Dagmar Reinhardt

Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2016

The book presents the proceedings of Rob/Arch 2016, the third international conference on robotic fabrication in architecture, art, and design. The work contains a wide range of contemporary topics, from methodologies for incorporating dynamic material feedback into existing fabrication processes, to novel interfaces for robotic programming, to new processes for large-scale automated construction. The latent argument behind this research is that the term ‘file-to-factory’ must not be a reductive celebration of expediency but instead a perpetual challenge to increase the quality of feedback between design, matter, and making.

Trivet Fields: The Materiality of Interaction in Architectural Space

ABSTRACT The proliferation of interactive technologies expands the palette of the architect, prompting a re-examination of notions of materiality in architecture. This article explores how the introduction of computational processes that accelerate, amplify or animate conventional mechanisms of time and space might alter the relationship between human perception and matter. We present a spatial paradigm for the materiality of interaction in architectural space and demonstrate it in a recent installation work, Trivet Fields, which employs a heterogeneous model of interactivity to articulate spatial materiality.

Sensors and Workflow Evolutions: Developing a Framework for Instant Robotic Toolpath Revision

This paper examines the potential for creative practitioners to adopt robotic fabrication processes augmented with the introduction of sensors. Typically, the outcomes of a fabrication process are predetermined, however, with the introduction of sensors, design and fabrication process may be interrupted by real-time feedback. In such a system, design roles and authorship become secondary to the process of manipulating data, such that new rules of design can be introduced and developed in response to materials. Hardware and software such as Arduino, Grasshopper3D, Rhinoceros3D and Processing have opened up new strategies of hacking, coding and robotic manipulation that can be embedded in robotic fabrication processes. The addition of sensors provides feedback about material location and characteristics, work environment and co-workers, so as to support architectural dialogue. This paper proposes a framework for designing new protocols for human interaction and machine response in robotic fabrication systems.

Elastic Space: Latent Formations in Fashion and Architecture

In search of an architectural response to shifting contemporary environments, the paper investigates the notion of latency in the related fields of sartorial fashion and architecture. The paper unfolds the possibility of a material and phenomenal elasticity that facilitates responsive architecture through a re-coding and re-contextualization of user, occupation and space.

Experiments with high-back chairs and retroreflective surfaces for increasing the support of one’s own voice over short conversational distances

Acoustic support of one’s own voice affects speech, and increased support can foster more relaxed voice projection, which reverses the Lombard effect. While hearing one’s own voice in typical rooms shows subtle influences of “global” room acoustics, local treatment can yield stronger effects for talking-listeners. This paper considers two types of architectural acoustic treatment for supporting one’s own voice and modifying speech propagation—high-back chairs and retroreflective ceilings. For a talking-listener, local acoustic treatment such as high-back chairs can be designed to selectively attenuate ambient noise while providing enhanced reception of sound from a particular direction, project speech towards a listener with increased gain for speech intelligibility, and also provide voice support. Acoustically retroreflective surfaces (e.g., ceilings and vertical partitions) provide increased voice support by reflecting a person’s voice back to them, without such local treatment. This also has the advant...

RBDM_Robodome: Complex Curved Geometries with Robotically Fabricated Joints

This research reports on the robotic fabrication for the complex architectural geometries of three intersecting domes. The project explores systems for modules through a tessellated skin (a) of hexagonal tile modules that produce a macro geometry for a doubly curved, non-developable surface; and the smooth micro geometry of an interpolating structural rib (b) that requires a customised manufacturing of modules and their integrated joints (c). It outlines the computational workflow between geometrical conditions, structural requirements, toolpath development, and fabrication process. The research concludes with a discussion of a new module and joint hybrid informed by stereotomic and timber joint techniques, which takes advantage of the six axis robotic fabrication for a standardized multiple face joint between modules of varying sizes that enables a form and force fitting connection.

Towards a Micro Design of Acoustic Surfaces

In the context of acoustic performance in architecture, this paper presents research into the computational design and robotic fabrication of surfaces with micro-geometries that can change the acoustic response of space. It explores the design affordances for acoustically efficient patterns for sound scattering - between complex geometries, acoustical effects, and robotic fabrication. Spline curves pose a problem for the translation between geometry and material fabrication, specifically when a series of tests is required with a high degree of detail. Whereas 3D printed samples are impractically small, and CNC fabrication is limited by tool path axis, robotic fabrication enables precision for 1:10 scale model prototypes such as the quick sampling of sound discs that can be used to analyze acoustic scattering. Through a process of reverse engineering from parametric modeling to scale model production to physical simulation, the acoustic reflective properties of surface patterns are investigated for scattering coefficients, in order to derive statistical data on acoustic properties of these surfaces, and to deduce design rules.

Performer-machine scores for choreographing bodies, interaction and kinetic materials

Recent advances in digital fabrication and computationally controlled environments have produced new forms of performative architecture that exhibit dynamic kinetic behaviours in physical space and time. This opens up the design process to choreographic thinking, in which patterns, compositions and dynamic qualities of movement are defined across heterogeneous elements of bodies, kinetic materials, spatial structures and software code. The generation of choreographic tools for exploring and notating movement in the design process poses the problem of representation and language translation across disciplines. Our contribution lies in a new tool to extend an existing design methodology. We propose the use of a performer-machine score, a choreographic tool which can be used in conjunction with many other choreographic and design tools, such as spatial diagrams and computer-aided design models and simulations, to aid the iterative creative process of designing the movement-based interaction, performance and behaviour of human performers and computationally controlled kinetic materials.

Coral|Colony—from Singularities of Mathematical Code to Relational Networks

Coral|Colony discusses ongoing research that investigates a language shared between the fields of biology, mathematics, behavioural studies, interaction design, and architecture. It creatively deploys and explores such language by proceeding through series of speculative design research that rework natural paradigms. A collection of marine specimens (corals, shells) are here deployed as design models for a range of studies driven by computational media and design processes. Natural precedents thus become prototypes produced through digital fabrication; these are assembled in interactive and responsive set-ups, and performed and experienced as spatial installations. From a study of form and type in the natural precedents, the research expands this towards templates, codes, and systems for design applications that focus on processes and protocols of ongoing change. By exploring the way in which code becomes matter and coded matter parallels natural behaviour, this research project contributes to an interdisciplinary discourse whereby mathematical principles as found in natural form/formation are explored for their potential to encourage and trace sensory, emotional, and experiential engagement. In doing so, this project addresses contemporary architectural design, moving current applications of code towards modes of engagement and experience.