Education
Download Hyperbody Education Booklet 2010
Hyperbody Minor Interactive Environments
The Minor on Interactive Architectures proposed by Hyperbody in collaboration with ID-StudioLab is a collaborative cross-disciplinary project within TU Delft and addresses issues of interactivity and robotics in spatial environments.
Architecture increasingly incorporates aspects of dynamics and interactive-kinetics: In addition to being dynamic, architecture becomes interactive, implying that it responds to external inputs. In this context, sensor-actuator technologies enable building components to interact with their surrounding in a self-organized manner. The Muscle Tower, for instance, incorporates movement-sensors: As soon as people’s movement is detected in the neighboring area, the tower responds by twisting and bending in that direction.
Interactive, digitally-driven architectures integrate bottom-up organization principles referring to processes, in which the organization of a system is not only generated automatically but also increases without being controlled from outside.
The exclusive control of the architect is in part replaced by emergent, bottom-up design processes based on swarm logics, cellular automata, and genetic algorithms. Novel attributes and characteristics are incorporated in behaviors according to which building components swarm and configure themselves into specific spatial arrangements.
The Minor on Interactive Architectures addresses, therefore, issues of self-organization on the level of soft- and hardware implemented in robotic prototypes for architecture.
BSc students design and build an interactive, kinetic prototype, using FESTO-muscles and sensor-actuator technologies.
Even though computer-based systems have been increasingly incorporating aspects of knowledge about the designed objects, they are either excluded from the current architectural curriculum or included as representation tools. In response, Hyperbody offers students the opportunity to develop design projects by means of intelligent computer-based systems. Intelligent computer-based systems not only enable design generation but also implementation of interactive building components. These have been meanwhile integrated in architecture making the quest for a paradigm shift in teaching even more evident.
Knowledge on interactive, kinetic structures is part of Hyperbody education; basic yet practical knowledge of this topic is integrated in the minor program. Minor, therefore, addresses in collaboration with the department of Building Technology topics such as: [1] Structural mechanics: Free-formed 2D and 3D constructions, [2] Structural mechanics: Dynamic structures, [3] Complex geometries: Generation, optimization and form-finding, [4] CAD-CAM processes in architecture, and [5] Interactive prototypes: Software and physical prototypes.
MSc 1 & 2 Hyperbody: Non-standard and Interactive Architecture
Non-standard and Interactive Architecture introduce the use of computers not only pragmatic, but also conceptual, as instruments to explore complex systems of organization in architecture. While Non-standard Architecture [NA] introduces MSc 1 & 2 students to digital technologies in architecture by implementing computer-based concepts and methods for design development and building construction, Interactive Architecture [IA] focuses within MSc 3 & 4 on issues of interactivity between users and buildings.
Focusing on the design of buildings within the urban context, the MSc1 program emphasizes the process of BUILDING RELATIONS. Building relations can be seen as both the process of building relations between various design components, building components, and users, and the building-relations themselves inside-outside, big-small, connected-disconnected, passive-active, static-dynamic. While, the first one emphasizes the process, the second represents the result.
Considering the process as being determinant for the result, the program introduces students to generative and parametric design concepts as well as CAD-CAM principles enabling them to develop designs by following a three steps procedure: [1] Analyze and structure the design problem, [2] Translate design task into relational- and dynamic-diagrams, from which the design can be abstracted[3] Design by employing appropriate software and programming environments, [4] Implement design in 2-4D representations including a scaled or 1:1 CNC-built prototype.
The MSc 2 is a free choice module focusing on the design of a non-standard and/or interactive project within an internationally relevant practice. This can be an architectural and engineering office, research institute, or a factory where file-to-factory methods are used.
MSC 3 & 4 Hyperbody: Advanced Non-standard and Interactive Architecture
The Master’s program offered by Hyperbody addresses most recent developments in architectural theory and practice, as well as building and information technology.
Non-standard architecture is defined as an architecture, which departs from modernist, repetitive, mass-production principles in order to address complexity, variation, and masscustomization.
In this context, computer-based design and production and their influence on design thinking are topics of particular interest. Furthermore, interactivity in architecture is addressed at the level where building components and buildings become dynamic, acting and re-acting in response to environmental and user-specific needs.
Not only dealing with issues of interdisciplinary design implemented in digitally and electronically augmented spatial environments and prototypes development for Interactive Architecture, this program addresses issues of computer-aided manufacturing, and Building Information Modeling [BIM].
In this context, real-time interactive environments are conceived as generic connectivities of buildings and building components with virtual prototypes articulated with parametric relations and embedded sensing technologies. These enable emergent spatial behaviors through real-time data exchange based on multi-player game designs, reformulating real life constraints in a structure of logical rule settings and elaborate sensor fields activating complex adaptive architectural systems.
With respect to structure and organization MSc 3 is a research project aimed to establish the framework for the final project MSc 4. MSc 4 builds up on the knowledge developed in MSc 3 and implies individual definition of an architectural problem to be solved by each student in dialog with the Hyperbody research and teaching staff.
MSc 3 Project751: Formerly an electronics factory,the western part of the 798 district located in the north-east part of Beijing, has been recently developed into an art distric incorporating galleries, ateliers, cafes, and meeting spaces.
Prof. Kas Oosterhuis together with Hyperbody proposed a distributed design concept for the eastern part of the 798 district - the 751 factory. By creating a large scale, multifunctional, three dimensional urban structure, the design is conceived as a result of a bottom-up and distributed design process. The bottom-up design methodology has been achieved by dividing the area into smaller, interdependent projects, assigned to autonomous but at the same time closely cooperating designers. On one hand all of them should have all the design freedom they may need, on the other hand their design process within the group follows the same set of rules.
The goal for the 751 multiplayer design studio was to design a complex three dimensional urban structure. The studio started in September 2006 with 23 students coming from all over the globe. The group will get as a design site a three dimensional virtual sphere containing 8 million cubic meters of volume.
The objective set for the entire semester was to produce a design model that would have the complexity of a real urban environment and which would potentially be able to evolve into many variants conditioned by external parameters. For this purpose, the sphere has been divided into 23 interlocking zones. Each of those zones has been assigned to one of the participating students. This whole virtual construct has been then placed in the centre of the 751 factory in Beijing. Partly submerged underground, it would stand on a small base of 20 000 m2 and raise 120m above the ground level. The rest of the 751 area has been divided into five parts and became subject to designs of five students from the collaborating South-East University of Nanjing guided by Prof. Dong Wei, Zhang Qian and Du Rong. Their work proceeded in parallel to the work within the TU Delft design studio [Oosterhuis and Jaskiewicz, 2007].
With respect to content, students develop expertise and are, therefore, evaluated in subjects such as interactive architecture, parametric design, scripting- and programming-based design, CAD-CAM processes and collaborative computer-based platforms for information generation and exchange.
Developed expertise is evaluated according to the at the time required stage of development by means of: [1] web-based interactive presentation showing concept, information models, and behavioral diagrams; [2] 3D-4D parametric models showing the design within the site at the phase of concept design, schematic design, design development, and construction design, respectively; [3] structure and materialization design for CNC production; [4] from 3D model obtained sections, plans, and views at appropriate scales - 1:1000, 1:500, 1:200, 1:100, 1:10, 1:1; [4] physical models developed from the 3D parametric model by means of rapid prototyping and CNC production.
Hyperbody graduates work in a range of settings and capacities, including cutting-edge architectural and engineering offices, as well as research and academic institutions.
EAD Hyperbody: Customizations
The post-graduate program offered by Hyperbody in collaboration with 15 European universities within E-ArchiDoct [EAD] focuses on Non-standard Architecture [NA] and addresses implementation of mass-customization in design and fabrication of 3D-modeled complex geometries by means of Rapid Prototyping [RP] and Computer Numerically Controlled [CNC] fabrication.
The course on Customization introduces students to generative and parametric design concepts as well as CAD-CAM principles enabling them to develop designs, which depart from standardization and repetition in order to address uniqueness and customization in architecture, which seems to have become as easy and economic to achieve as repetition. Addressing issues such as designing and building complex building components, buildings, and building clusters within a distributed city, the course engages in procedural and object-oriented studies enabling students to implement Customization in architectural design.
