by Tracy Geraldez

Architect

How can a physical space support teaching? Beyond that, can a more efficient classroom lead to greater student inspiration?

At MK Think, we have a lot of interest in how a building can function as a teaching tool – can we create spaces for collecting and collaborating?, Or, can we provide areas conducive to science experiments? In addition, we also consider how the functionality of a space, or the lack thereof, can affect the teaching process.

One of the greatest teaching assets that designers and architects can provide is simply the time that a teacher has with their students. When a space significantly lacks functionality, teaching time is interrupted while the teacher (or a proactive student) has to do things like adjust blinds, change light settings or fiddle with a thermostat. We always encourage people to make the necessary environmental adjustments to maximize comfort, as a method of making sure that learning is not inhibited. However, we should also be considering ways to minimize the time that users need to spend in making these adjustments, particularly when the user is a teacher and that time is class time.

Initially, we may think it trivial the amount of time that a teacher must allocate to adjusting the blinds or curtains. But doing some quick math, we can see that spending only three minutes a day (for three or four adjustments) can add up to 585 minutes, or almost 10 hours over the course of a (195-day) school year. This is the loss of more than an entire school day — from only one minor environmental adjustment that teachers have to make. (And before questioning the need to constantly combat glare by adjusting blinds and curtains, one should consider the ever-increasing use of computers and electronic tablets in schools.) However, a classroom that either has presets to make adjustments extremely easy and quick, or better yet, automates these adjustments to window treatments, temperature and lighting, can reclaim that time for teaching. 10 hours gained could mean a lot to a school district facing stricter spending and hiring. 10 hours gained could also add to the conversation for or against longer school years. And just think – how much learning, interaction, and hopefully inspiration could happen in the 10 hours gained?

by Matt Pietras AIA

Director of Architecture

3-D printing? Snooze. What’s next? Buildings that build themselves.  

I’m not really down on 3-D printing. You can now custom design your own cell phone case, have it 3-D printed exactly to your specifications and then mailed to you.  You can also buy a 3-D printer for your own home for the cost of a plasma TV.  Jay Leno uses one to make out-of-production car parts when working on his auto collection.

The process of automated production has had quite an evolution.  There is evidence that it predates the Industrial Revolution.  Computer Automated Manufacturing (CAM) showed up in the mid-20^th century.  Now, we have 3-D printing small-scale objects and kit parts.

But, let’s think bigger: what about building an entire building through automated construction? I’m not talking about just pre-fab building kits. I mean automated fabrication AND erection.

First though, why?  You’ll probably agree that the traditional construction industry is way too slow to adapt to economic market conditions, environmental concerns, and immediate demand situations.  Here’s a short list of problems with construction:

• Slow
• Costly
• Labor-intensive and inefficient
• Most Hazardous job (moreso than mining and agriculture)
• Wasteful, emissions producing

And, what can we hope to achieve through automation?

• Cost saving through savings in time and dangerous labor
• Useful for critical purposes: immediate response to natural disasters, assist economically disadvantaged populations
• Manufacture on site, produce, and source locally
• Limited over-seas manufacturing, create jobs locally
• Limit (or eliminate) waste
• Free up resources for thoughtful design

So, how far away is this fantasy?

It’s already here…almost.  Dutch architect, Janjaap Ruijssenaars is scheduled to realize the first building ever made completely from 3-D printing by 2014.  It’s a building built layer by layer.  Link:  http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/right-click/architect-aims-build-endless-house-using-3d-printer-173455705.html

And, Behrokh Khoshnevis, director of the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies (CRAFT) at the USC, has made it his mission to perfect that technology, which he calls “Contour Crafting.”  He is verging on being able to make a 2,500 square foot custom home self-built on site in 20 hours from scratch.  All good.

Getting more interesting though, there are materials that build themselves. We can use fungi that can be grown to make furniture and insulation.  Nanotechnology and bio-manufacturing already help concrete repair itself, employing simple bacteria.  Link: http://grist.org/list/concrete-can-heal-its-own-cracks/

Then there are the robots…

Vijay Kumar, professor and inventor at U Penn, is developing technology that could feasibly automate building erection at large scale, eliminating many of the issues that make construction so obtuse: slow, dangerous, costly.  Professor Kumar is working on flying robots that that cooperate with each other using ‘swarm’ dynamics like birds and bees use to sense each other’s proximity and coordinate movement.  It springboards off the military’s drone technology, applying it to coordinated efforts for commercial purposes… for now anyway.  His prototype robots demonstrate being able to pick up, manipulate, and move materials through coordinated flight.  While he hasn’t applied his experiments to the construction industry, at larger scale, they could be used to assemble buildings like erector sets, without cranes.  Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/vijay_kumar_robots_that_fly_and_cooperate.html

But, where it gets really wild is buildings that build themselves.

Without external machinery to manipulate them, individually coded building elements can organize and assemble themselves though applied energy sources.  Design, computer scientist, and lecturer at MIT’s Department of Architecture, Skylar Tibbits is a leading innovator on the subject.  His research focuses on developing self-assembly technologies for large-scale structures.  Link: http://www.sjet.us/

Energy sources could be in the form of sound waves, wind, or kinetic sources.  Imagine buildings that could self-correct, adapt, or repair through energy transmitted by seismic energy.  Energy applied from ground shaking provides energy to built-in elements that allows them to adapt and respond and change the state, a huge application in western California and other parts of the seismically active world.

Photo credit: Chiral Self-Assembly: Autodesk Univ., Las Vegas 2012

Materials that self-assemble, connect, and shape themselves can be used for quickly deployable structures like emergency shelters or mega assemblies like space elevators.

By taking out the need for extensive labor, reducing risk and time, construction could cost about a fifth of what traditional construction methods cost.

What’s next?  Buildings that disassemble (or decompose) themselves on cue and return themselves to raw material—cradle to cradle.