The environmental impact of the construction and demolition industry is enormous, therefore the management of architectural “waste” and the existing building volume became of crucial importance for the design of sustainable buildings and cities. Considering the principles of circular economy, two possible approaches emerge. The first concerns the existing architectural stock and its future use, not as a whole but as upcycled separate modules. The second is oriented towards the incorporation of future management of architectural parts in the design of new constructions, also known as design for disassembly (DfD). The research highlights the capabilities of each material and the potential ways of reusing it. In the case of design for disassembly, the connectivity of construction elements is of equal importance to the materiality of the projects. Moreover, the observations include the logistics of reuse in a new construction, the incorporation of a former architectural part, whose function sometimes differs from its role in the original building. In the existing residential fabric, upcycling emerges as a practice of creative reuse of building elements. Nonetheless, each case should be individually evaluated. Though these processes have not been yet used at a great extent, this theoretical framework is a reminder that the creation of a new building is not a permanent condition, but an aggregation of materials that temporarily serve a given purpose.
The present work is focused on the analysis of the microstructure of the exoskeleton of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus and the extraction of design concepts by implementing geometrically described 3D Voronoi diagrams. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis of dried sea urchin shells revealed a foam-like microstructure, also known as the stereom. Subsequently, parametric, digital models were created with the aid of the computer-aided design (CAD) software Rhinoceros 3D (v. Rhino 7, 7.1.20343.09491) combined with the visual programming environment Grasshopper. Variables such as node count, rod thickness and mesh smoothness of the biologically-inspired Voronoi lattice were adapted for 3D printing cubic specimens using the fused filament fabrication (FFF) method. The filaments used in the process were a commercial polylactic acid (PLA), a compound of polylactic acid/polyhydroxyalkanoate (PLA/PHA) and a wood fiber polylactic acid/polyhydroxyalkanoate (PLA/PHA) composite. Nanoindentation tests coupled with finite element analysis (FEA) produced the stress–strain response of the materials under study and were used to simulate the Voronoi geometries under a compression loading regime in order to study their deformation and stress distribution in relation to experimental compression testing. The PLA blend with polyhydroxyalkanoate seems to have a minor effect on the mechanical behavior of such structures, whereas when wood fibers are added to the compound, a major decrease in strength occurs. The computational model results significantly coincide with the experimental results.
The paper presents recent research on the reconstruction of Anamorphic effects and other optical illusions, shadows and projections, with the use of CAD systems. The first part of the paper is a bibliographical overview about the appearance of optical illusions in art, ranging from the work of Niceron to the extravagant sculptures of contemporary artists such as Markus Raetz. The second part of the paper reports on an educational approach that introduces anamorphic geometries into the teaching of digital methods of representation at Graz University of Technology. There is an overview of the experiments and methodology for constructing optical illusions in a CAD environment as well as examples drawn from student projects. The paper concludes with some observations and remarks relating to the aforementioned educational experience.
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