Barak Pelman and Lior Skoury
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel
Can Robots Change the Way Architects Work?
The presentation describes the development of a Design-Build process which uses a milling robotic-arm for a fabrication of a small scale architectural structure out of recycled natural tree branches. This was part of a 9 -week DesignBuild studio-course for third-year architecture students, held in summer 2018, at the Architecture Department of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.
The motivation for the development of the process came from an environmental challenge: Cities in Israel are responsible for about 500K tons of pruned branches each year. These branches are normally crashed and used either for compost production or as soil-cover in an expensive down-cycling process. A design and fabrication process that will be able to use these un-regular tree branches will enable more options for the re-use of non-standard structural material in architecture.
This challenge provoked a new design process that includes new architectural representation techniques, and new workflow of software and hardware. It includes: collecting branches that was trimmed by Jerusalem municipality through gardening routings, 3D scanning and indexing them by shape, kind and structural quality, designing a shading device based on this raw material using computerized optimization techniques, designing automated CNC joinery system for the robotic milling arm and assembly of all parts on-site.
The process was documented here and here.
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Barak Pelman is an architect, researcher and educator. He is interested in: Hybrid Design, HRI, Sustainable and environmental design, and design through making (Hands-on 1:1 experimental design and construction). He studied architecture at Tel-Aviv University (2006 with distinction) and at Helsinki University of Technology (The Wood program 2004 link), and he holds a Master's Degree in Sustainable Environmental Design from the Architectural Association School of Architecture London (2008) where he also taught at the Environment and Energy studies Program (link), and at the M.Arch Design & Make (link). He is trained in traditional and contemporary crafting techniques working with various building materials including iron, wood, concrete and earth.
He teaches design studio at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem where he also serves as the academic coordinator of the second year. In addition, he runs the DesignBuild Summer Studio at Bezalel which focuses on the process of making and the experimenting with materials as the driving force of architectural design.
Barak is also a PhD candidate at Design Hybrid Lab which focuses on digital design, craft and fabrication, and human-computer interaction.
Lior Skoury is an architect and a computational design professional. He studied architecture at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (B.arch) and specialized in computational design at the AA visiting school and the University of NSW.
He is an expert in parametric design tools and Python programming, and believes that in today’s architecture and design world, the digital tools are an integral part of the designer toolbox. He teaches digital tools at the Bezalel Academy for 3rd year’s Architecture students as well as the Design&Build Summer Studio. In Addition he teaches Digital Fabrication methods at the Colman Management College.
Beside teaching, Lior is the CPO at ParaGroup Company, a company that specialized in parametric and computational design for the AEC industry.