Resonant Chamber developed by RVTR is an interior envelope system that deploys the principles of rigid origami to transform the acoustic environment through dynamic spatial, material and electro-acoustic technologies. Our aim is to develop a soundsphere able to adjust its properties in response to changing sonic conditions, altering the sound of a space during performance and creating an instrument at the scale of architecture, flexible enough that it might be capable of being played.

The project is developed through three streams of iterative research and development in both computational testing and full-scale prototype installation: Dynamic Surface Geometries; Performative Material Systems; and Variable Actuation and Response. Resonant Chamber is funded through the 2011 Research through Making Grant, U-M Office of the Vice President for Research, 2011 Small Projects Grant, U-M Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Research Creation Grant.

Innovating parametric design and digital fabrication, the structure consists of 163 post-formable plywood components. The pieces were manufactured at the Tampere University of Technology in Finland, with the help of PIPU Ltd. The components were shipped to Hong Kong, where the team assembled the pavilion for the exhibition situated in Kowloon Park.

Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture is a double biennale organized in both Shenzhen and Hong Kong, and as such one of China’s most important architecture events. What makes the Dragon Skin pavilion quite special among this year’s exhibits, is that it is the only human sized structure that can be entered by visitors.Made out of birch plywood, the pavilion is quite and exotic sight in Hong Kong, where the prevalent natural material in use is bamboo. It has quickly become one of the biennale’s main attractions.

The exhibition was opened for public on the 16th of February and continues until the 23rd of April. 70.000 visitors are expected during this time. Among the exhibitors are renowned architects such as OMA, Steven Holl Architects, MVRDV and Reiser & Umemoto Architects.

The Self-Assembly Line aims to construct a large-scale version of self-assembly virus modules as a user-interactive and performative structure. This is an installation that builds installations, where people engage the assembly process by rotating the enclosure, changing the speed/direction and adding parts to influence the performance of self-assembly at macro-scales.

The Self-Assembly Line represents a large-scale version of a self-assembly virus capsid, demonstrated as an interactive and performative structure. A discrete set of modules are activated by stochastic rotation from a larger container/structure that forces the interaction between units. The unit geometry and attraction mechanisms (magnetics) ensure the units will come into contact with one another and auto-align into locally-correct configurations. Overtime as more units come into contact, break away, and reconnect, larger, furniture scale elements, emerge. Given different sets of unit geometries and attraction polarities various structures could be achieved. By changing the external conditions, the geometry of the unit, the attraction of the units and the number of units supplied, the desired global configuration can be programmed.

Project Team:
Martin Seymour, Andrew Manto, Erioseto Hendranata, Justin Gallagher, Laura Salazar, Veronica Emig, Aaron Olson

Invited to the project by Hermann Weizenegger – an industrial designer and design professor running his studio haw in Berlin – I was responsible for designing the overall interface between the music by composer and violinist miki and the production process of the robot. Together with the incredibly talented chris jeffs, who provided me with the audio analysis and musical advice as well as Wolf Deiss and Roman Kühnert of artis gmbh we realized what to me was one of the most complex, challenging and inspiring productions I was part of to date.

Hermann’s vision of the overall performance consisted of five variations of a musical piece by MIKI represented in five objects. To address this vision, wax was chosen as a base material, since it allowed rapid manufacturing through milling and application of heat as well as a possible further use for casting. Thus, the performance was conceptualized as a two stages production process showing MIKI and a pianist along the robot manufacturing the objects. In a pre-performance process, the wax base shapes were milled to reflect the musical atmosphere, in the second process the robot finalized the objects with the use of a Bunsen burner in reaction to MIKI’s play.

Given my initial lack of experience with product design and the related manufacturing processes, I teamed up with steffen fiedler to create a formal concept that will work in the timeframe we had. Even though this initial design process happened in Java/Processing with the help of Chris’ analysis tools made in SuperCollider, we realized quickly we would need an entirely different toolset to create data for such a high performance manufacturing process. Thus, the formal concept to match the requirements of the short timeframe for milling was implemented in Rhino/Grasshopper. The concept consisted of a fluent terrain being distorted according to the music. The terrain was chosen to provide the greatest flexibility for how the robot would manufacture it. This translation process is also shown in a minimal dynamic visualization I created in Processing mainly for the audience to understand the process. It was integrated into the lights control done by Chris as well. The large scale renderings for the exhibition were made in sunflow – a fabulous open source renderer written in Java.

Premise: any systems can be understood as sum of primitives – theory & science argues that ”the whole can be greater then the sum of its parts” – MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY™ has been interested to translate such ideas into architecture up to its physical realm. The research is based on a simple but extreme premise: the exploration through DIY design and production of structures made of MANY parts. Such quest involves the development of computational protocols for the generation of compound morphologies and descriptive geometry, both combined with a necessary logistic of production. As based on numbers (units, time,…) both are constantly evaluate through efficiency in order to make it happen.

Design intend : the quality of such aggregates structures is depending on population / numbers. In order to reach the inherent qualities of distributed field condition one needs MANY singular elements.

Geometry test : (the continuum of a long series of investigation) – minimum of primitives, maximum of diversity.
a minimum of primitives has an interesting property in terms of logistic: it allows to afford molding techniques – as the efficiency for a mold is exponential with number of replicate (due to the original effort and cost needed to develop one).

Material test : written within a series of installation investigating Do It Yourself modes of production, looking into ways to reduce time of production for a single elements in order to be able to produce many. The premise of the research was seeking a time cap less than 30 mins to produce one single finished element of certain complexity in terms of geometry.

The pavilion’s form is derived from the structure of a tree and intends to provide shade to the immediate area. a triangular footprintwith crisp planar walls begins to unfold at the roof plane into a series of pleats. the hyplane structure is comprised of white metal panels in the shape of isosceles triangles. the bends create a curving wall which reflects and introduces a soft light into the interior.

“I wondered what would happen if the walls were to keep growing upwards and present an uneven surface like ‘pleats’. Pleats resemble a tree in the way that they spread out and capture the sun and I felt that they would produce a bright, impressive exterior. I also thought that the space beneath this surface would present a relaxed atmosphere, similar to that of tree shade that would be an ideal quality for an exhibition space.”

Flight Assembled Architecture is the first installation built entirely by flying robots. Designed as an architectural structure on the scale of a “vertical village” of 600 meters, Assembled Architecture Flight tests a new paradigm of design and manufacturing, through a physical process of automated dynamic training. This project builds on the simultaneous use of multiple mobile agents. Considered as tools for adaptive production, these flying robots are programmed to interact and to capture, transport and assemble the modules to build architectural structures. They synthesize and the pragmatism of Gramazio & Kohler Architecture and visionary approach to Raffaello D’Andrea in engineering dynamics. The FRAC Centre supports this new project, which will ad up to its collection devoted to experimental architecture. This collaborative project will be exposed in the FRAC Centre in Orléans.

In the fall of 2010 Joris Laarman Lab was commissioned by the High museum Atlantato develop a kinetic installation that would illustrate a direction of future design. The installation is part of the exhibition “modern by design” that also features Nendo’sVisible Structuresand works from the High’s growing collection of contemporary design that showcases late twentieth- and early twenty-first century design. Next to that the exhibition will feature a selection of works chronicling three key moments inThe Museum of Modern Art’s design collection and exhibition history—”Machine Art” (1934), “Good Design” (1950–1955) and “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” (1972).

Digital Matter was inspired by development of digital nanomaterials, parallel to rapid innovations in computer graphics. An approximation of a rococo console with voxels (3d pixels) suggests that the state of the art in digital materials has it’s counterpart in low resolution graphics from early computer games. Michal Piasecki collaborate in the project with development of parametric models and scripts in Rhino which aid the modeling of roccoco console made of voxels in three sizes: 3, 5 and 10 mm. Digital Matter was manufactured using a 7-axis robotic arm.

Making of – Digital Matter from anita star on Vimeo.

t of the exhibition “modern by design” that also features Nendo%E

It is inspired by the beauty of nature systems with their inherent efficiency and performance. The project explored on-site fabrication of monocoques structures, thereby integrating skin and structure, along with services and infrastructure, with a household technique like knitting. It thus embodies a self organized micro system of textures and a macro system of structure. The book elaborates how the numeric aspects of a textile technique were used, first to digitally imitate the process of assembly and further exploited to develop and visualize a novel fabrication system, based on material research and technical experimentation. The digital machinic system was then deployed on a test site to demonstrate the tectonic capacity of the method developed.

SOFTlab has come up with a need project , a large outdoor installation for The San Gennaro North Gate located at on Mulberry St. between Houston and Prince St in New York. The piece was produced by Two Bridges and supported by St.Patrick’s Old Cathedral.

The geometry was engineered in collaboration with Matt Clark at ARUP and all of the building connections were designed by Nathaniel Stanton of CRAFT Engineering.

Installation will be up until September 25th, 2011

Design Team: Michael Szivos, Carrie McKnelly, Sean Madigan

Installation: Elliot White, Brandt Graves, Sarah Hunter, Liz Kelsey, Brandon Bartle, Sonal Patel, Simon Kristak, Henry Choi, Julia Schleppe, Katherine Salamat, Anthony Buccellato