The 4th Dimension

You may have heard of Skylar Tibbits - the director of his own research group, the Self-Assembly Lab, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While his friends are finishing their M.Arch. Programs or experimenting with career paths, Skylar is already pushing the boundaries of construction. 

What is the fourth dimension? Time, of course; with one of Tibbits' lab projects being a self-organising fish tank, which harnesses the technology of 4-D printing.

His frustration with the laborious construction process is what led him to pursue the fourth dimension of printing: programming objects with the ability to self-transform over time. How does he do it? Well, vaguely put, 3-D printing begins to enter the realm of self-assembly, where components with fixed properties and shapes can come together to form new objects if given an energy input; when smart materials are embedded with programmed behaviour and combined in a multi-material structure.

I just can't help but wonder, when this level of printing, will become affordable to the wider public such as myself.

I first heard about 4-D printing from Skylar Tibbits himself from various TED talks he gave, popularising the infamous concept. During one of his talks he said that Architects should be using their skill sets, and their ability to think radically, to push the boundaries of what's possible - and I completely agree! It's about time that Architecture reflected the development of modern technology in almost every field - synthetic biology, chemistry, physics, material science - where there has been a boom around design tools and software.

Les Batiments

What is a building?

A young child might describe it as a Big house that people either live or work in.

Google will tell you that a building is 'a structure with a roof and walls, such as a house or factory'.

A scientist might tell you that it is a functioning body which acts against the fundamental forces of the world, to serve as a dwelling for human beings...

Okay, they probably wouldn't say that.

However, if you ask Scot Horst (Senior Vice President, LEED, U.S. Green Building Council), he will give you a more eloquent definition: 'a Building is a collection of systems that creates a whole; it is an organism. Similar to the human body, each system has a different role, but they all must work together so that the body can perform. One system cannot operate properly without the other.'

You can tell if someone is passionate about their work, if they compare it to the natural performing beauty of God's creation.

Artist's rendering of active neurons. (Credit: iStockphoto/Sebastian Kaulitzki)