Manufacturing Performance

The use of rapid prototyping to produce scale models has in recent years become commonplace in architectural practices and universities. Employing such layer manufacturing processes at the scale of construction opens up entirely new possibilities for articulating and manufacturing a performative built environment. Achim Menges discusses Freeform Construction, a collaborative effort between Loughborough University's Civil & Building Engineering Department and Loughborough's Wolfson School of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering to develop construction-scale rapid manufacturing processes. Crossing conventional boundaries of the manufacturing domain, the research is not only concerned with developing new modes of production, but also contributes to establishing an alternative approach for designing performative architecture where form, material, structure and performance are understood as inherently related and integral aspects of the manufacturing and construction process. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lost in Parameter Space?

Rather than eradicating the need for mathematics in architectural practice, computation has intensified it. As Fabian Scheurer and Hanno Stehling of designtoproduction explain, the uneven flow of a complex design from computer-aided design (CAD) to computer-aided engineering (CAE) and through to computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) necessitates an understanding of abstract mathematical concepts that facilitate communication, precision and an accurate assessment of quality throughout the process. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Templating Design for Biology and Biology for Design

Architect Neri Oxman , Associate Professor and Head of the Mediated Matter Group at the MIT Media Lab, introduces how new advances in additive manufacturing coupled with emerging capabilities in materials science and synthetic biology are today empowering designers to combine top-down design procedures with bottom-up digital or physical growth across spatial and temporal scales.     

Ann Pendleton-Jullian

Ann Pendleton-Jullian practises from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she also teaches at MIT. This combination of teaching and practice allows her to consider the vital exchange between ideas and architecture that is evident in both her commissioned work and her theoretical projects. Her work has been cited for the manner in which it poeticises the intersection between pragmatic concerns and the ‘ambitions of the imagination’. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Architectural Chemistry

Protocell technology has a precedent in the innovative use of plastic in the 1960s, when chemistry first came up with an innovative new material that could be applied to architecture, interiors and product design. Omar Khan describes how at the Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies at the University at Buffalo in New York, he is developing a line of research that builds on the legacy of the 1960s and 1970s for soft materials and the capabilities of an elastic responsive architecture. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

To the Micron: A New Architecture Through High-Resolution Multi-Scalar Design and Manufacturing

Rapidly shrinking tolerances and increasing fidelity of emerging additive layer systems are beginning to afford a new opportunity: the ability to design below the macroscopic scale. This is resulting in the engineering of hybrid materials in which every element of their properties can be prescribed at the point of design conception. Richard Beckett of the Digital Manufacturing Centre (DMC), London, and the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and Sarat Babu of Betatype explore a potential new architecture that encompasses a scalar hierarchy of matter, enabling design to take place concurrently at scales ranging from the micrometre to the metre.     

空间结构节点的拓扑优化与增材制造

在简要介绍连续体结构拓扑优化的数学描述和数值算法的基础上,建立一空间结构节点模型,利用优化软件OptiStruct对节点进行单工况和多工况下的拓扑优化设计。详细讨论了棋盘格控制、SIMP法密度插值惩罚系数等参数设置以及对称约束、成员尺寸约束等工艺制造约束对优化结果的影响。经多次尝试比较得到受力合理、外观简洁且具有设计美感的优化节点模型,并利用熔融沉积制造技术完成采用聚乳酸材料的节点打印。文中进一步讨论了实际工程中利用增材制造（3D打印）技术对优化模型进行制造成型的可行性。目前易于实现的途径是将增材制造和传统制造工艺结合起来,如利用3D打印制作复杂铸钢节点的模具、3D打印蜡模进行失蜡铸造等。     

Ex Silico Ad Vivo: Computational Simulation and Urban Design at Foster + Partners

What makes a successful city? Can this be replicated simply by following tried-and-tested urban typologies? Francis Aish, Adam Davis and Martha Tsigkari of Foster + Partners' Applied Research + Development (ARD) group argue that technology allows other approaches to urban design. They explain that computational simulation is increasingly valuable in predicting how the dynamic and complex systems of a city might play out in an urban context, forging an exciting new alliance between computation and intuition.     

基于综合集成研讨厅方法的节能建筑建设体系的研究

“综合集成建设体系”是现代工程建设的重要方向,将系统论中的综合集成研讨厅方法应用于节能建筑设计时,需要包括建筑师、结构工程师、设备工程师、材料专家、节能技术专家、心理学家等与建筑行业相关的各行业专家的全程参与。综合集成建设体系是一个开放式的设计平台,在满足建筑使用功能的前提下,追求建筑全生命周期内的最优化节能。体系涵盖了建筑优化、资源优化、能源优化、材料优化、环境优化、智能控制优化和经济优化等7个方面。利用节能建筑综合集成建设体系,建设者们可以全面把握节能建筑建设。     

Design for manufacture: A strategy for successful application to buildings

Building designers’ counterparts in the manufacturing industry use proprietary methodologies described by the term ‘design for manufacture’ (DFM). Their use has resulted in radical improvements to productivity and quality. The potential benefits of applying DFM to buildings are widely recognized. However, there are differences between design in the manufacturing industry and in the construction industry. An analysis is provided here of how building design information and activities could affect successful application of DFM in the construction industry. The paper presents a review of DFM literature and a field survey of construction manufacturers, assemblers and consultants. The results suggest that information and activities prevalent in building design are barriers to the successful application of existing DFM methodologies. However, it may be possible to apply the fundamental principles of DFM to buildings. A strategy to achieve this is introduced and discussed.     

Biodiversity Targets as the Basis for Green Design

Mike Wells , the Director of Biodiversity by Design, and Ken Yeang outline the need for biodiversity targets in architecture to provide a more far-reaching basis for green design. Rather than just literally ‘greening’ a building by covering it with foliage, they seek to encourage designers to engage with wider ecological processes and in more specific detail. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A road map to find in 3D printing a new design plasticity for construction — The state of art

Recent years are showing a rapid adoption of digital manufacturing techniques to the construction industry, with a focus on additive manufacturing. Although 3D printing for construction (3DPC) has notably advanced in recent years, publications on the subject are recent and date a growth in 2019, indicating that it is a promising technology as it enables greater efficiency with fair consumption of material, minimization of waste generation, encouraging the construction industrialization and enhancing and accelerating the constructive process. This new building system not only gives an optimization of the building process but provides a new approach to the building design materiality. The direct connection between design and manufacturing allows the reduction in the number of the various construction phases needed. It is opening a new and wide range of options both formal and chromatic in customization, avoiding complex formworks, reducing costs and manufacturing time. The creative process has a strict and direct link with the constructive process, straightening design with its materiality. Cement-based materials lead the way, but new alternatives are being explored to further reduce its carbon footprint. In order to leverage its sustainability and enhance the system capacity, initiatives are being pursued to allow the reduction of the use of PC. Geopolimers are taking the first steps in 3DPC. Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) materials are used to substitute natural aggregates. Even soil is being explored has a structural and aesthetic material. These research trends are opening a wider range of possibilities for architecture and design, broadening the spectrum of color, texture, and formal variations. The concern about textures and colours is not yet evident in many the structures already printed, opening the opportunity for future research. More can be done in the mixture and formal design of this building system, “discovering” other raw materials in others waste. This article aims to make a critical review of technologies, materials and methodologies to support the development of new sustainable materials to be used as a plastic element in the printed structure. A roadmap of 3D printing for construction is presented, and an approach on mix design, properties in the fresh and hardened state, highlighting the possibilities for obtaining alternative materials are pointed. With this review possible directions are presented to find solutions to enhance the sustainability of this system discovering “new” materiality for architecture and design.     

Old Dispersions and Scenes for the Production of Public Space The Constructive Margins of Secondarity

The density of development in Belgium is such that the entire country has become an open city, with little sense of where one metropolitan area begins and another ends. Bruno De Meulder describes the underlying logic of this unbroken urbanscape, and the opportunity it affords for re-editing and reinserting informal social spaces in areas of wasted land. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Can Architectural Design Be Research?

So far the Unit Factor series has focused on design research within the context of the Architectural Association in London. Here the series editor, Michael Weinstock, discusses the possibilities of architects undertaking research in practice. He draws on the experience of Chris Bosse, who is responsible for the competition-winning design for the Watercube, Beijing's National Swimming Centre. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distinguishing Concepts: Lexicons of Interactive Art and Architecture

Interactive design has come about as a result of the intermingling of disciplines. As a consequence, the language it uses has become blurred - borrowed or stolen with little restraint from elsewhere. Though particular terms have become ubiquitous, the original concepts that lie behind them have been lost. This means that all too frequently they are no longer knowingly used. Usman Haque sorts the wheat from the chaff and brings clarity to bear on the vocabulary and thinking behind interactivity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why We Need Architecture of Tolerance

Professor and Chair in Integrated Design at the University of Calgary Faculty of Environmental Design, Branko Kolarevic has established an international reputation as an author and commentator on digital design and manufacturing in architecture. Here he questions the importance of high-definition tolerance in construction itself. As an industry that operates at far greater sizes and scales than other manufacturing bases, has the ‘messy world of building’ not always had to allow for a reasonable tolerance of errors? Should high-definition processes, which negate or negotiate zero tolerance, really be for architects and construction professionals the Holy Grail that they first appear?     

Optioneering: A New Basis for Engagement Between Architects and Their Collaborators

Conventionally, architects are somewhat tardy when inviting engineers to join their projects. By only introducing consulting engineers to participate in the later stages of the design process, engineers are commonly assigned a fixing role. This provides little opportunity for creative engineering solutions at the generative stage. Optioneering, a new business management model, however, offers the possibility of a new collaborative method for interaction between designers and their partners. Dominik Holzer and Steven Downing describe how a research project between the Spatial Information Research Laboratory (SIAL) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and the engineering firm Arup investigated the capability of this new form of collaboration. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hacking Science: The ALivE Group's Material Design Methods for Interdisciplinary Environments

Advances in the understanding and processing of materials have historically been one of the foremost drivers of architectural innovation. Today, groundbreaking material developments mainly occur on the nano-scale, and thus lie outside most designers' working knowledge and expertise. Martin Bechthold , Professor of Architectural Technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), and Allen Sayegh , Associate Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at the GSD, introduce the work of the Adaptive Living Environments (ALivE) group at Harvard University, which seeks to reconcile fundamental material science with architectural design through new modes of interdisciplinary collaboration drawing from contemporary cultures of computation and hacking.     

On SHRP：Twenty Five Years Review and Outlook

夏普计划已经走过了25年,它是沥青科技发展史上极为重要的里程碑.它打破了传统马歇尔设计中要求混合料低沥青含量的限制,