Hybrid structures and new applications: Exploring digital fabrication at Jacobs Hall
A reconfigurable lampshade, a portable scientific instrument, an affordable tool for surgery planning: these student projects may not seem to have much in common. Despite their wide-ranging focuses, however, all three are the products of courses that used resources in Jacobs Hall to explore digital fabrication technology during the fall 2017 semester. As the digital fabrication landscape — which encompasses a range of prototyping and manufacturing processes driven by computer-controlled machines, from 3D printing to waterjet cutting — rapidly evolves, interdisciplinary courses at Jacobs Hall are providing new opportunities for students to learn and create at the cutting edge of these technologies.
Digital fabrication is of great interest to Simon Schleicher, an assistant professor of architecture who studies how novel processes and overlooked structural behaviors can transform even inexpensive, flimsy materials into functional components. This fall, Schleicher led a graduate-level course, Flexible Hybrid Structures, in Jacobs Hall, prompting students to explore diverse materials’ properties through a mix of hands-on experimentation, background research, and digital simulation. Over the course of the semester, students were challenged to develop applications for easily available materials, using bending, assembly, and custom joinery — created using 3D printing and other digital technologies — to connect soft and elastic materials for augmented function. For Schleicher, this materials-driven assignment is fundamentally about “how you can design a shape, structure, form, and function when you don’t know what the final product is.” He notes that while this open-ended approach is familiar to most architecture students, “what’s relatively new to them is the availability of digital tools that can help them.”
Flexible Hybrid Structures encouraged students to explore digital and physical realms simultaneously. As the semester progressed, students moved from playful charrettes (such as one in which they used wires and soap to explore bending) into research on inspirations ranging from pneumatic structures to Fibonacci numbers in plants, and finally into more systematic modeling and early prototyping. As they built on early ideas and began to hone in on potential applications for the materials and techniques they found compelling, they used equipment at Jacobs Hall — particularly the entry-level 3D printers, which allow for accessible, inexpensive experimentation — to push their prototyping further.
Jacobs Hall “allows us to quickly prototype and iterate designs over multiple stages,” says Schleicher, noting that the building enables students to easily move from early prototyping with entry-level equipment toward refinement with more advanced machines. “One can start really cheap and low-tech,” he says, “but along the way, as your project matures, you can grow into an infrastructure that provides you with better tools, better printers.” As students explored these tools and how they might advance their ideas, Jacobs Institute staff helped support these efforts, with design specialist Kent Wilson serving as a project mentor throughout the course.
Ultimately, four distinct projects emerged from this process. Challenged to work at a 1:1 scale — in other words, to create objects at their actual size, rather than creating models for larger structures—student teams created wide-ranging standalone objects. Two groups created furniture projects: one team designed a reconfigurable lamp that allows users to reshape a lampshade in numerous formations, while another team used custom 3D-printed nodes to build a coffee table that could support a significant load while remaining lightweight and easy to disassemble. A third group considered shelter beyond the home, creating a portable “cocoon” to be used as a place to rest in outdoor environments. Finally, one team, which included students from architecture as well as electrical engineering and computer sciences, combined carbon fiber and bending sensors to make an interactive instrument they termed the “elastic harp,” allowing users to play with sound and light through simple sliding motions.
These kinds of experimentations will continue this spring, as Schleicher leads a Flexible Hybrid Structures II course in Jacobs Hall. In this and future class iterations, Schleicher hopes to continue to build an interdisciplinary community, with particular interests in structural engineering, electrical engineering and computer sciences, and biology in addition to architecture. His approach to the Flexible Hybrid Structures course sequence centers on “building up a set of knowledge and a culture, so that the next class can benefit from the last one:” students can take both the fall and spring course, or choose to take just one, with options for students to take existing projects in new directions. As part of this ongoing evolution, Schleicher also hopes to expand his students’ use of equipment at Jacobs Hall, including digital fabrication tools like the building’s waterjet cutter and CNC router.
Elsewhere in Jacobs Hall, another advanced course explored this broad array of machines from a different angle this past fall. Digital Fabrication Everywhere, taught by Jacobs Institute faculty director Bjoern Hartmann, prompted graduate students from multiple departments to delve into the rapidly evolving digital fabrication landscape. Over the course of the semester, students surveyed this ecosystem, studying key research, gaining familiarity with relevant technologies, and trying out equipment in Jacobs Hall’s labs. As they got to know the technology, they also considered its deployment in industries that range from construction to healthcare, both currently and in the near future.
From there, the students began to develop and prototype their own concepts for applications of digital fabrication technologies. Their projects took wide-ranging directions, reflecting the course’s interdisciplinary makeup. Translational medicine students Daniel Beckerman and Billy Kim, working in collaboration with orthopedic surgeons at UCSF, used entry-level 3D printers to prototype scale models of patient bones for surgery planning and patient education. Laura Cuconati and Erik Jurisch drew from their architecture backgrounds as they experimented with Jacobs Hall’s waterjet cutter to create an origami-inspired table, while integrative biology student Aaron Pomerantz prototyped a hand-powered centrifuge that could serve as an affordable, portable instrument for scientific fieldwork and education.
One student team focused its efforts on the lesser-known lab processes that surround advanced 3D printing, particularly cutting-edge 3D printers like the Carbon M1 that sits in Jacobs Hall’s advanced prototyping lab. Members of this project team, composed of mechanical engineering students Jacqueline Elwood, Ilbey Karakurt, and Eric Sweet, had previously used the advanced prototyping lab’s printers for research in areas like microfluidics, and noticed that the cleaning process (which involves the removal of resins) for prototypes made with the M1 could be improved to better allow for work at very small scales. Over the course of the semester, the team aimed to optimize this process, experimenting with new methods to facilitate their research and that of their fellow researchers in the advanced prototyping lab. It’s a project with real potential for impact: the lab is home to a growing user base, with students and faculty using the M1 and other tools for projects that include structural research and medical device development.
From emerging architects to scientific researchers, Berkeley students are helping drive new explorations of digital fabrication. At Jacobs Hall, diverse courses and programs provide opportunities for these students to experiment within an active community, connecting design innovators exploring emerging technologies and their applications for health, urban design, education, and much more. The hope is that this interdisciplinary exchange continues to grow, enabling students to link advanced technological exploration with a cross-section of design perspectives. “What’s really cool about Jacobs Hall,” says Schleicher, as he discusses the iteration of his Flexible Hybrid Structures course that will begin next week, “is that it gives these ambitions a location.”
By Laura Mitchell
