In recent years advanced parametric software combined with digital fabrication technologies have provided novel ways of exploring the relationship between building skin and building structure. Rather than viewing this relationship as a unidirectional hierarchy we now have the unique opportunity to engage in a responsive design process, which interweaves different qualities provided by material and structural properties/performances into a non-linear and multi-hierarchical system.
The students research and design an adaptive structural skin, which can be tested towards a series of different spatial and programmatic conditions. The focus lies on generating a model that integrates qualities of structure, surface and volume into one coherent system, which provides a range of adaptive qualities on a number of different scales. The development of this model is informed and inspired by Hunter Douglas products. The students were asked to work as a large team in conducting their research, setting up a parametrically controlled computer model and finally fabricating and constructing a full-scale model, which was installed and displayed in Pratt’s new gallery space.