CIEE is a student exchange program for undergraduate students from the United States of America. As a computational design assistant in IAAC, I had the change to work with the students and help them develop their projects, introduce them to material research, digital fabrication and computational design for data visualization and form finding.
The students gained an understanding of architecture and design within an emerging global context. The pursued hands-on design work in a state-of-the-art studio using the latest technology to address an aspect of the current global environmental crisis.
TENSE
TENSE is project that aims to create a new way to represent architecture in public space; more specifically, to use architecture to reinvent a site to create an immersive space that is informed by specific site characteristics. This creates a new and improved flow of circulation as well as a set of program acrivities. Students examined the structural properties of string in tension and developed a proposal for a plaza in Barcelona working simultaenously in ubran and 1:1 scale.
TENTE DE CEMENT
TENTE DE CEMENT is project that explores tensile structures and fabric formwork. The students examined the structural properties of fabric in tension and developed a proposal for a plaza Commercial in Barcelona.
The material behaviour experiments were conducted within an apparatus developed during the term by the students. The objective was to understand the way tensile structures work, in order to later use the tensed fabric as a mold for casting the final structure’s modules.
The proposal´s aim is to tackle the three main issues that the plaza faces, lack of seating areas, shadow and vegetation. The final design manages to cover a broad surface area, while not disrupting the circulation of pedestrians and bikers and providing shadow to the terraces of the restaurants of the plaza. It is composed by double- curved minimal surface modules that are joined together with 3D printed elements.
