#self-assembly lab

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MIT Self-Assembly Lab & Steelcase / Rapid Liquid Printing / 3D printing / 2017

[designforuncertainty-blog]

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Active Shoes

Christophe Guberan, Carlo Clopath and Skylar Tibbits from the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT look into active, self-transforming textiles for shoes, that respond to stimuli like temperature and moisture.

This project (video above) explores the possibility of producing an entire shoe by printing the upper part of a shoe and a sole on a 2D surface of fabric, which boasts translucent, lightweight and malleable properties. The Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) process is utilised in a minimal way to structure the fabric. [...]

Another project (see video here) explores the possibility of producing the upper part of a shoe by printing a specific pattern on stretched fabric. The 2D pattern evolves after cutting into a 3D form. By printing material of varied layer thicknesses onto stretched textiles we are able to create self-transforming structures that reconfigure into pre-programmed shapes. The combination of stretchable fabric and plastic offers both flexibility and stability.

“It’s really about trying to open up the possibility that all of our textiles can be active and responsive to the environment as well as the user and his or her performance,” Tibbits says. “So we don’t have to think of our world as this static, dead and cold materials. They can be highly active and it doesn’t mean that they’re any more expensive. It doesn’t mean that we have robots or sensors because we have these really subtle ways of combining material properties to make textiles active.”

[read more at The Creators Project]

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The MIT Self-Assembly Lab is Pioneering the Brave New World of “4D Printing”

MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab defines “self-assembly” as “ a process by which disordered parts build an ordered structure through local interaction.” In other words, the cross-disciplinary MIT team works to build materials and components that can then autonomously build themselves into larger structures. They have developed woods, polymers, balloons, magnets, and other materials that self-assemble in a variety of ways. Some are activated as they are submerged in water. Others are tumbled in cages like lottery balls until they find the right connection with other pieces. The Lab’s researchers believe that these prototype techniques could one day lead to major breakthroughs in a whole range of applied fields. For the Chicago Architecture Biennial this fall, members will be collaborating with the Gramazio Kohler research unit at ETH Zürich to debut a new method of self-assembly.

[architecturewithbenefits]

Aerial Assemblies

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