Andrei Jipa @JAM.d

jam

D

andrei jipa @jamD 150 Woolwich Road, London, SE10 0LT, UK

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0044 (0) 7816.814.295 | ma.jipa@yahoo.com sex: male | date of birth: 29 January 1989 |

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PERSONAL INFORMATION

www.jam-d.com nationality: Romanian

Master of Architecture (MArch, ARB, RIBA II Diploma in Architecture) with Distinction @The University of Westminster, Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment, London, UK • RIBA President’s Medal nomination; • The Shoaib Mahmad Rawat Student Award for the Best Design Project in the Master of Architecture; • CLAWSA nomination; • RHWL sponsorship;

EDUCATION September 2012 – June 2014

Year 3, BA Architecture @The University of Sheffield, School of Architecture, Sheffield, UK • ERASMUS scholarship;

September 2009 – June 2010

Years 1 & 2, BA Architecture @Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urban Design, Faculty of Architecture, Bucharest, Romania • Scholarship for Academic Excelency for the highest final mark in school;

September 2007 – June 2009

Visiting Lecturer @The University of Westminster, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, London, UK; Computational Design tutor for MArch Course Year 1; part of the Digital Representations Module;

WORK EXPERIENCE September 2014 - ongoing

Design Studio Assistant @DS10, University of Westminster, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, London, UK; Running technical workshops with students and assisting with tutorials and interim crits;

September 2014 - ongoing

I established jamD, an independent design practice, providing architectural, computational design, visualization and digital fabrication services, specializing in 3D printing techniques: • Wooden Waves, London, UK; (with Mamou-Mani, for BuroHappold Engineering); Permanent parametrically designed installation for the ceiling of the new Buro Happold Engineering offices in London. Laser-cut birch plywood panels for improving the acoustic performance of reception area and conference rooms; • Head in the Clouds, London, UK; (with Mamou-Mani and Amy Croft); Installation for the STO Werkstatt exhibition Staring at the Sun: Desirable Effects of Parametric Design. Four 2 meter-high 3d printed micro-pavilions, designed to diffuse light through digitally deposited PLA threads; • The 3d Printed Pup-Up Studio, Shanghai, China; (with Mamou-Mani, for XinTianDi Style); Temporary installation in Shanghai XinTianDi celebrating 3d printing. A 10 meter-long spiralling wall made out of interlocking 3d printed cocoons using a technique that allows the precise control of the flowrate, producing shells with varying wall densities.

• Designing with Nature, London, UK; (with Michael Pawlyn and Exploration); 3d printed parametrically designed display stands for the exhibition on biomimicry at the Architecture Foundation in London;

November 2013 - ongoing

Digital Fabrication Assistant @DUS Architects, Amsterdam, Ne; • The Kamermaker – a large scale FDM machine for manufacturing an entirely 3d printed house in Amsterdam; • Solanyl Tableware – 3d printed tableware made out of potato-based plastic for the Potato Festival in the Netherlands; • The Chanel No5 – 3d printed perfume bottle for the 50th anniversary of L’Officiel Magazine; Assistant Parametric Designer @MAD Architects, Beijing, China • The SuperStar – parametrically designed iconic skyscraper for Chinatowns around the globe; • Nanjing Quarters – 6 residential towers with mixed-use active public ground-floor area; Architectural Assistant @RHWL Architects, London, UK • Regent Quarters – mixed use development in North London, UK; • Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Heron residential tower in Barbican, London, UK; • London Palladium – West End theatre refurbishment and extension in London UK; Architectural Intern @Ranbir Lal Architects, Sheffield, UK • Geydon House – single family residential project in Warwickshire; Architectural intern @MaBu Proiect, Buşteni, Romania • various small hotels and residential projects.

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July 2013 – September 2013

May 2013 – July 2013

September 2010 – October 2012; October 2012 – May 2013 (part-time)

November 2009 – May 2010 (part-time) Summer 2009

EXHIBITIONS 24 October – 14 December 2014

1 – 16 November 2014 7 February – 11 April 2014 OTHER EXPERIENCE March 2014 - ongoing

2007 - 2010

• Staring at the Sun The Cloud Capsules in the Sto Werkstatt exhibition in Clerkenwell, London, UK; curated by Amy Croft; • Process Exhibition The Sine Forest in the SOHO FuXing Plaza exhibition in Shanghai, China; Curated by Vlad Tenu; • Designing with Nature The Radiolaria Project in Michael Pawlyn’s exhibition at the Architecture Foundation in London, UK; • Project Silkworm Joined the project started by Arthur Mamou-Mani and Adam Holloway for an integrated tool for designers to produce custom gcode and control FDM 3d printers through a Grasshopper plugin; • Case care plâng (Houses in Tears) Joined a project for monitoring the endangered built patrimony of Bucharest initiated by Loredana Brumă;

2012 - ongoing

• We Want To Learn Joined the active community and online publication of Design Unit DS10 promoting parametric design and digital fabrication in with a hands-on approach of learning and designing through making;

2010 - ongoing

• Cometa Fără Coadă (The Tailless Comet) Live music photography blog;

PUBLICATIONS November 2013

July 2012 November 2011 October 2011 12 September 2011 DESIGN COMPETITIONS Summer 2013

Spring 2012

Summer 2011

Spring 2011 SKILLS Languages

Relevant skills

• l’Officiel!; n.45; p.234-235; - article about the 3d printed Chanel No5 bottle; • Future Arquitecturas; n.35-36; p.32-33; - article about Future Architects; • L’Arca; n.274; p.127; - article about my LOFT London Farm Tower competition entry; • Concept; n.150; p.22; - article about my LOFT London Farm Tower competition entry; • Archdaily; - article about my LOFT London Farm Tower competition entry; Building Trust International HOME Competition Final 20 shortlist out of 400 entries for a competition focusing on providing residents most at risk in developed cities with a safe place to live, proposing a design for a home with a budget of £20,000; (with R. Sandu) The Cannon Building 4 redevelopment in London, UK Final 4 shortlist for the redevelopment of an office building in the vicinity of St Paul’s in London; the relationship with the cathedral was digitally parameterized to drive the overall design; (with RHWL Architects) LOFT Urban Farm Towers in London, UK 2nd Place for the Vertical Fields, a new formulation of urban living in which individuals and families cohabit with methods of aeroponic food production, consisting of 5 towers and an active public ground level in London’s Potters Fields; (with L. Obletsova and V. Hamilton) PUMA Vision International Competition Final 3 shortlist for designing a master strategy for Puma stores around the world, involving branding, interior and product design for display units; (with R. Lal and Z. Pulman) Romanian (mother tongue), English, French (beginner), Spanish (basic) • • • • • •

McNeal Rhinoceros + Grasshopper; g-code manipulation for 3d printing; built and run a modified Mendel FDM 3d printer; VB.net; C#; Processing; Pascal; C++ scripting; Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Premiere; Bentley MicroStation. AECOsim; Autodesk AutoCAD; 3D Studio Max + VRay; _3

andrei jipa @jamD

I established jamD in 2014, straight after I graduated with Distinction the Master of Architecture course at the University of Westminster in London. My 2nd year diploma project Solanopolis was nominated for the RIBA Silver Medal, shortlisted for the SOM Fellowship and received the Shoaib Mahbab Rawat Award, while the Temple to Infinity 1 st year project received the CLAWSA 2nd prize. The DS10 Diploma Unit i was part of, run by Arthur Mamou-Mani and Toby Burgess invited me back to teach technical workshops with the students as well as being a regular guest critic.

Aside from architectural, digital fabrication and computational design consulting with jamD, I am a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster, teaching Computational Design to 1st year MArch students. This is part of the Digital Representations module, focusing on the mathematics behind parametric design and teaching basic scripting skills with VB.NET. My main interest lies in the field of parametric design and digital manufacturing, focusing on 3d printing techniques. I am a collaborator on the SIlkworm project, a plugin for Rhino and Grasshopper for 3d printers. I built an adaptation of a Prusa-Mendel FDM 3d printer and used it to research innovative techniques to challenge traditional g-code oriented 3d printing. I developed methods to parametrically control flowrates and allow non-horizontal layers to be deposited.

Being a supporter of the open source movement, my research is available in the Maker community.

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September 2009 Year 3 undergraduate project at the University of Sheffield; tutor: Ranbir Lal; Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. The term is derived from the Greek  (parallaxis), meaning “alteration”.

Nearby objects have a larger parallax than more distant objects when observed from different positions, so parallax can be used to determine distances. source: Wikipedia Situated in the Peak District in the Yorkshire countryside, the pavilion explores the possibility of an architectural intervention within a protected landscape, proposing a very light contact with the ground and a sequence of timber frames cantilevering above Burbage Rock and framing the view of Higger Tor.

the parallax folly

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October 2012 Year 4 MArch experiment in DS10; tutors: Toby Burgess and Arthur Mamou-Mani; Part of a photographic study of the beautiful colour interference patterns that occor in thin soap films.

Thin-film interference occurs when incident light waves reflected by the upper and lower boundaries of a thin film interfere with one another to form a new wave. Studying this new wave can reveal information about the surfaces from which its components reflected, including the thickness of the film or the effective refractive index of the film medium. Thin films have many commercial applications including anti-reflection coatings, mirrors, and optical filters.

In the case of a soap bubble, light travels through air and strikes a soap film. The air has a refractive index of 1 (nair = 1) and the film has an index that is larger than 1 (nfilm > 1). The reflection that occurs at the upper boundary of the film (the air-film boundary) will introduce a 180째 phase shift in the reflected wave because the refractive index of the air is less than the index of the film (nair<nfilm). Light that is transmitted at the upper air-film interface will continue to the lower filmair interface where it can be reflected or transmitted. The reflection that occurs at this boundary will not change the phase of the reflected wave because nfilm > nair. source: Wikipedia 6_

interference patterns

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November 2012 Year 4 MArch experiment in DS10; tutors: Toby Burgess and Arthur Mamou-Mani; Soap bubbles are physical illustrations of the complex mathematical problem of minimal surfaces. They will assume the shape of least surface area possible containing a given volume.

A true minimal surface is more properly illustrated by a soap film, which has equal pressure on inside as outside, hence is a surface with zero mean curvature. A soap bubble is a closed soap film: due to the difference in outside and inside pressure, it is a surface of constant mean curvature.

While it has been known since 1884 that a spherical soap bubble is the least-area way of enclosing a given volume of air (a theorem of H. A. Schwarz), it was not until 2000 that it was proven that two merged soap bubbles provide the optimum way of enclosing two given volumes of air of different size with the least surface area. This has been dubbed the Double Bubble conjecture.

The project is featured in the book by Peter Silver and Will McLean - Pneumatic Structures, as well as on the cover of the Spanish edition.

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When two bubbles merge, they adopt a shape which makes the sum of their surface areas as small as possible, compatible with the volume of air each bubble encloses. If the bubbles are of equal size, their common wall is flat. Else, their common wall bulges into the larger bubble, since the smaller one has a higher internal pressure than the larger one, as predicted by the Young–Laplace equation.

At a point where three or more bubbles meet, they sort themselves out so that only three bubble walls meet along a line. Since the surface tension is the same in each of the three surfaces, the three angles between them must be equal to 120°. This is the most efficient choice, again, which is also the reason why the cells of a beehive have the same 120° angle and form hexagons. Only four bubble walls can meet at a point, with the lines where triplets of bubble walls meet separated by cos−1(−1/3) ≈ 109.47°. All these rules, known as Plateau’s laws, determine how a foam is built from bubbles. source: Wikipedia Using the principles of soap bubble clusters, a proposal for the Burning Man festival was put together, focusing on ease of assembly and use of recyclable materials.

wiki-bubbles

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October 2012 Year 4 MArch experiment in DS10; Tutors: Toby Burgess and Arthur Mamou-Mani In crystallography, the cubic (or isometric) crystal system has unit cells in the shape of a cube.

This is one of the most common and simplest shapes found in crystals and minerals.

crystallization

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The primitive cubic system (cP), found in pyrite and table salt consists of one lattice point on each corner of the cube. Each atom at a lattice point is then shared equally between eight adjacent cubes, and the unit cell therefore contains in total one atom (1 â &#x201E; 8 Ă&#x2014; 8). source: Wikipedia

mad superstar: a mobile china town Summer 2013 Parametric design consulting for MAD Architects, Beijing, China MAD designed a conceptual, star-shaped, mobile Chinatown as a response to the redundant and increasingly out-of-date nature of the contemporary Chinatown. Along with shopping malls, petrol stations and branches of McDonalds, the old China Town renders all cities boring and alike.

It is nothing more than restaurant streets and fake traditional buildings representing a kitsch image of contemporary China, with no real life inside. It is a historical theme park that poisons the urban space. The SuperStar is a shock therapy solution to remedy this situation. Rather than a sloppy patchwork of poor construction and nostalgia, the Superstar is a fully integrated, coherent, and above all modern upgrade of the 20th century Chinatown model. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a place to enjoy Chinese food, quality goods and cultural events; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a place to create and to produce, where citizens can use workshops to study, design and realize their ideas. Home to 15,000 people, the SuperStar includes health resorts, sports facilities, drinking-water lakes and a digital cemetery.

It can land in any metropolitan area of the world, acting like a self-sustaining benevolent virus, requiring no resources from the host city.

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November 2012 - June 2013 Year 4 MArch project in DS10; Tutors: Toby Burgess and Arthur Mamou-Mani

Homer’s work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that. We have always been fascinated by infinite space, by the endless stars and by galaxies upon galaxies. How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn’t have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopped describing the sky, simply listing what they see. (Umberto Eco) The Burning Ship fractal was originally described by Michael Michelitsch and Otto E. Rössler in 1992. It is based on the Mandelbrot set, the difference being that the real and imaginary components are set to their respective absolute values before squaring at each iteration.

temple to infinity

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J(z)  z2 + c c = -0.8 - 0.2i Below, a Julia set of a quadratic polynomial; In a Julia set, an arbitrarily small perturbation can cause drastic changes in the sequence of iterated function values.

The project focused on exploring three dimensional fractal geometries and the possible applications they could have in architecture. The main challenge was to understand the infinite complexities of the mathematical sets and their counter-intuitive behaviour and to represent these collections of numbers as point clouds which can then be topologically represented as meshes.

The theoretical basis of the project started with complex numbers which have two components (a real coordinate represented on the X axis of a carthesian system and the imaginary coordinate represented on the Y axis and expressed in i, or imaginary units, i being the square root of -1). These complex numbers therefore can be used in polynomial recursions to represent two dimensional fractal geometries, but the mathematics become even more complex when creating three dimensional sets, employing hypercomplex numbers and effectively producing three dimensional shadows of four dimensional geometries. _13

A quaternion Julia set of the Burning Ship - a 4D hypercomplex equivalent of the 2D fractal based on complex numbers. This image is a 2D projection of a 3D shadow of a 4D set of hypercomplex numbers. Hypercomplex numbers use 2 quaternion units (j and k), as well as the imaginary unit i, the square root of -1. j and k have the unique mathematical property of being non-commutative: j × k ≠ k × j. This is very counter-intuitive, because in the Real set of numbers, multiplication is always comutative: 3 × 2 = 2 × 3.

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temple to infinity

Inspired by a visit to ETH in Zurich, Switzerland and by the work of Michael Hansmeyer, in particular his Digital Grotesque project, Temple to Infinity was a radical approach to design, abolishing any established idea about architectural form and materiality and testing the boundaries of what a bulding should look like, ignoring the physical constraints of fabrication.

I love mathematics…principally because it is beautiful, because man has breathed his spirit of play into it, and because it has given him his greatest game - the encompassing of the infinite. (Rózsa Péter) The project was awarded with the CLAWSA 2nd prize. _15

solanopolis

February 2014 - June 2014 Year 5 MArch project in DS10; Tutors: Toby Burgess and Arthur Mamou-Mani A city that grows intuitively, a creature, living, breathing and computing, a seething ecology that is evolving as a new metropolitan megaform. A speculative urbanism, an exaggerated present, where we can explore the wonders and possibilities of emerging biological and technological research and envision the possible worlds we may want to build for ourselves.

Fiction is a speculative tool in conjunction with scientific research to probe the outer reaches of the realm of possibility, Supercomputers whistle and whir; a virtual city, a parallel city overlaid directly onto the physical turns everything into interface, everything into program. The city watches on, breathing, blinking.

It is a city that is grown rather than built, a computed territory, faceted and abstracted, endlessly reprinting itself as demand requires.

Reminiscent of an exaggerated silent film, everyone interacts with their digital city through intricate signs and gesture control. As the children play, they learn to hack the augmented streets evading their friends but getting lost in the hidden spaces they have unlocked. They must escape from a sentient city that no longer recognises them. (Liam Young, Tomorrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thoughts today) 16_

The world is overpopulated and in crisis. Failed attempts to colonize nearby inhabitable planets, increasing life expectancy, disastrous global warming, generalized poverty and the irreversible collapse of capitalism have transformed the Western World into a site of anarchy and social tension. Urban culture and civilization, after a 3,000-year-long history is in decline and about to disappear completely. Low-rise, overcrowded slums develop like parasites around urban areas and consume the little that is left of the glory of former metropolitan centres.

The 3d printer emerges as a main stream tool for fabrication, with the Delta Bot being the most popular tool in construction, because it is cheap, accessible and uses recyclable longlasting materials like fiber-enhanced bio-polymers.

Soon after the failure of major currencies, in a last attempts to revive capitalism, silver and gold became the de facto backbone of the economy until an extended period of financial depressions ultimately led to the abolition of the gold standard and the introduction of the potato as the generally-accepted financial standard. Genetically modified species of potato are the main source of carbohydrates for more than 85% of world population and are used to produce bio-fuel, electricity as well as PLA - a very efficient recyclable potato starch-derived 3d printing bio-plastic widely used ever since the era of the RepRap.

Fertile land being a luxury, people rely extensively on hydroponic agriculture, recycling industrial waste to produce home micro-farms that provide them with all the basic needs of daily life: electricity, heating, food and the raw material for additive manufacturing.

The 3d printers follow a space colonization algorithm and as new generations of branches are added to the city, they provide a safe structure that people can inhabit, moving up while the ocean levels are rising as a consequence to global warming. The rising ocean would swallow the ‘roots’ – the first generations of the ‘New Polis’, forcing people to abandon uninhabitable inferior levels. Cocolitophors transform the abandoned roots into a biorock, concrete-solid foundation for the levels above.

As soon as a safe height is reached, the 3d printers will start manufacturing SOLANOPOLIS, the apogee of human civilization and the highest expression of urban design.

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solanopolis 0 and ±∞ should be understood as formal concepts in mathematics, rather than actual numbers. A very simple example refers to the non-sense of infinitely long series of decimals and infinitely small numbers: 1 ÷ 3 = 0.333... |× 3 1 = 0.999...

While this might seem to defy logic, it is a mathematically correct argument, and based on the same principles, other similar (in)equalities can be proven. So let us start with having a look at the series (S2): (S2): 1 - 2x + 3x2 - 4x3 + 5x4 - 6x5 + . . .

This is somewhat harder to intuitively resolve than (S1) because positive and negative addends alternate. Calculating the sum for x=2 for example: (S2)[2]: 1 - 2×2 + 3×22 - 4×23 + 5×24 - 6×25 + . . .

4 + 12 - 32 + 80 - 192 + . . .

(S2)[2]: 1 The partial sums will be: 1 - 4 = -3 1 - 4 + 12 = 9 1 - 4 + 12 - 32 = -23 1 - 4 + 12 - 32 + 80 = 57 1 - 4 + 12 - 32 + 80 - 192 = -135 . . . . . . .

-3, 9, -23, 57, -135: the partial results are all over the place, it would be very difficult to guess what this series does when the number of addends is infinite. In the 19th century, Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel developed a method to calculate the result of the infinite series using algebra: S2 = 1 - 2x + 3x2 - 4x3 + 5x4 - 6x5 + . . . |× x x × S2 = x - 2x2 + 3x3 - 4x4 + 5x5 - 6x6 + . . .

Now let’s add up the two series: x × S2 + S2

- x3 - x4

+ x4 + x5

Now let’s add up the two series: S2 (1 + x) + x S2 (1 + x) = 1 - x + x2 - x3 + x4 - x5 x - x2 + x3 - x4 + x5 S2×(1 + x) x = S2×(1 + x)2 = 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 S2 = 1/(1+x)2 S2×(1 + x)2 = 1

( + +

7x6 - 6x6

5x4 - 4x4

+ x2 + x3

-6x5 + 5x5

-4x3 + 3x3

S2 (1 + x) = 1 - x x(S2 + x × S2) = x - x2

3x2 - 2x2

-2x + x

S2 = 1 - 2x + 3x2 - 4x3 + 5x4 - 6x5 + 7x6 - . . . x × S2 = x - 2x2 + 3x3 - 4x4 + 5x5 - 6x6 + . . .

- x5 + . . . |× x - x6 + . . .

S2 x6 x6 0

+ + +

xS2): . . . . . . . . .

So we’ve just found out the result we were looking for: (S2): 1 - 2x + 3x2 - 4x3 + 5x4 - 6x5 = 1/(1+x)2 If we give x in the series the value of x=1: (S2)[1]: 1 - 2 + 3 - 4 + 5 - 6 + . . . = 1/(1+1)2 = 1/4 This is a very counter-intuitive result and it proves the fact that infinity and 0 have very particular behaviours as numbers. While a sum of integers will always result in an integer (1 – 2 = -1; 1 - 2 + 3 = 2; 1 - 2 + 3 – 4 = -2 etc); if there is an infinite number of addends like in S2, the result is a fraction, which seems very bizarre, but it is mathematically correct: 18_

1 - 2 + 3 - 4 + 5 - 6 + . . . = 1/4

Then as the finite encloses an infinite series, And in the unlimited limits appear, So the soul of immensity dwells in minuta And in the narrowest limits, no limits inhere.

What joy to discern the minute in infinity!

The vast to perceive in the small, what Divinity! â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Jakob Bernoulli

Bots drift across this inhabited geology, a dense accumulation of crevice rooms, and public valleys, slowly printing and reprinting, endlessly as demand requires.

There is no nature anymore. We are wandering a new kind of wilderness, where the line between biology and technology is becoming increasingly indistinguishable. Through genetic modification and new engineered potatoes we are remaking our world from the scale of cells to the scale of continents. Plants, artificially sustained, are hanging from the branches of the city, embedded in the ecology yet detached from it.

As people started to benefit from the profits of the new Potato society, they started to vertically expand their ground-floor container homes to accommodate extra living space as well as the essential hydroponic potato farms.

The Maker community, still a very important player in society at the time, centralized the network of delta printers used to expand the city and provided an open-source self-updating algorithm for the robots to follow in order to coordinate them, avoid inconsistencies throughout the city and attempt to achieve a common final goal.

And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities? (George Berkeley) Digital morphogenesis is a process of shape development (or morphogenesis) enabled by computation. While this concept is applicable in many areas, the term â&#x20AC;&#x153;digital morphogenesisâ&#x20AC;? is used primarily in architecture.

In architecture, digital morphogenesis is a group of methods that employ digital media for form-making and adaptation rather than for representation, often in an aspiration to express or respond to contextual processes. In this inclusive understanding, digital morphogenesis in architecture bears a largely analogous or metaphoric relationship to the processes of morphogenesis in nature, sharing with it the reliance on gradual development but not necessarily adopting or referring to the actual mechanisms of growth or adaptation. Recent discourse on digital morphogenesis in architecture links it to a number of concepts including emergence, self-organization and form-finding. (Branko Kolarevic) _19

solanopolis An L-system is a parallel rewriting system and a type of formal grammar. An L-system consists of an alphabet of symbols that can be used to make strings, a collection of production rules that expand each symbol into some larger string of symbols, an initial axiom string from which to begin construction, and a mechanism for translating the generated strings into geometric structures. L-systems were introduced and developed in 1968 by Aristid Lindenmayer, a theoretical biologist and botanist at the University of Utrecht. Lindenmayer used L-systems to describe the behaviour of plant cells and to model the growth processes of plant development. L-systems have also been used to model the morphology of a variety of organisms and can be used to generate self-similar fractals such as iterated function systems.

Lindenmeyer Systems (L-Systems) provide a powerful method for creating complex geometric structures from simple rules. Not limited to geometric entities - the axiom can be an image, linguistic element, sound etc - the theory relies on turtle algorithms to generate the branching.

L-Systems have traditionally been used to model natural objects such as plants and cellular structures, but they can be used to create a wide variety of structures and transformations for various other fields, such as music, visual arts and architecture. L-Systems work on the principle of data-base amplification and replacement which allows complex structures to be generated by the repeated application of rules on an initial axiom or premise, just as a complex biological organism’s DNA controls it’s growth and development.

Despite the flexibility and clearly demonstrated potential of L-Systems, experimentation is required to create specific models, and the final result is very difficult to anticipate due to the high unpredictability of even the most basic set of rules after the first few itterations.

Lindenmayer’s original L-system for modelling the growth of algae: variables : A B constants : none axiom: A rules : (A → AB), (B → A) which produces: n = 0 : A n = 1 : AB n = 2 : ABA n = 3 : ABAAB n = 4 : ABAABABA n = 5 : ABAABABAABAAB n = 6 : ABAABABAABAABABAABABA n = 7 : ABAABABAABAABABAABABAABAABABAABAAB n=0: n=1:

A / \

A B /| \ n=2: A B A /| | |\ n=3: A B A A B /| | |\ |\ \ n=4: A B A A B A B A 20_

*start (axiom/initiator) *the initial single A spawned into AB by rule (A → AB), rule (B → A) couldn’t be applied *former string AB with all rules applied, A spawned into AB again, former B turned into A *note all A’s producing a copy of themselves in the first place, then a B, which turns into an A one generation later, starting to spawn/repeat/recurse

jamD g.code

G-code or the G programming language is the most widely used numerical control (NC) programming language. It has many flavours and implementations and it is used mainly in automation as part of computer-aided engineering. Simply put, G-code is a language in which computerized machine tools are instructed what to do and how - i.e. where to move to, how fast, through what path and how to use a toolhead. A common situation is that, within a CNC machine tool, a cutting tool is moved according to these instructions through a toolpath, cutting away excess material to leave only the finished workpiece. The same concept also extends to noncutting tools, such as forming or burnishing tools; to additive methods; and to measuring probes that validate the results.

Morphologically, G-codes - also called preparatory codes - consist of a number of “words” that begin with the letter G. Generally it is a code telling the machine tool what type of action to perform. Traditional 3d printing uses horizontal layer slicing and builds consecutive layers individually with travels on the Z axis upwards after each layer. During the printing process, the toolhead will print a layer, then move up vertically and start the next layer.

This means that the printer covers certain points twice. In a real scenario, a model will consist of hundreds or thousands of layers. This means the printer will waste a considerable amount of time. Important factors to be taken into acount here are the angular velocity and jerk (m/s3) which are defined in the firmware. This means that the toolhead will slow down to 0m/s, then move up and then accelerate back to travelling speed in the XY plane, which is a time consuming process. The solution is to elliminate the vertical movement between layers by changing the toolpath to a spiral gradually moving upwards. The fundamental problem is still that the slicing planes are independent of the geometry.

The proposed solution is to use slicing planes consistent with the formation process of the geometry (extrusion, rotation, revolution, etc.) . In the case study, the planes are perpendicular to the extrusion path. The resulting toolpath is a consistent spiral with no partial layers and no vertical translation movements, therefore all movements are significant and no wasteful instructions are performed. The issue with this technique is that the layer height is no longer consistent throughout the spiral. This introduces an issue in generating the E value numbers in the G-code, because variable layer height will have an effect on the E values.

The formula above is used to calculate a uniform E value throughout the instruction. The obvious solution would be to introduce a linear ‘E-value acceleration’ in the firmware. This means that in the G-code we can define an initial layer height which produces an initial extrusion velocity (mm of filament/s) plus an increment for the E value (mm/s2):

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Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including meteorology, sociology, physics, engineering, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a response popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos. The theory was summarized by Edward Lorenz as follows:

Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

Chaotic behavior can be observed in many natural systems, such as weather and climate. This behavior can be studied through analysis of a chaotic mathematical model, or through analytical techniques such as recurrence plots and PoincarĂŠ maps. (sourceL Wikipedia) For the purpose of the architectural 3d printing experiment, this type of geometry provided a continuous (potentially infinite) orbit to function as a support path for the additive material deposition.

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the narcoleptic 3d printer: do rep-raps dream of plastic sheep?

January 2014 Year 5 MArch project in DS10; Tutors: Toby Burgess and Arthur Mamou-Mani The geometry of the strange attractor was altered in order to allow it to self support itself structurally, while maintaining the continuous orbital path. This was then developed into a fully 3d printed pavilion for the Burning man Festival in the Nevada desert.

A 2.5x1.5m prototype was developed and manufactured on my RepRap 3d printer to prove the buildability of the structure. _23

the narcoleptic 3d printer: do rep-raps dream of plastic sheep?

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the radiozoa project

February 2014 Year 5 MArch project in DS10; Tutors: Toby Burgess and Arthur Mamou-Mani A research project based on Ernst Haeckelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studies and inspiring images of radiolaria. The aim is to clasify, 3d model and produce physical models of the fossil organisms trough 3d printing.

The models were featured in the biomimicry exhibition at the Architectural Foundation by Michael Pawlyn.

A research project aimed to assemble a catalog of radiolarians as fabrication-ready digital models. The project was inspired by the work of German biologist Ernst Haeckel who published Kunstformen der Natur in 1904.

The book consists of 100 lithographic prints representing beautiful organisms realised by Ernst Haeckel over the course of his career. It was an influential piece of work, inspiring architects and artists of the Art Nouveau movement. Ten of the plates were dedicated to Radiolaria, Foraminifera and Diatoms, which had not been researched before and were thus brought to the attention of the Victorian scientists.

The Radiolaria - microscopic protozoa organisms found in the zooplankton throughout the ocean - produce intricate mineral skeletons with needle-shaped pseudopodia, composed of bundles of siliceous microtubules which aid in the Radiolarianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s buoyancy. wikipedia.org A parametric tool was designed which allowed the generation of a broad spectrum of radiolarian structures, based on twelve predefined geometric archetypes, each having the possibility to be further refined and fine-tuned through sets of parameters. The tool produced a clean mesh geometry, to be sliced into gcode instructions for FDM 3d printers. The models were fabricated using a self-built Rep-Rap type 3d Printer. _25

exploration: architectural foundation exhibition

February 2014 Collaborator on Michael Pawlyn’s exhibition at the Architectural Foundation Murray’s law, or Murray’s principle is a formula for relating the radii of daughter branches to the radii of the parent branch of a lumen-based system. The branches classically refer to the branching of the circulatory system or the respiratory system, but have been shown to also hold true for the branchings of xylem, the water transport system in plants.

Murray’s original analysis was intended to determine the vessel radius that required minimum expenditure of energy by the organism. Larger vessels lower the energy expended in pumping blood because the pressure drop in the vessels reduces with increasing diameter according to the Hagen-Poiseuille equation. However, larger vessels increase the overall volume of blood in the system; blood being a living fluid requires metabolic support. Murray’s law is therefore an optimisation exercise to balance these factors.

I collaborated with Michael Pawlyn and the Exploration office to design a series of tables for an exhibition on biomimicry in architecture at the Architecture Foundation.

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Press release: The Architecture Foundation was delighted to present Exploration Architecture: Designing with Nature, the first ever solo show of Exploration, a thought-leading architecture and design practice working in the field of biomimicry.

An immersive display and striking 3D printed installation showcased a selection of four projects and prototypes from the studio’s cutting-edge research on sustainable, nature-inspired design, including two new, previously unpublished designs. Study models, sketches, infographics, and specially commissioned short films introducing Exploration’s projects were presented alongside a myriad of natural specimens that inspired the designs – offering unique insight into the studio’s practice of learning from nature in order to deliver future-facing solutions for architecture, systems design and materials production that address the major challenges of our age.

Showcasing Exploration’s working philosophy and embracing 3D printing’s capacity for radically increased resource efficiency, the exhibition’s central installation took the form of a long sweeping display designed to showcase innovative SKO software – a structural optimisation computer programme based on the adaptive growth patterns of trees and bones – which was created with support from large-scale 3D printing pioneer Lukas Oehmigen of BigRep and Ultimaker.

At a time when architecture and society more broadly urgently need to reconsider their relationship to the natural world and move towards a more ecologically sustainable future, the exhibition offered a timely showcase of biomimicry, and the innovative approach to design and resource use it offers. The Architecture Foundation was delighted to have partnered with Interface, a pioneer in applying biomimicry to industrial design challenges, as a headline sponsor for this exciting exhibition that presented this emerging design discipline to a UK audience.

The exhibition was accompanied by a public programme of events expanding on the themes of the exhibition, including a headline event featuring Exploration Director Michael Pawlyn, as well as broader debate exploring wider questions about the relationship between science, mathematics and the natural world.

Curated by Exploration Architecture and The Architecture Foundation. _27

July 2013 Collaborator on DUS Architects project Besides the possibilities of bio-based or recycled plastics, DUS also researched different kinds of natural materials as a base for 3d prints.

Testing Solanyl, a printing material based on the potato starch from the leftovers of a french fries company, the tableware that is printed with this material is completely biodegradable. For this reason probably not that suitable for printing houses, but of course very suitable for numerous other applications, and the material gives a great texture and produces objects that can be used in microwave ovens and dishwashers.

solanyl tableware

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The project was part of the Hutspot festival in the Netherlands, celebrating a traditional national dish and providing an auto-poetic set of potato-made,potato-shaped 3d printed tableware for eating potatoes.

dus: kamermaker

July-September 2013 Collaborator on DUS Architects project Working with DUS Architects in Amsterdam, while running 3d printing sessions on warm summer days in Tolhuisweg Gardens, open to the general public, displaying one or two Ultimaker desktop FDM machines at work, as well as the Kamermaker (the largest FDM printer with a build volume of 2 × 2 ×3.5m), I noticed how 3D printing seems to capture the popular imagination.

People would follow the patterns drawn by the hot ends for an entire afternoon, bewitched by the buzzing and humming sounds of the four stepper motors reminiscent of Ben Burtt’s synthesized voice for R2-D2, the astromech droid from George Lucas’ Star Wars universe. Even after months of working with the machines, my colleagues and I would occasionally slip in a hypnotic trance mesmerized by the monotonous deposition of fluid plastic, layer after layer, unable to take our eyes off the scurrying robotic arm, gazing in curiosity and puzzled interest, as if not wanting to miss any of the uneventful printing routine.

There are a number of reasons behind this nearly addictive interest: the anticipation of the emerging object, an attempt to associate the quirky sound with the motion pattern, an inquisitive desire to figure out how the machine works and identify all the minor gestures and their cycles, like the filament retraction, the point where the layer is changed and the moment when the Z-axis is in motion for a split second.

I relate this hard to explain, natural appeal to 3d printing with the ability of the technology to stimulate a confident optimism and inevitably trigger a science fiction level of expectations. _29

dus: kamermaker

DUS Architects are building a 3d printed typical Dutch canal house (grachtenpand) in Amsterdam Noord, using the Kamermaker, a custom 6-meter-high FDM printer to prefabricate 2 × 2 × 3.5m pieces on site. While the materiality is characteristic to the fabrication method, using a polypropylene plastic that clearly shows the typical sectional slices, the overall design does not celebrate 3d printing as a main design feature; the dwelling has nothing of the bio-mimetic geometries possible with 3d printing, it follows an orthogonal logic, with a typical slim proportion and rectangular façade penetrations.

The 3d printing manufacturing process is apparent only in the diamond façade details, which due to their 3 dimensional faceted patterns at various scales and inclinations determined by the capabilities of the machine, give a hint to the additive manufacturing process.

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chanel no5

August 2013 Collaborator on DUS Architects project The history and future of the Chanel No5 perfume bottle inside and on the cover of Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Officiel!

5th year anniversary issue of the fashion magazine. Working with DUS architects from Amsterdam, I was honored to be invited to re-design a unique 3D printed version of the iconic bottle of the Chanel No5.

Using a desktop Ultimaker FDM 3d printer that I assembled in Amsterdam, and a transparent PLA type of plastic, as well as an innovative technique to reduce the flowrate, an autopoetic geometric pattern was applied on the original bottle design. _31

head in the clouds: sto exhibition , london

November 2014 Architect: Arthur Mamou-Mani Lead Collaborator: Andrei Jipa Exhibition Curator: Amy Croft Described as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;skyscrapers-for-oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, the Cloud Capsules are a series of site-specific parametrically-developed 3d printed objects. These 2-metre-high installations demonstrate measured changes in the levels of light diffused through their forms. Visitors had the chance to observe the 3D printer on-site and follow the creation of these micro-pavilions throughout the duration of the exhibition.

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Staring at the Sun: Desirable Effects of Digital Design (press release extract) Sto Werkstatt presents Staring at the Sun, an exhibition featuring three innovative projects that focus on the impact of digital design technology on the social and environmental effectiveness of our built environment.

The research departments of many leading architectural practices are renowned for producing fantastically complex forms. Less well reported are the efforts to bring those forms to bear on the adverse environmental effects of construction and building operation. Staring at the Sun responds to the question of how advances in digital design techniques, such as parametrics, autopoiesis, algorithms, Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) act as a catalyst for positive social and environmental change. The exhibition displays three innovative projects that explore the omnipresent environmental challenge of solar exposure with its affect on architecture and life on our planet.

Cloud Capsule features a series of site-specific parametric models that have been developed

by Architect Arthur Mamou-Mani with lead collaborator Andrei Jipa. Described as ‘skyscrapersfor-one’, these 2 metre high micro-pavilions demonstrate measured changes in the levels of light diffused through their forms. These models are calculated using the daylight simulation software Radiance and “Silkworm”; an open-source plug-in for Rhino developed by a team including Mamou-Mani. Visitors will have the chance to observe the 3D printer on-site and follow the creation of one of these micro-pavilions throughout the duration of the exhibition.

From exploring our experience of varying weather conditions, the further two projects in Staring at the Sun look at the possibilities of how buildings can adapt to their context. Lotus: A Passively Deployable Canopy by Fang Han and Min-Shan Tsai is a 1:1 model for a seat and canopy system that transforms itself to provide varying amounts of shade in response to local weather conditions. The project was realised using a ‘heat-motor’ –a new technology that exploits the expansion of wax during temperature change to convert thermal to mechanical energy. On a larger scale but with comparable design criteria, the Al Bahr Towers, designed by AHR for the Abu Dhabi Investment Council Headquarters in Abu Dhabi will be presented in the exhibition through a scale model and digital simulations. The Al Bahr Towers feature the world’s largest computerised dynamic façade, a performance-based technology solution to the intense sunlight and heat in the Abu Dhabi. The façade is inspired by adaptive flowers and the “mashrabiya” - a traditional Arabic lattice screen, traditionally used to achieve privacy whilst reducing glare and solar gain.

The origami-like geometry of the shading screen folds and unfolds in response to the movement of the sun, reducing solar gain by up to 50%, whilst simultaneously improving admission of natural diffused light into the towers and improving visibility. Bespoke software applications and advanced parametric technologies were used to simulate the movement of the façade in response to the sun’s path. _33

head in the clouds

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The common thread which links the three projects in the STO Werkstatt exhibition their consideration of the specific solar challenges of a given site, such as the sun posing different issues in Abu Dhabi compared to the UK and how these unfold over time.

The exhibition demonstrates Sto Groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s continual investment and innovation in the sustainable design of living space tailored to human needs worldwide. During the exhibition at the Werkstatt samples of Sto material which address issues of sun exposure will be displayed in the materials library. These include Sto Artline photo voltaic glass, StoSolar, a solar wall heating system; Sto photosan, an external paint which through light exposure breaks down NOX particulates in the air and StoColor X-black, with near infrared reflective black pigment that reduces temperature gain through solar radiation.

The exhibition was accompanied by a series of talks and seminars, where the public will have the opportunity to discuss with the designers the ideas explored in their work. _35

Curated by Amy Croft, who is slowly carving a niche for stimulating exhibitions alongside the hard-nosed business dealings that dominate London’s contract furniture village, the exhibition highlights work from architects AHR, Arthur Mamou-Mani, Andrei Jipa and Bartlett MArch graduates Fang Han and Min-Shan Tsai.

head in the clouds

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Mamou-Mani and Jipa created a series of two-metre-high ‘micro pavilions’ designed specifically for the exhibition that will measure changes in the levels of light diffused through their forms.

The models are made using Silkworm – an open-sourced 3D printing plug-in for design software Rhino developed by Mamou-Mani and Jipa.

A series of talks based around ideas presented at the exhibition begins on 20 November. Staring at the Sun: Desirable Effects of Digital Design ran from 24 October to 14 December.

xin tian di studio: 新天地

September 2014 Architect: Arthur Mamou-Mani Lead Collaborator: Andrei Jipa Local Consultant: Stephany Xu Local Partner: Green City Sponsors: HypeCask (3d Printers); Voltivo (3d Printing Material) The 3d Printing Pop-up Studio was a temporary installation enabling visitors to discover the world of 3D printing and the beautiful forms that can be created with this innovative technology.

It took place during the Shanghai Fashion Week, between 25 September and 12 October 2014.

A development of Joris van Tubergen’s work, the studio was made of 200 different modules which were all 3D printed with varying opacity, creating a beautiful lace-like forest of cocoons lit from the inside. The geometry of the installation at different scales is based on trigonometric functions: the overall shape, the components and the pattern on each component, as well as the parametric variations were all achieved using computational design tools and programming languages.

The fabrication process of the 200 components took place in Shanghai over a one month period, employing 3 Delta Tower FDM 3d Printers, using PLA bio-plastic. The machines continued to print during the event as part of an exhibition and series of workshops to explain the process to the visitors.

We had been pretty intrigued by the novel way of using the 3D printer to create objects which have not a lot in common with the traditional objects created with FDM. Those lantern-like structures which materialised in front of our eyes had a much more textile and elegant feeling to them, looking like being weaved instead of printed layer by layer. (Dr. Stephan Weiß, co-founder, Hypecask 3D Printers) _37

xin tian di studio: 新天地

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wooden waves @burohappold

November 2014 Architect: Arthur Mamou-Mani Lead Collaborator: Andrei Jipa Client: BuroHappold Engineering The Wooden Waves is an architectural installation suspended in the reception areas of the BuroHappold Engineering headquarters at 17 and 71 Newman Street in London, providing a visual motif connecting the two. This functional art piece celebrates global engineering practice BuroHappold’s multiple innovations in the field of complex gridshell and other types of timber structures and was designed in collaboration with Mamou-Mani Architects and BuroHappold. The structure was made at the Mamou Mani fabrication laboratory in London, The FabPub. The components of The Wooden Waves form sinuous streams folded into unexpected configurations through an open-source and innovative digital fabrication technique of “lattice-hingeformation”: This is a parametric pattern of laser-cut lines that alters the global properties of plywood sheets making them locally more flexible and thus controlling the 3D form without significant supporting framework. The lattice hinge method is a development of the traditional timber bending technique, using the kerf (beam-width) of the laser to form torsional springs within the material.

The modules diffuse light through the opening of the cuts when bent and also absorb sound and stabilise temperature through acoustic and phase-changing material layers integrated into the design.

More than a hundred prototypes were tested to inform the digital model and master the curvature of the final piece which forms a seamless, soft and continuous stream.

The supports of the modules were generated through a digital process called “Topological Optimisation” in which force flows are assessed and un-used material is discarded. They hold the patterned plywood sheets in their current forms through a male/female connection requiring no glue.

The Wooden Waves installation makes use of flat, off-the-shelf plywood from an FCC certified supplier, demonstrating that complex forms can be achieved through application of innovative engineering and architectural technology to a sustainable, transportation-optimised material.

The piece is left untreated, showing the natural grain characteristic to engineered timber. _39

wooden waves @burohappold

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wooden waves @burohappold

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If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things throâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; narrow chinks of his cavern.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1793