­Methods in Structure and Design – „VIBESCALING ASSEMBLIES“

One key driver of many current developments is upscaling. Through bespoke parallelisation of selected processes, upscaling can yield striking results. As a cultural process, upscaling has been present since the beginning of humankind: instead of foraging for crops in the wilderness, concentrating plants in fields enabled society to develop to a new level. Mass production was a major driver of the Industrial Revolution—sparked in part by innovations such as Edmund Cartwright’s power loom and, crucially, Joseph Marie Jacquard’s programmable loom. The Jacquard loom’s use of punched cards created a conceptual bridge to modern computation; the digital revolution is difficult to imagine without this analogue precedent. Recent developments have made accessible AI tools available to a broad audience. AI development is largely driven by scaling, evident in trends in digital storage costs and in its significant energy consumption. Even though Tesla’s Gigafactories are highly debated, they have changed how we design and think at scale. At the same time, the enormous harm these structures can cause—amplified by their size—should warn us that not everything that can be scaled should be scaled.

In an architectural context, upscaling enables more effective structural systems and design concepts. From micro-scale phenomena to macro-scale design approaches, upscaling is often a key to success. Upscaling implies not only a change in the scale of a phenomenon but also a change in the scale and organisation of matter.

In this course, we will investigate natural phenomena in the context of the challenges humanity currently faces. Strategies for cooling, water storage, lightweight structures, motion, and deployment—assembled from simple adaptive components—will be the starting point for a journey into material-related development. Participants will not only develop an adaptive component but also devise new strategies for its materialisation and digital control.

The use of digital tools—including bespoke components in Grasshopper that may be developed with the help of contemporary tools, for example AI—will be part of this journey.

Methods:

• Design research, conceptual design of components, conceptual design of assemblies, development in Rhino and Grasshopper for bespoke tools.
• Weekly discussions or desk crits to learn from and evaluate the developments within the group.
• Self-learning and the ability to adapt to and reflect on new methods are part of the course.