The Robot Garden
The Robot Garden – Architecture and AI Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger, Alexandra Carlson Keywords Robotics, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Design, Architecture, Machine Learning, Posthumanism, Neural Networks, Speculative Realism, Machine Vision, Artificial Neural Networks, New Materialism, Assemblage Theory, Postdigital, Estrangement, Defamiliarization, Ruination, Generative Adversarial Networks, Machine Hallucination Abstract The Robot Garden, Architecture & AI…
Shanghai EXPO Austrian Pavilion
The major research questions in this project were about the consolidation of several previous pieces of research in order to construct a building beyond the scale of an installation. First of all, developing methods to apply the technique of using TopMod and Maya to generate the design of the building to areas such as planning…
Peaches & Plums
Premises for a 21st century education The educational system of the 21st century is facing a series of challenges that range from continuously transforming demographics, to new concepts of education -from self-organized learning to adaptive learning algorithms to health concerns- in our contemporary age. The main aim of this project is to provide a flexible…
Imaginary Maps
Imaginary Maps – A posthuman urban design method based on Neural Style Transfer Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger, Alexandra Carlson Keywords Artificial Intelligence, Design, Architecture, Machine Learning, Posthumanism, Urban Planning, Generative design, Utopia, Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Design, Deep Learning, Hallucinations, Datamining, Generative Architectural Design, Convolutional Neural Networks, Generative Adversarial Networks, Image style transfer, Machine Hallucination Abstract The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate and interrogate a design technique…
Towards Hallucinating Machines
Towards Hallucinating Machines – Designing with Computational Vision Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger, Alexandra Carlson Keywords Artificial Intelligence, Design Agency, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Machine Vision Abstract How many thousand images does it take an architect to learn what Gothic is, or Baroque or Modern? How many more to differentiate between good and bad…
A Question of Style
Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger, Alexandra Carlson Abstract At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German Architect and writer Hermann Muthesius (Fig. 1) proposed to get rid of the architecture discipline entirely from the term Style and to replace it rather with the notion of Type [1]. Full Text
Sensibilities of Artificial Intelligence
Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger, Leete Jane Wang, Marianne Sanche Keywords Artificial Intelligence, Agency, Style Transfer. Abstract The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate a methodology of design that interrogates aspects of Artificial Intelligence and its abilities to develop novel sen-sibilities. The presented project, The Church of AI (fig1), discusses the design…
Augmentations of the Real
Augmentations of the Real: A critical interrogation of therelationship between theactual, the virtual and the real Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger Keywords Architecture, Virtual Reality (Computer Graphics), Phenomenology, Augmented Reality, Construction, Theory of ornament, Computational Design, Patterns, Stereotomy, Descriptive Geometry, History of Masonry Architecture, Postdigital, Human-Robot Collaboration, Digital Tectonics, Design for Manufacture and Assembly, Alien Phenomenology, COLUMNS, HoloLens, Hypostyle Halls, Fologram, differential growth, Autonomous Tectonics Abstract Augmentations of the Real presents itself as…
Robot Garden
Positioned along the concave western façade of the new Robotics building, the robot garden serves as a testing ground for mobile robots of various families. The design of the garden is completely based on Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), using Artificial Intelligence in all steps of the design process. This allows generating a synthetic ecology present somewhere…
The Church of AI
The Church of AI – An examination of architecture in a posthuman design ecologyArchitecture and AI Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger, Marianne Sanche, Leetee Wang Keywords Artificial Intelligence, Aesthetics, Machine Learning, Posthumanism, Architecture Design, Speculative Realism, Machine Vision, Artificial Neural Networks, Agency, Worship, Design Methodology, Postdigital, Estrangement, Defamiliarization, Alien Phenomenology, Generative Adversarial Networks, design…
Plato´s Columns
Plato´s Columns – Platonic Geometries vs. Vague Gestures in Robotic Construction Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger Keywords Robotics, Ontology, Design, Architecture, Construction Technology, Posthumanism, Vagueness, Emergence, Representation, Agency, Gestures, Automation, Postdigital, Glitch Art, Fused deposition modeling Abstract This paper examines the inherent possibilities for architectural production in automated deposition modeling techniques, primarily explored through…
Bauhaus Museum
The Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts consists of a series of buildings erected in the last 10 years, situated in a sprawling green campus in the outskirts of Shanghai. In 2015 SPAN was commissioned with the remodeling of Building C which contains the fashion and dance studios of SIVA. The main goal was to create…
Guggenheim Helsinki
One of architecture’s most fundamental problems is here scrutinized for an alternate approach that understands the compartmentalization of space as a set of tools, or as objects enveloped in a massively articulated wrapper. In the tradition of John Hejduk’s 9-square grid problem, the project echoes elements of architectural production present throughout histories such as the Villa Rotonda,…
New Vienna Museum
The New Vienna Museum project is situated in the field of tension between the homogeneous historicist structure of the Ringstrasse and the diverse, structurally and stylistically heterogeneous zone of the city’s former glacis, an urban field with multiple gravitational fields of varying attraction that act on the construction site. In order to assert itself in…
ORE Shanghai Fashion Week
Adolf Loos fiercely condemned in his famous Streitschrift “Ornament and Crime” the décor of buildings as a “waste of time and resources” his main argument was that the laborious manual production of ornamentation stole the lifetime away of the craftsman involved in the production. What was lost in designed ornamentation was replaced by the visually…
SIVA Shanghai
The Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts consists of a series of buildings erected in the last 10 years, situated in a sprawling green campus in the outskirts of Shanghai. In 2015 SPAN was commissioned with the remodeling of Building C which contains the fashion and dance studios of SIVA. The main goal was to create…
Robotic Material Extrusion
Computational Methodologies in Robotic Material Extrusion For the Production of Double Curved Surfaces Authors Matias del Campo, Ellen Duff, Jordan Lutren, Ryan Scanlan Keywords Computational Design, Fabrication, Material, Robotics, Theory Abstract For design and construction, the combination of computer-aided design with modern fabrication techniques has rendered novel formal opportunities on ever-increasing scales. For the production of double-curved surfaces,…
Autonomous Tectonics II
Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger Keywords Critical Theory, Design, Architecture, Digital Fabrication, Autonomous Robotics, Computational Modelling Abstract Computational tools have become a standard in the discipline of architecture, to that extent, we can think of saturation of the field with computational tools. From early design stages to visualization to the execution of building designs,…
Bangalore Club
Delaminated Landscape The main aim of the project is to create a subtle and seamless embedding of the colonial substance on-site within a 21st-century intervention. To achieve this, the project delaminates the ground and lifts it wherever the program is needed, creating a sandwich between ground and landscape filled with the program outlined by the…
Autonomous Tectonics
Autonomous Tectonics – A Research into Emergent Robotic Construction Methods Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger Keywords Robotic construction, Autonomous Tectonics, Thermo Formations Abstract The aim of this paper is to present the results of explorations in autonomous robotic construction methods executed at University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning as part of a…
The Pearl Busan Opera
The architecture of this project oscillates between historic lineage and the most advanced contemporary atmospheres. Advanced computational techniques collide with romantic desires to produce an elegant space for the performance of operas, historic as well as novel ones. Organization The entire project oscillates between protective layers and programmatic elements. The outmost protective layer creates a…
SPA Hotel
The SPA Hotel in Sharjah is conveniently located on an island in the middle of the cities bay. Architecturally speaking the project is divided into two main elements: The base containing the majority of the SPA facilities and the tower area with the hotel rooms, in form of a tower. Both areas are geometrically connected…
DAM Maribor
Continuous Gradients The main driving forces for the design of the New Maribor Art Gallery are based on a twofold concept: Continuity and Gradients. The continuous, swelling flows combine the interior and exterior space in a subtle way, creating a seamless connection between the outside garden areas of the new Maribor Art Gallery, the open…
Sense and Advanced Sensibility
The Robot Garden – Architecture and AI Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger Keywords Critical Theory, Mathematics, Philosophy, Art History, Digital Fabrication, Architectural Geometry, Contemporary Design (Architecture), Digital Design and Fabrication Abstract Beyond the shared obsession with the specifics of intricated geometries, the question of sensuality is a particular driving force within a specific family…
Artifact & Affect
Artifact & Affect: open ended strata of communication Authors Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger Keywords Robotics, Philosophy, Design, Architecture, Digital Fabrication, Affect (Cultural Theory), Robots Abstract The main aim of this paper is to explore the manifold planes of possible communication between various fields of expertise triggered by two specific conditions: Artifact and Affect. The…
Chex Game
The game Chex comprises a hexagonal board bearing 37 hexagons that form the playfield of the chess-related game. The difference between chess and Chex is the reduced amount of figures and the speed of the game. Whilst traditional chess is orientated on ancient armies standing across each other on vast battlefields, Chex applies modern tactics…
Housing in Vienna
The Cairo pods gave us the chance to explore opportunities within the aggregation of repetitive objects that imply the creation of heterogeneous figurations. The Cairo Tessellation, known in mathematics also as an example of equilateral pentagons that tile the plane, allow for a high variety of the topology of the plane. In the case of…
Winery Boom
Performative Surfaces and The Economy of Form The mobile exhibition design for “The Austrian Winery Boom” provided SPAN with the chance to explore the issue of Performative Surfaces as well as The Economy of Form to a deeper extent. The Az W (Architekturzentrum Wien) asked for a design that had to fulfill various criteria: It…
