The Material Technologies Lab of The Faculty of Architecture at The HKU has recently finished its second robotically manufactured intervention called “CeramicINformation Pavilion.” Thus, the aim of the project is to reconcile the material intelligence of vernacular crafts with the specificity promised by digital design and fabrication technologies.
Firstly, explores the process of construction and seeks to find an appropriate level of automation suitable for emerging and transitioning economies. Each of the approximately 1000 components that make up the experimental structure is unique and has a specific immanent relationship to its neighbors. Secondly, this approach allowed the complex construction to be realized using unskilled labor, over a short period, without the need for typical architectural drawings. Therefore, the bricks were manufactured over a period of 20 days before the lightweight elements were shipped to the site and assembled into the multifaceted wall. Further, approximately 1.5million lines of code were generated – with each brick containing an average of 1400 individual target-points.
CeramicINformation Pavilion examined the Chinese terracotta brick, and explored it’s potential re-shaping through the process of robotic 3d printing. Certainly, this project highlights the expression and the capacity these systems have to change the way in which we fashion the built environment.
