New Lexus Carbon Fibre Loom

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March 21, 2011

Some essential viewing on BBC's iplayer, relating to sculpture.


romancing the stone: the golden ages of british sculpture

Thanks Eman!

sculpture on the iplayer

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February 23, 2011

For me, architecture gets really exciting when people start borrowing technologies from other disciplines, and incorporate them into projects. This japanese company has milled an aluminium motorbike helmet from a solid block of aluminium on their dynamic 5 axis machine- pretty sweet motion, and hopefully a flavour of things to come in the B... a lot of ally swarf left over though..

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February 18, 2011

Banham, R. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age
(Architectural Press) 1960
Pye, D. The Nature and Art and Workmanship
(Herbert) 1968
Potter, N. What is a Designer: Education and Practice
(Littlehampton) 1969
Vonnegut, K. Player Piano
(Delacorte Press) 1973
Pye, D. The Nature and Aesthetics of Design
(Herbert) 1978
Weschler, L. Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees
(UCP) 1982
Boyarsky, A., Salter, P. Intuition And Process
(Architectural Association Themes) 1989
Nicholson, B. The Appliance House
(MIT) 1990
Potter, N. Models and Constructs: Margin Notes to a Design Culture
(Hyphen) 1990
Groák, G. The Idea Of Building: Thought And Action In The Design And Production Of Buildings
(E & FN Spon) 1992
Cook, P. The Primer
(Wiley) 1995
Evans, R, Translations From Drawing To Building And Other Essays
(AA Documents) 1996
McCullough, M. Abstracting Craft
(MIT) 1996
Phillips, P., Reite, W. Vessels And Fields
(MIT Press) 1999
Callicott, N, The Pursuit Of Novelty - Computer Aided Manufacturing In Architecture
(Architectural Press) 2001
Hill, J. The Illegal Architect
(Black Dog ) 2001
Deplazes, A. (ed) Constructing Architecture; Materials Processes Structures (Birkhauser) 2005
Design Through Making Architectural Design Vol.75, No 3. Profile 176
(Wiley) 2005
Spiller, N. Visionary Architecture: Blueprints of the Moderm Imagination
(Thames and Hudson) 2007
Thompson, R. Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals
(Thames and Hudson) 2007
Cook, P. Drawing: The Motive Force of Architecture
(Wiley) 2008
Protoarchitecture - Between The Analogue And The Digital Architectural Design Vol.78, No 4. Profile 194
(Wiley) 2008



New journal edited by Shaun Murray - may already be available at the AA bookshop.

video from related conference here (inc. liquid factory...)

"Design Ecologies foregrounds the inextricable connection between human communication and ecological accountability in architectural design. This burgeoning field has the potential to become a far-reaching discipline, bonding a community that crosses over into and out of architecture, environment, interaction, urbanism, and performing arts and communication.

Through original design exploration ranging in scale, the journal will proffer a critical vision towards the built environment, and promote ecological transitions within local and global contexts. It will challenge the everyday emerging practices of architectural design by offering a transdisciplinary framework for design production."


here - thankyou alex



Forthcoming conference on Adaptive Architecture at the Building Centre, 3rd-5th March 2011. Featuring Chuck Hoberman keynote speech, plus much more. Coincides with their Living Form exhibition which sounds pretty essential.

adaptive architecture conference

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January 24, 2011

theransomprocess - Jose
projektion - Thias
variabledimensions - Emma
madhavkidao - Madhav
makedrawsleep - David
peakerpeaker - Peaker
michelleflam - Michelle
deepwrecks - Biggie
tmhrvy - Tom
jefffab5 - Jeff
danielgoodacre - Dan G
tekton2000 - Thomas
heathermacey - Heather

tumblr city

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January 13, 2011



‘the silhouette of a foreground object in a video frame is subtracted from
the background and used as a two-dimensional slice. at user-defined intervals new slices are captured and displaced
along the depth axis. the result is a three-dimensional model defined by silhouette slices over time.’ 

For the full article click here
For more 'fabrication-innovation' click here

Freeze Frame

Posted on

November 22, 2010


Underground laser scanning in my hometown. Enjoy!
More info on the Nottingham cave survey can also be found here

Federico Diaz: Geometric Death Frequency-141-spot from federico diaz on Vimeo.

running from october 23 until the end of march 2012, MASS MoCA will be exhibiting geometry death frequency – an external sculpture by frederico díaz. the scuplture is an aggregation of 420,000 black spheres – precisely milled glued and assembled by a team of robots and mechanical assembly lines (of which process can be seen below in the clip).

visually, geometric death frequency-141 combines diaz’s interest in the built environment, deep natural forces such as cellular growth, physics and fluid dynamics to create a massive wave confined within an invisible 50 by 20-foot tank that penetrates the wall of MASS MoCA’s lobby from the exterior of the museum’s main entrance courtyard. as the wave hits imaginary boundaries, it splashes back and up as high as the second storey galleries of the museum,

architecture critic and curator jeff kipnis calls diaz’s work “re-origination,” comparing it to the making of a book into a film. in one sense the film represents the book, yet does so in an entirely new medium, and through this becomes something completely different.i n the case of geometric death frequency-141, the “book” is a digital photograph of the museum’s clocktower entry courtyard as taken by the artist, which the artist then transforms into pure data, and modulates using analytical and fluid dynamic modeling techniques, finally rendering the data stream into a three-dimensional sculpture using state-of-the-art computer-aided manufacturing methodologies. the new work thus combines elements of photographic manipulation, data analysis, and computer programming, utilizing new techniques to produce a sculpture completely untouched by human hands.

check the wired site for further slides and the geometric death frequency-141 page @MASS MoCA

geometric death frequency-141

Posted on

November 10, 2010



We caught a brilliant exhibition of prints by Piranesi at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, supplemented by some fantastic three dimensional representations of his designs courtesy of Factum Arte and a sub-exhibition of Gabriele Basilico's comparative photography.

Piranesi in Venice

Posted on

November 6, 2010



Brief Guardian article about the simultaneous evolution of tools and language, based on research using digital capture of analogue modes of making. Original research paper here.

Hands at the Wellcome too.



45°45'04N 11°54'48E
45°51'17N 11°52'53E
45°26'22N 10°59'17E
43°49'54N 11°09'25E
43°46'42N 11°15'35E
45°01'57N 07°40'02E

and much much more...



Looking forward to checking this at the V&A.