Opening 21st August 2012

Within the subterranean bowels of the Tate Moderns South Oil Tank, something primitive animates the darkness of the dramatic new gallery space. For the visitors, a single roaming luminaire, is compass, and companion through this elemental space. Through the interplay of luminous form and motion, ambiguity in visual perception is explored and manipulated in an unfolding interactive performance between the public and a kinetic installation.

Amidst the global challenges of climate and ecological crises that threaten the very existence of humanity, the exhibition TransLife reflects on the whereabouts of humankind in relationship to nature through an unique perspective and philosophical speculation, calling for citizen participation in facing these imminent challenges with artistic imagination to advocate a new world view of nature and a retooled humanist proposition.

The exhibition is structured by three thematically related components that gradually progress from the discovery of new sensorial potentials that extend our cognitive capacities to the emergence of multiple life forms to biodiversity and an exploration of the symbiosis of cohabitation, revealing emerging concepts of life and provoking contemplation on the biosphere. In doing so, the exhibition also strives to reassess the historical roots and epistemological foundation of the current ecological and environmental predicament, interrogating the notion of subjectivity inherent in the project of modernity and the anthropocentrism derived from that tradition.

The 300 page plus exhibition catalogue consists of a collection of scholarly texts contributed by world-renowned authors (Bruno Latour, Arjen Mulder, Chris Salter, Peter Sloterdijk, Eugene Thacker, and a curatorial text by ZHANG Ga) to elaborate on the exhibition’s themes and their philosophical ramifications, along with color illustrations of works in the exhibition. The catalogue will be co-published by NAMOC, The Liverpool University Press and the Foundation for Art and Creative Technologies in UK and distributed globally.

An interactive installation and performance, developed through a collaboration between interaction designers, architects and performance artists. Its principal performer, a 3 metre high responsive robot, interacts with its audience’s gestures while it waits for the arrival of its human co-performers. The film shown here presents the first choreographed site specific work to come from this colloquy. Titled ‘The Promise of Touch’, it was presented at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in June 2011. responding to two works within the Gallery – Francis Bacon’s Triptych ‘Three Figures in a Room’ (1964) & Pablo Picasso’s ‘Femmes devant la mer’ (1956).

Motive Colloquies is both the work and the people who have formed it. Ciriaco Castro, Miriam Dall’Igna, Ruairi Glynn, Enrique Ramos, Sigridur Reynisdottir, Nicholas Waters, Jemima Yong

(Above) AAC Student Marilena Skavara 2009

Examples of Processing Projects created by students over the first term on the course

AAC Student Agata Guzik 2008

AAC Student Angelos Chronis 2009

Examples of Work from the Digital Ecology Module 2010

Example of Research & Design from the MSc AAC Thesis 2009

Marilena Skavara 2009.

Copenhagen Workshop January 2010

A one night performance between a towering robot, 2 performance artists sited in the collection of Picasso & Francis Bacon.
Motive Colloquies: Ciriaco Castro, Miriam Dall’Igna, Ruairi Glynn, Jemima Yong, Enrique Ramos, Sigridur Reynisdottir & Nikki

23 juin 2011
19h30 – 21h00

Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou
Musée – Niveau 5

Edited By: Ruairi Glynn and Bob Sheil
Foreword by Alan Penn, Robert Aish

FABRICATE: Making Digital Architecture brings together the work of designers, engineers and makers within architecture, construction, engineering, manufacturing, and computation. Covering a cross section of scales and typologies, the publication features 32 illustrated case studies of completed buildings, new works in progress, and the latest research in design and digital manufacturing. Practices included Foster + Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects, Arup, Buro Happold, Amanda Levette Architects, Ron Arad Associates, and renowned institutions Delft, Harvard, MIT, The Bartlett, CITA, and the AA. Punctuating chapters on Academic and Practice based research, conversations between world leading experts Mark Burry, Philip Beesley, Matthias Kohler, Neri Oxman, Mark West, Michael Stacey, Hanif Kara and Sean Hanna discuss themes on drawing to production, behavioural composites, robotic assembly, and digital craft. As the scope and diversity of work shown here very clearly conveys, new protocols of engagement between the design and making of digital architecture offer disciplines on all sides the challenge to rethink fabrication as a design activity, and to rethink how the necessary expertise to master this field can be acquired.

Book Design Emily Chicken
Riverside Architectural Press
ISBN: 978-1-926724-09-6
Hardcover section sewn with surbalin on the cover
260 pp, 135gsm furioso, 240 x 240 mm

An Introduction to Textile Futures made in 2011

MA Textile Futures 2007-Ongoing

The 21st century marks the beginning of a new textile revolution , and we believe it is smart, invisible, sustainable, ethical and poetic. Smart? The emergence of intelligent technologies such as conductive textiles, sensory fabrics, wearable computing, biomaterials, nanotechnology demand greater collaboration between science and design to transform textile design processes and products. Invisible? New fibers and finishings create textiles with invisible built-innovative functionality such as vitamin-enhanced fabrics, anti-stress fibre, solar-reactive yarns and composite materials. Sustainable? Increasing demands to consider sustainability necessitate more responsible approaches to textile design. Issues of production, waste and post-consumption drastically change potential design processes and outputs.Ethical? Demographics, globalisation, changing consumption patterns that impact on markets can be challenged by design. Poetic? Human need for inspiring aesthetics and comforting material persists. The aesthetic and emotional qualities of cloth and craft become even more relevant in a high-tech, high speed consumer culture.

Inconspicuous Matter: Celine Marcq 2010 – A material research project that aims to develop responsive materials for future ambient displays, which would make it possible to visualize electrical energy flows.

MA Industrial Design 2007-2009

MAID Student Bruno Taylor (2008)

The intention of the course is to create an environment of creative and critical experimentation and exploration in which students are encouraged to challenge not only the objects which are the result of the process of design, but the matrix of roles, responsibilities and relationships within which the designer might work.

MAID Student Sara Bellini 2007

Arkitektskolen Aarhus: Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark
co-run with Richard Roberts
In Development.

Material Animation

ETH Zürich – caad|EmbeddedLab, Switzerland
co-run with Manuel Kretzer

“ The use of materials that change their properties will revolutionise architecture. Buildings of the future will be able to adjust colour, size, shape and opacity. Architects will be able to design buildings that change their geometry according to the people inside. Those who fail to run with the trend, sparked by radical smart materials towards adaptive and kinetic buildings, will be left behind. ” Axel Ritter, 2009

- Workshop Documentation PDF
- Website

The integration of new technologies and materials into architecture allows buildings to become more responsive to inhabitants and the environment. Digital components to control lighting, shading, ventilation or temperature, as well as home automation systems have already become standard elements that architects have to take into account when designing new spaces. In the near future the integration of smart materials, shape changing topologies, new means of communication and virtual reality will change the way we perceive and interact with the built environment. Individualized data gained from biometric sensors will be processed through embedded intelligence and allow spaces to become adaptive and learn over time. This will result in a new generation of buildings whose internal and external properties are fluid and allow for a multiplicty of demands, usages and occupations.

M6 will focus on the application of thin film electro luminescent foils combined with data gained through a multitude of Kinect Cameras. The collected data shall be processed by intelligent algorithms to create an emersive environment as a combination of behavior, reception, material and space to further engage the users with the piece and create an emotional spatial siutation.

Inital experiments with making EL materials led by Manuel Kretzer

1. Experimentation
The first week will focus on intense and quick workshops alternating with introductory lectures and tutorials. The four experiments will be split in categories dealing with “material”, “animation”, “sensing” and “intelligence”. While gaining experience each student is ought to develop an idea on how this material, combined with sensors and means of computation, can be integrated in a future architecture and how this could be realized in a spatial installation.

2. Prototyping
After an initial presentation a group voting will decide which idea(s) will be processed further. Students will then continue together to develop this concept to a final stage. The students will work in small groups on different topics, related to the experiments during the first week. Issues like shape, structure, material performance, kinetics, electrical system, mechanical system, behaviour, data processing, interaction,… have to be considered. The results have to be merged to achieve a common goal. A constant back and forth and continuous communication between the different groups is essential and highly encouraged.

3. Production
During this phase students will work mostly on their own – split in their respective groups – towards the final installation. Frequent interaction between the groups is necessary to proof and refine code, design, material and physical object.

4. Installation
Two days are given to finish the final installation. Under intense supervision final problems can be solved and the overall system improved. The final presenation will be attended by Prof. Stephen Gage, UCL Bartlett, London and Karmen Franinovic, ZHDK, Zürich.

Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

A first year undergraduate 48 hour workshop at the Inspace Gallery at the School of Informatics. Working in teams of 4/5 the students were encouraged to make a short video piece that responded to the idea of a skin for the building. Because the data projectors at Inspace project on to translucent screens over glass windows, it was possible to move inside and outside the gallery to experience the skin as a form of membrane. Some works dealt with this phenomenon, whilst other works used the connection between the projectors to make large landscape movies that were synced in time. Ruairi Glynn and Paul Skinner developed custom software for the workshop to allow students to develop new drawing tools through hacking and experimentation. Documentation shot by Yuda Ho. Organised by Chris Speed.

Pneumatic Cellular Automata

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark

A collaborative workshop between students of the Bartlett School of Architecture & The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts building a huge array of kinetic “cells” which act collectively as a cellular automata driving each other by using air currents and light to communicate with their neighbours.

FABRICATE 2011 co-chaired by Ruairi Glynn and Bob Sheil was an International Peer Reviewed Conference with supporting publication and exhibition held at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London from 15-16 April 2011. FABRICATE brought together pioneers in design and making within architecture, construction, engineering, manufacturing, materials technology and computation with discussion on key themes including how digital fabrication technologies are enabling new creative and construction opportunities, the difficult gap that exists between digital modeling and its realization, material performance and manipulation, off-site and on-site construction, interdisciplinary education, economic and sustainable contexts. The conference framed discussion around the presentation of built or partially built works by individuals or collaborators in research, practice and industry selected from submissions through a call for work in the fall of 2010.

Photos of the Conference & Exhibition.