Mollie Claypool

OUR
AUTOMA
AUTOM
FUTURE
A Discrete
Framework for
the Production
of Housing

46
 Ossama Elkholy,
Cooperative Casting,
Unit 19,
Design Computation Lab (DCL),
Bartlett School of Architecture,
University College London (UCL), London,
2018

In Cooperative Casting, a discrete kit of ½ EPS moulds that can attach

to one another are used to assist in a quick initial deployment and
occupation of the sites, enabling users to negotiate living space with
their neighbour by rotating the combined uncast pieces. Casting
the moulds adds permanence to the user’s dwellings, but more
importantly becomes used as a negotiation tool for further adaptation,
expansion or evolution of the building as a whole.

TED
What are the social, economic and
political consequences of a shift
towards full automation for the
production of architecture – and,
specifically, housing? It is a question
that an experimental studio within
the Design Computation Lab at
the Bartlett School of Architecture,
University College London has been
exploring for several years. The
lab’s co-director Mollie Claypool
discusses the philosophical,
theoretical and design background
against which their investigations
have been carried out, and presents
some of the housing fabrication
projects that they have produced.

47
In a world plagued by a housing crisis where millions historical light, reveal themselves to be simple continuities.’4
live without adequate shelter, how can a fully automated A new generation of designers are now questioning the lack
production chain for architecture enable us to produce more of social value and impact of the work of previous generations
quickly, more efficiently and with highly reduced costs, of the digital which was ultimately unable to translate into
housing that can respond to changes in family structures, architecture and which holds real positive value for, and of,
in the way we organise our communities, and in how we the wider public. That work, using Srnicek’s terms, therefore
relate to our physical and virtual environments? How can constitutes ‘simple continuities’. This is aligned with the
the automation of the built environment enable us to rethink argument towards the discretisation of the spline that the
the way in which we incorporate these technologies and architectural historian Mario Carpo argued for in his essay
new social and economic frameworks into architectural ‘Breaking the Curve’ in Artforum in 2014.5 It draws on work
design and construction practices that engage with wider on digital materials by Neil Gershenfeld at Massachusetts
communities that include architects and contractors, but also Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Bits and Atoms who
users/inhabitants, policymakers and/or other stakeholders? defined a digital material as being ‘assembled from a discrete
How does this social awareness affect historical and cultural set of parts, reversibly joined in a discrete set of relative
understandings of the meaning and value of what the Discrete positions and orientations’.6 Digital materials by their very
holds for architecture? These are some of the questions which nature are able to transcend scales and platforms due to their
have been the catalyst for a body of work produced over the (geometric, structural, material) abstraction and therefore can
last four years in Unit 19, an experimental architectural design be more inclusive and equitable as a framework for design.
studio that is part of the Design Computation Lab (DCL) at An all-digital Discrete approach has roots in 20th-century
the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London architecture, particularly in the work of Jean Prouvé (Maison
that develops Discrete, automated frameworks for the Tropicale, 1949–52), Buckminster Fuller (exemplified by his
production of housing. book Nine Chains to the Moon, 1938) and Frei Otto (notably
There are several paradigms that Unit 19’s work has the Munich Olympic Stadium, 1972) who developed entire
contextualised itself against, within and/or in reaction to, production chains for their projects (amongst others surely
as a means of projecting potential possibilities for the also recognised elsewhere in this issue of 2). However,
future of architectural design and construction. The work these architects were still limited by the modernist paradigm
draws on the writings of contemporary philosophers and for architectural syntax – ie column, beam, floor slab, stair
theorists, and notably on technological left-accelerationism etc (although Fuller made some progress in disrupting this
as expounded by Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams, Benjamin with the Dymaxion House (1930), as did Otto). When we
Bratton and the collective Laboria Cuboniks. Contextualising move away from building elements being specific to their
the work alongside manifestos such as Laboria Cuboniks’ architectural function and towards an architecture made of a
‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’ (2015), Unit discrete set of parts, then we begin to move into the wholly
19 believes in the need to ‘strategically deploy existing digital paradigm, thinking of building blocks as open-ended,
technologies to re-engineer the world’.1 This is not an scalable, universal and versatile. Contemporary projects
impossible challenge, nor is it ‘a free-floating project, since such as WikiHouse (2011–) or the work by Ensamble Studio
[the] frameworks […] already exist and have traction in the such as Cyclopean House (2014–16) are attempts to pursue
world’.2 It requires an assessment of, engagement with, and aspects of a wholly digital project. WikiHouse still exists within
disruption of the economic, social and political issues that earlier digital paradigms because it is a highly bespoke and
currently restrain societal shifts towards Discrete design and customised model for the production of housing. Similarly,
full automation, whether these are political, economic or the Cyclopean House has a high degree of fixity even though
cultural, or are stereotypes or discriminatory practices. it utilises distributed manufacturing and is made of a discrete
kit of parts.
Finally, We Are Digital
Architecture is a profoundly material discipline that must Prosumerist Co-production
acknowledge whom it is supposed to serve in more Today’s smart gadgets and devices that emphasise an
meaningful and valuable ways. To work with a Discrete model individualised and real-time fully customisable experience
is therefore to be against neoliberalism, monopolisation, of the built environment are ubiquitous. This paradigm of
centralisation, customisation, localism, consumerism, the the individual is ignorant of the meaning and value that that
analogue, non-scalability, and highly Discrete and laborious individual could add to the process of producing their physical
design production (some being qualities of ‘folk politics’).3 environment: it is merely the customisation of a standard.
By promoting systemic thinking, universal and flexible The ‘end-user’ has a limited amount of perceived value in this
frameworks, economies of scale, platforms, open-source, kind of economic model. Unit 19/DCL is against privileging
decentralisation, the prototypical, mobility, prosumerism, the the notion of the ‘end-user’ as well as customisation for the
digital, scalability, and continuity in design production, we can sake of a ‘personalised’ architecture, and is for the integration
propose an ‘all digital’ or ‘wholly digital’ Discrete approach to of the ‘user’ at all stages of design, fabrication, assembly
the automation of housing production. and inhabitation of architecture. Unit 19 projects recognise
As Srnicek explains further in Platform Capitalism that the way in which many digital technologies have been
(2016), ‘in order to understand our contemporary situation, used succumb to the constraints and protocols determined
it is necessary to see how it links with what preceded it. by systems of power and centralised networks of capital and
Phenomena that appear to be radical novelties may, in capitalist production.

48
 By advocating a participatory, co-produced framework
for housing, the concept of ‘prosumption’ or the ‘prosumer’
rather than consumption and the consumer can be engaged
with. This enables prosumer(s) – embedded at each stage of
the design, fabrication and assembly process, and over the
course of the period of ownership of the house – to increase
the value of their own impact into the architectural system by
embedding their knowledge into our systems of production.
The work of Ivo Tedbury (2017), notably his Unit 19 project
semblr, explored developing open-source software such as
web- or desktop-based apps that enable non-specialised
users (the ‘layman’) to access design tools in order to use
them to specify their needs and test different outcomes, using
economic, physical (eg site-based) and/or social constraints to
do so. Users can specify how many parts they need according As in many Unit 19 projects, semblr proposes an online platform where users can test
potential building outcomes utilising specific constraints such as financial, familial,
to their current needs, taking into account any possible contextual or other requirements which are constrained against structural, material
predictions for required adaptations over time to changing and geometric possibilities of the kit of parts.

financial or social circumstances.

Ivo Tedbury,
semblr,
Unit 19,
Design Computation Lab (DCL),
Bartlett School of Architecture,
University College London (UCL),
London,
2017

The system’s technical foundation is a single syntax for cross-disciplinary

coordination between the building elements (and their geometry), and the
robot’s end effector (tested here with an industrial robot).

In semblr, discrete timber building

blocks and distributed robots that
move relative to the structure
that they assemble make up the
building assembly process.

This platform enables outcomes to

be tested for changes that may be
required over time, allowing users
to expand or contract their home
as required, making it more or less
permanent depending on lifestyle
or other constraints.

49
Automated Redistribution
Fully automated technologies can also aid in the
predicting of how the system may cope with or
anticipate changes in the future, as well as reducing the
amount of human labour (and therefore a degree of
overall cost of design and construction). Autonomous
robots can be used to assemble, disassemble and
reassemble houses entirely, picking up parts and
distributing them where required, as in Ivo Tedbury’s
project semblr (2017). These techniques require
substantially less human labour than is typical of
traditional construction or assembly of housing,
enabling a redistribution of resources across society.
On a larger scale, by designing into the framework a
chance for wider community-led engagement with the
geometric (structural, spatial, material), economic and
social rules of the part-to-whole relationships that are
built into discrete kits of parts, communities at whatever
scale can inform the way that the social, political or
economic models of the whole (eg the architectural
outcomes) are realised. More traditional construction
materials such as precast concrete can be utilised
alongside discrete kits of vacuum-formed moulds that
allow for relatively quick, repetitive fabrication of parts,
such as in Oscar Walheim’s project Avila Automatic
(2017). Lightweight materials such as foam (sprayed
with fibre-reinforced concrete), as in Julia Baltsavia’s
project i-Architecture (2017), or oriented strand board
(OSB) as in Alessandro Conning-Rowland’s project
Chamfer: A Cooperative Housing Platform (2018), can
be used and designed to be fabricated for the least
amount of waste possible and forego the use of heavy
machinery in assembly.
If parts individually act as one half of a mould for
in-situ concrete casting, a community can uses the set
of expanded-polystyrene (EPS) moulds to design and
negotiate spatial configurations over time with varying
degrees of privacy and temporality, making areas of
the housing permanent by casting when required and
negotiated by the community, as in Ossama Elkholy’s
project Cooperative Casting (2018).
The redistribution of resources through a Discrete
model enables inclusivity, distributing knowledge (both
specialist and non-specialist) throughout the project,
providing for more equitable and democratic production
of housing. The design question for architects therefore
shifts from how buildings respond to a social or physical
context through their appearance or presence, to how
they are produced, and thus embody particular cultural
conditions, including economic, political or social
values. In this, the role of the architect shifts towards
that of a designer of a system, where the architect
manages a conceptual and methodological framework
for architectural production. Importantly, it also enables
users to be not passive receivers of knowledge via
specialists, but active participants in informing how
automated technologies are used and the shifts in
conceptions of value and social practices that they
might produce. Otherwise, what are we (you, architect)
doing this for?

50
Julia Baltsavia,
i-Architecture,
Unit 19,
Design Computation Lab (DCL),
Bartlett School of Architecture,
University College London (UCL),
London,
2017

i-Architecture proposes an open-source system

based on a kit of parts that can be fabricated
using robotic hot-wire cutting, allowing for rapid
and efficient deployment of an open-ended and
adaptive housing project. The discreteness of the
parts allows for scalability from the minute stair
detail to overall structural organisation.

The redistribution
of resources
through a Discrete
model enables
inclusivity,
distributing
knowledge (both
specialist and
non-specialist)
throughout the
project, providing
for more
equitable
and democratic
production
of housing.

51
52
 Towards Discrete Continuity
Advanced digital fabrication and manufacturing technologies
such as industrial robots and 3D printers are commonly used
in construction either as replacements for human labour
(mimicking actions of the human body) or on the other end
of the spectrum, as representational devices: to make copies/
replicas of existing building elements. Recent examples
include SAM the robotic bricklayer by Construction Robotics,
and Winsun’s 3D-printed houses or 3D-printed wall panels.
Buildings realised by the architects of the first digital turn
were/are often hugely over-budget and inefficient, as the
basic building blocks for architecture are still planned and
put together through processes that are very much reliant on
techniques developed in the 19th century with the advent of
the Industrial Revolution – for example, a very slow, laborious
and highly Discrete production framework. In addition, the
legal system has only now just begun to catch up with a
system where parties are simultaneously an author and
owner of a design.
Utilising smart contracts and blockchain, we can speculate
on a near-now in housing production that disrupts this
dichotomy where design and construction are held in
opposition (whether due to financial, political, legal or
socio-cultural issues). Ownership can be incremental and
capital transparent. Overly specific building elements, as
in conventional design where every piece is designed and
fabricated with high degrees of specificity and low tolerance,
have no place in this kind of model. Instead, through the
Discrete, building blocks are part of a feedback loop between
design and fabrication. Building blocks can be distributed
with an exactness to the virtual model, with high tolerances
due to use of robotics to programme both fabrication and
Alessandro Conning-Rowland, assembly behaviours. This is closely aligned to Gershenfeld’s
Chamfer: A Cooperative Housing Platform,
Unit 19, recognition that while fabrication technologies are embedded
Design Computation Lab (DCL), with digital logics, materials were analogue.7 In a wholly
Bartlett School of Architecture,
University College London (UCL), digital model for the production of housing, there is almost
London, no difference in architectural syntax between design,
2018
fabrication or assembly. Furthermore, this kind of platform
Chamfer enables resident-initiated, funded, democratically can be coordinated to cross-scale in terms of systems of
designed and self-constructed housing, made possible material to labour, from material manufacturing to post-
through shared living, shared knowledge and the
combinatorial possibilities of building element chunks. occupation and from analogue labour to automated labour.
The geometry of these chunks promotes desired spatial A model for Discrete continuity facilitates our inevitable
and social outcomes, whilst physically they embrace
low-cost materials such as OSB and cardboard and highly future of full automation. 1
accessible fabrication technologies such as CNC milling.

Notes
1. Laboria Cuboniks, ‘Xenofeminsm: A Politics for Alienation’, 2015, www.
laboriacuboniks.net/#zero/3.
2. Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World
Without Work, Verso (London), 2015, p 107.
3. Ibid, pp 9–13.
4. Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, Polity Press (London), 2016, p 9.
Oscar Walheim, 5. Mario Carpo, ‘Breaking the Curve: Big Data and Design’, Artforum, February 2014,
Avila Automatic, www.artforum.com/print/201402/breaking-the-curve-big-data-and-design-45013.
Unit 19, 6. Neil Gershenfeld, Matthew Carney, Benjamin Jenett, Sam Calisch and Spencer
Design Computation Lab (DCL), Wilson, ‘Macrofabrication with Digital Materials: Robotic Assembly’, in Achim
Bartlett School of Architecture, Menges (ed), 2 Material Synthesis: Fusing the Physical and Computational,
University College London (UCL), September/October (no 5), 2015, p 123.
London, 7. Ibid, pp 122–7.
2017

opposite: Avila Automatic explores a

self-replicating, recombinant architecture
through the deployment of vacuum forming
on computer-numerically controlled (CNC)
moulds that generate precast concrete building
elements. The discrete and digital formwork
facilitates the exploration of a new kind of Text © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 46–7 © Ossama Elkholy;
construction framework that has scalability p 49 © Ivo Tedbury, May 2017; pp 50–51 © Julia Baltsavia; p 52 © Oscar
engrained into the system from the outset. Walheim; p 53 © Alessandro Conning-Rowland

53