e-Co Architecture: A Cooperative Fab-Lab Exploring Ecological Community Facilities
“Ecological architecture” calls for a paradigm shift in architectural processes, urging designers to consider the externalities imposed on other biological species and the environment. This study aims to explore how salvaged windthrow and other solid wastes can be repurposed and seamlessly integrated into architectural processes. However, upcycling presents unique challenges in volatile material supply, difficult craftsmanship, and design complexity.
“Ecological architecture” calls for a paradigm shift in architectural processes, urging designers to consider the externalities imposed on other biological species and the environment. This study aims to explore how salvaged windthrow and other solid wastes can be repurposed and seamlessly integrated into architectural processes. However, upcycling presents unique challenges in volatile material supply, difficult craftsmanship, and design complexity.
Their cooperative fab-lab initiative works with local communities to innovate and change the way they design and fabricate public facilities using wood upcycling technologies. In fostering socially-sustainable and environmentally-conscious architectural practices, our project questions: “how can local knowledge and emerging technologies be integrated to enhance participatory wood upcycling within architecture design and fabrication?”.
Novel tools in metaverse and automation technologies may help to democratise design knowledge and bridge skills gaps, advancing cooperative processes between different stakeholders. The resulting craftsmanship documentary, waste wood digital twin library, and phygital co-creation and co-production pipeline contributes to more informed community practices in ecological architecture for design practitioners and researchers.
- 2024
- Grantee: Provides Ng, Boyuan Yu, and Jianing Luo
Provides Ng is a Ph.D at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and a Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL). She is a co-founder of international R&D collectives, specialised in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in volumetric cinema and bio-inspired design: Current.cam and R.E.Ar_. Her work has been exhibited at renowned venues worldwide, including Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Multimedia Art Museum Moscow, Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture 2022 and more.
Boyuan Yu is a Ph.D at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) and the University of Oxford. He is a Hong Kong Center for Construction Robotics researcher and the Environmental Behavior Branch of the Architectural Society of China. His research interest is in circular engineering and autonomous architecture, with works featured in Nature Portfolio, Wood Central, and the Bartlett B-Pro show with a Bronze prize.
Jianing Luo graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) and holds a Master of Architecture degree. As a former researcher at Tsinghua University, his research focuses on digital fabrication, sustainable building design and construction, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), and the application of reclaimed materials in generative design and construction. His works won the B-Pro Show Bronze Prize from the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL).