Computational Architecture in Germany

In this talk for SEMANAU 2023, at the Federal University of Tocantins, I presented the state of the art of computational design in Germany connected to my own trajectory.

I began with Atelier Marko Brajovic, in São Paulo, with the O3 Pavilion, the Nike Air Guitar, the tensegrity studies, and the Models ByNature workshop, all examples of how parametric design could enter both design and fabrication. I then revisited my undergraduate thesis at FAUUSP, presented in a paper at IASS 2017, and the Life Lamp with Estudio Guto Requena, published at eCAADe 2020.

The second part of the talk was about Germany. From the master’s thesis at ITECH (Building Across Scales, with Nils Opgenorth, supervised by Achim Menges and Jan Knippers) to a historical arc linking Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren, Antoni Gaudí, Buckminster Fuller, and Frei Otto to the material computation taught today in Stuttgart. The ICD/ITKE research pavilions, and more recently the IntCDC cluster, were presented as the point where biomimicry, digital fabrication, and structure begin to be designed as a single system.

I closed by talking about BuildSystems, in Munich, where we were making sustainable construction feasible with Grasshopper tools and web apps; and about artificial intelligence, with the caveat that AI does not work magic, it depends on good data and a clear representation of the problem.