We are pleased to share photos of the 2011SP Pratt | Form, Force, Matter Seminar Midterm Review.

Additional photos can be found Here.

Course Description:
Form, Force, Matter will investigate the conceptual and technical terrain of simulation within architectural design. As a design strategy and a mechanism for analyzing and synthesizing the performative characteristics of the real, simulation is capable of finding stable configurations within complex systems that include temporal, physical, and material pressures. The spatial and organizational effects of this methodology can be traced through the work of Antonio Gaudi, Heinz Isler, and Frei Otto, as well as a multitude of contemporary practitioners. Implemented through a framework of analog computing, digital simulation, and virtual prototypes, such an approach is inherently instrumental because of the direct proportionality to the physical and the capacity to augment the pressures influencing synthetically generated forms. Thus simulation is tangible, to-scale, and non-representational, allowing us to design operatively on the world and effectively for the contingences inherent to thinking and making in architecture.

Student Participants (Images Courtesy of):
Wilson Cheng
Joseph Woo Young Kim
Chelsea Mailler
Paul Scrugham
Erianthe Semerzakis
Gillian Shaffer

We are pleased to share photos from our recent Pratt 2011SP Pratt | Digital Crafting Midterm Review.

The seminar is examining the procedural distinctions between craftsmanship and manufacturing; the former being the “workmanship of risk” and the latter the “workmanship of certainty”. Digital Crafting operates through a framework of computational, material, and fabrication strategies that hinge on the craftspersons’ skill, dexterity, and willingness to embrace the unknown, what has been termed “Risk” by David Pye in his seminal work, The Nature and Art of Workmanship .

It is our assertion that through this notion of Risk we may best critique our current milieu and arrive upon an apt characterization of Craft, as well as its affiliated set of procedures, within architectural praxis today.

Participating Students:
Heidy Garay
Justin Hattendorf
Sharon Jamison
Eun Ji Lee
Seo Hee Lee
Victoria Perez
Christopher Santos
Ji-Won Shin
Jia Rong Zhu

Thank you to Christopher Santos for the great set of photos!

More information and photos can be found HERE!

We are pleased to share photos of the 2011 UMinn. Catalyst Workshop | Material Intelligence Installation.

Special thank you to Marc Swackhamer for the invitation to participate in this excellent event!

Student Participants:
Aaron Frazier
Angela Bateson
Ben Garrison
Christianne Roach
Eric Lindner
Jessica Andrejasich
Keith McDermid
Marcus Hulmer
Pablo Villamil
Rob Holley
Shona Mosites

Additional photos can be found Here.

Studio Mode will be presenting the lecture, Material Intelligence this Friday in conjunction with the 2011 UMinn. Catalyst Workshop Series.

Special thank you to Marc Swackhamer for the invitation to participate in this excellent event!

Catalyst Participants:
Aaron Frazier
Angela Bateson
Ben Garrison
Christianne Roach
Eric Lindner
Jessica Andrejasich
Keith McDermid
Marcus Hulmer
Pablo Villamil
Rob Holley
Shona Mosites

Additional photos | modeLab.

The Fay Jones School of Architecture is inaugurating a new Advanced Digital Fabrication Lab [DFAB-LAB]  supporting new research and teaching initiatives directed by 21st C. Chair in Integrated Practice, assistant professor Santiago R. Pérez. The new lab will provide specialised computer-controlled machines for both small-scale protoyping and large-scale industrial fabrication of components in steel, wood, and experimental materials for architecture. The lab has been outfitted with a custom high-gantry, 5-Axis CNC mill and Steel Plasma Cutter, an innovative tool that will provide new opportunities for research and teaching.

FABCRAFT will  inaugurate the opening of the DFAB-LAB with a series of workshops, culminating with an exhibition of work at the Bentonville sUgAR gallery.

Thank you to Santiago Perez for the invitation to participate in this excellent event and to all the wonderful students who made this project happen!

More information + photos can be found at the following links:
srpLAB Flickr
Santiago Perez srpLAB
sUgAR Gallery

For additional exhibit information, please contact the sUgAR gallery at (479) 273-5305

FABCRAFT explores the intersection of advanced digital fabrication meth­ods, informed by computational design, with traditional craft-based practices.

Traditional craft-based methods of production such as weaving and basket-making share a common trait with 21st century design and fabrication methodologies; they are based on Procedural, Bottom-Up Component Strategies, combining many small pieces or operations into a unified whole. While twentieth century construction and product design methods relied on standardized “tooling” for production of identi­cal parts in assembly-line processes, twenty-first century design and production practices increasingly embrace the possibilities afforded by computationally derived forms and robotic or “CNC” computer controlled fabrication capable of modeling, sequencing, cutting and even assembling thousands of unique individual parts into a structurally optimized complex geometric assemblage. Increasingly, architects and designers are critically engaging these new technologies to both re-assess and re-think the trajectories of modern design, embracing both craft and computation.

The distinguishing hallmarks of this emerging generation include an interest in com­plex PATTERN, MASS-CUSTOMIZATION and PARAMETRIC design. The most recent advances in computational design and fabrication are beginning to embed real-world forces such as gravity, strength of materials, wind, etc. directly into the computation­al form-finding approach, using new software allowing designers an unprecedented level of intuitive control and optimization of form, resulting in environmentally re­sponsive and structurally optimized forms, produced entirely within a digital work­flow, from “FILE TO FAB.”

The unanticipated result of this approach, is a new “open-source” collective intelli­gence, relying increasingly not on machine intelligence, but rather on human inter­action and innovation, across previously unrelated disciplinary boundaries.

FABCRAFT will  inaugurate the opening of the DFAB-LAB with a series of workshops, culminating with an exhibition of work at the Bentonville sUgAR gallery.

The CELENTO / PEREZ STEELCRAFT workshop, FEB 17-19, will feature collaborative work by David Celento and S. Perez, utilizing CNC plasma cutting & 5-axis milling. The workshop will be held at the Government Avenue DFAB-LAB.

The PARAMETRIC CRAFT workshop, FEB 26-28, will feature DIGITAL FORM FINDING using parametric software [Rhino Grasshopper], coupled with KANGAROO, presented by Ronnie Parsons & Gil Akos of STUDIOMODE. Kangaroo is a “live physics engine for Rhino & Grasshopper. It embeds powerful mathematical models of real physical behaviour directly in Rhino’s 3D modelling environment; so designers can use it to integrate with and inform a design right from the very earliest stages.”

More information can be found at the following links:
Santiago Perez srpLAB
sUgAR Gallery

For additional exhibit information, please contact the sUgAR gallery at (479) 273-5305

Woodbury: San Diego Event Series
Saturday 29 January – Monday 31 January

Woodbury University School of Architecture students, faculty, and alumni may sign-up to participate in three days of advanced software and digital fabrication instruction.

Maxwell with Cameron Crockett.
Ecotect with Oliver Pennetier of SYMPHYSIS.
Revit with Jason Anderson of CASE.
Rhino | Grasshopper with Ronnie Parsons and Gil Akos of Studio MODE.

Many thanks to Marcel Sanchez-Prieto for the invitation!

Material Intelligence was a one-week intensive design and prototyping workshop held in New York City during the week of August 16-20.

Brief:
The relationship between the designed object and the forces surrounding that object are always present, perceivable, and tactile. These forces span, among others, material, fabrication, economic, cultural, as well as political domains. In this manner, the object can be thought of as simultaneously existing within a charged field of pressures while adding its own charge back into the field. Contemporary tools (digital fabrication) and technology (associative environments) provide a strategic means for navigating the multitude of forces at play, while the prototype serves as the activating link between material research and design innovation.

Methodology:
This workshop progressed through a series of focused strategies beginning with material testing, followed by the development of prototypes, and arriving at aggregations of a single topological type. Each prototype was created by simple operations, undertaken through a specific disposition, and evaluated for performative potentials. All assemblies were designed in an associative environment (Grasshopper) and iteratively tested utilizing digital fabrication equipment (CNC 3-Axis Mill and CNC High-Force Cutter). The workshop concluded with a reception that exhibited design prototypes and full scale assemblies built by participants over the course of five days.

Material Intelligence was conceived through a collaboration between Studio Mode/modeLab and Tietz-Baccon.

Photos courtesy of Adam Elstein Photography.