Week 9

Assessment 1 – Issues of topical currency

This assessment requires you to research current design trends and design writing, prepare your own predictions or speculative narratives from what you learn from this and use professional presentation skills to present it with visuals to your peers.

THE BRIEF

consisting of a 10 minute class presentation accompanied by a well researched and illustrated report of 2000 words on the relationship between possible future design styles/trends and issues and the writings of current design or social theorists 

SPECIFICATIONS

No of words:    2,000

FORMAT     PDFs for both report and presentation

The assignment will be assessed over the following stages:

STAGE ONE

Research and summarise the work of several different social theorists and design writers.

STAGE TWO

Write a report of 2,000 words.

STAGE THREE

Prepare a presentation with movies and or images to support your theories

STAGE FOUR

Professional Presentation as if to a client of final outcome

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA 

• Fulfilling parameters of brief (8/40)

• Depth of research (8/40)

• Originality and entertaining/engaging content (8/40)

• Correct referencing and academic style (8/40)

• Presentation  skills (8/40)

Report Due Date: Week 9 – End of Class Thursday 29th September 2011

Presentation Due Date: Weeks 10 and 11

Project Weighting: 40%

SELF ASSEMBLY WITHIN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

OVERVIEW

Our population is growing and our cities are getting crowded, building costs rise because resources are deminishing. Looking at what our natural environment offers is what can save us from ourselves? The proposition is to study the bodies protein interactions of self-assembly, replication and the ability to repair and  trying to mimick this into our built environment. Making things that make themselves, trying to write the code they can produce the object we desire.

METHODS

Skylar Tibbits, a researcher at MIT, and his team have looked into this theory. Proposing a few miniscale models of robots that work off sequences embedded into them to create a 3-dimensional object. He proposes with futher research, he sees new possibilities for self-assemble, replication and repair in our physical structures, our buildings and machines. Further programability in these parts and from that you have new possibilities for computing, spatial computing. Our buildings, bridges, machines, bricks could actually compute, amazing parralell distributing power, also new design possibilities. 

FINDINGS

Our building industry as of now is searching for new possibilities in regards to materials and construction with sustainability and environmental impact in mind. Technology is helping the industry along with innovations in man made materials and ways of constructing to prevent damage due to natural disasters or human accidents (renovations or repairs). Tibbits research is one small step towards the  ‘self-assembly’ of buildings but it is a valid step. Futher research could allow for a major change in the way people build all objects. 

RECOMMENDATIONS

With further research into the relationship of our bodies processes of self-assembly, replication and repair and the building industry will expand our options when it comes to the lack of resources available to build from, the sustainability of our bilding and objects, and the impact on the environment. If the self-assembly system progresses the possibilities in the building industry will blossom.  Objects that were too small to manufacture or so large it took years to plan let alone build, could now be programed into parts that will make it themselves. Not being an expert in the field I’m not sure if it will work, but the information gathered I think it is possible that in the future it will help construct buildings of all sizes to perfectly suit and adapt to their environment. 

INTRO

Todays contemporary society is forever advancing and growing, getting more complex yet simpler. Design and technology together have allowed for many innovations that have helped us with everyday activities and social or economical problems. The natural world we live in now is forever changing to suit the time, the environment, conditions and needs. Physical structures; buildings, machines, toasters, phones and practically any other item or device we connect with everyday are elaborate constructions. How would the world be if we could solve the constant headache that is the creation against the elements of time, difficulty and human/machine processing power. (Skylar Tibbits, APRIL 2010)

BODY

Built Environment and Construction

“Buildings come in a wide amount of shapes and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for a wide number of factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, to land prices, ground conditions, specific uses and aesthetic reasons.” (Wikipedia, 2011, Building [online]). A building is essential in our society to survive, provided shelter but also housing our belongings, providing privacy and space that we feel comfortable in. Since the first vision of a building used for shelter came an assortment of views on how it is to be built and look, artistic expression in the way we build, furthermore the design of buildings for work and for leisure are getting increasingly more extravagant (BBC News, 2000). Today’s society is exploring the possibility of extremes, with considering sustainability and impact on the ecosystem. 

Taking into account the fast rate the population is growing, today there is approximately 6.8 billion people in the world, it will continue to grow to at least 9 billion in 30 years or so. With more people and greater prosperity it is believed that 75% of the population will live in cities, 50 of those cities will be of 10 million people or more, considering the growth in population it is clear that the construction model we have today will not work tomorrow. (Bill Ford, TED speaker, 2011). The trouble that comes along with the design of a building is what materials to use that best suit the environment and will last the longest with minimal costs to our pocket and to the ecosystem. The world offers challenges in the form of natural disasters that alter the original foundation. Buildings get damaged by these natural disasters, renovations, any upkeep on the property and even accidents (Matt Bennett, 2006, Building Damage [online]). 

Building materials are heavily considered in the planning process, a variety of mediums can be used for a range of different structures. Many natural substances are used (such as clay, rocks, wood, sand, etc)  and also many man-made products some more and some less synthetic. The process of testing what will work best under the conditions is extensive, quite often expensive and highly time-consuming. “Modern building is a multibillion dollar industry, and the production and harvesting of raw materials for building purposes is on a world wide scale. Environmental concerns are also becoming a major world topic concerning the availability and sustainability of certain materials, and the extraction of such large quantities needed for the human habitat.” (Wikipedia, 2011, Building Material [online]). 

Experts are considering ways of building that will counteract unforeseeable complications, such as accidents or natural disasters. What is called ‘Natural Building’ places a vital emphasis on social and environmental sustainability, paying attention to the durability of materials and the possible renewable resources that are available. These structures rely on human labor rather than technology, it depends on “local ecology, geology and climate; on the character of the particular building site, and on the needs and personalities of the builders and users.” (Michael Smith, The Case for Natural Building [online]). Other methods have been looked into linked with natural building some more extreme than others, building underground, natural roofs, floors and foundations. The trouble with this is that the materials that aren’t ‘natural’ are used because they provide stronger structures and often are more reliable. 

Other engineers are looking into the science of natural disasters and experimenting with ways that will anticipate the consequences of earthquakes, hurricane, tornadoes and cyclones to infrastructure and how to design, construct and maintain structures to deal with the effects and aftermath. Some experiments are being undertaken to see what works best in those conditions. This wouldn’t necessarily need to apply to every ones plans when building but in areas that are prone to such natural disasters this could change the way they live for the better. With ‘Seismic design’ and ‘wind-loading considerations’ countries have an advantage when the natural disasters occur. If structures can deal with the elements, the deaths and devastating damage to infrastructure can be lessened and hopefully not occur. Obviously the strength of the disaster will determine the damage no matter what materials buildings are made from but the possibility of decreasing the sub-sequential destruction will be worth the time and effort into the research, experiments and production. 

Technological Construction

Contemporary society is advancing, the construction business highly relies on technology to determine many measurements and materials best for certain circumstances. Technology is forever moving forward and allowing for humans to consider and make objects, materials or machines that were impossible before. The computers behind certain machines are very intelligent, whilst the human brain is very smart it has it’s limitations. The systems of many high-tech computers these days can scale any information down to microscopic levels and up to macroscopic levels. The possibilities are practically endless, anything we can think of and outline the computer can write a series of commands to make it happen. 

DNA Construct - Self-Assembly As of Now (in the body)

The human body is made with an amazing design, our body is able to self assemble, replicate and repair itself through protein reactions with almost little to none complications. We have proteins that can fold two million types at ten thousand nanoseconds per protein, we have DNA with three billion base pairs that can replicate in approximately an hour. There is so much complexity in our natural systems that are extremely efficient than anything we as humans can build, far more complex than anything we can build, far more efficient in terms of energy, they hardly ever make mistakes and they can repair themselves for longevity (Skylar Tibbits, APRIL 2010).

Possibility of Self-Assembly in the Future (to help build)  as talked about by Skylar Tibbits.

With the damage that is done by environmental factors and even results of human fault or alterations, what if it could be fixed by self-assembly parts? Skylar Tibbits has a background in architecture, learnt how to built things for the physical world, taught himself to write computer code and generating structures in the computer and the virtual world, sending such parts to robotic machines to cut out 2D parts from aluminium, take such parts and assemble them and exhibit them as installations all over the world (voltaDom). After the extensive process he went to put it together, he tossed up the idea of something that would make itself he figured that after he worked out all this information to generate the objects in code and all the information the machines are using, there had to be a better way, possibly a way these parts can build them selves. 

Tibbits continued studying computer science and digital information, self-replicating systems and combining the physical and the digital worlds. He proposes that instead of taking raw materials and sending them through a machine or processor that is fighting tolerances, efficiency, errors and hope to get the desired end product. We could take those raw materials, embed some type of information in them and allow the materials to build themselves, imitating exactly how our bodies work with protein folding and DNA replication. 

MIT researcher Tibbits and his team have researched the concept of mimicking the self-assembly system within our body for the built environment that surrounds us. We will still have the concern of the environment and where these materials are coming from. Availability and sustainability, environmental concerns but Tibbits provides a few examples and mini models that he hopes will translate into the future building industry. 

If we can translate something from the complexity of our natural systems to our built environment then there is a lot of exciting potential for the way that we build things. Skylar Tibbits believes the key to that is self-assembly. To translate it into our built environment we have to; decode assembly sequences, determine the programability of parts, use energy for actualisation and consider error correction. Decode the sequences, essentially having the DNA of a building, being able to program parts to understand the sequences, have energy that will allow it to activate the sequence and will need error correction to guarantee that what is built is what we want. 

Decode what you want into a number of sequences. 

The user can plug in what they want the bricks to do, it computes on what it was doing previously and what you said you want it to do next and starts moving in 3-dimensional space. The structures contain the blueprints of what we want to build in these sequences,  they have all the information embedded in them of what is to be constructed so that means we can have some form of replication. Tibbits calls it in the ‘Logic matter’ case, self-guided replication, if you have errors you can replace a part, all of the local information is embedded to tell you how to fix it. Something could climb along and read it and can output it one:one, it is directly embedded there is no external instructions. 

He proposes with further research, new possibilities for self-assemble, replication and repair in our physical structures, our buildings and machines. Further programability in these parts and from that you have new possibilities for computing, spatial computing. Our buildings, bridges, machines, bricks could actually compute with each other, an amazing parallel distributing power, also new design possibilities. 

At small scales, biological structures, eventually when we get small enough we will not be able to build machines that are smart enough to be able to build those small scale intricate geometries and structures, so we want to build low level, simple intelligent pieces that have just enough information in that when they combine together they become a hard drive, reading each other and building the structures they need to build. So you build a simple of computers, small bits that can combine and build more complex structures. 

‘Biased chains’  it tries to embed the same possibilities of the reconfigurable robot but completely passive. The chain is one unit you can orient into different directions and the orientation gives it the fold sequence. When you give it an energy source (like shaking) the fold sequence can fold into any 3D shape. You can fold 3D structures from a 1D chain simply by giving it energy, you build the sequence up and give it some random energy and it folds into the sequence you have created. 

Space elevator, an example of a structure that we are going to need to build in the future. Anything that is far more complex, far bigger, could be far smaller, more precise, lower energy. Structures that we can’t build today, structures where we are going to need to find a new process or we won’t need smarter machines but smarter parts. Literally you have simple parts assemble themselves, depositing one after another, they can check how well they have done and tell us something about the structure rather than us forcing them to do what we want, the parts are smarter. 

Disaster relief, consider Japan, the ground becomes our energy source. So you have structures that are simple mechanism like a switch, beams and columns have a simple state, so when the ground shakes the structure is literally adapting. It can be more flexible or more rigid based on the dynamic the condition. The structures are smart and they have simple mechanisms, that have a state and the energy source can switch the state. Imagine any other industry that uses dynamic geometry, the solar industry for example. the geometry could literally adapt on demand as it needed to for optimum conditions, completely passive. 

The future could mean that we build in a smarter way, where our parts are smarter than the machines that built it.

CONCLUSION

Our building industry as of now is searching for new possibilities in regards to materials and construction with sustainability and environmental impact in mind. Technology is helping the industry along with innovations in man made materials and ways of constructing to prevent damage due to natural disasters or human accidents (renovations or repairs also). Tibbits research is one small step towards the  ‘self-assembly’ of buildings but it is a valid step. Further research could allow for a major change in the way people build all objects. 

With further research into the relationship of our bodies processes of self-assembly, replication and repair and the building industry will expand our options when it comes to the lack of resources available to build from, the sustainability of our building and objects, and the impact on the environment. If the self-assembly system progresses the possibilities in the building industry will blossom.  Objects that were too small to manufacture or so large it took years to plan let alone build, could now be programmed into parts that will make it themselves. It is possible that in the future it will help construct buildings of all sizes to perfectly suit and adapt with their environment. 

REFERENCES

Skylar Tibbits, APRIL 2010

http://www.sjet.us/index.html

Wikipedia (2011) Building [online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building

BBC News (2000) World’s oldest building discovered [online]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/662794.stm

Bill Ford (JUNE 2011) A future beyond traffic gridlock [online]

http://www.ted.com/speakers/bill_ford.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_ford_a_future_beyond_traffic_gridlock.html

Matt Bennett (MAY 2006) Building Damage [online]

http://www.pb.unimelb.edu.au/emergency/emergencies/internal/buildingdamage.html

Wikipedia (2011) Building Material [online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_material#cite_ref-6

Michael Smith, The Case for Natural Building [online]

http://www.networkearth.org/naturalbuilding/natbild.html

Wikipedia (AUGUST 2011) Hurricane-proof building [online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane-proof_building

Wikipedia (SEPTEMBER 2011) Earthquake engineering [online]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_engineering#Prediction_of_earthquake_losses