Aggregate Structures: Material and Machine Computation of Designed Granular Substances

In inanimate nature, large masses of granular substances are in constant processes of formation through perpetual cycles of erosion and accretion. What if architecture was to emulate this behaviour and allow for its own continuous reconfiguration? Karola Dierichs and Achim Menges establish the notion of an ‘aggregate architecture’. Composed of large numbers of unbound yet designed granules, aggregates are based on a fundamentally different logic of construction. In contrast to assembly systems, aggregates materially compute their overall constructional configuration and shape as spatiotemporal behavioural patterns, with an equal ability for both: the stable character of a solid material and the rapid reconfigurability of a fluid. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Granular Construction: Designed Particles for Macro-Scale Architectural Structures

Designing the individual particles of granular materials defines novel material characteristics of the overall granular system. This opens up a range of possibilities for architectural applications that are fully reconfigurable as the particles are not bound to each other. Karola Dierichs and Achim Menges of the Institute for Computational Design (ICD) at the University of Stuttgart provide an overview of recent research conducted at the Institute in this field. Autonomous construction is integrated into these systems through using either extrinsic autonomous machines or intrinsic autonomous particles.     

Membrane Morphologies: Heterogeneous Forces and Articulated Material Form

Material behaviour is induced at the moment a structure, with its accompanying system of energies, is assembled. The research introduced here by Sean Ahlquist , Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, in textile manufacturing and membrane structures challenges the concept of assembly in an architectural context, where form emanates not only from the integration of forces and differentiated materials, but also through the pervasive influence of structural action at the moment of fibre construction and composition.     

Fabrication Agency: Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall

Advances in computation challenge established design approaches in architecture through a much deeper integration of form generation and materialisation. Tobias Schwinn , Research Associate at the Institute for Computational Design (ICD), University of Stuttgart, and Guest-Editor Achim Menges , Director of the ICD, introduce how the potentials and constraints of robotic fabrication can now be explored as generative drivers in agent-based design. This enables architectural innovation in unison with fabricability, structural capacity and spatial performance, as demonstrated by the Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall in Schwäbisch Gmu"nd, Germany, the world's first building with a robotically fabricated segmented timber shell as its primary structure.