Advances in Architectural Geometry 2014 in London

PLACE: UCL University College London
DATES: 18-21/09/2014

One of the best-known conferences – Advances in Architectural Geometry took place this year at University College London in London. As LabDigiFab researchers we had a pleasure to participate in it.

On 18th and 19th of September the main part of conference took place. Among key- note speakers: Cristiano Ceccato from Zaha Hadid Architect office, Mark Pauly from ETH Zurich and Berok Khoshnevis fromUniversity of Southern California. Cristiano Ceccato gave an opening lecture “Systematic Thinking and Digital Practice”. He was talking more about practical side of digital practice, showing some projects from Zaha’s office (among other example of panelization in Galaxy Soho complex in Beijing). One slide especially caught my attention. Unfortunately I did not manage to take a photo of it. In the slide Cristiano showed the software which is used in every design phase in Zaha Hadid office.  At research stage: Rhino/Grasshopper, design Phase: Revit, Microstation etc. and in the final drawings: AutoCad. This slide might be a strong argument in discussion with some stereotypical Polish design course leaders :).

Cristiano Ceccato during his lecture Systematic Thinking and Digital Practice (photo by Judyta Cichocka)

Mark Pauly , an associate professor at the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL, impressed all audience with his great speech ” Computers and Architecture”. His charismatic performance about strong relation between computer science and architecture was like one of the best TED talks. He presented a new software application ShapeOp (http://shapeop.org/) and some of current research about wire meshes, computational caustics and planar intersections. The whole presentation in pdf may be found here.  Nevertheless no on-line presentation may be an equivalent to his live speech.

from the left hand side: Marcin Kosicki, Judyta Cichocka (me), Piotr Halczuk, we managed to asseble the Mark Pauly’s “7-piece puzzle”

On the second day, between 12.00 and 14.30 in Senate House, there was orgnized poster session. Fortunately I was selected as one of the presenters. Below, you will find link to the on-line presentation about my project.

Judyta Cichocka (me) presenting poster no 82 Walkability- optimized city concept (on line presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGDM5lhpv1w)

WORKSHOP 10 at AAG 2014
Date: 20 September 2014 (09:00 – 18:00, Saturday)

“Prototyping optimization process in relation to solar analysis” We also were selected among other aplications to lead workshops.  Below you will find workshops’ abstract:

Abstract: Contemporary architecture needs to be smartly designed. Multiple requirements from different environments, which designs should meet, seems to be often beyond human cognition. One way of exploration of the countless number of possible solutions may be the application of genetic and evolutionary algorithms into design process. The evolutionary solvers obtainable in the design systems reflect the principles of the evolution found in nature. By working in tandem with them architects can far more easily go through the decision-making process and achieve optimal designs.
One-day workshop will investigate the application of the genetic algorithms in the optimization of architectural designs in relation to solar analysis. The complex attitude explore many problems related to solar analysis: from those in the urban scale, through the phototropic geometries and structures to the photomorphogenesic panels systems.
We are going to use Rhino, Grasshopper, evolutionary solvers, and further plug-ins.

Some photos from workshops.
Photos by Piotr Halczuk, Judyta Cichocka and participants 🙂

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From unofficial information, the next AAG conference in 2016 will be organized at ETH Zurich!
See you there!
Judyta Cichocka