Shane and Xavier have got all the faffing about with sponsors out of the way, and Jonathon is introducing the meat of the day.
People are sticking the hash tag #sg2010 into tweets, so I’ll be doing that too. (brave new world)
Panelists:

• Branco koleravich (sp?)
• Anna dyson
• Martin Tamke
• nick Hacket

3 polemics to get the conversation going
Branco:
starts off with what seems to have become standard archi speak, dynamic… Adaptive… Flows…gradients… (did I mis this lecture at Uni)
Why is he showing these truncated cone? He says that it is dumb geometry. Intestine that they’ve really made it! They had trouble with friction, real life got in the way; so friction is a problem. Should we moe from mechanical actuation to biological actuation?
Adaptive building materials, intrinsically able to perform functions
Flexinol, national shape memory alloy wire allows material actuation.
These sorts of technologies don’t scale very well though. What other sorts of actuation is possible ? (I wonder if trying to scale is a mistake? Hairs on skin are very small, can buildings have very small adaptive components ?)
Book: smart architecture from tu delft 2003
(I wonder if he picked this font to be intentionally unreadable?)

Anna’s polemic

What we think is pertinent to today
Materials shaping energy flows
Radio frequencies and what they equate to in real life (scale) powers of ten still
We are stitching together single scale models to get multi scale models, not making smooth scaling models (Newtonian stops and quantum starts I suppose)
We have intuition about how buildings behave. Vernacular arch has a lot of that
Sharing skills through hive mind, can we use crowds to solve design problems fast? Too optimistic?
smaller scales higher embodied energy(? Per mass?)
Once we move small scale into larger scale we have a limited impact? (Are we straying into ID realms)
How do we move from low value add materials, steel, concrete etc. and add value through nano stuff
Why, what cost, to what end (good questions, not asked often enough)
Avoid fetishism

martin’s polemic

Why materials now?
What effect is digital’ having on architecture?
Research method of demonstrator objects address complexity directly
Making through code produces a design space, how can materials change that design space?
Materials Not new to design, but new to arch, aero has had it for ages
Scales introduce new design problems, but also ways of solving them.
(nice rough joint using the grain of the wood)
Material properties as a design parameter, find out through testing at a usefully big scale.
New methods lead to new processes: design AND validation
Design with aggregate behaviour and time based issues
Organisation of models? Not representational or hierarchical or linear, feedback loops as a way to do this? Agents etc.

discussion

Materials often exist in a vacuum
Discussion is usually about feelings and texture, not structure or behaviour
Mt: can I play? More analysis? Tools and design environments, materials have an impact on energy
.?: previously software and electronics was crazy, is designing materials less crazy? ( are we designing materials or designing with materials?)
Jc: is it about playing?
.: yes, it’s about engaging specialists to get them excited too. Specialists have a lot of embodied knowledge. They can move things along because new things excite them
A: academic specialisation is now looking at applying their specific knowledge to other fields. Hyper specialisation amight have run out of steam?
Bc: pro stealing from other disciplines. Students fine with geometry and micro controllers now, but they don’t understand thickness and tolerance. This is a really big challenge, councils for fundamental unrstanding of assemblies and how stuff works. Compound issues of many tolerances bite you before you get to the exciting stuff. Cover the basics.paradox
Jc: materials with static properties. What about intensive properties? ( are these properties of the material or the application?) how do we move forwards ?
Bc: working with air and hydraulics will be interesting
.: sg small projects, really interesting. Material scientist becomes interested in laser cutter, testing components
(is this discussion a dumb one that ID and engineering has had years ago?)
Bc: material based arch paradigm shifts, steel etc. what will dynamics do? Changing shape and properties
A: to what extent? Usually the same function, but better. New materials allow something new and different, not old but better
A: material conflicts? Are we working with compromises?
A: embodied energy, metabolic opera (wtf?) use old materials ina new way. Deep floor plate buildings uninhabitable, what to do with them?
Jc: energy implications?
Mt: is it ok to u high tech materials? Very high energy. What about time? What does thr mean? Interaction design, other fields can talk about this.
Q: can we educate people to be able to interact with mathematicians and chemists etc.?
A: performance the driver, interdisciplinary interaction. Can we be involved in development rather than consumers? PhDs are much less specialised and more integrative. Expert integrators and facilitators. How do we get to the next level? Is our best good enough currently?
.: digital false sense of security? Students don’t realise that hard questions are still messy, google can’t always help
Mt: research based teaching helps
Bc: can we use these things in developing econs? Arch doesn’t really care, but someone will