Thursday, December 2, 2010

New Masters of Science in Digital Technologies announced at Michigan

Yesterday the announcement was finally public, Michigan will be accepting applications for a new MSc in the concentration of Digital Technologies.  The admissions deadline will be Feb 15th.


It is loosely organized around 4 possible trajectories: Hardware, Software, Data, and Synthesis.  It will be a three term program and culminates in an independent research project.  While it will focus on design research there are no studios in this MSc concentration.

We are excited to push the work in this area and looking forward to add another group of students into the mix at Michigan.

Application details will be available Dec 6th.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Neglecting the blog but busy nonetheless

Hard to believe it has been so long since the last post.  It was a crazy summer and then school started too, which seems to always complicate things.  I just returned from the Architect R&D Symposium in Chicago and the Taubman College Future of Technology Conference.  Both planted a number of interesting ideas.

Other news from the summer is that the Shadow Pavilion won an Architect R&D Award and a National AIA Small Projects Award.

I have been especially busy with our work for BLU Homes.  Since February our firm has been doing design work with the prefab company out of Boston.  It is an interesting match that grew out of our work with CATIA and our interests in construction and fabrication.  BLU uses CATIA to completely model the houses and provide customer customizations.  The model captures all the information and then produces all the shop drawings for the factory.  In many ways it is another arrangement of the key players in the construction process, for us a new form of practice which questions the roles and relationships of traditional practice.  Within one team there is design, manufacturing, marketing, and sales. 

I should have some images to show soon but until then here is an image of a recently delivered project in Massachusetts.  There are three prefab units that are used as a painting studio, photo studio, and media space.  The open house for the project was last weekend, during my last trip out to Boston.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Images of THR_033 from the museum

Dezeen picked up the tea house on the blog today.  Click the image to read their description:

















 John also posted some great pictures from the opening.  Here is a link to his post.


















Here is the smile scanner in action:

Sunday, July 4, 2010

THR_033 - Tea House shipped to Japan

Things have been busy, but now that THR_003 has been shipped to Japan things might settle down a bit.  Here is a sampling of the process, development, and construction.  John and Cezanne left for Japan on Friday and will be assembling the parts this coming week.  Photos from the museum will be available very soon.  The show opens July 9 and goes through August 22.  Here is a link to the the exhibit information.

















Here it is crated and waiting for FedEx.





















Here is the tea house lit from the inside.































Detail of the yupo laser cut surface.

























































Here is the laser cut surface being assembled on the table.














Assembly / system diagram.































Prototype of the operable openings.



















Process representation of a flat paper skin.


















Skin prototype to detail the paper seams.


















Flat paper skin with operable opening.













Early drawings for the tea house.

Monday, May 31, 2010

Rule for Controlling Activity

Here is a simple rule embedded within a powercopy that controls if geometry is active or not (visible or displayed).  Robert Yuen and I figured this out while working on a research project for a parametric house.

The rule allows for geometry to be active or in-active based on a simple boolean parameter.  In the case for this tutorial, if a dimension is greater than a specified value, a middle strut is made active.

Click HERE to start the video.
 

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Color Changing Rule

Here is a short tutorial that shows how to make a rule that will change the display color of a powercopy.  The syntax for the rule was worked out by Julie Flohr and her students at UIC.  The next step is to work this into a knowledge pattern.  The benefit of something like this is to give you real-time feedback based on a certain criteria that you set.  As you change something, the display is updated.

Click the image to launch the video tutorial.  It is 16 minutes long.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Another Semester Ends

This semester was a heavy technology semester with the ParaMod seminar and the grad studio also using DP.  This meant lots of posts and figuring out all sorts of DP related issues.  After the intensity and a solid week of final reviews, I am taking a week to focus on some other work.  I have ideas for a few more tutorials, one of which will include a DP rule to change the display color of objects and probably a simple ecotech shadow generation.

As far as work goes, PLY is getting busy and John Marshall, Cezanne Charles and I are collaborating again.  This time on a Tea House for Robots to be installed in Japan in July.  It will be at the Natinoal Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto from July 9 –  August 22.  Here is a link. We are ramping up this week so once there are images and mock ups I can post some of that work.

Stay tuned, the summer is getting busy already.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Karl to give Architecture Keynote at the HATCH Festival

I will be giving the architecture keynote at the Hatch Festival in Ashville, N.C. on April 16, 2010

The festival takes place from April 15-18, 2010.

The mission of HATCH is to provide mentorship, education, inspiration and recognition to the next generation of creative innovators. The focus is on the creative industries and how to best leverage the creative talent to impact the community and the planet in a positive and sustainable way. HATCHfest brings together luminaries in the arts to serve as mentors to groundbreaking new creative talent in the fields of architecture, design/technology, fashion, film, journalism, music, and photography.

Click here for more information on HATCH.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Creation of Data Sheets

Short tutorial shows how to create and manage data sheets.  Click the image to start the video.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Graphic method to create varied intervals

Simple sketch to control the varied lengths for sub-dividing an object.  Click the image to view the video.

Click here to download the catpart file.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Area to Height and Manipulation of Void

Short tutorial that covers conversion of area to height.  It also shows the manipulation of a multi-section void. 

Click the image to start the video.

Attractor Point tutorial added

Finally had a chance to go back and complete the video tutorial for the attractor point tutorial.

Click here for the video.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Projecting Solid Shadows

Short tutorial that demonstrates the creation of solid shadows.  Click the image to launch the video.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

First time teaching Knowledge Patterns

Last night was the first time to roll out knowledge patterns in the seminar.  In the three hour format it was a bit rushed but we have two weeks to work on this assignment so I am optimistic that people wil be able to work through the flow of the various steps and operations.

I am curious to see if the power of the scripting out weights the perceived difficulty of the scripting and the process.  I hope that after the two previous weeks everyone is tired of manually instantiating their parts.  I am also curious to see what new types of projects will emerge from this type of tool.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Document Template Tutorial with Rules

This tutorial starts with an existing framework (download here).  I also included two rules to control the circles to always sit inside of the control points.

The document template allows you to deal with advanced replication of solids.  It also allows you to create separate files for each part, so that each instance can be modified independently.

If you want to jump ahead to the actual making of the document template you can download the geometry for the part (here).

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Attractor Point with Range

I received a request recently about using an attractor point in DP.  This was a famous early Grasshopper example so I figured I could do a simple version using DP.  The tutorial also includes a powercopied rule to set the range of the attractor point allowing for greater or lesser impact of the point on the circle radii.

Here is the text for a rule that gets powercopied with the geometry:
if buildgeo\radius_inner > radius_max 
{buildgeo\radius_float = radius_max }
else if buildgeo\radius_inner < radius_min 
{buildgeo\radius_float = radius_min }
else {buildgeo\radius_float = buildgeo\radius_inner }

Here is the file if anyone wants to work through the example (file here).  Click on the image below to start the video.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Radical Botanical by David Sokol

The Shadow Pavilion was published in the January issue of Interior Design Magazine.


Thursday, January 28, 2010

FAB Lab at Michigan officially opens

Short article in the local paper about the FAB Lab open house.  (I hope the robot doesn't crash into the foam mold, obviously placed for the photo!)

The FAB Lab opening was also the topic of a recent local radio interview on the Lucy Ann Lance Business Insider – 1290 WLBY, Ann Arbor, MI.  Click here to listen to the January 20th interview.


Saturday, January 23, 2010

Rules & Powercopies

Here is a DP tutorial that includes powercopies and rules.  Instead of creating a range of powercopies with a uniform variation, I model it as lumber with specific sizes.  The rule then allows for specific shapes to be placed depending on the context of the framework.  The rule is also dynamic so as the context changes the rule is able to update the geometry.

Here is the simple text required to make the rule.  Both "depth" and "joist_length" are linked parameters.


if joist_length <= 110in
{depth=5.5in}

else if
joist_length >110in and joist_length<145in
{depth=7.25in}

else if
joist_length >145in and joist_length<185in
{depth=9.25in}

else if
joist_length >185in and joist_length<225in
{depth=11.25in}

else if
joist_length >=225in
{depth=.75in}



Saturday, January 16, 2010

Blogs, RSS Feeds, and Pipes

Short video that covers the creation of blogs, the role of RSS feeds, and the aggregation of RSS feeds.  For the past year I have been requiring my students to document their work and use a personal blog site to comment on their work and synthesize different types of peripheral studio information.  As our studio format has moved to two days a week, the blog gives me a chance to see what my students are up to in the days between studios and gives me an easy ways to comment.  The RSS feed keeps me up to date by notifying me when something is added to one of their blogs.

Click the RSS icon to start the streaming 13 minute video.


Tuesday, January 12, 2010

ParaMod Seminar - Tutorial001

This semester the ParaMod seminar will be addressing the role of precedent and our ability to build on and manipulate existing rules and work.  Tutorial001 asks the students to model the plan of an existing project, uncover the rules, and produce 5 variations.

The student work blogs will be aggregated in the widget in the bottom right.

The following tutorial gives my quick approach to such a problem.  The tutorial models Borromini's San Carlo and UN Studio's Ponte Parodi project.  Click the image to start the streaming video.


Monday, January 4, 2010

Research Through Making Exhibit

Sorry for the holiday delay in posting.  Once reviews were done I needed a break.  We have been working on the exhibit of the first group of Research Through Making projects.  The exhibit will be on display starting on January 15th.  I have been working with Chris Johnson to animate a few of the material studies that were developed at the beginning of the project.  In all there should be 5 interactive prototypes.  Still working on the drawings and repairing some of the models.  I'll post some images once the exhibit is installed.

The interactive pieces are an array of LEDs with a PIR motion sensor controlled by Arduino boards.  We tried various code options but in the end recycled the code developed by John Marshall on the FIRE project.  The laser cut paper models are investigations of various aggregation strategies for a structural system.


Shadow Pavilion paper studies from Karl Daubmann on Vimeo.

Shadow Pavilion prototype from Karl Daubmann on Vimeo.