Locusts in Ether – Parametric Design and Digital Fabrication Workshop in Timişoara

 
Attendees: Irina Acasandre, Roxana Boloș, Agnes Brull, Simona Cojocaru, Dragoș Cristian, Simina Dimcea, Simona Farcaș, Anda Gheorghe, Smaranda Ghiniță, Vlad Igăntescu, Ioana Iordan, Laura Iosub, Anda Jugănaru, Roxana Mirea, Călin Negret, Roxana Pau, Andrei Pădure, Boris Peianov, Diana Poiana, Iulian Popa, Ștefan Prigoreanu, Luiza Rădulescu, Laurențiu Stoian, Egyed Szabolcs, Ioan Emilian Veliciu

Locusts in Ether is a parametric design and digital fabrication workshop, held for the first time in Timisoara, from the 16 to the 22 of July 2012. The workshop aimed at rethinking the way that the latest technology in design and manufacturing can influence the way that we develop, build and perceive architecture.

Throughout the intensive seven days of the workshop the attendees learned how to make use of digital tools to offer informed responses to a given context, by extracting data used as parameters in the generative design process of the architectural object. The aim was the relationship between the enclosure on Marasesti 14 street in Timisoara and a parametrically driven object. The challange of digital tools was combined with that of sustaining and revitalizing the local community centered to one of the old city neightbourhood enclosures – an organic space that has been lost in the last years.

The legitimacy of the use of digital environment is given by the integrative capacity and the ability to generate more options and make relationships between these parameters and the architectural object. By making use of digital fabrication tools the virtual objects, computationally generated, have been materialized, at first at a small scale, and then as a final 1:1 products. Using these technologies, the attendees integrated a feedback loop in the design process involving the physical making of prototypes, testing them and using the result as parameters in the development of the design.

The workshop was divided into three stages, the first stage being carried out as a series of lectures aimed at introducing parametric design and digital fabrication and a series of tutorials as a introduction to using parametric design software tools such as Grasshopper and its energy analysis (Geco+Ecotect) and physical forces simulation (Kangaroo).

In the next stage of the workshop the participants formed five teams that studied the relationship between geometric parameters of the site and a design process based on the simulations of natural forces, thus creating five projects.

The last part of the workshop was dedicated to the materialization, using digital fabrication methods, of prototypes proposed by the teams and a 1:1 scale realization of two of the five projects.

The results of the workshop are actually material traces of a complete digital workflow that starts from physical parameters that are implemented in the digital environment. These parameters are processed computationally generating a virtual object, which then is re-materialized by means of digital fabrication. During the whole workshop participants had had a hands-on experience with many cutting edge technologies, using a open source 3d Scanner (Kinect), a open source ABS deposition 3D printer (RepMan) and cutting tools with numerical control (CNC router and laser).

Throughout the workshop various 3D printed models of the projects, several prototype variations of the components at real scale that were used to proof test the ideas, and two 1:1 scale final installations were made in a short time span.
 
More information on the organizers, attendees, event and the outcome can be found at:

_Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LacusteInEter

_Blog: http://lacusteineter.wordpress.com/

_Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/46297265

_Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfzzkXxvkz4