Below are some examples of projects hosted on their site.

The project has been designed of lightweight perforated aluminum in parts to be dismantled and reassembled elsewhere. You can see it in its unfinished form below:

Below are some more images and explanation from Marc’s website, theverymany, an excellent resource on computational design in the architectural community.

Marc’s Description from theverymany:

nonLin/Lin Pavilion – is a prototype which engages in a series of architectural experiments referred to as text based morphologies. Beyond its visual perception of sculptural and formal qualities, the prototypes are built forms developed through custom computational protocols. The parameters of these protocols are based on form finding (surface relaxation), form description (composition of developable linear elements), information modeling (re-assembly data), generational hierarchy (distributed networks), and digital fabrication (logistic of production).

Prototypical Scale
The Pavilion project refers to its own scale. It is not considered a model of a larger structure or a building, neither is it an art installation. It is not made out of cardboard, or connected through paper clips. Its structural integrity does not rely on any camouflaged cables and it can resist water. It is light yet very strong. One could sit on it, even hang or climb it. It is scalable to a degree. It is not produced through academic facilities. It is a prototypical architecture.

Non-linear Structure
The cohesive morphology of the pavilion originates from a “Y” model referred to as the basic representation and lowest level of multi-directionality. Such a premise was established in order to challenge issues of morphology since tri-partite relational models can not be formalized and described through a single bi-directional surface (ie: Nurbs surfaces) – which is yet still one of the main medium of representation within the avant-garde architectural repertoire.
In order to resolve such an issue, it is required to address morphological models of change and introduce split or recombination – or in other words, how can one become two and two become one.
The paradigm shift from linear spaces (tube or donuts alike) is important, not necessarily on a formal level, but rather in order to engage a multiplicity of social situations – pushing further than “bi” or dual alike.

Dramatic Change of Morphology: From Network to Surface Condition.
This prototypical structure is an investigation into transformations from one state to the other. Members within the structural network are opening up and recombining themselves into larger apertures while their reverse side is creating a surface condition providing that as density increase eventually provides to the person evolving within a sensation of enclosure. Local protocols of transformation are corrupted with overall hierarchies – such as varying radii for the members based on their position within the structural network. This orientation to the system results into a spatial environment with intrinsic and extrinsic moments.

From Descriptive Geometry to Parallel Search as a Model of Description
Custom computational protocols are describing the structure of the pavilion as a set of linear developable elements. Those singular elements can then be unrolled and cut out of flat sheets of material.
Though due to the non-linear property of the model, this discretization process cannot be applied globally onto the morphology, but rather requires a search process. A global application strategy would fail due to its nature of reoccurring shift of defects within the distributed network (nodes with differentiated numbers of branches, changing types of double curvature, varying radii, etc). A local application strategy would distribute agents with local ‘search behavior’ tracing along the surface. These agents would provide immediate solutions based on local decision making, while in parallel, constantly communicating with their proximity based agents. This set of information can then be translated and materialized into a series of paths or stripes.

From Mass-Customization to Massive Customization and High Degree of Morphological Differentiation
The Pavilion is redirecting from a current avant-garde strategy of applications populating discreet components onto an overall surface or host. This strategy also includes introducing iteratively varying and blending proportions (with linear or non-linear acceleration) across a range of surface domain.
A precise description of such a prototypical structure requires massive number of elements, not only all unique but also morphologically extremely different. In order to describe and formalized all the different cases present (connection stripes to stripes, part to part, end rings, open edges, etc) -all requiring different properties (branches, holes, connection, grounded, etc)- one needs many types of agent behaviors, which generate forms of radically different morphologies.

From a Holistic Computational Code to Series of Protocols
This kind of prototype deviates from a strategy of singular protocols or codes. The emphasis is now focused on multiple ontologisms, which form a sum of many different steps, procedures, and codes, where each component focuses on its own specific fitness. Such dichotomy of individual per formative processes allows a parallel development of multiple codes. A serious advantage of this process is highlighted within any decision making, allowing additional testing, trails, errors and a series of variations. This overall strategy allows controllability on a specific local level, while identifying nodes of complexity within the structure. This comprehensive understanding supports a precise level of repercussion of any relationship or variable within each code.

From a Fiction of Precision back to a Fantasy of its Re-appropriation
The project is conceived as a resultant product of a very explicit research line, investigating the design and build component of a coherent environment. It is considered to be self-supporting and to affect its participants, while engaging basic notions of limitation, filtration, and spatial depth. The structure is forming a eccentric universe where familiar elements such as openings or dimensional measurements turn out of model or scale. This visual phenomenon is allowing spectators to suspend disbelief while assigning cultural references or analogies from nature (corals, flowers) – yet nonLin/Lin Pavilion is only a very precise experiment toward constructability within a precise economical and cultural context.

Skylar Tibbits talks at TED about the future of self replicating and naturally inspired robotic construction. Interesting insight into a rapidly developing field. Make sure to check out his work, great stuff. Below we’ve embedded some videos from his vimeo page.

Image by Mette Ramsgard Thomsen of CITA

CITA is an innovative research environment part of the Royal Danish Academy of Architecture that explores the emergent intersections between architecture and digital technologies. Identifying core research questions into how space and technology can be probed, CITA seeks to investigate how the current forming of a digital culture impacts on architectural thinking and practice. The program’s projects are broken down into four disciplines: digital formation, building information modeling, interface ecologies, and behavioral architectures.

Image by Mette Ramsgard Thomsen of CITA

Listener CNC Knitting is one such project to come out of the behavioral architectures program and explores the idea of a textile membrane that has an inherent capacity to sense and react to its surrounding. Collapsing the idea of the controlled and the controlling, Listener is the making of a material that has its own, autonomous, relationship to its environment. The material  becomes sensitive as it registers changes in the conductive flow through the material. As the material moves, or as users touch and interact with the material, they actuate the sensor, which in turn informs a microprocessor that ultimately switches on and off an air blowing device. The textile is treated as a composite material that through its inherent conductivity allows for the passing of computational signals, but also through its exceptional structural strength, and through its treatment, gains new properties.

Image by Mette Ramsgard Thomsen of CITA

Sensors and Actuators/ Image by Mette Ramsgard Thomsen of CITA

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Aerial - Image by Future Cities Lab

Future Cities Lab is an experimental design and research office based in San Francisco, California and Athens, Greece. Design principals Jason Kelly Johnson (creator of Grasshopper’s plug-in Firefly) and Nataly Gattegno have collaborated on a range of award-winning projects that focus on the intersection of design with advanced fabrication technologies, robotics, responsive building systems and public space.

Scaled Physical Model - Image by Future Cities Lab

Thermaespheres was designed in 2011 as a proposal for a public thermal bath and event pavilion facing the sea in Athens, Greece. It contains three distinct microclimates – the “caldarium” (hot), the “tepidarium” (warm) and the “frigidarium” (cold). These three intersecting domed spaces are surrounded by a light-weight shade canopy that serves as an urban threshold, public promenade, solar energy collector and microclimate generator. The structural system was developed through a series of catenary experiments draped over three dome like masses that describe the structural and microclimatic performance of the canopy.

Canopy - Image by Future Cities Lab

From Above - Image by Future Cities Lab

The science is quite complex but in a nutshell “bioluminescence is created by a chemical reaction where an enzyme called luciferase interacts with a light-emitting molecule called luciferin.” Philips has designed a steel frame that holds various glass jars with liquid holding a high concentration of light emitting bacteria. This could the future of “natural lighting” in the modern home.

Here’s more from the experts and Philips innovators as found on the CNN article on the technology:

“Designers have an obligation to explore solutions which are by nature less energy-consuming and non-polluting,” says Clive van Heerden, senior director of design-led innovation at Philips Design. “We need to push ourselves to rethink domestic appliances entirely, how homes consume energy and how entire communities can pool their resources,” van Heerden said in a statement. Jim Haseloff, a plant biologist from the UK’s University of Cambridge says the bio-light is a very provocative idea: “It’s appealing because it brings two things together which you wouldn’t normally associate.” “I don’t think you want to imagine that everyone’s going to start putting bacterial cultures into their own home for lighting but as a way of exploring the idea it’s quite interesting,” he added. It part of a wider swing to sustainable technologies, Haseloff says, but he doesn’t see bioluminescent lights competing with LED and other low-energy lights in the future. “When you move out of the normal (lighting) area — illuminated walkways and things like that — where things could essentially be growing and delivering light for free, that’s where you’re going to have applications.” Philips envisages similar applications, perhaps using glowing plants to illuminate road verges or as warning strips on flights of stairs. It also says these same bioluminescence techniques could be used as a diagnostic indicator of pollution levels or even as a biosensor for monitoring diseases like diabetes. Philips says the bio-light would be more suited to providing mood lighting than “functional illumination.” It forms part of a wider Philips Design’s Microbial Home project which imagines an “integrated cyclical ecosystem” in the home where traditional waste is recycled to address sustainability issues.

An excellent conference oppurtunity has come to our attention in Spain: 6th International Conference on Relating Design in Nature with Science and Engineering. It is scheduled for 11 – 13 June 2012 in A Coruña Spain. Anyone intersted can visit their website here.

You heard and saw correctly. Flight assembled architecture is a video showing small scale flying robotic agents assemble a wall over time by lifting bricks one by one and placing them in correct orientation due to pre programmed logic. It was part of an exhibit and installation covered by various outlets including but not limited to DeZeen, and Arch Daily. Imagine a swarm of robots attacking a site over a day and leaving a fully functional building behind much like an insect hive or birds nest. The project is an experiment by Swiss architects Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello D’Andrea. Very exciting.

Janine Benyus, inspiring update on biomimicry at TED. She mentions the Harare Building we already posted about earlier.

Inspired by the valvular pollination mechanism in the Strelitzia reginae flower (commonly known as the Bird-Of-Paradise) the flectofin is a hinge less louver system that is capable of shifting its fin 90 degrees by inducing bending stresses in the spine caused by displacement of a support or change of temperature in the lamina. The product was developed by Simon Schleicher and the good folks at the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE). In the natural world pollinating sun birds will land on the plant’s adnate petals causing temporary deformation and the release of pollen. When the weight of the bird is displaced the petals revert back to their original position closing the pollen perch.

The use of hinge less mechanical systems reduces the amount of maintenance commonly associated with interactive facade systems. Though the Strelitzia reginae was the focal point of this project there are many other species of plants that are worthy models for kinematic study. More information on products inspired by biomimetic design can be found at the University of Stuttgart’s homepage or on Simon Schleicher’s blog which features a video of the 3D printed prototype at work. This project and others like it exemplify the importance of biodiversity in the natural world and its continued inspiration to help solve everyday design problems. Great work.