Merging the work of architects, engineers, manufacturers, product designers, academics and artists, Prototyping Architecture explores the importance of prototypes in the delivery of high quality contemporary design. The exhibition, which runs at The Building Centre from January 11 to March 20, places an emphasis on research and experimentation to illustrate how trial assemblies can inform architecture with maquettes, models and full-scale sample productions on show from around the world.
Professor Michael Stacey, Director of Architecture at the University of Nottingham stated: “Prototyping Architecture celebrates vital methods of design development with new technologies that potentially herald the beginning of a second industrial revolution. The exhibition forms a bridge between architecture, engineering and art – with exhibits that are truly beautiful.”
More on Prototyping Architecture after the break.
Curated by Professor Michael Stacey of The University of Nottingham, in conjunction with The Building Centre, the show includes prototypes by Amanda Levete Architects, Barkow Leibinger, Yves Ebnoether, Kieran Timberlake and many more.
The full-scale prototype provided by Kieran Timberlake Associates’ Loblolly House, which has never been exhibited outside the USA, is a central feature of the exhibition. It demonstrates a new, more efficient method of building – using building information modeling (BIM) and integrated component assemblies. Thousands of building components are collapsed into a few dozen off-site fabricated assemblies that are simply attached to this industrial aluminum frame on-site. The result is a truly modular house which can be re-assembled and used for whole-sale reclamation.
Philip Beesley’s Protocell Mesh project integrates first-generation prototypes that include aluminum meshwork canopy scaffolding and a suspended protocell carbon-capture filter array. Designed in Toronto and primarily digital fabricated in Nottingham, it was then assembled by the University of Nottingham Architecture students under the guidance of Philip Beesley and Jonathan Tyrrell of Waterloo Architecture and PBA Inc. This spectacular combination of sculpture, architecture and science is part of the Living Architecture research program, a collaboration with the Universities of Waterloo, Nottingham, and Universitet Syddansk, funded by The Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada.
“New architectural prototypes show a kind of promiscuous exchange between widely varying sources, sweeping away traditional divisions between machine and hand crafts, and between nature and technology.” Philip Beesley, Philip Beesley Architect Inc.
QbissAir from The Building Centre on Vimeo.
The exhibition also includes: a post-digital prototype for the Passion Façade of Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família Basilica; a laser-sintered additively manufactured violin; lightweight prefabricated fabric formwork for on-site cast concrete; an early rapid prototyping/rapid manufactured components for Antony Gormley’s Quantum Cloud; Optical fibre concrete; and many more examples of innovation and invention that have been developed for use in building design, or have the potential to be translated to the construction industry.
An international prototyping conference will accompany the London exhibition. Taking place on February 21 through 23, 2013, the conference will be organized into five streams: Prototyping Architecture , Exemplar Prototypes , Technology Transfer , Systems and Material Future , and Low Carbon Prototypes.
Exhibition: Prototyping Architecture When: January 11 – March 20, 2013 Location: The Building Centre (Store Street, London WC1E 7BT) Times: Monday to Friday: 9.30 am – 6.00 pm; Saturday: 10.00 am – 5.00 pm
