Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia BLOG
August 28th, 2010

Tel Aviv_IaaC Summer Workshop


Students presenting their progress on work to both IaaC and Tel_aviv School of Management Faculty

Students with Fab Lab BCN manager  Tomas Diez  on the CNC Miller

The IaaC Summer school has continued with Students from the  College of Management Academic Studies_Department of Architecture from Tel-Aviv www.colman.ac with their Faculty – Arielle Blonder and Guy austern. This workshop was done by Faculty from IaaC Areti Markopoulou and Luis Fraguada with the support of Jacek Markusiewicz, Ander Gortazar, Jeffrey Clarke, James Brazil and Melat Assefa.
This workshop started from students doing an urban intervention in Tel-Aviv while also projecting these characteristics of their approach of design in some parts of Barcelona. Through the process they also use the machines and tools available at IaaC to test and experiment their work in progress.

August 13th, 2010

IaaC Summer School Final Presentation_ Intersticial Spaces and Rancho Digital projects

Final Presentation
Final Presentation
Vicente Guallart (IaaC Director) and Cecilia Arocha (UCV Dean)
Vicente Guallart (IaaC Director) and Cecilia Arocha (UCV Dean)

Rancho Digital and the Intersticial spaces are projects developed at Fab Labs and Informalism Workshop of the IaaC Summer School 2010, which took place at IaaC and Fab Lab Bcn in August 2010.
The Final Presentation took place on August 11th with the visit of the Dean of the Universidad Central de Venezuela, Cicilia Arocha, IaaC Director Vicente Guallart, IaaC Co-Director Willy Muller, and local and international visitors.
40 students, professors and professionals joined together to make this projects possible in 2 weeks of design, fabrication and assembly.
The intersticials spaces project was made out of the remaining structure of the Media House Project developed by IaaC and MIT in 2001. Made out of wood, the project looks into the creation of urban furniture and homeless refuge for people living in latinamerican streets.
The rancho digital project is a basic housing unit of 12sqmt, fabricated out of the remaining pieces of wood from the Fab Lab House Project developed at IaaC last June for the Solar Decathlon Europe competition. The rancho is also made out of wood, and recovers the idea of the parametric design related with the low – tech construction methods in the Caracas’ Barrios. Future plans includes the construction of the prototype in Petare, Caracas, the biggest slum on latinamerica.
The Fab Labs and Informalism Workshop recovers the mixture of different aspects of design, materiality and technology. The projects were developed on the basis of collaborative design, recycling, digital fabrication and do it yourself approach.
Workshop Faculty: Tomas Diez, Luis Fraguada
Collaborators: James Brazil, Fabio Lopez, Natalija Bolsjakov, and Brian Miller

August 7th, 2010

IaaC Summer School – 1:1 Construction Phase


Parametric Model

Team Work

The rancho digital is being constructed now in the Fab Lab. Each team is producing one to one prototypes of the different parts of the habitable space, 12 sqmt made out of the scraps from the Fab Lab House project. Ceiling, Structure, Enclosure, Ground Floor, Formwork…all parts are becoming toghether in one prototype. The Informalism Agenda is a research project that brings together the low tech and the high tech, the architecture from the barrio with the advanced architecture, the auto-fabrication with the personal fabrication at Fab Labs. Next August 11th will be the official presentation of the Rancho Digital.

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August 2nd, 2010

IaaC Summer School. Finishing Phase 1


International team final review

Tree structures team presentation

Intersticial spaces model test

Model assembly

Beach review

Scaling up prototypes, beach review and project definition. IaaC Summer School enters in phase two, which consists in the parametric design, testing and production of one to one scale prototypes in informal housing and temporary shelters for intersticial spaces in Caracas city. 40 students from Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas are developing and fabricating new proposals based on the “barrio” technology and digital fabrication equipment at Fab Lab Barcelona in IaaC. The goal will be accomplish next august 11th, with the final review and exhibition of the prototypes produced.
More at: http://www.fablabbcn.org/informalism

July 22nd, 2010

IaaC Summer School_Fab Labs and Informalism


Faculty Luis Fraguada and Professor Javier Caricatto introducing the courses

IaaC Co-Director Willy Muller giving presentations

IaaC summer school has started on the 19th of June 2010, With previous projects like the HyperHabitat (www.hyperhabitat.net), the FabLab House (www.fablabhouse.com) which were part of the XI Venice Biennale Architecture and The Solar Decathlon Europe respectively, This year the theme is ” FAB LABS AND INFORMALISM – High tech vs. Low Tech, Self Fabrication 2.0” where the study focuses on informal phenomena and possible connections with digital fabrication and associative design.It is a collaboration of IaaC, FabLab BCN and FAU-UCV (Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, University Central of Venezuela).
So far students have had presentations and lectures by IaaC Co-Director Willy Muller, Professors Javier Caricatto and Cristina Von der Heyde from Unit OO (FAU-UCV) and Various lectures and tutorials on Digital  Fabrication and principles by Faculty Luis Fraguada and FabLabBcn Project Manager Tomas Diez. Students will produce 1:1 scale prototypes of habitable spaces while working on projects previously developed by students of the Unit OO of the FAU-UCV, linking informal modes of production and personal digital fabrication.

July 6th, 2010

IaaC_GRADUATION CEREMONY YEAR 2009/2010

Iaac community during graduation ceremony

Graduation ceremony at IaaC

Graduation Ceremony at IaaC

IaaC Academic year has come to an end. The Masters class has finished, students have finished the nine months full of intense classes, workshops and courses, the Fablab House research and Fab Academy have also finished.With a lot of events and happenings in the school this year – FabLab House, Dhub exhibition, Smart Geometry workshop amongst others – IaaC has been an experience for both Faculty and students.  The IaaC community had students from more than 28 different countries coming from every continent to participate in these various courses. This provided the opportunity for all to have different experiences in terms of culture and academics.
The Graduation ceremony took place in the IaaC premises With the IaaC directors Vicente Guallart, Marta Malé-Alemany and Willy Müller along with faculty congratulating students for their achievement. This has been followed by a trip to the Barcelona ElPrat non-stop party at the beach.

July 5th, 2010

Master Project III: Multiple Results_Final Presentations


Multiple Results – Derived as process-based designs by using the tools provided by the new means of technology and know how, students presented their work With Jordi Pagès i Ramon and Lluis Viu and guest critics Faculty Marta Malé-Alemany, faculty Areti Markopoulou, faculty Olaf Gipser and guests Eduardo Gutierrez from On-a architects www.on-a.es and Denis Maher www.assembledcityfragments.com ,they presented their work, which also opened discussions on how far one can push a design or a system to make it work for the user as well as the designer. Each project varied from design of hotels, bridges, housing log details, and structural systems.

July 5th, 2010

Master Project Theme IV: Contextualizing Digital fabrication_Final Presentations

Master Project Theme IV has finished off with students presenting their works to Tutors Olaf Gipser, Marta Malé-Alemany and guest critics Dana Cuff  from  UCLA  www.spa.ucla.edu/dept.faculty, Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto from Ecologic Studio www.ecologicstudio.com. Opening up different aspects of conversations while presentations were taking place, Students works were various topics with different approaches. The FabBots have evolved theoretically as well as contextually, material systems and script based fabrication technologies have also been explored to their limits.

April 18th, 2010

FabLab Barcelona – ShopBot (assembly and installation)





Machine design – part of the biweek assignment at the FabAcademy, helps students study how to assemble machines and see how they are wired, programmed and how it works. This also includes the current assembly of the ShopBot at the FabLab by the FabLab team, This robotic machine is highly calibrated to be a faster, easier and able to produce bigger materials. It has an automatic tool changer which reduces the time a project must remain on the machine by automatically changing, cutting bits between cuts, thus eliminating the need for the CNC operator to change and calibrate tools by hand. More machines will be assembled through out the week.

April 21st, 2010

S2. Internet Zero

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