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ACADIA's 'Robotic Softness' Workshop

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(via Archinect)

The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) conference 2016, hosted by the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban planning at the University of Michigan, is a preeminent platform to discuss design philosophies and acknowledge new realms of work done by individuals or organizations among the architectural community. The Institute for Computational Design at the University of Stuttgart’s contribution to the field of computational design and architecture has been immense, and the workshop gave us valuable insight into the technology and know-how being developed at the there.

Through the seven ACADIA’s workshops, we participated in “Robotic Softness: Behavioral Fabrication Process of Woven Structures,” led by Lauren Vasey, a Research Associate from the ICD and Giulio Brugnaro, a graduate of the ITECH Master’s Program at the University of Stuttgart who is currently also pursuing his PHD at The Bartlett School of Architecture. The three day workshop was structured around the goal of introducing us to the concept of “Robotic Softness”, envisioned as a flexible and evolving framework for robotic fabrication in which the design linked with the fabrication process enables continuous feedback loops. Vasey and Brugnaro defined four main directions of investigation for the workshop as: material behavior and fabrication-informed design; scanning and machine vision; online robotic control; and behavioral fabrication strategies.

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Michigan Professor Catie Newell's Illuminating Installation 'Overnight'

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(via New York Times)

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A photo exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art offers views of parts of Detroit neighborhoods before they’re fully illuminated by new street lights.

Titled “Overnight,” the exhibition by Detroit-based architect Catie Newell opens Saturday at the Ann Arbor museum and runs through Nov. 6. The assistant professor at the university’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning is fascinated with light and darkness.

“I’ve always been interested in darkness and the night,” she said in a statement. “Colors look different. Things have a different hierarchy, based on what’s lit and what’s not.”

The Public Lighting Authority was set up several years ago in Detroit to deal broken lights across the city. Tens of thousands of new LED lights have been installed and about 65,000 are expected to be up by the end of 2016. They’re twice as bright and use less electricity than older lights.

Fewer than half of the city’s 88,000 streetlights were believed to be working before the efforts began. Burned out bulbs, deteriorated infrastructure and the theft of copper wiring by people seeking to profit from sales of the metal for scrap left swaths of the city in the dark.

The exhibition at the Irving Stenn Jr. Family Gallery includes copper, aluminum and LEDs — a reference to the city’s streetlights. And as Detroit’s new streetlights come are installed, Newell said she looks for spots of light surrounded by darkness to document.

(via New York Times)

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