Digital Studio: Locally Sourced, Purpose-oriented

Advanced fabrication brings about the ability to perform architectural scale construction on site. This challenges the use of pre-fabricated materials in architecture, and calls to rethink construction practices at large. Robotic tools offer a sustainable construction alternative – reconstituting onsite soil into an architectural grounds and structures. This brings back to relevance locally resourced materials, as well as historic traditions of earth-construction. The 2020 digital architecture studio ‘Locally sourced, Purpose-oriented’, aims to contribute to this endeavor. In collaboration with Desert Mars Analog Ramon Station (DMARS), a selected site the Ramon Crater served as the exploration ground. The students collected and analyzed soil samples from the site, and envisioned a procedural fabrication and assembly process for a space analog. The analog’s construction envisioned the use of robotic tools and native site materials. The process included robotic groundscaping, robotic 3D printing with various binders, and multiple techniques for production and assembly. The design involved background research on common Israeli industrial building elements and their production process, historical regional construction techniques, and contemporary practice in onsite robotics. Together, these served as a ground for developing visions for an architecture which is unique to site, material composition and purpose, and facilitated by multi-scale robotic tools.

Instructors: Karen Lee Bar-Sinai, Tom Shaked

Fall 2019 | Segoe Building – MTRL, Architecture & Urban Building Ground Floor