material systems. Here, geometry, materiality, pattern, structure, and form are inextricably linked. Menges and his students resist the post-rationalization of complex form through an approach that engages materially directed generative design. Here, architectural affordances reveal themselves as evolving flows of force through geometry and matter that are computed, designed, and fabricated through analog robotic interfaces that dance, collaborate, wind, and weave. These transformative models may in parallel provide potent contributions toward issues of construction, digital fabrication, and
tonic systems. The studio operates across scales through the explicit exploration of biological models for novel structures in the context of computational matter. While nonlinear concepts are widely applied in analysis and generative design, they have not yet convincingly translated into the material realm of fabrication and construction in architecture. The work in this studio offers some clues and answers where possible design routes and techniques no longer privilege column, beam, and arch through a broadened definition of architectural tectonics successfully made with advancements in computational design. How might these advancements impact material practice in architecture, engineering, and construction at economic, technological and cultural levels? While these questions remain unanswered, one of the most important deliverables of the studio concerns fostering new habits of thought and material intuition where nonstandard tectonic elements emerge through the rigorous investigation of the behaviors of natural models and their corresponding translation into novel
material ecologies in architecture. Critical to this approach are design processes rooted in experimentation without predetermination of form. Here, emphasis is placed upon the dynamics of natural models, of behavior and process in the material formation of difference and heterogeneous entities.
2013 Research Project Skin as Structure: A Fibrous Architectural Protoype by Catherine Soderberg.
141
next, synthetically exploring hierarchy and more mature architectural morphologies. Failures and messy computation become opportunities as the assemblages adapt and design intuition is honed through the agency of the material and process. Perhaps the most important aspect of the studio concerns the development of a design process saturated in material computation and making as steered and specified by a biological model or dynamic template. Here, the intention is not merely about mimicking biology, but learning how to design like nature, opportunistically extracting principles and processes for novel tec-