Wood Proto-architecture III: Integrating Design Computation and Materialization
“It is a question of surrendering to the wood, then following where it leads by connecting operations to a materiality, instead of imposing a form upon a matter.”
— Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Description
The advanced research studio “Wood Proto-architecture 3.0,” will investigate the generative potential of material systems and fabrication processes in architecture. This studio will explore collaborative design principles for a specific fabrication and construction process, which was studied and developed in the context of the research studios “Wood Proto-architecture 1.0 and 2.0,” through prototyping scaled installations. The aim of this research studio is to develop [Augmented] robotic fabrication to construct experimental timber structures at the school of architecture.
The studio will introduce students to the concept of integrative design computation in architecture. This concept is three-fold: exploring material systems, developing computational design tool, and investigating related fabrication tools. The proposed material system is wood as an anisotropic material with high-performance and adaptation. One challenge of this studio will be the development of a computational framework to integrate material characteristics with related fabrication processes into a design computation method. In addition to exploring material system this research studio will investigate advanced fabrication processes such as robotic fabrication, as a generative driver in design processes. Students will collaborate in fabrication and assembly processes through Mixed reality (MR) technologies, such as Microsoft HoloLens headset to apply their design intention in real-time.
Students will explore a design space, as a parametric space, through a generative design tool to geometrically differentiate and parameterize timber wood structures (such as wood joinery systems). The design explorations are constrained to the fabrication space and material characteristics. The process of form generation in a parametric design space is concurrent with robotic/CNC fabrication of small-scale prototypes. In addition, students will analyze the structural behavior of their prototypes to feed back the simulation results into their design. Prototyping scaled model will help students to understand the process of constructing a one-to-one demonstrator.
Students can work in groups of three. They will be needed to actively take part in design development, fabrication, assembly, and documentation of the project during the fall semester.
This studio includes three workshops: 1) computational design workshop, which will discuss about integrative computational tools, such as Autodesk Fusion 360 to sketch, design, simulate and manufacture a design concept; 2) robotic 3d printing workshop, which will introduce advanced robotic controls to explore the experimental robotic fabrication in design; and 3) Mixed reality workshop, which will introduce the HoloLens Headset to integrate design, fabrication and assembly of final installation through mixed reality technologies.
The project “Hygrosensitive Kinetic Façade” investigates the architectural application of the hygrosensitivity of wood. The final design is a kinetic façade system installation made of a maple-spruce bilayer that passively responds to changes in relative humidity in the environment.
eCaaDe 2020 presentation video
Hygroscopic behavior in wood has not been widely applied in architectural design. Therefore, initial research was conducted on this material behavior, including its effects on wood types and wood bilayer actuators. A humidity chamber was built to control the relative humidity, which fostered an exploration of the dimensional change of wood bilayers in relation to moisture condition. Experiments were conducted to better understand the wood’s hygroscopic behavior; these focused on aspect ratio, thickness ratio, geometry, and grain orientation.
The design process was a combination of a bottom-up material implementation and a top-down design proposal. Since wood is a natural material, its nonuniformity leads to an uneven dimensional change. As a result, the façade’s basic geometry was generated using only two major parameters—grain orientation and moisture content—to optimize certainty in the shape change. Computational simulation was performed on a dynamic shape to predict the curvature conditions. The Timoshenko Equation was adopted to simulate the curvature of bi-layer wood caused by relative humidity fluctuation in the environment. Changes in the width of the bilayer pieces were restricted to ensure that the final installation matched the simulation to the greatest extent possible. Hygroscopic bending formed the monoclastic bilayer pieces in this project. These were unrolled to return to their original shapes before being bent for fabrication.
This shape-shifting façade demonstrates the potential for new architectural applications of wood to achieve both aesthetic and functional results. The façade is environmentally friendly because it is made of wood, which is one of the most eco-friendly materials, and is a passive system actuated only by environmental factors that require no additional energy. Therefore, this kinetic façade system has the potential to be used broadly in future envelope design.
This project received the following honors: Award of Honor (The Society of American Registered Architects Student Design Awards), Award of Merit (SARA NY Design Awards), Silver Winner (IDA Design Awards), Silver Prize (Wood Change Award), Student Award Winning Architecture Projects (World Architecture Community Awards), and Honorable Mention (Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Awards).
“A system is “soft” when it is flexible, adaptable, and evolving, when it is complex and maintained by a dense network of active information or feedback loops, or, put in a more general way, when a system is able to sustain a certain quotient of sensitive, quasi-random flow.”
— Soft systems, Sanford Kwinter.
Description
Advances in design computation methods and fabrication processes provide new possibilities for designers to explore the manifestation of form in terms of materialization. Form manifestation can be investigated through behavioral approaches that are associated with basic material characteristics and fabrication parameters. Behavior-based approaches expand the design solution space, which previously was unavailable for designers restricted to top-down processes. Behavioral fabrication is a bottom-up process of integrating fabrication constraints and capacities into design processes.
The elective course “Behavioral Robotic Fabrication” introduced students to behavioral fabrication in architectural design. Students learned basic robotic fabrication processes that have been applied in architectural design thus far. Students were introduced to advanced robotic controls for digital fabrication and explored experimental robotic fabrication processes in art and architectural design. Accordingly, students gained practical experience in robotic fabrication by working with an industrial-scale robot, KUKA KR AGILUS.
This course focused on behavioral aspects of robotic fabrication processes, such as on-line, responsive, or interactive robotic controls. Students investigated different types of robotic fabrication tools (end-effectors) to build a custom end effector. Through sensory systems, students developed a soft system to adapt the physical realm of fabrication to the digital design environment.
Wood Proto-architecture II: Integrating Design Computation and Materialization
“It is a question of surrendering to the wood, then following where it leads by connecting operations to a materiality, instead of imposing a form upon a matter.”
— A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Description
The research studio “Wood Proto-architecture II” investigated the generative potential of material systems and fabrication processes in architecture. This studio aimed to explore integrative design computation, which unfolds specific material gestalt and related performative capacities without differentiating between processes of computational form generation and physical materialization. This studio will focus on the design and construction of research installations at the School of Architecture. Following “Wood Proto-architecture I” offered in Fall 2018, students will continue to explore wood material properties and digital fabrication processes to prototype scaled installations.
The studio introduced students to the concept of integrative design computation in architecture. This concept is two-fold: developing material systems and exploring related fabrication tools. The proposed material system is wood, a material with high performance and adaptation. Students investigated the anisotropic and hygroscopic nature of wood to understand tectonic potentials of wood morphology in design processes. Concurrent with developing material systems, students explored the potential of digital fabrication tools, such as robotic fabrication and CNC routing, as generative drivers in design processes.
Synthesizing these two agencies was further explored by developing a computational design framework to minimize the gap between formation and materialization. To achieve this, students developed computational design strategies and conducted a series of small-scale experiments. Students then applied the refined version of their experiments to prototyping a meso-scale installation.
This studio was supported by the elective course “Behavioral Robotic Fabrication,” which introduced students to fabrication agency in the design processes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
