Upon invitation from Dr. Davide Lombardi and Dr. Christiane Herr, students at the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University took part in a Design + Fabrication workshop from June 10-14 under the guidance of Clemens Preisinger and Matthew Tam. Over the course of 5 days, the students became accustomed to developing parametric structures in the grasshopper environment and analysing and optimising their structural performance with Karamba3D.

Acrylic rods of 6mm diameter and 3d printed joint connections were then given as a basis for the designs during the workshop. The structures needed to be easily transportable and a maximum bounding box of 1.5m x 1.5m x 1.5m was set. Students were free to explore designs which dealt with the idea of equilibrium and balance. With the digital tools that they learnt in the first half of the workshop the students developed two designs which tested the boundaries of balancing structures.

With 3d printing technologies, the connections between all beam elements of the structures could be highly customised. Each joint was unique and the 80 plus connections for each structure were all produced efficiently with desktop 3d printers.

Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University: Dr Davide Lombardi & Dr. Christiane Herr
Instructors: Clemens Preisinger & Matthew Tam
Students: Benjamin Jennesse, Chenqi Luan, Chung Yin Kwong, Isaac Galobardes, Kihong Ku, Liqiong Chen, Mingyu Wang, Xuesong Miao, Yi Zhang, Yiyuan Miao