Weaving Tectonics

Full description

Background: The exhibition displays several pieces of novel furniture and a large-scale pavilion. They showcase robotically fabricated prototypes that explore the potential of architectural form, structure, ornament, and tectonics through structural performance-based generative design methods. The outcome of the new design and fabrication system for large-scale spatial structure is based on a combined workflow of robotic assembly and robotic winding. The integration of an updated BESO algorithm with robotic winding and carbon fibre materials further enables the efficiencies of BESO to be realised within a lightweight built form.

Contribution: Contributing to the fields of generative design, robotic fabrication and mass customization, 'Weaving Tectonics' is an architectural installation/pavilion that combines advanced topology optimization-based form-finding and robotic winding technology. It validates the feasibility of the proposed system via the design, fabrication, and testing of various full-scale prototypes. This research establishes a design and fabrication process involving a collaboration between architecture and engineering research groups. The reusability of the robotic assembled temporary support system in the fabrication process further raises its competitiveness among all the manufacturing methods. This design and technology eventually provide a novel method to build adaptive, lightweight, sustainable, low-cost, and reliable structures and have the potential to be widely applied to mass customisation and manufacturing in the building industry.

Significance: This research further enables the creation of innovative, efficient and organic architectural forms needed to facilitate mass customization and provides an insight into the digital and automation technologies in the design and fabrication process. ‘Weaving Tectonics’ was exhibited at Melbourne Design Week 2022. The exhibition was co-curated by the MDW curatorial team - Timothy Moore, Ewan McEoin, Simone LeAmon and Myf Doughty.