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Marc Fornes TEX-FAB 3.0 Keynote

By admin | Published: April 16, 2012

Marc Fornes, Keynote speaker for the TEX-FAB 3.0 APPLIED: Research through Fabrication conference, answered questions after his 80 minute talk on Prototypical Geometries lecture. Covering his now vast number of projects from design research based computational methods driving speculative formal explorations to realized protocol driven projects for the FRAC and Pompidou Centre in Paris, the lecture was tremendously well received. People traveled from all over the region to see the Keynote lecture. In conclusion Marc’s topic and presentation sparked a lively debate with questions and in depth answers spanning his approach to material integration and projective concepts.

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3.0 Workshops in San Antonio

By admin | Published: April 16, 2012

Over the course of two days, the workshops in San Antonio saw the biggest sessions ever for TEX-FAB. With over 85 attendees in four sections of Parametric Design, Python Design, Revit Design and 3D Modeling, attendees from 5 regional universities, local practices and international offices Gensler, HKS and 5G Studio drew from the tremendous knowledge base of the workshop instructors.

Gil Akos and Ronnie Parsons from New York based Studio Mode, covered complex geometric generation in Grasshopper through list management while also tapping the potential of Weaverbird. Marc Fornes, the TEX-FAB 3.0 Keynote and veteran of 3 events, continued to inspire attendees with the potential of code through meticulous demystification. David Fano, in his first event, led novices and Revit pros through the paces of novel techniques in the BIM industry standard. Finally Travis McCarra, coding artist, began with simple modelling techniques and finished with advanced Grasshopper tutorials giving them a broad set of creative tools.

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AIA Houston Design Award

By admin | Published: March 31, 2012

Vlad Tenu and TEX-FAB have been awarded an AIA Houston 2012 Design Award for “Divine Detail”.  Minimal Complexity was recognized by A panel of two nationally recognized architects and the editor-in-chief of a nationally respected architecture magazine met at Architecture Center Houston on Thursday, March 22 to select the best of new Houston architecture from among 127 entries. Eligibility was limited to projects completed within the last 5 years and located within the Houston metropolitan area or designed by an architect working in the Houston metropolitan area. The jury selected twenty-one projects in eight categories to receive awards. The jurors were Craig Scott, IWAMOTOSCOTT, San Francisco, Susan S. Szenasy, Editor in Chief METROPOLIS Magazine, New York, and Jon Pickard, Pickard Chilton, New Haven, Connecticut. The Awards were presented at a cocktail reception on the eleventh floor of BG Group Place on that evening. For further information visit www.aiahouston.org/designawards.

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TEX-FAB at ACSA National Conference in Boston

By admin | Published: March 13, 2012


Brad Bell presented the paper “A New Regional Platform for Computation Fabrication” authored with Kevin Patrick McClellan, Andrew Vrana and Will Laufs of Buro Happold at the ACSA 100th Annual Meeting.  Hosted on March 1-4, 2012 in Boston, MA by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Southern California,  this years conference focused on Digital Aptitudes. In addition to this paper,  Andrew Vrana presented a paper entitled “Cloud Code: Public Space in 4 Dimensions” at the 4D Architecture session with Travis McCarra from Metalab co-authored with Joe Meppelink.

Andrew and Brad were also invited panelist in the “WHERE ARE WE NOW: ARCHIVE Looks at How Digital Probes Precipitated Contemporary Fields”. The panel was moderated by Maia Small and joined by Ashley Schaferand Michael Kubo.

Andrew Vrana is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Houston College of Architecture, Kevin Patrick McCellan is a Lecturer at the University of Texas San Antonio College of Architecture, Brad Bell is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington School of Architecture.

 

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ACADIA @ Digital Aptitudes | Synthetic Landscapes

By admin | Published: March 2, 2012

We participated in the Synthetic Landscapes workshops and special session discussion at the ACSA 100 Conference in Boston, MA.  The workshop has been sponsored by Objet, who manufacture state-of-the-art 3D printers.  With high resolution and an broader assortment of material options (white, black or clear plastic and even rubber), the machines amazed the group in their ability to explore intricacy.  A base “landscape” model was produced prior to the workshop and the participants were encouraged to design and site a series of responses to the field condition with architectural interventions with fine grain explorations with the technology.  The software exploration included the use of mesh modelling and sub-division smoothing operations with the Weaverbird plug-in for Rhino.

The design of the responses took the entire first day and at the end of the evening all projects were printed.   The next day the finished products were introduced into the landscape.  The project has been exhibited at the ACSA Conference and will continue on a tour of exhibition locations around the country and finally arrive at the ACADIA conference in San Francisco at the same time as the APPLIED competition exhibition and 2nd round jury.

The Workshop was organized by Greg Luhan of University of Kentucky and ACADIA.  Workshop instructors were Gil Akos, Ronnie Parsons, Andy Payne and Kyle Miller.  Other participants included Mark Cabrinha from Cal Poly, Aron Temkin from Norwich/President of ACADIA and David Celento from Penn State.

 

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Fabrikator

By admin | Published: February 21, 2012

TEX-FAB featured in Fabrikator Blog as part of the Collaboration Conference.

“The day also included the official announcement of a new international
alliance of academics, professional designers, hardware and software
developers and digital fabricators. Born out of a regional organization
known as Tex-Fab, the group will be called Digital Fabrication Alliance
and offered a look at the kind of minds it will be bringing together at
future events with a panel discussion with Phillip Anzalone, Anna Dyson,
and Erik Verboon.”
 
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COLLABORATION Conference Workshops

By admin | Published: February 21, 2012

TEX-FAB *DFA organized a series of Parametric Design Workshops at Pratt
Manhattan with Architect’s Newspaper. With over 100 attendees, the workshops were sold out
and provided exposure to a range of software and tools from leaders in
the industry of computational design and education.

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COLLABORATION Conference

By admin | Published: February 15, 2012

Brad Bell will introduce the Digital Fabrication Alliance to the audience at the McGraw Hill Auditorium in New York, NY at the Architect’s Newspaper Metals in Construction Facades Conference.

Andrew Vrana will moderate a roundtable discussion:

Facade Innovation:  Performance, Optimization and Integration

The ability of computational technology to inform facade design from novel geometries and enhanced environmental performance to rationalized component optimization and digital fabrication is creating new possibilities in the development of intelligent building skins.  The confluence of visible forces (structural, functional and physical) and invisible forces (cultural, political and temporal) can now be measured, managed and realized through the integration of enhanced information processing, cross-disciplinary material organization and computer assisted manufacturing ingenuity.  From a broad spectrum of expertise representing the professional, academic, applied research and engineering consultation community, the speakers participating in this discussion present a series of façade design case studies that articulate these forces of innovation in practice and lead the speculative dialogue on where this trend will head in the future.

Performative facade systems
Anna Dyson, CASE
Case Study:  Helioptix

Optimization of facade systems
Erik Verboon, Buro Happold
Case Study:  King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture

Integration of facade systems
Phillip Anzalone, Columbia University GSAPP
Case Study:  Columbia University Building Intelligence Project

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ACADIA Annual Conference

By admin | Published: February 14, 2012

Brad Bell presented a project titled “Casting Taxonomies” at the annual ACADIA Conference: Integration Through Computation in Banff, Canada. “Casting Taxonomies” was one of ten peer-reviewed projects selected for exhibition at the conference and featured the repetitive cast work from the Digital Fabrication Class at the University of Texas Arlington in 2010.

 

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TexTile_update 2

By admin | Published: February 14, 2012

With all the modules configured a test mock-up was assembled prior to final welding. Now TEXtile will be delivered to Wooten Metal for welding. Once the welding process for Textile is complete Wooten will deliver the components for powder coating.

  

  

 

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