File 2 Factory Continuum workshops are a result of cooperation between a couple of European architectural schools and industry partners. The Bartlett and TU Delft are among the collaborators. Sean Hanna was the facilitator of the workshop from the side of The Bartlett. The first workshop from the series took place in Lyon in September 2008. I have attended the second one: May 2009 in Barcelona.

The goal of the workshop was to design, manufacture and assemble a membrane structure in 1:1. We have worked at the premises of TP Arquitectura i Construcio Textil – manufacturer of membrane structures. We also had an opportunity to visit some of it’s collaborators. During the design stage we have used Wintess – a software developed by professor Ramon Sastre. Wintess is a tool dedicated to design, structural analysis and preparation of fabrication files for membrane structures. The team I had a pleasure to work with used Wintess mostly for structural analysis and creation of cutting patterns. The form itself has been found through parametric modeling in Grasshopper.

It was a very interesting experience of fully continuous file to factory process starting from conceptual design stage and finishing at the assembly of the actual object, not solely a prototype or a model. Such continuum became possible since the advent of computer aided manufacturing. Quite surprisingly however F2F might be considered as paradigm which is not completely new. Designers using F2F start to work with the actual materiality at a very early stage. This is precisely how craftsmen used to work before means of 3d representation in 2d where invented. The contemporary amalgam of CAM and 3d modeling is in a sense bringing us back to where we where before XVI century – closer to the material. If you add parametric design or generative methodologies to the F2F phenomena there is a good chance for architecture with increased performance.

Below you can take a look at a screen shot from Wintess while working on the fabrication files, fabrication snapshot and hectic preparations of the very final form.