SEAMLESS CONNECTION BETWEEN DIGITAL ANALYSIS METHODS AND ROBOTIC FABRICATION

Shahram Arashzad

Heiarii LI CHENG

NewSchool Of Architecture And Design

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is inconceivable today to imagine designing buildings without the use of computers. They are used at every step of the architectural process, from conceptual design to construction. Three-dimensional modeling and visualization, generative form finding, scripted modulation systems, structural and thermal analyses, project management and coordination, and file-to-factory production are just some of the digital practices employed by architects and building consultants. Digital fabrication is often one of the final stages of this process, and it is very much what it sounds like: a way of making that uses digital data to control a fabrication process. Falling under the umbrella of computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM), it relies on computer driven machine tools to build or cut parts.

BobCAD-CAM software illustration. Image courtesy of BobCAD-CAM.com

CAD/CAM has been a mainstay of industrial design and engineering and of manufacturing industries—particularly the automotive and aerospace industries—for more than a half century. Parts ranging from engine blocks to cell phones are designed and built using 3D-computer-modeling software. Scaled models are made quickly, using rapid-prototyping machines that turn out accurate physical models from the computerized data. Once the computer model is refined and completed, the data are transferred to computer-controlled machines that make full-scale parts and molds from a range of materials such as aluminum, steel, wood, and plastics. This computerized process streamlines production— effectively blending upstream and downstream processes that are typically compartmentalized, often eliminating intermediate steps between design and final production. There is the potential for architecture also to move more fluidly between design and construction. As Branko Kolarevic states, “This newfound ability to generate construction information directly from design information, and not the complex curving forms, is what defines the most profound aspect of much of the contemporary architecture.”  Architects have been drawing digitally for nearly thirty years. CAD programs have made two-dimensional drawing efficient, easy to edit, and, with a little practice, simple to do. Yet for many years, as the process of making drawings steadily shifted from being analog to digital, the design of buildings did not really reflect the change. CAD replaced drawing with a parallel rule and lead pointer, but buildings looked pretty much the same. This is perhaps not so surprising—one form of two-dimensional representation simply replaced another. It took three-dimensional-computer modeling and digital fabrication to energize design thinking and expand the boundaries of architectural form and construction. In a relatively short period of time, a network of activities has grown up around digital fabrication. Inventive methods have emerged from project specific applications developed by a handful of architects and fabricators. This inventiveness has to do in part with restructuring the very process of construction.

The work of Gehry Partners and its associated firm Gehry Technologies has played a pivotal role in this regard. For them, digital integration was largely necessitated by the complexity of the building geometries. Gehry’s office began using CAD/CAM processes in 1989 to develop and then test the constructability of a building system for the Disney Concert Hall. As is usually the case in design, the process was iterative and nonlinear. Initially, physical models were reverse-engineered using a digitizer to take coordinates off a model’s surface and import it into a 3D digital environment. The design subsequently moved back and forth between physical and digital surface models—physical models for aesthetics, digital models for “system fit.” For this purpose Gehry’s office adapted software from the aerospace industry, CATIA (Computer Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application), to model the entire exterior of the concert hall.  At that time the skin was conceived as stone and glass, and the office successfully produced cut-stone mock-ups, using tool paths for computer controlled milling machines derived from digital surface models. In other words, the digital model was translated directly into physical production by using digitally driven machines that essentially sculpted the stone surface through the cutting away of material. This building method revealed that the complexities and uniqueness of surface geometries did not significantly affect fabrication costs, and it is this realization, that one can make a series of unique pieces with nearly the same effort as it requires to mass-produce identical ones, that forms a significant aspect of the computer-aided manufacturing that has since been exploited for design effect. In 2002, Gehry Partners created Gehry Technologies to further develop Digital Project, a version of CATIA adapted and specialized for the unique demands of complex architectural projects. Gehry Technologies Design Basic 8 On Uncategorized Design Ideas 8. Image courtesy of Ghery Technologies.

Digital Project integrates numerous aspects of the construction process, including building codes, and mechanical, structural, and cost-criteria aspects. Gehry Technologies now acts as a consultant to Gehry Partners, as well as to other architects, assisting with digital construction and management. The company is revolutionary in that it expands the role of the architect to include oversight of the building and construction-management process, much as it was in the age of the master builder. In addition to Gehry’s, architectural offices such as Foster & Partners, Nicholas Grimshaw, and Bernhard Franken are forging similar integrated project-delivery methods for large, complex projects.

Nowadays, our cities have completely evolved to a point where it is unrecognizable and extremely difficult to control, and this is why architectural practice and urban planners heavily rely on digital analysis methods to simulate building performance and optimization. As a  new emergent software among others, Grasshopper, has been on the trend over the recent years. Grasshopper as a parametric tool, is numerically or formula driven. As a result, you are not only able to generate form with numbers, but you can distill out numerical data from the form you have created, and has proven to be an analysis design tool asset in emergent architectural practices. One of the most analyzed topics is surely the environment. With the unpredictable change in climate in recent years, it is important to have a clear understanding of the issue and how analysis tools can help designers tackle the matter. Among the most used design analysis methods for the environment are Grasshopper’s plug-ins such as “honeybee“ and “ladybug”. Ladybug is an open source environmental plugin for Grasshopper3D that helps architects and engineers create an environmentally-conscious architectural design.  Ladybug imports standard EnergyPlus Weather files (.EPW) into Grasshopper and provides a variety of 3D interactive graphics to support the decision-making process during the initial stages of design.       

Ladybug. Image courtesy of Grasshopper3d.com

 

Honeybee connects Grasshopper3D to EnergyPlus, Radiance, Daysim and OpenStudio for building energy and day lighting simulation. The Honeybee project intends to make many of the features of these simulation tools available in a parametric way.

Honeybee. Image courtesy of Grasshopper3d.com

However, an important aspect, if not the most important in the architectural and construction world is fabrication. The translation between the architectural design and the subsequent actualization process is mediated by various tools and techniques. Through the adoption in architectural design practice of computation and information technologies, with their capacity for a relatively seamless transition between design and fabrication, a more integrated workflow across the design and actualization process is made more accessible to designers. In recent years, designers have become increasingly able to move effortlessly between digital modeling, performance simulation, and physical realization.  As technology evolves, this rapidly evolving field continually presents architects and designers with new challenges and opportunities for creative exploration as well as a more materially intelligent practice. And this is where robots come into actions.

Over the past decades, robots have made possible to radically enrich the physical nature of architecture, to inform material processes and to merge computational design and constructive realization as a symbol feature of architecture in the digital age, leading to the emergence of a phenomenon described a few years ago as “digital materiality”. Robotic research facility, Architecture and Digital Fabrication, ETH Zurich, 2005. Image courtesy of Gramazio and Kohler Architects.

Firms such as ETH Zurich and the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) at the Singapore ETH-Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (SEC), is heavily anchored in this voyage of discovery, and explores what happens if architecture absorbs the proposed connection, enabled by robots, between computational logic and material realization as a new basis for the discipline’s practices. It is essential that architecture and the conditions specific to its production inform our approach to robotic fabrication, and not vice versa. Industrial robots are distinguished by their versatility. Like computers, they are suitable for a wide variety of tasks because they are generic and therefore not programed to any particular application. Instead of being restricted in their operations to a prescribed range of applications, the manual agility of robots can be freely designed and programmed. Their material manipulation skills can be customized to suit a specific constructive intention, both at the material and conceptual levels. It is precisely this quality, unleashing a previously unimaginable range of freedom in the interplay between the machine and the object that distinguishes the operational applicability of industrial robots from all other specialized digital fabrication machines. In order to exploit this potential, which massively expands the concept of architectural design, not only a technical grasp of the robot’s construction capabilities, but also an in-depth understanding of the materials to be processed, is necessary. Robotic fabrication overcomes the repetitive build-up of standard building elements in favor of a differentiated assembly of custom-built elements, and links computational design to the fabrication of physical study models. Robots offer a reliable and cost-effective technology that is globally accessible and extremely flexible in its application. Although analysis methods and robotic fabrication seams effortless, a key component of the design process are physical models (made by robots). Not only physical models sharpen the key concepts of the design, they also immediately communicate the relationship between material and structure, space, and proportions. Therefore, physical models are a critical tool in conjunction with computational design, whereby robotic technology is used for its fabrication.

ETH Singapore fabrication models. Image courtesy of the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) at the Singapore ETH-Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (SEC).

 

          One of the most recent case studies is probably the Gantenbein winery, 2006, Switzerland, by Gramazio and Kohler. The project was originally designed by Bearth & Deplazes Architects, and it was already under construction when Gramazio and Kohler were invited to design its façade. The initial design proposed a simple concrete skeleton filled with bricks: The masonry acts as a temperature buffer, as well filtering the sunlight for the fermentation room behind it. The bricks are offset so that daylight penetrates the hall through the gaps between the bricks. Direct sunlight, which would have a detrimental effect on the fermentation, is however excluded. Polycarbonate panels are mounted inside to protect against wind. Interior. Image courtesy of Gramazio and Kohler + Bearth and Deplazes Architekten.

The robotic production method that was developed at the ETH enabled the architects to lay each one of the 20,000 bricks precisely according to programmed parameters—at the desired angle and at the exact prescribed intervals. This allowed to design and constructs each wall to possess the desired light and air permeability, while creating a pattern that covers the entire building façades. According to the angle at which they are set, the individual bricks each reflect light differently and thus take on different degrees of lightness. Similarly to pixels on a computer screen they add up to a distinctive image and thus communicate the identity of the vineyard. In contrast to a two-dimensional screen, however, there is a dramatic play between plasticity, depth and color, dependent on the viewer’s position and the angle of the sun. Exterior façade. Image courtesy of Gramazio and Kohler + Bearth and Deplazes Architekten.

The wall elements were manufactured as a pilot project at the ETH Zurich, transported by lorry to the construction site, and installed using a crane. Because construction was already quite advanced, Gramazio and Kohler only had three months before assembly on site. This made manufacturing the 72 façade elements a challenge both technologically and in terms of deadlines. As the robot could be driven directly by the design data, without our having to produce additional implementation drawings, we were able to work on the design of the façade up to the very last minute before starting production.

Architectural design practice will be increasingly mediated by digital technology in the future. Digital fabrication technology allows architects to conceive designs both digitally and physically, and may empower them to take a more active role in materialization and construction process where connection between digital analysis methods and robotic fabrication is seamless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

BobCAD-CAM software illustration. Image courtesy of http://BobCAD-CAM.com

Gehry Technologies Design Basic 8 On Uncategorized Design Ideas 8. Image courtesy of Ghery Technologies.

Ladybug. Image courtesy of http://Grasshopper3d.com

Honeybee. Image courtesy of http://Grasshopper3d.com

Robotic research facility, Architecture and Digital Fabrication, ETH Zurich, 2005. Image courtesy of Gramazio and Kohler Architects.

ETH Singapore fabrication models. Image courtesy of the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) at the Singapore ETH-Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (SEC).

Interior. Image courtesy of Gramazio and Kohler + Bearth and Deplazes Architekten.

Exterior façade. Image courtesy of Gramazio and Kohler + Bearth and Deplazes Architekten.

Gramazio, F., & Kohler, M. (2014). Made by Robots Challenging Architecture at the Large Scale AD. (p. 18). Hoboken: Wiley.

Iwamoto, L. (2009). Digital fabrications: Architectural and material techniques (p. 144). New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Kolarevic, B. (2008). Manufacturing material effects: Rethinking design and making in architecture. New York: Routledge.