SE.11 – Lightweight Structures
LIGHT FOLDS
Faculty: Silvia Brandi
Computation and Fabrication expert : Rodrigo Aguirre
The lightweight structures course will explore this year the topic of the folded surfaces, more specifically we will work with the capability of a plan to acquire structural stiffness through folds and the possibility of components to interlock together thanks to geometrical logics. How would it be to inhabit an origami? We will explore the extreme possibilities of the plan, throughout complex computational form generations, structural simulations and physical 1:1 constructions.
Students will work in teams, each one designing, testing and building a 1:1 free standing & self supporting, lightweight, digitally fabricated, pavilion totally built in cardboard with the size limit of 3m x 2.5m. The needed amount of cardboard to build 5 real scale structures will be provided.
MAA 2012/13
Experimental Structure Seminar
During the seminar each group will create an user interface algorithm with grasshopper to generate forms and optimize its structure through various methods. Furthermost the codes should follow a manufacturing protocol in order to rapidly generate new fabrication directories. Ultimately we will create distinct strategies to go from: design to production; digital to physical; computation to fabrication.
The course is developed in collaboration with FAB FEST, a fabrication festival that will be held in London on the first week of July. The two best structures among those developed in the course will have the possibility to be built again by the teams and shown at this year’s FAB FEST edition.
courtesy Fab Fest London
FAB FEST is a celebration of creative thinking, design and making that will generate a tiny and temporary yet extraordinary Pop-up City within Ambika P3. The aim for participating teams will be to design and fabricate a pavilion that will make a distinctive and positive contribution to this micro-City, and that will help to facilitate the week of events and parties that constitutes the festival.