TOWARDS NEW DESIGN STRATEGIES

Research and experiments within SAC reflect a two-fold ambition. One, it is motivated by the need in architecture to assimilate and make use of the radical developments in digital technology and material science that have been taking place over the last ten to twenty years. While these technological developments penetrate the architectural realm on many levels, there is still lacking a full, matching advance in architectural design thinking and making. Frequently, architectural design merely adopts new modeling techniques without these reflecting the broader context within which architectural design is always set.

Second, the research and experiments offer mature students the opportunity to develop and formulate their own, personal approach and style to architecture other than the often streamlined type of production that one sees on the international scene.

With its two-year program, SAC offers a unique setting for this. The program is formulated as an exploration of architectural issues with respect to the most pressing challenges that the field currently faces.

MODELING BASED ON MATERIAL SYSTEMS

Natural and so-called synthetic fibres and fibre assemblies present an enormous potential on a structural and aesthetic level for the use in architecture. The material systems are one of the fundamental components in the making of advanced composites, an enormous group of material systems that hold a vast range of promises for architecture: superior strength and stiffness, cost-savings, and an advantageous energy balance based on the material systems design life and overall life cycle performance.

The principal characteristic of fibre reinforcing systems is their additive, hierarchical and multiple scale geometric structure. In architecture and construction this geometry is altogether unexplored and remain by-and-large an untapped resource for the realization of new architectural possibilities. These possibilities represent something other than the fashionable textile patterning that is a current architectural style.

The regimes of geometry that define the fibrous material systems present the question of how to access and use this rich material realm. The answer lies in design methodology, modeling and the processing of the materials for architecture. It requires a clear break with the established architectural methodology.

The possibility of new design methodologies is intricately linked to the processing capacity of computerised, digital technology. This technology also allows for accessing the minute material scales at which the fiber and textile geometry is dynamically at work and to retain the dynamics presented in the architectural modeling. This procedure reflects the fact that the composite material systems must be designed in relation to expected performance criteria and that the central variable in this task is the manifold geometric nature of the fiber reinforcement.

The promise of composite materials and – not the least – the fibre-reinforced versions of these, has generally been voiced ever since the materials were introduced in the 1950s. But the promise has yet to be realized.

The work presented here are fragments, small visual glimpses, into the efforts of the Architecture Class to contribute to the development of architecture.
Fibrous and composite materials must be designed: They must be conceived of, constructed and produced in relation to desired performance criteria. Before this, they principally do not exist.  Fibrous composite materials are therefore design materials and can be understood as virtual material constructs before they have been formulated.

Because of the fibers (which are defined as long, linear material elements), yarns, fabrics and textiles are material systems relying on the entanglement of linear elements. Pending the geometry of the entanglement, the resulting fibrous system will have very specific properties and performance capabilities. While the advanced contemporary versions of these material systems are produced with the aid of sophisticated, digital technology, they are usually referred to with well-known terms: woven, braided or knitted textiles.

This suggests that fibrous material systems are strung out between age-old traditions of craft and highly complex industrial processes. In both cases, illustrated by weaving or knitting, the systems come into being through geometric practices.
The geometry in question oscillates between the apparently simple relation between lines, via highly complex arrays of knotting and interlacing, to global forms that include folds and double curvature.  In material and structural terms, this material geometry results in mechanical behaviour that is at once complex and non-linear, the latter meaning that it is at times unpredictable. The behaviour or expression of these systems is the result of the aggregation of these geometric conditions.
For architecture most of this is novel territory. There were wonderful designs in the 1960s and -70s that demonstrated novel forms made from fibrous composite systems – at that time simply called plastics, but today an entirely different horizon is drawn by new modelling insights and digital technology. The advances in these fields combined with state-of-the-art material science and engineering invite us to intervene on and work with the material geometry in question. It means that the considerations of geometry in the architectural design process multiply and introduces complexities that previously and conventionally were beyond our imagination.

The Architecture Class is working on making advances in this field of material design and application. Our aim is to approach a new level of material sensibility and design know-how that are more appropriate and responsible for the future art of building.