Digital Fabrication
So apparently, the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms is in the housing biz. Recently they sponsored the FabLab House, a futuristic-looking concept house designed for the Solar Decathalon Europe.
The FabLab House was designed as an ellipsoid structure prefabricated from wood that is formed into a rib-like structure. Although this specific house was designed for Madrid’s solar resource, it could easily be adapted to other climates by changing the ellipsoid. Built on top of three legs, the home has a space underneath to allow for air to circulate and help ventilate it naturally.
Smart systems help monitor and control the home’s temperature and energy use, while passive design increases efficiency and minimizes consumption. A customized photovoltaic skin coats the roof, which also acts to collect rainwater. When the home is built for the competition, it will also come with a garden capable of growing food.
Source and more: Makezine
The door of a dry-cleaner-size storefront in an industrial park in Wareham, Massachusetts, an hour south of Boston, might not look like a portal to the future of American manufacturing, but it is. This is the headquarters of Local Motors, the first open source car company to reach production. Step inside and the office reveals itself as a mind-blowing example of the power of micro-factories.
Mark Hatch (standing center) and Jim Newton (far left, glasses) of Tech Shop,
where members pay for access to sophisticated prototyping tools.
(Photo: Leon Chew)
Source and More: Wired Febr 2010
I recently received a mail from Alex Mamalyha, web community manager for i.materialise, announcing the launch of a new service from Materialise NV.i.materialise is a rapid manufacturing service aimed at designers, and the beta sitegives a good idea of the way the service will work. Obviously there are many web-based rapid manufacturing services these days, and the announcement of a new one is a fairly regular occurrence which I usually just ignore. But given the extent to which Materialise have supported and encouraged designers’ use of RM technologies through their .MGX initiative, I thought this was one service that deserved further investigation. More at i.Materialise
Source: We Don’t do Retro
Architectural pioneers such as Frank Gehry and Greg Lynn introduced the world to the extreme forms made possible by digital fabrication. It is now possible to transfer designs made on a computer to computer-controlled machinery that creates actual building components. This file to factory process not only enables architects to realize projects featuring complex or double-curved geometries, but also liberates architects from a dependence on off-the-shelf building components, enabling projects of previously unimaginable complexity.
Digital Fabrications (…) celebrates the design ingenuity made possible by digital fabrication techniques. Author Lisa Iwamoto explores the methods architects use to calibrate digital designs with physical forms. The book is organized according to five types of digital fabrication techniques: tessellating, sectioning, folding, contouring, and forming. Projects are shown both in their finished forms and in working drawings, templates, and prototypes, allowing the reader to watch the process of each fantastic construction unfold. Digital Fabrications presents projects designed and built by emerging practices that pioneer techniques and experiment with fabrication processes on a small scale with a do-it-yourself attitude.
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Source: We Make Money Not Art
