Robots in Architecture

We are facing the „post-digital era“ in architecture; the „Second Digital Turn“ (Mario Carpo, 2014). Digital Tools and techniques have matured to such an extent that their use is more critically questioned. What does it mean for an architect to design digitally? How does it change the way we design architecture in general as well as our surrounding space?

By means of new technologies and computational power researchers from the so called „young digital avantgarde“ explore different approaches for achieving an architectural synthesis of complex geometrical formations and digital fabrication methods.

Alisa Andrasek, Professor at RMIT in Melbourne, is calling it the superpower of architecture, the shift from continuous mathematics to discretized code. She is exploring the potential of increasing the resolution of architecture as an important dimension, which affords a level of detail and expanded scope.

Gilles Retsin, Lecturer at UCL in London, is questioning, how can material be organized in the same way like data? How can Architecture fundamentally be “digital” – not just in their design process but also in their physical organization? His notion of the Discrete as an emerging body of work that rethinks the basic building blocks of architecture and its resolution, brings together a new generation of architects and theorists who are interested in the digital but also advocate for a critical and politically aware agenda.

The seminar will explore and discuss the potential of both design approaches and use the topic to introduce students to robotic assembling methods. The primary objectives are to get familiar with the technology and to develop a design concept and an additive assembling process which will be executed by the robot. Additionally, we are exploring further technology for communicating with the robot and implementing real-time information into the robot process.

Notes:

This winter semester the seminar “Robots in Architecture“ is linked to the seminar Augmented Reality in Construction – „High Resolution Architecture 2” which runs under the same topic but addressing the AR technology and their usage for complex assembling processes. Therefore, it is mandatory for students to enrol to both seminars. The goal for both seminars is to build a 1:1 mockup in the Foyer which requires both technologies, robotic fabrication and AR for the assembling and design testing phase.

The seminar will be taught in English.  

Modules:

• MSc. Architektur und Städtebau:
  Digitale Fabrikation
• BSc. Architektur:
  Grundlagen Digitaler Fabrikation
• BSc. Landschaftsarchitektur und Umweltplanung:
  Grundlagen Digitaler Fabrikation

Lecturer:

• Andrea Kondziela

Schedule:

Further Information on stud.ip