Architectural Knitted Surface II: workshop

I am very excited about this coming workshop on architectural knitted surfaces in which I will take part at Shenkar Univerisity (Israel). There is still some places left so come and join us !

27 June – 1 July 2010

Following the success of the first "Architectural Knitted Surfaces – Digital/Physical" workshop last year, Shenkar University is hosting a second international workshop on the topic in the last week of June 2010. The workshop explores the potential of three-dimensional knitted surfaces as models for thinking about the architectural environment. This year, it will further examine how composite textile surfaces can reflect on the material practices of architectural fabrication. We will develop bespoke computer defined textiles as frameworks for the incorporation of computational attributes; transforming knitted surfaces into robotic membranes by imbedding sensing and actuation into their skin. Combining advances in intelligent textiles with parametric modeling we ask how these new technologies have impact on the way we think, design and make architecture.

The workshop is based on a long-term collaboration between Dr. Eyal Sheffer of the Knitting Laboratory, the department of Textile Design in Shenkar and architect Ayelet Karmon of the Department of Interior – Building and Environment Design in Shenkar. This year we will also extend our collaboration with the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark, by hosting Associate Professor Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, MAA, PhD, Head of CITA, Centre for Information Technology and Architecture, as part of the teaching team.

This 5-day workshop is open to students and professionals from textile design, interior design, architecture, interactive and media design and other related fields.

Further details and registration forms on Shenkar University Website

Tweak exhibition and workshop

Tweak is two! Currently in its second edition, Tweak is an interactive art and live electronic music festival taking place in Limerick City between the 21st and 26th of September 2009. Its aim is to promote understanding of the use of technology within our culture and to explore contemporary issues (social, economic, psychological, aesthetic and functional).

The festival will consist of a 5-day exhibition, (interactive artworks, robots and installations) comprising of artworks from international and local artists, 3 days of workshops and many evenings of live electronic performance. Check out the programme and our blog for all the latest news.

Tweak examines the growing impact of digital technologies in the creation of art and aesthetic experience. Providing a space for Digital Artists to redefine the nature of technology within our lives, the festival intends to create public awareness of the complex nature of technology and explore the relationship technology has to our lives.

All details here

"Future Sustainable Transport" Kids Workshop, Canary Wharf, June 2009

The Puff & Flock team led a workshop in Canary Wharf, with Canary Wharf Arts & Events.
Children and families were invited to know more about the history of the docklands, in order to be part of a craft session involving imagination, inspiration and talent to design the sustainable transport solution of tomorrow.






















Thank you to all the unique inventors who came down to design incredible solutions for the transportation of tomorrow. You were all brilliant and we are proud to present some prototypes today on our blog. A diverse range of rockets will apparently invade the place in 2050, so will the "Catertrain" (caterpillar train), the "Flying Car", and other wonders, for you in exclusivity.


The Puff girls : Jenny, Kathy, Elisabeth, Amelie

Do you see a future career in design research?

Kathy and Aurélie will talk about their research during this Textile Futures Research Group workshop organized in London on the 7th of July 2009.

Architectural Robotics

An Emerging Case of Ubiquitous Computing in the Built Environment
September 30, 2009 in Orlando, Florida at Ubicomp 2009.

An promising workshop about architecural robotics that may be interesting for some textiles designers in respect to responsive architectural textiles & computing.

Abstract

Robotics embedded in our built environment will increasingly support and augment everyday work, school, entertainment, and leisure activities. Archibots, a full-day workshop at Ubicomp, aims to identify opportunities and challenges in research and education in the emerging area of "Architectural Robotics" - intelligent and adaptable physical environments at all scales. For Archibots 2009, we seek position papers representing diverse perspectives from the extended ubicomp community exploring possibilities and defining an agenda for Architectural Robotics for the year 2019 and beyond. Workshop participants will discuss these perspectives and then, in teams, sketch short videos to envision possible futures. The collected videos of the workshop are intended to stream to the Video Program. The organizers plan to publish selected position papers as an edited book or special issue of a journal, and further relations with industry and allied disciplines.

Website

http://www.archibots.org

INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL WITH PHILIP BEESLEY, WATERLOO AND CITA

Responsive Environments: developing concepts for sustainable architectures

August 10 – 24, 2009

The workshop will take place at CITA (Centre for Information Technology and Architecture) at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Philip de Langes Allé 10, 1435 Copenhagen K, Denmark.

more infos as well on the related blog http://responsiveenvironments.wordpress.com/

Call for participation:
The summer school has a wide international call for students and other interested parties from KARCH, Waterloo and beyond. The course will bring together a team of practitioners and students from across Europe and Canada.

To apply:
Please confirm interest and commitment to attending before June 1st, in a short written statement addressed to Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Philip Beesley. A small portfolio of prior work will be helpful.

Acceptance into the course will be confirmed by June 5th 2009.

SUMMARY
The summer school investigates how concepts of interactivity and responsiveness can suggest new ways of thinking the relationship between the building and its environment. The contemporary societal context necessitates the thinking of sustainable solutions for our built environment. But how do these challenge the way we think and design space? How do we challenge our understanding of sustainability from being a set of posterior technological implementations to become part of the intellectual thinking and culture of architecture? Where formalist design traditions uphold the autonomy of the architectural artefact, we ask how ideas of interfacing and actuated behaviour can allow a re-conceptualisation of core architectural terms such as context, shelter, programme and extension.

The summer school asks:
- If interactivity presents us with an inherent openness towards the exterior, how can new models of permeability and exchange challenge the way we think site and enclosure?
- If embedded actuation allows for adaptable structures, how does this challenge the primacy of permanence in architectural design?
- What are the technologies and materials that can enable the realisation of this new architecture of responsiveness: what is energy, how can we harvest it and how do we exploit it?

The goal of the summer school is to develop a major interactive architectural environment. The installation will be developed at the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA), Royal Academy of Fine Arts, at the Royal Danish Academy during August 2009, involving an intensive two week workshop that brings together students and faculty from Waterloo, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Philadelphia's PennDesign, and other European schools to work closely with experimental architectural designers and creators within the Copenhagen community at CITA.

The workshop will design and fabricate a new immersive kinetic sculpture environment that responds to user stimulus with dense, distributed fields of physical movement controlled by massively repeated arrays of microcomputers embedded within the textile-like layers of the space. This will be mounted in a large public gallery space on the grounds of the Royal Danish Academy.

By working collaboratively to produce and refine this installation, participants will gain advanced experience in key aspects of responsive architectures: networks and systems composed of complex parts assembled into coherent artificial 'organisms', actuation systems based on shape memory alloys, innovative techniques for creating large volumes out of small amounts of material, implementation of digital fabrication and advanced modeling, simulation and visualization techniques.

For full information: Please visit this page

Architectural Knitted Surfaces

International Workshop - 22-26 February 2009

A workshop proposed by Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Israel, result of a unique collaboration between the Department of Interior – Building and Environment Design and the Knitting Workshop and Plastics Engineering in Shenkar together with Dipl. Ing. (TU) Norbert Palz, an architect from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, CITA, Center for Information Technology and Architecture. The workshop was initiated by Prof. Shraga Kirshner and is based on a three-year long collaboration between Dr. Eyal Sheffer and architect Ayelet Karmon, who have been exploring the potential of three-dimensional knitted surfaces to become elements of the built environment. The workshop is open to students and professionals from textile design, interior design and architecture.

The workshop will offer the use of a parametric design tool, ParaCloud Ltd., which converts spreadsheet driven matrices into a powerful generative and associative modelling application. This tool allows the positioning of adaptable cell components on given surfaces and their optimization with relation to the overall surface tectonics and behavior. Behavioural attributes of various knitted surfaces will be explored through the production of computational models and material prototypes in the Knitting Workshop and Plastics Workshop at Shenkar. Since textile surfaces naturally attain complex geometrical behaviour, both at the level of the overall surface and the local stitch, CAD tools become exploration tools for the behaviors of these surfaces. The workshop will incorporate the use of different materials such as advanced composite materials, to achieve both rigid and elastic conditions.

Source: Dezeen