Urban Pollen is a demonstration project for the Polymedia Pixel designed by Tom Barker, Matthias “Hank” Hausler, Kirsty Beilharz and Sam Ferguson. It proposes an overhead mesh network of colour coordinated pixels that track and distribute urban use.The interactive system used the sensory and networked capabilities of the pixel to provide a means of navigating urban space based on personal interests. The project speculated on a distributed network of computation that detected and categorised spatial activity, and then directed public users to zones of use based on information about their desires. This information required a mechanism for sharing personal data, the more data shared with the pixel resulted in greater awareness of public events. This relationship of data and spatial agency sought to invert the current paradigm of the smart city that generates spatial activity to absorb and monetise data rather than benefit the public.
“Metabolic Weave” is a study into weaving 3mm plywood to understand its structural and expressive potential. The project used identical timber elements to create varied visual effects and structures, responding to “mass customisation” and financial constraints of digital fabrication in Sydney. Taking Gottfried Semper’s theory of Metabolism as a base, the project created a structural unit for a larger structure. Semper’s theory categorises architecture based on materials and their usage, grouping them by physical manipulation techniques and assembly methods. The project chose stick-like elements and aimed to explore two assembly techniques, resulting in a versatile building unit capable of transitioning between both assemblies.
The Hex Building is a speculative project, envisioning the architectural potential of a new train station in Bondi, Australia. The design, developed in collaboration with Nicholas Malyon, Leonardo Quinones, and Oliver Petrie, explores the impacts of rail infrastructure on the urban context and future beach suburbs in Sydney. It introduces coastal densification strategies to mitigate environmental, public health, and food access issues associated with population growth and low-density urban planning. The proposed station is a hub for work and life, blending retail, market, and civic functions to cater to both transient and permanent activities. The design focuses on creating new public spaces, enhancing pedestrian routes and providing a balance between the beach attraction and the densified suburb. This project promotes a future where residents can live and work next to the beautiful Bondi beach.
Looking into the public square and station.Corner of the Market.Desire Line Deformation GridKey Organisation MovesShort section through the public square.Ground floor plan.
The ‘Water Table’ project envisioned an aquatic centre at Sydney’s Green Square’s Guyama Park. It sported a rooftop Olympic pool and smaller therapeutic pools, linked visually to the park. The building featured a ‘water skirt’ for climate and aesthetic purposes, aligning with the competition’s water recycling brief. Instead of the usual central placement, our design lifted the pools for easier park access. The park’s design encouraged 24/7 use, with a landscape promoting various activities. It included spaces for water play, greenery, and sports. The design, transitioning from natural to purpose-built landscapes, catered for all ages and activities through surface angle and material diversity.
The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences invited Supermanoeuvre to reinterpret an item from their collection for an event named “Eat the Collection”. The only requirement was that the item had to be a 3D-printed object made from chocolate. We selected a mechanical drawing machine. Our object was an algorithmically generated 3D drawing that traced over an ice cube, creating a dome structure.
The final chocolate artefact resulted from an interplay between the traced line of the 3d printer and the material behaviour of the molten chocolate. This approach required manipulating the printer to deposit material in x,y,z space rather than a typical layering in the z-axis. The chocolate was deposited onto an ice scaffold to negotiate the behaviour of the chocolate, allowing it to cool quickly and adopt a static position in space.
Sydney’s Museums are inherently conservative; both in the way they exhibit artefacts and the architectural devices used to control experience. When you enter any museum you step into a highly curated world where architectural form and artifacts complicity work to modify behaviour. This studio searched for ways to generate more progressive architectural outcomes by first understanding the conservative ideas and tactics that currently delimit the experience museum. Contentious ideas were encouraged and students were required you take a position on how to subvert the museum type. Students mapped museum precedents and visualised them as field conditions of institutional forces and spatial experience. The studio introduced computational theory and techniques, and students learned to rapidly generate and evaluate design outcomes.
In 2015, the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship supported a research project that delved into the maker movement and its relation to architectural spaces. This project, “Making Culture”, investigated how adaptive reuse cultivates and supports communities, particularly those within the maker community. The research aimed to explore how the creation of community spaces could help architects bridge the gap between complex architectural design concepts and the public’s understanding, thereby enhancing the public’s appreciation of architecture.
The Makerspace Playbook broadly defines maker spaces as “ gathering points where communities of new and experienced makers connect to work on real and personally meaningful projects, informed by helpful mentors and expertise, using new technologies and traditional tools”. These spaces are the observable outcome of an emerging means of production based in peer to peer sharing facilitated by access to digital fabrication and communication technology. Jeremy Rifkin (2015) amongst others argue that a shift towards information goods and digital means of production is altering how material objects in everyday life are produced and consumed.
Architects are well placed to become both the leaders and beneficiaries of this social and technological revolution. From model making and 1:1 prototypes to small design build projects, access to digital fabrication tools increase the capabilities of architects while helping to explore the connection between digital design techniques and the material and tectonic traditions of architecture. The research produced an open set of information to enable architects to explore designing and making through community spaces with the potential for alternative social, cultural and economic contexts.
In the United States maker spaces, Tech Shops, or hacker spaces, provide physical space and access to technology and allow communities of people to form with shared social and cultural values. “Making Culture” examines the communities and the virtual and physical spaces that develop around digital making. The study identified key case studies in the US and Australia that represented this emergence in order to learn how they operated and what they achieved.
The spaces identified and visited all similarly occupy forgotten, unwanted or awkward parts of the city. They re-use and adapt existing architecture, opportunistically inhabiting space, geographically distributed by economic real estate forces. Inside these spaces varieties of people engage in making projects whilst connecting socially, seeking common goals, observing collective codes of behaviour, and sharing knowledge and experiences through participation and collaboration.
Rifkin, J. (2015),The Zero Marginal Cost Society; The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism. Palgrave:Macmillan – London.
“Plane To See” is a portable stand showcasing Organic Response’s technology. Developed by Supermanoeuvre, it’s a foldable stand demonstrating OR sensor node capabilities. Its design uses an origami-like form made from Dibond aluminium panels that can nest for storage. The complex geometry of planar surfaces was calculated using Rhino 3D. The stand, fabricated using CNC routing, consists of connected parts with concealed adhesions and nut/bolt fixings.
“Animate Networks” is a project that reimagines Le Corbusier’s Mill Owners Association building in Ahmedabad using timber strands and spatial organization techniques. Developed in collaboration with Rasmus Holst, it employed Rhino 3D software and Python programming to create algorithmically defined geometric forms. The design process involved three computational techniques: a force directed graph simulation for spatial organization, iso-surf system for surface generation, and digital strands representing timber strips for architectural form. The resulting building design was defined by the interaction and turbulence of strand components, arranged by internal and external forces. The project was exhibited at the Australian Institute of Architects digital innovation awards in 2014.
View over the Sabermati RiverMap of Ahmedabad, IndiaInterior of the reimagined building.
The organisation and connection of space were first explored through a force directed graph simulation. This simulation constructed a network system of nodes and links that interacted towards a self-organisation. The nodes were programmed as autonomous agents each with interacting sets of desires and used to organise the proximities of spaces. The links between agents retained the visual and physical connectivity set up through the determined network topology. The system produced multiple outcomes which provided input into the second technique.
2. From the network, an iso-surf system traced thresholds between the linking nodes to produce space defining surfaces. This system could calibrate surface generation through multiple points along each link delivering various outcomes from each tested topology. The series of thresholds that achieved the design criteria encapsulated within the brief provided the basis of the last technique.3. Each surface threshold attained a series of characteristics informing its role in the overall architecture. These surfaces provided a basis to generate a field of point geometry each with a unique identity and set of forming instructions. To create architectural form a series of digitally generated strands representing timber strips connected these points defining different densities of enclosure as an interpretation of door openings, fenestration and wall.Lower Ground PlanGround PlanUpper Floor Plan
The design concept for a retail store applied the technique of robotically fabricated bent metal rods, developed by supermanoeuvre and Matter Design Studio. This project sought to explore the ability of rod bending to create a functional and aesthetic enhancement to an existing space, as previously demonstrated in the 2012 installation Clouds Of Venice.
Front Window DisplayBent Rod Wall DisplayPitch Packaging
