Responsive Environments

Interactive Environment & AutoAdaptive Architecture Fran Castillo. Architect and Interaction Designer var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-18111475-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); - We welcome your comments. Please contact us if you would like to submit links, news, or research projects. [email protected]

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Kinematics

Category: #interactive fabrication #folding fabrication #4D printing

Author: Nervous System

Year: 2013

Url: http://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=4467

Description: Kinematics is a system for 4D printing that creates complex, foldable forms composed of articulated modules. The system provides a way to turn any three-dimensional shape into a flexible structure using 3D printing. Kinematics combines computational geometry techniques with rigid body physics and customization. Practically, Kinematics allows us to take large objects and compress them down for 3D printing through simulation. It also enables the production of intricately patterned wearables that conform flexibly to the body.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Reverberating Across the Divide

Category: #interactive fabrication #3D printing

Author: Madeline Gannon, Madlab

Year: 2013

Url: http://www.madlab.cc/reverberating-across-the-divide

Description: There is still a palpable disconnect between how one designs in the digital realm, and how one realizes a design in the physical realm. A number of factors contribute to this gap, including a virtual environment’s infinite scale, its autonomy from a tangible context, and its lack of physical materiality. Reverberating Across the Divide addresses such issues through a custom vision-based modeling software that uses a 3D scanning/sensing/printing workflow to merge digital processes in design with physical processes in fabrication.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: SpiderFab

Category: #robotic fabrication

Author: Tethers Unlimited

Year: 2013

Url: http://www.tethers.com/SpiderFab.html

Description: Additive Manufacturing and Assembly On-Orbit

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Microbial Ecologies

Category: #robotic fabrication #digital simulation #emergent behaviour

Author: Fran Castillo, Peter Malaga, Yogesh Karekar and Priyanka Narula

Research Center : Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia / IAAC

Year: 2013

Url: http://francastillo.net/Microbial-Ecologies

Description: Microbial Ecologies (ME) is proposing a speculative scenario in which is able to explore new robotic fabrication processes as a framework for investigating the generation of (bio)artificial systems. These systems allow us to regenerate and protect the soil erosion and encourage healthy plant growth using interconnected 3D fiber systems. The research aims to explore a heterogeneity of fiber structures at a broad range of spatial scales. The heterogeneity and interconnectivity of the 3D fiber system within soil makes it a biodiverse microhabitat for the diverse microbial population and vegetal systems. The system that ME is proposing has a pivotal role in microbial interactions, therefore It is able to amplify the biodiversity of ecosystems. Microbial Ecologies focuses on the development of fiber structures to characterize soil at multiples scales that are relevant for micro organisms.

Acknowledgments : Marco Poletto and Claudia Pasquero

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Vertical Emptiness

Category: #emergent behaviour

Author: Onishi Yasuaki

Year: 2013

Url: http://onys.net/

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/10/this-artist-makes-haunting-sculptures-out-of-hot-glue/#slideid-293121

Description: Onishi Yasuaki uses tree branches, hot glue, and urea for his installation. He uses the glue to connect our ground to an imaginary world. Crystalized urea appears on thin glue lines and in the tree branches.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Chairgenics

Category: #algorithmic design

Author: Form Nation

Year: 2010

Url: http://www.formnation.com/work/chairgenics/

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/10/can-you-genetically-breed-the-perfect-chair/#slideid-283271

Description:

Intentional genetic tinkering of living species has been around for centuries, ever since the first human mated two individual animals with desirable traits or grafted together two different plants with complementary features. Their greater understanding of genetics has only sped up the process and made it more targeted. What is it that we are ultimately striving for? Perfection? What does perfection even mean? Doesn’t it shift over time and between cultures? And can perfection be quantified?

In contemplating these messy questions, FormNation has turned to the chair. What if they apply the science of genetic engineering to an inanimate object? By crossbreeding individual chairs with desirable traits do we eventually end up with the ultimate chair? Can there even be a perfect chair, given our always-changing demands as users? To find out, they developed Chairgenics: a continually evolving modeling experiment.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Hidden Faces at the World Expo

Category: #newaesthetic #computervision

Author: Harald Haraldsson

Year: -

Url: http://haraldharaldsson.com/Hidden-Faces-at-the-World-Expo

Description: The failures and limitations of a certain approach or a technique can often lead to interesting outcomes. Face detection is a well studied machine vision problem but the solutions do not always return the expected results. So, what happens when a basic face detection algorithm is applied to buildings? By applying a standard Haar classifier with a frontal face model to a set of photos captured at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, the algorithm reveals its own limitations by detecting 'faces' in the structures. The faces and the path taken by the classifier are visualized in these works.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Reefs

Category: #digitalsimulation #3dprinted #ecologicalinteraction #responsiveenvironments

Author: Co-de-iT, disguincio.&co and d-shape.

Year: 2013

Url: http://www.co-de-it.com/wordpress/reefs.html

Description: The Reefs project fosters the creation of underwater sea barriers using D-Shape® technology through digitally simulated growth processes developed by Co-de-iT + disguincio.&co. It thrives on the potential that emerge from a coherent utilization of the environment’s inherent ecological structure for its own transformation and evolution, using an approach based on digitally simulated ecosystems and sparkled by the possibilities and potential of large-scale 3D printing technology. Considering tourism as an inevitable vector of environmental change, the project aims to direct its potential and economic resources towards a positive transformation, providing a material substrate for the human-marine ecosystem integration with the realization of spaces for an underwater sculpture exhibition. Such structures will also provide a pattern of cavities which, expanding the gradient of microenvironmental conditions, break the existing homogeneity in favor of systemic heterogeneity, providing the spatial and material preconditions for the re-population of marine biodiversity.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Aireal: Interactive Tactile Experiences in Free Air

Category: #hapticinterface

Author: Disney Research Pittsburgh by Rajinder Sodhi, Ivan Poupyrev, Matthew Glisson, and Ali Israr

Year: 2013

Url: http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/aireal/

Description: AIREAL is a new low cost, highly scalable haptic technology that delivers expressive tactile sensations in mid air. AIREAL enables users to feel virtual objects, experience dynamically varying textures and receive feedback on full body gestures, all without requiring the user to wear a physical device. AIREAL is designed to use a vortex, a ring of air that can travel large distances while keeping its shape and speed. When the vortex hits a user’s skin, the low pressure system inside a vortex collapses and imparts a force the user can feel. The AIREAL technology is almost entirely 3D printed using a 3D printed enclosure, flexible nozzle and a pan and tilt gimbal structure capable of a 75-degree targeting field. Five actuators are mounted around the enclosure which displaces air from the enclosed volume, through the flexible nozzle and into the physical environment. The actuated flexible nozzle allows a vortex to be precisely delivered to any location in 3D space.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Fabrication Ecologies-Machinic Conversations

Category: #roboticfabrication

Directed by Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto.

Team: Alexandre Dubor, Andrea Bugli, Venkatakasi Raju, Dolan Alexander, Ali Yerdel, Fran Castillo, Drew Carson, Georgios Soutos, Niccolo Marini, Priyanka Narula, Gabriela Gonzalez, Jin Shihui, Nasr Chamma, Kartikashok Gala, Aishwarya Sampath, Giannakopoulous Sofoklis, Vincent Huyghe, Peter  Malaga, Ahmed Selim, Iker Luna, Yogesh Karekar, Jean Akanish, Charusilawong Marisa, Levidis Stefanos.

Developed at IAAC ( http://iaac.net/ )

Year: 2013

Description : Exploring new robotic fabrication protocols with hemp fiber

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Laser Forest

Category: #responsiveenvironments

Directors: Robin McNicholas, Memo Akten, Barney Steel

Year: 2013

Url: http://www.memo.tv/laser-forest/

Description : A large interactive musical laser forest. Commissioned by and premiered at the STRP Biennale in Eindhoven, this giant interactive forest covers almost 450 square meters and is composed of over 150 musical ‘trees’ made of rods and lasers. The audience can freely explore the space, physically tapping, shaking, plucking, and vibrating the trees to trigger sounds and lasers. Due to the natural springiness of the material, interacting with the trees causes them to swing and oscillate, creating vibrating patterns of light and sound. Each tree is tuned to a specific tone, creating harmonious sounds spatialized and played through a powerful surround sound setup.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Parabolic Soap

Category: #roboticstructure #softarchitecturalmachines

Author: Felix Worseck

Year: 2013

Url: http://felix-w.de/?/Projekte/Parabolic-Soap/

http://www.creativeapplications.net/arduino-2/parabolic-soap-is-a-fusion-of-artificial-mechanical-and-natural-behaviour/

Description : The installation is a fusion of artificial, mechanical and natural behaviour. The aim of the install is to produce a minimal paraboloid surface. This surface is created only after the connection of the membrane and the soap pool is broken.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Fluid Crystallization

Category: #selfassembly

Author: Skylar Tibbits

Year: 2013

Url: http://sjet.us/MIT_FLUID%20CRYSTALLIZATION.html

Description : This installation investigates hierarchical and non-deterministic self-assembly with large numbers of parts in a fluid medium. 350 hollow spheres have been submerged in a 200 gallon glass water-filled tank. Armatures, modeled after carbon atoms, follow intramolecular covalent bonding geometries within atoms. Intermolecular structures are formed as spheres interact with one another in 1, 2, or 3-Dimensional patterns. The highly dynamic self-assembly characteristic of the system offers a glimpse at material phase change between crystalline solid, liquid, and gaseous states. Turbulence in the water introduces stochastic energy into the system, increasing the entropy and allowing structures to self-assemble; thus, transitioning between gas, liquid, and solid phases. Polymorphism may be observed where the same intramolecular structures can solidify in more than one crystalline form, demonstrating the versatile nature of carbon as a building block for life.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: The Venus of Google

Category: #generativefabrication

Author: Matthew Plummer-Fernandez

Year: 2013

Url: http://www.plummerfernandez.com/Venus-of-Google

Description : The Venus of Google was ‘found’ via a Google search-by-image, googling a photograph taken of an object I had been handed over in a game of exquisite corpse. The Google search returned visually similar results, one of these being an image of a woman modelling a body-wrap garment. I then used a similar algorithmic image-comparison technique to drive the automated design of a 3D printable object. The 'Hill-Climbing' algorithm starts with a plain box shape and tries thousands of random transformations and comparisons between the shape and the image, eventually mutating towards a form resembling the found image in both shape and colour.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: Silk Pavilion

Category: #FabricationEcologies #RoboticFabrication

Author:  Mediated Matter Research Group, MIT Media Lab

Year: 2013

Url: http://matter.media.mit.edu/

Description : The Silk Pavilion explores the relationship between digital and biological fabrication on product and architectural scales.

The primary structure was created of 26 polygonal panels made of silk threads laid down by a CNC (Computer-Numerically Controlled) machine. Inspired by the silkworm’s ability to generate a 3D cocoon out of a single multi-property silk thread (1km in length), the overall geometry of the pavilion was created using an algorithm that assigns a single continuous thread across patches providing various degrees of density.

Overall density variation was informed by the silkworm itself deployed as a biological “printer” in the creation of a secondary structure. A swarm of 6,500 silkworms was positioned at the bottom rim of the scaffold spinning flat non-woven silk patches as they locally reinforced the gaps across CNC-deposited silk fibers. Following their pupation stage the silkworms were removed. Resulting moths can produce 1.5 million eggs with the potential of constructing up to 250 additional pavilions

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: .FLOAT

Category: #3DPrinting

Author: panGenerator

Year: 2012

Url: http://pangenerator.com/

Description : .FLOAT consists in 3D printed based sculptures created because of fish tracking data.

[responsivesarchitectures-blog]

Title: MASTA

Category: #digitalfabrication

Author: Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Ultra-Lab

Year: 2013

Url: http://masta-project.com/

Description : MASTA is a project on social constructions aimed to set up ephemeral arrangements of people, abstractions and objects. Processes initiated by this system will generally end with the realization of an object or a structure, but the production of objects is not the goal of the MASTA project.