Sentient Rock

MArch AADRL THESIS PROJECT Architectural Association, London

Studio Master

Theodore Spyropoulos

Studio Assistants

Octavian Mihai Gheorghiu, Hanjun Kim, Apostolos Despotidis, David Green

The objective of this project is to propose strategies for creating inhabitable spaces using inflatables in extreme desert environments, while leveraging the desert's onsite materials and exploring their material properties.

By harnessing natural phenomena and adopting agency as a construction strategy for extreme environments, we have developed a method that combines the self-organized accumulation of sand particles and salt crystallization to solidify substances in a flowing environment.

Given the dynamic and challenging environment, a large number of robotic agents will be employed to create the inflatable formwork . These agents will have the autonomy to decide the condition of the formwork and the area of solidification. The resulting space will provide opportunities for desert explorers and researchers. This strategy not only creates desert shelters but also serves as a prototypical system.