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Oslo Hydropolis: Transplanting traditional water management techniques into Greater Oslo’s urban landscape
Full text linkOslo Hydropolis is a running landscape and urbanism design studio at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design that investigates how water can play a socially, ecologically, and economically active role in shaping life in the Oslo region. Historically a water-rich area, weather extremes and seasonal abnormalities question the functionality of cultural landscapes in the Oslo region, which is characterised by rain-fed agriculture in the soils of limited valley areas. Excess and scarcity of water—flood and drought—are exacerbated by the uncertainty of climate change, but even more so by the effects of urbanisation. Population in the Oslo region is growing and new models of how water, urbanisation, and social life integrate have to be defined
Adaptive Variable Stiffness with strategically arranged materials
Full text linkBy designing materials with variable stiffness, structures can adapt to various functional requirements. This paper presents variable stiffness explored in two case studies relying on an architected material approach that involved gradient pattern differentiation and freeform printing using thermoplastic polymers (TPE).
The differentiated cell pattern had gradients from high to low density of cells, which facilitate variable stiffness. Numerical and experimental studies showed the potential for application of materials with variable stiffness in adaptive structures
A Study on Traditional Asian Gardens as Parts of Water Network: Hybrid System with Ornamental Garden Ponds and Functional Water System in Historical Cities in Japan
Full text linkThis research aims to reveal the workings of hybrid systems with ornamental garden ponds and functional water systems in historical Japanese garden cities through researching old maps, documents, and measuring canals and garden ponds in three old cities (Edo/ Tokyo, Kanra-Gunma, and Kojirokuji-Nagasaki). As a result, the following things became clear: (1) If more than 50% of canals run through private land, canals are complicatedly divided to reduce quantitative (flood and drought) and qualitative (pollution) risk; (2) Lords of these cities lived at the termination points of the systems to control the water quality of the entire water networks; (3) In most cases, canals are not directly connected to garden ponds. In the few cases in which garden ponds have the functionality to control amounts of water downstream or upstream, garden ponds are directly connected; (4) Garden design variety becomes richer in accordance with the topographical situation; (5) In gardens, canals are divided into different uses; ornamental use and practical use for daily life
EXCASAFEZONE: Synthesizing Expert Based ‘On-The-Fly’ Safety Risk Heat Maps
Full text linkExcavation work takes place almost continually in most cities around the Western hemisphere. Many cities are already full of infrastructures, buried networks, and street furniture, so excavation work is not without any thread to the operator and surrounding environment. Small construction sites, for example, are often constrained by operating infrastructure on surface level and underground. Although different agencies and network owners have information about the location of the objects that put excavation work at risk, this information is not centralized. Different organizations manage location information of buried cables, unexploded ordnance, and pollution, for example. This significantly complicates the early-stage planning and last minute risk assessment processes because professionals need to manually collect, assess, and integrate data about subsurface objects into a comprehensive risk assessment. To smoothen this process, ExcaSafeZone project, therefore, develops a system that collects location data, defines expert-based rules for safety risk assessment, and that synthesizes this into an open source prototype that visualized safety risks on a heat map.
 
Terra–Ink: Additive Earth Manufacturing for Emergency Architecture
Full text linkIn recent years, natural disaster and military conflicts forced vast numbers of people to flee their home countries, contributing to the migration crisis we are facing today. According to the UNHCR, the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide reached the highest level since World War II. Post-disaster housing is by nature diverse and dynamic, having to satisfy unique socio-cultural and economical requirements. Currently, however, housing emergencies are tackled inefficiently. Post-disaster housing strategies are characterized by a high economic impact and waste production, and a low adaptability to location-based needs. As an outcome, low quality temporary shelters are provided, which often exceed by far their serving time. Focusing on temporary shelters suitable for the transitioning period between emergency accommodation and permanent housing, TERRA-ink addresses new construction methods that allow for time and cost efficiency, but also for flexibility to adapt to different contexts.
TERRA-ink aims to develop a method for layering local soil, by implementing 3D printing technologies. With the aid of such a construction system, the goal is to create durable structures that can be easily de-constructed once they served their purpose. The use of locally sourced materials in combination with additive manufacturing is investigated aiming at reductions in financial investments, resources and human labor, as well as at simplified logistics, low environmental impact and adaptability to different situations and requirements. Such a building system has the potential of combining low- and high-tech technologies, in order to facilitate a fully open and universal solution for large scale 3D-printing using any type of soil.
 
The Architecture Machine Revisited: Experiments exploring Computational Design-and- Build Strategies based on Participation
Full text linkThis article summarises a series of experiments at the Architectural Association between 2011 and 2017, which explore the intellectual notion of ‘the architecture machine’ as introduced by Nicholas Negroponte and the Architecture Machine Group at MIT in 1967. The group explored automated computational processes that could assist the process of generating architectural solutions by incorporating much greater levels of complexity at both large and small scales. A central idea to the mission of the Architecture Machine Group was to enable the future inhabitants to participate in the decision-making process on the spatial configurations. The group aimed to define architecture as a spatial system that could directly correlate with human social activities through the application of new computer technologies.
Our research presented here focuses on technologies and workflows that trace and translate human activities into architectural structures in order to continue the research agenda set out by Negroponte and others in the 1970s. The research work discusses new scenarios for the creation of architectural structures, using mobile and low-cost fabrication devices, and generative design algorithms driven by sensory technologies. The research question focuses on how architects may script individual and unique processes for generating structures using rule-sets that organise materiality and spatial relationships in order to achieve a user-driven outcome.
Our explorations follow a renewed interest in the paradigm where the architect is a ‘process designer’, aiming to generate emergent outcomes where the inherent complexity of the project is generated towards specific performance criteria related to human activities and inhabitation
Dialogs on Architecture
Full text linkDialogs on Architecture is a series of dialogs between researchers and practitioners who are embracing the intellectual model of high technology and are involved in its advancement and application in architecture. The first dialog focuses on the impact of an intellectual model of high technology on architecture, and takes place between Henriette Bier (HB) and Keith Green (KG)
GEOCON BRIDGE: Geopolymer Concrete Mixture for Structural Applications
Full text linkThe sustainability of infrastructure projects is becoming increasingly important issue in engineering practice. This means that in the future the construction materials will be selected on the basis of the contribution they can make to reach sustainability requirements. Geopolymers are materials based on by-products from industries. By using geopolymer concrete technology it is possible to reduce our waste and to produce concrete in the environmental-friendly way. An 80% or greater reduction of greenhouse gases compared with Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) can be achieved through geopolymer technology. However, there are limited practical applications and experience. For a broad and large scale industrial application of geopolymer concrete, challenges still exist in the technological and engineering aspects.
The main goal of GeoCon Bridge project was to develop a geopolymer concrete mixture and to upscale it to structural application. The outputs of projects provide input for development of recommendations for structural design of geopolymer based reinforced concrete elements. Through a combination of laboratory experiments on material and structural elements, structural design and finite element simulations, and based on previous experience with OPC concrete, knowledge generated in this project provides an important step towards a “cement free” construction. The project was performed jointly by three team members: Microlab and Group of Concrete Structures from Technical University of Delft and Technical University of Eindhoven
Re^3 Glass: a Reduce/Reuse/Recycle Strategy
Full text linkThe applicability of glass in structures is continuously ascending, as the transparency and high compressive strength of the material render it the optimum choice for realizing diaphanous structural components that allow for light transmittance and space continuity. The fabrication boundaries of the material are constantly stretching: visible metal connections are minimized and glass surfaces are maximized, resulting to pure all-glass structures. Still, due to the prevalence of the float glass industry, all-glass structures are currently confined to the limited forms and shapes that can be generated by planar, 2D glass elements. Moreover, despite the fact that glass is fully recyclable, most of the glass currently employed in buildings is neither reused nor recycled due to its perplexed disassembly and its contamination from coatings and adhesives.
Cast glass can be the answer to the above restraints, as it can escape the design limitations generated from the 2-dimensional nature of float glass. By pouring molten glass into moulds, solid 3-dimensional glass components can be attained of considerably larger cross-sections and of virtually any shape. These monolithic glass objects can form repetitive units for large all glass-structures that do not buckle due to slender proportions and thus can take full advantage of the stated compressive strength of glass. Such components can be accordingly shaped to interlock towards easily assembled structures that do not require the use of adhesives for further bonding. In addition, cast glass units–due to their increased cross section– can tolerate a higher degree of impurities and thus can be produced by using waste glass as a raw source
Apparatisation in & of Architecture
Full text linkApparatus and apparatisation, the focus of the Cyber-Physical Architecture (CpA) issue #2 of SPOOL, refer to an assemblage of various components, tools, and instruments that in combination produce an exponential surplus beyond the linear sum of parts. On the one hand, apparatus can be seen as a collective of means used to perform certain tasks in order to solve a range of problems. It can contain a series of tools and instruments and produce new rationalities that often translate into pervasive technology, such as, for instance, electricity and, today, Information and Communication Technology (ICT). On the other hand, apparatuses can be found in organisations and institutions that deal with various aspects of a society. For example, the police apparatus, of which rationalities are – rather than being embodied in physical technics – codified in written statutes. The apparatus in this sense is a collection of performative concepts that the subjective members of the apparatus execute in order to serve policies and plans