Designing Material Innovation - Exhibition Digital Brochure by Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

September 28 â€“ December 22, 2017 California College of the Arts 1111 8th Street, San Francisco

Exhibition Full-scale prototypes and pavilions demonstrate new approaches to material, fabrication, and design on the Back Lot, CCAâ€™s outdoor venue for making and displaying art.

Featuring work by APTUM Architecture with CEMEX CCA Digital Craft Lab Matter Design with MIT Architecture T+E+A+M

designing material innovation.org

SYMPOSIUM

Designing Material Innovation By exploring collaboration between architects and industry experts, an international symposium shows how technological optimization intersects with economics and ecology, ethics and aesthetics. October 26 6:00 – 8:00 pm Keynote and Reception October 27 9:00 am – 4:30 pm Presentations and Panels California College of the Arts 1111 8th Street San Francisco, CA 94107 Free and open to the public

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designing material innovation.org

A pavilion of massy concrete perforated to form a delicate screen. A leggy canopy coated in polyurea, gloss red. Columns of streaked resin embedded with brick fragments and glass shards. The contours and hillocks of a fiberglass island. A big stone that people rock and spin, wrangle with ropes, and walk into new positions. Step out onto the Back Lot at California College of the Arts this fall and you’ll encounter five full-scale prototypes conjoining form and material in fresh ways. Arrayed amidst the school’s facilities for outdoor work and play, these pieces explore the functional and experiential dimensions of architecture generated at the intersection of formal and material research. Each emerged from collaboration across fields of knowledge and expertise as architects partnered with engineers and fabricators, chemists and biologists, as well as farmers and students, historians and waste managers. This exhibition stages a dialogue among related yet distinct approaches to designing with materials and to collaboration, as well as to the project of mobilizing technological optimization in economics and ecologies, ethics and aesthetics. By gathering these exemplars of digital and post-digital craft, it explores the ends to which we might put contemporary virtuosity in digital design and fabrication. Structural analysis lets us use resources more efficiently. Tools for controlling complex surfaces allow designers to modulate topology for particular formal and performative outcomes. The capacity to design and build with large sets of differentiated components supports new kinds of material use and reuse, allowing architects to form stable and aesthetically controlled structures by matching heterogenous components, in their raw state or remilled. Products of experimentation in and around vibrant North American architecture schools, these works reflect a shared culture of making, of developing and testing design intentions through studies in the intended construction materials or proxies. They show how material feedbacks challenge and enrich formal aims. They result from a shared practice of prototyping: of putting a design forward in full or partial realization in order to test its capacities, discover its shortcomings or potentials, and identify revisions for subsequent iterations. These

practices interleave knowledge gained in the shop with insights from office and studio, since they require expertise not only in design but also in fabrication, materials, industrial and post-industrial process. The exhibition itself is a prototype of sorts. The first large-scale exhibition mounted on CCA’s Back Lot — an expansive ground for making and displaying art, staging events, and socializing — it tests the potential for distinctive forms of living and learning, making and displaying art and design, in the outdoor venues that the college plans to build over the next few years. The Back Lot is a pop-up, an interim strategy for a site soon to be turned into a new campus building with gardens and work yards, designed by the Chicago firm Studio Gang. In designing the installation, Clark Thenhaus of Endemic Architecture created a “confetti urbanism” that rearranges the existing furnishings of the Back Lot — hammocks and picnic tables, trash cans and planters, shipping containers and the other miscellany of an art-making work yard — so that they continue to serve their purposes even as they are drawn into a lively palimpsest. Strewn across the blacktop as though they had been tossed into the air before fluttering down to a ground painted with colorful ribbons and flecks, these diverse elements become detritus in a prototype parade. The prototypes exhibited in Designing Material Innovation exemplify great technical capacities in concrete and composites. They also engage with an expanded range of architectural concerns. Consider sustainability. By achieving new degrees of lightness and thinness, they use materials more efficiently. By reprocessing discarded foam and rubble, they divert waste from landfills and oceans. By creating targeted new ecological niches, they promote marine restoration. By reanimating prehistoric construction methods and meanings, they engage us with histories of environmental depletion and societal collapse. In showing how advanced design and fabrication promote sophisticated scientific and aesthetic experimentation, these prototypes show how architectural research addresses big questions about our past, present, and possible futures. – Jonathan Massey

Thinness

Polymorph Pavilion

Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab

APTUM ARCHITECTURE WITH CEMEX

CCA DIGITAL CRAFT LAB

Composed of sixteen modules conjoined to form a cross-vaulted pavilion, Thinness shows how high-performance lightweight concrete opens new performative and visual possibilities for this typically weighty material. Working with the Global R&D division of CEMEX, one of the world’s largest building materials companies, APTUM tested new fiber reinforcement methods that allow for extremely thin casts. Each module takes the form of a pier — but rather than a solid mass, it is a hollow shell with walls only a half inch thick.

Exhibited here are components for a work-inprogress: a six-legged shell that will serve as a semi-permanent Back Lot installation accommodating casting work by CCA students. Made from blocks of EPS foam pinned and glued together, then coated with polyurea in a strong, highgloss red, the pavilion was designed and made by students in an advanced design studio focused on the integration of form, performance, and fabrication within the context of a design/build project.

The Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab prototypes a new kind of resilient coastal infrastructure. Synthesizing the expertise of designers, advanced digital fabricators, and marine ecologists from three years of applied research at CCA, it creates a floating breakwater with variable topographies that create distinctive habitats both above and below the water.

Anticipating that the portable components would be subject to different stresses as they are moved between vertical and horizontal orientations, the architects used structural analysis to identify areas of greatest loading across a range of configurations. By perforating the shell more extensively in areas of higher stress, they translated differential loading into a pattern that reveals the seemingly massive form to be a thinly encased void. The vault thus opens up to plays of light and shadow associated more often with sheet materials such as metal than with cast concrete.

After studying shell structure typologies and fabrication methods, the group elected to upcycle the waste foam from large mold-making projects executed by Kreysler & Associates, a leading composites fabricator based nearby in the Bay Area. Students used parametric modeling and analysis to design the structure, and a hot-wire cutter attached to a robotic arm to re-mill the foam into masonry blocks. The polyurea coating seals the foam, protects it from weathering, and stiffens the assembly of 502 blocks by forming a structural skin, yielding a composite material that is lightweight, strong, and sustainable.

Modeling multiple iterations of the design with varying degrees of perforation through the technique of diffuse limited aggregation, APTUM explored the limits and potentials of the material in relation to their design intentions. Once they settled on a solution, the firm worked with CEMEX to build the prototype through a method that combined contemporary water-jet-cut silicone with the ancient method of lost wax casting, in which wax formwork is melted and reused after each pour.

The studio was divided into small teams focusing on different aspects of the project, including materials, parametric logic, and robotic fabrication. The group developed the design by modeling numerous forms and testing them with small tabletop prototypes. Predominant decisionmaking parameters centered on questions of milling, assembly, and tolerance in a constant feedback loop between the design intention of creating an aesthetically distinctive shelter for CCA casting activity and the capacities and constraints of workflow. As students established a workflow — from the Kreysler shop to campus, through the robotic cutting station they built, to assembly on the Back Lot — they gained experience designing not only the form of their architecture but also its emergence through a complex logistical path negotiating the vicissitudes of supply chain and labor management.

The prototype exhibited here is one iteration in a projective process of discovering properties and processes latent in high-performance concrete. CEMEX and APTUM have extended this line of experimentation to other lightweight concrete forms, creating floating concrete pads lashed together to create Rhizolith Island, a living breakwater for mangrove restoration in Cartagena, Colombia.

By immersing students in the problem space where design and engineering intersect with logistics and construction management, the studio illuminated topics well beyond the purview of most design studios, such as the challenge of designing workflow and aligning tolerances across disparate processes.

An artificial island made from two identical fiber reinforced polymer hulls conjoined like a clamshell, the vessel has a surface topography of two larger mounds separated by a valley, with a variable pattern of gradated rugosity, or bumpiness. Underwater, the hull’s peaks and valleys vary in size to provide habitats for different types of invertebrates, promoting ecological diversity. On the top, the topography is engineered to channel rainwater and produce watershed pools for intertidal or terrestrial habitats. The design of the Float Lab utilized an integrated, parametric digital model to incorporate both ecological and material performance criteria. The surface geometry is informed by a series of smaller ecological substrate prototypes produced from 2014 to 2016. These prototypes were installed underwater and monitored regularly by ecologists from the Benthic Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories for their performance as a growing medium for specific marine specimens. The Float Lab design combines these criteria with Kreysler & Associates production specifications, ensuring that the rugosity dimensions comply with the necessary clearances of the robotic router bit end effector used to fabricate the mold and allowing for successful de-molding. The proof-of-concept success of the initial substrate prototypes confirmed the Buoyant Ecologies hypothesis: that architectural design practices could discern and control the relationship between material properties, surface geometry, and ecological performance. The prototype will be deployed in the San Francisco Bay in 2018 as a demonstration, research station, and test of the wave attenuation potential of larger arrays of multiple modules working together as a larger system of floating breakwaters.

DESIGN

INDUSTRY CONTRIBUTORS

PROJECT TEAM

APTUM, principals Julie Larsen and Roger Hubeli, with research assistance from Sean Morgan and Ethan Schafer

Falso Industries (Steel Mold Production); Eager Plastics Chicago (Silicon); Fortech (Waterjet Cutting Construction)

CCA Digital Craft Lab studio taught by Andrew Kudless, David Shook, and Aaron Willette

CCA Digital Craft Lab faculty: Adam Marcus, Margaret Ikeda, Evan Jones

STUDENTS

ENGINEERING

FUNDING

Taylor Metcalf, Georine Pierre, Jared Clifton

Sinead MacNamara

CEMEX Global R&D; Syracuse Architecture

Gloria Asaba Kiiza, Roshan Britto, Joseph Chang, Jonathan Frederick, Trenton Jewett, Denita Irsjad, Kow Ming-Hsuan Kao, Victor Daofu Lu, Javier Moctezuma Mendoza, Bhavin Nagda, Sasank Reddy, Stephen Sanford, Joaquin TobarMartinez, Anh Vo

INDUSTRY PARTNER AND FABRICATOR

CEMEX: Davide Zampini (Global R&D Head), Alexandre Guerini (Product Development & Industrialization Director), Enrique Terrado (Urban Dynamics & Design), Jeremy Esser (Concrete Technology Specialist), Matthew Meyers (Materials & Product Design), Loris Barth (Concrete Technician)

INDUSTRY COLLABORATORS

Kreysler & Associates; WeCutFoam

DESIGN TEAM

MARINE ECOLOGY

Benthic Lab, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories: John Oliver, Kamille Hammerstrom, Daniel Gossard FABRICATION

Kreysler & Associates, Bill Kreysler, Josh Zabel NAVAL ARCHITECTURE & ENGINEERING

TriCoastal Marine, Andrew Davis

DESIGN IDEATION AND PROTOTYPING

Students in three Buoyant Ecologies studios at CCA, 2014–2016 PROJECT SPONSORS

Miranda Leonard, Kreysler & Associates; Ashland Reactive Polymers; Autodesk Workshop at Pier 9; Port of Oakland

Clastic Order

McKnelly Megalith

T+E+A+M

MATTER DESIGN WITH MIT ARCHITECTURE

The Clastic Order is a group of free-standing columns made of reclaimed construction waste and industrial byproduct. The geological term clastic describes a type of stone made from older rock fragments, or clasts. Here, familiar fragments of buildings (brick, concrete, glass, pipes, and fittings) are the clasts mottling the stone-like surface of the columns. Each column is monolithic, fabricated as a continuous cast through a process similar to concrete slipforming. Variations in color and texture visually separate the pedestal, base, shaft, and capital: a pile of bricks anchors the column at the ground; stacked bricks embedded in melted plastic form the pedestal; streaks of partially melted plastic elements suggest fluting patterns in the middle; the smooth shaft transitions to a rough texture of glass and unmelted plastic at the top.

This 2000-pound, sixteen-foot-long object made of glass fiber reinforced concrete deploys digital modeling and fabrication to test hypotheses about history. According to accounts of the moai made by the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island, these giant carved stone statues walked themselves from quarries to their present locations — a narrative construed by anthropologists to describe the upright transport of these megaliths using ropes and human power.

While the classical orders of architecture manifested rules of proportion, spacing, and the relation among parts, the Clastic Order suggests an approach to design based on material behavior under heat and gravity. To make monolithic thermocast forms, T+E+A+M adopted methods from concrete slipform construction, a technique used to cast uninterrupted structures such as building cores, shear walls, and silos. By varying the ratios of components in the mixture and the application of heat, the architects produced a range of colors, textures, and effects. Clastic Order is the first full-scale installation made from “post rock,” a hybrid material made of waste polymers and inorganic aggregates. Developed through a research initiative led by T+E+A+M principals Thom Moran and Meredith Miller, post rock is their recreation of an emerging geological material called plastiglomerate. As plastic pollution has collected in oceans and along coasts at startling rates, some waste plastics have begun to fuse with sand, rock, seashells, and other materials to make a new type of stone. The Clastic Order claims this post-natural material as a resource for building. Because post rock incorporates recognizable fragments of plastic objects, stone, brick, or other component materials, its visual qualities stem from the geographies of its input materials via regional waste streams that constitute a kind of architectural terroir.

Megalithic civilizations held tremendous knowledge — much of it lost today — surrounding the seemingly simple task of moving heavy objects. How can digital craft help us understand that knowledge, and vice versa? As an experiment, MIT students taught by architect Brandon Clifford and historian Mark Jarzombek designed, computed, and constructed a GFRC megalith that can be walked horizontally and stood vertically with little effort.

The project exemplifies what scholars call “experimental history” — historical research conducted through experiment, and often activating multiple dimensions of experience beyond those of strictly textual or visual analysis. By making an enigmatic object that asks to be engaged, manipulated, even played with, the team opened a new mode of research into prehistoric architecture that simultaneously challenges contemporary designers to exploit mystery and dynamism in their work. Because the people who made the moai subsequently exhausted their ecosystem and abandoned Easter Island, the megalith also provokes reflection on the ways technological proficiency relates to other capacities and values, such as those of ecological sustainability. The project has inspired subsequent experiments with a floating GFRC megalith (the Buoy Stone) and with methods for adapting Incan cyclopean masonry to build walls from remilled rubble in a process that Matter Design calls “cyclopean cannibalism,” suggesting that experimental history has much to contribute to future building.

DESIGN

FUNDING

TEAM

University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning; University of Michigan Office of Research; The AIA Upjohn Research Initiative

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning students in a studio taught by Brandon Clifford and Mark Jarzombek

PROJECT TEAM

CONSULTANTS

Jon Tulman, Noelle Bowman, Washtenaw County Solid Waste Program; Jeff Horning, Horning Farms; Dan Riddle, Lodi Farms MATERIAL SOURCING

McDunnough, Inc. (recycled plastic); Recycle Ann Arbor (concrete and brick waste); Guardian Glass (glass cullet)

CURATOR

Jonathan Massey Dean and Professor of Architecture, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan; former Dean of Architecture, California College of the Arts EXHIBITION DESIGN

Design: Endemic Architecture, principal Clark Thenhaus Preparator: Charlene Tan Project Team: Justin Smith, Abduallah Balkhyour, Sansank Reddy

Project Lead: Dustin Smith Assistant Director of Architecture Exhibition: Karina O’Neill Program Manager Symposium: Leah Kandel Program Manager CCA Operations Lead: Sarah Lowe Associate Director of Instructional Fabrication UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Amber LaCroix Senior Director of Marketing Communications Deniz McGee Public Relations Associate Bryan Ranallo Senior Web Designer MaryAnn Wilkinson Exhibition Director

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION DESIGN

Confetti Urbanism, by CCA faculty member Clark Thenhaus of Endemic Architecture, reimagines the CCA Back Lot as a lively palimpsest of architecture, furniture, plantings, and human activity. For three months, the 73,470-squarefoot Back Lot presents the prototypes of Designing Material Innovation while continuing to support students engaged in design activities, making art, and hanging out. At once display venue, work yard, and social space, the Back Lot is equipped with shipping containers for storage, a material reuse center, a facilities management outpost, a welding station, and an Airstream trailer, as well as picnic tables, trees in planter boxes, trash cans, hammocks, and random debris. Rather

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