The Co-designing Circular Plastics project was a small initiative. As proof of concept, PI 3D printed a scaled chair (1:2) with an industrial robotic arm.
Development of a Co-designed Circular Interface
A user interface (UI) will be developed to integrate distinct aspects of user-friendly and circular economy.
Implementation of Co-designed Circular Construction
A design for fabrication method has been developed to integrate material properties and robotic fabrication into consideration. This integrated design method follows the principles of co-designing circular plastics. The process includes the preparation of recycled materials for printing a chair with an industrial robotic arm.
The Result of Co-designed Circular Plastics
A scaled model (1:2) of a chair was designed based on human ergonomics while considering material and fabrication capacities.
Since 2018, PI has developed an advanced technology curriculum that highlights the agency of materials in our built environment. Courses like ARCH5500-Computational design and construction, ARCH5500–Behavioral robotic fabrication, ARCH 5500-Cognitive design and fabrication, and ARCH5500-Robotic additive manufacturing focus on applying advanced technologies in design. This fund supported these ongoing curricula to advance UVA’s position in sustainability for design and construction. It helped students learn a new economic model in design and construction.
Author and Image Credit
Ehsan Baharlou
Image Credit
Ehsan Baharlou, CT .lab, University of Virginia, 2023
Chair No. 7, funded by the Jefferson Trust, examined the robotic 3D printing of PLA to make a 1:1 scale chair. It aimed to establish a circular plastic production of architectural furniture to reduce plastic waste. Additionally, an integrative computational tool was developed to assist with form generation.
The circular use of plastic
Plastic materials in various forms—including thermoplastics, thermosets, and elastomers—are commonly used in building construction today. They are used indirectly as construction molds or directly as building facades or interior spaces. Recent use of plastic composites such as carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP) presents the undeniable potential of their use in building structural elements (Menges and Knippers 2021). However, the long biodegradation of petroleum-based plastic necessitates changing the mindset about plastics use.
Novel approaches like Cradle-to-Cradle (McDonough and Braungart 2002) and Circular Economy (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2013) propose the design and implementation of a sustainable approach in manufacturing. Circularity in production challenges the linear model of economy, “take-make-waste” (Leonard and Conrad 2010), by investing in the efficient use of resources through innovation in repurposing waste materials.
From shredding to extruding thermoplastic
The general awareness of the negative environmental impacts of plastic waste is effective in generating movement towards implementing circularity in plastic waste management. This includes adapting industrial-scale plastic recycling processes to smaller scales to fit on a desktop. Recycling plastic waste, after washing, includes shredding plastic waste into small pieces and melting them down to produce filaments. These filaments can be used directly or pelletized. This process helps close the circle of plastic waste and enables the design of a closed-loop system that includes each process from manufacturing plastic objects to reusing plastic waste.
Additionally, applying a robotic industrial arm in 3D printings allows designers to design beyond the imposed dimension of a 3D printer’s bed. This changes 3D printing from just prototyping towards printing building elements at a 1:1 scale.
Case Study: layer-by-layer robotically 3D printed chair
One of the plastic types that is widely used in 3D printers at the University of Virginia School of Architecture is Polylactic Acid (PLA). PLA is considered Number 7 in the plastic waste categorization. Its biodegradation and low level of toxicity make it popular for prototyping architectural models. However, a huge amount of failed 3D printed prototypes is considered landfill waste. A reclamation process for this type of plastic would decrease this waste and can be extended to other non-toxic plastics such as Numbers 1 and 5.
Robotic Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is a layer-by-layer process of extruding polymers such as PLA. This layer-based process might differ from 3D printing with supports in that complex geometry is rationalized to have 3D printed supports for overhanging sections. Thereby, printing layers are designed to act as structural supports for upper layers. This manufacturing process reduces 3D printing time. Rationalizing complex geometries requires the integration of materials and fabrication constraints in design processes at the earliest stage of design.
This case study, a 1:1 scale chair, tested the formation to materialization stages to establish a circular plastic production of architectural furniture by 3D printing PLA. An integrative computational tool was developed to assist with form generation. This tool integrates three main parameters involved in the production of a robotically 3D printed chair: PLA’s mechanical and structural properties, limitations of the robotic fabrication system (KUKU KR120 R2700-2) and pellet extruder head (MDPE10, Massive Dimension), and selected individual human parameters. Tilley (2002) in “The measure of man and woman” identified the human factors of designing ergonomic chairs (Tilley 2002). These design factors can be abstracted to user-based parameters to individualize each product, such as the height and width of the individual human body.
A series of experiments was conducted to identify the required parameters for 3D printing PLA palettes, such as the robot kinematic velocity, the temperature, and the revolutions per minute (RPM) of the extruder head. These experiments used a fixed 5mm nozzle to determine other parametric variables. The experiments included determining the inclination angles, width, and height of each 3D printed layer. These parameters shaped a parametric space as a design solution space for designing a chair.
The result is an ergonomic chair, robotically 3D printed with PLA. In order to change the color of the chair, red color concentrates (3DXTECH) were added. The rate of red spectrum was calculated with the amount of red concentrate by weight to the overall weight of the pure PLA. The fully automated process of 3D printing includes the automatic feeding of pellets to the robotic fabrication system. The overall process of robotically 3D printing this chair was between 14-16 hours, including everything from preparing the material to fully 3D printing the chair.
Discussion
This case study showcased the automation process of 3D printing an ergonomic chair, an everyday thing. The computational framework facilitates the integration of material properties and robotic fabrication systems, while parametrically allowing design adjustments to human parameters. The process of integrating material and fabrication parameters enables designers to exploit a design solution space curated with the specific material and fabrication system. This space, confined to the capacities and limitations of materialization processes, provides an exploratory space that monitors the constructability of the design. This encourages designers to embrace design agencies to address individuals’ needs. It provides a platform to consider human parameters as important factors of circular design. This computational interface allows designers to witness the process of formation located within their fabrication capacities.
Author and Image Credit
Ehsan Baharlou
Project student research assistants
Avery Edson, Keaton Fisher, Juliana Jackson, Eli Sobel, and Tabi Summers
Image Credit
Ehsan Baharlou, CT .lab, University of Virginia, 2023
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Melissa Goldman, UVA School of Architecture fabrication lab manager, and Dr. Trevor Kemp, UVA School of Architecture fabrication facilities assistant manager, for their profound support. The exhibitor also thanks the Jefferson Trust for funding this research project.
References
Cheshire, David. 2021. The Handbook to Building a Circular Economy. Second edition. Newcastle upon Tyne: RIBA Publishing.
Ellen MacArthur Foundation. 2013. “Towards the Circular Economy: Economic and Business Rationale for an Accelerated Transition.”.
EPA. 2023a. “National Overview: Facts and Figures on Materials, Wastes and Recycling.” Accessed November 22, 2023. https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-facts-and-figures-materials.
Faircloth, Billie. 2015. Plastics Now: On Architecture’s Relationship to a Continuously Emerging Material. London, New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Leonard, Annie, and Ariane Conrad. 2010. The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health–and a Vision for Change. 1st Free Press hardcover ed. New York: Free Press.
McDonough, William, and Michael Braungart. 2002. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. 1st ed. New York: North Point Press.
Meikle, Jeffrey L. 1995. American Plastic: A Cultural History. New Brunswick N.J. Rutgers University Press.
Menges, Achim, and Jan Knippers. 2021. Architecture Research Building: ICDITKE 201020. Basel: Birkhäuser.
Tilley, Alvin R. 2002. The Measure of Man and Woman: Human Factors in Design. Rev. ed. New York: Wiley.
“When a structural concept has found its implementation through construction, the visual result will affect us through certain expressive qualities which clearly have something to do with the play of forces and corresponding arrangement of parts in the building, yet cannot be described in terms of construction and structure alone. For these qualities, which are expressive of a relation of form to force, the term tectonic should be reserved.”
— Eduard F. Sekler (1960), “Structure, Construction, Tectonics”, in Structure in Art and in Science.
Description
Advances in computational design methods and fabrication techniques provide new possibilities for architectural designers to consider different paradigms for design and making. These paradigms emphasize the relationship between formation and materialization. Through robotic additive manufacturing, designers can construct buildings or building elements quickly.
The studio “Additive Tectonics” explored the tectonic expression of additive manufacturing in different architectural contexts, from constructing affordable housing with earth materials to investigating the construction of settlements on other planets. The studio focused on the exploration of such architectural tectonics as an abstracted skin or wall system; a tower or a column as a structural element; a vault or a shell as a roof system; a hut or a shed; or other, new building tectonics. One-to-one structures were designed for the North Terrace at the University of Virginia’s Campbell Hall.
Students explored additive tectonics through three stages. The material system development stage demonstrated various materials—such as bio-based, bio-degradable, or bioplastic materials—and their properties and limitations in additive manufacturing. In computational design development, students considered the material properties and fabrication constraints in prototyping. Finally, robotic additive construction—which can be defined as abstraction, formation, rationalization, and materialization to explore novel tectonics—enabled students to execute their design prototype to examine their design’s tectonic potential in building an architectural element.
A series of integrative workshops supported this studio. Formation workshops introduced Grasshopper as a CAD software that can be used for form generation. Materialization workshops presented students with a numerical-based fabrication process. Students learned to control an industrial robotic arm and 3D-print tectonic prototypes.
“The manifest form—that which appears—is the result of a computational interaction between internal rules and external (morphogenetic) pressures that, themselves, originate in other adjacent forms (ecology). The (pre-concrete) internal rules comprise, in their activity, an embedded form, what is today clearly understood and described by the term algorithm.”
— Who is afraid of formalism?, Sanford Kwinter.
Description
Advances in design computation methods and fabrication techniques provide new possibilities for designers to consider different paradigms for design and making. These paradigms emphasize the relationship between formation and materialization. Form manifestation can be investigated through behavioral, emotional, and cognitive approaches. Cognitive and emotional design approaches center humanity in production processes to address their needs. The implication of human-centered design methods will change the production of goods from mass-production and mass-customization to more personalized manufacturing. This new form of industrial thinking challenges disciplines such as architectural design to profoundly investigate innovative design approaches and fabrication techniques.
The elective course “Introduction to Cognitive Design and Fabrication” introduced students to cognitive design principles, computational design processes, and additive manufacturing techniques. After learning the principles of cognitive design, students developed their own design that applied these principles to the design of “Everyday Things”. This included, for example, items essential to responding to COVID-19, such as face masks, safety glasses, and face shields. In addition, students were introduced to additive manufacturing techniques such as 3D-printing and robotic additive manufacturing to materialize their design.
This course included two workshops. The first, on computational design, discussed integrative computational tools, such as Autodesk Fusion 360, to sketch, design, simulate, and manufacture a design concept. The second workshop focused on robotic 3D-printing and introduced advanced robotic controls to explore experimental robotic fabrication in design.
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