augmented architectures

Mestrado em Arquitectura e Computação ISCTE-IUL

2009-12-30T15:25:00.001Z

Mestrado em Arquitectura e Computação ISCTE-IUL
(Departamento Arquitectura Urbanismo/ Departamento Ciências e Tecnologias de Informação)
http://dau.iscte.pt/

Inscrições abertas [1ª Edição]: até 31 Janeiro 2010

O novo curso ambiciona atingir no ISCTE métodos de investigação dirigidos a uma prática digital com tecnologia de topo oferecendo o primeiro Mestrado a pesquisar assuntos de arquitectura e computação em Portugal.
Novos materiais, técnicas e métodos constructivos são de importância crescente na formação de arquitectos, engenheiros e designers entre outras profissões. A organização do programa de mestrado em Arquitectura e Computação prevê a consolidação e o aprofundamento das seguintes competências tecnológicas:

> Aprender e desenvolver técnicas de prototipagem rápida (Impressora corte a laser, Impressoras 3D, CNC router );
> Aprender um leque de técnicas algorítmicas ou métodos computacionais usados para gerar e optimizar forma (Modelação 3D Paramétrica);
> Computação Física - Projectar através de protótipos e artefactos embebidos de tecnologias electrónicas (actuadores e sensores);
> Desenvolvimento de paradigmas de Interação-Homem-Máquina (Human Computer Design, Interface Design);
> Aprender e desenvolver linguagens de programação (Processing, C#, ou outra linguagem de programação por objectos);

Formato: Formato intensivo da parte lectiva em 4 meses[Maio-Julho 2010] e elaboração de tese em 6 meses [Setembro 2010 a Fevereiro 2011].
Destinatários: Arquitectos, Urbanistas, Engenheiros, Designers, Artistas Plásticos.
Condições de acesso: grau de licenciatura.
Informações: nancy.diniz@iscte.pt

"Thinking Aloud" PhD Lecture Series

2008-09-17T23:03:00.003Z

"Evolving Behaviour in Architecture"

A Conceptual Framework for Performative Spaces

PhD research by Nancy Diniz

Bartlett Graduate School, 18th September, 16:00

2nd Floor, Room 246, Torrington Place

Thinking Aloud PhD lecturers

Contemporary Architectural Challenges 2008

2008-07-29T13:40:00.002Z

CAC - Contemporary Architectural Challenges: Conception; Production and Performance
FAUP, Porto, Portugal from 22 to 24 September 2008.

I am going to participate in a round table of CAC 2008, a scientific and cultural international event encontro Internacional which aims to discuss present challenges in the conception and construction of architecture facing today´s techno-cultural context. Some of the participants include: Ted Krueger, Ignási Sola Morales, Neil Spiller, Neil Leach, Josep Maria Montaner, José Bragança de Miranda, Adrian Forty and many more.

Body tailored space at ISEA and Siggraph 20008

2008-07-15T14:19:00.002Z

"Body Tailored Space - Evolving Spatial Space" is going to be presented at ISEA - International Symposium of Electronic Arts 2008 and Siggraph 2008.

"Body Tailored Space" on The Body Project Symposium

2008-05-08T22:19:00.009Z

I will be giving a lecture on "The Body Project", 13th May, at 13.30.
It is organised by the Slade Research Centre and it will host a variety of discussions, lectures, brainstorming sessions, and collaborative art projects revolving around all manner of ideas about The Body.

My presentation reflects my research of the past 2 years where I explore through several design experiments that space within an embodied interactive approach is to be perceived not as abstract, neutral space, but as the space of “lived experience”. The aim it to explore the potential of architecture to communicate, respond and perform for its inhabitants in an evolutionary fashion.
I´m looking forward to meet people researching on this subject from such different perspectives and backgrounds!

The symposium runs between 12 and 15th May 2008.
Woburn Square, Slade Research
Centre University College London, (10-11 Woburn Square)

2008-02-01T01:37:00.000Z

It has been a while since I posted something. I have just trying to figure out how I am going to finish my PhD till October. In the meantime I have to find time and funds! to present a paper at CAADRIA 2008 "Beyond Computer Aided Design", in Chaing Mai, Thailand between 9-12 April, and another one at ISEA2008 the biennial International Symposium On Electronic art, in Singapore between 25-30.

Pecha Kusha Night Lisbon Vol.#3

2007-12-05T19:06:00.000Z

Lectures and Talks

2007-11-28T10:49:00.000Z

I am going to give a lecture about my research at the Bartlett Graduate School / MSc in Adaptive Architecture and Computation , on Thursday, 29th Nov at 11.30, 1-19 Torrington Place, Room 247. Everyone is welcome!
Also, I am giving a presentation at Pecha Kusha Night Lisbon #3, on the 18th December, 9.30pm, at LUX. Pecha Kusha format was created in Tokyo by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham architecture), it was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. The presentations are very dynamic, it is 20 presenters, each with 20 slides and with 20 secs per slide. LUX is by the way the most beautiful Club in the world! So if you happen to be in Lisbon on that date, check it out!

Portugal Now Exhibition

2007-10-31T12:49:00.000Z

Nausea Transformer
Long Live the New Video Skin
Life Speculatrix
An approach to 3D Digital Design

Update on the Portugal Now 2007 event

2007-10-31T12:26:00.000Z

Portugal Now: Country Positions in Architecture and Urbanism is the third in a series of conferences and exhibitions organized by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University. The series explores some of the most intriguing currents in contemporary architecture, landscape architecture, art, and urbanism in different parts of the globe. Portugal Now will examine examples of emerging contemporary Portuguese architectural practices and how they contend with global political, economic, and social realities.
The Event consists of:
_Conference
November 1, in Ithaca, NY__Cornell University AAP Department
November 2, in New York, NY__Cornell University AAP NYC Space
_Exhibition
Openning: November 1, in Ithaca, NY__Cornell University AAP Department
Openning: November 2, in New York, NY__Cornell University AAP NYC Space

PARTICIPANTS Conference
Carrilho da Graça
Pedro Bandeira
CVDB
Camilo Rebelo
EMBAIXADA
Moov

PARTICIPANTS Exhibition
Álvaro Siza Vieira
Gonçalo Byrne
JLCG - João Luís Carrilho da Graça
Eduardo Souto de Moura
Contemporânea
Promontório
Paulo David
Cannatá&Fernandes
Aires Mateus e Associados
ARX Portugal
Menos é Mais
Camilo Rebelo
CVDB
EMBAIXADA
MOOV
A.S.* Atelier de Santos
Pedro Bandeira
Bernardo Rodrigues
Pedro Pacheco
S’A Arquitectos
Barbas e Lopes
Nuno Brandão Costa
Pedro Gadanho/Nuno Grande
Augmented Architectures
RED Design
Alberto de Souza Oliveira
Plano B
Ricardo Jacinto
Didier Fiuza Faustino Lopes

PortugaL Now 2007 Website

Space and Place

2007-10-13T05:10:00.000Z

ACADIA Expanding Bodies Conference
NSCAD University's new Port Campus, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Metabolic Sensory Workshop

2007-10-13T04:33:00.000Z

It was great to hang out, learn and share opinions on materials, sensors and actuactor with the workshop leaders and some really nice and hard working participants (not me) like Jonah, Marnie, Jensil, Nima, Ruiri, Candace, Amanda and many many others. They made it possible to move these thick heavy ropes with "servo" motors actuators. Check out Candace Fempel´s post in her blog, she describe the installation process quite well.
Expanding Bodies ACADIA Conference,Halifax, Canada.

Portugal Now 2007

2007-09-24T10:26:00.000Z

Augmented Architectures studio was invited to participate on the exhibition and publication of "Portugal Now" curated by Carla Leitão, Visiting Critic at Cornell University. It takes place at Cornell University, College of Architecture Art and Planning- AAP in Ithaca, New York and in NYC Manhattan in November 2007.
The exhibition includes several Portuguese offices focusing on new emergent practices on Portuguese Architecture, Urban Planning and Art.
Programme following soon!

Metabolic Network Sensory Workshop

2007-09-20T20:14:00.000Z

Within the context of "Expanding Bodies" ACADIA 2007 conference, there are several workshops going on. I am looking forward to participate on "This two-day workshop, on the theme of “Metabolic Network”, brings together five researchers working in the area of electronic sensing in art and design, with a special focus on textiles and architectural-scale applications. The network will be a large installation made from a field of suspended fibers that have different properties: such as elasticity, conductivity, dissolvability, or luminosity. By joining the fibers together, a field of possibilities open up and patterns within the field emerge. The use of sensors and actuators, both electronic and mechanical, will provide dynamic and responsive features in the network. The result will be a metabolic network that emerges, acts and self-destructs over the course of the two-day period."
Workshop leaders are:
Philip Beesley
http://www.philipbeesleyarchitect.com/
Carole Collet
http://carolecollet.com/
http://www.arts-of-fashion.org/af%202005/bio%20Carole.htm
Mette Ramsgard Thomsen
http://cita.karch.dk/citapeople_mrt.html
Rachel Wingfield and Mathias Gmachl
http://www.loop.ph/

The cost of the workshop is $60.00 or $20.00 for students. Cost includes a workshop lunch and refreshments. To participate contact Jordan Winters at:
Acadia07workshops@dal.ca

Transitive Space

2007-09-19T23:29:00.000Z

The Transitive Materials workshop at Ubicomp ´07, turned out to be a prolific space for informal discussion about smart materials, textiles, design and computation, behaviour(s), design methodologies, learning models, and many more subjects including the definition of transitive materials itself. It certainly created a lot of food for thought. I hope this workshop continues in future editions. I feel this is just the beginning of an exciting field of research. Congrats to the the organizers Marcelo Coelho, Neri Oxman and Sajid Sadi from MIT for putting this event together and all the participants for sharing so many interesting ideas.

Nausea Transformer

2007-09-19T23:25:00.000Z

Nausea Transformer up and running. The basic idea is to give sound a physical dimension. It recycles "noise" into a "pleaseant sound" and learns to predict sound environments.

Ubicomp 2007 - Transitive Materials

2007-09-10T09:51:00.000Z

I am participating on the workshop "Transitive Materials - Towards an Integrated Approach to Material Technology" at Ubicomp 2007, Innsbruck Austria 16 September 2007.
I will be presenting "Augmented Membranes", a summary of my design explorations on responsive surfaces.

Program:
Marcelo Coelho, Sajid Sadi, Pattie Maes, Joanna Berzowska and Neri Oxman
Transitive Materials: Towards an Integrated Approach to Material Technology
Stephen Barrass
Faux Fur Taxtiles: bridging the gap between cloth and skin
Sharon Baurley, Philippa Brock, Erik Geelhoed and Andrew Moore
Communication-Wear
Joanna Berzowska, Di Mainstone, Marguerite Bromley, Marcelo Coelho, David Gauthier, Francis Raymond and Valerie Boxer
Skorpions: Kinetic electronic garments
Marcelo Coelho
Programming the Material World: A Proposition for the Application and Design of Transitive Materials
Nancy Diniz
Augmented Membranes: Design Explorations into Responsive Materials
Jeng-Neng Fan and Daniel Schodek
Personalized Furniture within the Condition of Mass Production
Omar Khan
Open Columns: Responsive elastomer constructions for patterning the space of inhabitation
Brad Kligerman and Jamil Mehdaoui
Genetically Modifed Spaces: Art, Architecture and Territory -- The Fabrication of a Wave in Venice's Lagoon
Neri Oxman
Digital Craft: Fabrication-Based Design in the Age of Digital Production
Sajid Sadi
Metadesign: Design for design -- a path beyond mass customization
Sabine Seymour and Mika Satomi
Designing for the extended body: Hearing aids and transitive materials
Mette Ramsgard Thomsen
Building liveness: imagining architecture as a robotic membrane
Dido Tsigaridi and Mikael Powell
SMA Variables: Directing Kinesis
Anna Vallgarda
Investigating the Aesthetic Potential of Computational Composites
Alyssa Wright
Building Process: A Framework for Fluid Construction

Life Speculatrix

2007-08-22T12:55:00.000Z

2007-08-04T16:30:00.000Z

Read Sascha´s comments of Dislocate2007 at "We make money not art". It is always nice when your work gets attention from my favorite art blog.

Kiowa Project Space, Kiowa, Tokyo

2007-07-28T16:19:00.000Z

"Life Speculatrix" finally in action at Dislocate 2007 (after a few too many problems with the Japonese power system and a few trips to Akihabara to buy Japonese adaptors).
23 July to 5th August 2007, at Kiowa Project Space, Kiowa, Tokyo.

Dislocate 2007

2007-07-05T09:43:00.000Z

ART, TECHNOLOGY, LOCALITY
Exhibition, Symposium and Workshop series

24th July – 5th August
Tokyo and Yokohama
Ginza Art Laboratory (Wednesday – Sunday 3-8pm)
Koiwa Project Space (Tuesday – Sunday 2-7pm)
ZAIM 28th & 29th July 11am-4pm Symposium and Workshops
Opening Event Koiwa Project Space 24th July 7pm
Performance Event ZAIM 29th July 6pm

Artists Include:
Active Ingredient http://www.i-am-ai.net/
Christian Nold http://www.softhook.com/
Dan Belasco Rogers www.planbperformance.net/dan/
D-Fuse http://www.dfuse.com/
Taeyoon Choi http://tyshow.org/
So-Hyeon Park
Erik Pauhrizi http://butonkultur21.org/
Andreas Schlegel and Vladimir Todorovic http://syntfarm.org/projects/btc/
Yuko Mohri http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~moo/
Augmented Architectures http://www.augmented-architectures.com/
Stanza http://www.stanza.co.uk/sensity/index.html
Disinformation
All Events are Free!

Dislocate 07 – Festival for Art, Technology and Locality
Dislocate brings together a group of over 30 international artists in an exhibition, symposium and workshop series in Tokyo and Yokohama. Considering the spacial and social dislocation which can occur through technology, these artists are investigating how new media can be rooted in its specific location and form a meaningful relationship between ourselves and our surroundings.

Dislocate aims to explore the potential new media has to increase our awareness of our environment, enhance participation in our locality and community and transform our perceptions of the space we inhabit.

This project presents cutting edge approaches to new technology art but with a view to seeing beyond the technology itself, examining what lies past the screen.

Dislocate prompts us to reconsider the alternative uses of the personal technologies which surround us, not merely offering an escape route from our current situation but also a tool to actually confront this very location.

With an endless array of spaces available to us, we can select our contexts of participation like the channels of a television. We may be highly active in an online space, engrossed in our constructed personal space, but by choice or otherwise we may distance ourselves from our immediate surroundings. We are presented with the freedom of ‘unlimited’ possibilities and yet are we making these decisions consciously or are they occurring without thought?

Dislocate considers the very integration of new media with the environment and this might be utilized to consciously reconnect with our location, seeking to explore, question and debate how can technology be used to heighten our engagement with our surroundings instead of isolating us from our immediate space.
When numerous places converge in one site, how do we navigate such space? How does our interaction within a given space formulate identity and how can this be communicated effectively to elsewhere?

These are some of the questions which will be raised through the Dislocate events.

2007-06-27T19:59:00.000Z

My paper "Towards a Living Architecture" was accepted to "Expanding Bodies" ACADIA 2007 Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia · October 4-7, 2007

Abstract: Interaction is the latest currency in architecture, with responsive components reacting to the inhabitant of the space. These units are designed, installed, by the architect with a view to the phenomenology of space, where the experience of the environment is previewed and preconstructed before it is translated into the conception of the space. However, this traditional approach with new technology leaves no scope for the architecture to be alive in and of itself, and thus the installation piece quickly becomes just that: isolated and uncontained by its environment, a spectacle for the masses. In this paper, we argue that a way to approach the architecture of responsive environments is to design for a piece that is truly living, and in order to propose a living architecture first we need to understand what the architecture of a living system is. This paper suggests a conceptual framework based on the theory of Autopoiesis (Maturana and Varela 1980) to create a “Self-Producing” system through an experiment entitled “The Life of a Wall”. We identify several interdependent stages in the context of an environment constantly being designed and re-designed through its inhabitation. The wall has a responsive membrane controlled by a genetic algorithm reconfiguring its behaviour according to different stimuli and learns to adapt itself continually to the evolutionary properties of the environment, thus becoming a situated living piece.

Art and Artistic Research

2007-06-17T13:07:00.001Z

"Art and Artistic Research are not identical. They share the same means but not the same goals. - The validity of artistic research does not depend on the production os successful art objects. It might produce successful art objects, but then again, it might not. - the art market is no recipient for artistic research. - Art is centred on the desirable object, even if the object has vanished into concepts, performance, or distributions. - In the past, artistic research had to disguise itself as art, because there was no offer register in society. - Art is a weak solution to the question of research. - A negative outcome is acceptable. - If there is a failure, it lies in the wrong commitment to the process of research. - An artistic researcher has to trust his process more than his result. - A truly procedural art does not exist. - Artistic research should not be judged by artists and their like. - Artistic research offers the solution to the problem that is Art. - Artistic research is all that art is minus art's dependency on production. - Artworks and exhibitions have to be judged by their contribution to research and not to by their ability to please or be sold. - The artist is of no use, value, or interest."
Michael Schwab, RCA Summer Show 2007.

Dis-locate 2007

2007-06-01T15:27:00.001Z

Our interactive installation "Life Speculatrix" has been selected for Dis-locate 2007 Exhibition, in Tokyo, Japan, July 23rd - August 5th 2007
Ginza Art Laboratory
Koiwa Project Space
Held over two sites, of contrasting locality, Dislocate will present new possibilities of our immediate space and the multiple connections which link to elsewhere. The projects look really interesting! Check out the other artists selected.

Siggraph 2007

2007-05-31T23:20:00.000Z

Our sketch "Nausea Transformer" was accepted at Siggraph 2007, 34th International Conference in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, San Diego USA 5-9 August 2007.
Abstract: The word "noise" comes from the Latin word nausea meaning "seasickness", or from a derivative (perhaps Latin noxia) of Latin noceō = "I do harm", referring originally to nuisance noise. Generally all non-musical sounds are considered to be noise. Noise is a complex concept and source material to deal with; it is an invisible architectural element with an undefined aesthetics. It deeply affects people and yet people feel very powerless to interact with or control it. The fundamental idea is to turn noise into a reprocessed living, evolving and tangible experience, by interacting spatially and temporally with the environment and its observers. Our purpose is to raise people’s awareness to sound, in all its forms: speech, non-speech sound (sound pollution sources) or natural sound, and treat it like data with a corporeal dimension. We aspire to convey an embodiment to an often neglected “hidden dimension”, by adding it to a phenomenology and a poetics of visual space. Building up on our research in interactive membranes, we introduce "Nausea Transformer": a sound reprocessed machine that unexpectedly can create pleasant behaviours by recycling noise into pleasant sound, therefore promoting new interactive experiences to a nearby audience.

Bartlett School at the CNN

2007-04-27T12:49:00.000Z

The Bartlett School of Architecture will this month feature in CNN’s popular documentary series “Quest”. Setting out on a quest to build his own architectural wonder the programme’s host Richard Quest approached the Bartlett to become an architectural student for the day.
This will be quite interesting to watch!
It shows at: 0700, 1500 and 2000 Saturday 28 and 0700 and 2000 Sunday 29 April 2007.
CNN Documentary Series "Quest to Build".

Morphosis in "Arquitectura & Vida"

2007-04-11T17:17:00.000Z

Our project "Morphosis" has been featured at "Arquitectura & Vida" April issue. Jose Pedro Sousa wrote the review. He is co-founder of ReD Research+Design. He won the FEIDAD award in 2005!

Call for Internships for 3D Modelling

2007-04-11T17:10:00.000Z

Call for internships at ADETTI, ISCTE, Lisbon at a R&D project for 3D modelling and Animation.
Contact Miguel Dias, at midias@microsoft.com.

Folding architecture

2007-03-27T17:46:00.000Z

I have been wanting to buy this toy for a while now. It is the famous Hoberman sphere, now Hoberman is absolutely the guru of deployable structures. I love his toys, sculptures and architectural structures and since I'm building prototypes with deployable structures, I had to have this wonderful classic. It expands and contracts so smothly, it is such a joy!

Luminous Cloth

2007-03-27T02:50:00.000Z

Me, and almost every designer I think has dreamed about making/working this material. Finally, there is a comercial product called LumiGram. This luminous fabric, based on fiber optics, emits a colored light along the full length of the fibers, producing a stunning luminous effect.

Origami Tesselating

2007-03-24T14:33:00.000Z

I always wanted to try the art of Origami. I feel very attracted to its all organicity. I'll investigate methods to to create a deployable surface for a new project, and this weekend I'm going to give it a try! I bought paper and I'm ready for lot's of creasing!

I'll let you know about my results. Above, a beautiful example called the "Kawasaki Rose Crystallization", desined by Kawasaki.

Plant and grow your own house

2007-03-21T11:52:00.000Z

This project is part of a shift in architectural concepts dealing with ecological-materiality issues. Architects Mitchell Joachim and Javier Arbona, along with environmental engineer Lara Greden, have designed a house that will grow from a few seedlings into a two-story, water-recycling, energy-efficient abode. The Fab Tree Hab, a mix of ancient and ultramodern environmentally friendly technology.
Instead of building a home out of green materials, the trio figured, why not construct a living, breathing house? “Something that’s alive and thriving,” Joachim says. They hope to plant the first house within five years, but for now, they’re working with Israeli arboriculture firm Plantware, testing techniques for growing the lattice-like weave of vines and roots that will form the walls. Despite its odd exterior, the house will look normal on the inside. The walls, packed with clay and plastered over, will keep out the rain, and modern technology will be welcome. Yet there are still a few practical kinks to work out. Joachim wonders, for example, how a planning board will react to a house that constantly expands. Each house will take at least five years to grow, depending on the climate, but Joachim envisions the structures being grown and tended to on a farm. Customers could pick a finished tree habitat and then have it transported to and replanted on a lot within 100 miles.

Artificial Love

2007-03-21T02:31:00.000Z

As part of my research on ideas of architecture as living machines and artificial life processes, at the library I came across this book "Artificial Love" by Paul Shepheard and I was drawn into its title. I have this thing about titles of books, I always feel curious to know if the content lives up to a good title... unfortunately life is full of good titles and rubbish contents. I also have other obsessions like covers of cd's, and also with navigability of websites....if it doesn't appeal to me visually, I tend to give it a miss or lose focus...but that is another subdivision of my superficial personality…
Besides, "Artificial Love" passed the 1 minute attention span, so I brought it home. It is half fiction half essay. Shepheard's account is fuelled by a noble purpose: to reclaim the machine as a human artifact, relating to human emotion, dreams and purposes. Any machine, however complex, can be seen as a purely human production, and an object of love, existing in an complex network of motivations and relationships. The machine, as Shepheard sees it, is not standing outside, or above or below the phenomenon we call civilisation, but is instead woven into the fabric of human culture: "We make the machines, we are their programs".
This notion is very important to me because I think robots and machines in general lacki that emotional dimension, they are not likeable, and this is one of my main challenges. What are the criteria of empathy between man and machines?

robotic membrane

2007-03-18T21:17:00.000Z

Morphosis: prototype #4.
It is assembled, and the flexinol actuates it: physical pixel.

CAADFutures 2007

2007-03-17T13:07:00.000Z

Our paper "Morphosis: A Responsive Membrane" was accepted to the CAADFutures 2007, in Sydney 11-13 July, Australia. The focus of the conference is integrating technologies for computer-aided design. So, we are looking forward to it!

Abstract: In this paper, we introduce Morphosis: A Responsive Membrane, which physically responds to movement, light and sound interacting spatially and temporally with the environment and their inhabitants. The dynamic of the material is made of dozens of actuators made by Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) which react in real time to change the shape of the membrane. The result is not only incorporating interactivity within the physical nature of the material with performance and aesthetic nature but also adding levels of functionality. The Morphosis prototype, borrows its design logic from ubiquitous electronic technology, robotics, and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) models as integral components of the design system.

2007-03-12T17:20:00.001Z

This lever is actuaded by a Flexinol electronic muscle controled by a Phidget board connected to a laptop running a c++ program.

2007-03-09T10:01:00.000Z

We finally made it work. Now for the SMA actuators.

It is a question of Time

2007-03-09T03:12:00.000Z

I have an obcession with time planning, organising my life in-between 2 cities. So, I spend most of my time, planning time, scribbling calendars on every piece of paper I come across to.
This is the first calendar that completely satisfies my global perspective of the year.
By the very talented W. Bradford Paley.

Turning to form

2007-03-04T18:10:00.000Z

Cardboard was first used by Frank O'Gehry in his famous furniture.

It has been extensively used since then by designers and architecture students.

I love the work of Ball-Nogues Studio. They have exciting installations exploring the tectonics of architecture.

Algorithmic walls

2007-03-03T09:03:00.000Z

Above, an image of a previous project of ours, "City of Gestures", an experiment with virtual reconfigurable surfaces through user-interaction. The user changed the shape of surface making movements with a flashlight directed to the screen.
Below, a prototype of an algorithmically designed brick wall, produced with a standart industrial robot during a diploma seminar at the ETH zurich. A lot of parametric design is being practised in schools and by some architects by very few examples are actually built. So it always exciting to see it physically, this one is a striking example of how efficient and rigorous algorithmic-designed surfaces can look.

Robotics and furniture

2007-03-03T07:28:00.000Z

Our 1st prototype "stiquito robot" and below robotic furniture by
Designer Victor Vetterlein. His Woojuin (2007) is a light fixture inspired by pod architecture & robotics.

Phenomenology revisited

2007-03-02T05:05:00.000Z

Phenomenology is defined by the exploration and description of phenomena, where phenomena refers to things or experiences as human beings experience them. Any object, event, situation or experience that a person can see, hear, touch, smell, taste, feel, intuit, know, understand, or live through is a legitimate topic for phenomenological investigation. There can be a phenomenology of light, of colour, of architecture, of landscape, of place, of home, of travel, of seeing, of learning, of blindness, of jealousy, of change, of relationship, of friendship, of power, of economy, of sociability, and so forth. All of these things are phenomena because human beings can experience, encounter, or live through them in some way. A person and the world are intrinsically part of one another. I'm from a generation of architects who was introduced in phenomenology through the classes of theory of architecture and particularly by the book "Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture" by Norberg-Schulz which was highly discussed and praised. I read it to pass my exam and quickly lost interest as I just couldn't understand how post modernism could be such a bad product of such good intentions... Of course, later on, architects like Peter Zumpthor, and Steven Holl claimed themselves phenomenologists and bla bla. Yet, recently, through my own research on interactive systems I find it attractive as a philosophical design current in contemporary architecture, as being based on the physical and haptic experience of building materials and their sensory properties. Hence the reason for this revival.

2007-02-28T23:38:00.000Z

Natural digital world generated from an image of an apple pie.

AI, Cybernetics and language and conversations

2007-02-26T03:21:00.000Z

It all started with the Turing Test, created by Alan Turing and is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to perform human-like conversation. Described by Alan Turing in the 1950 paper "Computing machinery and intelligence," it proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test. With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think.
Conversation is the basis of all that we know. Hence cybernetics, which is itself a formal inquiry into what we can know and how we know it, is always concerned with conversations.
An early machine (above) by Gordan Pask was Eucrates (c. 1956), an embodiment of a conversation between machines, where one machine literally 'teaches' the other.

Natural quality

2007-02-25T22:45:00.000Z

Some time ago we started experimenting with 3D free hand designed surfaces. The amazing thing is that it looks organic, unlike parametric design for example. We have a "natural" quality, not yet replicated by generative design. Perhaps if a structure would learn from humans, what we like and do not like, that structure will also aquire a "natural" quality in its behaviour.

Narcissus and Glam

2007-02-24T06:27:00.000Z

This is a project from students of the MArch II UCLA.
"The course involved studying Arthur Harry Church drawings of a flower, developing (vacuum formed) plastic detail techniques, and eventually a composition. Our group chose the Narcissus pseudonarcissus, or Daffodil. Initial studies centered around the section where the petals twist into the outer skin of the stem and the bifurcation of the petals in the blooming process."

Evolution, Mathematics, Autopoiesis and Living machines

2007-02-24T03:17:00.000Z

Lately I've been looking at issues regarding what is the criteria to describe living things? and why physical phenomena take the form they do?

The theory of evolution by natural selection was first put forth in detail in Charles Darwin's 1859 book "On the Origin of Species". In the 1930s, Darwinian natural selection was combined with Mendelian inheritance to form the modern evolutionary synthesis. With its enormous explanatory and predictive power, this theory has become the central organizing principle of modern biology, providing a unifying explanation for the diversity of life on Earth.

Obviously, "On Growth and Form" the D'arcy Thompson's original book written in 1917, had to be revisited. He looks at the way things grow and the shape they take. In the chapter "On the theory of transformations." He explored the degree to which differences in the forms of related animals could be described by means of relatively simple mathematical transformations. The central thesis of "On Growth and Form" is that biologists of his day overemphasized the role of evolution, and underemphasized the roles of physical laws and mechanics, as determinants of the form and structure of living organisms.
Now, Autopoiesis literally means "auto (self)-creation" from the Greek, and expresses a fundamental dialect between structure and function. The term was originally introduced by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in 1973. The term autopoiesis was originally conceived as an attempt to characterize the nature of living systems. A canonical example of an autopoietic system is the biological cell. This body of theory concerns the dynamics of living systems, purporting to answer the question "what is the characteristic organization of living systems?" The process of Autopoiesis lies at the heart of the answer. Autopoiesis (the process) is defined through a definition of 'living machines'. (to be continued)

Non traditional material realities

2007-02-20T19:46:00.000Z

"Long lives the new video flesh" is a project of ours dating back from 2004. It describes a system of a dynamic and interactive environment taking inspiration in the 1983 film by David Cronenberg entitled "Videodrome". The movie thereby provides a metaphor for proposing an embodied interface merging video from a physical realm into digital form in real time through an "emotion detector". The main challenge is to detect emotional states of the physical reality and translate them into the digital dimension in real time. The main objective of the project is to test possibilities to turn it into an emotive mutable and permanent membrane for an architectural surface in a near future. This experiment also seeks out to reflect on the growing interest in integrating media elements into architecture and how these new emerging principles are creating non traditional material-realities. With our experiment we want to create digital systems that are extended into social space creating the potential for architecture of reciprocity, reacting to and with the activity and emotions of people. And demonstrate a potential means of achieving a more spatial and temporal interactivity.

In praise of the body

2007-02-20T02:00:00.000Z

Understanding architecture implies the unconscious measuring of an object with one's body, and of projecting one's body into the space. We feel confort and pleasure when the body finds resonance in space. Understanding architecture is understanding the relationship of its scale and the human body.
Above: "In the upper room" by American Ballet Theatre, coreography by Twyla Tharp and music by Philip Glass. Sadler's Wells, 18 Feb 2007.