FrAgile 2 - Porous Cast at Tallinn Architecture Biennale |
**NOW** REX|Lab at the Tallin Architecture Biennale TAB main exhibition ! Research Project by Prof. Marjan Colletti, Kadri Tamre Cooperation partners: UIBK , REX|LAB , Exp.Arch, The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL , Grassmayr Collaborators: Lukas Jonathan, Pedja Gavrilovic, Anna Aschberger, Chris Mell, Peter Griebel, Georg Grasser, Anne Steinkogler, Julia Fleckenstein, Maryna Shovkoplia ![]() ![]() Photo: TonuTunnel
FrAgile 2: Porous Cast
The installation is part of a series of prototypical (and theoretical) investigations into FrAgility (fragile + agile), which explore the synthesis of agile robotic fabrication methods with fragile materiality. The series includes tests with polyurethane foam, hot melt glue-gun adhesive, plaster, polyactic lacid PLA, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene ABS, polycaprolactone PCL, concrete, Stewalin, gel pellets, clay, sand etc. FrAgility is a key aspect characterizing all of them - an implication for openness, dynamism, hybridity, agility and fragility. In this case a simple technique of form-carving and casting was combined with gel inlays creating “self-organized” porosity. Porosity adds additional properties to the resulting prototype, for example thermal absorption, lightness or allowing environment for other (natural) organisms - as a synergy between the natural and the artificial.
The installation is part of a series of prototypical (and theoretical) investigations into FrAgility (fragile + agile), which explore the synthesis of agile robotic fabrication methods with fragile materiality. The series includes tests with polyurethane foam, hot melt glue-gun adhesive, plaster, polyactic lacid PLA, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene ABS, polycaprolactone PCL, concrete, Stewalin, gel pellets, clay, sand etc. By challenging Vitruvius’ notion of firmitas (solidity), fragility questions soundness and robustness, whilst agility contests stiffness and stasis as untouchable paradigms of contemporary architecture. With the aid of new simulation software and Rapid Prototyping technologies, volumes and surfaces can be dissolved to light, fibrous, porous, open, delicate structures.
Cedric Price had already asked the question ‘how
much does your building weigh?’. FrAgile
architecture re-engages with this enquiry; but not only with lightness in mind
(High-Tech architecture has already successfully proven its feasibility), but
probing whether the technical constraints and the aesthetic seduction of fragility,
delicacy and brittleness of 3D Rapid Printing technologies can be scaled up
into architectural production, and how. In fact, if graphics processing unit
(GPU)-accelerated computing, simulation software can nowadays calculate
astonishing complex physics processes (fluid dynamics, agent-based flocking
systems etc.) and crowd behaviour, in most cases the physical translation of
such constructs is complicated and rather clumsy, as 3D Rapid Prototyping
machines are either too small, or produce too heavy objects. Robotic
fabrication could provide an answer, but a robot’s payload is usually
relatively low. Hence, adequate fabrication protocols that are as light and
dexterous as the digital files are paramount.
In this case a simple technique of robotic soft
form-carving and casting was combined with gel inlays. The resulting
‘self-organized’ porosity is of course lighter, but more importantly it becomes
translucent, thermally insulating and nature-active (it instigates micro-growth and insect habitat), meeting nature halfway. By doing so, architecture
could challenge the clichés that it solely deals with edifices (in other
words: the built environment), becoming a more proactive interface, fully bound
and integrated between artificiality and nature. Surely, building envelopes
divide an internal controlled environment from the external uncontrollable
climate. But it seems that a while ago (in the Industrial Era) the common
semi-prefabricated production methods of architectural materials opted for, or
accepted, the total detachment and isolation of matter from natural changes,
totally ignoring site, climate and context. A conceptual business trajectory
pulling away from the environmental awareness of vernacular architecture for
example, which, it appears, understood quite well how to respond to these
extremes by using materiality, and nature in an intelligent way: for example by
layering snow on a roof as flat as possible to make use of insulating
capacities, or ventilation chimneys to cool down spaces in warm climates.
The hefty weight of responsibility (in terms of economy and in
particular ecology) which was recently put upon the discipline’s shoulders
drastically challenges this approach. Architecture can no longer ignore nature;
on the contrary – it must act as a prosthetic device for nature towards the
creation of a nature 2.0 – a new kind of synthetic ecosystem where the
biological domain and the artificial domain coexist. What I mean here is not
that architecture should replace or mimic nature; nor that nature should
replace or mimic architecture. The goal here is to set both realms in motion,
and to have them meet halfway. To see the two as separate and incompatible is a
modernistic and blatantly surpassed approach, made obsolete by digital and
computational design and fabrication intelligence. The great advantage we have nowadays is that it is not mandatory to revert to the basics of vernacular architecture. Advanced tools of modeling and simulating allow designers and engineers to predict form and performance prior to materialization. Besides the great advantages in terms of design control, this insight opens up architecture to a truly multi-disciplinary approach: not only can we now participate in co-authoring novel material-material assemblages, we can also co-author material-nature aggregations and processes of growth, change, mutation. In order to do so, architects can apply some of the knowhow of engineering, robotics, material sciences, biology, biotechnology etc. on a large scale, opening up bewildering scenarios for the future. A FrAgile future.
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University of Innsbruck Institute for Experimental Architecture.Hochbau REX|LAB Bartlett School of Architecture UCL London Credits
Initial studies were developed during the SS2015
elective course “Digital Architecture” at the University of
Innsbruck, in cooperation with Sille Pihlak and Siim Tuksam.
Team
Pedja Gavrilovic Support
Institute for Experimental Architecture.Hochbau |
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Letzte Aktualisierung ( Donnerstag, 15. Oktober 2015 ) |