The IDC Kuka HA-100 Robot is initially being used to demonstrate a versatile new fabrication methodology for building houses that looks to deploying thermoplastic composite paneling to allow non-standard yet low-cost housing.

The thermoplastic paneling methodology marks a breakthrough in offering the economy of a continuous-feed process with the technical advantages offered by composites (ie it attains an economy of scale that is uncommon in the more typical one-off mold logics of thermoset technologies). The thermoplastic process also avoids locking up the resin with a catalytic hardening agent, relying on heat to meld pure polypropylene and glass fiber fabrics under heat and pressure, offering full recyclability, so it is remarkably ‘green’ (as independent studies from a group at Stanford University has shown).

The panels consolidate two skins of thermoplastic fabric either side of a core material (which can be varied in thickness and material), offering a highly resilient composite paneling system. The research looks to milling these basic panels to provide structural and weatherproof connections, looking to build highly resilient thin-skin building envelopes that are simply snapped together by unskilled labor. The robot demonstrates highly accurate yet entirely non-standard cutting of the panels, avoiding the usual pitfalls of standardized modular housing, which has historically proven to be unpopular: here we suggest material AND fabrication innovation to offer a resilient, materially efficient, customizable housing.

The primary goal of the IDC research is to offer a scalable solution to second-world housing, which is a pressing need given the burgeoning developing world population. It may also prove a valid alternative to first-world building technologies given the high quality of the panels we aim to produce, and their elegance as a form of building enclosure. We are currently demonstrating the technical validity (through fire and structural testing) of using such thermoplastic panels as a unitary structure/enclosure methodology, which would offer a highly streamlined fabrication process, benefitting from CAD CAM methods to radically challenge current building-industry methods.

As part of this research we have set about developing new protocols for linking architectural modeling software (Rhino/Grasshopper) directly to robotic milling instructions, such that a simple architectural model quasi-automatically generates actual milling instruction. Already, we feel, this sets the MIT Kuka apart from most others being used by architects (or anyone), bypassing at least two levels of software (a milling software and the Kuka software, plus an interface called Codebreaker). This should allow students (or anyone) to quickly design panelized buildings and fabricate them directly as high-quality composite structures that can be essentially self-erected, and we are just coming on-line with this: an exciting moment in offering alternative logics for building housing. It should permit high-quality, low cost, low environmental impact housing.

We thank IDC for their generous support, and would like to thank the following:

The immediate Zero+ team comprises:

Prof Mark Goulthorpe, MIT Dept of Architecture

Stelios Dritsas, IDC (CAD CAM research)

Sawako Kaijima, IDC (FEA research for composites)

James Coleman, MIT grad (robotic research)

Zach Conway, MIT undergrad (robotic research)

Vasco Portugal, MIT PhD (thermal/environmental research)

The project is being aided by several industry partners:

Rich O’Meara, Core Composites, Rhode Island (Composite Material Consultant)

Hossein Borazghi, AS Composites, Montreal (Thermoplastic Paneling)

Mark Bishop, Waterfront Solutions, Baltimore (Composite Engineering)

Tim McCaul, Ove Arup (Structural Engineering)

And technical and material support is being given by:

Fiberglass Industries FGI (Twintex Thermoplastic Fabrics)

TechnoFibre and Avtec (Fire Treatments)

Environmental Analysis is being given by:

Prof Mike Lepech (and his students), Stanford University Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering

4.109 (Complete Fabrications) is a comprehensive and intensive introduction to methods of making explored through a range of focused exercises. The course is structured with two narratives. The First aims to simply familiarize students with an expanded set of tools, technologies and techniques. The second aims to build bridges with the interdisciplinary concerns of design culture as “Building.”
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The goals of this course are to engage and develop methods of fabrication as useful sets of opportunities important to the design process, and to give students the experience and expertise to act in an expanded field of conventional opportunity.
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The course additionally seeks to establish the reciprocities between designing and making, tracing critical connections between the application of architectural conventions such as drawing, making and representation, towards an alternative paradigm of convention, that of instrumentality.
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Exercises will be structured additively, building one on top of the other, with successful completion of exercises in sequence mandatory. Individual exercises will emphasize collaboration and teamwork as well as intimacy with materials, tools, and procedures. Successful students will have completed exercises not as rote procedures, however as small scale design opportunities within the specific constraints of “Building”. The course will likewise seek to situate a readiness to incorporate fabrication into future design strategies, not as a substitute for design, however as a set of new opportunites and capabilities.
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All available fabrication equipment and tools will be briefly introduced over the duration of the class with certain tools being emphasized more for their abilties to solve and address design problems. Students will emerge with an understanding of how to approach and operate each tool, what it is most appropriate for, and how to integrate into design.
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4 EXERCISES:
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1-FRAME
2-INFILL
3-BLOCK
4-PAVILION COMPETITION

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Duration 3.5 Weeks

James Coleman of ParaPractice participated in MIT’s Festival of Art, Science and Techology  as a part of 150th anniversary of MIT.

From  Arts MIT:

FAST is a prominent feature of the MIT150 events, a festival celebrating MIT’s unique confluence of Art, Science and Technology. Directed by Professor of Music and Media Tod Machover, FAST will present an exciting, surprising variety of work, embracing past to future, performance to debate, and installations to the unclassifiable. FAST will appear throughout the MIT campus and extend over the entire spring semester, punctuated by five special Festival weekend events.

Project Designers: Craig Boney, James Coleman, Andrew Manto

Project Team: Enas Alkhudairy, Rudy Dieudonne, Alexander Farley, Iman Fayyad, Sarah Freidel, Erioseto Hendranata, Toshiro Ihara, Suzanne Magill, Edrie Ortega, and Bridget Rice

Project Contents:

2,400 PVC coated Aluminum components: WaterJet cut

2,400 Polyethylene actuating clips: CNC routed & WaterJet cut

1,200 ft – Braided steel cable

32 ft -  Steel Tubing

1 Rolled steel circle 7 ft diameter

2 high capacity winches

An essential component within the field of architecture is the client, and at its heart, architecture is an industry of service. The client can take a number of forms and scales from an individual to the greater public, but in any case architects provide a service. As with any service, there is a level of accountability necessary to ensure safe, quality products. This accountability in recent years has grown into a suffocating force, marginalizing architects to the point of obsolescence. Installation as an architectural pursuit allows architects to take charge of the content by releasing themselves from this subservience.  This break allows architects to experiment outside the Vitruvian obligations of permanence (firmness), functionality(commodity), and aesthetic(delight).  The removal of one or more of these categories allows installations to take on an experimental quality with the potential to expand and re-inform the building industry as a whole. Dis[Course]4 is a focused investigation into the practice of Making; one that suggests a “blurry” mode of architectural design. A mode that utilizes parametric practices to scrutinize manufacturing potentialities and explore material properties.

The conceptual goal of Dis[Course]4 was to break down the (often isolating) vertical stratification of MIT. By occupying a building stairwell, one of MIT’s few sectional anomalies, the project is poised to generate inter-floor/interdisciplinary discourse. The project was sited architecturally, meaning considerations were taken to ensure physical compatibility between site and project, but truthfully nearly anything occupying that space would have generated some sort of dialogue! This demonstrates the project’s operative lack of specificity and suggests reconfiguration of the global system. Unlike other site specific projects, Dis[Course]4 is flexible in it’s ability to adapt to physical conditions of site through a designed versatility and physical flexibility. The project embodies a rigorously investigated manufacturing process as a physical representation of  the combined efforts of designers and engineers.

Dis[Course]4 is an architectural installation designed and constructed entirely by architects, as an experimental prototype and an investment in Making. It is the informational precipitates inherent in the process of making that contain the potential to affect the greater whole of architecture. This truly alchemic process transforms designs by linking data to material/matter. During the design process material data was continually collected thru the generation of prototypes and their subsequent analysis.  Each material tested demonstrated unique physical qualities such as workability, fold-ability, and machinability. That data was then reinserted into a computer model to re-inform the whole. Dis[Course]4 was truly a process oriented exploration of the tectonic and the technological.  Composed of over 5,000 parts the project required a fluidity between design and manufacturing in order to appease both conceptual agendas and budgetary restrictions. An important distinction between current trends in architectural production and the production of Dis[Course]4 is one of complexity. Instead of first designing the ‘whole’ to be later subdivided into discrete parts, we developed an intelligent component capable of approximating any number of ‘wholes’. This technique with the combination of custom computer software, ‘scripts’, allows for the deployment of the system on any desired ‘whole’, outputting individual component actuation levels.

During this series of bottom up design decisions we constantly transcend the traditional boundaries of the designer and assume roles as material researcher, fabricator, computer scientist, and engineer. Modes of making and describing space are consistently being reexamined, installation art provides architects an essentially risk free testing area. In Dis[Course]4 we advocate a productively “blurry” mode of architectural design, where physical prototypes directly affect and infect the design process as a whole. In this mode of Making mock ups are not merely a ‘final test’, but an impetus of the design as a whole.

Writing by James Coleman

]]> http://parapractice.net/2011/05/02/fast-festival-mit/feed/ 0 http://parapractice.net/2010/11/06/mit-open-house-installation/ http://parapractice.net/2010/11/06/mit-open-house-installation/#comments Sun, 07 Nov 2010 01:26:54 +0000 admin http://parapractice.net/?p=449

Project Brief:

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NOSEDIVE:

Our Project sought out transformative components through a rigorous series of folding studies. Our resulting component was one that transformed in three axes while organizationally abiding to a triangulated grid. This allowed us to deploy our component to any number of surfaces through simple triangulation and later a by applying a hexagonal grid.

The timeline for this project was 3 weeks with one for final design & fabrication and 12hours for assembly. This tight timetable directly informed both our material choice, fabrication technique, and amount of surface variation. The material chosen was .01″ Aluminum. The choice provided the necessary fire resistance required by the site and also allowed us to fabricate 20 components simultaneously by stacking the material.

Each component connects to it’s three neighbors through ’slots’ and is zipped tied together. Cables spiral down through the form along the grids regulating lines forming an internal diagrid.

The process was parametric throughout and resulted in a model informed by structural capabilities, material deformation, surface analysis and relaxation, and finally fabrication processes.  The process was automated from generic from to cut sheets with individual perforation patterns.

Final project was composed of 500 parts, 1200 zip ties and numerous band aids!

Project Team  Included:

Design:

James Coleman

Andrew Manto

Craig Allen Boney

Assembly Specialist:

Aaron Willette