F2F-CONTINUUM ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING: FROM THE SCHOOLS LAB TO THE FABRICATION WORKSHOP

The paper will discuss the findings and conclusions drawn so far from the first year of operation of Continuum. Continuum is a LL Erasmus Multilateral Project that aims at putting together schools of architecture and small to medium-sized enterprises to exchange research results, information, ideas, techniques, methods and expertise in the domain of design-to-manufacturing. A large number of contemporary buildings is generated through parametric design, that is the design of forms with the irreplaceable aid of computer software in a continuum to their manufacturing. At the same time technological advances in the genesis of new materials and methods for the fabrication of components creates a natural continuum from the design process of a building to its fabrication.

Despite this evident continuum, in real terms work that is produced as the result of continuous efforts of research at universities and the respective research produced in the building industry is hardly communicated and rarely becomes common knowledge. The two parts involved, universities and enterprises are not in the necessary close contact to promote creativity, innovation and competitiveness in the domain of the creation of contemporary architecture with the use of advanced technology at European level. However, these two parts are complementary in their strengths and weaknesses. Namely, universities possess dedicated researchers with profound academic interest to conduct research but lack the infrastructure to test their ideas, whilst enterprises have the aforementioned infrastructure but cannot exploit it as they lack profound academic research.

Moreover, teachers of architectural design always aware of contemporary tendencies in architecture never convey these tendencies to the building industry that tries speculatively and tentatively to adjust and adapt to these needs. Continuum will develop a series of activities such as student workshops to visit small to medium sized enterprises that work with cutting edge CAM/CNC techniques to become familiar with their limitations and potentials.

Staff from the enterprises has been delivering informative lectures at two levels: the basics to students of the possibilities of their forces, the advanced to researchers and teachers. From the latter further avenues for research and exchange have yielded. Two student workshops on innovative designs have been scheduled aiming at producing prototypes, the best of which have been ‘built’ by the enterprises involved in the first contractual period at Grands Ateliers de l’Isle d’Abeau in September 2008 with 9 schools around Europe participating, 30 students, 11 teachers and researchers and 6 building industries. The second student workshop has been planned for May 2009. Meanwhile apart from the workshops and lectures guided tours and seminars on the infrastructure of the industries involved took place and educational material was produced firstly to aid students to participate in the workshops but also to be disseminated through a web portal to schools, enterprises and practicing architects around Europe. Four meetings of university teachers/researchers and the industrial partners of the project took place to discuss the teaching practices and their link to real manufacturing techniques The paper will sum up the results of the activities of the first year the Programme as these were ran with emphasis on the creation of a teaching protocol on the f2f-continuum process.