Kinesthesia

With architectural design practice increasingly incorporating our growing understanding of the human senses, and how they influence one another, we can assume that adopting a multi-sensory approach to architecture will ultimately lead to the development of modern art and architecture, and especially modern design education that does a better job of promoting our social, cognitive, and emotional development.

Andrea Rossi

WASP 

BIO: 

Andrea Rossi is an architectural researcher and computational designer. He is a doctoral candidate at the DDU Digital Design Unit at TU Darmstadt, as well as research associate at the Experimental and Digital Design and Construction chair at the University of Kassel. His current focus is on discrete design and robotic fabrication strategies. This led him to develop Wasp, an open-source Grasshopper plug-in for discrete modelling. Previously, he has been a research associate at ETH Zurich, robotic fabrication specialist at Coop Himmelb(l)au (Vienna), as well as robotics specialist at IndexLab (Politecnico di Milano). He taught workshops on digital tools and fabrication in Italy (Politecnico di Milano), Germany (HfG Offenbach, Leibniz University Hannover), USA (University of Buffalo) and Israel (Technion Haifa). He holds a BSc in Architecture from Politecnico di Milano and a Master of Architecture from the Dessau International Architecture Graduate School.

TALK TITLE:

Toolkits, Platforms, Datascapes: the Wasp Ecosystem as model for Open-Source Thinking in Architecture

Computational Design has become more and more ubiquitous in architecture. However, the development of software tools in architecture has followed a non-linear path, and, still today, the majority of tools in use in architecture offices were originally developed for other purposes, and then adapted to architecture. Often these tools are not open-source and lack flexibility, trapping the users in predefined models, which limit design creativity on different levels. The talk will explore an alternative scenario offered by implementing an open-source thinking in both the development of software tools for architecture, as well as in the development of architecture itself. Using the Wasp plug-in for Grasshopper (developed by Andrea Rossi) and its ecosystem as example, the talk will explore the  systemic changes generated when applying a digital logic to physical space, using combinatorial design and robotic fabrication to explore novel open models for production in architecture and design.

Nicolo Casas and Sara Jaurequi: 

10am - 11am 

BIO: 

Italian architect and professor Niccolo Casas is Principal and Founder at Niccolo Casas Architecture, a visiting faculty member at RISD Rhode Island School of Design, and a PhD candidate at The Bartlett UCL London.
He runs a multidisciplinary practice for research and architecture that aims to combine several fields of specialisations so as to offer an innovative and unique vision of the academic discipline and profession. 

Niccolo Casas believes that, in order to have a true impact on the redefinition of future sustainable inhabitation, architecture must reinvent itself as a new discipline focusing on the construction of collaborative environments. It is also for this reason that Casas is partnering with environmental organisation and global collaboration network, Parley for the Oceans; together they are committed to presenting a vision of how architecture can become an instigator of a circular economy, one that works in harmony with the ecosystem.

Talk Topic: Plasticity > Parley for the Oceans 

Niccolo will talk about the impact of climate change, what we can do now to help mitigate the risk and what we can do as architects and designers to help shape the future. He will introduce our audience to Plasticity. 

Plasticity is a 3.6-metre-high sculpture, 3D-printed by the robot fabrication company Nagami and fabricated with Parley Ocean Plastic®, a premium material created from upcycled plastic waste recovered from remote islands, waters and coastlines by Parley’s Global Cleanup Network.

Plasticity emerges from intercepted marine plastics: it transforms intercepted plastics into avant-garde architectural constructs, it raises awareness of the problems of the Oceans, and it triggers actions in support of Ocean cleaning and bioplastic research. 

From a formal point of view, Plasticity, results from the combination of two oppositional lexicons: an organic one—the fractal, ice-looking section—and a linear/geometric one. Their combination becomes a metaphor of the twofold human-nature.

Plasticity wants to awaken us to the environmental and ethical impact of our everyday actions: plastics are the extreme symbol of human egoism and myopia; mostly created for non-necessary single uses, they impact terrestrial and marine life for centuries. 

Not only are we killing our oceans and lands—on which we depend—but we are directly killing ourselves by drinking and eating the plastics we once threw away.

I trust solutions to current social and environmental questions will arise from multidisciplinary confrontations. To have a true impact on the redefinition of future inhabitation, architecture must reinvent itself as a new discipline focusing on the construction of collaborative spaces.

We have to be environmentally careful as architects, as multidisciplinary experts, and finally—and most importantly—as human beings, in our everyday life

Design: Conceptual Design 

3.2 Application of creative imagination, aesthetic judgement ans critical evaluation in formulating design options. 

Design: Schematic Design 

4.1 Evaluation of design options in relation to project requirements 

Documentation: Detailed Design 

5.1 Application of creative imagination and aesthetic judgement in producing a resolved project design