Seminars
Satoru Sugihara / Computational Modeling with Scripting
Marcelyn Gow / Working on Practice
Andrew Atwood / Misfigures
Devyn Weiser / Robotic Confections & Confabulations
Marcelo Spina & Bill Pearson / Textile Tectonics
Peter Testa / Free Form Fabrication
Peter Testa / Synchronous Robotics
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COMPUTATIONAL MODELING WITH SCRIPTING
Instructor: Satoru Sugihara
Semester: Spring 2012
This course explores advanced modeling techniques with scripting using Processing combined with Rhinoceros. It provides fundamental skills of coding in object oriented programming language, basic knowledge of 3D vector math and NURBS and polygon mesh geometry, and algorithmic approach to design architectural geometries. This course involves two individual projects. One is to algorithmically design facade system with surface-based scripting techniques, and another is to design massing form with multi-agent based swarm scripting techniques.
Course Contents:
Part 1: Surface-Based Scripting
- (Coding Topic) Data Types, Array and Loop
- (Geometry Topic) 3D Vector Math
- (Geometry Topic) NURBS Curve and Surface and Polygon Mesh
- (Geometry Topic) Surface Division and Panelization
- (Individual Project) Facade Design Project
Part 2: Multi-Agent Based Swarm Scripting
- (Coding Topic) Subroutine, Class and Object Oriented Programming
- (Coding Topic) Multi Agent Programming and Swarm Algorithm
- (Geometry Topic) Math for Physical Force Simulation
- (Individual Project) Swarm Forming Project
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WORKING ON PRACTICE
Instructor: Marcelyn Gow
Semester: Fall 2011
Practices are the techniques, relationships, intelligence, and disposition that shape design – the intangibles that add value and ultimately distinguish one firm from another. Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “A World Full of Holes” (1998)
The main objective of this seminar is to provide a platform for students to do work on the territory of contemporary architectural practice in the interest of formulating their future professional agendas. Currently practice is in the process of being actively redefined by shifting political, social, technological, and ecological paradigms. Taking as a starting point Alejandro Zaera Polo’s recent characterization of the contemporary practice landscape as a world full of holes latent with opportunity, we will examine the complex terrain defined by these new paradigms and attempt to discover “what is yet to be exploited” in this filigree space. Acting as entrepreneurs, we will identify niches for future action and innovation. The seminar will introduce several contemporary disciplinary themes through readings and project presentations. These themes are intended to outline research trajectories that students will pursue collectively throughout the duration of the course in the form of in-class discussions and presentations. Each student will be required to conduct ongoing research, culminating in a clearly formulated argument that advances a specific position on one of the disciplinary themes introduced in the seminar. This material will be presented in the form of an exhibition proposal with an accompanying catalogue essay. The research should be situated as a test case for specific approaches to design and to modes of practicing.
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MISFIGURES Experiments in Control
Instructors: Andrew Atwood
Semester: Fall 2011
This seminar will focus on developing tools and techniques for controlling multiple six axis robotic arms in increasingly synchronous ways. We will begin with an introduction to basic principles and techniques of mechatronic control. Through a series of workshops, lectures and class discussions, students will develop the technical skills related to robotic movement as well as the necessary intellectual tools related to the concepts and theories of control (see May). Subsequent classes will focus on the introduction and integration of various strategies for end arm tooling. Starting with a single “hot wire”, students will develop various end effector prototypes. Experiments in burning, melting, extracting, depositing, dropping etc. will lead to strategies of addition, subtraction and re-additive fabrication, which will then be applied to a final figure.
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Robotic Confections & Confabulations
Instructor: Devyn Weiser
Semester: Spring 2012
Research Fellows: Brandon Kruysman, Jonathan Proto
Robotic Confections & Confabulations (RoCoCo) focuses on techniques of representation using the state-of-the-art SCI-Arc Robot House and purpose-built software esperant.O – a designer friendly robot motion control toolset in Autodesk Maya.
Architectural representation since the 1990′s privileged computer generated images. In this decade, the convergence of software and hardware offer new possibilities for aesthetic expression with tactile material outcomes beyond Cartesian perspectivalism. The seminar explores the role of maker, medium, and machine. Particular attention is given to the history of early computational visualization from the 1960′s onward, Op and Pop Art, up through artists working in the post-medium condition. While grounding students in debates underlying contemporary art and technology the seminar offers a hands-on laboratory for experimentation.
Seminar participants produce drawings and paintings in a new spatial medium with a focus on additive processes (inks and paints) and multi-axial, multi-robot motion paths. Tutorials and exercises introduce airbrushing techniques, from the dot to the line, masking, frisketing, and shading, as well as color mapping theory. Each team proposes and produces a final project that may include the design of new end of arm tooling (EoAT) for airbrushing, depositing, painting, spraying, and sputtering on 2D and 3D surfaces in 4D real-time. Projects explore and exploit the aesthetic affect of anexact air and particle driven formats. This enterprise has far reaching implications for architecture from rethinking matter and motion to generative representation.
The seminar benefits from generous in-kind contributions by Iwata Medea and Copic Marker.
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TEXTILE TECTONICS Experiments in Quasi-Rigid-Flexible Composites
Instructors: Bill Pearson and Marcelo Spina
Semester: Spring 2012
“It has become increasingly rare for any structure built for a performance sport application to be constructed from anything other than composites. And at the high end that means carbon fibre pre-preg composites.”
Bill Pearson
This first collaboration between SCI-Arc ESTm program and North Sails aims to speculate on the future of a extreme lightweight materials in architecture by experimenting in the design and fabrication of quasi-rigid [quasi flexible] objects that blur the threshold between hard and soft, textile and composite. The class will encompass several areas of design: from the digital computation needed to digitally and physically distribute yarn pattern over complex surfaces, all the way thru the construction of necessary intricate mechanisms for laying carbon fibber, aramid and other yarn reinforcements within a resin matrix.
Taking advantage of the advanced manufacturing knowledge and capabilities from North Sails 3DL systems and technology, the class will concentrate on the possibilities offered by composite materials for architecture and design, paying close attention to the role of computation and robotic manufacturing in the fabrication and new modes of [non-mechanical] adhesive assembly in its construction.
SCI-Arc Textile Tectonics In-Kind Sponsors
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FREE FORM FABRICATION (FFF)
Instructor: Peter Testa
Semester: Spring 2012
The Free Form Fabrication (FFF) seminar challenges specialization to posit design, engineering, material science, fabrication, and construction as a continuous process open to radical recombination via reprogramming of process sequences, tools, and practices. In this way authentic new developments in architecture may be affiliated to ongoing transformations in material culture and manufacturing that are coming to characterize the third industrial revolution. FFF will explore shifting paradigms in material culture and architecture from the built to the assembled, and emergence of the rheological; and from industrial isotropic materials to designed and tailored anisotropic material systems. The overarching goal is to develop an entirely different notion of what it means to make something.
Research projects and case studies focus on coupling generative design and fabrication techniques with material behavior and its computational, geometrical characteristics. Robotic execution and construction logistics are not merely regarded as a service tool for materializing a design but an opportunity to inform and transform the design process. This new research program is undertaken in the spirit that anything can become more or less real depending on continuous chains of translation.
Research Topics
Advanced Composites
Free Form Fabrication
Material Computing
Synchronous Robotics
Link to Free Form Fabrication book
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SYNCHRONOUS ROBOTICS
Instructor: Peter Testa
Semester: Fall 2011
The seminar, held for the first time in SCI-Arc’s Robotics and Simulation Lab (SRSL), offers a high-level introduction to synchronous robotics and non-linear motion control. The seminar and lab sessions support implementation of a purpose built programming and simulation environment. Students acquire expertise in a Maya based workflow for both simulation and real-time operation of multiple robot systems. In this new course robotics is envisioned as the immediate future of computing- not merely a service tool for producing a design but an opportunity to inform and transform the design process.
Lecture, lab, and tutorial topics include: Forward and Inverse Kinematics; Expressions; Rigging; Esperant.0 plug-in integrating Maya tools and Stäubli’s VAL3 operating system; advanced simulation techniques including Match Moving, Compositing, and After Effects. Student teams develop demonstration projects that seamlessly integrate movement technologies in Maya will specific robot systems; and one RealFake animation integrating motion capture and simulation.
Course Web Site: Machinators.org
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