MICA 3d Printer robotic arm_6 axis

Mica; a multifunctional robotic arm for the new design experience.

This is an on-going research project that focuses on the implementation of a multifunctional device which could facilitate and enhance the process of architectural design. Although architectural design and fabrication processes involve continuous transitions from digital media to analogue and from 2D to 3D representations, questions about the efficiency of design tools to facilitate these transitions arise. For instance, digital fabrication techniques require a lab equipped with heavy duty machinery to support their function. As a result, an average user is unable to use them as basic design tools in his everyday practice and in his own studio. Furthermore, the constraints of CAD-based design tools and the restrictions of their user interfaces, especially when used in the initial conceptual and more creative stages of the design process, can hardly encompass the indeterminacy, density of information and fuzziness of traditional sketching. A possible response to this methodological problem would be the creation of an ‘open’ and adaptable device able to facilitate the effective integration and synergy of various plug-in digital or even analogue tools, ranging from digital fabrication techniques to gestural design media. In particular this would involve a customizable physical interface with many possibilities for drawing, representation and fabrication.

Ntzoufras Sotiris, Stathopoulou Efi, Telo Marinela

The initial project concept was developed at the Adaptive Architecture course by Socrates Yiannoudes and Transformable Intelligent Environments Laboratory | Technical University of Crete