Phriends* for Shells           Seminar 01 at IAAC Barcelona

Teaching team

Stephanie Chaltiel Innochain IAAC UPC PhD candidate

During the Phriends* for Shells robotic fabrication Seminar this year part of the Master of Advanced Architecture, students fabricated 5 earthen shells with perforations and non uniform thickness.

This work has started with the very quick edification of bending branches and elastic fabric temporary form work. As a form finding experiment, the idea was to leave the branches bend the way they naturally do.

The shells were scanned at different stages of the fabrication to allow ‘RobotSpraying’ trajectories fine tuning.

RobotSpraying applied for this fabrication process needs a significant amount of adjusting in terms of intermittent vs continuous trajectories, Spraying by points or by lines, the velocity, pressure, pace, angle, distance to the support.

By varying those parameters in the digital world, participants were invited to observe the system performance in terms of material robotic deposition on the formwork in the physical world. (Good adherence and uniform texture)

Constant manual craft in between Robotic fabrication were adjusted according to the phasing. Some layers of clay and sand were more or less fibrous, with different levels of viscosity.

on the 12th of March in the morning the very calm and sunny moment of removing the branches and fabric with a bit of fear but with much joy to discover each unique earthen shell stands and reveals new aesthetics.

The same day the students show their progress and some drafts of their future videos during a second critics session.

The technique developed during this seminar doesn’t have any existing literature, as we’re creating a new robotic and manual fabrication method inspired by vernacular earth architecture. the students of this seminar are therefore creating history in the meticulous development of those new highly sustainable techniques.

To be continued as the submission on the 1 st of June will reveal the final shells with smooth edges, cactus sauce coating, and videos showing the beauty of robotic movements married to enjoyable manual craft.