Michal Piasecki recently worked for NEX Architecture on Times Eureka Pavilion. The project, commissioned by Times newspaper and Kew Gardens, was undertaken in collaboration with landscape architects Marcus Barnett. It is about to be opened during RHS Chelsea Flower Show on 25th of May 2011 in London. Detailed description is available from NEX.

Michal’s responsibility was to develop a series of scripts and parametric models for all design stages. Early concepts used an implementation of L-systems – algorithms simulating the growth of trees – in Processing. Grasshopper was put to work on later stages when the form became controlled by a Voronoi diagram. It was also used to develop final fabrication data, including layout and labeling, for two technologies: 5 axis CNC milling for timber structure and laser cutting for plastic infill.

Michał Piasecki pracował niedawno dla NEX Architecture nad projektem Times Eureka Pavilion. Projekt, opracowany na zlecenie gazety Times i Kew Gardens, powstał we współpracy z architektami krajobrazu Marcus Barnett. Otwarcie nastąpi na RHS Chelsea Flower Show 25 maja 2011 w Londynie. Szczegółowy opis jest dostępny na stronie NEX.

Zadaniem Michała było opracowanie szeregu skryptów i modeli parametrycznych , których używano na wszystkich etapach pracy nad projektem. Na etapie koncepcji użyto L-systemów – algorytmów symulujących proces wzrastania drzew – zaimplementowanych w Processing. Grasshopper został użyty na późniejszym etapie, gdy forma zaczęła być kontrolowana przez diagram Voronoi. Wykorzystano go również do przygotowania końcowych danych do cyfrowego wspomagania wytwarzania. W projekcie zastosowano dwie technologie CNC: frezowanie 5-osiowe do wytworzenia konstrukcji drewnianej oraz cięcie laserowe przy plastikowym wypełnieniu.

Michal tutored a 5 day Processing workshop for a master programme at Lund University’s School of Industrial Design. The workshop took place between 25th and 29th of October 2010. Many thanks to Andreas Hopf and Axel Nordin for the invitation. Below is the synopsis:

Processing for Mass Customization

Parametric modeling gains a significant influence on the workflow of product designers and architects alike. Packages such as Rhino plug-in Grasshopper allow for a definition of a product through associations between it’s parts. These relations embed a range of features: starting from how the product looks, through it’s ergonomic qualities, up to material effectiveness and ease of manufacturing. Designers are not developing a single instance of a form through continuous iterations any more. Instead they constantly refine a spectrum of potential solutions, so allowing the end user to have a look at this spectrum seems like a natural step forward. If the design is produced with digital manufacturing, on-demand production appears to be a natural consequence of this move.

Mass customization in it’s full takes place when customers are allowed to browse through a significantly large spectra of solutions. Yet non-designers can not access parametric definitions developed in plug-ins such a Grasshopper, since they are not familiar with CAD packages which host them. Thus the knowledge of programming becomes an important skill for the designer, since it allows them to create configurators: tools for mass customization of products, which open up a new channel of communication with the clients.

The workshop will be an intensive 5-days introduction to Processing, an open-source programming language initiated by Casey Reas and Ben Fry at MIT. First two days will be devoted to an introduction of the syntax and basic functionalities. Students will learn how to use Processing for generation of 2d and 3d models as well as how to program interaction with their software. Later, students will be provided with a sample code used for mass customization of a 3-dimensional form. This will serve as a basis to develop their own designs and softwares for their customization.

Michal Piasecki recently recently developed a generative process for Malgorzata Mozolewska‘s “Structural Ornament”, a project aiming at embedding algorithmic aesthetics into structural logic. The outcome turned out to be more of a material than an object. The project is Malgorzata’s master thesis at the Faculty of Design, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

Below is an excerpt from Malgorzata’s description:

“Structural ornament arises on the verge of order and chaos, mathematic calculation and chance, but once achieved, it may serve to shape any object you like. It is generated by a purpose-made software that takes into account the shape of a desired object, loads and pressures therein and adds a component of chance so that the structure obtained, while functional, is different each and every time and not entirely foreseeable. Preparation of the software was preceded by painstaking analysis of the history and transformation of ornament over time, helping to precisely channel my search and to find my own way of creating the structural ornament which is firmly rooted in history, inspired by processes seen in nature, but created using modern technologies.”

Michal’s role was the development of the software. It has an arbitrary shaped mesh as an input. The user is then able to assign the forces. The software then conducts a series of steps to generate a 3d printable infill responsive to the forces present. First is a structural analysis using a direct stiffness method. An outcome of this is a 3-dimensional array of voxels, each containing data on the forces and displacement. This data is used to generate a grid of points which becomes denser where forces are greater. Then the infill is generated based on this grid, thus it becomes responsive to the forces present.

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.

Atomized by Hugo Loureiro

The Cave by Ermis Adamantidis

Pixels Dance by Angelos Chronis

All of the works are available here.

Joris Laarman Studio commissioned Michal Piasecki to develop a generative process for their Starlings Table project. The 3d printed piece of furniture was  on show at Friedman Benda gallery in New York between March 4 and April 10, 2010.

The process consisted of a 3d flocking simulation based on the Reynold’s boids algorithm. User of the software could freeze the flock at any given moment. If the spatial arrangement of the boids was satisfactory, they could initiate the latter part of the process, which took the arrangement data to generate an stl file valid for 3d printing. The table was manufactured by Materialise, using stereolithography and nickel plated.

Warsaw as an Emergent Structure is an initiative to acknowledge that a city is a complex system. It is also a book featuring texts from researchers and theoreticians from various fields, centered around the concept of complexity in urban environment. Ola Wasilkowska, who initiated it, aims at creating a multidisciplinary round table, aiming at developing new means of understanding the city and managing it’s growth.

Ola Wasilkowska commissioned Michal Piasecki to write a prototype of an online platform for planning negotiations. Em_Wwa 1.0 aims to be an amalgam of top-down and bottom-up development. The municipality is able to control global parameters such as the percentage of particular functions on the site and the size of the new developments. Developers can seek places for their initiatives using a cellular automata-like algorithm, which evaluates their propositions accordingly to what has already been generated and to lighting, transportation and accessibility constraints. Citizens can engage in the process by creating their own propositions of developments and commenting those generated by others.

The site used in the EM WWA 1.0 prototype is Plac Defilad – a large square in the heart of Warsaw. The square surrounds a once controversial monument of architecture in favor of ideology – the Palace of Culture. Numerous competitions for a master plan of this square where organized to date, but it remains undeveloped as it gradually morphed from a site into a symbol.

The software was written in Processing.

Above are a couple of pictures showing manufacturing process of Evolve Ring Silver, commissioned and distributed by Fluid Forms and co-designed with Krystian Kwiecinski. The manufacturing process begins with a wax 3d print of a positive form. Then a rubber mold is created with the use of the print and once it is ready the actual object is cast in silver.

The entire process takes place in Austria, where Fluid Forms is based.

tutorial 1 – Wstep do Processing (Introduction to Processing)

tutorial 2 – Krzywe Beziera (Bezier Curves)

Evolve rings where commissioned and are distributed by Fluid Forms. I have co-designed them together with Krystian Kwiecinski and they are available for purchase since today. They where designed with an aid of an artificial selection in genetic algorithm (GA). I have developed the phenotype together with Krystian and then wrote a purpose-built GA tool for breeding, rather than designing products in Processing. We will convert the GA tool into a configurator for mass customization of the rings. It should become available on Fluid Forms site early in 2010. Below is an explanation of the roots of evolutionary approach in design, which I wrote for the purpose of the launch.

Roots of the Evolve ring generative design process

Today Darwinian model of evolution by natural selection is widely acknowledged. It assumes that a new generation of individuals within a given specie inherits properties of these individuals from the previous generation, which where the most fit to survive. Fitness to survival is always evaluated within a given environment. It is not objective, but a subject to particular conditions which the individual happened to find itself in.

On a metaphorical level, theorists has refereed to evolution of culture, societies and products that they develop. Philip Steadman’s “The Evolution of Designs” from 1979 is a great roadmap of evolutionary metaphor in reference to any kind of artifacts, including designer objects and architecture. Bashford Dean’s study of historical evolution of helmet design or Lane-Fox’s and Pitt-Rivers’ tracing of evolutionary relationships of Australian weapons are just some of the examples discussed in Steadman’s influential book.

With the dawn of computing, evolution could become an applied tool used for seeking answers to particular problems rather than a conceptual model only. Survival of the fittest has been a source of inspiration for developers of “evolutionary algorithms”, which enable navigation through vast spaces of potential solutions in any imaginable field from marketing to transportation. They also help find solutions which are a best fit for given criteria, even if these are very complex and somewhat contradictory. The art world was quick to adapt the notion of evolution and survival of the fittest, but engineering was as well. In the art world William Latham imagined artists growing artworks rather than creating them already in 1985.

Later his renowned collaboration with IBM’s Stephen Todd led to development of the software called “Mutator”. The software literally enabled Latham to breed his sculptures just like the gardener breeds plants. In this case the individual most fit to survive is the one the artist likes the most. The possibility of breeding jewelry is also mentioned in Latham’s and Todd’s contribution to Evolutionary Design by Computers edited by Peter Bentley.

This is in contrast to application of evolution in engineering, where aesthetics do not have a significant impact on the validity of the solution. What is important in this case is performance. An example is the work of dr Peter Bentley and Stephen Manos on optimization of Holey optical fibres. These fibres are able to transmit light on large distances and their capacities are greatly enhanced by small air holes running through their entire length. Question was what shape, size and number of the wholes provides a fibre with best transmission capacity? Looking for an answer with evolutionary computation likely took millions of solutions to develop, but as the process was automated the time lapse was not so big and the results where rewarding.

Evolve ring brings evolution to the design world, not as a metaphor, but as a design tool. In design, aesthetics plays a crucial role, but the design has to be valid from a manufacturing stand point as well. This is why an algorithm used by Michal Piasecki and Krystian Kwiecinski is an amalgam of the GA from the art world and from the engineering world. Michal and Krystian developed a parametric phenotype first. Later Michal unleashed the process of evolution of jewelry and guided it towards the designs, which became the Evolve rings designer’s series from Fluid Forms. These pieces are breed, not designed.