Slinky(bot)_Spyropoulos Design Lab_ AADRL 2017

SLINKY(BOT)

BIOGENIC ORGANIZATIONAL TAXONOMIES

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB THEODORE SPYROPOULOS APOSTOLOS DESPOTIDIS MUSTAFA ELSAYED PHASE II BOOK

AYA RIAD | HANBING ZHAO | JOUMANA ABDELKHALEK | QIN XIA

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would first like to start by warm heartedly thanking our parents and families for believing in us, constantly pushing and supporting us, and enabling us to take the steps for fullfilling our dreams. We dedicate our success to you.

A special thank you to Theodore Spyropoulos for giving us the opportunity to express our ideas and for being not just a great influence but also a friend and a mentor.

Spyropoulos Design Lab tutors; Apostolos Despotidis Mustafa ElSayed

Our Tutors; Patrik Schumacher Shajay Bhooshan Robert Stuart-Smith Alicia Nahmad Pierandrea Angius Tyson Hosmer Alexandra Vougia Doreen Bernath

Our technical tutors; Albert Taylor (AKT II Consulting Structural and Civil Engineers, London) Alessandro Margnelli (AKT II Consulting Structural and Civil Engineers, London) Ed Moseley (AKT II Consulting Structural and Civil Engineers, London)

Our Programme Tutors; Torsten Broeder Eva Magnasali Jorge Mendez Pavlina Varoudaki Soomeen Hahn Ashwin Shah Paul Jeffries

Our Programme Coordinator; Ryan Dillon

Our AADRL Phase I helpers; Basant ElShimy Weihan Chang

Our friends; Norhan Tarek Ahmed Sorour

Last but not least, All our fellow AADRL colleagues

Head Receptionist; Phillipa Burton Graduate Coordinator; Clement Chung

Thank you for helping us make slinky(bot) come to life, for the gained knowledge, amazing experience and atmosphere. We wouldn’t have made it without you.

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The Slinky(bot) Team

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NOTE FROM TEAM:

We live in a busy, fast pace, ever-changing world nowadays. Human to human interactions are

getting more virtual and less tangible. Hence, contemporary communication networks encourage fast interactivity. Our smart devices replace many of our physical possessions making our lives easier, more efficient, more interesting, and faster. Autonomous cars are developed and robots are designed to make our lives easier and to assist us to perform tasks with high precision. Generally, artificial intelligence and machine learning are very trending in the technology of our time; they are also being tested and implemented in various fields. However, architecture remains fixed, finite, and static. The construction process remains very slow compared to the fast pace that we live in, and the outcomes are limited and permanent. Therefore, this makes us question how architecture could be situated in contemporary times.

Our role is to explore and experiment technological advancements in the field of architecture to be able to design infinite, mobile, smart architecture. This architecture provides a more personalized space, variable and mobile in behaviour, and configures and reconfigures infinitely.

Our team proposal within the agenda of the Spyropoulos Design Lab is to try and break the norm

of the static finite architecture, and enhance the communication between the human and their surrounding space. We aspire to create playful and interactive architecture that could communicate, express emotion, to become part of the human’s life. It is a self-autonomous prototypical system, which could configure and reconfigure according to the surroundings. It is specifically important for us as a team to be able to create this dialogue between our architecture and the human, because the studio’s agenda is to design habitable homes, which we believe are the most personal and sincere spaces, which should be able to comfort you, excite you, alert you, and generally help enhance your health and quality of life. Moreover, the slinkybot depends on you as much as you depend on it. It is an organism that develops complexity and intelligence with time. Hence, in this book we take you through our journey in the AADRL on how and why we created slinky(bot) within the “Behavioural Complexity” Agenda of the Spyropoulos Design Lab.

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TABLE OF CONTENT

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INTRODUCTION & STUDIO BRIEF

9

DESIGN THESIS THESIS STATEMENT SELF-ASSEMBLY SYSTEM INSPIRATION LOOKING INTO BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

11 12 18

CASE STUDY HOUSE ANALYSIS 36 CASE STUDY HOUSES THE EAMES HOUSE

THE 4 MAIN PROJECT SCALES

26 39 62

THE SLINKYBOT MECHANICAL APPROACH PNEUMATIC APPROACH

SLINKYBOT TO SLINKYBOT COMMUNICATION BASIC COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR EXTENDED UNIT BENDING LIMITATIONS

84 122

162 172 186

SLINKYBOT TO HOUSE COMMUNICATION

206

SLINKYBOT TO HUMAN COMMUNICATION

214 217 218

HUMAN LIFECYCLE TO SLINKYBOT LIFECYCLE SCENARIO I SCENARIO 2 SCENARIO 3 SCENARIO 4 PREVIOUS STUDIES

242 274 282 294

SLINKYBOT TO ENVIRONMENT COMMUNICATION

306

HIGH POPULATION &RECONFIGURATION

318

DERIVING THE BASIC RULE SETS FOR THE SYSTEM

356

JURY CRITIQUE

412

CONCLUSION

422

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STUDIO BRIEF

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The Spyropoulos Studio framework for the concluding year of the Behavioural Complexity agenda is to design a behavioural system which aims to achieve the goals of self-assembly, self-structuring, configuration and reconfiguration. The system should potentially create different variations to and within one of the case study houses designed in the 1950s. The case study house initiative was a program that encouraged young architects of the time to design residential homes with new ideas, provided the restrictions they had due to war. The announcement stated that the “house must be capable of duplication and in no sense be an individual performance”. (arts & architecture). The houses were to be conceived as “the spirit of the time.”

Hence, the 36 case study houses initiative delt with those specific requirements and challenges.

However, it is still interesting because they required “best suited material of the time” and they had a vision of creating a house that is capable of duplication optimizing the technologies provided. The case study houses are important and relevant to our research because we share the same goals of the initiative. We are experimenting with technology, computational design, bottom-up behavioural proto-systems to capture and achieve the essence and spirit of contemporary times in architecture. We initially analyzed all the case study houses we found some interesting concepts of interior flexibilty, consideration of the human user, mobility and the multiuse of space. The case study houses are a successful demonstration and guideline that utilized technology of that time to create the best prototype of a home.

CASE STUDY HOUSES

50’S

CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGIES

INNOVATIVE MATERIAL

OPTIMUM CONFIGURATION

$

REDUCED COST

Beyond the unique goals and design of the case study houses, we analyzed their spatial configurations, roof treatments, materials used, construction techniques, their solid to void ratio, overall massing, and surrounding landscape and context. The 36 houses were analyzed with the aim to identify the house that could be extended with our architectural system. The next section describes the 36 case study houses

Hence, our proposed architectural system will also utilize current technology to create the house of the future. This is why the self-assembly system is explored. The main goal is to create an artificially intelligent prototypical system. The units that make up this system are autonomous, and could make decisions and communicate with other units and their surrounding context. The aim is to create architecture which is not finite, and that could configure and reconfigure according to its surroundings.

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DESIGN THESIS

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THESIS STATEMENT

The slinky(bot) behavioural system is an autonomous self-assembly and self-aware design

system.

It aims to provide an alternative approach for living, that extends on the ideas of materially and

geometrically elastic, endless and ever-evolving architecture. It is specifically important to our team that the slinkybots are companions in the house that are emotive, and have their independent life cycles that are symbiotically intertwined with the human lifecycle creating an environment that grows and adapts with its users.

The system consists of poly-scalar relationships for reasons for functionality and experience.

It initiates from the lowest level of organization and communication, the unit scale. Within this scale, concepts of singular entity morphology were researched resulting in a dual-state slinkybot, a compact state and an extended one. The compact state explores mobility and structuring mechanisms, while the extended state introduces concepts of spanning, transparency and a higher level of complexity.

The slinkybots are designed to be aware of each other, their surrounding environment, and the human and are able respond at the level of an individual unit and a collective one.

At the aggregation scale, the units collectively work together through different modes of com-

munication to achieve different organizational taxonomies. Across the lifecycle of the slinkybot system, more complex body plans are developed and differentiated for reasons of specialization. They specialize to create functional landscapes, lighting organizations, and sensory habitable spaces that are interactive and playful, living in parallel with the human.

At a high population scale, the system addresses space making strategies and reconfigurable frameworks inspired to create an ecology within the Eames House, that represent its original values of playfulness, surprise, iteration, adaptability, and sustainability. These values are reinterpreted, to what we think, corresponds to the technological advancements of our current time.

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BOTTOM-UP/BEHAVIOURAL DESIGN APPROACH:

In the design of the

slinkybot prototypical architectural system, we use the concept of behavioural, bottom-up processes.

This bottom-up design approach uses a system of artificial intelligence. John Johnston explains the basics of artificial intelligence in his book “The Allure of the Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and New Ai.” He simplifies the concept of behavior based process through describing Douglas Hofstader’s theory. Hofstader looked into a colony of ants to explain the idea of a bottom-up system.

The colony of ants convey

how teams of ants cooperate to perform a specific task, where information is passed from ant to ant or team to team, but there is no one central program or processing unit. (342) Cognition is described as collective and distributive among multi-agent system where there is no central control. He also adds that the ants’ collective activities result in a higher level of complexity, which is described as emergence. Hence, our design is approached similarily, where a unit should behave autonomously and communicate according to the surrounding with no central control.

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PRECEDENTS OF SELF-ASSEMBLY SYSTEMS: ROBOTIC CHAIR, MAX DEAN & RAFFAELLO D’ANDREA

The robotic chair is an

example of a behavioural system which learns with time from its environment. When the chair is not assembled, it could gather itself, and learn from the environment, to form the chair again. The sequence of images below show the process in which the chair assembles.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

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HOD LIPSON, SELF- REPRPODUCING ROBOT

The self-replicating/

reproducing machine was designed

by Hod lipson aiming to study the unquantifiable concept of selfreplication. It is interesting and relevant due to its unique choreographed movement & mobility. It is also a precedent of an autonomous unit, which could connect through various faces, and is capable of self-learning.

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PRECEDENTS FROM BEHAVIOURAL COMPLEXITY AGENDA: HYPER CELL

Hypercell, one of

the student projects in the Spyropoulos Design Lab, use the autonomous bottom-up approach described earlier.

The unit is a “voxel” or a simple cube which on its own could perform certain behaviors of mobility and recognition. When joined with more than of the units, they can collectively create space.

RUB-A-DUB

Another project, Rub-A-

Dub, also uses the same proto-system design approach. The design starts with a simple unit, that could collectively configure and self-assemble to create space, and reconfigure based on the surroundings to create a different space.

This year, we are

following the same agenda of “Behavioural Complexity” and all the previous works of the studio are used as a reference to guide the process of slinkybot. We share the same goals of creating infinite space with autonomous units that could create the space itself.

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LOOKING INTO

BIOLOGICAL ORGANISMS 17

LOOKING INTO BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS: EVO-DEVO:

The idea of infinite configuration and behavioural systems is best demonstrated in natural and biological systems. Hence, the team looked into “Endless Forms Most Beautiful- EVO DEVO” by Sean B. Carroll. Biological form identifies the simple idea for mobility and movement. These simple functions and characters conveyed by the animal kingdom, as mentioned in the book, are simple. Yet, these result in the behavioural complexity.

The criteria relevant to our research are outlined below:

I. MODULARITY ORGANIZATION & SEGMENTATION

II. SYMMETRY & POLARITY

Symmetry and polarity are the universal features of animal design. And they are important to help us understand how could a unit poten-

The first criterion of Modular architecture of a human hand/lobopodian helps understand organization and how these creatures perform and move.

tially move, climb, and stabilize.

III. REPITITION

IV. SPECIALIZATION Repitition as seen in the butterfly wing, what seems to be very complex is actually a very simple pattern of repitition.

Hence, complexity arises from simple patterns of repitition.

“IT IS POSSIBLE, AS OUR HUMAN SKIN, ALL

OF THE CELLS ORGANIZE, SO THAT

SOME ARE PHOTO-SENSITVE AND

SOME ARE SOUND-SENSITIVE,AND

THEY’RE HEAT SENSITIVE ...

ONE COULD BE A SCREEN OTHERS

BREATHING AIR, OTHERS LETTING Specialization as described

LIGHT IN, AND THE WHOLE THING above by fuller, through

COULD ARTICULATE JUST AS skin cells is one of the most important criteria. It is im SENSITIVELY AS A HUMAN BEING’S portant for each unit to have a specific task and know SKIN.” how to communicate with BUCKMINSTER FULLER. different units.

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V. DIVERSITY

EVOLUTION

Diversity is concerned with different functions for dif-

Finally, as shown above, this leads to the

ferent animals, for example, as shown above, the limbs.

idea of evolution. A bat and a bird both have

It is important to show how each limb performs and is

wings, yet each evolved based on the func-

created differently in each animal.

tion of each and the conditions of each.

Finally, all those criteria, modularity, symmetry, specialization leads to diversity and finally all lead to evolution. Hence, all those criteria are interdependent.

As part of the design research, the team is exploring if such criteria could be used in the design of the architectural unit to create this kind of evolving property?

Because in theory, If diversity is achieved in the scale of the units then evolution could occur in the overall picture.

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UNDERSTANDING COLONIAL ORGANISMS:

Colonial organisms are

seen as the first step of evolution starting from a single cell into multicells. A prominent example is the Portuguese man-of-war, which is part of a group related to jellyfish called siphonophores.

What appears to be one organism is actually a colony of identical cells. All the individual cells can carry out all functions necessary for life, so they could all be seen as a single organism. The genetically identical individual cells tend to later specialise for different tasks for the better survival of the overall ecology. Some form tentacles (banded strands) while others form feeding bodies (brown speckled parts), floats, or reprodcutive structures. The colony is dependant on each other, however, can still survive alone and perhaps join another colony.

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SINGLE CELL

MULTICELLULAR MATRIX

DIFFERENTIATED CELLS

SPECIALIZED TISSUE

ORGANISATIONAL STRATEGY Our project’s organizational strategies would follow the main concepts of colonial organisms, which are the following:

BOTTOM-UP APPROACH

BOTTOM-UP APPROACH

The project’s self assembly strategy will follow a bottom-up approach where intelligence is the product of the collective actions. Opposite to the top-down approach, there is no central controlling body ordering the individual units.

ENDLESS GROWTH AND RESTRUCTURING

ENDLESS GROWTH & RESTRUCTURING

DIFFERENTIATION & SPECIALIZATION

The organization of the project would be structured in a way that allows endless growth and addition to the ecology, while also allowing for separation and losing units that could form separate ecologies.

DIFFERENTIATION AND SPECIALIZATION Identical units would have the ability to differentiate itself from others in order to perform specialised tasks that lead to the overall survival of the ecology.

COLLECTIVE COORDINATION

COLLECTIVE COORDINATION

The organisational system would be based on a collective coordination between its specialized cells performing different tasks cohesively.

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TAXONOMIES, BODY PLANS, & SPECIALIZATION As slinky(bot) was developed, it was important to understand how complexity and specialization increase over time. After looking into different organisms, we have identified that different taxonomies and families have different body plans and different organism configurations. Different body plans help in different functions performed by the organism.

Hence, the following body plans of sea planktons were analyzed.

What was interesting and meaningful in the development of slinky(bot) are the radial and linear formations of those multi-cellular organisms which inspired alot of the different slinky(bot) taxonomies which will be explained further in the book.

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CASE STUDY HOUSES 25

CASE STUDY HOUSES ANALYSIS HOUSE SIZE

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The Case Study Houses

were analysed according to their floor areas to set out the size range that will be used for our house design. They ranged from the smallest of 70m to the largest 2

of 1700m2. The average area of the case study houses is 280m2. These values will be used as guidelines for the size of the bounding box of our system of units.

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CASE STUDY HOUSES ANALYSIS TRANSPARENCY

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The Case Study Houses were analysed according to the transparency of their materials and opennes of the houses. The range of transparency ranges from 20% to 100% which allows us different

options for manipulating transparency in our house. Transparency of our system could vary from the density of the units or their material.

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CASE STUDY HOUSES ANALYSIS

MATERIALS

MATERIALS

The materials of the houses were broken down into categories to identify the constituents of the house and its rigidity and flexibility. Those aspects are crucial when its comes to the unit prototype design which overall affects how the system would behave.

#1-1

No Name J.R. DAVIDSON 1945(unbuilt) 167

No Name J.R. DAVIDSON 1948 239

1946 Sumner Spaukding 120 and John Rex 1947 185

Lath House A. Quicy Jones Frederick E. Emmons 1961 200

#25

The Frank House Killingsworth, Brady 1961 230

#27

CSH 27 Campbell and Wong 1963 200

West House Rodney Walker 1948 120

#18A #3

#24

CHS 21B Pierre Koenig

#21B #2

Stuart Bailey House Richard Neutra 1948 70

Charles & Ray Eames 1949 286

#8 #1-2

#20.A

No Name Wurster, Bernardi and Emmon 1949 105

Killingsworth

#7

#23A No Name Brady Smith Thornton M. Abell 1960 1948 120 180

Killingsworth Brady Smith 1960 No Name 120

#5

#23B #11

Materials Not Specified Not Built #12

#13

#17B

J. R. Davidson 1946 255

No Name R. Neutra

#21.A Lath House

Whitney R. Smith 1946 1946 900 100

Alpha HouseNo Name

Alfred N.Beale APT1 Richard Neutra Unbuilt 345

Alan A.Dailey 1964 250

No Name

Killingsworth Brady, APT2Craig Ellwood 1956 Smith &A-Assoc.

1200 1964

1700

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#6

No Name Whitney R. Smith 1946 315

No Name Richard Neutra 1945 320

#10

No Name Kemper Nomland Nemper Nomland Jr. 1945-1947 176

#16

No Name Rodney Walker 1947 440

#20.B

Bass House C. Buff, C. Straub, D. Hensman 1958 465

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MATERIALS

t Bailey House rd Neutra

#9

House uicy Jones erick E. Emmons

#18B

rank House gsworth, Brady

#22

27 pbell and Wong

#23B

me ey R. Smith

#26

e Neutra

e Nomland Nomland Jr. 47

#28

#1950

ame ey Walker

#1953

s House uff, C. Straub, D. Hensman 8

#4

Entenza House Charles Eames Ero Saarinen 1949 223

#1-1

#1-2

Fields House Craig Ellwood 1958 150

#2

No Name Pierre Koenig 1960 213

Killingsworth Brady Smith 1960 240

#3

#7

1962 200

No Name Buff Hansman

No Name J.R. DAVIDSON 1948 #21B 239

Sumner Spaukding #18A and John Rex 1947 185

Charles & Ray Eames 1949 286

CHS 21B Pierre Koenig 1946 120

West House Rodney Walker 1948 120

Killingsworth No#23A Name Brady Smith Wurster, Bernardi 1960 and Emmon 120 1949 105

Killingsworth No Name Brady Smith #23B Thornton M. Abell1960 1948 120 180

Materials Not Specified #21.A Not Built No Name

1966 465

#11

CSH 1950/ Raphael Soriano 1950 100

No Name Craig Ellwood 1953 220

Greenbelt House Ralph Rapson 1949 221

Wood

No Name J.R. DAVIDSON 1945(unbuilt) #8 167

Concrete

Steel

Glass

No Name R. Neutra 1946 900

#12

No Name Alfred N.Beale LathAPT1 House Alan A.Dailey Whitney R. Smith 1964 1946 250 100

#13

Killingsworth Bra APT2 Smith &A-Assoc.

Alpha House Richard Neutra 1964 1700 Unbuilt 345

#17B

Brick

J. R. Davidson 1946 255

Gypsum

No Name Craig Ellwood 1956 1200

Plastic

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CASE STUDY HOUSES ANALYSIS FLAT

ROOF TREATMENT

The Case Study Houses were analysed according to their roof treatment and type. This gives insight to the areas closed up or shaded which would be important in setting up the system for our house.

SLANTED

FLAT

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SKYLIGHT

OVERHANGING

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CASE STUDY HOUSES ANALYSIS ANOMOLIES

Some of the Case Study

Houses had distinctive features that made them stand out from the rest of the houses. It’s important to shed light on these differences and understand how they were concieved and why. Some of the houses were actually several different entities while others were attached modules. These features would help us articulate our system design.

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CASE STUDY HOUSES ANALYSIS

MODULARITY AND ORGANIZATION IN THE CSH:

The following case study

houses in specific are unique

1.

in modularity, organization and adaptability. The first one, for instance, by Campbell and Wong shows the housing unit as a module which replicates to create a cluster. The house by raphael SoriCampbell and Wong, 1963

ano on the other hand shows a very distinctive modular grid of column which emphasizes the shape of the house. Finally, Ellwood’s house,

2.

displays modularity of the steel structure which in turn creates lightness. This creates adaptation in terms of structure.

Raphael Soriano, 1950

3.

Craig Ellwood, 1956

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CONTEXT ADAPTIBILITY:

Another kind of adapta-

tion is one through surrounding.

1.

The following set of case study houses each respond to a particular contextual issue. For instance, Nomland’s is embedded in the ground, walker’s is multi-storey, and Koenig’s has a buffer of water around the house. Those examples inspire the ideas of architecture that is adaptable to users needs.

If the adaptability was to be ever

Kemper Nomland, 1945-1947 Embedded in ground

2.

evolving and ever changing according to the user at different times then the house could become a more efficient and successful model.

Pierre Koenig, 1946 Water surrounding

3.

Rodney Walker, 1947 Multi-storey

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THE EAMES HOUSE 39

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THE EAMES HOUSE, RAY & CHARLES EAMES

The Eames house , designed by famous couple Charles and Ray Eames is one of the most influ-

ential and unique buildings of the 20th centuries. This house is of interest due to the different values that it portrays in its concept and design. The Eames couple wanted the house to trigger the elements of playfulness and surprise. We as a team believe that these two elements are crucial in the design of a house. The couple believed that design is an “iterative process” and that it was constant rethinking and redesigning is what improves the project over time.

“The house represents an attempt to state an idea rather than a fixed architectural pattern, and it is an attitude towards living.” (artandarchitecture.com) Hence, this is where the innovation of the project lies.

They were able to portray the essence of playfulness and ideas of healthy living through their use of color, translucent, opaque and solid planes, and adaptable living spaces. The house is described as a one of a kind experience.

Beyond the unique idea of the house, the couple had values that were important for them when designing the house. The original site of the house was on a natural meadow and hence they shift their location, and use the earth from the site to create a barrier with a retaining wall to maintain the natural reserve.

They believed that this is a way to adapt to the environment and its needs. Therefore, the clear attention to the design, not only of the interior but also of the landscape makes the Eames house’s purpose not only to comfort the user but also to respond to and respect nature and context. “The Eames House is the only place in LA where you can experience the seasons.”

All those values in the making of the Eames house is of interest to further explore. We aim that our architectural system would continue to portray and extend the novel values of the house, which is about happiness, adaptability, playfulness, experience, and iteration. We also believe that our role as architects is not only to respect context and nature, but also to encourage a sustainable and healthy environment.

However, our system will portray these ideas in its own ways, to achieve the goals of the Eames house in contemporary times.

On the Eames House: “when Ray would arrive home from the Office, she would step out of her car, pause, inhale deeply and smile.” (Newman) We hope that our system could have the capability to understand its user (no matter who they are), communicate with them and provide them with the constant satisfaction and inner peace.

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PLAN

Ground Floor Plan

First Floor Plan

TRANSPARENCY

STRUCTURE

2:3 / 60% Transparent

MAIN MATERIALS ROOF TYPOLOGY

MASSING Glass Cemestos Stucco Aluminium Gold-leafed panels

Flat Roof Typology

Photographic panels Wood finishes

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OUR DEFINITION OF A HOUSE-GOAL

Considering that a house, our intervention, is the place that you spend most of your time in, it should be tailored to understand you and your needs. It should also grow and evolve with you over time. The house should be playful and interactive when you want it to be. Moreover, if you want it to be calm and static it should respond to you. Hence, the house becomes not just a space you occupy but instead it becomes an extension to your body. You should be able to project your thoughts into it. The house should represent your thoughts and culture . Hence, we believe that the house is not just a shelter, but instead the house and the human are blending and merging to become one entity.

Moreover, inspired by minimaforms’ “Petting Zoo” installation of artificially intelligent flexible and playful organisms that display different emotions and interact with the users; we are inspired to create playful, highly elastic autonomous units that interact with the users.

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CONTINUITY AND EVOLUTION

As mentioned earlier, as a team we are interested in extending the spirit and concept of the Eames House. Moreover, Kiesler’s endless house is an inspiration due to his very unique ideas of elastic space; and he was interested in creating continuous space. The spatial configuration is unique because of Kiesler’s elastic spatial concept and endlessly flowing continuous space. Kiesler redefines space in the endless house, where the line between a wall and a floor is blurred and they become one continuous entity. This house in particular, inspired the team’s concept to create ever-evolving elastic spaces. These spaces could have the capacity to create continuouty.

ELASTIC

CONTINUOUS

EVOLVING

LIGHTNESS

Inspired by Tomas Saraceno’s work to build “lighter than air vehicles”; the team aims to design a system that breaks the notion of being a heavy and highly mechanical and functional system. But rather, the team wants to explore and experiment with the concept of creating light weight, spider-web like architecture through light-weight and elastic units.

Tomas Saraceno

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LOOKING INTO

EXPERIMENTAL ADD-ON ARCHITECTURE 47

Since our self-assembly system is a design experimentation on the intervention of the prototypes within the Eames House, a research of experimental architectural add-ons to existing houses is compiled and each precedent is analyzed. The precedents are shown chronologically.

PNEUMATIC AIR-STRUCTURES HAUS RUCKER, 1967 “Edible,playable, and Wearable Architecture�

Haus Rucker were a

group of radical architects in the 60s had inspiring add-on and parasitic concepts of architecture.

With the rising concerns on the environments and pollution, they developed a new concept of architecture. They experimented with pneumatic structures, to create add-on floating and light balloon like spaces which will expand from existing buildings. Their concepts were playful, new and different.

Even though this project is from the 60s and early 70s, their ideas are still considered radical in contemporary times. Their ideas are very simple, yet very meaningful and unique. The pneumatic air-structures create an interesting dialogue and portray a different idea of architecture than the buildings they occupy.

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LA BULLE PIRATE,JEAN LOUIS CHANEAC,1971

Jean-Louis Chanéac

installed a parasitic cell on the façade of a modern residential building in 1971, with the purpose of extending the existing space.

He was one of the first architects to experiment with adaptable, mobile, and temporary architecture. He wanted to create “a new architectural language” which contrasts concrete. He used very lightweight materials to construct the cell, and it was detachable. Hence, you can detach the unit and take it to add it to another house. His philosophy similar to Haus Rucker, was very unique, radical, and experimental.

According to the team,

those two approaches are very relevant because they are adaptable, light, and playful. They also make a statement, but they don’t overpower the buildings they occupy. The two projects convey a very light and fun spirit to architecture. Moreover, people relate and love such installations.

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GEHRY RESIDENCE,FRANK GEHRY, 1970

Frank Gehry transformed his own residence in the 70s quite radically. However, he didn’t demol-

ish the old house. Instead the old house was engulfed by Gehry’s deconstructed design. Gehry believed that it was a “balance of fragment and whole, raw and refined, new and old.” His additions definitely stood out amongst the neighborhood and were a statement.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

NATIONAL GALLERY LONDON, VENTURI & SCOTT BROWN, 1984

Moving from Frank Gehry to the National Gallery London Sainsbury wing, designed by Venturi

and Scott Brown; the approach had to be extremely contextual with the existing design. However, it also had to be modern and creative. The designers believed that this post modern design was the right balance between contextual and modern. The design blends in with the context, it continues the same architectural language, yet it is interpreted with modern materials and proportions.

Venturi and Scott Brown’s approach completely contrasts Gehry’s approach. This approach is

rather harmonizing with the surrounding vs Gehry which contrasts and deconstructs. It is important to compare both approaches because when it comes to intervening within the Eames House, it is vital to keep it’s architectural character and harmonize with it.

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PONT-NEUF WRAPPED,CHRISTO AND JEANNE CLAUDE, 1985

The Pont-Neuf one of the

oldest bridges in Paris, underwent continual changes over its lifetime. “Wrapping the PontNeuf continued this tradition of successive metamorphoses by a new sculptural dimension”. It was a lightweight addition of fabric covering the bridge. Even-though temporary the fabric is a modern statement, which transforms the bridge, without overpowering it.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

ROOFTOP REMODELING FALKESTRASSE, COOP HIMMELBLAU, 1988

Inspired to create wings

and floating space, Coop Himmelblau designed this roof on top of a very classic looking building. The design creates a contrasting effect and stands out, without changing or altering the existing building.

ENERGY ROOF PERUGIA, COOP HIMMEL BLAU, 2009

Another project by Coop

HimmelBlau, an energy roof, also stands out as an architectural add-on. Not only is the architecture unique, the top layer includes transparent photovoltaic cells to generate electricity and shade the sun. Wind turbines are also added to generate energy. Hence, the roof is energy self- sufficient.

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KING’S CROSS STATION, JOHN MCASLAN+PARTNERS, 2013

King’s Cross Station is

also one of the statement architectural add-ons. It creates a dialogue between the original historical 19th century station and the 21st “iconic gateway to the capital.”

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

ANALYSIS AND COMPARISON:

After analyzing the previous experimental architectural add-ons that were most relevant to our system, the different projects were categorized into 3 main categories.

The first category, which includes La Bulle Pirate, Pneumatic Air membranes, and

Pont- Neuf wrapped represent the light, mobile, and playful experimental add-ons to architecture. They’re completely contrasting to the materials of the architecture they occupy, and are generally temporary, and adaptive to different contexts. They are subtle and simple, yet carry a very strong architectural expression.

The second category includes The Gehry Residence, The Himmelblau Rooftop

remodeling and Energy Roof, and King’s Cross station. These examples definitely make a statement and stand out. They completely contrast the architecture they occupy. They are contemporary to the buildings they occupy.

The third category, which contains the National Gallery London is what we called the

“Harmonizing”. The design blends with the building and doesn’t create a statement or standout. On the Contrary, it reads like it is the modern continuation of the existing building. It still has its own proportions and design elements, yet it doesn’t contrast the existing building.

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TIMELINE OF EXPERIMENTAL ADD-ON ARCHITECTURE:

Placing our system “Slinkybot” in the timeline below, it was important to identify the main characteristics/features that are relevant to slinkybot. The team wishes to apply many of those features in the design of the system, in the contemporary manner. “Slinkybot” is inspired by lightness, playfulness, and adaptability of the projects in the 60s, which also had an environmental value. It is also important to standout without losing the essence of the existing building. Moreover, it is crucial to use technological advancements to be able to create a sustainable and self-sufficient and energy efficient system. The diagram below, situates the projects with the different categories in relation to each other, and to slinkybot.

Chaneac, La Bulle Pirate.

Christo & Jeanne Claude, Pont- Neuf.

Frank Gehry, Gehry Residence

1967

1984 1970

Haus Rucker, Pneumatic Air Structures.

SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

1985

Venturi & Scott Brown, National Gallery London.

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

Coop Himmelblau, Energy Roof Perugia.

1988

2013

SLINKYBOT

2009

John McAslan +Partners, King’s Cross Station.

Coop Himmelblau, Rooftop Remodelling

Energy Efficient

Adaptable

Renewable/ Recycable

Light & Playful

Stands Out Blends

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Eames House + Endless House

Eames House

The goal is to re-interpret

the original ideas and values of the Eames house using our system, which is inspired by the endless house. Hence, the result will be a dialogue between the very straight

DIALOGUE

crisp and clean lines of the Eames house and the very free form continuous lines of the Endless House.

Endless House

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Hence,

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OUR APPROACH TO REACH THE GOAL ON SELF-ASSEMBLY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, & BEHAVIOUR

The goal is to re-interpret the original ideas and values of the Eames house using our system,

which is inspired by the endless house. Hence, the result will be a dialogue between the very straight crisp HIGH and clean lines of the Eames house and the very free form continuous lines of the Endless House.

POPULATION

In summary and as shown in the diagram above, the Eames house was chosen and analyzed due to its unique concepts and values that we as a team aim to maintain. Hence, to maintain those goals we split our research into system goals and design goals. Our system goals were inspired by the biological systems of

HIGH self-assembly and self-organization. Hence, we looked into colonial organisms and ants behavior to underAUTONOMOUS POPULATION

stand intelligent and autonomous self-assembly systems. Evo-devo helped us clarify the idea that to create

HIGH POPULATION

AUTONOMOUS

TIME BASED

AUTONOMOUS

TIME BASED

UNIT BASED

TIME BASED

UNIT BASED

D NAMI MOBILE

SYSTEM FEATURES HIGH POPULATION

AUTONOMOUS

TIME BASED

UNIT BASED

D NAMI MOBILE SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

DESIGN GOALS UNIT BASED

D NAMI MOBILE

BOTTOM UP

D NAMI MOBILE

BOTTOM UP

SEL O GANI ING

BOTTOM UP

SEL O GANI ING

SEL ASSEMBL

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

HIGH POPULATION

AUTONOMOUS

TIME BASED

UNIT BASED

a self-assembly reconfigurable system we need to use the criteria to develop an ever-evolving model. When

D team NAMIas a very successful example TIME the Endless house considering ever-evolving architecture, UNITstood out to the MOBILE AUTONOMOUS BASED one of the mainBASED of continuous space. Hence, it became design goals to be able to create a harmony between

the existing eames house and our system. The intelligent, interactive, and playful petting zoo project and the lightweight, air-floating ideas of Tomas Saraceno inspire the design goals, as well. In conclusion, all those factors help shape up our Slinkybot system within the Eames House.

TIME

UNIT

D NAMI

BOTTOM The diagram below summarizesBASED the general system MOBILE features and the general goals that we aim to produce BASED UP

from this system.

UNIT BASED

D NAMI MOBILE

BOTTOM UP

SEL O GANI ING

D NAMI MOBILE

BOTTOM UP

SEL O GANI ING

BOTTOM UP

SEL O GANI ING

SEL O GANI ING

SEL ASSEMBL

SEL ASSEMBL

SEL ASSEMBL

SEL ASSEMBL

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THE UNIT SCALE

WHY DUAL STATES?

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

LIGHTNESS

SOFTNESS

The unit is designed with very light material to allow easier mobility, assembly, and unique space making.

The elongated state allows for softness and transparency, and the compact state allows for rigidity, strength and structure.

EFFICIENCY Dual states arised in order to maximize the potential for an assembly system that is efficient in time, energy and number of units needed.

FORM FLEXIBILITY The elongated state allows the unit to embody various free forms with and against different forces such as gravity and to rotate around multiple axis.

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THE UNIT TO UNIT SCALE WHAT ARE THE COLLECTIVE HYBRID UNIT BEHAVIOUR OUTCOME POSSIBILITIES? ASSEMBLY

DIS-ASSEMBLY

The capabilities of the

assembly techniques against

system should be experimented

gravity and with gravity. We

with to the fullest to yield the

also experiment with dif-

best outcome. The unit is not only autonomous on its own, it also conveys collective behavioural capabilities. Hence, in unit-to-unit communication, self-assembly plays a crucial role via self-awareness. At the same time, the results of self-assembly are not finite, it is possible to infinitely reconfigure the space via assembly, dis-assembly, and re-assembly.

ferenet variations of compact

When units start to communicate and assemble, different behavioural patterns start to appear. Hence, we explore

and elongated units. There is a variaty of stability and softness we aim to achieve through collective behaviour. This variety will help in making interior spaces that could be used as furniture and other spaces that could be structural elements or walls for instance. The capability of the units to change states by elongating, gives the system an advantage for faster response to the human or to the environment.

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SLINKY(BOT) & HUMAN SCALE

It is important for

slinkybot to establish a very strong connection with the human agent. The human is the stimulant for slinkybot to develop and increase in behavioural complexity. Hence, in the human chapter there will always be a relationship between the life cycle of the human and that of the system.

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THE OVERALL HOUSE SCALE: WHEN THERE ARE OVER 1,000 UNITS AT THE SAME TIME, HOW WILL THEY COMMUNICATE, CONNECT, AND ASSEMBLE?

Our system is a

time-based, bottom up system defined by various rules and behaviours. The system defines the way the units will communicate and assemble and the order and time. We are exploring the overall space making strategies through the the computational particle spring system. By developing different rules and controlling different variables in the system, different configurations are obtained.

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PROJECT

SINGLE UNIT SCALE

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SLINKYBOT TO SLINKYBOT SCALE

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

SCALES

SLINKYBOT TO HUMAN SCALE

OVERALL HOUSE SCALE

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HUMAN LIFECYCLE SINGLE OCCUPANCY

HOURLY BORN

COUPLE

DAILY

SEASONAL

CAPABILITIES EXPLORATION

HUMAN ADAPTIBILITY

MOBILITY

COMMUNICATION

COMMUNICATION (UNIT-UNIT)

SPECIALIZED TAXONOMIES

TRANSFORMATION CLIMBING

SLINKYBOT LIFECYCLE

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FAMI

MATERIAL COMPLEXITY

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

LY

FAMILY EXTENSION

TIME YEARLY ENVIRONMENT RESPONSIVENESS

RECONFIGURATION

ENCLOSURES

SPACIAL ORGANIZATIONS

ENERGY COLLECTION

THE OVERALL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SLINKYBOT AND THE HUMAN IS DEMONSTRATED IN THE DIAGRAM BELOW. THIS IS ALSO THE LINK BETWEEN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SLINKYBOT. IN THIS BOOK, WE WILL START BY EXPLAINING THE BASIC SINGULAR UNIT (SLINKYBOT) DEVELOPMENT. THEN WE WILL EXPLAIN THE COMMUNICATION LAYERS WHICH START FROM THE UNIT TO UNIT LAYER, MOVING TO THE UNIT TO HOUSE, THEN UNIT TO HUMAN, AND FINALLY UNIT TO ENVIRONMENT.

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MATERIAL EXPLORATION

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MATERIAL CONCEPTS The analysis of the 36 Case Study Houses emerged several design critria that was vital for their time.

Those that emerged during our in-depth analysis of the houses were the following: the idea of an adaptable space, the importance between the transition from one space to the other and the freedom of mobility within that place. The criteria that was most interesting to put in context of our current time and explore was the concept of adaptibility. This concept inspired the reserch into materials of morphing qualities as in phase-changing material.

Phase-changing material have the capability of state changing offering different qualities that could be useful for various puposes. Those unique properties of phase-changing material meant that a system could be adaptable under different conditions and environments.

ADAPTABILITY

TRANSITION

MOBILITY

PHASE CHANGING MATERIAL

MAGNETIC LIQUID

HYDROPHOBIC

FERROFLUID

MOBILITY

PHASE-CHANGING SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

HYDROPHOBIC SAND

PHASE-CHANGING

SOFTNESS/RIGIDITY

WATER ABSORPTION EXPANSION

SOFT

HYDROGEL

HEAT REACTANT SELF-HEALING

WAX FILLED

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

WATER AS A STIMULI Water is an integral important part of any house. Water networks supplying the house and being used for cooling and heating is a necessity. Also, concepts of rainwater harvesting and water recycling should be taken into account. Since water is a major aspect of living, we were interested in studying it closer and exploring possibilities were water could act as an actuator to our system.

Furthermore, conductive fluids and water based materials were looked at as possible scenarios were water is the main key. Water properties such as condensation and its ability to be absorbed by other materials and expand opened up ideas for our endless, growing system.

SILICONE AND WATER EXPERIMENT SILICONE CASTING PROCESS

DIGITAL CAST-WATER SIMULATION

I. CAST TOP

II. CAST BOTTOM

III. COMBINE

IV. REMOVE MOULD

V. ACTUATE WITH WATER

3D PRINTED MOULD

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THE

SLINKYBOT

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DUAL-STATE UNIT Our exploration of phase-changing materials lead us to start thinking of a unit that would be capable of morphing between states.A dual-state unit would offer a variety of qualities that would be useful in creating different parts of our system.

In addition to that, studying previous precedents that tackled the idea of self-assembly, the qualities and advantages of having a compact unit were apparent as it offered uniformity that was useful in assembling the system together. However, other more exteded types of units had unique added qualities to them that gave the system new possibilities of assembly and structuring. Therefore, the idea of a unit that combines both of those states arised in order to maximize the potential for an assembly system that is efficient in time, energy and number of units needed, in addition to that, adding an element of playfulness and responsiveness to the overall house.

INITIAL IDEAS

RIGID ELASTIC RIGID POINT TO POINT

ELASTIC POINT TO POIN

Initial prototyping tests were focused on using rigid and elastic elements that allowed for extension. A rigid core sphere had several extendible rods attached to it and was capable of growing in all directions while the rubber bands tied to those rods helped give a more flexible dimension to the overall unit. The unit only allowed for point to point connections with other similar units.

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UNITS STACKED WITH POINT TO POINT CONNECTIONS

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

COMPACT/EXTENDED UNIT The unit should be capable of taking the decision whether according to the conditions its under, if its best to remain compact or open up and extend.

MOBILITY

STRUCTURAL

COMPACT STATE ACTIVE

UNIFORMITY

CHOREOGRAPHED ASSEMBLY

INTERACTIVE /

EXTENDED STATE FLEXIBILITY

TRANSPARENCY

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THE MECHANICAL APPROACH

COMPACT STATE

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EXTENDIBLE

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

THE PNEUMATIC APPROACH

COMPACT STATE

EXTENDIBLE

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MECHANICAL APPROACH

COMPACT STATE 1.0

CONNECTION POSIBILITIES

MECHANICAL MOBILITY

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MECHANICAL COMPACT STATE 1.0

RIGID CORE Structural element of the unit. It contains the brain of the unit and holds its actuators.

PROXIMITY SENSOR Allows the unit to sense its environment and other units. When another unit is close enough, the motor stops and the electromagnet is activated.

ELECTROMAGNET Helps the unit to attach to another face to face.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

WHEEL Teeth for friction Connection to motor disc

SERVO MOTOR Continuous rotation motor

FLEXIBLE FRAME 3D printed flexible filament

Pattern studies

Chosen pattern

87

MECHANICAL MOBILITY

With heavy, pneumatic machines being tethered to the unit, it would be difficult to create a self-mobile prototype that is capable of self-assembling.

Another approach was looked into where an inbuilt motor revolves a wheel to actuate the entire prototype. This prototype was designed to have a monowheel in the center that is made of 2 wheels; each hald unit had its own wheel, in-built motor and controlling system. This was to achieve the concept of slinkybot where the unit could split into halves and extend.

Mono-wheel in compact state

Half a unit rigid core with in-built motor

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

UNIT-UNIT CONNECTION

Due to the presence of a monowheel splitting the unit in half, the attachment options on the unit becomes limited to 2 sides only. This means assembly could only be made possible in a singular linear fashion. A wheel treatment would need to be figured out to allow for more connection options to allow for an assembly system. Connections between units was made possible by an electromagnet that is activated when the unit senses another close by using its proximity sensor.

Connection points

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MECHANICAL APPROACH

COMPACT STATE 2.0 MONOWHEEL DEVELOPMENT

ALL FACES CONNECTION

LOCKING/ UNLOCKING

EXTENDIBLE ENGULFMENT

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MECHANICAL COMPACT STATE 2.0

FACE MAGNETS FOR UNIT-UNIT CONNECTION Allows unit to connect to any other unit from all directions making it a uniform compact shape.

Connection possibilities

RIGID FRAME The flexible frame unit lacked stability therefore a 3d printed rigid one was used.

PROXIMITY SENSOR

ELECTROMAGNET

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

MODIFIED WHEEL

The wheel is designed to be curved inwards to engulf the extendable slinky inside of it.

UNIT’S LOCKING MAGNETS

Attracting magnets Repelling magnets When half of the unit rotates 90 degrees, the magnets are aligned to repel each other pushing the unit apart.

CONNECTOR DISC

SERVO MOTOR

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COMPACT MOBILITY- THE MONOWHEEL MOVING FORWARD

Slinkybot’s monowheel is composed of 2 wheels, one attached to every half of the unit. When both parts of this whel move at the same speed in the same direction, the slinkybot moves either forward or backward in a straight line in a balanced way.

CHANGING DIRECTION

However, when one part of the wheel is inactive while the other one moves in any direction, this leads to slinkybot rotating in place either clockwise or anti-clockwise. This is the way the unit is capable of changing directions.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

EXTENDED MOBILITY

In this prototype of the slinkybot, mobility in the extended form result in a more swerving action. Similar rules apply as in the compact state, hoever, a new type of motion is achieved when wheels alternate in motion and direction, and the slinkybot swerves like a living organism that sways for mobility.

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LOCKING/UNLOCKING MECHANISM

UNIT’S LOCKING MAGNETS Attracting magnets Repelling magnets

A mechanism of transforming the unit from compact to extended was studied. A series of magnets are placed according to a certain pattern of polarity.

In attachment, the patterns of the magnets on the 2 wheels are in opposite polarity hence attract.

When different parts of the wheel rotaate in opposite direction, this leads to the magnets being aligned in a repelling state forcing the unit to split up.

ALL FACES CONNECTION

Connection possibilities

Connections from all faces was crucial in our self-assembly system, hence the slinkybot had to be re-designed to allow for attachment to the faces that is compromised of the rotating wheel. The rigid frames were taken advantage of and chamfered to create faces of connections on both sides of the wheel with magnets.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

SPRING ENGULFMENT

The ability of engulfing the slinky-like form in compact state

Having 2 states, the unit should be capable of collapsing its extendible part when in compact state and its no longer needed. Therefore, the compact state should be designed in a way where it could engulf the extendible part collapsed within its uniform shape.

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MECHANICAL APPROACH

COMPACT STATE 3.0

EXPLORING CLIMBING

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MECHANICAL COMPACT STATE 3.0 VERSION 1

CLIMBING MECHANISM Mobility by the rotational movement of a wheel could be utilized to develop the climbing mechanism as well.

The wheels would be designed in a way to attach and hold on to each other while one unit pulls itself and rolls on another unit.

SERVO MOTOR

RIGID CORE

PROXIMITY SENSOR

Wheel rolling on another

In order to achieve that a multi faceted geometry was designed to give the units small faces to hold on to and try to pull themselves on one another using magnets that attract.

SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

ELECTROMAGNET

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

CLIMBING UP MAGNETS Those magnets help units in going up by its multi faceted design that give units a face to lock on to.

UNIT’S LOCKING MAGNETS MODIFIED WHEEL - BETTER STABILITY - MORE SPACE FOR ENGULFING SLINKY - CAPACITY TO CLIMB

101

MECHANICAL COMPACT STATE 3.0 VERSION 2

The faces on the first version of the wheel were too small for climbing attachment. The design was developed to have more emphasized faces for both unit to unit connections and climbing. Stronger magnets were used to pull up the unit on top of the other while rolling. However, this mechanism wasn’t successful as the unit was too heavy to be pulled up this way. A lighter unit design shuld be made.

CLIMBING FACE

EXTENDIBLE ATTACHMENT UNIT TO UNIT CONNECTION FACE

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MECHANICAL APPROACH

THE EXTENDIBLE

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MECHANICAL EXTENSION MECHANISED-CHOREOGRAPHED MOVEMENT Inspired by the Petting Zoo by Minimaforms, it was realized that the unit’s extendible form’s strength is in its capability of moving and bending in a choreographed manner to perform tasks of assembly and other. This behaviour would cut down in the time needed for assembly, as well as in energy and the number of units needed.

SLINKY BENDING EXPERIMENT In order to achieve this controlled choreography a more mechanised system was explored. WIth the use of fishing wires and servos, some controlled bending of a mini slinky was achieved. The tensioned wires work by pulling the top ring of the slinky to cause it to bend.

SETUP WITH MOTORS TO SHOW SIDEWAY MOVEMENT OF SLINKY UNDER TENSIONED WIRES SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

PARTITION DETAILS Three points of control

HALF-UNIT DESIGN

The slinky has several partitions placed designed with 3 control points where the wires pull using a servo motor. However, our design of 3 control points did not work as expected in bending. But it did achieve contracting and extending the slinky.

UNIT EXTENDING WITH MOTORS TO LIFT ANOTHER AS AN ASSEMBLY MEHANISM

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HINGED EXTENDIBLE

There was limited control over the slinky in previous tests especially when a choreographed movement was required. A new extendible was designed as a mesh of silicone tubing and 3d printed PLA hinges.

This new design has more control and structure to it, while remaining flexible and capable of contracting to fit inside the unit when its in compact state.

EXTENDED STATE

COMPACT STATE

WITH GRAVITY

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AGAINST GRAVITY

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

EXTENDIBLE’S REQUIRED FUNCTION-

WITH GRAVITY

AGAINST GRAVITY

COMPRESSING

EXTENDING

CHOREOGRAPHED MOTION

ACTIVE UNT PULLING BY MOTORS

PUSHING MECHANISM ACTING BY GRAVITY

111

FLAT SHEETS EXTENDIBLE

Plastic flat sheets were cut in the profile shown in the diagram with 3 control points. Wires go through those points and are controlled by 3 bi-directional continuous motors that pull and release the extendible.

The flat sheets are assembled in a way using elastic rope where it can open up and collapse the extendible sections.

FLAT SHEET PROFILE WITH 3 MOTOR CONTROL POINTS

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CHOREOGRAPHY The manipulation of the 3 motors speeds ad directionality allowed for various complex choreographies that allowed the extendible to have a wide range of free motion. The extendible was capable of having a complete collapsed mode in compact state and fully extend when the wires were released.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

ASSEMBLY Ideas of using this free motion as an assembly strategy arose. The extended unit could be used as almost as a robotic arm that could pic up other compact units and place them either on top of each other or over certain obstacles.

This strategy could be time and energy saving and opens up opportunities for collective behaviour and collaboration between different units in the system.

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UNIT DEVELOPMENT This motorized system was then integrated within the slinkybot’s body and organized in a way to act efficiently. The servo motors were carefully placed to situate their centers with the 3 control points in their correct locations.

The rigid plate is essential to push against the extendible as it is contracting and collapsing.

PULL WIRES

RIGID PLATE EXTENDIBLE

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FRAME SERVO MOTORS

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MOTORIZED SLINKYBOT This developed motorized slinkybot consisted of an intricate extendible that was springy. Tiny springs were attached to metal rigid rings that were enclosed with a cover that is wrapped by an elastic rope that gave the extendible more flexibility.

PULLING WIRE

RIGID RING

ELASTIC ROPE

SPRING

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CONTRACTING- PULLING THE WIRES

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

EXTENDING- RELEASING THE WIRES

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EXPLORING PNEUMATICS SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

THE PNEUMATIC APPROACH

COMPACT STATE

EXTENDIBLE

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PNEUMATIC APPROACH

COMPACT STATE

UNIT SCALE

SOFTNESS & RIGIDITY

PNEUMATIC MOBILITY

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UNIT SCALE Scale is an important factor within our system nd how it functions. On a singulr unit scale, the prototype acts as a brick that assembles itself to create spaces of various different scales. It was crucial that our unit was relative to the human body since it would make up house. Hence, a unit that had the dimensions governed by steps guidelines was followed and a unit within the range of 15 to 20cm in all directions was to be followed.

COMPACT STATE

150 mm

150 mm

EXTENDED STATE

The extended state also has a relative dimension to the compact state. One elongted unit cn reach as far s 5 compact units connected to eaach other. This meant that an elongated unit cn replace the spce taken up by 5 units making space making more efficient in terms of units needed. Also, this spanning helps us create design rules and assembly sequence that is tiime efficient.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

RIGID/SOFT STATES

Driven by the concept of phase changing, ideas of a unit that can transform from rigid to soft and back again was explored. Different materiality of the unit were experimented and the design of the unit optimized. A proposal of 3d printed rigid frame and soft silicone inflatable pockets achieved the dual rigid and soft state for the unit. The rigit state is needd for supports and structure within the system while the inflatables are useful for more interior application where softness is a requirement.

RIGID TO SOFT

STRENGTH

FLEXIBILITY

RIGID FRAME PATTERN STUDY

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PNEUMATIC MOBILITY A mobility approach we experimented with is the use of inflateable, soft pockets that are air pumped to push the unit forward into a rolling motion. Each half unit has 4 pockets between the rigid cross frame. The pockets were designed to be attached to silicone tubes that would supply them with air.

The pneumatically actuated unit is inflated using several air compressors to pump air into the soft chambers one after the other in a choreographed manner to get the unit rolling.

However, it was noticed that 4 chambers were not enough to smoothen the rolling of the unit and more divided chambers were needed to give the push the prototype required to have mobility. Furthermore, the unit had to be tethered to the heavy air compressors for inflation which was an issue. Our system’s concept revolved around lightness which would be difficult to achieve with those heavy machinery.

ROLLING DIGITAL SIMULATION

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PNEUMATIC APPROACH

THE EXTENDIBLE

PNEUMATIC EXTENSION

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PNEUMATIC EXTENSION EXTENDING/COLLAPSING

A mechanism to control the contraction and extension of the slinkybot pneumatically was experimented. The use of air to carry out this process would mean that pur extendibles are light and flexible following our concept of lightness and endlessness.

PARTITION DETAIL HOLES FOR ATTACHMENT WITH SLINKY

The pneumatic mechanism consists of partitions along the slinky and inflatable pockets inbetween those partitions. As the pockets inflated, the air pressure in them pushed against the partitions to result in a linear extension. The deflation of the pockets result in the slinky compressing back together to its initial state.

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PNEUMATIC MUSCLES SETUP

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PNEUMATIC MUSCLES SYSTEM

A pneumatic system was designed to have full control over 3 air muscles. The muscles could be inflated or deflated separately or together. This individual control over every muscle meant that a variety of choreographed movements could be programmed.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

PNEUMATIC MUSCLES SYSTEM The system is compromised of one air pump that is capable of pumping air and vacuuming. Also, each air muscle has 2 solenoid valves that control if it’s being inflated or vacuumed. While, 4 other solenoid valved decide whether the pumping or vacuuming is occuring within the system or to the surrounding.

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AIR MUSCLES DESIGN A mix of silicone caulk and corn starch was used for the first test of creating air muscles.

The design was a ring with 4 compartments that could be filled with air. The different layers of rings were interconnected to transfer air from one to the other.

MOULD DESIGN

This material mix was too thick and rigid to give the deformation we were looking for.

SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

AIR MUSCLES DESIGN Another silicone mix was used (ECO-FLEX 0050) that was more soft and transparent than the previous mix. It gave us a deformation and extension that we were looking for. However, it needs some patterning on the pockets to control the degree of inflation.

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AIR MUSCLES DESIGN After a simple extension was achieved with this silicone mix, a new mould design of 3 inflatable pockets was designed to be able to achieve the choregraphed movement we are aiming for. Layers of this mould were created and interconnected to form an extendible that can complettely collapse and extend significantly.

MOULD DESIGN

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

By choosing to inflate one of the 3 pockets of the mould we were able to achive directional movement which would be used in slinkybot’s choreographed mobility.

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THE SLINKYBOT FINAL PROTOTYPE

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COMPACT STATE

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SOFTNESS, TRANSFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION A) RIGID SKELETON A rigid skeleton composes the core of a slinkybot unit. It serves as a structural frame for the unit giving it potential to bear loads in all directions. The frame is 3d printed using rigid PLA which is a type of plastic.

3D PRINTED FRAME

B) SOFT EXTERIOR A soft cover is attached to the rigid skeleton to give an exterior that is more human friendly and tactile.

This exterior allows for interior applications where human contact is a necessity as a form of comfort and interaction. This breatheable skin gives slinkybot its living quality where it could be considered as a soft tissued organism rather than a rigid plastic unit.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

C) INFLATABLE POCKETS The soft skin is composed of multi-chambered inflatable pockets that have the cpability of deforming using pressurized air for different purposes. Corner inflatable pockets transform the geometry of slinkybot from a more sphere-like form to a more cubic one which is more stable and more useful in stacking techniques. While, other pockets are responsible for the breathing of the unit giving it a further step of sensitivity to human contact.

TACTILE, BREATHEABLE POCKETS POCKETS FOR STABILITY & STACKING

COMMUNICATIVE LIGHTS

D) COMMUNICATIVE LAYER The most exterior layer to slinkybot is the communicative one where several spots of lights blink and change color to communicate with other units about their different states and positions. These lights can also be used as a signalling mechanism with the human to establish a form of communication with the inhabitant of the house.

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EXTENDED STATE

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SEGMENT OF THE EXTENDIBLE

CORE AIR MUSCLE A segment of multi chamber, inflatable pockets was developed to create the extendible with the ability to expand and change its orientation. The main core air musle is responsible for the overall expansion and opening up and closing of the slinkybot. The segments inflated in sequence result in a mono-directional, straight translation.

ORIENTATIONAL AIR MUSCLES Orientational air muscles are needed to change the direction of the slinkybot’s expansion. Each orientational muscle can be triggered separately or together to perform the required choreography for a specific task. When all orientational muscles are inflated it results in a further straight expansion.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

MATERIAL EXPERIMENTATIONS

SILICONE CORE

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SILICONE ORIENTATIONAL MUSCLES

SILICONE CORE

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LATEX ORIENTATIONAL MUSCLES

SILICONE CORE

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POLYURETHANE ORIENTATIONAL MUSCLES

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SILICONE CORE

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SILICONE ORIENTATIONAL MUSCLES Several materials were experimented for the air muscles ranging from different softness degress and capability to withstand pressures. First an all silicone segment was made with both its core and orientational muscles made out of silicone.

SOFTNESS

PRESSURE RESISTANCE

FABRICATION PROCESS

3D PRINTED SILICONE MOLD COMPONENTS

POURED SILICONE

SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

A 3d printed PLA mold was created for the liquid silicone to be poured in. The silicone hardens and takes the required shape of the pocket and then fitted in with a tube to be inflated.

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

SILICONE CORE

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LATEX ORIENTATIONAL MUSCLES Using silicone muscles for orientation did not give us the pressure needed to push several segments into a ceertain direction therefore more rigid materials were considered. Latex was one of them, where it gave us more pressure resistance and load bearing.

SOFTNESS

PRESSURE RESISTANCE

FABRICATION PROCESS

AIR PASSAGE CONNECTION

Latex flat sheets were lasercut into the desirable shape and 2 sheets ENCLOSED were glued together to form an POCKET enclosed pocket. the pockets were attached together leaving a passage of air through them so that they are inflated together.

ENCLOSED POCKET

FLAT LATEX SHEET 155

SILICONE CORE

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POLYURETHANE ORIENTATIONAL MUSCLES Finally, polyurethane was used to create the new orientational muscles. It was light yet gave rigidity to the extendible when inflated to give us the pressure resistance we were looking for. The core still remained in silicone, giving the overall unit softness without decreasing its strength.

SOFTNESS

PRESSURE RESISTANCE

The polyurethane material allowed us to stack up the segments in the extendible without hindering performance. The extendible was capable in performing vertically against gravity and horizontally.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

FABRICATION PROCESS SILICONE CORE MUSCLE

Lasercut cardboard was used to create a flat mold for the liquid silicone to be poured on. This creates one side of the pocket which is then stuck to another one from the edges using silicone to create an enclosed pocket.

LASERCUT MOLD

POLYURETHANE ORIENTATIONAL MUSCLES

ENCLOSED POCKET

AIR PASSAGE CONNECTION

Polyurethane flat sheets were laser cut into the shape of the muscle needed. 2 sheets are then heat pressed together using a bag sealing machine to form an enclosed pocket. Several pockets are attached together using heat leaving a passage of air through them.

ENCLOSED POCKET

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SLINKYBOT DISSECTION

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EXTENSION

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CHANGING ORIENTATION

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COMMUNICATION Communication and interaction is key when it comes to a system of multiple elements working cohesively. Behaviour of our units is adaptable when it is responsive to inputs from the surrounding and the elements within this environment. The slinkybot should not only be self-aware but aware of other neighbouring slinkybots and capable of having a 2-way dialogue with them. Communication should also be carried out on the scale of clusters and their responsiveness to humans, environmental factors and structuring sequences. From unit to unit interactions to global relationships we have generated concepts of assembly and collective scenarios.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

UNIT-TO-UNIT COMMUNICATION

UNIT-TO-HOUSE DIALOGUE

UNIT-TO-HUMAN INTERACTION

UNIT-TO-ENVIRONMENT ADAPTIBILITY

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UNIT-TO-UNIT COMMUNICATION

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THE NERD HERD

�Nerd Herd by Maja Mataric. “Designing and Understanding Adaptive Group Behaviour

The Nerd Herd was an experiment by Maja Mataric where strategies by which robots can learn adaptive group behaviour from one another and thus learn to behave socially are studied. It looks at how simple local interactions among a collection of artificial autonomous agents produce complex and beneficial group behaviour by the observation of the direct reinforcements for desired behavior and mimicking it.

They are a group of 20 identical, mobile robots and did not possess a great deal of intelligence. The robots are equipped with IRs, contact sensors, grippers, position sensors, and radio communication. The main concept behind the Nerd Herd is that they used a specific definition of behaviour: a control law that satisfies a set of constrints to achieve and maintain a particular goal.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

The interaction primitives used in Mataric’s experiments were:

COLLISION AVOIDANCE

DISPERSION

HOMING

FOLLOWING

AGGREGATION

FLOCKING COMPOSITE GROUP BEHAVIOUR

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UNIT TO UNIT COMMUNICATION SENSING MECHANISM

Rigid Proximity sensor

The units in the system should not only be self-aware but should also be aware of other units in the system and be capable of communicating with them. So far we’ve used the proximity sensor to recognize when a unit is close enough for attachment this then sends a signal to the electromagnet to be activated and attract the other unit.

Proximity sensor

Electromagnet

The aspect of two way communication between the slinkybots is of importance since it enables collective behaviour in terms of movement and energy sharing. Through arduino prototypes, the use of RGB sensors and different LED colors could be used to articulate the state of the slinkybot.

In addition, the use of radio transmitters and recievers allows data exchange between units which would be useful in cases of leaders and followers.

RGB sensor and LEDs

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Radio transmitter and receiver

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

UNIT TO UNIT COMMUNICATION GOALS

RECOGNIZING ANOTHER SLINKYBOT

COLLECTIVE MOBILITY

ENERGY SHARING

CONNECTING STATE

CLIMBING STATE

LEADER AND FOLLOWERS

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UNIT TO UNIT COMMUNICATION CONNECTION With the help of an RGB light sensor and a blinking LED light of a certain color, slinkybot can communicate with another unit about its readiness to connect. The flashing colored light is picked up by the sensor which then activates the electromagnet for a successful connection between the 2 units.

RGB LIGHT SENSOR

BLINKING COMMUNICATIVE LIGHT

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UNIT TO UNIT COMMUNICATION

BASIC COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR

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UNIT-TO-UNIT COMMUNICATION COMPACT STATE _ COLLECTIVE MOBILITY

Simple collective mobility is explored, where units will sense each other and when connected, the minimum number of units needed to move te group will be used. The advantages and disadvantages are outlined below.

INITIAL STATE

SENSE OTHER UNITS

ROLLING TOGETHER

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COLLECTIVE MOBILITY

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INABILITY TO GO UPWARDS

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

COMPACT STATE _ COLLECTIVE UPWARD MOTION

Upward mobility is explored using the compact units in different possible ways.

INITIAL STATE

SENSE OTHER UNITS

+ -

UPWARD MOVEMENT

INSTABILITY

ROLLING TOGETHER

KEY ACTIVE

SIGNAL

PASSIVE

MOBILITY

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COMPACT STATE _ COLLECTIVE MOBILITY

The units are driven by one unit to collectively move forward to save energy.

INITIAL STATE

SENSE EACH OTHER

+ -

ENERGY EFFICIENT

LIMITED COLLECTIVE MOBILITY

FOLLOWING

KEY

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ACTIVE

SIGNAL

PASSIVE

MOBILITY

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COMPACT TO ELONGATED

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UNIT-TO-UNIT COMMUNICATION ELONGATED STATE _ COLLECTIVE MOBILITY

When in the elongated state, the units also use their wheels to move forward as seen in the images.

INITIAL STATE

SENSE EACH OTHER, CONNECT & MOVE TOGETHER

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COLLECTIVE MOBILITY

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-

INSTABILITY& INABILITY TO GO UPWARDS

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

ELONGATED STATE _ UPWARD MOVEMENT

Bending of the elongation could lend to upward mobility to the units. However, there is a height constraint and high energy level required to reach a stable state.

INITIAL STATE

UPWARD MOVEMENT

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UPWARD MOVEMENT

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KEY LIMITED HEIGHT

ACTIVE

SIGNAL

PASSIVE

MOBILITY

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ELONGATED STATE _ HORIZONTAL MOBILITY

INITIAL STATE

BENDING TO A LOOP

HORIZONTAL MOBILITY

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COLLECTIVE MOBILITY

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NO UPWARD EXPANSION

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UNIT-TO-UNIT COMMUNICATION

COMPARISON OF BOTH STATES

#

NUMBER OF UNITS

TIME TO REACH TARGET

STABILITY

LIGHTNESS+ TRANSPARENCY

By identifying different behaviours of compact units and elongated

ones, we analyse and compare both based on different criteria. Firstly, when it comes to stability, compact units are more stable. The compact state of the unit generally is more efficient in terms of mobility, and reaching the target. On the other hand, the elongated state serves the purpose of lightness, playfulness, and choreography. Hence, it is important to create a hybrid of both the compact and the elongated state. The compact state provides efficiency of movement and the elongated serves the concept of space making. Together, they could both produce new possibilities; which are identified below.

EFFICIENCY

+

CHOREOGRAPHY

=

HYBRID STATE

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THE HYBRID STATE SELF-CLIMB

1

2

The unit could use the

elongation to climb on other units instead of having to climb step by step in compact mode. This allows less unit for going up and hence a lighter overall space. The unit could also use the elongated part to grab other units and place it in the appropriate location. The unit could also create enclosures by hanging from a group of units.

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COLLECTIVE UPWARD MOVEMENT

1

2

3

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FREE-FALLING:

1

2

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UNIT BASED CLIMBING The slinkybot has several bending limitations it could reach. Within those limitations it has several capabilities to climb and go upwards.

One of thoe strategies is using another unit for support. This is called unit based climbing. A slinkybot anchors itself to another and bends to move its other half on top of that anchoring unit. The slinybot then contracts to pull its other half upwards.

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STRUCTURE BASED CLIMBING While the other climbing strategy is structure based. This is where the unit is capable of defining a metal structure it can attach to with its electromagnets. This requires the unit to have good context awareness and have the capability to scan its surrounding for climbing opportunities. Using a similar bending choreography as before, the slinkybot is capabole of anchoring itself on to the structure to climb it.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

STRUCTURE BASED CLIMBING EXPERIMENT An expeiment was carried out to simiulate how a structure based climbing strategy could work. Metal sheets were sut up as shown in the images. The electromagnets had to be synchronized with the bending choreography to attach and let go when needed to achieve a descending climbing scenario.

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After identifying various

different behaviours of the hybrid system, it was important to realize that there are limitations on the movement of the extendable part. Therefore, the following section compiles the angle and height limitations of the extendable part of the unit.

SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

LIMITATIONS

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

BENDING LIMITATION OF A UNIT

TOP VIEW_1 elongation length = 30 units curvature = 0;

elongation length = 30 units curvature = 35;

TOP VIEW_2 elongation length = 30 units curvature = 0;

elongation length = 30 units curvature = 24;

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SECTION VIEW_1

elongation length = 40 units curvature = 27;

SECTION VIEW_2

elongation length = 35 units curvature = 27;

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

SECTION VIEW_3

elongation length = 30 units curvature = 24;

After setting

the limitations, a comparison of the most efficient hybrid method for climbing and going upwards was identified.

It is always important to maintain an efficient system which is capable of rapid re-configuration

SECTION VIEW_4

as well as being true to the concept of playfulness and lightness and elongation length = 30 units curvature = 24;

endlessness. Hence,not only the end goal should comply to these concepts, the assembly process should also be unique and interactive.

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SINGLE UNIT MOBILITY & LIMITAION

ROLLING

For compact state, the rolling behaviour is the most efficient way to change position. But each unit can only roll on one direction.

EXTENDING

Extension is another mobility of compact state. Even though, the elongation distance of slinky can be longer, for extending, the slinky can only open to 3 units width.

SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

BENDING(HORIZONTAL)

When the unit starts bending on the ground, the bending curvature is more free. The maximum elongation distance of slinky can be 3 units long.

BENDING(VERITCAL)

When the unit is bending vertically, the bending curvature is more limited. But the maximum extending length of slinky could be 4 units long.

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COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT WAYS TO GO UP

CLIMBING 1

CLIMBING 2

GRABBING 1

GRABBING 2

0

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The diagram shows

the different behaviours explored and the time it takes for each unit to reach the target.

∞ TIME

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TWO-UNITS BEHAVIOUR

INITIAL STATE

The next set of explorations tackle the mobility and self-structuring of 2 units rather than just one unit.

The ability to achieve more than a single unit mobility at a time isn’t only more efficient, but also creates different spatial configurations. The first example shows a set of images where the units are performing the simple climbing technique collectively.

TYPE 1_CLIMBING

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TARGET

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TWO-UNITS BEHAVIOUR

INITIAL STATE

In this example, 2 elon-

gated units pick up one unit and help it reach the target. Hence, the compact unit remains in the inactive state, losing less energy.

Moreover, the different technique of assembly create different interesting spatial configurations.

TYPE 2_GRABBING SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

TARGET

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TWO-UNITS BEHAVIOUR

INITIAL STATE

In this experiment, the

asembly is reversed, it is rather an approach from the top working with gravity rather than against gravity to attach or pick up different units.

TYPE 3_HANGING UP

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TARGET

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SLINKYBOT SPECIALISED FAMILIES

LEADER & FOLLOWER

ACTIVE & INACTIVE

ACTIVE UNIT INACTIVE UNIT

LEADER UNIT

FOLLOWER UNIT

In this example, the leader just acts as an allocator

or an attractor for the units to connect to. However, the units then also have the capacity to perform their own behaviour without copying the main leader. The leader in this case just acts like an anchor and is inactive in the assembly process.

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FAMILIES_LEADER & FOLLOWERS

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ACTIVE UNIT INACTIVE UNIT

LEADER UNIT

FOLLOWER UNIT

In this example the leader is not just an attractor and a guide

for the followers to copy. The followers only role is to stay within range of the leader and the leader does all the rest of the work, by shuffling all the units around and creating the configuration.

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SLINKYBOT SPECIALISED FAMILIES

LEADER & FOLLOWER

ACTIVE & INACTIVE

ACTIVE UNIT INACTIVE UNIT

LEADER UNIT

FOLLOWER UNIT

In this example, the leader just acts as an allocator

or an attractor for the units to connect to. However, the units then also have the capacity to perform their own behaviour without copying the main leader. The leader in this case just acts like an anchor and is inactive in the assembly process.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

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UNIT-TO-HOUSE DIALOGUE 207

UNIT-TO-CONTEXT INTERACTION STACKING TO CEILING

CLIMBING UP The units migrate to the ceiling.

For this process, the units stack on each other around the metal structure.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

The units can work on ceiling for lighting and communicate with human, but how the units get to the ceiling? In previous study, the unit has the behaviours of climbing. It could be used to create a temperary unit column, and leave some working units on the ceiling.

FALLING DOWN After self-structuring a stacking column, some units work as a temperary scaffolding, and start moving away. But some other units are still stuck on the ceiling as lighting units.

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UNIT-TO-CONTEXT INTERACTION MIGRATING ON CEILING

ROLLING

BENDING

There are magnets on the wheel of each unit, so that the magnets help unit to roll on a metal roof sheet. But this migration behaviour is only meaningful for the units which are directly stuck on the ceiling.

Besides, bending is another way of migrating, yet the distance of migration is limited by the slinky. This movement is good for the units which are not directly stuck on the ceiling.

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

GRABBING

FALLING

While the unit is bending, it could also grab a connected unit moving to a new place together.

After the units migrating to a new position, the slinky part could also be open for illumination.

Also, the slinky will extend to the maximum length because of the gravity.

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POTENTIAL BEHAVIOUR IN EAMES HOUSE

An army of units will be move into the house through three entrances of the house.

COLLECTIVE ROLLING

Scanning the structure of the house is another feature of the unit. Because the unit is magnetic, it could be stuck on the metal structure.

HOUSE SCANNING

SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

While the units randomly roll into the house, they start interact with other units.

INTERACTIVE ROLLING

After scanning, the units could also climb on other units to go up to the ceiling.

CLIMBING & STACKING

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

In the ground condition, popoing-up directly is a very straight forward way to create a furniture-like configuration. The image on the left shows the sofa-like furniture, which can wave when people sit on that.

FURNITURE_POPING-UP

In the ceiling condition, falling down is the most efficient way to create lighting system, because of the gravity. Meanwhile, the illumination part is included in the slinky, which makes the light more liner.

LIGHTING_FALLING DOWN

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SLINKY(BOT) TO HUMAN COMMUNICATION 215

As mentioned earlier, the slinky(bot) system is time based. As time passes, the complexity of the system increases leading to an endless evolving process, and because we believe the system and the human are codependent entities we are relating the lifecycle of the system to the lifecycle and needs of the user. The user is the main stimulant and motive for the slinky(bot)s to evolve. Hence, we believe that a more intimate relationship between slinkybots and the human users will develop over time. We demonstrate on of the possible scenarios in the following chapter, where we relate the stages of the slinkybot development and growth to that of human growth and development.

YEARLY/ LONGTERM

DAILY/ SHORT TERM

Another aspect, which influences the behavior of the slinkybots, is the temperature and time of day (light intensity). The slinkybots should have the capacity to understand daytime vs nighttime because different times require different functions. Therefore, the slinkybots are designed with the capability to detect different temperatures, different light intensities, to be able to understand when should they light up, and when they should create seating vs sleeping spaces. Therefore, we always compare the activity that the slinkybots are carrying to the time of day they are carrying it in, as well as to the number of users in the area. Along with the following variables:

TIME

LIGHTING & ENERGY

TEMPERATURE

HOURLY

DAY VS NIGHT

TEMPERATURE OF SURROUNDING & HUMAN BODY

YEARS/ DECADES

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SOLAR ENERGY COLLECTION OVER TIME

SEASON

NUMBER OF OCCUPANTS

NUMBER OF PEOPLE AT SPECIFIC TIME

DIFFERENT AGE GROUPS

HUMAN EMOTIONS

HUMAN MOOD & EMOTION

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

Therefore, this chapter splits the human activity and growth along with the interaction and growth of slinkybot into 4 main stages/ scenarios. Those stages show different levels of interactions. They start with the first stage which is the practical period of the humans life, requiring different specific and efficient functions. The second stage is when the person shares the house with someone else. The slinkybots start to become more intimate. Ambience and soft spaces are created to enhance comfort. The slinkybots start to understand and interact to emotion. The third stage the slinkybots start to interact with different age groups living in the house. They perform beyond functional landscapes and lighting. They start to interact and become part of the users. Last but not least, in the fourth stage, they start to understand the requirements of different users at different times and start performing more complex tasks.

BASIC HUMAN LIFECYCLE

1

ERGONOMICS RECOGNIZING THE HUMAN AS A PHYSICAL BOUNDARY

2

UNDERSTANDING EMOTION

3

COMPLEXITY OF EMOTIONVARIOUS MEMBERS

4

COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING +MATURITY

SLINKY(BOT) SYSTEM COMPLEXITY

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MORNING TIME/ BASIC SLINKYBOT POP-UP - FUNCTIONAL LANDSCAPE

The first daily scenario assumes that the units are deployed within the daytime inside the Eames house. This is their first encounter with the human. The slinkybots still don’t require to light up since its still daytime and there is enough light inside the house.

Their first level of complexity is developed when they understand that the human exists as a physical boundary. Their first task would be basic clustering, and then simply they will just open and pop-up to establish the first level of communication with the human. This level is considered functional landscape/ seating. In order to be able to create those landscapes, the slinkybots should understand ergonomics to be able to create different seating types and different arrangements.

SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

ERGONOMICS

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GROUND CONDITION- POP UP It is important for our system to behave collectively to produce meaningful functions. As a ground condition, our system inflates and deflates vertically to produce varying furniture landscapes that can respond to the human needs and ergonomics. The changing heights of the small slinkybots result in smooth contours that take the shape of the human body for added comfort.

SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

While the system can act together with the same inflation level to reach the same height it could also vary itself for human ergonomic reasons and to create different functions and landscaapes.

The ability for every particle to vary itself gives us a variety of multiple options that each could serve a new opportunity or level of comfort.

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1 CODE SIMULATION The code simulation shows the continuous variation in the height of a cluster of units behaving together.

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ERGONOMICS

Understanding the different types of possible resting positions. The slinkybots go beyond just creating functional landscapes, they start adapting to the user’s physical requirements. we are always used to the idea of a bed being a horizontal surface. however, the slinkybots try to redefine the concept of surfaces, due to the fact that they can use the wall or the floor. Therefore, in both the following pictures the same resting position is achieved but once horizontally and once vertically. This allows more flexibility and a faster response to the user requirements. If the units are already vertical, it could be more efficient to create a “vertical bed” and hence saving energy required for the units to move to ground position in order to create the “horizontal bed”.

Horizontal configuration

Vertical Configuration 225

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When the number of occupants increases, the slinkybots can accommodate for that. Different pop-up heights create different seating arrangements. At around sunset, the units recognize that the light intensity in the space decreases. This is when some units migrate from the seating arrangement to the ceiling, as shown in the images below.

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ERGONOMICS

When the units reach the ceiling and the lighting intensity starts requiring the slinky(bot)s to light. The slinkybots will descend from the ceiling to act like lighting fixtures around the users. Therefore, creating a very simple atmosphere for the user for seating and lighting. The lighting adapts based on the location of the human.

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ERGONOMICS

Basically, lighting is a necessary function of a house. For each unit, the slinky is the illumination part. The aligned units starts lighting when it senses people getting closer, and starts closing when when it senses people going far away.

05

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1 The ceiling units could sense the human which is sitting on the ground. After the ceiling units are activated, they start falling down vertically and try to provide some illumination for the reading people. This linear configuration could eventually act as a partition, enhancing privacy.

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ERGONOMICS

When the falling units get closer to the ground units, they start communication. The falling units will activate the ground ones as lighting units as well, by connecting.

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APPLICATION OF LEADER & FOLLOWERSIN THE DAY-TO DAY HUMAN SCENARIO

ROLLING

1

The leader among a group of units could not only be a single unit with red light, but also two or more units. In this situation, the leader group send a signal to follower groups and try to activate them.

The basic behaviour in this process is the collective rolling.

LEADER

FOLLOWER

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ERGONOMICS

Lighting could be a signal of communication among units. With the similar leader and follower behaviour of previous page, the leader unit with red light can guide other units which are with blue lights to do the same behaviour. It is a playful game among units. Also, this collective behaviour can make the unit movement visualized and create a charming atomosphere, especially at night.

CLIMBING

After the units roll to a specific position, the leader group starts climbing. At the same time, the follower groups try to imitate the behaviour. When the leader keeps stable, the followers stop moving as well.

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The energy used for lighting from ceiling units could be transferrd to the ground units. After they finish the transfer, the ceiling units begin to close and sleep.

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ERGONOMICS

Besides, the lighting system could not only make the space brighter, but also make the interior darker. This lighting feature is useful for resting.

When the compact lighting units recoganize people, they will be moved towards them.

Meanwhile, the units can sense human’s emotion. When the human wants to take a rest, the units start to decrease the illumination and make a comfortable environment.

LIGHTING DECAY

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1 As the exterior light, the lighting units are basically founctional as well. When people passes by, they could start illuminating gradually.

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ERGONOMICS

However, the lighting cluster is not only the installation of the house, but the background, which is to create a soft, charming atmosphere.

AMBIENT LIGHITNG

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The more the slinkybots extend to create lighting, and the different heights they create, create endless forms in the ceiling.

The slinkybots interact with the user by bending towards them, and generally start to understand the basic human needs.

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ERGONOMICS

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2 COMMUNICATION BEYOND CLUSTERING TAXONOMIES & BODY PLANS

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PARTICLE & SPRING SYSTEM --- UNIT

COMPACT STATE The compact state is represented by the particles in a sphere.

EXTEND STATE The open state is represented by the springs in a spring like shape.

Beyond basic clustering demonstrated in the previous scenario of popping up, the unit needs to be able to communicate in a more complex manner in order to create meaningful and different body plans to utilize its potential. The particle-spring system was used in order to simulate different rule sets to produce meaningful high population models. The rules generated aided us in creating different taxonomies and complexities. The following section explains these rule sets and how they produced different body plans.

However, deriving these rule sets required different tests and experiments which are described in the last chapter of the book.

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SPRING NUMBER The different types of connections explored are the line rule, the tree rule and the star rule. These make the basic topologies of the project.

LINE

TREE

STAR

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LINE

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PARTICLE & SPRING SYSTEM --- CHANGE STATE

4 neighbours >=3 extend <3 compact

Compact

Slinky

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PARTICLE & SPRING SYSTEM --- CHANGE TOPOLOGY

1 neighbours >=3 <3

tree line

3 neighbours >=3 <3

tree line

Line

Tree

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PARTICLE & SPRING SYSTEM --- CHANGE STATE & TOPOLOGY

The unitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s local density decides its own state and which one it will connect to, which consequently decides the overall topology and density deployment. Developing these rulesets helped the team identify different potentials in creating different taxonomies which were all experimented as part of the second scenario.

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Line

Tree

Slinky

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PARTICLE & SPRING SYSTEM --- LOCAL DENSITY SETTINGS Ideas of density were explored.

Local density here means how many units are there around a unit. There are three levels of density, the low density, which is less than 20 units, the middle density, which is between 20 and 40 units, and the high density, which is more than 40. Therefore, different state settings and topology settings will result in different patterns.

Low Density

Star

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Middle Density

TREE

2 High Density

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Low Density

High Density

Compact

Open

Compact in the Middle

Open

Compact

Compact on the Edge

Star

LINE

LINE

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CATALOGUE of CLUSTER/TAXONOMIES WITH GRAVITY

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CATALOGUE of CLUSTER/TAXONOMIES AGAINST GRAVITY

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PARTICLE & SPRING SYSTEM --- CHANGING BOUNDARIES

1 seeding point

3 seeding point

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2 seeding point

10 seeding point

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In conclusion, using the above body plans along with the different rules of state change we were able to create a catalogue of different taxonomies where we applied the physics engine to test how each will perfom with/ against gravity.

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When combining those taxonomies together along with these different rule sets, interesting organism like behaviour start to emerge.

And more interesting space could be created.

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Applying the digital simulations in the second stage of the human lifecycle; the slinkybots start to understand that there is more than seating and lighting. Slinky(bot)s are designed to be able to create different transparency and translucency based on their density.

They also have the capacity to twist for instance to provide different light intensity. This will vary based on the time of day. For instance, in the morning they can twist to create different shades from the sun, or at night they can create different light intensities and colour combinations. Hence, materiality and basic behavior helps to increase the complexity of slinkybots in this scenario.

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AMBIENCE

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PERISTALSIS

The slinkybots have a capacity to perform the peristalsis movement. This is demonstrated in the diagrams below. It is specifically beneficial for the controlling the solid to void within the space.

When the units inflate, they could fully enclose a particular space. At the same time, they give a different ambience and allow to vary the degrees of opacity.

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Different control points were applied in order to test different inflations and their effect on the slinkybot.

These were then translated in the collective behaviour.

DIFFERENT CONSTRAINS WITHIN THE ELONGATION

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EXPLORING CHOREOGRAPHED BENDING

When the units detect the presence of human and want to attempt to interact with them, they could bend in various directions to create enclosures and to create a play of light. The ideas of bending were also tested physically As shown in the images below.

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The slinkybots, as mentioned earlier, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t only communicate with humans, they communicate with each other. This also serves another purpose of creating ambient lighting. As the different units flicker light to communicate, they create a different kind of atmosphere which is unique, and establishes a different level of complexity of communication with the human.

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HIGHER POPULATION TAXONOMY

After experimenting with different taxonomies, the radial taxonomy was chosen for further testing. Therefore, it was tested to create space in a higher population and with multiple clusters.

According to the position of human, leading units are able to gather in between human and attract other units to create partitions from the ceiling to provide privacy for human beings.

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Target Position

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2

After exploring the different potential taxonomies of that the slinkybots could perform. The radial one was the most efficient and produced interesting results. Hence, exploring the potentials of creating enclosures using the radial taxonomy was necessary. The radial taxonomy has a potential of creating beyond enclosure. It could start using the strength of joined units to bend in synchronized manner and carry the human users, and by simple bending of one of the slinkybots (which could act as joints) the slinkybots could act like a swing. This enhances playfulness within the space.

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AMBIENCE

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POTENTIAL SPACE MAKING STRATEGY/ RADIAL TAXONOMY 273

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WALL TAXONOMY

The slinky(bot)s with time establish an even more complex level of communication. It starts to understand that the human requires for instance lighting to read. It starts to interact with different age groups, for instance kids. Therefore, we started developing taxonomies which are more human engaging, and more ground oriented. Every taxonomy has a different function. For instance, in the first image the slinkybots are trying to interact with the girl. The second image demonstrates the presence of a baby and hence the slinkybots are engulfing him, keeping him safe. The third image demonstrates that the slinkybots have dropped down from the ceiling to keep the baby entertained by flickering different light and by simple movements of choreographed bending and peristalsis. Therefore, in this stage the slinkybots start using all their potential capabilities along with other slinkybots to create different connections with the users.

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COMPLEX EMOTION

GROUND TAXONOMY

CEILING TAXONOMY 275

3 The following images show various behaviours which were explored by the team.

This catalogue aims is to create different bodies which start with the same base units yet behave differently based on the different conditions.

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COMPLEX EMOTION

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SLINKYBOTS INTERACTING WITH MULTIPLE USERS 279

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COMPLEX EMOTION

The slinkybots also start to perform functions that are user specific and are more instant. For example, when they see a baby approaching a chair that could have a sharp edge, they could monitor the behavior of the baby. As a result they could start to engulf the chair to make it softer, and protect the baby.

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CATERING TO EVERY HUMAN NEED 283

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BEYOND HUMAN INTERACTION

In the fourth level of complexity, the units start to understand lot of the humans needs and are always working in synchronization to achieve the required task. Therefore, they have the capacity to shuffle things around, including existing furniture. As shown below, the units collectively move the chair to seat the human user. This could be efficient in cases where the users are of old age or have a certain disability.

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SUMMARY ILLUSTRATIONS OF DIFFERENT TAXONOMIES

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PHYSICAL MODELS OF DIFFERENT TAXONOMIES

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PREVIOUS STUDIES OF HUMAN INTERACTION

It was crucial for our slinkybot system to consider the human on every scale. While the unit could be developed to be responsive to human needs and presence, the slinkybot collective behaviour plays a very important role in the way the human interacts with the space. The units should be able to cater the humans desires and collectively transform.

Softness in the unit and the assembly of the slinkybots plays a very important aspect to create usable and comfortable furniture. Therefore, in phase 1, the research was focused on creating simple furniture using the elongated part of the unit as the resting surface. However, after studying the idea of different units popping up to create functional landscape, it turned out to be a more successful mechanism in furniture generation.

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GENERATIVE FURNITURE DESIGN

In previous studies, a generative furniture design approach was experimented in order to be able to create seating from a library of the eames furniture. The team studied what makes a chair, a chair. Hence, it was identified that the most important parts of the chair is the back, seat, and support.

The first exercise was to create a generative design using the percentage of every part of the eames furniture. Therefore, the following images show different results with different percentages.

ATTEMPT 1

ATTEMPT 2

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GENERATIVE FURNITURE DESIGN

After analysing the different chairs, the idea of using the eames furniture as a base was removed. Hence, by only using the rules of creating a seat , support, and back some furniture was designed. The following images demonstrate the following.

Those points were then later on voxalized and printed. More results are to be explored in this part.

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ATTEMPT 1

ATTEMPT 2

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EAMES FURNITURE GENERATED FROM CODE

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HUMAN-HOUSE RELATIONS

STELARC ON HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN AGENTS

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In the information rich environment we currently live in, it is difficult for humans to absorb and process all of this information at once and emit data that would push for a symbiotic relationship between man and his machine. Stelarc mentions how the body should be considered as being plugged into a new technological terrain. Technology should not be looked at as an alien to being humane, where to Stelarc it is the essence and meaning of being human especially living in the technological data age we are currently living in. Defining what it is to be human is arguable. Whereas, some might frown upon the integration of chips and mechanical or silicon parts with the natural biological aspects of the body, it should be noted that such connectivity between those 2 material worlds, the organic and the synthetic is already widely spread and acceptable in our world. Given the example of a hip replacement, or a pacemaker regulating the heart, these individuals that undergo these transformations are still naturally regarded as humans.

According to Stelarc, our philosophies are bounded by the human physiology and his limited sensory organs processing the world. A new compound species might not have the same notions about the world as humans which would then open up opportunities that were before shut down due to our inadequacy or incompleteness specifically in our physiology. Architects and designers continue to design our spaces around the current human body and capabilities, whereas design thinking should put more focus on modifying the human for a new kind of ‘nature’ where the built environment alongside its users are in a composition of complex behavioral relations. Nature is re-evaluated by the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), a body of research initiated in 1970s by Latour, Hayles, and others. STS positions scientific activity in a social and cultural context granting agency to nonhumans; “the formerly neutral environment becomes a space crowded by human and non-human actors.”

This co-existence of organic matter and synthetic one, human intelligence with artificial one in a dependent, cohesive, close relationship open up new channels of communications. These new channels would change the way humans live and inhabit their surroundings. New wavelengths will not only be produced by our architecture but humans will have the capability of picking up these wave lengths and emitting other ones which would send the conversation between humans and their world to another spectrum. Much more intimate, intertwined interactions and activities would be possible with the homogenous, malleable, new nature.

This raises questions about the role of the designer and the state of designed spaces in such a fluid existence.

The complexity of such a nature would be growing by the perpetual development of the human and the space together by enhancing, learning from and affecting one another. The static state of architectural physical boundaries are shattered in this field of continuous dynamism that is highly sensitive to thoughts and emotions of both the human and non-human agents.

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SLINKYBOT AND HUMAN

The architecture we propose therefore is one that recognizes the human as more than just a physical boundary, but as emotions, moods and activities. The slinkybots would be capable of sending and receiving various data about the human and processing them to achieve a response to the situation it is in.

There are various special kind of sensors such as muscle activity sensors, heart rate sensors and sensors measuring mental concentration that give a lot of information about the human’s state. These sensors would send their data to our system which would be able to adapt to the human’s current needs and desires developing a sophisticated relationship between the human and our the house.

THE SMART SLINKYBOT Instead of attempting of creating wearables for humans with the sensors needed to transmit data to our system, another approach was explored. The idea of using the smart phone, a device which has become inseparable from us on a daily basis, as a communicative link between the human agent and the non human one.

Our smart phones carry many sensors withing their fairly small hardware that could be utilized for human data collection. Our slinkybots would be equipped to recieve direct signals from the human’s phone and would be able to have a two way channel of communication with it.

+

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PHONE APPLICATION FEATURES

NEAR FIELD COMMUNICATION

LCD

VOICE RECOGNITION

GRAVITY

MAGNETOMETER

LED

ORIENTATION

GPS

LIGHT SENSOR

COLOR RECOGNITION

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UNIT-TOENVIRONMENT ADAPTIBILITY

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UNIT-TO-CONTEXT ADAPABILITY ENERGY COLLECTION & SEASONAL CHANGE S

N

SUMMER Energy collection 6:00

12:00 13:00 14:00

In summer, the energy collection is more efficient than that in winter. Units in summer need less time to get maximum energy.

Seasonal change

Related to the configurations in the house, the canopy in summer is higher span & less dense, to allow for openness & ventilation.

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The Eames House is located at 203 North Chautauqua Boulevard in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. It is a place with sufficient sunshine.

Thus, the location is good for units to collect energy from the sun by solar panel, no matter it is in summer or in winter.

S

N

WINTER Energy collection 6:30

12:00

16:00 17:30

In winter, the same process takes more time to get full charged from the sun.

Seasonal change

While the one in winter is more dense & intimate.

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EAMES HOUSE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The appreciation of nature is an essential part of life in a house according to Charles and Ray Eames. The Eames house was designed in close proximity to a vast abundance of greenery as a result of Eameses’ decision to preserve the meadow and rows of eucalyptus trees in the original site.

In their point of view, nature acts a re-orienter and shock absorber providing needed relaxation to the inhbitants of the house away from daily complications and problems. It’s this sense of design adaptability to the surrounding environment and sustainable conscious and nature reservation that we would like to carry forward in our slinkybot system.

“The Eames House is the only place in LA where you can experience the seasons.”

-LIGHT -HUMIDITY -TEMPERATURE -SURROUNDING/TERRAIN

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SLINKYBOT AND THE ENVIRONMENT CHARGING UNIT ENERGY BAR

ENERGY BAR

In attempt to making the system sustainable, we aim to make the slinkybot responsive to sunlight possessing the capability of storing solar energy. The compact unit could have a phase-changing skin, which works as a solar panel. The adaptive skin would charge the unit and store extra energy within it for sharing and distribution

FLEXIBLE SOLAR PANELS

Flexible solar panels were used to take the contour and shape of our slinkybot and to be light in weight. Those solar panels were able to produce enough energy needed to run the system of the slinkybot.

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MORNING CONFIGURATION IN EAMES HOUSE

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DUSK CONFIGURATION IN EAMES HOUSE

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NIGHTING CONFIGURATION IN EAMES HOUSE

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HIGH POPULATIONRECONFIGURATION

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GROW VERTICAL-STACKING Stacking is one of the strategies for the units to reach a certain height. And this strategy can be used in both the compact state and the open state.

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STACKING --- TARGET

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STACKING --- TARGET

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STACKING-FIXED TARGET

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STACKING-EVER-CHANGING TARGET

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION-LOCAL DENSITY SETTINGS

Local density for clusters means how many clusters are there around a cluster and we set two levels of density, the low density, which is less than 20 clusters, and the high density, which is more than 36. Therefore, different state settings will result in different spacial configurations.

Low Density

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High Density

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CLUSTER PATTERN ACCORDING TO UNIT LOCAL DENSITY

Low Density

High Density

Compact

Open

Compact in the Middle

Open

Compact

Compact on the Edge

Configurations created by tree clusters will provide a network with clear grid.

Configurations created by linear clusters will provide a more fluid network .

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CATALOGUE of OVERALL CONFIGURATION

Dome - compact ones on the edge

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Cantilever - compact ones in the middle

Double Arch - compact ones on the edge and in the middle

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When density setting changed, with the same state setting and topology settings, the height of the spacial configuration can be changed. With lower density setting the height will be higher.

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pe

OVERALL CONFIGURATION-MULTIPLE CLUSTERS APPLIED When different types of clusters are applied according to cluster density, we can achieve various patterns in one overall configuration.

2D PLAN

compact on the edge

radial cluster

pe

compact in the middle

2D PLAN

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spacial configuration

linear cluster

erspective

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erspective

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CONFIGURATION CATALOGUERADIAL CLUSTER & LINEAR CLUSTER CONFIGURATION

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION-CATALOGUE OF OVERALL CONFIGURATION

After applying all these rules we generate 18 identical types of configurations

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION --- STACKING

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION --- EAMES HOUSE When leading units sense human in the house, they are able to treate human position as targets and come towards to the targets while attracting other units to form clusters.

Then those clusters are able to pop up to create seating area or network enclosure. Moreover, when leading units are able to take the center of the ground furniture as their target position so that lighting can be created.

Leading units sense human in the house TARGET POSITION

Ground clusters gathering CLUSTERS REACHING TARGET

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LEADING UNITS

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

Ground clusters creating seating area

TARGET CLUSTERS POSITION for CREATING NEW LEADING SEATING AREA UNITS

LEADING UNITS

Ground clusters creating network enclosure TARGET POSITION for CEILING LEADING UNITS

CEILING LEADING UNITS

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Ceiling clusters creating lighting

CEILING CONFIGURATION

More people coming

MORE HUMAN BEING `

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB More leading units coming

TARGET POSITION for NEW LEADING UNITS

Ground clusters creating larger enclosure

ENLARGED ENCLOSURE

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION --- EXTERIOR As for exterior, taking the advantage of the structure of the Eames house, we are able to generate various spacial configurations.

2D PLAN RENDERING

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SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION --- EXTERIOR By using the slab of the house the configuration is able to enlarge the first floor space and create grey space in the yard.

2D PLAN RENDERING

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SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION --- EXTERIOR By using the slab of the house the configuration is able to enlarge the first floor space and create grey space in the yard.

2D PLAN RENDERING

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SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION --- INTERIOR In the morning, the units are able to create enclosures for the residents.

2D PLAN

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SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION --- INTERIOR In the afternoon, the units are able to create large spacial configurations for various activities.

2D PLAN

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SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION --- INTERIOR In the evening, the units are able to create lighting for the house

2D PLAN

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SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

2D PLAN

SPACIAL CONFIGURATION

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DERIVING THE BASIC RULE-SETS

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OVERALL CONFIGURATION

CONTINUITY Our inspiration, the Endless House, gives us the concepts of a house with the quality of continuity and elasticity, which means the continuous space, the continuous structure as well as the continuous building and changing process over time.

Extending on the concept of the endless house, continuity and elastic space, we want to create continuous configurations that infinitely reconfigure based on local rules.

REAL-TIME SELF-ASSEMBLING SELF-ORGANIZATION POPULATION-BASED

In our design system, the house is built by those intelligent prototypes autonomously, which means a real-time, bottom-up, population-based self-assembling and self-organization system. The local behaviour of prototypes which influence by the contexts and human define the overall shape and interior space of the house over time. As a population-based system. Therefore, we choose the Particle-Spring system to simulate this house design system, through defining a set of local rules.

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PARTICLE & SPRING SYSTEM

The Spring-Particle system is constituted of two elements, the particles and the springs which particles are connected by. The particles negotiate with a spring in between to reach a stable state. Since particles are linked with springs, the spring and its force make it possible to simulate an elastic system.

GLOSSARY

N

S

PARTICLE

S

N

A particle is an agent with massing and various behaviours

SPRING A spring is the connection of two particles and acts like a physical spring.

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PARTICLE & SPRING SYSTEM

SPRING NUMBER PER PARTICLE The first aspect we can explore is how many springs can each particle have. This decides the pattern of the overall configuration.

SPRING LENGTH The second aspect we can explore is how long can each spring be. The spring length decides the degree of density of the overall configuration.

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SPRING NUMBER In order to systematically explore what kinds of configurations can be drawn when different spring numbers are applied, we divide the system into two parts, the hierarchical system and the non-hierarchical system.

NON-HIERARCHICAL SYSTEM The other approach is the non-hierarchical. This is where all the particles are given the same importance, and all of them have the same spring number.

HIERARCHICAL SYSTEM This means that in a number of particles, one particle is given importance and compare to others, this one can have more springs connected than other particles.

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COLORS: LIGHT GRAY: R:200 G:200 B:200

NON- HIERARCHICAL SYSTEM DARK GRAY: R:66 G:66 B:66 PINK: R:247 G:0 B:100

Each particle has two springs to create a line

Each particle has two springs to create a loop

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

COLORS: LIGHT GRAY: R:200 G:200 B:200

HIERARCHICAL SYSTEM

DARK GRAY: R:66 G:66 B:66 PINK: R:247 G:0 B:100

Particle on edge has one spring

Particle in centre has 18 springs

This create a star / radial configuration

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INITIAL 2D CONFIGURATIONS OF THE HYBRID COMPUTATIONAL SYSTEM The hybrid system create a richer configuration, like line with stars and treeshaped topology.

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Particles on the edge have only one spring

This particle has four springs which makes it a small core

Particles on the edge have only one spring Middle particle has twenty-four springs

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CHANGING SPRING NUMBER - CHANGING LOCATION

Here by changing the spring number of each particle the core of the configuration can be changed.

Color of center particle: blue

Color of center particle: green

Color of center particle: yellow

Color of center particle: purple

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CHANGE SPRING NUMBER- RECONFIGURATION

1

2

3

4

5

6

Here by killing spring and reconnect particles with different spring numbers, it is clear that with the same amount of particles different configurations can be created.

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CHANGE SPRING NUMBER- SWALLOW By transferring the springs of a core to another the size of the stars will change. The one with more springs will be bigger than the others.

Stage 1 This particle has eight springs which makes it a core

This particle has one springs which makes it at the edge

This particle has eight springs which makes it a core

Stage 2 This particle loses one spring which makes it a smaller core This particle has no springs which makes it free

This particle has eight springs which makes it a core

Stage 3 This particle loses one spring which makes it a smaller core This particle has one springs which makes it at the edge of another core This particle has one more spring which makes it a bigger core

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1

2

6

3

4

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CHANGE SPRING NUMBER- CHASE

Stage 1 This particle has one spring which makes it at the edge

This particle has four springs which makes it a core

Stage 2 This particle has one more spring which makes it connected to the other core

This particle has five more springs which makes it a bigger core and connected to the other core

Stage 3 More springs are made between cores and edged particles and this created a linear structure

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5

2

3

6

4

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CHANGE SPRING NUMBER- CHECK In this coding sketch, the springs a particle can make is under the control of a distance checking and spring number checking.

DISTANCE CHECK A particle can only make spring with another particle within a certain distance.

before

before

SPRING NUMBER CHECK If a particle’s spring number is more than three, than all the spring will be killed. If a particle’s spring number is less than two, than one more spring will be made. Therefore, all particles’ spring number will be controlled within a certain number. after

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after

SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

Making springs without control, randomly

Making springs under distance check

Making springs under distance check and spring number check

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CHANGE SPRING NUMBER- WEAVE

Each particle makes two spring with the ones before and after it

Each particle makes two more spring with the ones above and under it so that each particle has four springs

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4

2

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CONCLUSION BASIC CONFIGURATION From the study we develop three basic configurations.

Non-hierarchical system with each particle having two springs, creating a linear configuration.

Hierarchical system with a radial shape

Hybrid system with a tree shape

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

NEXT STAGE We have already explored the different configurations brought by different spring numbers. In the next stage, we will focus on using the system to simulate housing space.

BOUNDARY We will set boundaries to explore how particles and springs occupy a certain space

SEEDING POINTS We will set starting points as the beginning of the growing

SPRING LENGTH We will explore different spring lengths in the next stage

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BOUNDARY We chose three case study house as boundaries, seeding points and gradients to explore the configuration of the units and the simulation of different elements of a house, like structure, circulation and transparency.

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STARTING POINTS We chose three kinds of starting positions of leading units for each house

Starting points on the boundaries

Starting points on the corner

Starting points in the middle

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CHANGE SPRING NUMBER- BASIC TOPOLOGIES WITHIN BOUNDARY LINE #8

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#17

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CHANGE SPRING NUMBER - BASIC TOPOLOGIES WITHIN BOUNDARY TREE

#8

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#17

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SPRING LENGTH The gradient is used to control spring length to potentially control different densities.

COMPACT

Area that a particle avoid

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Smaller spring length

EXTEND

Larger spring length

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EXAMPLE OF LINEAR SPRING LENGTH CONTROL

Smallest spring length

Medium spring length

Largest spring length

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CIRCULATION

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CIRCULATION

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STRUCTURE

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STRUCTURE

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TRANSPARENCY EAMES HOUSE ELEVATION

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CONFIGURATION

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SIMULATIONS

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GROWTH STRATEGY - STACKING The physical connection is a face to face connection. Therefore, the initial growth strategy is a stacking technique in the particle spring system.

Initial starting units

Each unit checks its neighbour number which represent its density

If the density reaches a specific number, the unit will be regarded as the stable particle and will become the new starting point for the next layer of growth

18=density

10=density

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

Face to face connection

When the amount of stable particles of all the particles reach a certain percentage,

New starting points

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STACKING-SINGLE START POINT

density=5 stable percentage =1%

density=10 stable percentage =1% When a particleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s neighbour number reaches 10 and the amount of stable particles reaches 1% of all particles, the existing layer will stop growing and starts to climb up a layer vertically and grow on the new layer

density=10 stable percentage =1%

With a higher densityďź&#x152;less particle can be the starting points for the next layer, which leads to a less dense column.

density=15 stable percentage =1%

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB density=5 stable percentage bottom =1% stable percentage top =10%

When the stable percentage become higher, more particles can become new starting points and the radius of the column will grow in size

density=10 stable percentage bottom =1% stable percentage top =10%

With a higher densityďź&#x152;less particle can be the starting points for the next layer, which leads to a less dense column.

density=15 stable percentage bottom =1% stable percentage top =10%

%10=stable percentage %1=stable percentage

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STACKING-AN ARRAY OF START POINT When all the particles become starting points of the next layer but climb to different height according to density, the particles will create a surface

18=density

18=height

10=height

10=density

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

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STACKING-A ROW OF START POINT

density=average stable percentage =4% When changing the start point from a single particle to a line of particles, the system will build a wall

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SPYROPOULOS DESIGN LAB

With larger stable percentage, the wall becomes thicker

density=average %1= stable percentage

density=average %4= stable percentage

density=average %17= stable percentage

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CONFIGURATION By applying the column, surface and wall into the boundary of the three case study house, we generate our 36 configurations.

Initially, we started creating a variation of 36 configurations to test the system.

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CONFIGURATION-SINGLE START POINT

With single start point creating columns we are able to create structure with different height and radius.

new start point

new column

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CONFIGURATION-AN ARRAY OF START POINTS

From an array of starting points, we are able to create the structure from a surface to columns and by changing the parameters the radius of the columns can also be changed,

405

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CONFIGURATION-AN ARRAY OF START POINTS By an array of starting points and the logic of creating walls, we are able to create different kinds of structures.

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CONFIGURATION-AN ARRAY OF START POINTS By an array of starting points and combining the logic of creating walls and columns, we are able to create different kinds of structures.

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WHAT MEANING RULE SLINKY(BOT) @ AA DRL

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CONCLUSION

UNIT

The second stage of study mainly focuses on the various distributions brought by different spring numbers for particle and different spring length for springs. But there is still gap between the processing simulation and our physical unit, especially when we decided to inherit the qualities and concepts of Eames House in our system. Therefore, .several strategies should be carried out to fill this gap

A PARTICLE

A SPRING

WHAT IS THE UNIT

A SPRING & A PARTICLE

COMMUNICATION

TWO PARTICLES & A SPRING

UNIT STATE

UNITSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; DISTANCE

DENSITY

CONNECTED FACES

ENVIRONMENT ELEMENTS

HUMAN BEHAVIOR

WHAT DOES SPRING NUMBERS AND SPRING LENGTH MEAN

BEHAVIOR WHAT ARE THE RULES FOR APPLYING DIFFERENT SPRING NUMBER AND DIFFERENT SPRING LENGTH

UNIT BEHAVIOR

Eames House

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JURY CRITIQUE AND POST PRESENTATION CONVERSATION

LUCIANA PARISI Luciana Parisi is Reader in Cultural Theory, Chair of the PhD programme at the Centre for Cultural Studies, and co-director of the Digital Culture Unit, Goldsmiths University of London. She has written extensively within the field of Media Philosophy and Computational Design. In 2004, she published ‘Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire’ (Continuum Press).

In 2013, she published ‘Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and Space’ (MIT Press). She is currently researching the history of automation and the philosophical consequences of logical thinking in machines.

“

Thank you very much for showing us this amazing project. It’s parting to see how these things can move. We saw before magnetic field and now we are seeing pneumatics. It’s interesting how the idea of mobility of…enters the kind of interaction.

So we know that for cybernetics and the application of cybernetics to space it’s always been about the ability to respond and be responsive and adaptive and is not a rule based but it’s actually adapted to the environment in terms of sensory motor activity.

I’m thinking about how do this kind of of interaction and kind of adaptability to space be this is what we said before and to the human or the circulation of activity in the house can be in one end be understood as you said ergonomically so they are forcing humans to adapt, I’m wondering also in terms of agency where is the agency here…you could argue that there is an adaptability of the system to do human behavior but you could argue also that the human behavior is conditioned by the capacity of these agents to be adapted to them.

So you could argue it’s a symbiotic relationship or say codependence or there is another set of hierarchical intelligences that have to be spelt out. And again what is interesting is this kind of… changes completely the landscape that the imagination of the room or interior space having all those hanging little machines that are intrusive perhaps they are not only in their adaptation in so to say we are here we govern the space we make sure you don’t hurt yourself we make sure you wake up we make sure you don’t have too much light this kind of capacity of technology to care for the human and to extend is really going to happen and what kind of implications it has but in terms of specialty it completely changes the volume inside there is a kind of envelope continuously hovering over the human which is a bit overwhelming, intrusive…yes.”

PATRIK SCHUMACHER Patrik Schumacher is partner at Zaha Hadid Architects and founding director at the AA Design Research Lab. Patrik Schumacher has been teaching at various architectural schools in Britain, Continental Europe and the USA since 1992. In 1996 he founded the “Design Research Laboratory” with Brett Steele, at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, and continues to serve as one of its co-directors.

“

Congratulations it’s again a great project and I think that’s it in this round of experiments with this in terms of the focus of your interactions with you and figure and situations and yes this dialectic of inspiring human behavior following it needs to be teased out. I mean the particulars of the various ranges of investigations the plausibility of them and the comparison of them can be debated of course maybe this is overly obtrusive maybe it isn’t clear but how productive is and what was meant to do under these kind of shell like conditions so that I guess need to have some editing clearly and there was those situations which were become much more natural and find them elegant and plausible.

I wanted to also ostracize you started with the installation that contrast between that it says this case study house and certain organic attachments that one historical lineage but I think what is more important when I see this is the late sixties early seventies soft furniture world where suddenly these typologies breakdown you have stuff you have this kind of soft beanbag you have the super wave and reconfigurability not self-actuating but valency and things snap into different configurations a little bit like the magnetic studies was interesting when you played with your hands and you made these components I think there could be something and we discussed a number of times the excessiveness of having these sophisticated robots being at the same time the whole volume of creating these scapes to challenge this and allow for really things to be pushed around you have you leader following distinction with labels but not yet with respect to capacity really understood the agency could be lessons on..I mean that’s something of which we can’t get right and plausible in all respects but this was just for me inspiring to see that the problems posed much more succinctly and much more plausible and effectively I think like Brett was saying last time around before lunch that’s problems now on the table and working on inventing these life processes querying how architecture and these new capacities of architecture because again agency and spontaneity and what the response would be we could just elaborate and work on it we should work on it more we need to turn the human figure into agents and rule based agents etc. So I think for me that’s the encouraging thing not the particulars, the particulars are nice that funny and charming things that the baby occurred and that that’s lighting is a big element I appreciate that but of course each individual situation is highly criticized on that.

One last point is it can become can be one more query the necessity of one only one element to generate all this. You can explore maybe this one in the end the final analysis is maybe just a lighting system, a mobile or a migratory lighting system because I don’t you may because it’s not credible as carrying and lifting the human body how nice this is best for me the editing comes in at a certain point. And then from project to project to see a more focused thing, we talked about the shading and screening operations I mean there is something which is let’s say naive to presume the universal element that would like the voxels universal joints they’re so different capacities/ It’s nice the degrees of reconfigurability and maybe also multiple capacities to some extent but there is this kind of sense of wanting to do too much although I like the fact that it disburdens itself from a lot of exterior enveloping and structure relations but can we experiment with even sharper focusing that’s just editing once you’ve done the browsing but it’s absolutely necessary because we don’t we don’t know ahead of the process what such systems will bring up and I like the fact that put together in the interim you have that whole panel here which is pure configurational logic we don’t know what this building will deliver then you come up with this just kind of any plausible but so I condone that the process but in the final project you need to maybe make it certain concentrated this sort of exploration speculation and this is an edited mature offering.”

TOM WISCOMBE Tom Wiscombe is founder and principal of Tom Wiscombe Architecture, an internationally recognized design practice. His work stands out in terms of its mysterious figural features, its alluring graphic qualities, and its tectonic inventiveness. Tom has developed an international reputation through winning competition entries, exhibitions of work at major cultural institutions, and publications worldwide. His work is part of the permanent collection of the FRAC Centre Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA San Francisco, and MoMA New York.

“

I got so intrigued in your project when you started showing these things that I thought were city plans. I think that there is a sheet across from Patrick way down there I can't see it from here. I’m not sure if those were intended to be these things extending extremely far or what those were exactly. But then I don't know what happened here when it started to become kind of spatial. But I didn't treat these things at different scales. I like them really small when they are lights. And then this one across for me, I imagined it could even be larger or to be something larger robot that would help you move packages or move things around the house. And I’m kind of want to agree with Patrick on that the idea that you would have a universal robot tool that would do everything or sort of do everything around the house. I think maybe that's not the era like maybe the era is in massive scale differences between bots. And assuming that we're living with bots. Like already making that assumption that you guys are asking us to go along with you on. Just the idea there would be a range of things with different capabilities but limited capabilities. And not as you say continues, endless and ever-evolving but maybe semi evolving toward the certainly like not quite I forget what the term is called, but there's a term for something that's almost an AI but not quite, like a verging on AI and the different scales of those things. And I think it would be more plausible because I feel like that this thing is some, I don't know, it just seems it just seems a little bit implausible to me right now. These guys, I don't know what they're doing, they're charming and they're funny. But it's like when they start to become structure, other things that I just I don't I don't buy it as much. But I think that some of the animations that you had of the early things the early pneumatic structures are just awesome. This thing the way we start to spin and change and change directions and attack treads. I think you have like within of many of these studies in the black blatters. It's like you have pieces of technology each of which could do a range of things really well and then not do everything very well. And I just wonder if there are three or four different projects within this thing that would have led to a more differentiated scale and differentiated use and use differentiated set of little bots that you live with.”

THEODORE SPYROPOULOS Theodore Spyropoulos is an architect and educator. He is the Director of the Architectural Association’s world renowned Design Research Lab (AADRL) in London.

“

With respect to let’s say like that call it like the issue of scale I think the way that we’ve tried to approach this is that scale is probably not the criteria that we’re evaluating.

We’re trying to let’s say not do like the universal thing because the thing itself changes so the idea of taxonomy for us is that we would build complexities, within those complexities have to be like explicitly clear. I think where the project is really strong is when it’s very constrained and it has a certain kind of identification of actually what it is its goal and it gives you variations on achieving that. where it doesn’t I think where it falls short is when it becomes this stuff like the structuring of space because in a way the organization doesn’t necessarily coincide with actually the behavior that is being argued through that where in the other ones it’s more plausible because more explicit in some way. It’s simpler and you kind of get an understanding of population relative to actually what is being asked to do and I think it just gives it a richness to it through the simplicity of that. And the attention of choreography then I think is also something where it actually becomes very added as value because it gives us a way of signaling how these things could actually be dynamic and changing and at the same time not necessarily just exhibit fear or these other kinds of let’s say emotive variables. I do think that also like the house when it comes to deploying these things in an interior their migratory aspect I think of something that you guys should explore a little bit more like I think it is kind of interesting when they swarm together but it’s not interesting when they swarm together around a guy who just walked in the house. I think one of the things where you started to set up the diagram of the timescales there’s the daily scale but then there’s this thing evolving over time so I could come home and every day I come home to a different house, or every time I move from one room to another these things actually could be reflected and reactive and identifying a certain economy of their distribution and had magnify the ambience and the atmospheric aspect. This model in particular the big one I think has been like fully jungle doubts while when you guys first started to put the stuff in what was really interesting is that the atmosphere aspect of its illumination was much more a space-making device and the physicality of the actual glowworms. And I think that that’s also something that you can discover you make a model like this and you can treat it like a dollhouse, and you could really start to use it as a tool to identify potentially actually what is the real medium is it the physicality of the thing itself or is it the atmosphere that’s created around that, where light could actually be a meaningful space-making tool, at least in its night scenario it seems to be more convincing. When Patrik says the thing comes down and it swallows the person like a Venus flytrap and I actually thought that was probably the one moment where space-making in your world kind of was interesting not necessarily if it’s possible but actually really radically created a suspension space like a Thomas Saraceno world which I think could very much fit into this kind of strategy. So I think it’s not fully resolved. I do think it’s much more prototype specific and I do think that there’s an editing that has happen but I think what you choose to communicate I think is really important. What I commend you on is actually really taking a certain accountability of the human agency in it but I think it’s just the beginning of this. I really do think that if these things evolve with us then of course we’re going to have tendencies and behavioral attributes and every one of these things could potentially evolve their own personalities and characteristics, the question is actually if we have that capacity actually how does that really radically transform the way that we actually operate within that environment. If it is just like we do things and it’s coming to you then I think it would be an interesting way to speculate about actually what that would be because I’m not really sure we know but once we have it in front of us and we see it, we can actually play with that and try to figure out how that would be different, actually for each of us.”

ARIANE KOEK Initiator, Founder & designer of Arts@CERN & Cultural Consultant, specialising in transdisciplinary work and creativity.

“

I think what is great about the project that you show is how the system can allow for different possibilities of different configurations. The problem is when we see them all together it can become it can be misinterpreted like we that we have too much technology. It is the same way like when you get a phone and you download too many applications then you know you remove the application I think sometimes when we see everything happening in one space it can look like overwhelming I think you should present it in a much more…or show it as a sepaarate possibility then a user can choose to have only a specific type of you need to have a specific type of behavior so I think that’s one thing. Still you need to question what does it mean for the house what is the consequences of the house how do we use the house so in a way that one way could be lighting become important when you were showing the scenario I thought to maybe the sound will be important like what does it mean if the house is used by 10 15 20 people, does the system allow to create different types buffer for example. I think you need to question now what happens to the house how do we inhabit it and not just leave it as different scenarios.”

CIRO NAJLE An architect practicing in Buenos Aires, Ciro Najle is the former Director of the Landscape Urbanism Graduate Design Program and Diploma Unit Master at the Architectural Association in London, and has taught at different architectural schools and institutions worldwide, including Cornell University, Columbia University, the Berlage Institute, and the University of Buenos Aires. Director of GDB (General Design Bureau) and previously of MID, Young Architect of the Year Second Prize in London in 2001, he has practiced in Buenos Aires, New York and London since 1991.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

I mean in a way I like this there is the agenda of them being able to escape but at the same time I felt that in the project there were two moment that weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in a way in conflict with one another and one is the capability of this thing to roll and the other one is their ability to reach. And to me the agenda of reaching is an interesting one in the project. It would be interesting, I mean in that context it would be interesting to establish a platform that from where a things are reached and the purpose of reaching as well. And I think that kind of reducing the agenda of ability to mostly to reach or to remoteness in the control of space would be favorable for the project to have more of the quality of stance. Secondly, in that context I think that what is missing in the project is humor and a in a way that is a lot of humor in the object and very little humor in your presentation, or in the way you talk about the project. And in the same way as we were talking about other projects as that as behavior in a way not only being able to achieve goals but also to do that with a certain grace I think that what to me is it would be interesting to understand and to explore would be the different ways in which this thing behaves or contorts or reaches or curves in terms of its capability to produce a humoristic situation.â&#x20AC;?

BRETT STEELE Brett Steele directs the AA School of Architecture, including its public programme, publications, membership and fundraising activities.

“

One of the things that I really really applaud in the project is that and it seems quite a deliberate move and I’d like you to say something about it but one of the most spectacular consequences to your architecture that sort of strange swarming slinky stuff is that it scares away everything else from the interior, like it’s gone. And I don’t think that, except for the world’s last Eames chair, literally the last remnant of what we used to think of it the interior and I promise you your worms or slinkies will eat that very quickly and even got a video of it of them moving it around like they’re trying to get out of the house. And I would say rather than treat that as a kind of time management issue that I haven’t sort of put some of the rest of that architecture in, it seems in a way the instinct is also that this future lives that we’re going to be living and that in fact many of us might already be living in your architecture is in part about the dispersal of all of that stuff from the 20th century that’s now just clutter like the extreme Marie Kondo you know decluttering of our lives, man you are there. You know and I think that and if you could say well that’s not possible like we still need a toilet or something, you know, we probably do but you probably got a backyard and people take care of themselves and you know if I need to eat and ubereats will bring the food to me, that thing we used to call the kitchen, like I would push it to the other extreme to give it a job to now do everything. And so for example all I’ve got to do to solve most of those other problems is make sure I’ve got really good 5g Wi-Fi inside one of these balls. That links me to the world in such a way that the interior is no longer this thing I depend upon in a twentieth-century model it’s serving the world becoming my inner world, but it’s simply now the platform for me to try and figure out what I’m going to do. You know in a way it also then plugged into all kinds of social movements that are now questioning amongst the generation of DRL and other students today what it is we build around ourselves as our inner domestic lives and you know one of the compelling features you could say of the pieces of everyday life from the early 20th century forward is that this revolution starts at the scale of the domestic interior.

Weirdly says his idea of the everyday life appears the battle is fought with the media in our inner world, has fought with our technologies. What’s great is yours is just wiped it out and that shouldn’t be an accident by focusing on all of the attention on these weird little worms that are hanging from the ceiling but rather an argument about what space really has become today which is a kind of interface to all of that stuff outside the object. I mean I don’t think it’s an accident three of your animals are trying to escape and you’re the first one to show it that way.

This poor guy right in front of me those two which are almost you know they’re like the shawshank redemption version they’ve found a way to and you’ll even got a family here that are sneaking off the platform here. What it is recording is that if your thesis is right that thing we used to call the distinction between the interior and the outer is completely gone, totally eradicated, you know. The same sense that you’ve done a lot of this project by sitting in front of screens over in the studio and linking the various technologies that have given you all of the forms of expertise to do this project, and I guess is you wrap the project that was a sort of thesis statement it should have a bigger argument behind it for what it can actually deliver despite all of the sort of functional questions we might ask about the objects. I would say really go for it and then it’s not a speculation to common statement about where we might be right now and then consider where that plays out in the immediate future, It would be great. And I think they will escape by the way. I think it seems insane in your world that I wouldn’t put a couple of these in the car with me when I do go to work in some point because they’ll then be able to talk to these guys and keep track of what’s going on. And frankly they don’t care whether I’m at work or I’m at home, they’re still doing whatever it is they’re going to do that you can start to challenge all of these architectural habits that makes us think that our world has to happen only inside this glass box what happened to be at this stage for this moment in the day.”

CONCLUSION

To conclude, looking at the development of slinkybot and how the system works over the hours of the day, and how it interacts with the user, and overall long periods of time. We imagine that over the years the slinkybot system will be in continuous reconfiguration developing a more intimate relationship with the human. We imagine that the system with more complexity and over time could start to substitute all the functions within and around the house blurring the harsh lines between the exterior and interior.

We agree with what Brett Steele proposed about pushing our system even further to revolutionize domestic interior.

He mentioned the following “it should have a bigger argument behind it for what it can actually deliver despite all of the sort of functional questions we might ask about the objects. I would say really go for it and then it’s not a speculation to common statement about where we might be right now and then consider where that plays out in the immediate future, It would be great.”

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PHOTOS CREDIT: TAOLE CHEN & NORHAN TAREK

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