Michal Piasecki presented a paper “A Redefinition of the Paradox of Choice”, co-authored with Sean Hanna, at the 4th International conference on Design Computing and Cognition (DCC’10) in Stuttgart.
The paper is a part of Michal’s ongoing PhD research on providing the users with intuitive and satisfactory B2C online mass customization expirience. The abstract is available on the research page.
Filed under: 03 research, 07 texts, conferences | Leave a Comment
Tags: DCC'10, Design Computing Cognition, Design Computing Cognition 2010, John Gero, Sean Hanna

Green2, a polish design magazine with a focus on sustainability, published Michal’s article on SmartGeometry 2010. This year’s SmartGeometry workshops took place at Iaac in Barcelona – a post-industrial setting likely to influence the title of the event. It was called “Working Prototypes”. Over four days more than a hundred participants worked in ten distinctive clusters using various CAM technologies to manufacture their proofs of concepts.
Four days at Iaac were followed by a two-day conference drawing together speakers such as Mark Burry (RMIT), Enrico Dini (D-Shape), Marta Male-Alemany (Iaac) and Hanif Kara (Adams Kara Taylor). Videos from the conference are available from Bentley (requires registration).

Workshop participants in Iaac at work. Image: courtesy of Shane Burger.

Final prototype of High Tech Design – Low Tech Construction cluster. Image: courtesy of Shane Burger.

Work from the Parametrics and Physical Interactions cluster. Image: courtesy of Przemek Jaworski.
Filed under: 07 texts, conferences, design, digital fabrication, digital paradigm, workshops | Leave a Comment
Tags: SmartGeometry 2010, SmartGeometry, Iaac, Bentley

Michal Piasecki’s recent design – Weaving Bowl – was selected for the final of Young Design 2010 competition organized by Warsaw’s Institute of Industrial Design (IWP). During the project presentation at IWP, taking place on June 2nd this year, Michal emphasized how mass customization paradigm shifts designers and users roles. Designers’ focus moves away from a single solution towards a spectrum of possible forms, while the “users”, “customers”, “prosumers” or “co-designers” choose a single option from this spectrum.

Michal later moved on to describe the spectrum of Weaving Bowl’s forms, also often called the solution space. The product is controlled by three attributes: height, porosity and type of material. The size of the object is 20 by 20 by 4-16 cm and it is a 3d printed piece. It is designed to be manufactured using stereolithography, fused deposition modeling or selective laser sintering.
Parameter 1: height.
Parameter 2: porosity.
Parameter 3: type of material.
Different algorithms for browsing through a solution space of such product where also discussed. This part of the presentation was directly related to Michal’s PhD research, where he is looking at two distinctive approaches to the design of configurators:
- An elective approach where users define levels of each of the product attributes explicitly.
- An instructive approach – an implementation of genetic algorithms which enables users to manually select parents of next generations without a need to understand how many parameters control the product and what each of them is responsible for exactly.
These two approaches were compared in the Breeding Objects Experiment 1.

Filed under: 01 design, 05 programming and scripting, 06 talks, Breeding Objects, configurators, digital fabrication, generative design, mass customization, online configurators, printing in 3d | Leave a Comment
Tags: Michal Piasecki, IWP, Young Design, Instytut Wzornictwa Przemysłowego, Institute of Industrial Design, Young Design 2010

6 workshops conducted by Workshops Factory to date in Poland and in the USA will be featured at the Spontaneous Schooling Exhibition, curated by Nous gallery as a part of London Festival of Architecture 2010.
The exhibition opens on Friday 18 June, 2010 at 6pm. The venue is: 3.01 Tea Building, 5 – 13 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6JJ.
Thanks to the Faculty of Architecture, Warsaw University of Technology, 5 3d printed models from the very first WF workshop (wf_091) will become part of the exhibition as well.



Images: courtesy of Faculty of Architecture, Warsaw University of Technology.
Filed under: 04 teaching, 08 exhibitions, printing in 3d, workshops, workshops factory | Leave a Comment
Tags: LFA, LFA 2010, London Festival of Architecture, Michal Piasecki, Nous gallery, Spontaneous Schooling

Critical Practice, a cluster of artists, researchers and academics hosted by Chelsea College of Art and Design has recently commissioned Ola Wasilkowska and Michal Piasecki to design a temporary spatial intervention for their Parade event. The event took place on 21-23 May, 2010 at Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground in London.
The structure, called Assemblage in Public compromises computational design strategies with a low-tech assembly of repeatable components on site. The project is rooted in an idea that a repetition of a few simple rules is able to construct complex geometry, which can host different functions.



The core structure of the intervention was obtained through multi objective optimization with genetic algorithms. The optimization was conducted with a purpose built software written in Processing. The goal was to distribute the components according to a predefined “shadow map” and to keep them structurally stable at the same time. 4320 crates where used in total. Below are some of the individuals from one of the middle generations.
After the core was erected according to the plans extracted from the optimized form, everyone was invited to contribute to the intervention by adding on furniture. These where meant to be integrated and dissolved in the structure, so that discovering them may be surprising, but at the same time when they start to be used, they always prove comfortable. For this part of components assembly, there was no pre-defined layouts, so the structure started to crawl in diverse directions.
The low-tech crate component enabled the mixture of an evolutionary search for an optimal form with collective intelligence to create an attractor intervening the everyday use of the public.



Images: courtesy of Marsha Bradfield and Neil Cummings from Critical Practice.
Filed under: 01 design, 05 programming and scripting, evolutionary algorithms, generative design, genetic algorithms, processing | 2 Comments
Tags: Michal Piasecki, Ola Wasilkowska, Critical Practice, Assemblage in Public, Chelsea College of Art and Design, Neil Cummings, Marsha Bradfield
Open Generative Design
Open Generative Design is an initiative started by dr. Sivam Krish. The aim is to develop platform independent algorithms which can be used to browse through solution spaces of various parametric definitions. The algorithms will be written in Excel and special add-on will be developed for each parametric modeling package. The ones for Solidworks and Rhino Grasshopper are already available for download and others, including one for Generative Components are under development. Below you can listen to Sivam introducing the idea himself:
The first iteration of the Excel spreadsheet script will generate instances of parametric definitions which will be random but constrained by maximum and minimum values of each of the attributes. Further iterations will feature a variety of browsing algorithms. For now have a look at how it works with Solidworks:
Filed under: digital paradigm, generative components, generative design, open-source | Leave a Comment
Tags: Michal Piasecki, open generative design, Sivam Krish
Recent Entries
- Fabricate: an international conference on design and making in London
- “A Redefinition of the Paradox of Choice” presented at DCC’10 in Stuttgart
- An article on SmartGeometry 2010 in Green2
- Weaving Bowl presented at the IWP in Warsaw
- WF featured at the Spontaneous Schooling Exhibition opening this Friday in London
- Digital Relations in Architecture: PhD students symposium hosted by CITA in Copenhagen
- Assemblage in Public: a temporary spatial intervention for Critical Practice
- Msc AAC 09/10: first term Processing sketches
- Open Generative Design
- “A Redefinition of the Paradox of Choice” accepted for DCC’10
- Starlings Table: generative process for Joris Laarman Studio
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