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Graphic design piece using abstract metallic shapes to create a tense image with a white background.

In recent years advanced parametric software combined with digital fabrication technologies have provided novel ways of exploring the relationship between building skin and building structure. Rather than viewing this relationship as a unidirectional hierarchy we now have the unique opportunity to engage in a responsive design process, which interweaves different qualities provided by material and structural properties/performances into a non-linear and multi-hierarchical system.

The students research and design an adaptive structural skin, which can be tested towards a series of different spatial and programmatic conditions. The focus lies on generating a model that integrates qualities of structure, surface and volume into one coherent system, which provides a range of adaptive qualities on a number of different scales. The development of this model is informed and inspired by Hunter Douglas products. The students were asked to work as a large team in conducting their research, setting up a parametrically controlled computer model and finally fabricating and constructing a full-scale model, which was installed and displayed in Pratt’s new gallery space.