Non-Standard or Procedure –based exploratory and generative architecture design processes

The method in which a set of techniques is consciously transferred from one material to the other engages the principles that computer control numerical machines CNC operate either by cutting, subtractive and additive process. Rather than a reductive set of operations, a procedure-based process may expand art & architecture’s materiality to promote a new social protocol between author, producer and user. (Gramazio & Kohler, 2006) (Koralevic, 2006) (Lynn, 1999) (Cache, 1995).

A further understanding of the relationship between a standard and a non-standard making process is intrinsic to the notion of art or architectural procedure: A systematic association of design or artistic principles and rules with concrete making processes. This process may be organized along a table-based methodology that articulates procedures involved in the development of technical arts with the properties of the materials inherent to its applications.

Cache (1999) identifies Semper’ inquiry as the foundation of architecture discipline, not as a strictly based arts & crafts knowledge but as a composition of several lineages of transposition by which a number of abstract organizational techniques are articulated from one material to the other.

The notion of non-standard or procedure and the ability to relate a number of attributes between a series of materials and the abstract procedures applied in their transformation shifts the notion of process intrinsically to a transmission of a disciplinary body of knowledge to an associative generative process. The principles of Non-standard architecture processes become then related to the translation of information into algorithmic process in order to help automate and generate a series of recursive operations exploring difference and adaptation towards localized conditions.

The cross-disciplinary seminar digital fabrication at the Rhode Island School of Design seek to further test the possibilities of translating morphogenetic digital design processes manufactured through digital fabrication into casting class artifacts. A group of art & design students from interior architecture, furniture design and architecture participated in a series of workshops developed by the author and glass artist Stephanie Pender to provide knowledge of associative modeling coding and fabrication methods within the tradition of the tectonics and the applied arts. The class explored the generation of tectonic elements through Rhino Grasshopper parametric modeling definitions for further analog and digital fabrication of a one cast-glass prototype of an artifact in collaboration with RISD Glass Department.

87 Fig. 3: Generative Digital Design for the making of Glass artifacts.

Rhode Island School of Design, Advanced Digital Fabrication, instructor Eduardo Benamor Duarte with Glass Artist / Professor Stephanie Pender. 2014.

The seminar referenced the notion of transposition evidenced in Semper's gap between intuitive and the so called rational decision making processes in design of form and space has become increasingly vanishing with the evolution of digital design technologies. The digital simulation of hand-built formal manipulations or the systematic and geometrical rigorousness of computer aided drawing technologies in design has become an automatic process, universally accessible, largely effective and no longer traceable in a specific tectonic craft .

An identification of the associative nature involved in the notion of transposition contributed to establish a pedagogical apparatus where the fluid nature of design process may offer an unlimited specificity independent of distinctions between analog or digital processes; and the scales of production involved in the design of architecture artifacts.

A further inquiry on the characteristics of the design process inherent to non-standard methods may be focused in the study of morphogenetic principles for the design of a spatial installation defined by the stacking of modular unit. Whether constructed in analog or digital means the focus of this study is to identify how the project algorithm constructs a system to automate the generation of information. The users’ experiential knowledge is key to the methods’ assessment.

Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning

88 3. Adaptive, modular and sited constructs for human-interaction systems

Whereas the translation of morphogenetic art making or design principles from digital fabrication to glass manufacturing may offer the possibility to bridge the gap between disciplines its application may also offer the opportunity to associate the morphology of modular units for human interaction.

When referencing the impact of mass-customization or the architecture of the non-standard authors (Koralevic, 2008) found a considerable interest in addressing the making of a participatory spatial installation and the relationship between designers, users and producers. As much as generative digital art & design processes may convey simultaneously variability and a literal transformation of input in material through computer control numeric processes, authors & users may also participate (or provide input) towards the customization of art, fabrication and assembly processes on site. This possibility helps artists, designers, users and producers to customize and identify contextual differences during the process of optimizing the generation of building components during the algorithmic design. In particular these may be evident in the design of structural elements or providing most advantageous shape in natural ventilation systems to better optimize the building performance.

Fijiji blocks is an art installation based on the design, making and stacking of porcelain building blocks developed in collaboration with the Ceramics Department at the Rhode Island School of Design and installed at Art Lab / Museum of Art at University of Memphis. The project is generated from a computing generated modular system based on a series of Rhinoceros iterative operations followed by the construction of a wood prototype to enable the fabrication of plaster moulds for later casting each modular unit into a series of modular surfaces.

89 Fig. 4: Fijiji Blocks, Installation, porcelain blocks.

Art Lab Museum of Art University of Memphis, Eduardo Benamor Duarte Larry Bush, mold-making / acknowledgments Rhode Island School of Design. 2014

The modular system is based on the octahedral polygon figure. This figure resulting from the subdivision of a circle in 8 equal sides, proved to become fundamental in the discovery of the tiling process to generate a series of planes that could become the structure and enclosure of the sleeping surface. Inspired by a series of geometry exercises developed in the Ulm School of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung) the generation of the tridimensional form from the bidimensional figure was developed along an elementary process of abstract geometric procedures based on successive rotations.

The art installation at the Art Lab / Museum of Art at the University of Memphis becomes a non-standard building process exploring clay’s hand-made plasticity in combination with the recurrent availability of mass customization in digital technology and fabrication. Fijiji blocks dwells on the duality between hand-modulated clay and the mathematical reproducibility of a ceramic module engaging clay’s tactility to construct a combined building process exploring ceramics plasticity and formal complexity: Maintaining its hand-made qualities and being simultaneously manually, mechanically and digitally reproduced through CAD/CAM technologies.

Even if the basis for a prototype is to become mass-produced. The term prototyping for architecture interventions simulated at 1:1 considers the processes of distilling the programmatic

Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning

90 ambitions or requirements; the resources and technologies available to produce a model; the site assembly; and ultimately the user-interaction (Kottas, 2010).

Besides the actual making of a full-scale construct the Fijiji blocks installation enables a direct inquiry on the direct relationship between scale of prototype, assembly and site integration to become visible for social validation. Independently and in collaboration, visitors may become active participants in the assembly of blocks purposefully ideated for stacking.

By being simultaneously adaptive, site-specific and modular the porcelain units’ installation define a construct that is reactant to changes of scale, material, location and distinct user interactivity.

Its site specificity is inherent to the context of where it's installed offering the opportunity to understand clearly the principles of an intervention in its capacity to alter a site and constitute new relationships with user.

If the incorporation of digital tools enables the production of increased variability and more complex forms and structures, how many of the intuitive and uncertainty driven processes inherent in art based practices are lost? The case study research analysed below sought to engage automated systems inherent in sensor based motion hardware to simulate the designer’s decision-making process beyond the computer screen and towards the actual physical prototype.

4. The Adaptive Cork Screen (ACS): The creation of an automated reflexive