http://www.vimeo.com/6658509
Adaptive fa[CA]de is an emergent, adaptive building skin that aims to provide optimum light levels to the interior. Using the computational and behavioural characteristics of Cellular Automata coupled with Artificial Intelligence, it gradually learns how to use complexity towards explicit goals. Translating the analog input of the environment, as measured by a series of light sensors, to digital and again to the analog tilted panels formed by CA patterns, suggests that one way to adapt to the complexity of the environment can be complexity itself.
By deeply understanding and utilising the inherent ‘universality’ of several Cellular Automata, the resulting system minimises both the exhaustive calculations found in other responsive façades as well as the input from the environmental conditions. More importantly, as it learns from its own errors and achievements, it can anticipate and challenge its own future behaviour. The outcome is a kinetic, performative, beautiful building skin.
Adpative fa[CA]de was my final thesis’ project for the ‘Adaptive Architecture & Computation’ (Bartlett, UCL, 2009) with Sean Hanna and Ruairi Glynn as my supervisors. It was exhibited from the 8th of September till the 2nd of October in Digital Hinterlands Exhibition at Arup’s Phase 2 Gallery on 8, Fitzroy st, as part of London Digital Week
The project has been widely published in ‘Passages through hinterlands’ book, numerous design blogs and has been awarded with Europrix 2010 Quality Seal.
http://www.vimeo.com/5095922
video created by Agata Guzik
I am very pleased to present this project created by a group of international students – including myself – in Barcelona during the F2F workshop (File to Factory). The topic was “Tensile Structures” and the objective was to collaborate for one week with students from different european universities in order to design and construct a 1:1 structure.
This particular project is based on the idea of tensegrity and, in particular, on the idea of replacing all the struts with membranes, apart from one which holds everything together. Once this strut is dettached, the whole structure is dismantled. An interesting idea for a portable and easy-to-assembly bench-shelter.
We took it to the beach to rate its performance!! Thanks to all of the people who participated in this amazing experience!
http://www.vimeo.com/4927650
This is a self-replicating facade driven by simple computational rules found in formations in Nature called Cellular Automata. The facade is responsive to the light levels of its environment measured by light sensors. The physical piece consists of a grid of 15 panels running real-time according to the simulation of the whole finite grid coded in Processing 1.0. An Arduino board is used for pinning the light sensors and transmitting the values to Processing through serial communication.
Project created by Marilena Skavara for “Computing for Emergent Architecture 2″, AAC, Bartlett, 2009.