The ACADIA (The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture) conference is a yearly, highly anticipated event for many architecture practitioners, researchers, educators, and inventers around the world. It is a chance for architects to come together and reach into the work that they have been starting or contributing to over the last year. This year ACADIA was hosted at The Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, chaired and organized by accomplished and celebrated faculty members from Taubman College. The theme for the ACADIA 2016 conference is “Posthuman Frontiers: Data, Designers, and Cognitive Machines”; an elusive title meant to question certain fundamental conventional methods in architecture.

The workshop series: immersive, full-service learning

Every year, the workshop series is an integral part of a successful ACADIA conference. This year, there was a total of seven workshops that spanned across three intensive days in intimate groups of participants from a wide variety of academic, research and professional backgrounds. Although the workshops varied widely in content, there were two main subdivisions that became apparent with regard to output. Workshop one through four directly pertained to some form of fabrication, whereas workshop six through seven primarily dealt with information management and workflows, and the fifth workshop lurked somewhere in between. The format of the work was also quite varied, but in general, the students spent the first day getting accustomed to the tools, processes, and software. The second day was generally spent practicing the learnings from day one. The third day culminated in fabrication, assembly and finalizing projects.

The ACADIA 2016 workshop series was chaired by Assistant Professor in Architecture and FABLab Director at Taubman College Wes McGee, and the Assistant Professor and newly appointed Director of the Master of Science in Material Systems and Digital Technologies at Taubman College Catie Newell. There were two aspects which were unique to this workshop series; the curated workshop leader roster, and the FABLab facilities. The workshop leaders were highly sophisticated in craft and agency, and were able to very quickly and efficiently bring the participants up to speed with their research and methodologies in both digital design and output. This was viable because the leaders are highly established in their respective fields of research and they all have been involved in varying methods of teaching. Alongside this expertise, the availability of the exquisite machinery and tools from FABLab supported the advanced fabrication that these workshops demanded. One of the workshops used the 5-axis CNC machine to mill one of the designed pieces from the workshop itself.

To reiterate, hosting these workshops at Taubman College allowed for the fabrication of these designs to happen at the same time. The participants were able to fully engage in the process from concept to full scale realization. Another workshop relied on an extruder set that had already been set up by Wes McGee. What’s more, the workshop participants were able to engage in the work in an immersive manner, as they were able to, in just three days, learn a new skill, apply it to a design problem, develop and execute it. This “full-service” workshop model is key to their advancement in the discipline and conversation.  

The three-day workshop concluded with the “Fabricated” Panel Discussion Moderated by Wes McGee and Catie Newell. The panelist comprised of workshop leaders, Brandon Clifford, Matt Jezyk, Dave Pigram and Lauren Vasey.

The panel discussion: challenging the norm through advanced technology

The discussion started with a brief presentation of work from each of the panelist. Dave Pigram talked about a very challenging concept of structures instructing structures, and then went on to illustrate that process. The workflow included a feedback loop through the use of a Kinect scanner, that scanned the 3D printed structure and then informed what the next printed structure should be. This work is important in challenging the typical layer based 3D printing that we currently use. Brandon Clifford went on to present some of his intriguing collaborative work, in which he revisits the volume and its new possibilities with more advanced fabrication methods. The design strives for the element of theatricality, which is further exploited by the proposed object’s function as a floating object.

Lauren Vasey presented next, showing some of her fascinating robotics work, in which she “invents” behavioral robotics fabrication. Her aim is to break the typical linear design-fabricate process, and rather have the design correspond to the existing environment. She illustrated this research and testing through a robotic weaving demonstration, in which the robot scans the existing structure using a Kinect controller, feeds the information back to the software and then the robot decides how to proceed to the next operation. There is a fascinating intersection of advanced technology and the affect of indeterminate form that exists in this work. Concluding the brief presentations, Matt Jezyk, a pioneer in the development of architectural tools and software, gave an overview of some of the newest tools and their effective uses in the industry. He emphasized the advancements that have been made in understanding analysis data and efficiently plugging in the right type of information to a design process. Although these ideas may have already existed, it is the introduction of new tools that make it possible to create seamless workflows across platforms.

The recurring theme amongst the research and the teachings is a desire to challenge the norm. These norms vary from broad, such as the relationship between the architect and contractors, to very specific, such as layers of 3D printing. The ways in which the panelists are challenging these conventions is of high interest however, because it pertains directly to the theme of the conference, Posthuman Frontiers. All of the proposed methods employ some form of learning, instructing, relearning, filtering, and feeding the information in real time in a loop. The tool, the machine; it is no longer a mere execution apparatus—it now has autonomy.

From research to concrete framework—to other frameworks

The ability of the workshops to produce their respective projects at the end helps in situating the research in a more concrete framework, rather than a speculative one. However, another prominent question posed during the discussion was whether the research could be adapted into other frameworks, or sets of frameworks. This is a question that ultimately has no definitive answer, however there are a few ways in which that can happen and that the discussion and the workshops helped bring to light. Some of these practices can be applied in terms of ideology and not a replica of the process. Another highly effective way is through the participants. The participants are a combination of practicing architects, students, and researchers, who were placed in a room and were compelled to work and learn together. Their newly acquired skills and knowledge will continue to resonate with them after the workshops. The practicing architect will evolve in the office, the student will have a more informed project, and the researcher will use it as a base to further build upon.

The effort and expertise were present in these workshops, not only during the intensive work, but also present in the final projects. Through these workshops, it is evident that ACADIA’s relevancy into the development of research and investigation continues to grow. It is not a matter of finding the ultimate process, but rather it is the ambition of evolving methods.