Booklet: Philip Beesley Summer School (2009)

Sarga ss o F i e l d s

a summerschool with Philip Beesley at CITA Centre for IT and Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture

http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

within the field

Sargasso Fields A CITA summer school with Prof. Philip Beesley, University of Toronto in collaboration with Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Martin Tamke.

The summer school investigates how concepts of interactivity and responsiveness can suggest new ways of thinking the relationship between the building and its environment. The contemporary societal context necessitates the thinking of sustainable solutions for our built environment. But how do these challenge the way we think and design space? How do we challenge our understanding of sustainability from being a set of posterior technological implementations to become part of the intellectual thinking and culture of architecture? Where formalist design traditions uphold the autonomy of the architectural artefact, we ask how ideas of interfacing and actuated behaviour can allow a reconceptualisation of core architectural terms such as context, shelter, programme and extension.

The summer school asks: - If interactivity presents us with an inherent openness towards the exterior, how can new models of permeability and exchange challenge the way we think site and enclosure?

- If embedded actuation allows for adaptable structures, how does this challenge the primacy of permanence in architectural design?

- What are the technologies and materials that can enable the realisation of this new architecture of responsiveness: what is energy, how can we harvest it and how do we exploit it?

The summer school was kindly supported by The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Dreyers Fonden and the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

The summer school was further supported by the kind lending of a second laser cutter. We thank Ă…lborg University, Department of Architecture and Design and Michael Mullins, Head of Department.

Thank you also to Rachel Armstrong and the FLinT - Center for Fundamental Living Technology for their inspiring constribution to the summer school collequium.

http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

The goal of the summer school was to develop a major interactive architectural environment. The installation was developed at the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA), Royal Academy of Fine Arts, at the Royal Danish Academy during August 2009, involving an intensive two week workshop bringing together students and faculty from Waterloo, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture and other European schools to work closely with experimental architectural designers and creators within the Copenhagen community at CITA.

The workshop designed and fabricated a new immersive kinetic sculpture environment responding to user stimulus with dense, distributed fields of physical movement controlled by massively repeated arrays of microcomputers embedded within the textile-like layers of the space.

By working collaboratively to produce and refine this installation, participants gained advanced experience in key aspects of responsive architectures: networks and systems composed of complex parts assembled into coherent artificial ‘organisms’, actuation systems based on shape memory alloys, innovative techniques for creating large volumes out of small amounts of material, implementation of digital fabrication and advanced modeling, simulation and visualisation techniques.

The installation will be mounted in Meldahls Smedie as part of the Climate Exhibition in November 2009. The exhibition is part of larger school respons to the COP 15 event.

http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

As part of the summer school PhD Student adn TED fellow Rachel Armstrong from the Bartlett School of Architecture organised a collequium with researchers from University of Southern Denmark’s FLinT - Center for Fundamental Living Technology research group.

The aim for the collequium was to frame the summer school in respect to material design, kinetics and sustainability. The talks are from researchers and practitioners from Denmark, UK and Canada.

Speakers included: - Rachel Armstrong, The Bartlett School of Architecture - Martin Hanczyc, South Danish University - Kasper Stoy, South Danish University - Hans Tofrtlund Neilsen, South Danish University - Terry Peters, independent writer and architect - Rory Glynn, Interactive Architecture and The Bartlett School of Architecture

Biographies: Rachel Armstrong TED Global Fellow; Teaching Fellow, The Bartlett School of Architecture. v Rachel is a medical doctor with qualifications in general practice, a multimedia producer, SF author and arts collaborator whose current research explores the possibilities of architectural design as a new experimental space to create positive practices and mythologies about new technology.

Her focus is on Living Architectural systems, integrating natural processes with synthetic technologies. Rachel’s unique and extensive experience in the creative use of the biomedical sciences in architectural practice and her project management of these collaborations that she has put together over the last 10 years provides both a creative and catalytic energy that will provide a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the project.

Martin Hanczyc Associate Professor, Associate Professor, Institute of Physics and Chemistry and the Center for Fundamental Living Technology (FLinT), University of Southern Denmark. Martin Hanczyc is Associate Professor at the Institute of Physics and Chemistry and the center for Fundamental Living Technology (FLinT) in Denmark. He is developing novel synthetic chemical systems based on the properties of living systems. These synthetic systems are termed ‘protocells’ as they are model systems of primitive living cells and chemical examples of ‘artificial’ life. He has previously also held the position of Laboratory Director at The European

Center for Living Technology in Venice, Italy and Chief Chemist at ProtoLife Srl in Venice, Italy. He received a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Pennsylvania State University, a doctorate in Genetics from Yale University and was a postdoctorate fellow at Harvard University. Martin is interested in the development of protocell models into new technologies and their applications in art and design.

Kasper Stoy Associate Professor, Computer Systems Engineering, Southern University of Denmark. Kasper Stoy (KS) is an associate professor at the Maersk McKinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark (USD), and a co-director of USD’s Modular Robotics Lab. KS received his MSc from the University of Aarhus, Denmark and his PhD from USD in 2003. He spent a year of his PhD studies at USC’s Information Sciences Institute, CA, USA. KS is the author of the book “Self-Reconfigurable Robots: An Introduction” (MIT Press, 2009, to appear) has published thirteen firstauthor papers of which three received awards. He organizes international workshops, serves as reviewer for IEEE conferences, International Journal of Advanced Robotics, Journal of Autonomous Robots, and Journal of Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour and several more. KS currently manages the ``Morphing Production Lines’’ research project funded by the Danish Research Council for Technology and Production and is USD’s PI on the EU project Locomorph. He also developed the first version of the Player component of the multi-robot simulation tool Player/Stage, which is the most widely used simulation in this field world-wide.

Hans Toftlund Nielsen Associate Professor Department of Physics and Chemistry University of Southern Denmark. Full Professor, Inorganic Chemistry, Odense University (Southern Denmark). Member of the board of the European Inorganic Chemistry Symposia. Federation of European Chemical Societies, Working party on History of Chemistry. Member of the editorial board of Acta Chem, Scand. Member of the editorial board of J. Chem. Soc. Dalton Transactions. The Danish representative in COST D21 and ESF initiative on molecular magnets. Referee on the DFG Priority Program on Molecular magnetism 2002-2007. Member of The Danish Academy of Science.

Received the Ole Rømer Prize 1984 .

Terry Peters Architecture and independent writer. Terri Peters is an architect and writer based in Copenhagen and London. Born in Canada, she has spent the last seven years in the UK, where she is a registered Architect. Her professional experience in London has been at both small and large offices, most recently at Building Design Partnership in Clerkenwell, the largest multi-disciplinary design office in the UK. Since late 2008 she has been spending more time in Copenhagen, focusing on research and writing about architecture, technology, art, design and sustainability. She began her parallel career in writing at the Architects Journal in the UK during her Diploma studies, where she was the Student Correspondent for two years. Building on this experience, over the past seven years she has established a portfolio of about 200 articles including interviews with

designers such as Will Alsop, Jan Utzon and Moritz Waldemeyer, articles about new buildings such as the Oslo Opera House and the Copenhagen Elephant House, and show reports and exhibition reviews from Tokyo to San Francisco to Venice to Stockholm. Her writing appears widely in print and online, and she writes regular features for magazines such as Mark, Clear, Sleeper, Azure, Metropolis, Frame, Pol Oxygen, Oyster, Architecture Record, Blueprint and ArchitectureWeek. She is currently working on an interview with fashion designer Hussein Chalayan, a series of articles about new ecological hotels in San Francisco, and a feature about the work of artist/architect Jenny Sabin.

the wider environment and have the potential to enter into exciting and potentially productive forms of dialog that enables continual negotiation between the built environment and its inhabitants and the natural environment. He is the founder of www.interactivearchitecture.org, a repository of information

Ruari Glynn Architecture and founder of interactivearchitecture.org Installation Art and Architectural design are framing his research, exploring the effects and opportunities that responsive technologies provide to spatial design and participatory culture. Originally a sculptor, he studied as an Interaction Designer at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design London, and at the Institute of Digital Art and Technology in Plymouth before taking my skills and experience into an architectural context joining the ‘Interactive Architecture’ research group, at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London where he graduated with distinction. His work focuses on enabling architecture to act not just as an interface between people participating in interactions but also as an active participant in its own right. He believes that interactive environments are able to improvise and learn from their interactions with people and http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

Sargasso Fields was exhibited at the Pluto Festival, Belgium, October 2010 and at the Climate and Architecture exhibition, Meldahls Smedie, Copenhagen, Dec 2010 Sargasso Fields at Climate and Architecture exhibition, Dec 2010

http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

Catalogue text

Sargasso Cloud The collaborative Sargasso Cloud project by CITA (Centre for IT and Architecture) and Waterloo Architecture investigates how concepts of interactivity and responsiveness can suggest new relationships between buildings and environments. We need sustainable solutions for our built environment. But how do these challenge the way we think and design space? How do we challenge our understanding of sustainability from being a set of posterior technological implementations to become part of the intellectual thinking and culture of architecture? Where formalist design traditions uphold the autonomy of the architectural artefact, we ask how ideas of interfacing and actuated behaviour can allow a reconceptualisation of core architectural terms such as context, shelter, programme and extension.

The summer school asks: - If interactivity presents us with an inherent openness towards the exterior, how can new models of permeability and exchange challenge the way we think site and enclosure?

- If embedded actuation allows for adaptable structures, how does this challenge the primacy of permanence in architectural design?

- What are the technologies and materials that can enable the realisation of this new architecture of responsiveness: what is energy, how can we harvest it and how do we exploit it?

The structure is the product of two-week intensive workshop, staged August 2009 at CITA, led by experimental architects and educators Philip Beesley and Mette Ramsgard Thomsen. Extended dialogues included researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and the Bartlett School of Architecture. Twenty-five architecture students investigated primary qualities of a responsive, sensitive architecture through cycles of making and designing, exploring models for future living architectures.

The expanded, lightweight layers within the kinetic field created within the studio are organized like a coral reef, using densely populated resilient, expanded meshworks. Calls and responses ripple throughout the environment, stirring diffuse ripples of filtered air that trickle through the space. Power cells arrayed within a bamboo and silk ‘geotextile’ array at the lower levels of this stratified environment create their own power, that call the upper lightweight structure. Suspended proximity sensors and touch sensors from the upper layer register these weak signals and amplify them through arrays of microprocessor-driven actuated components that stir the air in peristaltic waves of breathing motion.

Within a layer of glass counterweights, protocell structures are formed.

These serve as portents for future development of this building system.

A protocell is a primordial molecular globule, situated in the environment through the laws of physics and connected through the language of chemistry. Uniquely, protocell technology possesses a material simplicity that forms through self-assembly. Yet the globule can become dynamic because it has an embedded chemical metabolism. Protocells are engineered as a material but possess life-like properties. This gives this type of matter the ability to communicate with and integrate into existing developing natural and architectural systems, imparting an ecological responsive character.

http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

The summer school was joined with students and collaborators from all levels and from many different countries. From professorial level to first year students the focus was on the exchange of ideas.

Participating tutors were Prof. Philip Beesley, Lecturer Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Lecturer Martin Tamke, Adjunkt Phil Ayers, Research Assistant Karin Bech, Research Assistant Jon Gammel, Research Assistant Hayley Isaks.

Participating students were Sofie Aandahl, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Daniel Baumann, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Anna Beznogova, University of Waterloo Diana Bico, Braunschweig University of Technology Anders Deleuran, Aalborg University, School of Architecture and Design Vera Doerk, Academy for Fashion and Design, Hamburg Isak Foged, Aalborg University, School of Architecture and Design Max Gerthel, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Newsha Ghaeli, University of Waterloo Paul Hasselberg, Architect working for Snohetta, Oslo Ian Huff, University of Waterloo Vincent Hui, College Tutor Ryerson University, Canada Kristine Jensen, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Richard Taehyung, University of Waterloo Belinda, Langasdalen, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Jonathan Nestler, Braunschweig University of Technology Stefan Neudecker Braunschweig University of Technology Lily Nourmansouri, University of Waterloo Terry Peters, Architect, Aarhus School of Architecture Esben Poulsen, Aalborg University, School of Architecture and Design Simeon Rivier, University of Waterloo Frederik Seehusen, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Tyler Walker, University of Waterloo Andrea Wong,Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London

Kandidat student Kandidat student Bachelor student Bachelor student College tutor Professor Recent graduate Kandidat student Bachelor student Architect Kandidat student Teacher Kandidat student Bachelor student Kandidat student Bachelor student College tutor Bachelor student Phd Student College tutor Bachelor student Kandidat student Kandidat student Kandidat student

http://cita.karch.dk

SAR G A S S O F I E L D S A u g u s t . 2009

for further information and projects please see http://cita.karch.dk and the summer school blog: http://responsiveenvironments.wordpress.com/