Students: Miguel Guerrero (Spain), Natasa Pistofidou (Greece), Carolina Miro (Spain), Chryssa Karakana (Greece)

Research Studio: Digital Tectonics

Studio Instructor: Marta Malé-Alemany, MAA Co-Director

Student Summary:

“Earth´s abundance of sand and the critically self-organizing nature of granular materials were the inspiration of this research. To this day sand has predominantly been used in construction as a primer material as well as in sand casting moulds. The aim of the project is to numerically control the process of sand pile formation and solidification, through manual and digital design and experimentation.

The procedure involves a machine that collects and then directly deposits the sand found on site, rearranging the environment into a configuration of piles and cavities. This simple process ensures that the building material does not need to be transported to the site and only needs to be carried by the machine momentarily.

The liquid binder that is introduced to solidify the surface produces a wide variety of structures that are related to the binder properties (viscosity, time, density, deposition trajectory). The fabrication process of the project is bound to specific environmental conditions of the site into which it could be integrated and possible architectural applications lie in the creation of desert rails, provisional structures for tsunami situations or alternatively laboratorial production of components.”

In Final Phases of the Masters in Advanced Architecture program students attend one of three Research Studios: Self-Sufficient Buildings, Digital Tectonics or Emergent Territories. At the end of Phase II MAA Students presented their initial proposals. Throughout Phase III they will refine this research for their final presentations.

In the time leading up to the week of presentations we will give a preview of each project on the blog.

This year final presentations will be held the week of June 27. All presentations are open to the public. We invite you to come to see the students present. More information will be provided closer to the week of presentations.