core.form-ula

New addition to our 3rd column scripting++ section wework4her

_Context and argument.

Ted Kruger , in his lecture series, Instrument and Instrumentality , uses Herbert Simon’s distinctions between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ sciences to describe the ‘sciences’ as operating on two agendas: understanding the world ‘as-is’ and speculating on ‘as-it should be’. Subscription to, and extension of the argument would mean that ‘applied science’ could be posited as the bridge between the two. Further, (architectural) ‘design as research’ could be argued to exhibit similar properties of using, translating, transposing and adapting the descriptive tools of natural science to engineer an imagined and wished world. However, it could also argued that this ‘translation’ has to be negotiated against more ‘weathered’ concerns of design including discourses on formal language, performance fitness, spatial perception and experience, socio-cultural implications etc. The over-arching context of this paper will be ‘apposing’ the current interest and rapid evolution of computation within architectural design, against such an idea of applied science. read more

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New addition to our 3rd column scripting++ section

biothing is working on an algorithmic articulation of the interface between the material behaviors and computational instruments in an attempt to engage with complexity. Computational patterns are understood as deep in terms of their potential to produce expressions at various scales. At the core of the work is an accumulative library of scripts and methods for their transcoding, networked with constraints of materials, structure, esthetics, fabrication and assembly. Evolving algorithmic infrastructure allows a designer to work at the scale of information linked to various forms of materialization. read more

Popularity: 3% [?]

The architectural design community is faced with a shift in focus from an object-centric model of design creating aesthetic objects in fields to propose, instead, valid and relevant solutions to complex problems within complex systems. In this, traditional boundaries of ownership, ego and control need to be examined as does the flow of, and access to, elements of the design process. The issue is how to adjust an old model of project methodology which is not structured to support a systems-based approach. Based on philosophical foundations which have been developed precisely to address these issues, the SYNCH Research Group (synchRG), Lawrence Technological University, has initiated a project focused on a theoretical organizational system of research which addressed the idea of systems, curatorship, invited experts, open source standards and focused crowd-sourcing as a core operational structure. read more

Popularity: 3% [?]

For this years DesCours, an annual AIA event, held in New Orleans Louisiana. Francis Bitonti (fadarch.com) and Brian Osborn (bo-th.com) collaborated to construct a 500sqft robotic canopy.

The illuminated canopy fills the upper portion of a small courtyard in the French Quarter. As participants fill the courtyard the space is transformed by a field of kinetic devices. “Our objective is to create a fluid public condition which is programmed by habitation and social interaction.” Participants control the architecture through the seating. The ceiling is created from a grid of robotic components. The components randomly contract and expand while at rest. When the space is empty only one turns on at a time. As people begin to occupy the seats under the canopy, more components begin flickering on and off. Two people will cause three units to randomly dance around three people will activate four and four people will activate 5 etc… read more

Popularity: 2% [?]

SOFTlab participated in Random Number’s SYSTEM:SYSTEM exhibition with their site specific installation, pAlice. The piece connects all of the openings in the room with a singular surface, turning it inside-out and giving viewers reference to the exterior of the room without physical access to it. Viewers can also look inside the surface from the outside of the room and see a space that is the surface average of these openings without actually seeing the interior space of the room. pAlice is made of over 2400 laser cut triangles and over 3600 custom connections. All of the tooling and labeling was automated using a custom written MEL script.

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Popularity: 14% [?]