CCA News
Biology Meets Architecture: San Francisco Workshop Radically Rethinks Building Envelopes
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010, by Samantha Braman
Sixty participants from 20 countries around the world descended on CCA's San Francisco campus from July 12 through July 21, 2010, for the Biodynamic Structures workshop. A collaboration between CCA's Architecture Program and the London-based Architectural Association (AA) Visiting School, the workshop offered enrollees the opportunity to investigate new tools, modeling techniques, and technologies of architectural design. In particular they explored how the fields of material science, biology, biomimetics, and robotics might become primary technical and creative sources for design explorations.
The participants were a remarkable mix of students, academic faculty, and design professionals. Participants and instructors came from American schools such as the UCLA, MIT, Pratt, and Harvard as well as top institutions and design offices in Europe, Asia, South America, Mexico, and Canada.
The 10-day workshop began with a series of hands-on technical courses and lectures led by top thinkers and practitioners in the key fields, including Dr. George Jeronimidis, director of the Center for Biomimetics at the University of Reading, England, and Michael Weinstock, noted author and director of the Emergent Technologies Program at the AA School of Architecture in London.
The ideas they introduced were then explored in an intensive six-day project-based design exercise. The participants self-organized into 11 groups, each devoted to a different design idea. "We asked them to explore the future of the building that they were working in: CCA's main San Francisco campus building," says Jason Kelly Johnson, CCA assistant professor and codirector of the workshop. "We asked them to radically rethink its skin and propose new envelopes that could dynamically change in response to both environmental needs and the shifting needs of its users. The result was a diverse and fascinating set of projects that blurred the boundaries between architecture, biology, robotics, and beyond—almost a new paradigm of biodynamic architecture.
"One group project focused on the vascular system of plants and explored how a pneumatically driven 'breathing' facade might use sensors and actuators to expand and contract based on the microclimatic needs of its context. Another group researched how a plant uses its stomata, or small pores in its leaves, for gas and water vapor exchange, then looked into how a dynamic shade canopy modeled on stomata might respond in real time to variable light, heat, and humidity levels."
CCA's collaboration with the AA Visiting School emerged out of a mutual interest in pushing the boundaries of architectural design through explorations in advanced computation and the allied sciences. Johnson and his fellow CCA Architecture professor and workshop codirector Andrew Kudless have had a long-term dialogue with their colleagues in London, and the workshop structure offered an ideal opportunity to continue and enrich these discussions. The other codirectors of the workshop were Christina Doumpioti and Evan Greenberg, both tutors from the AA in London. Kudless reports that CCA is planning to host the collaborative summer workshop for another two years; also in the works is a plan to encapsulate all of the research and workshop projects into a book and traveling exhibition.
Johnson has an extensive background in biodynamic structures. He was featured in the 2009 Princeton Architectural Press book Interactive Architecture, which catalogued architects and designers working at the intersection of dynamic structures and interactive technologies. "The book makes a compelling argument for considering architecture at the crossroads of biology interaction design, material science, robotics, fabrication, and various sustainable applications," says Johnson. "Architecture is just beginning to engage issues surrounding energy sensing, systems control, and cognizance in buildings, cities, and landscapes. We are increasingly looking for technology to be seamlessly integrated into architecture rather than simply applied to it. Architects are extremely interested in understanding how to actually imbue material assemblies with the capability to respond instinctively to their environments, to adapt and learn from their own actions and the actions of their neighbors. Imagine entire buildings that react and move in continuous negotiation with the energy dynamics and cycles of their surroundings!"
Related
AA/CCA Biodynamic Structures website
CCA Architecture MEDIAlab website
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