Drawn Dress Published in Pidgin 8

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Mat­ter is proud to announce the Drawn Dress will be pub­lished in Issue 8 of Pid­gin Mag­a­zine.  Join us at the release party for cham­paign.  Details below.

Fri­day, March 26, 2010
Time: 7:00pm — 9:00pm
Location: Center for Archi­tec­ture
Street: 536 LaGuardia Place
City/Town: New York, NY

Malleable Space

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Charged with the task of devel­op­ing a con­tem­po­rary villa archi­type, these 3 mod­els rep­re­sent the the­ory of mal­leable space.  Each model rep­re­sent a moment in time of a con­tin­u­ously trans­form­ing space — a sin­gle occu­pant pod for liv­ing.  Sit­u­ated in the north Atlantic Ocean, the pod’s enve­lope recon­fig­ures in response to pro­gram, struc­ture, and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns.  When the pod encoun­ters rough water, it closes up and pro­tects the inhab­i­tant.  As the seas calm, the envelop grad­u­ally opens.  This mal­leable archi­tec­ture ques­tions the con­ven­tional space plan­ning phase of design where func­tions are sep­a­rated into mul­ti­ple rooms for­ever ded­i­cated to a sin­gle pur­pose — bath, kitchen, bed­room, liv­ing…  In these pods, you don’t change spaces to per­form dif­fer­ent func­tion, the space changes in response to your func­tion cre­at­ing a rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ship between the occu­pant and the envelope.

These scale mod­els are con­structed from the same geo­met­ric prin­ci­ples researched in the mal­leable foam research project.

Malleable Bath

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toi­let | uri­nal | sink | shower | bath

Typ­i­cally in design­ing a res­i­dence, flex­i­bil­ity in design is lim­ited to cer­tain irre­ducible fac­tors.  A min­i­mum bath­room is 5′ X 7′.  This bath­room con­tains a shower or bath, a toi­let, and a sink — all with their indi­vid­ual dimen­sions and func­tions.  By address­ing the typol­ogy of bath­room, both func­tion and flex­i­bil­ity have a direct rela­tion­ship with the human body.  When each of these spe­cific porce­lain objects are viewed topo­log­i­cally, we can see each is com­posed of a water sup­ply and a water return.  Beyond these ele­ments, the specifics of dimen­sion are dic­tated by (1) the func­tion, and (2) gen­eral human pro­por­tions and dimensions.

Removed from the restric­tions of a 5’X7’ bath, we con­sol­i­dated all wet func­tions into a sin­gle mal­leable space.  This space is com­prised of a water sup­ply, water return, and a sil­i­cone sur­face that con­fig­ures itself in response, not only to gen­eral human dimen­sions, but to the specifics to the occupant’s body.

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Large Format Additive Fabrication

As part of the Fall 2009 Robotic Fab­ri­ca­tion course, stu­dents chal­lenged the tra­di­tional lim­i­ta­tions of the 3d print­ing process. One big lim­i­ta­tion is the scale/cost ratio. Sev­eral researchers have pro­posed building-sized fab­ri­ca­tion machines, but all rely on mas­sive gantry-type machines….massive in cost and lim­ited in mobility.

This project seeks to pro­pose the process not just for full scale mod­el­ing, but instead for the full scale fab­ri­ca­tion of actual build­ing com­po­nents. The process is a hybrid between addi­tive and sub­trac­tive tech­niques to cre­ate a net-shape build­ing com­po­nent. This part can then be coated as well as filled inter­nally to pro­vide struc­ture and sur­face rigid­ity. Prece­dents include the typ­i­cal ICF con­crete forms as well as the foam core com­pos­ites used in high end struc­tures requir­ing dou­ble cur­va­ture. Even if used sim­ply as a mold pro­duc­tion process, the mate­r­ial sav­ings occurs from elim­i­nat­ing a major­ity of the waste cre­ated in a purely sub­trac­tive process such as milling EPS foam blocks for molds. The abil­ity to extrude a tool­ing paste over the sur­face has already been proven in the aero­space and wind tur­bine fab­ri­ca­tion industries.

Cer­tainly the topo­log­i­cal free­dom of 3d print­ing has already been proven, but not at the build­ing scale. Inte­grated elec­tri­cal and mechan­i­cal pas­sages are just one pos­si­bil­ity. The capa­bil­ity to cre­ate lim­ited over­hang with­out a sup­port­ing scaf­fold is also a major advan­tage, requir­ing the abil­ity to angle the extru­sion noz­zle. Future research includes the appli­ca­tion of GFRC/P (glass fiber rein­forced con­crete or poly­mer) coat­ings as well as back-filling struc­tural rein­force­ment into the voids created.

Stu­dent cred­its
Lead: Kris Wal­ters
Team:Les Key, Jae Ryong Oh, Jonathan Puff, Dan Weissman

Digitecture

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We would like to begin a con­ver­sa­tion about what it means to be dig­i­tal design­ers.  Please take a few moments to fill out our short online sur­vey.  Your sub­mis­sion will be con­fi­den­tial.  We invite a can­did response from everyone.

Robotic Foam

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This full scale mockup is a part of the larger research project address­ing mal­leable archi­tec­ture.  We charged our­selves with the task of pro­duc­ing a phys­i­cal show­case of the con­cept.  In the­ory, the robot would con­stantly carve the wall, re-producing an enve­lope required for each moment in time.  By uti­liz­ing a vari­able cone boolean oper­a­tion, the inher­ent sys­tem that con­structs the per­fo­ra­tions in the wall are topo­log­i­cally intel­li­gent enough to respond to scale and porosity.

More to come soon regard­ing the rel­e­vant research.

Princeton University | Drawn Dress

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Bran­don Clif­ford has been invited to present the ‘Drawn Dress’ at this years Prince­ton Research Sym­po­sium on Sat­ur­day Decem­ber 5th.  The PRS2009 is open to the pub­lic and reg­is­tra­tion is free.

Drawn Dress: Press Release

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We are proud to announce the release of the ‘Drawn Dress’ project.  To learn more and see the entire project, please go to the Drawn Dress Page.

Dress Sneak Peak

Here is a sneak pre­view of the process in the Drawn Dress series.  Start­ing with a 3d body scan and mov­ing through the robotic fab­ri­ca­tion, our model Vic­to­ria Lee proves that not only the draw­ing of the dress is vari­able, but the real­ity is as well. More draw­ings, images, and ani­ma­tions of the Drawn Dress project to come.

Robotic FABRICation

To accom­pany the dig­i­tal body scan, we decided to go all ‘dig­i­tal’ for phase 2 of the ‘Drawn Dress’ project.  Here is an ani­ma­tion for your enjoy­ment of Wes and his Robot cut­ting the cus­tom dress geometries.