Holo | Morph Redux

2010

Seattle's weather forecast frequently includes rain, and the Coleman Ferry Dock's location at a low point in the city's topography means the site receives runoff from the entire downtown area and surrounding parts of the city. Water also traces the paths of human circulation through the site, which flows from downtown Seattle to the Puget Sound. Both rainwater and runoff are collected on site and filtered through the screens of each residential tower to provide clean water to the residents. The playful articulation of the ground plane provides retail space and protected access to the ferry terminals as well as a park-like setting for residents and visitors alike. This multiuse project aims to create a sense of community through a balance of housing, greenery, and retail space while speaking of Seattle's intimate connection between people and water.

The Design Journal, 2017

Despite the large number of innovative materials developed in laboratories worldwide, their application in new mass-produced products is complicated. Design can reduce the risk that the research developed in scientific laboratories could fail to be properly exploited and triggering a beneficial cycle linking Science to Design. This paper present the Design4Materials, an italian network founded by the laboratories of leading schools of design: MaterialdesignLab|Sapienza Rome, Madec|Politecnico di Milano, HybridesignLab|SUN Naples, Soft Surfaces and Polisensoriality|Poliba Bari. After presenting the different skills of the network members, the authors describe the capabilities and the goals of the network and the main results developed like the project that define characteristics and identities for an open material, starting from a research of the IIT of Genoa. The Design4Materials aim is to play a leading role on design-driven innovation process, responding to society’s changing needs and developing a ‘circular’ methodology of innovation from a design standpoint.

As we all know, advanced materials increase product performance by augmenting value added, making them vitally important to the competitiveness of companies on the global market. But despite the large number of innovative materials developed in laboratories worldwide, their application in new massproduced products is complication matter. Apart from the lengthy lead time of industrial development, introducing a new material in search of suitable applications on the market is difficult. Design, therefore, plays an important role, "concluding the cycle of innovation" by establishing scenarios for the new materials and giving value and meaning to technological advances. The design-driven innovation approach -operating in interdisciplinary fieldsassigns a strategic role to design in R&D work, putting technical-scientific research on a par with design research, the analysis of a material's technical-performance potential on a par with the analysis of its aesthetic-perceptive characteristics, and prioritises the analysis of consumer behaviour and the understanding and interpretation of society's needs by creative professions, stimulating the creation of specific, context-oriented 'visions of design' that establish a framework of innovation-oriented meanings. Design has also taken on the role of carefully communicating the value of innovation, making its benefits clear and significantly reducing acceptance times at an industrial level and the time-to-market. In fact, designers can improve communication during the various different phases of the innovation production chain, reducing the risk that the research developed in scientific laboratories could fail to be properly exploited and triggering a beneficial cycle linking Science to Design. This type of approach is already held as valid internationally, and is carried out, for example, through the construction of such software and applications as CES Selector developed by Mike Asbhy at the Cambridge University Engineering Department, with the objective of combining a database of materials and of technological processes contained in it, by introducing parameters for aesthetic/perceptive assessment, or the Matrix of Material Representation developed by Zuo, Hope, Jones from Southampton Institute UK.

2012

Architecturally relevant geometry originating in Origami, the ancient Japanese art of paper folding, is reframed in the context of the evolving computational design and fabrication methods as a retro novel genre of tessellation. The case study in focus, the Folding Architecture course taught by the authors at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly during the spring semester of academic year 201-12 demonstrates combinatorial methodologies that employ both computational tools and material processes outlining interdependencies between the two. The paper highlights didactic tools and methods that interweave research in Origami, folded plate and deployable structures, single surface architecture and advanced architectural geometry. It demonstrates the educational value of generative processes with digital and physical media, testing the ‘seamlessly and in a continuum’ concept along the integration between analogue form generation, computation, simulation and fabrication. Furthermore the paper substantiates the design methodology with a selection of design proposals and fabricated prototypes.

Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe)

This paper is about the fabrication process of the DesCours pavilion, a project that was realized in the context of a graduate design studio in the Fall Semester of 2010. The assembly and construction process of the pavilion will be used to show how parametric software, such as Grasshopper can inform fabrication and material systems. The paper will explain the fabrication process of a pavilion in detail and make an argument for plastic as a material that not only responds to the malleable characteristic of digital tools but also to environmental issues.

A strange phenomenon is presented when we approach the subject of design and trends when we consider terms of education, since much has been set for the first two terms (design and trends), but what about the education of it, more specifically in Industrial Design? In the brief history of the practice, different trends have been experienced, which have led to changes not only in terms of how are designed objects of the daily lives of people, but also in the way in which Industrial Design is considered, which then undoubtedly affects the education of future designers. Through a retrospective which shows the evolution of the components considered for the configuration of objects, starting from the Industrial Revolution, passing through different movements like Arts & Crafts, Bauhaus, Functionalism, Post-modernism, and concluding with our days, is seen how the dominant vectors, by tradition, as the form and function, have been overcome due to different requirements (for both users and global market), allowing the inclusion of other vectors, such as technology, the generation of experiences, and the value of innovation. Following this trend, and considering others in a globally scale, such as accelerated education and the importance that will represent the creative industries in the future, it is highlighted the need to reconsider the way in which students are formed in design, especially what regards to the design process, the way they approach problems, and how they proceed to provide a solution, embodied in an object or service. Disassociating from any mystical relationship in the generation of ideas, and a linear process that could lead to the same results always, it is proposed a design process in a fluctuating way, which can mutate and is totally dependent on the needs of the project or problem. This will provide the possibility to students to implement a methodology that enables the adaptability, experimentation and rationality needed to develop a successful design process which results in a product with a high design value contribution.

2017

Between digital and physical. Envisioning and prototyping smart material systems and artifacts from data-informed scenarios.