RC6
Wonderlab
Crafting Space Stefan Bassing, Soomeen Hahm, Daniel Widrig
Students Christina Bali, Meng Ying Li, Somdatta Majumdar, Siti Nadiah Shahril, Zhen Shan, I-Ting Tsai, Chrysanthi Tzovla, Shaoru Wang, Jinliang Wang, Changchen Wei, Wenjian Yang, Chao-Fu Yeh, Yiru Yun, Chao Zheng, Xixi Zheng
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Project groups SpaceStream Meng Ying Li, Zhen Shan, Wenjian Yang, Shaoru Wang faBrick I-Ting Tsai, Somdatta Majumdar, Xixi Zheng, Yiru Yun inCrease Chao Zheng, Changchen Wei, Chao-Fu Yeh, Jinliang Wang Plex-e Christina Bali, Nadiah Shahril, Chrysanthi Tzovla Teaching Assistant David Reeves (ZHA Code) Thanks to our consultants and critics Roberto Bottazzi, Michail Desyllas, William Firebrace, Kostas Grigoriadis, Christoph Hermann, Ross Lovegrove Igor Pantic, Jose Sanchez
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Impacting on all aspects of creative production, digital design and manufacturing technologies enable architects and designers to work at a pace and resolution unimaginable just a few years ago. Digital systems allow designers to accumulate, structure and utilise massive quantities of information to parametrically shape products and the built environment. Corresponding materialisation technologies such as 3D printing and robotics synthesise these projects in an increasing scale and resolution employing rapidly expanding ranges of ‘digital materials’. While these soft- and hardware systems facilitate the rapid design and materialisation of such products and environments, tactile interaction with form and matter throughout the design and fabrication process is increasingly scarce. With all of us more and more depending on readymade fabrication strategies, scripts and black box technology, an unbiased evaluation of our computational design culture is increasingly difficult. Within this context, Research Cluster 6 seeks to revaluate the role of craft and hands-on production in the digital design domain. Now in its third year, the cluster’s Crafting Space programme continues to explore hybridised design and fabrication strategies in which digitally controlled techniques of form-finding and manufacturing naturally blend with existing crafting techniques and low-tech ways of making. Manoeuvering between disciplines, the cluster seeks to occupy ‘in-between’ territories where traditional and contemporary ways of designing and making blur into one. The cluster’s research work has received great attention over the last year being published widely across the web on Dezeen, Designboom, suckerPUNCH daily, ArchDaily, Wired, Progettare Architettura and gooood. Our work has also been exhibited at various international events including the Pavilion of Innovation 2015 as part of the Beyond Building Barcelona Construmat and DADA 2015, the architectural biennale in Beijing, China.