Module 7 - an Exhibition by KASA at the Avenues Mall...

The Kuwait Architectural Students Association, or KASA, will be exhibiting at the Avenues Mall from the 4th to the 8th of April, 2010. These events are always worth s visit as, particularly the student work produced by the various 'creative' faculties at KU, have always something interesting and catalytic to offer...

The opening ceremony will take place on Sunday, April 4th, at 7 pm, and is presented under the patronage of Sheikh Talal Al-Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah.

Using a SensAble Haptic Interface...

I finally managed to download the included short videos of me using a Sensable Phantom haptic interface, which was used in the making of the Finger Run tablets and the Snakeskin tactile interface... The device and the accompanying software allow one to 'feel', and thus control & design, things on the screen through the sense of touch... The video above was filmed a few years back, at our old floating office on the HMS President 1918, docked by to the Blackfriars bridge by the Thames Embankment (opposite the Oxo Tower) in London... The video below shows a screen-shot of how this voxel based software, which allows one to design and manipulate the 'digital-clay' on the screen... Both the above mentioned designs were eventually fabricated through various both subtractive and additive CAM processes...

Making Mud-Bricks, Omani Style (Ourselves)...

Included are a few posters depicting our own attempts at making mud-bricks. The original posting showing images from our visit to Bahla fort where we learned the process can be accessed by clicking here...

It's all fun, fun, fun under the (very bright and hot) sun, sun, sun...

The 100th Blog Entry...

This is the 100th blog posting on the smArchitecture blog which, based on the intended average of at least one blog entry a week, is still ahead of schedule (the blogs first entry took place in early December, 2008). It's a tough but satisfying itch to write and keep up with both this as well as the Kuwait School blogs, which in unison require more time and effort than initially expected. But, as they also perform the role of catalysts and mediums within which to generate, explore further and clarify various ideas, they have become something which on a personal level have become a necessity to regularly consider and update (I have never bothered to find out or follow how many people actually bother to follow my blogs, and and some level, don't really care)...

Let's see where they stand when the 200 mark is reached...

Favorite Buildings/ Structures Visited - Nizwa Dam, Oman

Hokusai eat your heart out..?!

Making Mud Bricks (Omani Style)...

I'm teaching a class in 'Architectural Conservation & Preservation' in which we've decided to take a slightly skewed take on the topic, more of that later, but to commence this valid subject matter we're going to attempt to build a 1:5 scale space using traditional (Omani) mud-bricks. To allow us to understand what this would actually involve we managed to find and visit (thanks to my industrious and well connected students Ali and Khaled) an actual mud-brick making facility at Bahla Castle, an ongoing restoration project taking place approximately thirty-five kilometers from Nizwa. Apparently the castle's/ fort's restoration has been going on for a few decades by now, which makes it (particularly in the context of the Gulf) a unique and commendable project indeed. During our visit we had the opportunity to inspect the mud-brick making process from start to finish, the stages of which are outlined (in brief) below...

(Please click on the imags to inspect them in more detail)...

Pits adjacent to the site where the clay is initially settled and stored...

The process starts by bringing the clay to the site where it needs to be stored in adjacent clay-pits (as seen above) for at least a month before it can be used. It has to be wetted regularily...

A pile of clay intended for bricks...

Once 'aged'/ settled enough to use, the clay can be adapted to two primary uses - as bricks or as mortar and screed (which seem to be more or less the same). The clay for bricks is thicker (seen above), more viscous, than the clay used as mortar (seen below) which is stored in dug out 'cubicles' also located next to the site.

The clay used for mortar and screed...

The clay used as mortal can seemingly be used as is, whilst the thicker clay intended for bricks needs some post-processing. This involves mixing it with dry straw, done manually by foot (in a somewhat similar fashion to crushing grapes for wine - see image below) as well as shovel, at a roughly 3/4 clay - 1/4 straw ratio (or 1 wheel-barrow of clay, 2 bucket fulls of straw). This mixture is allowed to settle for a day...

Mixing clay, water and straw for the mud-bricks...

Their boots act as evidence of their tramp-led/ing toils...

Delivery of mixed (brick making) goods...

The mixed clay is brought to the brick making site in wheel-barrows, where it is put into molds (see below) and allowed to dry for five days in the shade and two additional days exposed to the sun. The most common brick size is 30 x 15 x 15 altough the option of making them 35 x 15 x 15 or 13 x 10 x 15 also exists... The workers at the Bahla site made on average between 250 - 400 mud-bricks a day...

Making mud bricks...

The mud-brick making process - The inside of the mold is lubricated with a watery coat of clay; the clay is packed into the mold up to its rim and the top surface is flattened and smoothed by hand; the mold is lifted off the brick and the process is repeated...

A few examples of different, both wood and metal, molds used...

The mud-bricks are allowed to dry for five days in the shade, and two additional days exposed to the sun...

Included below are some additional images from the Bahla Castle/ Fort in which restoration the bricks are used.

Regarding our project we eventually plan to take what we learn from making the bricks ourselves and expand on the remit to hopefully also include a updated/ adjacent take on what using such materials and processes could actually entail. This might involve experimenting with alternative binding materials to straw (look at GRC as an example) or, say, apply some lessons from contemporary rammed earth construction (updates will be included as the project progresses)...

Bahla Castle/ Fort...

Watch tower...

Smiling wall...

Above and below - examples of various textures and aggregates used in the various mud-brick walls at Bahla Caste/ Fort...

More Edible 3D Printing...

One more 3D print to chew (over)...

The project in this entry has already been floating around the blog-sphere for a while, but as it relates to some of the more recent posts dealing with a similar topic I though it might be worthy to also be included here (to access the original posts click here and here)... Apparently Philips Design in Eindhoven have also dabbled with some ideas relating to bespoke food production in the context of Additive Manufacturing. Somewhat suggestive of Heston Blumenthal's culinary inventions, this, still conceptual, project which is a part of the company's Design Probes scheme, which aims to explore and predict (guesstimate) how we might live in a decade or two. The design, which works in a similar fashion to a 3D Printer, would 'fabricate' (cook and assemble) a meal based on each individuals nutritional needs (which would be read through a 'scanning wand' nutritional monitor) and partly from food grown in ones own Home Farm...

Click here for a link to the original article...

A link to a related R&D project by Philips Design, which in this instance aims to 'enrich' the act of consumpting food through the stimulation of a more multi-dimensional perceptual realm, can be viewed by clicking here...

Original image from the Dezeen blog...

Reverse Biomimetics - Mushrooms that look like they'd been CAD/ CAM'ed...

Our partner from the UK office, Paul Brady, sent us these photos of mushrooms which he thought looked like they could have been made through sone of the additive manufacturing processes, an interesting and astute observation, suggestive of something that could be termed 'reverse biomimetics', i.e. instead of a biological entity influencing a design, one designs a biological entity... There are a number of individuals who already have touched upon related/ similar ideas such as Francois Roche of R&Sie(n), Marcos Novak, Jonas Runberger and Marcos Cruz, to mention a few, and also, of course, some of the stuff in process at places such as the AA DRL, the Biomimicry Institute, and the Center for Biomimetics at the University of Reading.

As fleeting influences abound, why not learn from the core natural/ biological source which have had eons to develop the various most optimized solutions to the various bountiful queries we engage with daily...

Mud Village, Firq, Oman...

Whilst flaneuring (as one does) around some residential neighbourhoods in and around Nizwa, I came across an abandoned village completely consistent of rows upon blocks of two floor, assumedly residential, mud houses. They seem to have been abandoned for a while, as much of the debris surrounding these, now mostly collapsed and fragmented, buildings showed decades worth of wear & tear. However, what was still standing retained its own kind of gentle and sparingly sublime presence. These types of building can be found scattered most residential neighbourhoods in Nizwa, but usually only as singles or in pairs. Their narrow and shaded passages held their own intimate charm, which in scale and proportion were clearly laid out for the benefit of ambulatory users rather than the more substantial, and somewhat crude, demands of motorized vehicles. In their dishelved state, the few blocks of the village become perhaps even more evocative and catalytic than they would be if pristine. As ruins the buildings leave room for the imagination to, literarily, fill the gaps. Here 'what ifs' abound. A collapsed roof becomes an eloquent pergola, a protruding beam turns into a (dust?!) diving board, a shaded cranny assumes the form of a cozy nook. The mud walls of the place engage a more intimate, perhaps even domestic, sensory paradigm, where the width of the passages separating the buildings is narrow enough to allow one to run ones fingers simultaneously across both of the flanking walls, catch an olfactory whiff (guided to you by these same walls) from the nearby date-palm plantation, and, even from a distance, apprehend the muffled, steel-framed, clatter of a bicyclist making his way across the adjacent gravel paved road...

The village captures and reflects some of the timeless qualities which remain essential in all typologies of building, regardless of age, style, culture, function, or status...