Recently, the government of Rio de Janeiro implemented a policy of urban redevelopment that recognises the importance of providing space for the local creative economy of the Samba Schools within the Port of Rio de Janeiro, after having ignored their incorporation within the Porto de Maravilha Waterfront Regeneration Project. Using this new incorporation strategy as our impetus, the Rio de Janeiro Visiting School will work directly with this initiative and aim to broaden its scope and accessibility in an attempt to foster a diverse public space for the Cidade de Samba (Samba City) infrastructure, a large warehouse complex built by the city for the top Samba Schools in the Port of Rio, which currently has no connection to the waterfront cruise-terminal tourist infrastructure, nor any type of amenities for the general public.For more info: brazilvisitingschool@aaschool.ac.uk or +55 11 3062-3522
The projects will include the design of both permanent structures and temporary interactive installations transforming the existing closed production area of Samba City into an open space linked to proposed leisure itineraries along the waterfront. Structures will be designed with computational design methods and built with digital fabrication techniques with the assistance of local artisans combining new materials and processes with reappropriated Carnival paraphernalia. Students will build both models and partial one-to-one prototypes of their urban, architectural and interactive design proposals.
Instruction for the Visiting School workshop series will be led by AA Tutors and Assistants and local architects and specialists, the Escola de Carnaval Artistic Directors, and Carnival float-fabricators. Specifically, participants will learn computational design using rhino, grasshopper, processing, and arduino as well as the use of c.n.c. milling and routing, laser cutting and rapid-prototyping. No previous experience is necessary. The workshop is open to architecture and design students and professionals worldwide.
The baixo-centre Barra Funda of São Paulo, was once characterized by a vibrant mix of small industrial, commercial and residential programmes. Yet, as economic policies over time favoured a monopolization of larger production industries, companies abandoned the city centre and moved to the periphery and abroad. Rather than solely introducing new programs for the post-industrial landscape, the workshop proposes the creation of new-types of micro industries to produce a mix of both consumption and production within the centre, thus creating an urban policy of 'pro-sumption', manifested through micro-manufacturing interventions that can co-exist alongside retail and housing. The workshop posits that innovative computational design and digital fabrication can be used to help create these new micro-industries, as these new technologies bring increased productivity levels with a decreased use of space, which can help empower local craftsman to produce and sell directly to potential consumers through on-demand, micro-manufacturing in small urban workshops which can be easily implanted within the centre.
The workshop will tap into the energy of the emergent gallery-scene of Barra Funda, and the activities of local micro-agencies that plan to use computational technology to introduce a new cultural and economic movement for the centre. The workshop will propose prototype models for micro-industries using computational design and digital fabrication, while participants actually learn and use these technologies, including Rhino, Grasshopper, their related plug-ins, and arduino, as well as the use of the laser-cutter, rapid-prototype machines and CNC routers and mills, to produce 1:1 scale interventions within the city to further promote this new movement. The workshop will be a part of the 2012 International Festival of Electronic Language (F.I.L.E.), an avant-garde exhibition of interactive electronic technology. The workshop will suggest ways these electronic technologies can be imported out of the gallery and into a new cooperative micro-economy of the neighborhood. For this we will work directly with local Barra Funda manufacturers and artists introducing digital technologies to their local fabrication processes, including the Resinfloor Barra Funda small factory, using resin both as a finishing agent as well as within digitally fabricated milled molds, for example, inventing a type of `high-tech/low-tech` liquid fabrication process. The workshop will also collaborate with the local Metamáquina D.I.Y. rapid prototype machine manufacturers, whose goal of diseminating a high-tech, yet low-cost and small-scale fabrication system, can further promote this micro-industrial movement.
The urban depth emerges physically and sensitively in different manners, in an arrange specific to the user and to the multiple relations made possible by the city, inside a connectivity between the parts and the whole. Distinct components link forming an interlocked arrangement structurally specific to the site.It was an excellent opportunity to investigate generative systems of lightweight structures and complex connections. We start from a Delaunay triangulation of a pseudo-random network differentially extruded following a set of attractor curves and we extend the connecting nodes’ geometry to stabilize the structural parts in the direction perpendicular thereto. This extension changed the secondary status of the connectors, turning them the main pieces. The whole parametric process consists of five Grasshopper definitions and one RhinoScript separated in stages to allow team work. As a result, 540 unique pieces of polystyrene were CNC cut and assembled with screws.
