MSc1&2  |  1:1 Interaction & Fabrication Prototypes

Hyperbody’s MSc1 and MSc2 studios inspire its students to rethink conventional design processes in order to creatively challenge the interplay between contemporary culture and technology, and their relation to architecture. The studios operate at the scale of an architectural insert situated within urban context. The shared studio framework challenges the students to develop an architectural process that can keep up with the actual needs and desires of people in a rapidly changing world. Such a process can only be validated by participants in the project - users, stakeholders, experts and designers - actual people who judge the state of the design process against their actual needs.

This semester, Hyperbody MSc1 and MSc2 embark on a collaborative project dealing with the design, fabrication, erection and operation of an architectural intervention situated in Delft, between the Faculty of Architecture and the Delft Science Centre (De Vries van Heyst plantsoen).

Study goal of these semesters is introduction to the architectural application of emerging technologies as design instrumentarium. Open-mindedness, team performance, associative capability, a sense for form, flexibility and a pro-active attitude are seen as important and acquirable skills for the successful completion of these courses.

MSc2  |  1:1 Fabrication

Hyperbody MSc2 is an advanced introduction to Non-Standard parametric design, digital fabrication, durability and collaboration. In this semester, students encounter the methodological implications of emerging design and fabrication technologies in the setting of a hands-on realisation of a design project at scale 1:1.

Architecture in our culture is fed by global resources and processes that transform building materials, energy, collaborators and information. This globalized production site is by no means spatially immediate. It is connected by networks of digital communication: any kind of digitized information can be accessed everywhere, immediately. In a situation where all digital information is at immediate reach; what matters for immediate adaptation of our material environment are transformations from the digital to the material realm and back. Only these transformations bind digital information to location.

Non-Standard Architecture is based on adaptive, informed digital-material transformational processes, which allow each building component to be individually made to measure. The complexity of non-standard building geometries can be handled efficiently and precisely due to digital design instruments, digital fabrication and tagging of building components. Tags are basis for numerical control of the building model, in parametric design, fabrication, assembly and interactive operation.

Tags can ensure an immediate linkage between a produced piece and its digital origin, providing informational context. With tags, all parts of a digital plan can be allocated in the physical environment. Digital model and physical environment can be matched one to one. The potential of such immediate allocation exceeds linear construction processes. It enables designers to track the life-cycle of each building component individually, and can help to establish a sustained population of building components. A population that can grow, mutate and evolve.