Tutors: Toby Burgess and Arthur Mamou-Mani
Toby Burgess is the director of Toby Burgess Design Ltd. He has previously been design tutor on the Architectural Association’s Design and Make Course and taught the Advanced Digital Design Master’s at London Metropolitan University, with a focus on the funding and delivery of live student projects, designed and fabricated using digital design tools.
Arthur Mamou-Mani is an architect, and director of the award-winning practice Mamou-Mani, specialising in a new kind of digitally designed and fabricated architecture. Arthur is a lecturer at the University of Westminster. In 2020 the Architects’ Journal named Mamou-Mani one of its 100 ‘Disruptor’ practices. Alongside his architectural practice,Arthur founded the digital fabrication laboratory FabPub.
Eco-Parametric Architecture: Circular design & fabrication
SUSTAINABILITY FIRST. DS10 looks for novel solutions to sustainability issues in all its forms. We value digital exploration on the threshold between structure and ornament, coupled with thorough material testing and are interested in realistic and efficient buildings that contribute to a more sustainable society.
Brief 01: 3D Off-Grid Inhabited Pre-Fab Bio Machines
Working with Artificial Intelligence tools such as Midjourney and Dall-e, students generated architectural prototypes which were expanded into parametric models using Grasshopper3D to create novel and inhabited spaces; fusing architecture with living elements such as plants, trees, soils etc.
They focused on using A.I. for design linked to a specific industrial manufacturing process, such as folding, extrusion or 3D printing, and through the process came to an understanding of how to realise a manufacturing-informed dream.
Armed with these tools, students embraced an entrepreneurial spirit, designing a small building as a product which they rendered in great detail, and developed a business plan for the product they created.
Factors such as transport, material and manufacturing constraints were considered and understood in terms of the cost-profit margin, leading to the creation of sustainably powered, off grid proposals.
We will continue to explore the relationship of living elements with architecture beyond food production, using plants for shade, thermal control, material production etc.
Brief 02: Derelict London
In response to the compounded energy, cost of living, and housing crises, students explored refurbishing derelict buildings in London.They created novel and highly sustainable new buildings from old with innovative and forward thinking programmes; a real place in a greener future London designed as highly efficient, closed-loop buildings and systems, minimising energy wastage at all stages of design, construction and operation.
Students defined new and unexpected programmes of their choice. Creating sustainable closed loop communities from modular building systems, they exploited the full potential of off-site manufacturing, harvesting and efficiently managing energy and water to offer new economic opportunities to its inhabitants or users.