Computational Making

Lecture Series

Spring 2018 Computation Lecture Series: Affective Bodies & Sentient Matter

Curators: Athina Papadopoulou, Terry Knight

In recent years, proponents of virtual reality technologies have argued for immersive digital spaces, distancing architectural discourse from the embodied experience of physical matter. As architecture gracefully embraces its disintegration into virtuality, advances in material sciences, biology, and robotics are expanding the possibilities of physical reality by creating materials with new sensing and morphing capabilities. Such advances challenge the ways we conceive our sensory interactions with materials, as they allow for materials that interface with our physiology and psychology in redefined ways. Affective Bodies and Sentient Matter lecture series explores the role of this enriched physical materiality, and the opportunities it offers for design and architecture.[more]

Talks

Objects-to-sense-with: Tools for embodied spatial learning in architecture education

Invited Talk: Athina Papadopoulou

Architectural Studio Tinkerings: Workshop at the Hellenic Conference on Innovating STEM Education, Athens, Greece, December 16-18 2016

Architecture education, by being enclosed in studios has been detached from a direct sensory experience of space. To overcome this limitation, I suggest an interdisciplinary educational approach based on the use of objects-to-sense-with. Alluding to Seymour Papert’s term “objects-to-think-with” Idefinethe term “objects-to-sense-with” to refer to computational tools that provide a body-centric, self-directed, and situated learning of space focused on the senses. To offer a framework for the proposed method, I first discuss the sensory pedagogiesformulated in the Montessori method and the Bauhaus School. Then, I discuss the process and results of a workshop that I co-taught at MIT where students made their ownobjects-to-sense-with with embedded sensors, explored different physical spaces with these tools, and then documentedtheir sensory interactions in space. Finally,to provide further evidence on the pedagogical implications of such tools, I discuss the method, process, and results of a controlled study with participants exploring physical spaces on MIT campus while using a wearable tool –an object-to-sense-with- that I developed.[more]

Talks

Shapes and Other Things

Invited Talk: Terry Knight

Association for Women in Mathematics Research Symposium 2017 University of California, Los Angeles April 8, 2017

Shape grammars have offered a unique computational theory of design over the past forty or so years. Shape grammars are comprised of visual, shape rules that specify seeing and doing actions (see this  do that). Shape rules apply in computations to generate, or compute, designs made of shapes. Underpinning shape grammar computations are formal definitions of shapes based on their visual properties. Recently, shape grammars have been adapted to define making grammars comprised of rules that apply to compute material, real-world objects or things, as opposed to abstract shapes. Underpinning making grammars and their computations are formal definitions of things based on their physical, sensory properties.[more]

Talks

Out of our minds: Computational designing and making

Keynote Lecture: Terry Knight

Schwerpunkte 6, Automation Takes Command. ETH Zurich, Switzerland. May 4, 2018

Recent work in interactive fabrication, robotics, digital craft, and related areas aims to collapse the divide between designing and building initiated in architecture by Alberti, but originating far earlier in Aristotle’s hylomorphic dualism between form (morphe) and matter (hyle). This dualism sets designing – as an intellectual, cognitive activity resulting in plans or representations – against making – as an embodied, dynamic, improvisational activity that involves working with and responding to the materials at hand. Contemporary efforts to undo the designing/making divide through automation and digital technologies are challenging, whether the goal is an autonomous, linear process or a more interactive and cyclical one. Related to these ambitions is the decades old, but still unique, computational theory of design based on shape grammars. As a non-digital, generative, perception-action approach to computing, shape grammars align designing with making. They have been extended recently to making grammars and a computational theory of making. This talk looks at how both the spatial and temporal aspects of designing and making – as out-of-the-mind practices – are enabled with these grammars. [more]

Symposium

Computing Embodied Architectures

Organizers: Athina Papadopoulou, Theodora Vardouli, Cagri Zaman

Symposium at the 6th International Conference on Spatial Cognition: “Space and Situated Cognition”, Rome, September 7-11, 2015.[more]

Lecture Series

Spring 2015 Computation Lecture Series: Making to Interact :: Interacting to Make

Curators: Dina El-Zanfaly, Terry Knight

Making in architecture and in the arts and crafts is an activity of creation – an active conversation between the maker, her senses, her materials, and the environment. Today, a new conversation emerges with the rise of new computational tools and digital fabrication machines that perpetuate the hylomorphic model of the separation between the design process and physical building. [more]

Lecture Series

Fall 2014 Computation Lecture Series: Learning to Make and Making to Learn

Curators: Dina El-Zanfaly, Terry Knight

Architecture, the arts, and the crafts are processes of creating and making objects, spaces, and experiences. Making involves improvisation, experimentation, risk, and unpredictability; it is a conversation between the maker, her senses, her materials, and the environment.[more]

Conference

Computational Making Workshop

Computational Making workshop at the Design Computing and Cognition conference, London, 2014.[more]

Lecture Series

Spring 2014 Computation Lecture Series: Computing in (e)Scapes.

      Computing in (e)Scapes Curators: Onur Yüce Gün, Terry Knight Humans precede computers in computation: we compute via intertwined acts of active perception and bodily action. We observe, interact with and learn from places and things as we wander in scapes. Our experiences are then put into use – this time to make (within) scapes. Unexpected discoveries, novel encounters […][more]

Lecture Series

Fall 2013 Computation Lecture Series: Polyglot Drawing Making

    Polyglot Drawing Making Curators: Onur Yüce Gün, Terry Knight Synopsis: Drawing is an experiential act and computational tools are transforming and enriching our physical and perceptual engagements within drawing processes. This lecture series aims to raise discussions around emerging computational methods for visual explorations and alternative techniques for evocative representations. All lectures can […][more]