MODULAR HOUSING
Masters Studio | Participation and Industrialization
Combinatorics, Robotic Assembly & Fabrication Aware Digital Timber
Project Level : Academic Project
Project Type : Group Project
Location : London, United Kingdom
Duration : Masters Project (2023)
Project Supervisor : Tommaso Casucci, Vishu Bhooshan
The world’s growing urban population has created a pressing need for more residential buildings. To address this challenge, our project has leveraged the power of combinatorics and fabrication-aware digital timber to create modular housing. We’ve designed livable units using discrete elements, which were combined to form single houses. A constraint-based solver was then used to aggregate the single houses creating multi-level habitats. Additionally, we employed 3D graphic statics to form-find a stable column design, which we then materialized. To achieve custom bespoke joinery for the nodes, we used robotic additive manufacturing and tested various slicing techniques in order to save time and resources. Our innovative approach to modular housing has the potential to provide sustainable and affordable housing solutions for communities around the world.
Case Study
Unit Aggregation
Rules are defined for connection of a tile/defined space with other tiles depending upon single or multiple connections. The plugin Wasp by Andrea Rossi is used which allows generation of specific aggregation composed of strategies and rules, described as an instruction to orient one tile over a selected connection of another tile.
Unit variations
Wasp works on growth and can have random outputs driven by machine learning algorithm. Optimum assemblies of 2 x 4 grid are chosen on parameters like Floor plan, foot print and the placing of the outdoor space and taken forward for further aggregation from units to a building. A bounding box or a cage encapsulates this entire grid containing a unit and then is taken forward to further achieve an aggregation for a cluster/building.
Cluster Aggregation
A tile/unit score has been included as part of the Module properties in the algorithm. Each tile gets assigned a percentage score for Usable Area, Green space, Internal Circulation, Circulation and Void space.
The individual tile score for each unit is aggregated and normalized by the number of units in a cluster to calculate the overall score for the aggregation. This gives the user the ability to evaluate the aggregations straight away.
Structural Form Finding - 3D Graphic Statics
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Node Design Investigation
Planar Printing - 3,4,5 Valence Nodes
Robotic Planar Print
Robotic Non Planar Print
Robotic Non Planar Print with AIBuild
Robotic Fabrication
Manual assembly showed some practical issues which led to design modifications. Material tolerance can become a reason for inaccuracies or instability. A limit band was added to avoid further movement of the timber onto the node arm.
Secondly, for the ease of robotic assembly we made the node ends conical, similar to a space ship docking mechanism, so even if there’s a tolerance gap, the conical shape can guide the timber member into position.
