Digital design takes to the beach
Thirty-five students engaged in a summer workshop run by ABP’s Ex-Lab (The Experimental Design Lab) will construct an intriguing public installation on St Kilda beach, as part of the 2011 St Kilda Festival.
The installation will be the creative result of a ‘Digital Design and Fabrication’ workshop – an intensive 4-week course which introduces students to advanced digital modeling and parametric design software with a focus on producing physical objects through different digital fabrication methods.
Students are introduced to design processes that promote performance-driven designs that can adapt to their setting as live organisms adapt to their habitats. Harnessing the power of computing allows the designer to define parameters that will express the final outcome and quickly visualize the multitude of potential results. The workshop culminates in the design, fabrication and construction of the St Kilda installation, a piece that will explore this potential by allowing the final form of the installation to be defined by the participants at the festival by following a simple set of rules, much like the growth of a simple organism.
These processes and themes are explored through utilising advanced computational design tools allowing students to explore the multitude of possible results and rapidly analyze them as physical objects through the use fabrication equipment including laser cutting and 3D printing. These fabrication and design tools allow students to extend their creative ideas in an environment which encourages experimentation.
Workshop Coordinator Jas Johnston said there was an overwhelming response from people wanting to enroll in the workshop, indicating a keen interest in this relatively new area of design.
‘We received 170 expressions of interest and over 70 applications for only 35 places. Clearly there is a high interest in parametric and computational design. We are offering students from all levels, as well as industry professionals, the opportunity to extend their knowledge of digital modeling and parametric design and collaborate on an exciting project which will have a huge public exposure.’
Johnston says that being part of an event like the St Kilda Festival will provide huge public exposure of the student’s work. “Potentially thousands of people will view and interact with our installation over the Festival Day.”
The workshop process and installation, featuring an interview with Jas Johnston and Bachelor of Environments student Josh Batterham, was captured on film for a recent episode of Visions.
The Ex-Lab is a Melbourne based design and research collective - coming out of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning – created in 2010 to promote the creative utilization of digital techniques in design. Taking inspiration from complex systems in nature, the collective promotes performance-driven designs that can adapt to their setting as live organisms adapt to their habitats.