Beyond Anthropocentric Boundaries

This year's Venice Biennale maintains a position of humans designing for humans, but can we expand that position to include all Life, not only humans? Some architecture offices exhibiting at the Arsenal were chosen because their projects are decarbonising in novel ways. Can we expand those novel ways further?

I want to present two scenarios where designers design, on the one hand, with communities and forests and, on the other hand, with the properties of construction materials. In both cases, we will see that computation is the enabler.

Crossing the City Boundary

In December last year, we invited the Mexican architect jose Alfredo ramirez to be part of our inspirational talks. He showed us how his students at the Architectural Association use computational design to help British communities (and the politicians they talked to) understand the economic and environmental consequences of national policies that, when applied locally, can be detrimental rather than beneficial. Computation helps simulate scenarios that serve better local conditions.

A Temporal Solution

In November last year, we invited the architect Hans Jakob Wagner as another guest to our abovementioned talks. Hans told us about a construction technique developed at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) that saves 40% on material. Our current massive CLT systems can only be shaped in rectangles. Using the ICD's agent-based modelling computational method called "ABxM", Hans showed us how the algorithm fragments the inner layers of CLT slabs into small pieces and distributes them according to structural needs. In parallel, the software minimises the number of columns needed with spans up to 11m, which makes the building quickly adapted to future uses. This technique translates in buildings with non-orthogonal floor plan shapes.

Crossing the Material Extraction Boundary

Still, we produce waste when we force materials to have specific shapes. Rather than cutting them or using energy to shape them at our will, we should co-design with materials themselves!

The same institute where Hans works designed and built the Urbach Tower using Self-forming Curved Wood. In their own words: "...computational simulations for accurate prediction allow us to use moisture-induced swelling and shrinking to design and self-shape timber at a larger scale [...]. Components for the tower are designed and manufactured in a flat state and transform autonomously into curved shapes during industry-standard drying."

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Those two presentations I just shared were part of a project we started in our branches in Uppsala and V?ster?s last year. We call this project "Computational Design Lead". It looks to enhance our scripting understanding and use. One of the main goals is to start using the same tools Alfredo and Hans are using: Grasshopper and Python.

Post-Venice

Folk Politics, which has served as a theme of this year's biennale, has been a critical development for us as a society. As a queer and Global South-born, I am in debt for this movement. Still, it focuses on recognising and restoring an ideal HUMAN PAST. How about recognising, including and even more, designing a FUTURE for ALL LIFE?