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Learned Fabrications Material Agencies For Architecture ROLANDO MADRIGAL TORRES DESIGN + MAKE 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author is thankful to Charlie, Edward, Chris and Jez of Hooke Park for provision of invaluable, instruction and time. In addition, deep gratitude should be expressed to Mark Cambell for his continued support during the writing of this thesis. ABSTRACT The rise of nonstandard serial design during the mid nineteen-nineties brought about a metamorphose to the economic, technological and visual language that has characterized modes of design and production for the last five centuries (Carpo, Embryologic Houses, 2013). Advancements in computation now allow architectural designers to produce an inexhaustible series of varying digital iterations at a rapid pace. However, it is important to evaluate what the significance of generating a variable series of designs within the context of architectures materialization. Whether designing one or multiple iterations the input of the designer remains crucial as the mediator of the architecture. The language of a digital production does not be governed solely by bits and code but can respond to material realities and in fact, has much to gain from them. There exist great opportunities in the study of the material qualities of the digitally designed. Engaging with the build realities of architecture can represent a means by which the designer learns from the physical qualities of design and can create feedback input for future digital iterations. Interaction with built prototypes can allow the designer to evaluate materiality and uncover new design data from material realities. To explore these ideas this thesis will analyze the development of Wakeford Hall to date and how the build of the Sawmill Shelter helped engage with both digital and material aspects of the project and how a materially informed architecture contributes the evolution of both virtual and material design intentions. Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................4 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................4 TABLE OF FIGURES ...........................................................................................6 INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................7 CHP 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW ...............................................................................8 Arguing for a Digital Materiality ........................................................................8 CHAPTER 2 – MATERIALLY INFORMED DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE .......................................10 CHAPTER 3 – PROTOTYPING WAKEFORD HALL ..........................................................12 Wakeford Hall ............................................................................................12 Technique development: Timber Under Tension Parallel to the Grain Structure ..............12 Uniaxial Tension Test .................................................................................13 10-meter Laths ........................................................................................14 Collaboration with Bath University .................................................................15 Form Finding ...........................................................................................16 Bucket Load Test ......................................................................................17 CHAPTER 4- THE SAWMILL SHELTER ......................................................................18 1:1 Prototype .............................................................................................20 Material Testing ..........................................................................................20 Uniaxial Tension Test V 2.0 ..........................................................................21 Timber Grading ........................................................................................22 Curvature Jig ...........................................................................................22 CHAPTER 5-CONCLUSION ..................................................................................24 Bibliography .................................................................................................25 TABLE OF FIGURES Figure 1 - Uniaxial Tension Test Jig ......................................................................14 Figure 2- 10-meter lath ....................................................................................14 Figure 3 - Joint A ............................................................................................15 Figure 4 - Joint B ...........................................................................................15 Figure 5 - Joint C ...........................................................................................15 Figure 6 - Joint designs in collaboration with Richard Sambrook (Sambrook, 2016) .............16 Figure 7 - Form Finding Jigs............................................................................... 17 Figure 8 - Bucket Load Test ...............................................................................18 Figure 9- Author unknown (1985) The Protoype House working model. Retreived from Hooke Park Servers .................................................................................................19 Figure 10 - HCMA (2014). Grandview Heights Aquatic Centre. Retrieved from http:// www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/11759-making-a-splash?v=preview ......................20 Figure 11 - Splayed finger jointed scarf .................................................................21 Figure 12 - Uniaxial Tension Jig V 2.0 ...................................................................21 Figure 13 - Test Sample ...................................................................................22 Figure 14 - Knot Area ratio diagrams and failure stresses ............................................22 Figure 15 - Curvature Jig 2.0............................................................................. 23 Figure 16 – Spyrydonos, E. (2016) Sawmill Shelter ....................................................24 *Uncredited images are by the author and may also appear in the author's Project Documentation submission. INTRODUCTION The rise of nonstandard serial design during the mid nineteen-nineties brought about a metamorphose to the economic, technological and visual language that has characterized modes of design and production for the last five centuries. Variability, which has long presented a hurdle for the economies of scale which allowed industrial mass production to thrive had been transformed into a virtue by a new digital age. The capacity to mass-produce series of non-identical items had transfigured a culture of industrial production in which only identical copies were desired and valued into on where differential reproduction is welcome. This new paradigm allows designers to digitally craft script which converses with digitally controlled interfaces and machines that materialize the designed process. (Carpo, The Alphabet and The Algorithm, 2011). The writings of Gregg Lynn (Lynn, 2013) and Bernard Caches (Cache, Philibert De L'Orme Pavilion: Towards an Associative Architecture, 2003) have stressed the role of mathematics, calculus, and continuous functions as new tools of design. Therese was intended to license digital fabrication to produce an array of seemingly inexhaustible design variations at no additional cost. A changing, evolving data flow presented design data as a viable negotiator between algorithmic notational differences and the material. However, if these variations are strictly informationally driven they ran the risk of becoming materially estranged and disengaged from the physical realities of architecture. To date most of the advancement of the digital have been geared towards refining the digital process exclusively and thus being able to develop a series of inconsistent multiples has, in many cases, become about formal variations with little or no unique architectural repercussions. So to what end are these simulations repeated? It is important that digital design must not continue to be strictly geared towards advancements in computing but acknowledge its materialization. If digital iterations can be fabricated and studied, then material realities can begin to form a multimodal interface with digital design intentions. Thus creating alternative iterative design process by which every digital iteration can build on a different variety of inputs which respond to physical realities. For this to occur it is necessary for the material narrative to alter data content so that it may be referenced as iterations are generated and later fabricated; to encode the digital with physical understanding allows the digital to project to produce design data from the richness of the built world. An analysis of materialized digital iterations can create an interface between physical and digital data coalesced to create variation and to inform each iteration. The object of this thesis is to evaluate how the iterative process of digital architecture can be governed by not just formal possibilities driven by data but also notions of materiality and to propose a role for the designer-maker as an arbitrator between digital and material iterations in an iterative design process. Thru an analysis

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