• dMA Mobile Robots WiSe 22/23

    With our new robotic infrastructure at the chair of Digital Methods in Architecture, we want to explore the benefits of integrating collaborative robotic manipulators with an autonomous mobile robotic platform. The aim is to investigate potential applications and navigation methods for the platform in an architectural context. During the seminar, we will work with and control both, the mobile platform and an attached mobile robotic arm (UR5e) to it. Students will gain first experience and skills in robotic fabrication and use their design capabilities for creative engagement with robotics in order to develop methods for design that harness production or live adaption as a creative opportunity. Robotically manufactured architectural prototypes (part or whole) will be developed by students and presented at the end of the course.
  • dMA Mobile Robots SoSe 22

    During the Summer Semester of 2022, we focused on developing a tracking system to enable small robots to be moved by workers to extend their work area. To prototype, we produced interlocking bricks to be placed by the robot and tested its precision. Augmented reality goggles were used to visualize the location of markers on the floor. The markers were used for the robots to look at them and estipulate their position after every time they were moved by the workers.
  • dMA Mobile Robots WiSe 21/22

    Video here. All robotic applications in architecture are facing the issue of a massive difference in size between the robotic system and the building to be erected. There are various ways to overcome this issue for example by prefabrication building parts in a static robotic cell, mounting robots on large gantry systems, or using freely roaming mobile robots. The latter has the advantage of getting away with relatively small robots but comes with the challenge of precisely tracking the mobile unit in space. The project explores the opportunities and challenges of building an architectural prototype with a freely roaming robotic system where an UR5 robotic arm is mounted on a MiR 100 mobile robotic platform. The architectural prototype is built from 333 stacked wooden slats around 40 cm long as a curved wall. The slats can easily be reassembled by the robotic system thus let the wall slowly migrate over time. The project was conducted as part of the seminar Mobile Architectural Robots, winter semester 2021/22, and helped to scope further research in spatially tracking autonomous robots for assembling architectural structures.
  • dMA Paperless Worksite 2021

    In the last few years, the physical and digital realms have been overlapping more easily. Games and services like Pokémon Go and Waze redefine how we act in urban settings. Specifically, Augmented Reality provides new ways of not only interacting but shaping our environment. From IKEAs AR App which visualizes furniture from the catalog as an overlay in your living room to AR-enhanced assembly in factories and laboratories, this technology is finding its way to consumers and industries alike. This seminar will explore the possibilities of utilizing Microsoft Hololens and smartphones in architectural design and construction to bring digital models to reality. We propose the combination of high-tech design and fabrication techniques (AR, 3D Scanning, discrete aggregations, physical simulation) with low-tech and cheap construction materials and tools (concrete blocks without mortar) to build 1:1 construction prototypes of arches and other architectural elements.
  • dMA Mobile Robots 2021

    With Andrea Kondziela and Antonin Brünner. With the robotics infrastructure at the Chair for Digital Methods in Architecture, we want to explore the advantages of integrating collaborative robotic manipulators with an autonomous mobile robot platform. The aim is to examine possible applications and navigation methods for the platform in the architectural context. The aim is to develop design methods that use digital production and live adaptation as creative means of expression. Architectural prototypes produced by robotics (partially or completely) are developed by the students and presented at the end of the course.
  • UNICAP ICAM-Tech 2021

    Watch the paper presentation here or read the paper here. The Hyphae House is a prototype that speculates about the application at 1:1 scale of Augmented Reality as a construction tool that replaces orthographic technical drawings as the means to communicate the architectural design to the construction site. It proposes the use of smartphones as the tool for the current digitization of the construction site to achieve complex geometry with local materials and workforce. It was built during the seminar I taught in Recife with Ana Luisa Rolim.
  • dMA Silicon Based Imagination 2020

    In this seminar, the current possibilities of artificial intelligence models for the generation, manipulation and analysis of architectural drawings are examined. Over the past half a decade, the architectural images generated by AI have developed from the edges of experimental architecture into a research topic that is popular around the world. This seminar interfaces with several AI types that democratizes machine learning for artists and designers. Several topics and techniques are explored: style transfer, generative adversarial networks for image generation, photogrammetry, image-to-text and text-to-image models, object recognition and image segmentation.
  • dMA Robots in Architecture/AR in Construction 2020

    The ARch is a 1:1 prototype that explores the feasibility of robotic fabrication and augmented reality construction in realizing discrete structures. With Andrea Kondziela, Antonin Brünner and Eike Struckmeier.
  • dMA Robotic Choreography Demonstrator 2019

    Robots in Architecture Exploring Human-Robot-Interaction and Robotic Fabrication Tutors: Victor Sardenberg I Andrea Kondziela The course “Robots in Architecture” introduces the potential of combining human interaction with robotic controlled design processes. Students were taught to use different technologies like AR and 3D cameras for communicating and interacting with the robot. The research topic of this semester was to explore human choreographies and the possibilities to transform those to the robot arm. Participants were invited to cross-pollinate movement in space and see them as a design tool that employ a concept of motions. They recorded human movements in space and transformed the collected data to robotically executed drawings. The further step was then to translate the same recorded movements to a spatial structure using a specific robotic fabrication technic. Participants were encouraged to conceptually design the shape of the modules according to the movements. The final assembling was done using Augmented Reality to assist for the exact positioning of the spatial structure. Students: Elena del Cura Beryal, Anna Koyachkova, Thuz Dinh, Shan Wang,  Yamin Stev, Kamilla Zambo Materialsponsor: JET Schaumstoff-Formteile GmbH
  • dMA Robotic Painting 2018

    After analyzing different brush techniques of 20th Century painting, students simulated Pointilism, Impressionist and Op Art visual effects. Participants produced their on actuators and set of instructions to create abstract and figurative paintings. Introduction to 6-axis robot programming for B.Arch. and M.Arch students at dMA (digitale Methoden in der Architektur - Prof. Mirco Becker), Leibniz Universitaet Hannover. WS 2017/18.
  • UFRJ Em Busca da Forma 2017

    Em Busca da Forma (Searching for Form) was a week long workshop in Rio de Janeiro dealing with Generative Algorithms. Systems like CA, L-Systems, Genetic Algorithms and Shape Grammar were explored in small scale projects (3m x 3m x 3m) in such a way that it's possible to compare its products and effects. A paper will soon be published. Tutors: Gonçalo Castro Henriques, Ernesto Bueno, Lucas de Sordi, Jarryer de Martino and Daniel Lenz.
  • UFMS Contextualizing the Strange 2017

    The goal of this workshop was to explore Form Making and the role that very strong and specific sites are able to negotiate with contemporary digital techniques. Architectural drawings were appropriated and remixed to produce proposals that are both stange and specific to the site.
  • HSD/PUC-Rio Surfaces of Contact 2016

    The workshop "Surfaces of contact" was the first result of the institucional cooperation between Peter Behrens School of Arts at the Hochschule Düsseldorf and DAU / PUC-Rio. The workshop was based on the concept of „skin“ not limited to the body but could be applied to tectonic strategies ranging in scale from object, jewelry over clothes to buildings. The course aimed to speculate about the relation of skin as a surface of contact in connection to the body / object /building / urban space and focus on its performative and mediating potentials in order to generate personal, social and cultural spaces. Düsseldorf 14. - 18.11.16
  • AA Super-Living 2015

    The city of São Paulo is characterized by an endless horizon of monolithic and non-descript towers. A newly instated City Master Plan promotes further vertical development by allowing for higher skyline and construction areas along public transportation corridors. Up until now, neighborhoods once characterized by two-story houses, gardens and ground- floor open shopfront programs, have been completely transformed by the introduction of fortressed monolithic residential and office towers, which lack any sort of urban street life.

    This intenisive 10 days workshop focused on possible new towers typologies for São Paulo 2025. The research-driven work started from analysis of current situation on social and urban issues of São Paulo 21 million inhabitants megacity.

    These analysis offered architectural opportunities to speculate on new kinds of towers, ranging from bycicle circulation schemes within a residentail building to vertical branching network neighborhood.

    Directors: Franklin Lee and Anne Save de Beaurecueil - Tutors: Christian Veddeler, Adi Utama, Aurélie Hsiao, Victor Sardenberg, Alexandre Kuroda, Renata Portelada and Thomas Takeuchi.

  • AA PMCA 2015

    For the first time the AA Visiting School Program has been present in the Rhein-Main Metropolitan space identifying, conceptualizing and realizing Cross Territorial Cultural Supply Chains. A cultural network through architectural interventions will redefine territorial strategies connecting the metropolitan with the Hinterland and vice versa. The exercises, findings and strategies have been compiled in this exhibition presenting a current view on the museum landscape in Frankfurt and two proposals for the first stage of the Peripheral Museum of Contempoary Art - PMCA Spessart. The exhibition operates across the two rooms of Salon Kennedy, whereby one highlights personal understandings of the Städelisches Kunstinstitut and detailed analysis of specific cultural institutions in Frankfurt by the AAVS students. This research is complimented with elements by the participants of the PMCA-Symposium. The other room presents the two strategies for the first PMCA intervention. "Between Quarries" is a proposal to reactivate quarries, having been identified as a dominant landscape in the Spessart, in establishing an institution acting within. "Benchmark" is a new hiking path connecting all island like villages enabling a system of recreating for existing tourists and attracting new interest through artist designed benches. Hence a hybrid network of art interventions, the first part of the Peripheral Museum of Contemporary Art, allows the landscape to be read differently while adding substantial value to the urban and territory. At the same time it creates a voice for the citizens through establishing an architectural presence from above conceiving new territories and networks and from beneath establishing architectural spaces. Directors: Friedrich Gräfling, Johanna Stemmler Coordinator: Victor Sardenberg
  • Städelschule 2015

    Introduction to parametric and computational tools workshop at the Post-Graduate Master of Arts programme at the Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC) in Frankfurt am Main. Tutors: Victor Sardenberg, Damjan Jovanovic and Won Chae. 13 - 16 January 2015
  • PUC-Rio NEXT 2014

    After one week of computational tools workshop, we studied possible parametric control techniques for digital fabrication with a KUKA 6-axis robotic arm. NEXT Núcleo de Experimentação 3D - September 2014 - Rio de Janeiro.
  • AA Liquid Design 2014

    AA VISITING SCHOOL SÃO PAULO 2014 – LIQUID DESIGN:  MULTIPLE SCALE -  São Paulo, Brazil - July 22 - 31, 2014  -                                                                                                                                                                                                         

    During the intense ten-day workshop of the AA São Paulo Visiting School 2014, advanced computational design and digital fabrication will be used to generate speculative new architecture models in the creation of a ‘liquid design’ that can mediate multiple-scale flows. The workshop will explore the redevelopment of a bordering territory along the Marginal Rivers of São Paulo, where in the 1960’s, much of the water-system was disastrously canalized, causing problematic flooding and the creation of ill-conceived residual post-industrial riverbanks that are inhabited by monolithic, large-scale programs such as sports centers, distribution centers, mega-stores and a convention center.   The Visiting School São Paulo will work on bringing a new urban life for these sites by redefining the existing macro-architectural typologies along the river with micro-scale interventions that can introduce new flows of urban street culture. Specifically, the workshop will focus on the reinvention of the large-scale market distribution center, CEAGESP (Companhia de Entrepostos e Armazéns Gerais de São Paulo), to introduce programs and structures that could mediate a new movement of people, commerce, and environmental forces using parametric design and fabrication.  Students can choose to work either at the larger architectural scale or at the scale of the shop-front display, bringing a new contemporary interface between agricultural production and consumption.

  • UFRJ Abrigos Sensíveis 2014

    Abrigos Sensíveis - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - UFRG - June 24 - July 21 - 2014 The goal was to develop small scale shelters responsive to visitors behaviours. http://www.fau.ufrj.br/lamo3d/abrigossensiveis/
  • AA Infrastructure Padrão FIFA 2014

    Centro Carioca de Design/Studio X – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America

    Tuesday 15 – Thursday 24 April 2014

    The Architectural Association Visiting School Rio de Janeiro will collaborate with the Centro Carioca de Design  with the support of Columbia University Studio X to investigate new possibilities for the urban infrastructure surrounding World Cup Stadiums. Nation-wide, there has been significant investment to build and renovate stadiums for the 2014 World Cup in order to meet the required standard FIFA regulations (‘Padrão FIFA’). At the same time, there has been a large public demand for equal investment into transport systems, public space, and public programs such as hospitals and schools.  The Visiting School will tap into the momentum of this movement, and promote a series of interventions within and around the World Cup structures, proposing new public programs and standards for their legacy.  Students can choose to focus directly on the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro, the venue for the Final match of the World Cup. The intense ten-day workshop will employ computational design and digital fabrication to introduce a design methodology that creatively automates and promotes transformation, mutation and complexity for these infrastructure interventions.

  • UNICAP 2014

    Recife - 07 - 12 April 2014 - The first parametric architecture workshop in Recife focused on digital tools to generate biomimetic structures. During 5 days, the participants developed proposals for an urban beach.
  • UFMS 2013

    October 26th - 28th 2013 - Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul - Campo Grande The proposal of this short workshop was to introduce and apply parametric tools and form-finding in a design proposal for Mercado Municipal de Florianópolis' courtyard coverage.
  • AA Liquid Urbanism 2013

    July 16th–25th, 2013 - The premise of the 2013 São Paulo Visiting School is to re-define urban architecture through creating a symbiotic fusion between landscape, infrastructure and building design. Workshops, lectures and seminars will challenge the environmentally destructive urban planning of the 1960’s local government of São Paulo, which destroyed major water systems to build a network of macro-scaled roadways and zoning divisions, which has caused flooding, pollution and urban decay. Instead, the Visiting School promotes an intricate integration of natural eco-systems within new multi-modal interfaces connecting urban transport and building infrastructures. This will be achieved through the use of advanced computational design incorporating parametric design and interactive media, to create highly responsive landscape-urban systems.
  • AA Shopfront Fab 2012

    10-19 JULY 2012 The Barra Funda district of São Paulo was once characterised by a vibrant mix of small industrial, commercial and residential programmes, but over time, as economic policies have favoured agglomerated, larger production industries, numerous companies have abandoned the area and moved to the periphery or even abroad. In response to this decentralisation, the workshop proposes the creation of new types of smaller industries to produce a mix of both consumption and production within the centre, manifested through micro-manufacturing interventions that can co-exist alongside retail and housing. At its core will be the idea that computational design and digital fabrication can be used to help create these new micro-industries, which in turn will help empower local craftsman to produce and sell directly to consumers through micro-manufacturing, located in small urban workshops implanted within the centre district.
  • AA Supple Pavillion 2012

    30 March – 7 April 2012 Pimpolhos da Grande Rio Escola de Samba – RIO DE JANEIRO The second stage of the Supple Pavilions workshop series will focus on the development and 1:1 fabrication of a network of interactive pavilions and related artifices.  These elements will react to sensors, creating a range of different lighting and spatial effects that will trigger further movement and produce a feedback loop of behaviour and response. To accommodate this respon­siveness, the design will be developed using parametric associative modeling, processing, arduino, and digital fabrication using the CNC and Laser Cutters.  Students can both develop completely new designs, and/or work on the evolution of the Workshop 1 Supple Pavilion project. The Visiting School will return to Pimpolhos da Grande Rio Samba School to evolve the design of the migrating Pavilions, their contents and their context, exploring a design philosophy of interactive event design and the production of a creative fusion of high-tech design generation and fabrication with low-tech redefinition of Carnival-float artisan techniques, paraphernalia, and materials.  We will work in the immense and creative Pimpolhos warehouse, collaborating with local artisans of several Samba Schools in the post-industrial, partly-derelict Porto do Rio area, (the birthplace of the Carnival and Samba), introducing digital fabrication techniques. The goal is to create interventions for micro-venues and cultural events that express the identity of the Samba culture within the `Porto Maravilha` planning.
  • AA Supple Pavillion 2011

    29/11/2011 to 02/12/2011 Extending the São Paulo High-Low Visiting School, this four-workshop programme will focus on the 1:1 fabrication design of an interactive pavilion for the 2012 International Festival of Electronic Language (F.I.L.E.). To be located along Avenida Paulista, the aim is to create an interactive and supple design, using recursive scripting, associative modelling, processing and Arduino with digital fabrication. Based on the Strings Pavilion design of the 2011 High-Low workshop, the pavilion will react to light sensors and human activity, so as to transform and create a range of different lighting and spatial effects, triggering further movement of the pavilion and producing an interactive feedback loop of behaviour and response. Each workshop will focus on a different phase of design fabrication. Participants can take part in one or more workshops, fee discounts will be given for multiple workshops. Design instruction will be led by Rob Stuart Smith of Kokuggia and Tristan Simmonds of Simmonds Studio, with Lawrence Friesen of Generative Geometry,  Anne Save de Beaurecueil and Franklin Lee of SUBdV, other AA tutors, and the original Strings Pavilion design team, as well as local structural engineers and set-designers. Each workshop will offer introductory instruction in computational design (grasshopper, processing and arduino) and digital fabrication, while advanced instruction in computation and digital fabrication will be given for participants of multiple workshops.
  • AA Matéria-Prima 2011

    2011 BARRACÕES DE SAMBA – PORTO DO RIO AA Rio de Janeiro Design Workshop 5- 14 April 2011 Complementing the venues associated with Rio de Janeiro’s annual Carnival, 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, this workshop will explore alternative, informal and grass-roots sports and cultural programmes as a way of transforming precarious urban environments and communities and help guarantee a community legacy for these global events. The 10-day workshop will promote a design philosophy that mediates between global and local sensibilities, between formal and informal economies, and between high-tech and low-tech fabrication processes. In contrast to imported and pre-fabricated end-products, it will employ a hybrid methodology, using raw goods (matéria prima) and other found-objects (inspired by the work of artist Ernesto Neto and the Campana Brothers), yet evolving these projects with novel computational-design and fabrication techniques that emphasise the introduction of component-based logics. The workshop itself will take place almost 40 days after the Carnival, to explore the re-use of the actual Carnival floats, costumes and other related paraphernalia, collaborating with several Escolas de Samba located in the post-industrial empty warehouses of the Porto area, the birthplace of the Carnival and Samba. The recyled Carnival material will be transformed using digital fabrication processes and new digitally fabricated joint components, to create interventions for micro-venues and urban furniture in the Porto region, to support open cultural and sports events that engage the local populations and both counter and complement the large-scale constructions of Olympic sports venues.
  • AA HIGH-LOW 2011

    FILE- ELECTRONIC LANGUAGE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL- CENTRO CULTURAL FIESP   12–21 JULY 2011   The aim of this programme is to rehabilitate environments, populations and materials through the use of innovative computational ecological design and digital fabrication processes. With these tactics we will define a new generation of digital design that employs both high-tech and low-tech strategies. Parametric design generation and digital fabrication techniques will be used to computationally redesign low-tech building strategies, mixing high-tech exper­tise with local labour knowledge. One objective of the workshop is to transform sustainable design strategies so as to bring to ecological design a new aesthetic and social agenda. This high-tech/low-tech strategy will include environmental registration and mediation, using high-tech agent-controlled computational design and environmental and structural simulation, to design both high-tech and low-tech environmental mediation systems. The workshop will script the calibration of devices to respond to multiple forces – structural and cultural as well as environmental forces. The goal is to create spatial organisations for various programmes, settings and building types, using different structured environmental devices and networking them within larger cultural and ecological systems of the urban setting.