Experimental Architecture. Advanced Computational Design and Digital Fabrication (Summer School)

Students must have passed no less than 30 ECTS on their Masters degree in the fields of Architecture, Engineering and Design, before the summer school starts. 

Digital Fabrication technologies have the disruptive potential to revolutionise how we conceive and shape our built environment. Through the use of novel fabrication techniques, designers and engineers are challenged to explore innovative structures that benefit from the capacity to produce performative and sustainable architecture with, up to now, unreached levels of complexity and control on material organisation.

The Summer School focuses on exploring design ideas and producing fabrication artefacts as answers to some fundamental driving questions: what kind of tectonic configurations can be enabled by means of robotic manufacturing? How do we realize high-performance architecture with it? How can we digitally build bespoke architecture in a sustainable way?

Adopting a design/make approach, catalyzed through tailored computational techniques, experimental architectural configurations will be investigated through both small-scale prototyping and 1:1 scale construction demonstrators. Working in interdisciplinary teams of different sizes, the students will be involved in knowledge generation and build-up as first-person researchers and developers. The goals and the program of the Summer School are not entirely pre-planned but will evolve throughout the two weeks in response to research undertakes and findings.

At the end of the course, the students are expected to have knowledge about:

• Advanced robotic fabrication technologies, their characteristics, possibilities and limitations

• Robot programming and control in the context of digital fabrication

• Design and development of the robotic setup for different digital fabrication operations

• Structural characteristics and fabrication-related behaviour of the materials in question

• Computational tools for design, engineering, and fabrication that allow the integration of material, manufacturing, and structural performance

At the end of the course, the students are expected to be able to:

• Develop and drive the design process through advanced visual programming and parametric design tools

• Use computational tools to structurally assess and optimize material behaviour during the fabrication process and in the final use stage

• Develop and drive the process of digital fabrication with robot arms of experimental construction systems

• Fabricate and build scaled and full-sized prototypes with digital fabrication machinery

• Fully develop robot programs and run simulations of robotic fabrication processes

At the end of the course, the students will acquire competencies to:

• Autonomously plan and conduct specific design and construction experiments on a given topic and discuss the results

• Develop research-driven projects in the field of architectural robotics and manage the complexity of multifaceted design-fabrication processes, data and analysis

• Autonomously prototype, test and critically evaluate specific digital fabrication technique

• Engage with agile and bottom-up design and construction processes and materials/fabrication experimentations

The course is conceived as a highly engaging design-to-fabrication activity, where students will develop experimental prototypes related to specific design/research topics.

Multiple forms of instruction will be involved:

• Lectures on the role of digital fabrication in experimental construction

• Guided tutorials on parametric modelling notions related to a specific course project

• Introduction and exercises for specific digital fabrication techniques

• Supervision of group-based design activities

• Collaborative fabrication of prototypes by students with tutors’ coordination

• Final review on the projects development and output with invited guests

Time of classes: 2 weeks in August

The enrollment is limited to 6 students. If more applications than places are received, applicants who meet the mandatory requirements are prioritised according to the below selection criteria:

1. Graduate students from partner universities (exchange) 

1. International graduate guest students (fee-paying)

1. Graduate students from other Danish universities. 

For the Ph.D students:

1. Ph.D students from partner universities

1. Other international Ph.D. students

1. Other applicants

Students are prioritised on a first-come, first-served basis, i.e. according to the time we receive your complete application. In case a course is full, we try to offer you an alternative course from your list of priorities. All final decisions about admission will be sent out on a rolling basis.