Wonderlab UCL Bartlett
Alien Within Familiar
The first project developed using algorithms based on cellular division. The researched focused on testing different design opportunities by embedding a high resolution of articulation into 3D printed fabrics, as it was available given the constraints of robotic extrusion in various materials.
For the first time in history, design and architecture can start to approach extreme resolutions found in material systems in nature. Recognising that architecture is as fundamentally informational as it is material, with an intrinsic structure of information and concepts on which to operate, architecture’s logical core can be rewritten, by using accelerating capacities used to process information. Architecture is opening to concepts and techniques utilised in broader extra-disciplinary informational ecologies. It relates to the logics of formation of the contemporary world at large. Through large data, computer and material science, as well as new methods of building, matter can be accessed in its native resolution, both in vitro through simulation, and in vivo through robotic fabrication. We can now design and construct across many orders of scale, from material science to large scale design ecologies, from micro to macro. What could be called “data materialisation” is opening up the potential for architecture to finally resonate with the complexity of ecology.
Finer scale building blocks of matter and energy are now becoming available for increased resolution in manufacturing, construction and design. We can imagine a new scale of structures—microstructures capable of finer blending of material states, micro-precision design engineered for massive scale applications—increasingly malleable, plastic and intricate, primed for superperformance and unseen aesthetics.
