#arc311

[clara-roth]

Exercise 6 - Robotic Toolpaths

Our group was also interested in creating Euclidean objects for the robot to draw. This series of cubes investigates how the perception of the shape changes when rotated in space and viewed from different camera angles.

[allegrarc311]

ALLEN (intro)

“It is precisely when practice and experimentation turn up inconsistencies in the “normal science” that new theories are produced.” (XII)

“Constantly mixing media in this way, material practices produce new concepts out of the materials and procedures of work itself.” (XIII)

           We have spoken this semester of risk and surprise. Craft is risk, the evolutionary algorithm must produce surprising results to be worth our time, prototyping depends on risk and unknown to discover new systems—otherwise it would be a model not a prototype. Innovation in architecture happens in the gaps between what we know, in the processes of building and designing and creating in which we do not know the end result. Allen reintroduces this notion, speaking to how “theory” and “practice” are actually the same: practice produces theory, and in doing so makes theory another sort of practice. It’s architecture; our end results almost always take up space in the real world, and for that reason we are quite tethered to our realities which means our theories must constantly be acted upon, adapted to the world. They must constantly evolve, learn, grow. 

           “Tethered to a fast-moving reality, material practices need to be agile and responsive, which often requires that they leave behind some of the weighty baggage of received ideas” (XV). There is a constant back and forth between concept and making. Architecture has a responsibility to keep up with the latest technological innovations, the newest climates and cultures, and for that reason we do things like learn of building systems in our architecture class not in the details of plumbing and air conditioning, but in understanding geometry, tools, concepts of workflow that will keep us steady through a fast moving reality. It is our responsibility to refuse to think of architecture and architectural ideas as monolithic; they have to change rapidly, constantly.

           “Architecture is of necessity a discipline of circumstance and situation.” (XI). We respond to clients and client needs. We respond to the world, the world responds to architecture in a recursive loop in which true innovation must result in the risk, the surprise, the unknown of this in-between. It’s been an interesting semester of learning methods and concepts that could be scaled up, scaled up, stretched and pulled in order to derive inspiration for architectural works. They’re tools, now, we adapt them.

[anewmanifestation]

cement cast #3

[chitrap311]

ARC311 Exercise 5 and Blog 7 | November 6, 2019

Overall, working with our topography and converting it to a wooden surface was not dissimilar from the way in which Bundy, Burstall, Weir, Young “formalized a problem” in the AI reading. Bundy et al. wrote,  “Let us weaken the task initially, to that of writing a computer program that will merely check our solution, and then develop it into a program which finds the solution itself.” The idea of weakening a task related well to the way in which the CNC mill reads information (through a tap file that essentially is a list of points on a planar coordinate system). There were many key design decisions that we made throughout the process - for instance, we had to decrease the U and V values to change the size of each block unit in order to make the surface manageable for the CNC mill to drill within a reasonable time frame; to some extent, we were working around the rate of the machine by finding a compromise between fine detail and time. We also had to scale the height of our topography to accentuate differences in elevation, and in doing so, we were making aesthetic decisions about which cut levels would best portray the topography we were hoping to display. 

That being said, aside from design decisions, throughout the week, as we attempted to use the mill to create our surface, we encountered trouble with the CNC mill due to a variety of reasons. In our first try, we were printing a surface that was a rectangle while using a square-shaped block of wood. As we did not fill in this blank space, the mill tried to trim the surface by shaving off the extra block of wood layer-by-layer. As a result, the edge of the drill bit brushed against the edge of our surface and essentially burned the edge. During this process, the wood also moved slightly and our final product did not work properly as the coordinate system alignment was disrupted.

Our experience on our first try highlighted key relationships between the tool and the surface that we did not fully anticipate ahead of time. The path that the machine took to create the surface also caused the edge to be burned because the machine tried to remove the excess block earlier on in the process rather than waiting until the edge had been shaved down to its lowest point (at that point, the height of the drill bit would have been tall enough so that it would not have brushed against the edge). 

Images from our first attempt are shown in the second row.

During our second try, the block was kicked up by the machine because it was too light to be properly held by the drilled ‘roadblocks’ surrounding it, and thus, our print did not work until we attached the block to a larger block of wood underneath to hold it in place during milling. Although our first two tries were unsuccessful, these experiences showed us the importance of set-up in working with machinery. Often, we place a lot of importance on the computational portion of working with the mill -- however, steps such as initialization, vacuuming, and holding down are equally important. 

Images from our second attempt are shown in the second row. Our final product (third attempt) is shown in the fourth and fifth rows, with the fourth row showing our first attempt and final attempt in comparison.

In sum, the relationship between the topography, data, and the mill resonated with the idea of simplification that Bundy et al. set forth. The data served as the driver of the mill - as the instructions - but the data itself was not complicated. It was simply a list of points. As such, the mill also exemplified the idea of “a program which finds the solution itself.” By being able to comprehend the list of points to then convert them to locations on a coordinate system and subsequently locations to cut/drill, the mill was able to ‘find the solution.’ As a group, thus, we learned about the role of process in computation - not just in terms of how the mill required the simplification of the topography into data but also in terms of how various parts of the milling process (even as simple as making sure the material does not even move in the slightest) are extremely crucial to the final output. It is easy to forget how these steps make a difference in the final output, especially as we design and make decisions on the computer, but as we learned, they can make or break the project. 

Team Members | Elizabeth Keim & Chitra Parikh 

Source | A. Bundy, R. M. Burstall, S. Weir, R. M. Young, “Preface” and “Geometric Analogy Problems” in To Artificial Intelligence, Occasional Paper: 3, 1976.

[realtalk-princeton]

Anyone have advice on choosing between ARC311, CEE374, and CEE345? Need to choose two out of three of them and can't decide.

Response from Heisenberg:

CEE 374 and ARC 311 overlap, so I'd probably go with ARC 311 (CEE 374 NPDF kinda sus) and CEE 345 (although new course w/ no reviews kinda sus). Was not given any academic context, so vibes should probably be the determining factor i.e. shop the classes and see which group of people you vibe with the most.

Readers?

[2019arc311-blog]

Sally Jane sjruybalid.tumblr.com Chitra chitrap311.tumblr.com Halima halimamatthews-arc311.tumblr.com Tatijana sunfold.tumblr.com Annette annettechu.tumblr.com Elizabeth eakeim.tumblr.com Samuel princetonianchocolate958.tumblr.com

[professormcewen-blog]

Intro

In preparation for a fluid and evolving contemporary design practice, ARC311 introduces physical prototyping and related computational strategies. Across platforms and instruments, exercises and readings emphasize process development as a core competency in architecture.  A lecture component provides a technological overview, situated in a long-term cultural perspective and a theoretical framework. Focused lab modules provides exposure to a range of prototyping and fabrication resources at Princeton SOA.

[anotherlab-blog1]

Building Technologies foundational course ARC311 at Princeton is an undergrad course that culminates with group projects staged with robotics in the Embodied Computation Lab. Student work from tutorials and assignments are posted selectively.

[clara-roth]

Exercise 6 - Robotic Toolpaths

In this last series, we wanted to try out the glow sticks one more time. We noticed with the sphere that the glow sticks created images that were very blurry, so we were interested in trying a rather simple curve as opposed to the complex sphere. We tried many different drawing speeds of the robot and different camera setting, but most images drawn with the glow sticks still turned out very blurry.

[clara-roth]

Exercise 6 - Robotic Toolpaths

This series of images examines the effect of mirror reflection. The image drawn by the robot is perfectly duplicated by the mirror.

[clara-roth]

Exercise 6 - Robotic Toolpaths

In this series of spheres, we experimented with different light sources. We created two spheres with two different curves, one more complex than the other. We drew both of them with a light blinking in three different colors (bottom right image) and were interested whether the initial curves would still be visible when the image was created with a blinking light source. The blinking of the light source created a interesting pattern of blurry dots in both pictures, but both are still distinguishable and relatable to their initial curves. In the bottom two pictures (yellow spheres) we drew the spheres with glow sticks. The light source was a lot bigger and at the same time less bright, which is why the images turned out to be just a circular blurr.

[clara-roth]

Reading Response Week 11: Matthew Crawford

In “The Jig, the Nudge, and Local Ecology”, Crawford writes about the “jig” as a method of human experts which helps them improve their memory and work capacities. Crawford states that the maximum capacity of our working memory as humans is very limited, however, humans are able to “vastly extend [their] intellectual capacities” (p.35). The reading in respect to our class makes me want to compare the memory and work capacities of humans and robots.

Humans use spatial “jigs” to cue the environment in order to make themselves focus on a specific activity without constantly having to think about it. They make activities easier for themselves by “informationally structuring the environment as they go along” (p.33). This prevents them from forgetting steps or getting distracted form their work or activity. For humans, this tactic is very helpful because “there is only so much room in [their] head[s]” (p.32).

Unlike a human, a robot is unable to improve its memory capacity by arranging its working environment in a certain way. A robot only does whatever it is programmed to do (at least this is true before artificial intelligence). However, this also means that a robot really doesn’t need to put cues in its environment: As it is programmed by humans and doesn’t have its own will or feelings, it will not get distracted or forget steps. If anything, the programmer of the robot, i.e. the human, has to cue the robot’s environment. As Professor Parascho showed us in the workshop last week, she had to measure out space, define coordinates as points of orientation and set up planes, etc. for the robot to work. This is similar to the way that Crawford describes unskilled human labor: “The jig is […] rigidly deployed by someone other than the worker him- or herself” (p.34).

Robots’ memory capacity is a lot higher than humans’, however, there are also limits to the amount of information robots can receive and store. As Professor Parascho demonstrated, it can happen that the robot keeps moving and stopping and moving and stopping (rather than moving in one continuous motion) because the rate at which information is sent to the robot is not as fast as the robot processing this information. This opposes the following quote from the text which refers to a machine: “The busier it gets, the more ‘on’ it is” (p.34). The example by Professor Parascho shows that indeed, machines have limits as well, and if it gets too busy, they might even stop.

Overall, this reading and relating it to the capacities of robots raises a debate over the efficiency of robots vs. humans (or at least skilled experts). What is more efficient: A robot with a very high memory capacity but no potential for improving this capacity by its own cognition, or a skilled human expert with a significantly lower memory capacity but the ability to cue its environment with jigs and use other cognitive methods to extend its intellectual capacities?

[clara-roth]

Exercise 6 - Robotic Toolpaths

On of the main features of drawing with a robot is the ability to draw in a three-dimensional space. Therefore, our group wanted to create mainly three dimensional shapes and objects. I was reminded of of an artwork I have seen multiple times in the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, Germany, which consists of bed frames floating in space (see top image). Therefore, I was interested in drawing other everyday objects (chairs, tables) that would then be floating in space when drawn by the robot.

[Group work with Anoushka and Sonya]

[clara-roth]

Reading Response Week 12: Stan Allen

In the introductory chapter of his book Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, Stan Allen opposes the categories “theory” and “practice” as shown in the following table.

However, Allen doesn’t just argue that architecture is practice rather than a theory, but he also suggests a further differentiation between two competing categories of practice. He distinguished between “discursive practices” and “material practices” as in the following table.

Allen argues that architecture qualifies as a material practice rather than as discursive practice for multiple reasons:

1) The Specificity of Building Compared to other discursive practices as writing, film, new media, etc. architecture is “relatively inert as discourse”. Practicing architecture as discursive practice is “a troublesome pursuit”. However, as material practice, architecture’s material and instrumental properties present great opportunities. Architecture’s real attraction is its source of creativity, operational power, and pleasure. [p.14]

2) Architecture’s Agency in the Public Architecture is part of a complex social exchange. Because of the constant change of the public sphere, architecture cannot rely on existing norms and conventions of agency but needs to be agile and responsive to the fast-moving reality. Therefore, architecture must be conceived as material practice. [p.14/15]

3) Practical Consequences and Effects of Architecture “The ability of architecture to generate perceivable experiences and sensations in the world – practical consequences and effects – is more important than its conformance or non-conformance with some abstract set of theoretical criteria”. Architects work with lots of theoretical knowledge, but the impact of this knowledge is indirect. However, the variables of construction in architectural procedures create practical consequences and effects. [p.16/17]

4) Constant Change of Architectural Practice Architecture influences culture and society but is also largely influenced by culture and society. Architecture has survived the constant changes of society by being constantly revised and changing itself. Architecture cannot rely on theory and past work. As material practice, “the significant work of architecture is one that allows continual revision and rereading, teasing out new meanings as the context changes”. [p.17/18]

5) The Writing of an Architect

Architects write texts as well, but the activity of writing of architects can be part of architecture as material practice. The writing of architects is constantly on the lookout for change and new techniques. It works from examples towards something new, and it does not work from principles to regenerate something that already exists. [p.20]

____________________________________________________________

The reading is very much in accordance with our class which clearly treats architecture as material practice. Some of Allen’s arguments are very comprehensible in the context of the class:

4) Constant Change of Architectural Practice ARC 311 gave us an understanding of the constant change of architecture and “the new ways of thinking and seeing that have emerged with modernity” as mentioned in the text (p.20). One of the biggest changes in modern architecture has been the shift to digital design and computation. The class taught us how to use computer programs and algorithms to facilitate the architectural design process. Furthermore, we learned how to use modern technologies and machines like the laser cutter, the Zund, or the CNC Milling machine. Another development in the architecture world is the rise of robotics, which we have also dealt with in the class.

3) Practical Consequences and Effects of Architecture When producing volumes and shapes with some of the machines listed above, we generated perceivable experiences and sensations. Also, it was oftentimes apparent that whatever we produced was not conforming with theory. There was always a factor of doubt or risk, practical consequences and effects of materiality that weren’t accounted for, etc.

5) The Writing of an Architect Through our weekly readings we dealt with many writings of architects. However, we never tried to conform with the existing principles from the texts in our projects. We used the readings as base, but always pushed ourselves to go beyond previous work and create something entirely new and original.

In summary, our class really underlines Allen’s text because it presented architecture as material practice throughout the whole semester.

[allegrarc311]

CRAWFORD + PATTERSON

“American musicians are frantically running up and down, all over the finger-boards of their violins, viola and cello, grasping at hundreds of different ‘tones,” …still trying to find their unique, personal “tone”” (Patterson)

“A jig is a device or procedure that guides a repeated action by constraining the environment in such a way as to make the action go smoothly, the same each time, without his having to think about it.” (Crawford, 31)

“The jig as it is used in a skilled practice is located somewhere between the overdetermination of the assembly line and the ideal of autonomy.” (Crawford, 34)

“A number of metaphors have been suggested: we "offload" some of our thinking onto our surroundings, or we incorporate objects in such a way that they come to act like prosthetics.” (Crawford, 35)

At first pass it was difficult to determine the parallels between Patterson’s treatment of tone, and the field of architecture. But upon closer reflection, the ideas are many; architecture began as an interdisciplinary field (Vitruvius’ 9 required disciplines, for example, which included medicine and law) and continues casting a wide net today, with a move toward more software/technologically literate architects. We have many “tones” we are expected to use, master, weave together, all while trying to find our own “voices” or our own brand of authorship. Is there, perhaps, something useful to learning to do one thing well, not having the architect do everything, but having the architect gather a group of other specialists to work together? Does architecture, perhaps, move toward an interdisciplinary field in the adoption of other specialties in to supplement or drive us, without putting the burden of knowledge on a single individual? I think it should; let the software engineers and the structural engineers and the interior designers and the architects etc etc work together to play many tones together, to make music together. (Still don’t know what, exactly, an architect would be responsible for doing, but I’m not sure we’ve really ever known).

           Crawford’s discussion of the jig also plays into his conversation. The jig is a mechanism for “offloading” thinking onto others to streamline a process. Between autonomy and assembly line, if other specialists or specialties were to function as a sort of “jig” to architecture in order to offload some thinking to focus on other areas, we move toward a field more meshed with the world. If we take robots to be “jigs” constrained by an environment to repeat the same action again and again without too much (too much, still some) thinking on the part of the programmer, then we see another way in which architecture utilizes the jig to design and build. “Architecture” is a broad term, if we take our desks and our lamps and our buildings and our everything to be architecture, and it seems impossible for one person to do it all (that’s why we have architecture firms, for collectives), but if we jig our environments with engineers and geoscientists we find a way to keep the field of architecture on the forefront of innovation.

[clara-roth]

Exercise 7.1 - Material Process: Cutting Foam

These three cuts investigate curves through duplication and manipulation.

The yellow and green series were created by mirroring and flipping the same curve without disrupting the geometry of the curve at all. The resulting concrete cast that we hope to produce from these foam iterations will be formed from the negative space that is a result of the flip+mirroring functions, filling in negative space that is produced when to identical forms are inward-facing and forced together.

The blue series was created out of two curves mirrored onto each other. One of the curves, while maintaining the same geometry, exaggerates each of the curves, producing a dynamic surface that is sharper on one end, and shallower on the other. The topography of this surface is of particular interest in ways that it can be cut and cast in concrete.

[Group work with Anoushka and Allegra]