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// MIDJOURNEY / 2022-2023

// AIR PRINTING / Giannakopoulos -  Marini  / TROPOS / 2016

// DIGITAL TECTONICS / FABRICATION ECOLOGIES / Giannakopoulos - Levidis - Marini - Soutos unit / IAAC / Barcelona / 2012 - 2013

Besos / Site / Wetlands

Situated on the edge of the Ronda del Litoral highway, on the banks of the Besos river and confined within the stretch of land that separates Barcelona from Badalona, the site acts as both a border and a link between the two. Besos is the most heavily polluted river in Catalonia. The river reaches the site already heavily polluted with residue from nearby agriculture,
industry, mobility and domestic use, namely phosphates, sulphates, nitrates, carbon dioxide, ammonia, and mercury. The air quality is low due to CO1 and CO2 emissions from the highway and the industries surrounding the site.

Radical cartography / Mapping

A series of experiments were conducted to extract data for the pollution levels in and around the river. An air quality sensor powered through an arduino board, a Db meter, a Ph meter as well as wind simulation models were used in order to understand the distribution patterns of pollution and identify the most significant pressure points on the two ecosystems, the natural and the urban one. This process, along with helping undestand the flows on the site in a better way, informed the sort of direction the architectural intervention would follow.

Radical cartography / Dynamic map

The levels of the Ph of a river is a factor that heavily affects
the ecosystem and the people living around it and coming
in contact with its waters. Ph values fluctuate over a seasonal circle, with higher values being recorded over autumn and winter, mainly due to pesticides being applied over the months of September and October. In order to map a dynamic process over time, an interactive tool was designed in Processing. Values for Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn are overlayed, and compared to the average yearly value and maximum tolerance levels for a river. The site is transformed into a point cloud in which the Ph values are mapped.

Response / Tropism

Tropism is a growth response between a plant and an external stimulus. The stimulus could be weather, touch, time, gravity or light. A positive response is indicated by growth toward a stimulus and a negative response is indicated by growth away from the stimulus. Light is a stimulus that plants respond to. This is called phototropism
(photo= light). Plants usually display a positive phototropic response to light, which means they grow toward
a light source. The plant Growth trajectory was extracted
through a series of studies, using drawing as the main tool. This, in turn informed a series of fabrication techniques shaped around the growth patterns.

Coil / Simulating wind aggregation

3D Printiing techniques were deployed as a means of research the potential of natural aggregation. A structure that protects the young plants in a natural environment was fabricated according to the growth patterns that were extracted from our research. This was then sprayed with fibers and smaller particles in order to simulate the natural depositing of residue on the structure in a natural environment and the structure that these form.

Coil / Apparatus

The apparatus seeks to harvest the process of Phototropism, the tendency of plant stems to grow towards the light source. The base that supports the pot rotates, while the light source remains stable. The plant responds to this circular movement and spirals along, producing longer, customized bast fibers.

Shelter / Formation

Creation of a catalog of different types of shelters using an apparatus that is able to modify the growth of the plant.
Through a system of direct connections between the plants and the mechanisms, which are planted in the various terraces in Valldaura, we are able to develop a variety of forms that are based on previous experiments conducted. Each plant is deformed depending on the different characteristics necessary for the creation of the shelter. After experiments carried out on the type of bending of the trunk and on the type of connection. we are able to predict the behavior and the disposition of the plants for the shelter’s design. In the formation of the catalog the elements that are
taken into consideration are: the number of plants, their
arrangement in the particular site, the number of points where the trunk is bend, the anchor points and the amount of arcs developed. For the design of the shelter there are 4 types of external stimuli that come from our study on hemp and that are developed in the new mechanism: rotation of the pot, phototropism, type of connection and pulling - bending system.

Valldaura / Simulating conditions

Strategic Mapping of the area of Valldaura. Environmental
studies of solar radiation, shadows distribution and water runoff.

From Natural to Directed / A vegetated landscape of inhabitable corridors

Shelter designed through a series of plants. The plants, arranged along the terraces of the site in Valldaura, are bended in different points and the various pot are rotated in order to obtain the shape of the shelter. The shelter is planted in March and its formation takes place during the period of plant growth, until October. When the life cycle is over, these are cut off and it starts the procedure for extracting the fibers. It is also planned a certain amount of parts ofthe plants that remain in the project

Fabrication Ecologies / Ecologic Studio

‘Social ecosophy will consist in developing specific practices that will modify and reinvent the ways in which we live as couples or in the family, in an urban context or at work, etc […] Instead of clinging to general recommendations we would be implementing effective practices of experimentation, as much on a micro social level as on a larger institutional scale. ’

GUATTARI, F. The Three Ecologies. Continuum, London 2000.

Kuka simulating conditions

The Fabrication Ecologies Research Studio embraces a radical attitude towards digital fabrication by experimenting new eco-systemic fabrication protocols; our core ambition is to embed the mechanisms of digital fabrication within specific design milieu, manufacture related 1:1 design prototypes and trigger the emergence of speculative architectural scenarios.

Shelter / Formation

This year our material research focuses on natural fibrous systems; in particular we will start form hemp, which in the 20th century has been the extraordinary protagonist of a controversial industrial war. Once the most diffused material in the world, in the early ‘30s hemp became the key competitor of the growing petrochemical industry, which then took control of the market until today; the studio will plot a surprise comeback by inventing new hemp based components and related fabrication protocols.

Our design method includes several steps from the initial creation of a “hemp garden”, to experiments in material self-organisation, digital simulation and robotic fabrication; each step is supported by dedicated seminars and design workshops. In the 3rd term each group of students is required to manufacture a 1:1 architectural component and describe a related design scenario.

CATALOGUES //

 WORKSHOPS //

Apomechanes

The title apomechanes is derived from “από μηχανής”, literally “from the machine”, and refers to the machinic nature of the studio in an abstract/diagrammatic sense. Apomechanes is a calque from Greek meaning "god from the machine". The term has evolved into a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object. Apomechanes is a seminar devoted to the concepts and methods of algorithmic design as a generative device of architectural space.

Design Theme: 
This workshop is devoted to the research of nonlinear computational generative systems for architectural design. Design research is not defined here as a linear scientific process with objective outcomes, but rather as the iterative, non-linear and speculative process with the ability to reassess and shift our disciplinary discourse. This research focuses on the inherent potential of computation to generate space and of algorithmic procedures to engage self-organization in the design process. 

Anamorphosis

Self-organization of a system requires diversity. If a system can ensure self-organization, it can ensure that it will be resilient to changes and shocks of the constant environmental transformations over space. By seeing nature as a system of materiality our architecture dissolves geometry through abstract material articulation, resulting in a non-geometrical and non-standard structure that is materially efficient, while being extremely articulated, tactile, and ornate. 

Apomechanes

The title apomechanes is derived from “από μηχανής”, literally “from the machine”, and refers to the machinic nature of the studio in an abstract/diagrammatic sense. Apomechanes is a calque from Greek meaning "god from the machine". The term has evolved into a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object. Apomechanes is a seminar devoted to the concepts and methods of algorithmic design as a generative device of architectural space.

Design Theme: the Ascent to the Acropolis
The emergence from the modern city of Athens to the hill of Acropolis manifests a unique and universal experience. It operates as a cross-section through a spatial and temporal field that resonates multiple individual and cultural perspectives. The computational design workshop will speculate on a contemporary response to this challenge.The goal will be to test our contemporary disciplinary discourse against a different scale of time; to discover new fundamental ways of addressing abstraction, experience and history.

Heteromorphosis

The narrative comes from the concept of double into a single element. The study of the Acropolis as a place both political and religious continues with the discovery of the tomb and the temple Erechtheum up to the formal and speculative studies of the caryatids, statues and columns at the same time.

Through formation and deformation of these elements is being searched the true essence of the other and the diverse.

Life Size 3d printing

3d printing an artificial coral reef with Enrico Dini in his laboratory in Pisa.

Candelabrum 2.0

Candelabrum 2.0 is a wooden pavillion sourronded by nature.

It was a logic and not a design, a possibility and not a solution, a process without a clear outcome. It was a project in which each personality could influence the product. A joint system of non linear development based on a traversal method that tested minor changes in comparison to the overall composition. Candelabrum 2.0, finally, was a fascination for the beauty of imperfection.

Teatri abitanti

The ability to modify in a few seconds the internal space turning it into devices that can accommodate situations even radically different.
Here is a project to bring to the outside this ability. Only a formal element, a table. And the possibility to arrange it according to people' s needs for using it in different configurations marked on the ground and overlapping each other.

Taking the chair from home and putting on stage.

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