Achim Menges

Tobias Schwinn

Oliver David Krieg

In light of environmental challenges architecture is facing, wood is no longer regarded as outmoded, nostalgic, and rooted in the past, but increasingly recognized as one of the most promising building materials for the future. Recent years have seen unprecedented innovation of new technologies for advancing wood architecture. Advancing Wood Architecture offers a comprehensive overview of the new architectural possibilities that are enabled by cutting-edge computational technologies in wood construction. It provides both an overarching architectural understanding and in-depth technological information through built projects and the works of four leading design research groups in Europe. The projects presented include large scale, permanent buildings such as the ETH Arch-Tec Lab Building in Zurich, the Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall near Stuttgart and the Boiler House in Hooke Park, UK, as well as, built research prototypes investigating additive robotic fabrication, folded plate structures and meteorosensitive building skins. Illustrated in full colour, the book showcases the latest technological developments in design computation, simulation and digital fabrication together with an architectural, engineering and manufacturing perspective, offering an outlook towards novel spatial and constructional opportunities of a material with unrivalled ecological virtues.

A Computational Approach

Advancing Wood Architecture

Michael Hensel

Christopher Hight

The Space Reader provides a highly pertinent and contemporary understanding of space for a new generation of students and architects. It espouses a definition of space that is heterogeneous (an object or system consisting of a diverse range of different items). An example of heterogeneous space, for instance, is Manhattan where complex and multiple social and technological conditions are overlaid. (This is to be contrasted with highly centralised and ordered Modernist cities.) With the onset of globalisation and the Web, heterogeneneous space, with its emphasis on differentiation, is more relevant to the contemporary condition, which encourages the mixing of space, than a much more static conception of Modernist space. This book foregrounds spatial issues and the potential of heterogeneous space through a threefold strategy: 1) Its compilation of seminal essays on the discourse of heterogeneous space. These are to include previously published key texts by Reyner Banham, Andrew Benjamin, Robin Evans, Jeff Kipnis and Henri Lefebvre, as well as new texts by important contemporary commentators, such as Mark Cousins, Werner Durth and Anthony Vidler. 2) By commenting on these seminal texts and drawing links between them. 3) By distilling from the first two efforts a contemporary outlook on a discourse of heterogeneous space that is of future significance.

Heterogeneous Space in Architecture

Space Reader

eine Untersuchung über Funktionen der Literatur in der Bildungsarbeit

Literarische Bildung und gesellschaftliche Modernisierung

Michael Weinstock

This issue of AD introduces a new approach to architectural practice based on the interrelationship of emergence and self-organisation concepts. A sequence to the successful Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies title by the same guest-editors, it advances on the previous publication by taking on board the latest developments for fully integrated design evolution, manufacturing and construction. Emergence requires the recognition of architectural structures not as singular and fixed bodies, but as complex energy and material systems that have a lifespan, exist as part of the environment of other active systems, and as an iteration of a series that proceeds by evolutionary development. Thus the focal point of this issue will be the exploration of techniques and technologies that enable the implementation of such morphogenetic strategies, requiring a new set of intellectual and practical skills. Though the publication stands alone as an investigation and presentation of cutting-edge techniques and technologies within the design and construction field supported by examples from adjacent industries, it also introduces a new springboard for understanding and rethinking the radical changes in which architecture is now being conceived, designed and produced. While representing a timely exploration of the embedding of techniques and technology in an alternative design approach, it also presents wholly new strategies for tackling issues of sustainability.

Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design

The production of architecture, both intellectually and physically, is on the brink of a fundamental change. Computational design enables architects to integrate ever more multifaceted and complex design information, while the industrial logics of conventional building construction are eroding rapidly in a context of increasingly ubiquitous computer-controlled manufacturing and fabrication. A novel convergence of computation and materialisation is about to emerge, bringing the virtual process of design and the physical realisation of architecture much closer together, more so than ever before. Computation provides a powerful agency for both informing the design process through specific material behaviour and characteristics, and in turn informing the organisation of matter and material across multiple scales based on feedback from the environment. Computational design and integrated materialisation processes allow for uncovering the inherent morphogenetic potential of materials and thus are opening up a largely uncharted field of possibilities for the way the built environment in the 21st century is conceived and produced. In order to effectively introduce and outline the enabling power of computational design along with its inherent relationship to a biological paradigm, this publication looks at formation and materialisation in nature, integrative computational design, and engineering and manufacturing integration. Architectural contributors include: Cristiano Cecatto, Neri Oxman, Skylar Tibbits and Michael Weinstock. A scientific perspective by Philip Ball and J Scott Turner. Features: Buro Happold's SMART group, DiniTech, Foster + Partners' Specialist Modelling Group, the Freeform Construction group and Stuttgart University's Institute for Computational Design.

Higher Integration in Morphogenetic Design

Material Computation

Emergence - the process by which new and coherent structures, patterns and properties ‘emerge’ from within complex systems Traditional architecture starts from the premise that architectural structures are singular and fixed, and however well integrated are separate from their environment and context. Emergence requires that the opposite is true – that those structures are complex energy and material systems that have a lifespan, exist as part of an environment of other active systems, and develop in an evolutionary way. This book, based on the authors’ internationally renowned Emergent Technologies and Design course at the Architectural Association in London, introduces a new approach to the practice of architecture. The authors use essays and projects to demonstrate the interrelationship of concepts such as emergence and self-organisation with the latest technologies in design, manufacturing and construction. With projects from their course, and critiques and commentary from some of the world’s leading design theorists and practitioners, the authors of Emergent Technologies and Design have introduced a radical new way of understanding the way in which architecture is conceived, designed and produced.

Towards a Biological Paradigm for Architecture

Emergent Technologies and Design

Mark Pauly

Sigrid Adriaenssens

Fabio Gramazio

Matthias Kohler

The Advances in Architectural Geometry (AAG) symposia serve as a unique forum where developments in the design, analysis and fabrication of building geometry are presented. With participation of both academics and professionals, each symposium aims to gather and present practical work and theoretical research that responds to contemporary design challenges and expands the opportunities for architectural form. The fifth edition of the AAG symposia was hosted by the National Centre for Competence in Research Digital Fabrication at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in September 2016. This book contains the proceedings from the AAG2016 conference and offers detailed insight into current and novel geometrical developments in architecture. The 22 diverse, peer-reviewed papers present cutting-edge innovations in the fields of mathematics, computer graphics, software design, structural engineering, and the design and construction of architecture.

Advances in Architectural Geometry 2016

Sean Ahlquist

"Computational Design Thinking, " AD Reader Edited by Achim Menges and Sean Ahlquist The current transition from Computer Aided Design (CAD) to Computational Design in architecture represents a profound shift in design thinking and methods. Representation is being replaced by simulation, and the crafting of objects is moving towards the generation of integrated systems through designer-authored computational processes. While there is a particular history of such an approach in architecture, its relative newness requires the continued progression of novel modes of design thinking for the architect of the 21st century. This AD Reader establishes a foundation for such thinking. It includes multifaceted reflections and speculations on the profound influence of computational paradigms on architecture. It presents relevant principles from the domains of mathematics and computer science, developmental and evolutionary biology, system science and philosophy, establishing a discourse for computational design thinking in architecture. Rather than a merely technical approach, the book will discuss essential intellectual concepts that are fundamental not only for a discourse on computational design but also for its practice. This anthology provides a unique collection of seminal texts by authors, who have either provided a significant starting point through which a computational approach to design has been pursued or have played a considerable role in shaping the field. An important aspect of this book is the manner in which adjacent fields and historical texts are connected. Both the source of original inspiration and scientific thought are presented alongside contemporary writings on the continually evolving computational design discourse. Emerging from the field of science, principally the subjects of morphogenesis, evolution and mathematics, selected texts provide a historical basis for a reconfigured mindset of processes that generate, arrange and describe form. Juxtaposed against more contemporary statements regarding the influence of computation on design thinking, the book offers advancements of fundamental texts to the particular purpose of establishing novel thought processes for architecture, theoretically and practically. The first reader to provide an effective framework for computational thinking in design. Includes classic texts by Johan W. von Goethe, D'Arcy Thompson, Ernst Mayr, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Gordan Pask, Christopher Alexander, John H. Holland, Nicholas Negroponte, William Mitchell, Peter J. Bentley & David W. Corne, Sanford Kwinter, John Frazer, Kostis Terzidis, Michael Weinstock and Achim Menges Features new writing by: Mark Burry, Jane Burry, Manuel DeLanda and Peter Trummer.

Achim Menges

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