beyondperformance

[beyondperformance]

I haven't been updating this blog recently because I was building my website. I will still post any research that I'll be doing, but it will be more spare than ever.

Thank you for following for the past two years. Have a look at the new site, and any feedback is more than welcome!

[beyondperformance]

Octahedral robotic structure under testing at The Bartlett School of Architecture's robotics lab - UCL. Massive thanks to all involved.

Can't wait for site testing in 2015!

[beyondperformance]

15 days, 10 participants, 8 arduinos and a lot of creative spirit

[beyondperformance]

Consequential Spaces

Consequential Spaces is an interactive experience which explores the consequences of marine water ballast and the unintentional transport of marine life across oceans. This research-based narrative is part of Fascinate 2014 (Falmouth, Cornwall, UK) and is carried out by B-Pro graduates and IAL members:  William Bondin, Francois Mangion, George Tsakiridis, Eleftheria Varda and Chryssa Varna.

Read more at FASCINATE2014.

[beyondperformance]

Consequential Spaces

[beyondperformance]

Press Play

This short video is a result of a two week workshop carried out during EASA 2014 in Velitko Tarnovo Bulgaria. Participants formed three groups and were asked to derive a concept from “games & play”, propose an architectural intervention and construct a working prototype.

Organised by EASA Bulgaria.

Led and Tutored by Interactive Architecture Lab.

Supported by SmartFabLab Sofia.

Group 1

Participants: Marius Costan, Ali Can Erol, Veronika Smetanina, Petra Ilijevic

Concept: Competitive Play

Prototype: A two player game, where each player knocks on a table to ‘push’ a light towards his opponent. The game ends when light reaches the base of either player.

Proposal: The architectural proposal was for a light intervention on an abandoned soviet bridge in the city of Velitko Tarnovo. Addressable light sections would flash in different sequences depending on how many people would touch the bridge’s railing. The aim is for visitors to compete for their own mark on the bridge crossing the Yantra River, an echo of the actions by Bulgaria’s past architects.

Group 2

Participants: Andrea Zerafa, James Dingli, Justin Coppini

Concept: Collaborative Play

Prototype: A small ball is placed on a fabric held at three points, with each point being able to move up or down based on the player’s distance from the game. The game ends when the fabric is no longer held flat and the ball falls off.

Proposal: A light-space modulator in an abandoned soviet engine room, at the Yantra River dam. The corroded mechanical components on site, are the carcasses of engineering projects from an era when technological development was at its peak in eastern Europe. The light space modulator provides visitors to interact with the space through shadow puppetry, generating new mechanical spaces and projected experiences.

Group 3

Participants: Kipras Kazlauskas, Morta Pilkaite

Concept: Zero Player Game

Prototype: A light following robot, based on the literature of Valentino Braitenberg - Vehicles (1986).

Proposal: The proposal was for the deployment of hundreds of small robots with very simple functions in the city of Velitko Tarnovo. Reference is drawn from the shear scale of the EASA event, and how 500 people affect the functioning of a city.

[beyondperformance]

In those early years of practice, preceded by formal architectural education, young Maltese architects look outwards from their micronation towards the global scenario for references, inspiration and professional development. Digital Processes is an exhibition comprising individual research projects carried out by six young Maltese architects who recently completed postgraduate degrees in the UK, Spain and the Netherlands. Exhibiting under – Arkitettura Performattiva – the projects are a reflection of local architects operating on a European scale, and looking back into their micronation. A self-autonomous, robotically driven architecture; a caustic based, form-finding design process, and a multi-objective optimisation of building geometry are amongst the current design research projects existing within the international architectural scenario, however they also a reflection of local practice. We believe that the process is more important than the final product, thus, the exhibition will not only feature completed projects but also the process through which these design proposals have been derived. Showcasing work by: 

William Bondin Francois Mangion Sean Buttigieg Zack Xuereb Conti Joe Galea

[beyondperformance]

Morphs make it to Zurich, at Fabricate 2014

[beyondperformance]

MORPHs will be at the A-Eye exhibition at Goldsmiths, University of London on the 31st of March 2014.

[beyondperformance]

Big Data: Designing with the materials of life

A two-part exhibition organised and supported by the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Central Saint Martins and the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Static Exhibition

A static design exhibition which will present biologically-driven design narratives, including work from Ann-Kristin Abel, William Bondin, Natsai Chieza, Rob Kesseler, Amy Congdon, Ruairi Glynn and Ollie Palmer.

Live Workshop

A live design-science project in collaboration with MRC Clinical Sciences Centre as part of the ‘Fabrics of Life’ series. Starting on the 22nd of January and for three weeks, the Lethaby gallery will become an incubator studio where emerging designers from MA Textile Futures (Central Saint Martins UAL) and architects from the Interactive Architecture Lab, (RC3, the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL) will create new design proposals in response to the research of leading biological science labs.

[beyondperformance]

Interdisciplinary Research is Essential

Brooks didn't 'invent' new AI...he translated cognitive processes into computation ones, and here is why: Henry Molaison was a patient who in 1953 had 2/3 of his hippocampi (part of the brain responsible for memory) removed, during an attempt to cure his epilepsy.  He could not form new memories, however he could still develop new skills and had retained a very good spatial memory (he was able to remember the layout of his new house by remembering the movements/ procedures he did to get from one room to another). This eventually proved that spatial memory and motor skills occur in different neural structures than semantic and episodial memories. Brooks paper on nodal mapping is a literal translation of this observation. He argues that the way forward in robotics is not to store paths and maps, but to store relationships between sensory events. Why is Brooks a genius? (by my standards at least...). Because he was able to look out of his comfort zone, and explore new fields in order to understand his own. For that, I salute you.

[beyondperformance]

The Bartlett School of Architecture is one of the world's most exciting architecture schools, in one of its most inspiring cities. Our name stands for provocative ideas, boundary-pushing research and high-achieving lecturers and students. We are part of The Bartlett: UCL's global faculty of the built environment.

[beyondperformance]

Inherent Motives

This research highlights the gap which exists between digital simulation and physical prototyping in the performance of dynamic architectural systems. Feedback loops are explored as a solution to mediating between these two domains as well as providing a means to steer material and morphologically embodied behaviour towards desired goals.

Building upon this understanding, a prototype for adaptive and kinetic structures is presented called “Morphs” along with a speculative proposal for their deployment as a mobile reconfigurable architecture.

[beyondperformance]

Bend Don't Break: A lesson I've learnt in RC3

I am, by profession, an architect. I was trained to think that the world has a problem, that it is broken, and somehow we can fix it. Wooden beams sag and metal sheets warp. Time shapes materials in ways which we, as citizens of Utopia, do not embrace. Unlike our three-dimensional models, reality is messy and inconsistent. What worried me most is that what I was designing and what I was building, behaved completely different.

Since I started my current research, I started to realise that the world is not broken, it is bent. The wooden beams were not broken, they were telling a story by adapting to their realities. Bend don’t break. Suddenly everything fit into place. I shall focus less on the fictional breaking, and more on embracing and guiding the bending. Embrace the error, embrace the inconsistency. However, as an architect, acknowledging the inconsistency was not enough, I wanted to measure it and quantify it. If reality is messy, how come my calculations are so clean and precise? The problem does not lie in the error, but in the perfect ideal. So I started to fiddle with sensors and feedback loops, in order to transfer this messiness into the digital domain.

I was once told that Calatrava produces additional sketches after his details are built. In a linear design methodology this is absolute nonsense. Sketch, drawing, detail, building. This is what I was used to. However, the feedback loop questions the very principles of a linear methodology. Like the master craftsmen who dotted Europe with gothic cathedrals, I started to get involved in the making as much as the drawing. In fact, at some point, I made pieces which I hadn’t drawn yet. During machining, I became even more aware of the “bend don’t break” mantra. On CAD software, architects draw straight lines and perfect perpendicular edges. In reality, nothing is straight. If you disagree, use a micrometer. Tolerances, flexible mountings and rubber spacers accommodate these “errors” and are more effective than high precision manufacturing. So why do we speak of 3D printed buildings and CNC fabrication? After all, this is architecture not medicine. To be honest, I don’t know. I think the way forward is not to reduce tolerance but to increase it.

[beyondperformance]

Making of a custom engineered servo mechanism. The mechanism is designed to animate a series of polyhedra, called MORPHs.

[beyondperformance]

Temporal Geometries

[beyondperformance]

Some assembly required

Exploded view of prototype servo-mechanism.