Research and Education
MSC / MArch [Emergent Technologies in Design]
Michael Weinstock, Michael Hensel, Achim Menges, Nikolaos Stathopoulos, Defne Sunguroğlu
The Emergent Technologies and Design programme is open to graduates in architecture, engineering and industrial design who wish to pursue design research that proceeds from innovative technologies. The programme is focused on the development of skills and knowledge that is located in new production paradigms.
Phase 01 of the programme includes the Seminar Courses, the Core Studio and supervised research.
Phase 02 consists of further supervised research culminating in the Design
Dissertations for MSc and MArch.
Seminar courses provide the theoretical context, setting out the origins, theories, instruments and practices of Emergent Technologies, and exploring relations to contemporary architectural discourses. The courses are extensively cross-linked, thematically and instrumentally with the Core Studio. Outputs of the seminar courses are critical and technical analyses that are connected to design strategies and material systems, and located in industrial processes and production. They provide inputs to the Core Studio modules and experiments, which in turn lead to a fully articulated design projects.
Course Structure
The programme takes place over four terms [from October 2007 to October 2008] for MSc candidates and over five terms [October 2007 to January 2008] for MArch candidates. Phase 01 of the EmTech programme offers a wide range of theories, concepts, methods and techniques that are designed to help students develop their skills, explore across the boundaries of contingent disciplines and practices, and engage with the theoretical discourses in Emergent Technologies. Students are also encouraged to attend relevant courses in Technical Studies and those offered elsewhere in Graduate School.
Successful completion of Phase 01 is a prior condition of progress to Phase 02 of the programme. At the end of Phase 01 students present their dissertation proposals to faculty members for approval. Upon successful presentation, candidates will commence the dissertation phase. During Phase 02 students develop a dissertation in teams of two, working with faculty members and external advisers. Seminars and tutorials guide the progress of the dissertations. External Examiners review the Dissertations.
Experimentation and Construction
Construction experiments are part of the programme - last year two lines of design experimentation lead up to full-scale constructions. One set of experiments investigated ruled surfaces and deriving complex double curvature with straight material elements. EmTech collaborated with Juan Subercaseaux and Buro Happold on the design of a viewing platform and shelter for Hazienda Quitralco in Chilean Patagonia, based on the principles devised in the experiments. A group of students traveled to the site in Chile to construct the project.
Another set of experiments examined the environmental performance capacity of a membrane canopy made from varied membrane components. Buro Happold engineers worked with the students on the design development, detailing, manufacturing and assembly strategies for the canopy for the terrace of the AA.
In 2007/8 we will explore three dimensional nets for the design and construction of an interior cable-net and membrane assembly at the FRAC centre in Orleans, France and a bridge at Hazienda Quitralco in Chile.
Phase 01 Core Studio
Autumn and Spring Terms
The Core Studio commences with an intensive period of intellectual and skill building sessions. Studio discussions and readings focus on the concepts of morphogenesis, emergence and self-organization, and workshops focus on advanced digital modeling methods including Rhino modeling, scripting and associative parametric modeling in Generative Components. This is followed by introducing material self-organization and form-finding as design methods that lead to performance-oriented design. This year the Studio will focus mainly on three-dimensional nets, culminating in the design, detailing and construction of two projects: one in Orleans and one in Chilean Patagonia.
The integral design strategy deploys the inherent properties and behavior of materials in material assemblies that respond to the specific pressures of their context. Material, manufacturing and assembly logics, and the behavior and performance of the designed system are key elements of the integral design approach of the programme. Modeling and analysis of natural and manufactured systems are introduced to provide the techniques necessary for the development morphological complexity and high level functionality in the designs for construction.
Seminar Courses
EMERGENCE AND DESIGN Term 1
Michael Weinstock
‘Emergent’ is defined as that which is produced by multiple causes, but which cannot be said to be the sum of their individual effects. It has been an important concept in biology and mathematics, in artificial intelligence, information theory and computer science, and in the newer domains of weather and climatic studies, the material sciences, and in particular biomimetic engineering. Commonplace terms such as ‘self-organising structures’ and ‘bottom-up systems’ have their origin in the science of emergence, and are encountered in fields as disparate as economics and urbanism. The seminar course will commence with a survey of the origins of the science and technologies associated with emergence, commencing with D’Arcy Thompson and Alfred North Whitehead, through Turing’s work on cryptographic analysis and on the mathematics of biological development, to the development of evolutionary algorithms. The conceptual structures and philosophies of Emergence in Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life will be reviewed, and the course will conclude with a series of digital experiments in algorithmic design.
NATURAL SYSTEMS and BIOMIMETICS Term 1
Michael Weinstock with Dr. George Jeronimidis and Nikolaos Stathopoulos
This course examines the ways in which biological organisms achieve complex ‘emergent’ structures and performances from simple components, relating this to an exploration of current architectural/industrial component design, prototyping and production. The aim is to suggest the possibility of a radical bottom-up programme for architectural design proceeding from a component strategy derived from an analysis of biological component strategies. The course will show how the boundary between the ‘natural’ and the man-made has been reconfigured by biomimetic engineering, and will introduce students to the thinking that has led to the evolution of new materials that may play a significant role in shaping the future of our built environment. It aims to explain how materials can be designed to produce varied properties, such as concrete that can ‘heal’ itself, glazing that can change its optical properties and materials that have a memory. It explores the concepts that are driving the implementation of new materials, particularly in ‘smart’ or adaptive structures, and examines these materials for potential contributions to new agendas. An introduction to the ways in which organisms have evolved their form, materials and structures in response to varied functions and environments will be followed by an account of the way in which engineering design principles have been abstracted from nature in current research projects for industry and material science. An in-depth study of articulated shell morphologies (general form) and anatomy (structure) will be carried out, and the interrelations explored, using digital geometric modelling and digital structural analysis. Exact geometric models created in Rhino and Maya are then converted and imported into the ‘ANSYS’ analysis software.
DESIGN and TECHNOLOGY Term 2
Michael Weinstock with Michael Hensel and Jennifer Boheim
This course aims to provoke a re-examination of the theories and practices of design from the point of view of their embedded material implications. It aims to reveal the ways in which ‘design’ and the ‘technical’ exist within the general culture of architecture, the processes leading to technological innovation in material objects and the particular role of the protoype in the design and production of artefacts and buildings of different scales. An examination of the prototype in the small, the mass-produced and the individually crafted architectures in contemporary production will be presented. The relations of material forms and formulations of thought in architectural projects in the twentieth century will be set out, and a discussion will be opened up around the ways material practices today are undergoing a substantial reconfiguration. The historical context of these forces will be examined, through the work of Buckminster Fuller, Charles and Ray Eames, and Prouve. The identification of their material agendas is focused on the contradictions and oppositions of the universal and the individual, of the mass-produced object and the ‘tailored’ craft product. Contemporary and historical positions, projects and procedures are compared, with particular attention given to the origin and relations of prefabrication and modular construction, and the associated design practices and drawing techniques..
Emergent Technologies and Design Directors
Michael Weinstock
Michael Weinstock studied and has taught at the AA since 1987. He is also Academic Head and Master of Technical Studies at the AA, and member of the PhD advisory board at Delft School of Design. He has held Visiting professorships at Yale and ESARQ in Barcelona, and in Rome. He is a partner in the Emergence and Design Group.
Michael U. Hensel
Michael U. Hensel [Dipl. Ing. Grad Dipl Des AA] is an architect, researcher and writer. He is a partner in OCEAN NORTH and the Emergence and Design Group, innovation fellow at the University of Technology in Sydney, board member of BIONIS – the Biomimetics Network for Industrial Sustainability, editorial board member of AD Wiley and JBE – Journal of Bionic Engineering, Elsevier Scientific Press. He has taught, lectured, published and exhibited world-wide.
www.ocean-north.net
michaelhensel@aaschool.ac.uk
Emergent Technologies Staff
Studio Master
Achim Menges
Achim Menges [AA Dipl Hons RIBA II] received the FEIDAD Outstanding Design Award in 2002, the Archiprix International Award 2003, RIBA Tutor Prize 2004 and the International Bentley Educator of the Year Award 2005. He is a partner in OCEAN NORTH and the Emergence and Design Group.
achimmenges@aaschool.ac.uk
Tutors
Nicholaos Stathopolous
Nicholaos Stathopolous is a design engineer at Buro Happold, London, working on international projects including large span tensile structures. He has also taught at the Yale School of Architecture, the University of East London and has been a visiting critic at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture, Holland and at the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of Imperial College, London.
Defne Sunguroğlu
Defne Sunguroğlu [BA Interior Architect AA Dipl RIBA II] is an architect and partner in OCEAN NORTH. For her work on complex brick assemblies she received the Holloway Trust Award 2006 for an outstanding contribution to the building industry, the Anthony Pott Memorial Award 2006, and the PMI Award [Industrial] 2007 of CERAM Research.
dsunguroglu@aaschool.ac.uk
Visiting Staff
Prof. George Jeronimidis
Prof. George Jeronimidis is the Director of the Centre for Biomimetics in the School of Construction Management and Engineering.He is an active member of the Smart Materials and Structures Committee of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IoM3). He has recently been invited to join the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Colloid and Interface Research in Golm [Germany] and the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Virtual and Physical Prototyping.
Project Consultant
Juan Subercaseaux, KPF