scriptedarchitecture

Interior view.

Last summer, I had the privilege to work with an outstanding group of students and colleagues on the design, detailing, robotic fabrication and construction of the ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 2011. The project evolved out of ongoing research into biomimetics and robotic fabrication at the Institute for Computational Design (ICD) led by Achim Menges and was realised as part of a studio project in collaboration with our fellow institute for building structures and structural design (ITKE) at the University of Stuttgart. The pavilion was open for the public from end of August to early December 2011 and has since been published in print and on the web, most notably in the current edition of Detail magazine on Timber construction.

Fabrication data model.

As “Project Manager” my responsibilites not only included the logistics of the project such as finding and contacting sponsors, preparing the planning application (yes, we’re on public ground on the campus, so we had to file one), keeping track of budget, and doing the PR; but a major focus of my work was the integration of the design model with our inhouse 6+1 axis industrial robot.

The students did a great job encapsulating the biomimetic principles found in the sand dollar (more details below) in a digital design tool; however a major challenge represented the generation of the CAM data necessary to numerically control the robot as there are no off-the-shelf tools on the market that deal with finger joints (the fabricational equivalent of the calcite protrusions found along the edges of the plates in the sand dollar’s plate skeleton). Using Rhinoscript, we created a tool that not only allowed us to export the CAM data into industry standard ISO format (the easy part), but also to create all the toolpath information necessary to drive the robot (the not-so-easy part).

6+1 axis industrial robot.

More information from the official press release:

The project explores the architectural transfer of biological principles of the sea urchin’s plate skeleton morphology by means of novel computer-based design and simulation methods, along with computer-controlled manufacturing methods for its building implementation.

Following the analysis of the sand dollar, the morphology of its plate structure was integrated in the design of a pavilion. Three plate edges always meet together at just one point, a principle which enables the transmission of normal and shear forces but no bending moments between the joints, thus resulting in a bending bearing but yet deformable structure. Unlike traditional lightweight construction, which can only be applied to load optimized shapes, this new design principle can be applied to a wide range of custom geometry. The high lightweight potential of this approach is evident as the pavilion that could be built out of 6.5 mm thin sheets of plywood only, despite its considerable size.

Bird eye view.

Some facts and numbers: Material: 6.5mm birch plywood Number of individual plates: 850 Number of finger joints: 100,000 Gross Floor area: 72 sqm Building volume: 200 cum

Night view.

More information can be found on our institute’s website. If you are interested in images for publication please don’t hesitate to contact me through this blog or the institute’s contact list.

Exterior view from north-east.

All images © ICD/ITKE University of Stuttgart.

Since a few days a report by Barclays Capital that points out correlation between skyscraper boom and economic crisis is topic of international news, e.g. BBC and BI. Economist Andrew Lawrence suggested in 1999 the Skyscraper Index, as predictor of economic crisis. The relation between skyscraper building and finance has earlier been discussed earlier in the great book Form Follows Finance by Caroll Willis. Furthermore, I found an interesting figure related to this topic on page 94 in Alex Lehnerer’s Book Grand Urban Rules, showing the relation between industrial production and building height limitations in Chicago.

With the PolyArc set up, we can adjust the geometry dramatically by setting a new tangent vector. In this video we discuss tangent vectors and how to control them.

Once the series of points is set up, we create a curve of continuous polyarcs through them. The radius and direction of these arcs can be changed, along with the base series of points we already created.  These arcs, connected together will be revolved into the surface of the Pavilion.

2012년 첫 라이노스 정모가 오는 1월 14일 수원에서 개최됩니다. 일정, 내용 확인하시고 어서 신청해주세요! 이번 달  모임 위치는 수원역 부근 우리동네 커피가게입니다. 장소관계로 30명까지만 신청을 받습니다. 신청 안하시고 오시는 분들은 신청하신 분들에게 자리 우선권이 있으니 꼭 신청 후 참가해주시기 바랍니다. 2012년 1월 모임 모임 1차 일시 : 2012년 1월 14일 토요일 오후 2시 장소 : 수원역 우리동네 3층 아래 약도 참조 What's New      - Rhino5.0 Beta에 새로 추가된 커맨드 및 바뀐 내용 소개      - Vray For Rhino 1.5 Beta 라이노의 모델링      - Surfacing      - Solid modeling      - Surface control points editing Parametric design      - Parametric modeling 및 그 활용 Modelng challenge     - Control point editing 활용 자유 토론      - 자유로운 주제로 서로 이야기 해보아요! Q&A      - 질의 응답      - 정확한 질문/답변을 위해서 USB 메모리등으로 관련 파일을 준비하시면 도움이 됩니다. 모임 2차 일시 : 오후 5시부터 Greetings      - 회원소개 및 인사 Let's talk talk talk      - 이야기하며 서로 사귀어요!      - 이야기하며 많은 정보를 나눠요!      - 이야기하며 웃고 즐겨요! # 연락처 윤상훈 : 010-3286-5575  | 윤상철 : 010-9460-7239 | 고정석 : 010-4125-2867 # 참가 인원수에 따라 조기 마감될 수 있으니 서둘러 신청하세요. # 정모 회비는  일반 20,000원 | 학생 15,000원 입니다. # 정모 2차로 바로 참석하시는 분들도 환영입니다. 위 연락처로 연락주세요. 참가 신청! click 정모장소 약도 - 우리동네

We are psyched that our very own Mark Green will be the featured guest during a week-long series hosted by the University of Utah's College of Architecture + Planning and Integrated Technology & Architecture Center (ITAC). The series, Digital Process: Parametric Modeling and BIM Integration, will take place from January 23rd to January 27th. It will offer workshops on customized, environmentally-responsive facade systems to parametric modeling and BIM integration workflow. 

On the evening of January 26th, Mark will also present "Digital Process", a lecture based on parametric modeling and BIM integration in building design and construction. So if you're in the Salt Lake City area be sure to stop by and check it out!

We are psyched that our very own Mark Green will be the featured guest during a week-long series hosted by the University of Utah's College of Architecture + Planning and Integrated Technology & Architecture Center. The series, Digital Process: Parametric Modeling and BIM Integration (IATC), will take place from January 23rd to January 27th. It will offer workshops on customized, environmentally-responsive facade systems to parametric modeling and BIM integration workflow. 

On the evening of January 26th, Mark will also present "Digital Process", a lecture based on parametric modeling and BIM integration in building design and construction. So if you're in the Salt Lake City area be sure to stop by and check it out!

The next tool we use to dynamically update items is the Series. Here we set up a series of points that will become the 'wavelengths' for the Hannover Pavilion modules.  The Series component takes inputs for (S) the start value, (N) the value step size, (C) and the number of values in the list. 

In this series we explore the power of lists to drive parametric changes in the Hannover Pavilion from early on in the design to precise details. This first video explains how lists work and gives and overview of the Hannover Pavilion process.

sg2012 Material Intensities: Simulation, Energy, Environment

Smartgeometry Workshops are an annual event - a gathering of leading designers and researchers, programmers and artists, professionals and academics who come together for 4 days of intense collaboration and development within the framework of Computational Design.

The sg2012 Workshop will be organised around Clusters. Clusters are hubs of expertise. They comprise of people, knowledge, tools, materials and machines. The Clusters provide a focus for workshop participants working together within a common framework.

Clusters provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, processes and techniques and act as a catalyst for design resolution. The Workshop is made up of ten Clusters that respond in diverse ways to the sg2012 Challenge Material Intensities.

Applicants to the sg2012 Workshop will select their preferred cluster from the following:

• Beyond Mechanics
• Micro Synergetics
• Composite Territories
• Ceramics 2.0
• Material Conflicts
• Transgranular Perspiration
• Reactive Acoustic Environments
• Form Follows Flow
• Bioresponsive Building Envelopes
• Gridshell Digital Tectonics

More information about the sg2012 Workshop and Clusters can be found here:

http://smartgeometry.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=116&Itemid=131

The application process will close on December 31st, 2011.

• Full Fee   $1500
• Reduced Fee   $750
• Scholarship Fee   $350

Fees include attendance to both the workshop and conference from March 19th-24th.

Reduced Fee and Scholarships are available only for Academics, Students and Young Practitioners, and are awarded during a competitive peer review process.

sg2012 takes place from 19-24 March 2012 at EMPAC (http://empac.rpi.edu/) and is hosted by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, upstate New York USA. The Workshop and Conference will be a gathering of the global community of innovators and pioneers in the fields of architecture, design and engineering.

The event will be in two parts: a four day Workshop 19-22 March, and a public conference beginning with Talkshop 23 March, followed by a Symposium 24 March. The event follows the format of the highly successful preceding events sg2010 Barcelona and sg2011 Copenhagen.

sg2012 Challenge   Material Intensities: Simulation, Energy, Environment

Imagine the design space of architecture was no longer at the scale of rooms, walls and atria, but that of cells, grains and vapour droplets. Rather than the flow of people, services, or construction schedules, the focus becomes the flow of light, vapour, molecular vibrations and growth schedules: design from the inside out.

The sg2012 challenge, Material Intensities, is intended to dissolve our notion of the built environment as inert constructions enclosing physically sealed spaces. Spaces and boundaries are abundant with vibration, fluctuating intensities, shifting gradients and flows. The materials that define them are in a continual state of becoming: a dance of energy and information. Material potential is defined by multiple properties: acoustical, chemical, electrical, environmental, magnetic, manufacturing, mechanical, optical, radiological, sensorial, and thermal. The challenge for sg2012 Material Intensities is to consider material economy when creating environments, micro-climates and contexts congenial for social interaction, activities and organisation. This challenge calls for design innovation and dialogue between disciplines and responsibilities. sg2010 Working Prototypes strove to emancipate digital design from the hard drive by moving from the virtual to the actual in wrestling with the tangible world of physical fabrication. sg2011 Building the Invisible focused on informing digital design with real world data. sg2012 Material Intensities strives to energise our digital prototypes and infuse them with material behaviour. They have the potential to become rich simulations informed by the material dynamics, chemical composition, energy flows, force fields and environmental conditions that feed back into the design process.

More information can be found at http://www.smartgeometry.org

Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/smartgeometry

 

sg2012 Material Intensities: Simulation, Energy, Environment

Smartgeometry Workshops are an annual event - a gathering of leading designers and researchers, programmers and artists, professionals and academics who come together for 4 days of intense collaboration and development within the framework of Computational Design.

The sg2012 Workshop will be organised around Clusters. Clusters are hubs of expertise. They comprise of people, knowledge, tools, materials and machines. The Clusters provide a focus for workshop participants working together within a common framework.

Clusters provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, processes and techniques and act as a catalyst for design resolution. The Workshop is made up of ten Clusters that respond in diverse ways to the sg2012 Challenge Material Intensities.

Applicants to the sg2012 Workshop will select their preferred cluster from the following:

• Beyond Mechanics
• Micro Synergetics
• Composite Territories
• Ceramics 2.0
• Material Conflicts
• Transgranular Perspiration
• Reactive Acoustic Environments
• Form Follows Flow
• Bioresponsive Building Envelopes
• Gridshell Digital Tectonics

More information about the sg2012 Workshop and Clusters can be found here:

http://smartgeometry.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=116&Itemid=131

The application process will close on January 15th, 2011.

• Full Fee   $1500
• Reduced Fee   $750
• Scholarship Fee   $350

Fees include attendance to both the workshop and conference from March 19th-24th.

Reduced Fee and Scholarships are available only for Academics, Students and Young Practitioners, and are awarded during a competitive peer review process.

sg2012 takes place from 19-24 March 2012 at EMPAC (http://empac.rpi.edu/) and is hosted by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, upstate New York USA. The Workshop and Conference will be a gathering of the global community of innovators and pioneers in the fields of architecture, design and engineering.

The event will be in two parts: a four day Workshop 19-22 March, and a public conference beginning with Talkshop 23 March, followed by a Symposium 24 March. The event follows the format of the highly successful preceding events sg2010 Barcelona and sg2011 Copenhagen.

sg2012 Challenge   Material Intensities: Simulation, Energy, Environment

Imagine the design space of architecture was no longer at the scale of rooms, walls and atria, but that of cells, grains and vapour droplets. Rather than the flow of people, services, or construction schedules, the focus becomes the flow of light, vapour, molecular vibrations and growth schedules: design from the inside out.

The sg2012 challenge, Material Intensities, is intended to dissolve our notion of the built environment as inert constructions enclosing physically sealed spaces. Spaces and boundaries are abundant with vibration, fluctuating intensities, shifting gradients and flows. The materials that define them are in a continual state of becoming: a dance of energy and information. Material potential is defined by multiple properties: acoustical, chemical, electrical, environmental, magnetic, manufacturing, mechanical, optical, radiological, sensorial, and thermal. The challenge for sg2012 Material Intensities is to consider material economy when creating environments, micro-climates and contexts congenial for social interaction, activities and organisation. This challenge calls for design innovation and dialogue between disciplines and responsibilities. sg2010 Working Prototypes strove to emancipate digital design from the hard drive by moving from the virtual to the actual in wrestling with the tangible world of physical fabrication. sg2011 Building the Invisible focused on informing digital design with real world data. sg2012 Material Intensities strives to energise our digital prototypes and infuse them with material behaviour. They have the potential to become rich simulations informed by the material dynamics, chemical composition, energy flows, force fields and environmental conditions that feed back into the design process.

More information can be found at http://www.smartgeometry.org

Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/smartgeometry

 

So… As I was discussing with Don (@AYBABTM) his crazy Revit API Pin Ball Machine (stay tuned) it occurred to me that with worksharing I could make a checkers game in Revit! Don said “I can make it 2 players with worksharing” so that got me thinking… Anyways, channeling David Light and half a flight to Miami later and I have a working checkers game in Revit.

 

Here is how it works

1. Enable Worksets

2. Make a local for each player

3. Player 1 makes a move

4. Sync with central

5. Player 2 makes move

6. Sync with central

7. Repeat 3-6 till you have a winner!

 

Here is a link to download the file

 

It has 2 views in it like the image above. 1 for player 1 and 1 for player 2.  I think you’ll need some sort of chat client to play across an office but it should keep you entertained while you sink a 400 mb model  . Over the break I’ll try and make a starter kit for a chess set. (I’m counting on David Light to make a Starwars set of Pieces).

 

Anyways, Happy Holidays and thanks so much for supporting CASE and DesignReform. Stayed tuned for lots to come in 2012!

 

Dave and the team at CASE  

Generator.x 3.0: From Code to Atoms Feb 18-26, 2012 at iMal, Brussels http://www.imal.org/en/activity/generatorx3

Announcing Generator.x 3.0: From Code to Atoms, a workshop and exhibition focusing on digital fabrication and generative systems. This event is an evolution of Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the Screen, which took place in Berlin during Club Transmediale 2008. Generator.x 3.0 is produced by iMAL in collaboration with Marius Watz.

Context: Digital fabrication drastically changes manufacturing by democratizing access to industrial tools as well as changing the way objects are produced, opening the door for the on-demand creation of bespoke objects. Combined with the “craft” of code it becomes possible to directly connect parametric software processes to an instant manufacturing workflow, turning bits into atoms and introducing a paradigm that is radically different from traditional 3D modeling.

Generative systems shift the focus from static models towards a computational logic – what Bruce Sterling calls processuality. Here objects are understood as mere instances of a family of forms, produced by a specific interaction of parameters. Such forms may be data-driven or created through interactive means, adapting to conditions coded into the system. The artist becomes a “gardener” of possible forms, harvesting desirable results in an iterative process of coding and prototyping.

Workshop format: Participants will be chosen from a call for projects, with a focus on experience combining coding practices with digital fabrication. We will have large and powerful laser cutter machine on site, as well as several low-cost 3D Printers (Makerbots). The main software tool will be Processing (http://www.processing.org), but we also welcome users of other coding tools like VVVV, PD or OpenFrameworks.

The workshop will be hands-on and geared towards producing projects ready for exhibition at the end of the project. Participants will be expected to be familiar with code and generative strategies. There will be short tutorials demonstrating certain techniques, but the main focus is on the participants’ own independent work.

Call for projects: Submit projects or concepts for consideration through the online form on the iMAL web site.

Support: Generator.x 3.0 is produced by iMAL, and is made possible by the support of the Brussels-Capital Region, the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, and our sponsors Hackable-devices (Paris and Ghent) and i.materialise.

We're happy to announce (on designreform anyways) apps.case-inc.com .  On CASE apps we're going to try our best to post 1 FREE Revit Add-in a month.  Now that Rock Star Don Rudder (@AYBABTM) has been on board as CASE CTO for a bit, he has had some time to play around with some ideas he was cooking up and we have been able to get these Revit Add-ins out in to the wild. In this video we'll walk through how to install the add-ins and how to use the change and replace line tool.  (ever exploded a dwg and wanted to swap a bunch of lines?!?!?) . So far we have 3 add-ins and plenty more cued up to go.  Here is what we have so far:

• Change and Replace Line Styles
• Revision Cloud Data Export to Text File
• Door Mark Updater

Keep checking back to see what is coming up next. Also, feel free to suggest ideas, you never know, we might just make it :)

 

We're happy to announce (on designreform anyways) apps.case-inc.com .  On CASE apps we're going to try our best to post 1 FREE Revit Add-in a month.  Now that Rock Star Don Rudder (@AYBABTM) has been on board as CASE CTO for a bit, he has had some time to play around with some ideas he was cooking up and we have been able to get these Revit Add-ins out in to the wild. In this video we'll walk through how to install the add-ins and how to use the change and replace line tool.  (ever exploded a dwg and wanted to swap a bunch of lines?!?!?) . So far we have 3 add-ins and plenty more cued up to go.  Here is what we have so far:

• Change and Replace Line Styles
• Revision Cloud Data Export to Text File
• Door Mark Updater

Keep checking back to see what is coming up next. Also, feel free to suggest ideas, you never know, we might just make it :)

PLAT 1.5 has just been released, and with it my critical essay entitled Algorithmic Abuse, which I’m sharing below. It’s a short attempt to raise awareness towards several gaps in computational architecture’s theory as well as practice.

Please support the journal by purchasing a copy!

Head over to my blog for the complete article.

Tagged: architecture, arhitectura, computational, computational architecture, critical theory, dimitrie, dimitrie stefanescu, parametric architecture, stefanescu, theory

This book describes recent developments in the relation between architect and engineer in the design process, with focus on switzerland and germany.

With the Grasshopper definiton complete, we go over how to bake geometry, save, and manage the models.

Once our model is complete, we test the parametric dynamism of the Grasshopper definition's inputs and outputs.