For the first Design Data Berlin - BIM Roundtable 15.03.2016 informance invites experts of leading German design practices. It is planed to have this as a reoccurring event, where the agenda is defined by the community of participants.

NODE Festival the biennial forum for digital arts is taking place April 27. to May 2. in Frankfurt.

NODE15 is dedicated to the negotiation of the human body throughout current technological developments and how this is being expressed in our present projects; utopias; and fictions. We will reflect on processes of embodiment; the integral role of the body in perception and interaction; as location of implicit knowledge; and as a tool we constantly try to extend and optimize.

The Architecture and Performative Design specialization has been invite to show Digital Bodies at Naxoshalle.

3D printed sculptures – photograph by Ragunath Vragunath

On Thursday April Mirco Becker has the honor chairing the conference session on Virtual Realities & the Future of Interaction Design as part of the one day symposium featuring three artists, designers and researches:

Mark Farid

For 24 hours a day for 28 days, Mark Farid is planning to wear a VR Headset through which he will experience life through another person’s eyes and ears.  Over the course of the project, it will become apparent whether Mark will begin to lose his own sense of self, and start to inhabit the reality of the other person. www.meta-narrative.co.uk

Pedro Lopes

He is working at Prof. Patrick Baudisch’s Human Computer Interaction lab at HPI in Potsdam, and published various papers about kickable computing. Currently he is working on a system to read & write directly to the user’s body using electrical muscle stimulation. pedro-lopes-music

Mark Lukas

After coauthoring the seminal book “Prototying Interfaces”,Mark Lukas explores various olfactorics solutions and the possibilities and problems of designing interactions with scents. He currently is working on a starter kit allowing interaction designers controlling scents using Arduino and vvvv. hpi human-computer-interaction

4 Modes of Performative Design

Models have always been an integral part of the architectural design process. Todays performative-design-models are more than simply representations of a project, they are advanced systems. Such a system captures design dependencies and allows to evaluate performance before realisation. The presentation highlights how such performative-models are used exploratively in design research at the Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC) as well as in practice on large scale projects and product development. The very essence of these models is to capture design knowledge on project requirements, building performance, and fabrication logic. The challenge of such models is to balance the richness of content with the agility for design exploration. In that sense the performative-model is an extension of the Building Information Model (BIM) paradigm; design is paramount.

Arkimeet Istanbul, Nov. 20. 2014, Image courtesy of Arkimeet

Models are an integral part of the design process if we don’t regards them as miniature representation of the design but as abstract systems. Such a system captures dependencies, gives a compact description and allows to evaluate performance before realization.

Graphic Static Method as found by Wolf / Culmann

Historically, build structures evolved slowly over time by trail and error and as evaluation methods were lacking to make any analytical forecast on the behavior of the design. For centuries advances were mainly in the crafts. Only in the 19th century new analysis methods allowed to fully liberate the design process. A journey that started in Renaissance with Filippo Brunelleschi and found its break-through with Karl Culmann’s Graphic Static method.

First Generation Performative Models

In the 1960s Frei Otto and Heinz Isler build elaborate models which measured the forces in grid-shells and cable-net structures experimentally continuing the work initiated by Antonio Gaudi. These models included spring gauges, tension scales and pressure sensors. Measurements from these sensors where extrapolated to dimension elements for construction. At this point neither the computation power nor the algorithms where available to do this digitally.

Performative model by Frei Otto

Computational Models

Since physical simulation is available in popular design software (Daniel Piker, Kangaroo Plug-In, 2008) the work done in the 60s can now run in realtime on laptops machines. Any computation requires a discretization of form. In a mass-spring simulation a discretization for cloth is very different than the one for a metal sheet. Nowadays designer are literate in formulation a problem to match computational methods as well as developing their own algorithms. See also gPlanks.

Second Generation Performative Models

Recent developments in 3d-printing materials allow for robust and an cost efficient prototyping. This gives the opportunity to physically prototype the discretized models used for computation and embedding specific joint conditions, elasticity, roughness into them without the need for manual assembly. These models might help expend the repertoire of rigorous physical models and in that sense provide a novel way of continuing the work on performative models of the first generation.

Friction joint system with scissor mechanism, 3d-print

by Mirco Becker

The lecture is the precursor to a the Design Thinking Symposium on April 11th. It is giving an insight into the processes governing design and traces the different mindsets that developed along with the architectural discipline in history. With a look at design theory it will focuses on the reciprocal relationship between modes of design thinking and proposed artifacts. It advocate a designers self-awareness in a discipline between communication and making. Methodically, it will give an overview on design thinking as non-rational method for innovation.

Symposium

Hosted by Mirco Becker

The symposium brings together three different perspectives on architectural design thinking. It is based on the notion that a designers mindset is a critical factor in shaping the design process as well as the artifact. A craftsman thinks differently through a given design task than an engineer does, a mathematically inclined individual different than a visually biased one.

The speakers are all trained designers with a high degree of specialization. As much as they are experts in their filed they have all cooperated with an array of different architects thus are used to reading and adjusting to different modes of Design Thinking.

Each speaker will introduce their work and reflect on their very own design mindset as much as on the mindset of collaborating designers. In a panel discussion these different perspectives will be further explored for their uniqueness and as a rich source for design communication.

Hendrik Schwantes – Publishing Art and Architecture

Hendrik Schwantes is an editorial and graphic designer based in Berlin. Together with Michael Heimann he runs the studio Heimann und Schwantes since 2007. The firm’s focus is the conception and design of print media, identity programmes, exhibitions and interactive work, that are unique in terms of their artistry and craftsmanship. Heimann und Schwantes maintains collaborative relationships with individuals and institutions mainly in the areas of fine arts, architecture, and design, such as Olafur Eliasson, Sauerbruch Hutton, the Zumtobel Group and the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau.

Tobias Nolte – Constructing Geometries

Tobias Nolte  is a designer based in Berlin and New York.  He is currently Director at Gehry Technologies in New York where he leads a team of architects, engineers and builders in the implementation of parametric and computation methods to improve design, engineering and construction performance.  He was previously a director at the Europe office of Gehry Technologies in Paris where he has worked with a variety of leading international design firms including Gehry Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects, Snohetta, UNStudio, Coop Himmelb(l)au and several others.
His areas of interest include design computation, integrated product and process design, construction automation and  concurrent design.  Prior to Gehry Technologies he was a research fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked for Preston Scott Cohen, Inc. on the New Building of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. He has taught courses on digital design at Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris and Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna and has been a design critic at Harvard GSD, MIT, CITA and others. He studied in Berlin and Los Angeles and holds an Engineering Diplom in Architecture from the University of Technologies in Berlin.

Johannes Wolfgang König – Visual Imagination

Johannes Wolfgang König, grew up im Hamburg and graduated with a degree in Architecture form TU Berlin in 2009. Already during his studies he was working as a visual artist for several architectural practices such as KW Berlin, Hascher Jehle Architektur. Post his Diploma he specialist further into the creation of architectural images working with the competition department of Hascher Jehle Architektur. In 2011 he joined bloomimages in Hamburg and is leading their Berlin office since 2013.

Lecture and Symposium are part of the Staedelschule Architecture Class 2013 Lecture Series.