We are very excited to post the development of one of our Finalists, Emily Baker and the work on Spin-Valence. Please refer to the text below and the images.

The second round of TEX-FAB’s Applied Competition fell at the exact span of time that I was moving around the world and taking a new job.  This means that I had only limited use of the CNC fabrication tools that I’ve become accustomed to easily accessing.  I must admit that I felt like my hands were completely tied.  Learning-through-making has become an engrained MO, and faced with working outside of it, I become even more grateful for the time I’ve been able to spend gaining insight and intuition through making my ideas become physical.  Though my plans for this development period had to change, I have still been able to push the work forward.  Prototypes show nuances of finish on depth through shadow, shifting outdoor lighting conditions, potential shading variations, and system connections and folds.

If you saw my first round board, you read a diatribe against the “image-bias [in architecture] that threatens to render computational fabrication a mere theoretical exercise.”  I stand by that sentiment. Architecture is not just for looking at, and it should be developed in ways that support its multivalent purpose. Thanks to TEX-FAB for supporting this kind of research.