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2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

2. Material: Digital in Action

Authors : Andrea Quartara, Djordje Stanojevic

Published in: Computational and Manufacturing Strategies

Publisher: Springer Singapore

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Abstract

In this chapter, the role of material production becomes crucial. Digital fabrication technologies are expanding the role of virtual computation and in their mastering is concealed the task of the digital master builder. The narrative is an account of small-scale wooden design experiences gathered in two different groups underlining different opportunities arising from distinctive workflows. In both cases, computation and machining processes engage active roles and are actual interoperable means of production. The case studies activate different design-to-production chains of non-standard structures and achieving relevant outcomes for the state of the art. The two categories have as main topics, and also as design targets, the tolerances management and the enhancement of available material properties. These two topics are tackled by the teams with an investigative aptitude typical of the academic workshops and make the most of fallacies and limitations to move forward.

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previous chapter Know and Build Your Own Tool

First CNC machines were developed as prototype by MIT and the first CNC lathe was introduced to the market in 1952. During the 1960s, CNC machines start to circulate aviation, shipbuilding and automotive industries. Only in the last two decades, CNC machines and robot significantly have spread out in architecture’s academia.

G-code is a language in which people tell CNC machine tools how to make something. Generally, there is one international standard: ISO 6983.

This often-quoted statement relates the assumed essence of a material to a set of given structural and spatial typologies. It holds that any material should be used where it is supposedly most appropriate and its nature should not be hidden, thus it should be left unfinished and exposed. This belief was closely associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Three predigital parametric personalities are taken as case studies. A. Gaudí and his magnum opus, the Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família in Barcelona, J. Albers with his Vorkurs course at the Bauhaus in Dessau and F. Otto and his extensive series of material experiments in Stuttgart. At their time, they provided excellent examples where the projective capacity of material was explored by scale models. In different ways, they all evidently reveal the exploratory horizons embedded within the materially informed design. The experimental approaches were undertaken not as symbolic and scalar representations of engineering constructs, but employed material as a driving force for developing new open-ended architectural designs, rather than optimized forms. Reference for further details on form-finding are: Horowitz F, Danilowitz B (2009) Josef Albers: To Open Eyes, Phaidon, New York; Otto F, Rash B (1996) Finding Form: Towards an Architecture of the Minimal, Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart.

“The structural production process that emerges in digital materiality is no longer that of the construction site or the workshop but rather a design process according to specific guidelines of the architect” Reference to Willmann et al. (2013).

Sometimes applications appear as artistic supplement rather than material studies.

These are the distinguish characters of mass customization. See Mass-Customized Material Accomplishment.

It is important for the reader to remember that the dissertation at the start of this book is about features and their possible connotations.

Reference to Computer Software The Magic Inside the Machine (1984) Time, 123(16).

Reference to the previous paragraph The Digital Master Builder.

The project has been conducted during a short term by an international team of students and researchers. Credits go to Iaac and the team composed by faculty: A. Markopoulou, S. Brandi, A. Dubor, D. Stanojevic, and students: J. Alcover, A. Figliola, Y. Haddad, J. Won Jun, M. Kumar, M. M. Najafi, A. Quartara, F. S. Shakir and N. Shalaby. The pavilion would not have been possible without the generous sponsorship of Serradora Boix, in collaboration with, Gremi de Fusters, Tallfusta, Incafust, Mecakim and Decustik.

Local wood unfits structural applications because of the often-irregular fibre arrangement and it is solely used for palettes, i.e. wood knots.

In mathematics, discretization is the process of transferring continuous functions, and equations into discrete counterparts. In this case, the continuous and connected one-sheet hyperboloid surface is approximated through the wooden sticks.

In solid modelling, a boundary representation (B-rep) is a model composed by topology (faces, edges and vertices) and geometry (surfaces, curves and points).

It can be defined as the use of digital tools to mass-produce variations at no extra costs. A more in-depth definition can be retrieved in Sect. 1.3.2.2 Mass-Customized Material Accomplishment.

Shank spiral nails were chosen in order to increase friction with wood.

The 2016 edition had as tutors E. Vercruysse (director), G. Edwards, P. Devadass and Z. Mollica (tutors) and as students: E. Azadi, M. Bannwart, J. Blathwayt, A. Carpenter, J. Curry, Ka. Kaewprasert, Ko. Kaewprasert, A. Quartara, E. Rodionov, M. Sharp and C. Thompson.

Singularities are caused by the inverse kinematics of the robot. When placed at a singularity point, there may be an infinite number of ways for the kinematics to achieve the same tip position of the robot. Six-axis industrial robots suffer from three types of singularities: wrist singularities, shoulder singularities and elbow singularities that can be generally defined as collinear alignments of two or more robot joints that cannot be solved—the robot is locked in position—or can be solved only by instantaneous 180° spin.

The hull is the body of a boat.

The stitches are usually done with copper wire.

Paul Lazarus, “Improving The Efficiency of Strip—planked Construction: new ‘speed strip’ system cuts time and labor—by a lot”, issue of Professional BoatBuilder, reprinted from the April/May 1997.

Forms are temporary moulds, acting like a skeleton ensuring a supporting surface (usually a plywood sheet). Once the outside of the hull has been glued, glassed, and is rigid enough, the mould can be removed.

Fairness is used to describe if the surface of the hull is fair or smooth; when an unfired surface has bumps or hollows, needs to be fired or smoothed out.

Port and starboard are, respectively, the left and the right side of a boat.

Schleicher S, La Magna R, Zabel J (2017) Bending-active Sandwich Shells Studio One Research Pavilion 2017. In: ACADIA 2017 Disciplines & Disruption, Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA), Cambridge, pp 544–551.

The overlapping system recalls the clinker construction technique for boats.

Analogy to the scarf joint adopted in boat construction. In this project, the length of the linear lap joint was set to 25 times the strip thickness.

Race boats or high-end performance cruisers are built through fibreglass lamination to reduce weight and maximize strength. Alternating layers direction increases the laminates resistance. Each ply can align its coordinates axes with the material matrix, modulating material properties as such as orienting the principal directions of elasticity.

The simplest method to layup fibreglass is to apply the fibres with a brush, impregnated from a bucket of catalysed resin. Another method is through special rollers, which contain catalysed resin directly in the roller’s head, but the most advanced and practical technique is with spray guns, where the resin and catalyst are mixed at the moment of being sprayed.

During the layup, there is the risk that small pockets of air, called voids, get trapped between the layers. They promote blistering by providing locations for moisture and therefore reduce the laminate’s integrity.

Pirinen M, Ductility of Wood and Wood Members Connected with Mechanical Fasteners, Master’s thesis AALTO UNIVERSITY School of Engineering, Degree Program in Structural Engineering, Espoo. 2014.

La Magna, R., Bend9 Bending-Active design at Pier 9. 2016. Last accessed on 24 January 2018. http://www.itke.uni-stuttgart.de/entwicklung.php?lang=en&id=76.

Adriaenssens S, Block P, Veenendaal D, Williams C (2014) Shell structures for architecture: form finding and optimization. Routledge, New York

Ahlquist S, Menges A (2015) Materiality and computational design emerging material systems and the role of design computation and digital fabrication. In: Kanaani M, Kopec D (eds) The routledge companion for architecture design and practice established and emerging trends. Routledge, London, pp 149–168

Beorkrem C (2013) Material strategies in digital fabrication. Routledge, New York

D’Acunto P, Kotnik T (2013) AA/ETH-Pavilion. In: Proceedings of the TENSINET symposium 2013, Istanbul, pp 99–108

La Magna R, Schleicher S, Knippers J (2016) Bending Active Plates. In: Advances in architectural geometry 2016, vdf Hochschulverlag AG an der ETH, Zürich, p 174

Menges A (ed) (2012) Material computation higher integration in morphogenetic design. Wiley, Hoboken

Menges A (2015) Material synthesis fusing the physical and the computational. Wiley, London

Menges A, Schwinn T, Krieg OD (eds) (2017) Advancing wood architecture a computational approach. Routledge, New York

Pottmann H, Asperl A, Hofer M, Kilian A, Bentley D (2007) Architectural geometry. Bentley Institute Press

Sheil B (ed) (2012) Manufacturing the bespoke making and prototyping architecture. Wiley, Chichester

Thomas KL (2007) Material matters architecture and material practice. Routledge, London

Willmann J, Gramazio F, Kohler M, Langenberg S (2013) Digital by material. In: Brell-Çokcan S, Braumann J (eds) Robotic fabrication in architecture, art and design 2012. Springer Wien, New York, pp 12–27

Title: Material: Digital in Action
Authors: Andrea Quartara
Djordje Stanojevic
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Book: Computational and Manufacturing Strategies
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-8829-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-981-10-8830-8

Copyright Year: 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8830-8_2

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