerging design possibilities of autonomous systems. It investigates the role of robotics in architecture beyond their use as fabrication and construction tools, moving towards a novel concept of architectural robots. For a long time now, designers have envisioned building systems that could 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 material systems can create novel structures that are able to self-form, reconfigure and achieve multiple states, operating and interacting at architectural and human scales. 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 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 artificial intelligence. The cluster develops experimental design models embedded with the ability to self-organise, self-assess and self-improve, using deep learning to train assembly systems to negotiate 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. We reappraise linear building lifecycles holistically, learning from living systems’ extraordinary scalable efficiencies of adaptive construction with simple flexible parts. In the face of the pandemic, this year we will rethink notions of ‘home’, ‘workplace’ and/ or ‘factory’ as separate building typologies, and investigate new socio-economic models for distributed living, working and production, enabled by reconfigurable architectural systems.
RC4 ARCHITECTURE AND AUTOMATION Design: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia,Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz and David Doria Theory: Mollie Claypool This year, Research Cluster 4 continues its agenda on housing and automation, with a specific interest in platforms based on automation with discrete design and fabrication technologies. Mindful of the social and political consequences of automation, students will develop community-driven platforms for homes and housing. They will develop everyday automated workflows, set in the present, while being invested in radical spatial and aesthetic agendas for the future. At the same time, students will develop new narratives for community, work, life and domesticity in an increasingly automated world. We will question life with autonomous entities, robots and artificial intelligence, mobile robotic mini-factories, viral platforms and activism. This Research Cluster is affiliated with Automated Architecture Labs.
RC5&6 FRAGMENT Design: Adam Holloway, Guan Lee and Daniel Widrig Theory: Ruby Law Our brief this year uses fragmentation as a device for design to assume the critical responsibility of revealing and questioning the demand for coherent material assembly. In a conceptual sense, the fragmented – be it already ‘broken off’ or simply potentially separable – always retains logical traces of the whole: a part of something greater. When is the fragment a facet of architecture? Is it during the conception of a design? Is it the moment building components take shape? Are fragments instances of incongruous experiences of space? Or are they pieces of architectural ruin, excavated out of solidified history? The fragment is necessarily incomplete but not always subservient to the whole that completes it. The primary meaning of the term differentiates between the essential and the accidental. While architectural fragments often lend themselves to such reduction, they are just as often able to challenge the expected unity. This Research Cluster is affiliated with Material Architecture Lab
RC7 BIOSPATIAL DESIGN II Design: Richard Beckett, Barry Wark and Levent Ozruh Theory: Luis Hernandez and Carolina Ramirez Figueroa Research Cluster 7 considers how advances in biotechnology, life sciences and engineering are affecting architecture. This year students will explore the integration of non-human agency within architecture, exploring novel conditions of space, concepts of inhabitation and building performance. These ideas will influence building typologies and offer new strategies for resilient cities in the face of accelerating climate change. Our aim is to question how machine learning can be applied alongside principles of ecological systems for simulation and digital fabrication of building prototypes. Proposals will look to provide radical solutions around issues including urban growth, smart buildings and healthy infrastructure. Computational approaches integrating machine learning will be developed as design tools alongside sustainable material exploration and bio-digital fabrication. Topics this year will revolve around themes including bio-augmented design, resilient infrastructure, novel architectural tectonics and large-scale fabrication.
RC8 RECYCLING AND MIXING Design: Kostas Grigoriadis, Lizy Huyghe and Martina Rosati Theory: Ilaria di Carlo In Research Cluster 8, our main research focus is multi-material design and the wider implications that the use of multi-materials will have on architecture and building construction. More specifically, 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. The first two cycles of this year’s research agenda are targeted towards the rethinking of the building envelope, namely of curtain walling and its part-based buildup. The corresponding design research projects investigate the use of robotic fabrication for the in-situ 3D printing of building facades, and more importantly the fusion of metal and glass to generate component-less, materially continuous envelopes. Students will then research the multi-material design of large span structures for transit hubs in London, specifically the main concourse roof of King’s Cross Station. We will consider the origins of the materials that make up the larger multi-material topologies from recycled sources.
RC9 ARCHITECTURE FOR THE AUGMENTED AGE Design: Igor Pantic, Alvaro Lopez and Jose Pareja Theory: Clara Jaschke As we immerse ourselves into rapidly developing Extended Realities (XR) the barriers between humans and machines are becoming increasingly blurred, with portable devices such as smartphones and tablets augmenting our perception of the environment. Research Cluster 9 explores how XR technologies can change the ways in which we design, build and interact with the environment. Traditionally, the cluster has explored a hybrid approach to making that is neither purely analogue nor purely automated, through application of alternative strategies for fabrication, utilising cutting-edge head-mounted devices to holographically assist designers and makers in the design and manufacturing process. This year, we will broaden the research to areas which are not strictly limited to the construction industry, by exploring the concept of the gig economy and development of digital platforms for multiplayer design and distributed manufacturing, as well as immersive experience and interaction with the built environment and the metaverse
RCX HABITAT TECTONICS Design: Vishu Bhooshan, Federico Borello, Henry David Louth Theory: Provides Ng Architectural Geometry focuses on the synthesis of shapes that guarantee optimal structure and fabrication. It is also closely aligned with the development of robotic and digital fabrication technologies and design methods. In Research Cluster 10, we explore the relevance of this state-of-the-art design and construction paradigm applied to computational housing projects that adapt to local contextual aspects, including supply chains and fabrication technologies in concrete and timber. This year, students will use the methods and algorithms used to produce Architectural Geometry in the design of modular, fast-to-assemble residential spaces. From this geometric basis and using the computational speed of Architectural Geometry methods, students will build browser and game-platform configurators that allow non-expert end users to personalise and assemble prefabricated building components into custom homes. The content and tools used are representative of the imminent future of the industry as it shifts from building information modelling for documentation to a ‘design for manufacturing and assembly’ paradigm.
MATTER + BEHAVIOUR 13.07 10:00am13:30pm BST
PANEL: ALISA ANDRASEK, KRISTOF CROLLA, MAJA OZVALDIC, ULRIKA KARLSSON, FAYSAL TABBARA, MORITZ DORSTELMANN
10:00 RC8-TEAM 2 Students: Yuchong Yao, Yiyun Liang, Anning Chen Tutors: Kostas Grigoriadis, Lizy Huyghe and Martina Rosati with Ilaria di Carlo (theory) The project brief is to redesign Kings Cross Station with multi-materials and to embed a new programme related to the location of the station in one of the most significant knowledge clusters globally. The design in effect combines the concept of future knowledge space with conventional railway station programmes. Instead of static reading and learning spaces, the project aims to accommodate mobile and continuous communication areas. The project is constructed primarily from recyclable plastic with its plastic structure being continuous throughout the design, with various degrees of transparency and flexibility from the canopy to the ground. Rigid opaque plastic forms a lattice topology that acts as reinforcement for the concrete ground, while flexible plastic regions come out of the ground to form resting and sitting areas.
10:30 RC5/6 HEMPSTACK Students: Nora Brudevold, Matteen Haj, Seyed Javadi Hyelyn Lee, Danai Mavridi Tutors: Adam Holloway, Guan Lee and Daniel Widrig with Ruby Law (theory) Hemp’s association to narcotics next-to-outlawed it in the Western-world. Now, legal changes mean it has burst into fashion in recent years. Yet as a crop, we know it has an 8,000-year long history, from Christopher Columbus’ ships’ rope, to food. Hempcrete is a sustainable replacement for concrete and has a vast array of benefits, with a massive reduction in carbon, to being lighter, making transport and construction simpler. This project is concerned with understanding how to popularise this incredible material’s use, through considering its connection to localities and new construction techniques. We believe the best way to understand this is through physical testing, culminating in 1:1 structures.
11:00 RC7 BIOPLASTIC Students: Zhuoning He, Qing Tang, Zijun Wu, Xinyue Zhan Tutors: Richard Beckett, Barry Wark and Levent Ozruh with Luis Hernandez and Carolina Ramirez Figueroa (theory) Biospatial conditions are explored through the use of biopolymer prototypes which at the material level offer renewability, low cost production, non-toxicity, biodegradability and availability. Computational methods of structural agency are explored alongside a designer as material maker approach engaging with contemporary design agendas of multimateriality and performance. Prototypes are seen less as serially produced products but instead ones which permit and expect change or adaptation and can be varied according to different environments. These changes, driven by factors including hydration levels, decay, growth of secondary agencies, ageing and failure are then remapped, removed, re-formed or re-assembled resulting in non-fixed typologies with longitudinal consideration of material agency.
11:30 RC9 VERNACULAR Students: Jing Feng, Yue Qin, Yifan Ran, Wenqiang Wei Tutors: Igor Pantic, Alvaro Lopez and Jose Pareja with Clara Jaschke (theory) VernaculAR proposes a fast and affordable system for building low-cost housing in Chinese rural areas, by weaving a series of bent bamboo elements. Use of Augmented Reality guides in fabrication allows people without previous construction knowledge to engage in the construction of local communities. An Augmented Reality app for Hololens is developed in order to guide the construction process, in which the builders will bend and assemble bamboo in place following holographic templates.
12:00 RC8 - TEAM 1 Students: Sen Wei, Gaojie Zhang, Huiyin Pan, Sai Feng Design: Kostas Grigoriadis, Lizy Huyghe and Martina Rosati with Ilaria di Carlo (theory) This is a proposal for the renovation of King’s Cross station concourse. The station canopy is redesigned as a multi-plastic, patterned tensile membrane. The volumetric design of the membrane’s support columns allows them to form enclosures for various functional co-working spaces. Appropriate daylight conditions for white collar working are enabled by adjusting the colour and transparency of the plastics. Recycled thermoplastics are used in its construction - TPU and PET/PETG - and are combined by gradient fusion and the 3D printing of the flexible tensile membrane and the rigid support structure. In terms of construction, the design uses functionally gradient materials for integrating 3D printing and construction and to reduce the number of steps and components typically used in traditional tensile membranes.
12:30 RC5/6 AGARITECTURE STUDENTS: YULIANG BAI, MATTICE BOETS, YUWEN QIAN, YUE WANG Tutors: Adam Holloway, Guan Lee and Daniel Widrig with Ruby Law (theory) We commonly conceive of buildings as fixed things, but we believe that they are not, they are moving, evolving, degrading, growing masses. With Mycelium, we can witness this at an incredible rate, creating an organism that is architecture, that has a life cycle. Through extensive testing we discovered natural substrates worked well as bases for the mycelium to feed and grow off, slowly scaling up our tests to a 1:1 wall, with unpredictable but exciting results; the architecture designing itself. Proposing pavilions throughout Teat Nature Reserve; a place known for its rich mushroom species and picking; the building is born, can live, and support life through harvesting its walls, and die, in an incredibly sustainable cycle.
13:00 RC2 ELASTIC CHOREOGRAPHIES Students: Yelay Bayraktaroglu, Shahram Minoee Sabery, Cephas Bhaskar Tutors: Valentina Soana and Georgia Kolokoudia with Alejandro Veliz Reyes (theory) Elastic choreographies explore the performative potentials of elastic robotic structures at architectural scale. Large shape changes are achieved through the integration of modular robotic-material-systems with elastic structures (bending active tensile hybrid). Inspired by the body movement of dancers, the project investigates how to design and control architectural robots to generate spatial performances. The synergy between rigid body spatial assemblies and elastic structures generates a hybrid system that combines high precision kinematic control of rigid bodies with large deformations and intricate forms of a compliant system. The project envisions the emergence of dancing structures, providing a new paradigm for Human- MaterialMachine- and Space- architectures.
MEDIA + AI 13.07
14:00pm17:30pm BST
PANEL: WINKA DUBBELDAM, M.CASEY REHM, KAREL KLEIN, FARZIN LOTFI-JAM, YARA FEGHALI, SANDRA MANNINGER
14:00 RC1 LAST CHANCE TOURISM Students: Hongyi Wu, Ze Gao, Zhe Zhang Tutors: Déborah López, Hadin Charbel and Joris Putteneers with Daria Ricchi(theory) As climate change has begun to irreversibly modify landscapes the arctic has seen a tourism boom. Dubbed as ‘Last Chance Tourism’, the allure of a disappearing arctic has created a negative feedback loop. ‘Chaser’ empowers indigenous Arctic communities through a virtual tourism platform that capitalizes on these social phenomena. Changing environments are recorded and archived to be used as content in creating unique procedurally generated immersive spectacle surfing experiences. A word2vec algorithm trained on a climate data set drives the system, linking different spectacles that collapse scale, time and distance, allowing for non-linear readings and experiences of climate change while serving as a database for future predictions.
14:30 RC9 XREF Students: Haoya Chen, Yuling Guo, Yingxuan Tang, Haonan Wang Tutors: Igor Pantic, Alvaro Lopez and Jose Pareja with Clara Jaschke (theory) 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, xREF proposes an adaptive augmented space that will cater to specific user’s needs, through which the users will generate and interact with digital data which responds to, and changes their perception of the physical world.
15:00 RC5/6 CORNUCOPIA Students: Jianing Luo, Yi Shi, Boyuan Yu, Haoxing Zhang Tutors: Adam Holloway, Guan Lee and Daniel Widrig with Ruby Law (theory) Cornucopia takes the idea of timber being the answer to our carbon crisis in the construction industry, and interrogates whether our use of timber is as sustainable as it could be. With large amounts wasted and a trajectory of downcycling, how can the traditionally unwanted and unusable parts from the industry be used as a construction material? Employing AI and automation in a quest to make the recycling viable and efficient, this project uses multiple scales of design, from a chair to a school, to test the modular material’s potential.
15:30 RC1 SAMI BORDERLESS Students: Yuqi Liu, Fangrong Lin, Jiaxi Zheng, Yuexi Liu Tutors: Déborah López, Hadin Charbel and Joris Putteneers with Daria Ricchi(theory) Common history has traditionally be told from a colonial perspective. Auto-ethnography is one way by which alternative narratives and perspectives have been recorded; but the method is not without its limitations and flaws. ‘Sami Borderless’ presents a new approach to auto-ethnography which leverages the combination of emerging technologies and protocols. Departing from the existing frameworks of scenario planning, the project aims to connect personal narratives to larger social issues by archiving personal experiences in creating immersive personal and collective worlds, raising questions on how history can be decentralized, reported, shared and experienced.
16:00 RC0 CASTLE SPONGE Students: Cristina Trovati, Jili Mei, Gilang Kusumawardana, Kaifeng Li Tutors: Alessandro Bava and Tobias Jewson with Julian Siravo (theory) The Castle Sponge aims to provide temporary housing for remote workers from all around the world, otherwise known as digital nomads. The contemporary nomadic lifestyle is associated with remote working, frequent travelling and temporary housing. The project challenges the idea that temporary housing has to be of lesser quality than long-term living environments. By questioning the relationship between human and machine intelligence within the process, the project aims to utilise machine learning to create an alternative typology of nomadic living that is beyond human thinking - a result based on learning from local history and the Mediterranean context.
16:30 RC3 B.E.A.S.T. Students: Ta-Hsin Chang, Xiangyun Dai, Lin Li, Yuehong Zhou Tutors: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu and Philipp Siedler with Jordi Vivaldi Piera ( theory) The project “B.E.A.S.T.” the Behavioral Extended Adaptive Scissor Transformer investigates autonomous spatial embodiment through robotically controlled scissor structures. Beast body plans are composed of linkages of various components with passive and active joints enabling them to maximize degrees of adaptation while minimizing actuation. Beast is self-aware through a lidar sensory system and through motor sensor feedback, evolving its self-adapting behavior in relation to its changing human and non-human environment. The research involves parallel development and integration of robotic prototypes with sensor actuation control systems, and a Unity based simulator using reinforcement learning to learn adaptive policies.
17:00 RC7 CRYPTOGAN Students: Pooja Harumalani, Ned Jakimavicius, Panos Kalaitzidis, Aijia Wang Tutors: Richard Beckett, Barry Wark and Levent Ozruh with Luis Hernandez and Carolina Ramirez Figueroa (theory) CryptoGAN embodies a design methodology which utilizes machine learning to generate built space of maximum ecological production and of densified symbiotic co-habitation of both humans and non-humans. In doing so, the research explores how architects can create their own datasets to influence the machine learning, offering new computational design strategies.The project develops a series of systems that can produce potentially infinite amounts of variations in a dataset, each variation nevertheless share the same design intelligence for hosting spaces for the non-humans to exist. The resulting architecture aims to enhance biological wilderness and to push for ecologica awareness through the cohabiation of the two above mentioned parties.
AUGMENTATION AUTOMATION 14.07 10:00am13:30pm BST
PANEL: MARINA OTERO, JELLE FERINGA, HANIF KARA,MATHILDE MARENGO, ELISE HUNCHUCK,IMMANUEL KOH, GONZALO HERRERO
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10:00 RC9 MIXR Students: Xuanyang Chen, Pengfei Mu, Shuhui Yu, Congyuan Yuan Tutors: Igor Pantic, Alvaro Lopez and Jose Pareja with Clara Jaschke (theory) It is expected that in the near future, personalized wearable Mixed Reality devices [AR glasses etc.] will become as affordable and widespread as mobile phones are today. With this in mind, miXR proposes a Mixed Reality platform, which allows each user to personalize and change their view and experience of the real environment, through a series of virtual overlays. This Urban MR game turns people from passive consumers to active participants in the creation of constantly changing and evolving digital twins of our cities, posing the questions on possible positive and negative impacts of such technology.
10:30 RC7 SIMCLAY Students: Yunhao Wang, Sixin Xie, Wenyuan Zhu Tutors: Richard Beckett, Barry Wark and Levent Ozruh with Luis Hernandez and Carolina Ramirez Figueroa (theory) SimClay explores the relationship between Clay 3D printing and craft.
The project develops a
fluid implicit particle solver system to permit gravity based robotic clay extrusion simulations. Using this system, the computational methodology creates, predicts and exaggerates the imperfections of the process creating a sense of digital ‘risk’ associated with wider definitions of craft. Through these simulations which predict instability, drooping and shrinking the ‘hand’ of the craftsman becomes part of the digital fabrication to re-establish the role of co-creation in clay 3D printing and its relationship with expression and craft.
11:00 RC2 ARCREATURE Students: Huan Zhang, Xin Tong, Jiatong Ni Tutors: Valentina Soana and Georgia Kolokoudia with Alejandro Veliz Reyes (theory) ARCreature proposes a novel self-reconfigurable and mobile architectural system. This intelligent architectural robot is designed to crawl, assemble and generate large adaptive structures. The system interacts with humans, providing multiple spatial experiences. ARCreature integrates elastic tensile surfaces within a kinematic frame, combining the advantages of both rigid bodies kinematics (precision) and compliant systems (flexibility, lightweight). From a simple unit concept, the exploration of different topologies and actuation sequences can generate a wide range of complex behaviours. The development of ARCreature focused both on the design of novel methods to control and build the architectural system and the exploration of novel urban scenarios of ARCreatures.
11:30 RC0 LOFT PALAZZO Students: Kong Lingwen, Zhang Quan, Shen Tianchen, Gao Tiany Tutors: Alessandro Bava and Tobias Jewson with Julian Siravo (theory) Today more and more people are working remotely and the ways a domestic nucleus functions is radically changing. Loft Palazzo is a project that reimagines the typology of the loft adapting it to the needs of working from home. If lofts are traditionally undetermined, columnless spaces that result from an adaptation of a manufacturing typology to living, our project aims to hybridise living and manufacture in a space that combines flexibility with specificity.
12:00 RC3 A.N.T Students: Abdullah Nasib Ummerfarook, Shizhao Wang, Yixuan Xu, Haoyue Zhang Tutors: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu and Philipp Siedler with Jordi Vivaldi Piera (theory) ANT (Amenities Navigation Technology) responses to today’s housing crisis with a logistics-based solution utilizing autonomous distributed robots to reconfigure private and shared interior spaces to negotiate the requirements of its inhabitants. Inspired by space stations where all surfaces are utilized and warehouse robotics, the project embeds a continuous system of rails for robots to navigate, distribute, and store spatial elements and furniture across walls, ceilings, and floors in a continuously adaptive building life cycle. A spatial assembly algorithm is used to generate continuous building assemblages while an agent-based algorithm is developed to respond and negotiate the changing building occupancy.
12:30 RC4 STNE Students: Shuning Chen, Qing Wang, Tianyu Zhang, Echo Zhu Tutors: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia,Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz and David Doria,with Mollie Claypool (theory) Facing the global climate emergency and housing crisis, STNE is a platform that uses AI-Driven automated design and fabrication technologies to re-introduce stone construction for mass housing. Our design methods allows to compile a wide range of housing typologies directly from raw stone material, minimising the need for craft and customisation. A configurator software allows communities of future inhabitants to negotiate their preferred mode of living and space usage. An ML-trained virtual bot then interprets these programmatic schemes and organises raw materials from a crowd-sourced stone database into fully functional housing blocks. Using post-tensioning as a structural system, new types of stone buildings are enabled, which provide an open-ended, natural and adaptive way of inhabiting our cities.
13:00 RC8 PLASTIMBER Students: Alvaro Villacis Salazar, Daria Frygina, Dhwani Ruparelia, Vincente Vieira Tutors: Kostas Grigoriadis, Lizy Huyghe and Martina Rosati with Ilaria di Carlo (theory) PlasTimber introduces a novel method for recycling and mixing plastics and wood-plastic composites aiming to achieve functionally graded multi-materiality at an architectural scale using additive manufacturing. WPCs are produced by mixing wood and plastic wastes to obtain WPC pellets, which are then extruded. It has been proved that reinforcing plastic with wood fibres enhances the thermo-mechanical properties of the composite. WPCs are a growing industry within the building sector with yet to be fully developed means to recycle them. The project proposes a building system based on 3d printed multi-material blocks which are then fused together by heat.
HOUSING + PLATFORMS 14.07 14:00am17:30pm BST
PANEL:
ZEINA KOREITEM, JOSE SANCHEZ, VIOLA AGO, THEODORA VARDOULI, DANIEL KOEHLER, DAMJAN JOVANOVIC,LINDSEY WIKSTROM, RYAN MANNING,BRIAN RINGLEY
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14:00 RC0 CO-CONDOMINIUM Students: Xinyi Yu, Yu He, Yaxin Duan, Ningzi Xue Tutors: Alessandro Bava and Tobias Jewson with Julian Siravo (theory) Working from home poses new challenges for families’ domestic life, particularly when coupled with childcare. The project for a co-condominium is centred around the socialisation of domestic work, aiming to alleviate the stresses triggered by this increasingly dominant condition through a specific typological and spatial organisation. We attempt to encode and challenge the qualities observed in traditional multi-family typologies in an adaptive and flexible co-living housing project, using algorithmic tools.
14:30 RCX SYNKATOIKISIS Students: Zhengqing Zhang, Vasia Sargani, Le Xu, Yuan Cheng Tutors: Vishu Bhooshan, Federico Borello, Henry David Louth with Provides Ng (Theory) The city of London, as per the GLA’s Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA), is projected to require on average 49000 - 65000 houses per annum(2021 -2028). To achieve this requirement an efficient and streamlined design to production pipeline is of primary importance.
SynKa-
toikisis, inspired from gaming technologies, proposes to bring together different stakeholders of the housing industry - architects, planners, developers, engineers, contractors, fabricators etc. – as actors in a unified collaborative design to production platform to expedite the design process. In addition, the project explores the use of Architectural Geometry (AG) and associated technologies of Robotic- Digital Fabrication (RDF) & Industrialised Construction (IC) to create an architectural kit of parts, which seeks to build on historical precedents and combine with contemporary technologies to enable structural efficiency,
fast production and
ease of assem-
bly. The above methods are deployed on a prototypical site in East London, with an aim to develop a system, which could be instantiated on multiple site conditions and cities with similar housing challenges. The design, factoring in the current covid19 induced scenarios of hybrid working and reduction in social interactions, incorporates into its spatial features the concepts of increased social interactions via green communal spaces, health & well-being facilities, markets and co-working areas.
15:00 RC4 PLAN MEDITERRANEA Students: Sehr Gupta, Stavroula Ioakeimidou, Yumo Wu Tutors: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia,Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz and David Doria, with Mollie Claypool (theory) Plan_Mediterranea provides a platform to reinvigorate existing villages in the Mediterranean region, and establish new types of settlements which capitalise on the digital economy and remote work. COVID-19 has made us explore the work from home set-up and has encouraged us to shift all offline activities to online platforms. Our platform focuses on turning local neglected villages to smart villages by creating digital economy workspaces. For this, we refer to rural revival strategies like the “Back to Village” platform in Spain, Taobao villages in China and 1-Euro villages in Italy. Plan_Mediterranea consists of a crowd-sourcing co-design tool for platform participants and existing villagers to negotiate content and collectively draw a masterplan for the community. This data is then translated and processed using volumetric algorithmic operations to obtain feasible schemes for 3D-printable homes, grafted on the existing context.
15:30 RC1 HYPERMIGRATION Students: Foteini Terzopoulou, Yuxiao Zhang, Sofiela Kotsi, Tiantong Xu. Tutors: Déborah López, Hadin Charbel and Joris Putteneers with Daria Ricchi(theory) Hyper-migration is a dynamic system for cli-migration that evolves adjacently to shifting environmental and economic conditions. The system takes uncertainty as a factor and thus produces different outcomes for different potential circumstances and is translated through a constructional syntax derived from the re-use materials sourced from existing buildings. Its central axis is oriented in the decoding of the community’s identity through the investigation of daily behavior and its recoding in spatial essence through the reconfiguration of existing architectural typologies.tions to obtain feasible schemes for 3D-printable homes, grafted on the existing context.
16:00 RC5/6 THE ROAD IS NOT A ROAD Students: Yuan Jiang, Rui Jing, Jiajie Yang, Lang Zheng Tutors: Adam Holloway, Guan Lee and Daniel Widrig with Ruby Law (theory) This project is built upon circular responses to environmental concerns. It aims to use the waste from a traditionally carbon intensive industry: steel, to make products for another carbon heavy industry: construction. Steel slag has a variety of useful characteristics we investigated in our material experiments. Situated the village of Yangxing, home to the world’s largest steel mill, we propose to use the waste generated to make structural interventions that slow the damage being done to the environment and landscape by the vast amounts of slag that has already been dumped, in the form of buildings, roads and retaining walls.
16:30 RC3 M.E.H.R. Students: XiaYan He, Tina Kalantary, Jun Sheng Shan, Meng Xia Tutors: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu and Philipp Siedler with Jordi Vivaldi Piera (theory) Driven by post-pandemic political fragmentation of our societies, the spread of remote work, and the increased allegiance to the global community, M.E.H.R. proposes a decentralised bottom-up platform for community building where users are connected through psychogeography data and incentivised to share and trade space and resources through a smart contract system. The project is composed of autonomous robotic spatial units capable of self-assembly and reconfiguration. Adaptive parts are composed of robotic linear and rotational joints integrated with a flexible composite skin. Online virtual groups, forums and pages can now be lived in the physical world through the range of community topologies M.E.H.R. continuously reforms.
17:00 RC4 WITH/WITHOUT Students: Argyrios Delithanasis, Santiago Del Aguila Ferrandis, Andrea Terceros Barron, Ghanem Younes Tutors: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia,Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz and David Doria, with Mollie Claypool (theory) With/Without is a game-based Community-Led Housing (CLH) platform which automates the mass negotiation of participatory design intent. The design input of thousands of users gets automatically processed into a functioning building. The design game kit augments the negotiation between designers and future homeowners by using a computer vision application that uploads every user’s physical typological input in a digital master model. Subsequently, an AI negotiator analyzes every input that is uploaded in the database and creates the building assembly through a constraint solving algorithm that reflects every inhabitant’s desires. Lastly, a cable robot automates the construction of the assembly by compiling discrete timber building blocks into the desired living spaces. The result is a modular and scalable system that creates customized and unique spaces with generic parts.
NOW 1 15.07
09:30am13:30pm BST
PANEL: LEV MANOVICH, PHILIP YUAN, YAEL REISNER, ROLAND SNOOKS, GEORG VRACHLIOTIS, ANNA-MARIA MEISTER, BARBARA CAMPBELL-LANGE, PHILIPPE MOREL
09:30 RCX AIRS Students: Chen Yue, Mayue Gao, Despoina Grigoriadou, Shanyi Li Tutors: Vishu Bhooshan, Federico Borello, Henry David Louth with Provides Ng(Theory) The average household in the city of London is projected to grow by 7-10% in the year 2028 (Office of National Statistics), which entails each household would have a larger space requirement. This along with the lack land to meet the housing requirements in the city (National Planning Policy Framework), forms the basis of research for AIRS. The project, proposes to create Add-Ons to existing residential units and activate multiple airspace strategies - roof-top, over rail etc to counter this dual challenge, It seeks to drive this development through the data gathering of end user requirement, made possible by a participation platform which builds on technologies in the gaming and automobile industries. In addition, the project explores the synergies of sustainably sourced digital timber with contemporary computational form finding, design for manufacture (DfMa) & Industrialised Construction technologies to create structurally efficient and fast to build parametric architectural components. AIRS showcases the deployment of these modular-bespoke kit of parts through a prototypical time line based scenario to create a sustainable housing development to increase density whilst seeking to activate the roofscapes of the chosen site to promote enhanced community interactions and well being.
10:00 RC0 HIGH-RISE ALLOTMENT Students: Liqun Ma, Jiaxi Zhang, Chengyi Wang, Mark Trance Tutors: Alessandro Bava and Tobias Jewson with Julian Siravo (theory) High-rise Allotment Garden is a housing project for remote workers suffering mental and physical exhaustion. While the domestic typologies surrounding our social, economic, and cultural behaviour are becoming ubiquitous, we as designers should create an adaptive and continuously evolving solution in parallel with our basic needs – to live, work and nourish. So the question of combining work and leisure is cogent. The project aims to combine green space and living space with different sizes and proportions in a non-rhetorical way.
10:30 RC1 ARCTIC EVERYWHERE Students: Aiyasi, Angui Li, Ran Wang, Yanning Yang Tutors: Déborah López, Hadin Charbel and Joris Putteneers with Daria Ricchi(theory) Arctic Everywhere is a multi-lateral negotiating platform that updates available resources and accessibility by constantly monitoring and redrawing borders in real-time. The system includes a video game, a trading platform and digital assets associated with real value. The video game collects player behaviors to train the system and links them to the trading platform. Borrowing principles and technology from cryptocurrency, Arctic Evrerywhere decentralizes control and updates protocols that operate under human and non-human interests.
11:00 RC3 R.A.D. Students: Jialu Hou, Aikaterini Kiki, Boning Luo, Sashank Pilla Tutors: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu and Philipp Siedler with Jordi Vivaldi Piera (theory) Have you thought about having a new studio at home for working remotely? From mobile field hospitals to domestic studios, from social distancing to self-isolation, the demand for flexibility has increased more than ever. To address these challenges, we introduce RAD, reconfigurable autonomous demiurge. RAD is an autonomous system of agents and components that offers wide customizability of design, that can self-assemble and reconfigure. Robotic agents are trained in machine learning to save human labor. Through the platform of RAD, users can customize the architecture in collaboration with artificial intelligence, renominated as the designer of their living environment.
11:30 RC4 EARTHCASTER Students: Hsiu-Min Lin, Tongyu Fu, Yi Zhang Tutors: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia,Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz and David Doria, with Mollie Claypool (theory) Earth Caster is a fully-automated co-living platform which turns the earth of polluted brownfield sites into large-scale housing. Future inhabitants subscribe to the platform, which uses computational graphs and AI processes to negotiate their programmatic desires and modes of living. Automated robotic excavators dig out the polluted land and create large, megalithic earthcast parts which are then compiled and stacked
into a poetically brutal housing block. The inhab-
itants co-living lifestyle could be compared to that of a modern cave man, engaged in abundant co-living, while at the same time the project is a claim for right to land. By turning toxic land into a living environment, the question is raised how absolute our relationship to land is.
12:00 RC7 HEMPCLIFF Students: Simiao Qi, Xingnan Wang, Haochong Wang, Jingjing Zhang Tutors: Richard Beckett, Barry Wark and Levent Ozruh with Luis Hernandez and Carolina Ramirez Figueroa (theory) Urban biomes are some of the least biodiverse habitable places on earth and lack of microbial diversity in cities is driving the emergence of new epidemics of absence that are more challenging and less resilient to pandemics.
Hempcliffe takes as it’s agenda, some of the many unused
concrete frame buildings in Greece, promoting refurbishment in opposition to demolishing and new build approaches.
The project then explores these conditions as a strategy for new urban green-
ing approaches, intertwined with post covid working habits to create new building typologies that are part office, part biodiverse open space. Establishing urban connectivity of biodiverse areas using wind simulation and bioreceptive materials the project offers new ways to create urban biodiversity using the built fabric.
12:30 RC8 TEAM-3 Students: Yan Zhiyuan, Yiqi Hua, Zhengxian Zhang, Qikun Yang Tutors: Kostas Grigoriadis, Lizy Huyghe and Martina Rosati with Ilaria di Carlo (theory) Combining recycled plastic and concrete, concrete plu(a)s is an architectural project rooted in material research. Through the use of multi-material 3D printing, concrete can be moulded into complex shapes without producing unnecessary waste while gaining improved performance from the stay-in plastic formwork. This material system is applied to the re-design of the western concourse of London’s famous King’s Cross station. Transforming the current steel canopy into an urban garden, the project balances numerous aspects of performance with the help of computational methods and generative design to achieve the best overall solution for humans, city and the environment.
13:00 RC9 SAECULUM Students: Indrajith Gamage, Kelvin Law, Anastasiia Metelskaia, Saee Pagar Tutors: Igor Pantic, Alvaro Lopez and Jose Pareja with Clara Jaschke (theory) Saeculum
proposes a reusable and reconfigurable formwork system for on-site concrete casting.
With AR technology, Saeculum 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.
NOW 2 15.07
14:00pm17:30pm BST
PANEL: ALEJANDRO ZAERA-POLO, MARIO CARPO,PETER COOK, MARCELYN GOW, CATIE NEWELL, JENNY SABIN, KRISTY BALLIET, ANDREI MARTIN
14:00 RC5/6 SHAPE TO SHAPELESS Students: Hui Gao, Zhihan Guo, Xinran Liu, Menghua Wang Tutors: Adam Holloway, Guan Lee and Daniel Widrig with Ruby Law (theory)) This project focuses on shapeless materials for casting and approaches the process in both a playful and technical manner.
Gelatin is used as a ‘shapeless’ formwork, something that allows
the positive to form the negative as both change states. We used a hybrid of precise digital and experimental physical methods to get an increasingly layered feedback loop of design, discussed the pros and cons of the increase and decrease of material information in the process from manual to digital, and concerned with scaling intricate manual findings to something viable over a whole building or whole construction system. This detail change is exemplified through the different areas of our proposal: a modular building that demonstrates the possibilities of texture through the different manufacturing methods we explored.
14:30 RC9 LAMINAR Students: Xinlu Chen, Zeshun Liang, Yiguan Liu, Laizhen Wu Tutors: Igor Pantic, Alvaro Lopez and Jose Pareja with Clara Jaschke (theory) With the help of Augmented Reality, humans have the ability to interact with both physical and digital objects in an interactive real-time feedback loop, changing the way in which we design and make. LaminAR proposes a democratized user-owned platform for building off-grid wood house communities with the help of AR. The platform empowers community members to design collaboratively and fabricate complex bent laminated timber elements. LaminAR opens up a new realm that allows the public to join the creative process to be inspiring and innovative.
15:00 RC2 LOOPS Students: Ling Dai, Tongyao Lin, Yichao Shi, Yiting Ma Tutors: Valentina Soana and Georgia Kolokoudia with Alejandro Veliz Reyes (theory) LOOPS is an architectural robotic system that can self-form, self-assemble and change shape through controlled elastic deformations. The project explores the architectural potential of mobile, soft, intelligent, adaptive, and interactive structures. The system comprises robotically actuated bending active tensile hybrid loops that are controlled through continuous negotiation between design, material and machinic feedback in a cyber-physical network. LOOPS is lightweight and resilient; it can continuously deform and adapt to respond to changing conditions, and achieve multiple complex shapes and behaviours with minimal material and energy. This project opens up new visions where humans, machines and materials interact at architectural scale.
15:30 RC1 GAMING CONSENSUS Students: Beiyuan Zhang, Bingchuan Jiang, Junyi Du, Xiayi Zheng Tutors: Déborah López, Hadin Charbel and Joris Putteneers with Daria Ricchi(theory) The remote coastal town of Kivalina is located 80 miles above the Arctic circle and is expected to be submerged within five years. Numerous relocation plans proposed by the government have been rejected, hinting that relocation itself is not the issue, but reaching consensus is. ‘Gaming Consensus’ proposes the use of a video game that allows inhabitants to negotiate different phases of the relocation process. Operating through a form of subsistence, the game gives the community and individuals agency by facilitating the practical dismantling of the town and negotiating the redistribution of materials as they reconstruct anew.
16:00 RC3 TESSERACT Students: Wanzhu Jiang, Ying Lin, Jiaqi Wang, Zongliang Yu Tutors: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu and Philipp Siedler with Jordi Vivaldi Piera (theory) Tesseract is real-time adaptive living architecture utilizing a voxel-based robotic material system to continuously reshape multi-dimensional communities through a socio-economic model which incentivizes users to trade and share spaces. Tesseract sets up a comprehensive information collection port to monitor the status of its users and the environment in real-time. A novel agent based spatial planner algorithm was developed using reinforcement learning to provide adaptive policies for adjusting volumetric room boundaries to constantly changing scales, shapes, materials, and atmospheres. Real-time negotiation balances the interests of multiple users and puts them in a dynamic equilibrium under the background of the pandemic normalization and the second digital turn..
16:30 RC7 MORE THAN HUMAN Students: Yi Sui, Chris Whiteside,
Zhan Xu
Tutors: Richard Beckett, Barry Wark and Levent Ozruh with Luis Hernandez and Carolina Ramirez Figueroa (theory) The project explores how machine learning can aid in developing novel design tools. Continuing the clusters agenda of Bio-spatial design, the work challenges the paradigm of building first and landscape second, instead creating a sketching tools that integrates both human and non human spaces simultaneously as the lines are drawn. This simple input is then processed through a series of site-specific environmental conditions to generate a massing model with embedded ecological intelligence for further development.
16:30 RC4 YIMBY Students: Mengzhen Guo, Yusong Hu, Li Jingwei, Li Yangzhi Tutors: Gilles Retsin, Manuel Jimenez Garcia,Kevin Saey, Sonia Magdziarz and David Doria, with Mollie Claypool (theory) YIMBY is an AI driven platform that helps self-builders to densify their own communities. By unlocking local land with an automated planning, negotiation and building app, low-density suburban areas turn into dense urban blocks with a new collective shared living mode. The YIMBY platform serves as a collective toolkit, consisting of automated planning, automated house design, robotically enabled self-building and AR assisted assembly.
Bartlett B-Pro SuperCrit 13.07 - 15.07