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Nature has always been a source of inspiration for the design of the human environment. The analysis of biological constructions can not only lead to astonishing technical solutions but can also inspire the design of architecture. Bionics is a fascinating border area between pure research and practical application: biologists, chemists, physicists, mineralogists, and paleontologists meet up with material scientists, engineers, and architects and transfer their knowledge to architecture and construction. Using numerous practical examples, this richly illustrated introduction traces the process from the understanding of how something functions, to abstraction—for example in computer models—and the construction of initial prototypes, through to fully functional manufacture and production.
Material Synthesis: Fusing the Physical and the Computational Guest-edited by Achim Menges A new understanding of the material in architecture is fast emerging. Designers are no longer conceiving of the digital realm as separate from the physical world. Instead computation is being regarded as the key interface for material exploration and vice versa. This represents a significant perceptual shift in which the materiality of architecture is no longer seen to be a fixed property and passive receptor of form, but is transformed into an active generator of design and an adaptive agent of architectural performance. In stark contrast to previous linear and mechanistic modes of fabrication and con...
In this book a foreign affairs analyst takes a hard look at the influence that U.S. officials and organizations brought to bear between 1960 and 1976 on the armed forces and police, large corporations, political parties, news media, and regional development agencies of Brazil.
Construction systems reduced to the smallest possible number of identical elements have long been used by architects to build structures as well as dismantle and change them as quickly, efficiently, and economically as possible. Think of the architecture of the nomads, the Crystal Palace designed by the architect John Paxton for the London World’s Fair of 1851, or the modern construction systems of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in steel, concrete, and wood. Coupled with modern digital planning and production methods, modular precast construction systems that are adaptable for many combinations and capable of being combined with one other will play an increasingly important role in...
This book comprises a first survey of the Collaborative Research Center SFB-TRR 141 ‘Biological Design and Integrative Structures – Analysis, Simulation and Implementation in Architecture’, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft since October 2014. The SFB-TRR 141 provides a collaborative framework for architects and engineers from the University of Stuttgart, biologists and physicists from the University of Freiburg and geoscientists and evolutionary biologists from the University of Tübingen. The programm is conceptualized as a dialogue between the disciplines and is based on the belief that that biomimetic research has the potential to lead everyone involved to new findings ...
This comprehensive catalogue of contemporary work examines the renewed investment in the relationship between representation, materiality, and architecture. It assembles a range of diverse voices across various institutions, practices, generations, and geographies, through specific case studies that collectively present a broader theoretical intention.
The production of architecture, both intellectually and physically, is on the brink of a fundamental change. Computational design enables architects to integrate ever more multifaceted and complex design information, while the industrial logics of conventional building construction are eroding rapidly in a context of increasingly ubiquitous computer-controlled manufacturing and fabrication. A novel convergence of computation and materialisation is about to emerge, bringing the virtual process of design and the physical realisation of architecture much closer together, more so than ever before. Computation provides a powerful agency for both informing the design process through specific mater...
Digital And Parametric Architecture explores the development of the latest digital tools including advance modeling software and computer aided design in the production of architecture. It is a journey through the most fascinating projects, digitally designed and fabricated, during the second decade of the 21st century. The book highlights the use of these technologies to explore tectonic operations such as sectioning, folding, contouring, and tessellating. A wide variety of projects that range in scale and location offer an insight into the architecture of the future.