ROBOTIC FOAMING

REX|LAB, 2013

ROBOTIC FOAMING

Installation and REX|LAB workshop for SmartGeometry at UCL, 2013.

Special thanks to: Innsbruck Workshop - Ernest Hager and Kevin Neurauter

REX|LAB Student Assistants: Pedja Gavrilivoc, Roger Loho and Anne Steinkogler
Tool development, IO: Stefan Hechenberger
HAL support: Thibault Schwartz

And all the participants in past Robotic FOAMing Worshops:

SmartGeometry cluster participants: Andreas Akerblom, Andrei Ivanescu, Anna Kulik, Christopher Beorkrem, Deniz Tumerdem, Dirk Krolikowski, James Warton, Khaled ElAshry, Marilena Georgantzi, Matthew Gilbert, Ozgun Balaban, Vladimir Ondejcik

University of Innsbruck: Michela Bassot, Aurélie Bis, Selina Brandstätter, Stamatia Christodoulaki, Tobias Dorsch, Birgit Eberl, Hannes Fickenscher, Karl Christoph Handtmann, Maximilian Hartmann, Tobias Hauer, Lena Herrmann, Julia Huminski, Daniel Kapfinger, Thomas Kendlbacher, Bernardin König, Laurent Loullingen, Lisa-Marie Martach, Kübra Mercan, Verena Neureiter, Alexander Neuwirth, Eric Pöltner, Elena Prisse, Dennis Przybilka, Johanna Quast, Stefan Reynisson, Jakob Roßmann, Ufuk Sagir, Johannes Schewe, Laura Schmid, Daniel Schröckmair, Maximilian Seiferlein, Martin Sieberer, Selina Vix, Andreas Wagner, Kevin Weiß, Gabriel Weitenthaler

Robotic FOAMing is a series of design-research prototypes and installations, all fabricated in foam by CNC machines and robots. It is an arts-based design-research project that investigates the post-digital paradigm shift from novel formal digital aesthetics to Neo-Materialism – with its innovative fabrication and manufacturing techniques and technologies. It looks 1) at the potential of robotic fabrication in architecture, in the attempt to start bridging the gaps in scale, price and expertise between relatively simply achievable Rapid Prototyped (RP) models, by using foam with 2,5D computer-numerically controlled (CNC) milling machines and 4D multi-axial multi-move robotic arms systems. Besides its strong material-based and process-related innovative aesthetics, the research is 2) led by a sustainable agenda: how to externalize (from cavity walls) the insulation material foam, how to increase its structural performance and capitalize on its surface workability by digital and machinic processes.