Research by Piercy & Company and Material Architecture Lab into digitally-augmented manual crafts shows great potential for design and for the construction industry, explains Guan Lee

Buildings.

Words
Guan Lee

Photos
Naaro, Guan Lee

Code-Bothy is a research project about the collaboration between digital and manual crafts. Its focus is to investigate ‘mixed reality’ fabrication – the coming together of the real and the virtual worlds. In practical terms, it developed a hybrid environment in which physical and digital objects can be visualised together and interact with one another in real time, in order to construct an experimental brick ‘bothy’. The bothy was designed using parametric modelling tools, which generated a brick structure that would be challenging – if not impossible – even for a skilled bricklayer to set out without the aid of digital tools, but which could be hand-made with computer-coordination relayed via a headset.

The bothy therefore combines the potential offered by digital design and fabrication technologies with hand-crafted qualities that are not found in brickwork laid by robots.

The structure, realised at Grymsdyke Farm in Buckinghamshire, is the first outcome of a research programme called Practice Making, established by architect Piercy & Company and the Material Architecture Lab (MAL) at The Bartlett, which I lead together with Daniel Widrig and Adam Holloway.

‘Code-Bothy’ at Grymsdyke Farm. The project’s title refers both to laws for the use of a bothy and to computer language. A bothy is a shelter which hillwalkers can use without charge, but where the ‘bothy code’ requires respect for the structure itself, for other users and the surrounding environment. “The symbiotic relationship between users and a bothy illustrates a core principle of environmental and cultural sustainability”, says Guan Lee, “and relates to the reciprocity of different processes inherent in the project: digital and manual, virtual and physical, machine and human, software and hardware” (phs: Naaro).

The scheme provides two-month placements to two recent graduate students from the Bartlett, divided between the offices of an established architect and my research and fabrication facility at Grymsdyke Farm, during which they research digital design processes, digitally-controlled machining and semi-automated machining through prototyping and experiment, with a view to designing and realising a structure at one-to-one. The intention is that this hands-on research is not only concerned with expanding the possibilities of digital fabrication, but also with applicability to the construction industry.

Laser-cut model developed in Piercy & Company’s London studio (ph: Naaro).

For Stuart Piercy, the research work of Practice Making is closely aligned to the concerns and objectives of the office. “As a studio, our work is concerned with the loss of connection with the materials from which we build”, he says. “We also share with Guan a passion for material experimentation and developing new techniques with familiar materials. After many years of informal collaboration with Guan we decided to formalise our research into a 1:1 prototype. It can be difficult for a practice to invest time and finance into non-project-related research, but in our view it is fundamental for the continued evolution of the studio”.

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View through the Hololens showing the digital model of the bothy superimposed on the physical structure (ph: Hanjun Kim)

The bothy project began with discussions with Yorkshire Sculpture Park about the possibility of creating small shelters on its 500-acre estate, providing places for visitors to rest or seek shelter from the weather, and has produced a full-scale working prototype.

Design work began with extensive testing through sketches and in model form. “The early concept development for the form was actually a manual process, and was particularly concerned with the orientation north-south”, notes Stuart Piercy. “The north face is protected and the south aspect allows the sun to penetrate into the volume through the oculus for the longest period”.

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David Hussey and the bricklaying team use the Hololens to position bricks (phs: GL)

One of the aims of this project is to find new languages for bricks, to showcase what is achievable in a mixed-reality environment. The arrangement of bricks in the bothy is parametrically rather than computationally designed – that is, the designers establish constraints and relationships, within which the software generates a range of options in an iterative process.

The bricks are ‘instructed’ to follow a given geometry, with other geometrical relationships as constraints. Each brick must overlap with all the neighbouring bricks by at least 50 per cent. Each brick is set at a unique angle to itself and to each other: there is no repetition. The rotation of the bricks is parametrically differentiated with code, to allow for the overall sculpting of the form. On the bottom layer, the bricks are set at 45 degrees to one another; that geometrical relationship gradually and parametrically shifts so that the bricks are parallel to one another at the top.

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A hand-made Petersen Tegl D71 brick was chosen for its light colour, varied texture and reduced frog size which impacts the contact surface area if cut.

For the mixed-reality interface used by the bricklayers we chose Microsoft’s Hololens headset and the software Fologram – a plugin which allows for the real-time sharing of information from Rhino and Grasshopper with the Hololens. Looking through the Hololens is akin to wearing oversized googles and seeing one’s surroundings overlaid with a translucent Microsoft desktop. In order to interact with a built-in computer, the wearer needs to look at particular hand gestures to ‘click’ and navigate around different menus. When a digital version of the bothy is loaded and scaled at 1:1, a see-through 3D model identical to the one on a computer screen will appear. It is possible to ‘move’, ‘rotate’, and even ‘walk’ around the virtual structure.

You cannot physically touch digital bricks, of course, but it is possible to take a real brick and put it in the place of the virtual one. During construction of the bothy, the bricklayers ‘turned on’ each layer of bricks one at a time, and placed real bricks where the Hololens display showed virtual ones.

All the information about about structure and geometry is held in the digital model, so the bricklayer just needs to focus on positioning the bricks, and the quality of finish. The space to be taken up by mortar is accounted for in the model simply as a gap between the bricks. In order to fill these gaps, the techniques of skilled bricklayer are indispensable. This messy process calls upon the bricklayer’s timing, dexterity and trained movements. One can argue that when brickwork is used to form complex geometries, on-site ‘mixed-reality’ construction cannot do without humans.

David Hussey, a very experienced contractor who runs a small firm near Grymsdyke Farm, took on the role of chief bricklayer, and also taught bricklaying to the two students. He found the Hololens “a little claustrophobic” to begin with, but in time it became “quite instinctive and surprisingly straightforward” (though he points out the difficulty of keeping the delicate optical device clean and protecting the digital equipment in a traditionally dirty, abrasive and chaotic environment).

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Implications

At the interface between digital and manual design and fabrication we are interested in three key areas: first, the advancement of digital fabrication with the help of manual craftsmanship; second, engaging with sustainable materials using a new mode of production; and third, the combination of manual production and digital automation to allow the conservation of craft skills while integrating technological advances. Traditional brick construction is a manual craft, making it costly which challenges its continued viability. With the growth of digital fabrication, we need to consider what changes are required if we wish hand-made brick construction to remain relevant.

Digital fabrication might reduce demand for on-site labour, but our research highlights the value of the digital and manual working together”

It is more than 10 years since the Swiss architect Gramazio Kohler first used a robot, R-O-B, to lay double-curved brick walls in exhibition environments, so why should we continue to lay bricks by hand?

There are many reasons for wanting to find ways to preserve the viability of construction in brick, including concern for a large workforce vulnerable to changes in our construction and manufacturing industry, and already contending with the impacts of mechanisation and prefabrication.

Two further reasons concern the human bricklayer’s ability to deal with irregularity in the material, and our enjoyment of brickwork that shows signs of being hand-made – the ‘manu’ part of manufacture. Bricklaying is involves familiarity with the mortar that holds the bricks together. Clay bricks are made to be modular and interchangeable, but they are not identical. Brick by brick, it is the bricklayer’s input that absorbs the small differences and judges the tolerances.

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In counterpoint to some recent architectural experimentation with robotic construction, where form and constructional logics are often derived from the capabilities of machines, one of the key positions of the Practice Making research programme is that the added value is in design. One aspect of the research work was situated in design that becomes achievable if the craftsman can also function like a robot, or learn when loaded with augmented ability.

Digital-manual hybridity is compelling because one is perceived as belonging to the future and the other to the past, but it may offer the route by which existing skills and techniques retain their relevance. Whatever the digital and automated future holds, one suspects that the human element of design, and in particular architecture, will not completely disappear.

Ensuring that future generations of makers can continue to lay bricks – or that plasterers can render walls by hand, for example – is an issue of sustainability. This research project acknowledges the social and economic implication of industrial realities, but looks for an answer in the fact that human-computer interfaces have greatly increased in recent decades and will continue to rise, and puts forward themes such as craftsmanship, materiality and decorative art as vital considerations in the debate on fabrication in the future.

Credits

Material Architecture Lab (MAL)
Guan Lee, Daniel Widrig and Adam Holloway (directors)
Piercy & Company team
Stuart Piercy, Yannis Halkiopoulos, Fiona Neil
Student researchers
Changjian Jia, Teng Wang
Chief bricklayer
David Hussey
Bricklaying team
Kevin Rouff, Paco Böckelmann, Jianbin Sun
Site manager
Nigel Tucker
Landscaping
Andy Grant
Hololens consultant
Hanjun Kim of SoomeenHahm Design
Structural engineering advice
Tim Lucas