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Critical Mass Posts

Obuchi Lab + Harvard GSD Tokyo Site Visit 1

Published 2012年2月28日 by T—ADS

We visited the world’s largest glass manufacturer, Asahi Glass, located in Ibaraki Prefecture just north of Tokyo.  The company has 4 large-scale factories in Japan, and the one we visited produces glass sheets mainly used for architectural applications, i.e., windows, doors, skylights and glass roofs. The factory was so big that we had to take a bus to move from one facility to next. Sadly we could not take any pictures inside the factory….


http://www.agc.com/english/index.html

Obuchi Lab + Harvard GSD Tokyo Lecture Series 4

Published 2012年2月27日 by T—ADS

Azby Brown from Kanazawa Institute of Technology joined us and spoke his latest book ‘Just Enough’. The main focus of the book is about the ecological network developed during the  17th and 18th centuries in Tokyo.


http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/thegreenguide/2010/05/review-just-enough-by-azby-bro.html


Obuchi Lab + Harvard GSD Tokyo Lecture Series 3

Published 2012年2月20日 by T—ADS
We visited Blest Co., a company invented a machine which turns plastic waste into gasoline, diesel, kerosene and other refined oil. We had a great talk by Akinori Ito, the president of Blest, who started up his company 9 years ago. His vision is to transform the public perception of trash not as waste but as future resources. This machine is now sold in many developing countries where plastic waste has become environmental hazard.

http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/plastic-to-oil-fantastic/

Obuchi Lab + Harvard GSD Tokyo Lecture Series 2

Published 2012年2月14日 by T—ADS
Prof. Jun Sato from University of Tokyo spoke to G30 and Harvard GSD Tokyo Program students about design culture of structural engineering in Japan. He works with young Japanese architects like So Fujimoto and Jun Ishigami, and explores to integrate Japanese tradition and latest technological innovations through the development of structural and material behaviours. 


Obuchi Lab + Harvard GSD Tokyo Lecture Series 1

Published 2012年2月8日 by T—ADS

G30 students and students from Harvard GSD Tokyo Program are joined by Morinosuke Kawaguchi, a technology consultant, who discussed the future of technology and how Japanese custom and subculture could help the direction of technological innovation.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morinosuke_Kawaguchi

Evolutionary Productions Seminar for Harvard GSD Tokyo 2012

Published 2012年2月1日 by T—ADS

Together with Toyo Ito and Ken Oshima of University of Washington, Prof. Obuchi started to teach Harvard students for their GSD Tokyo Program 2012. In the coming months, G30 students will be joining lecture series and site visits organized for Prof. Obuchi’s seminar course, Evolutionary Productions which exams Low/Mid/High Tech production processes uniquely developed in Japan.

G30 Obuchi Lab Christmas Sushi Party

Published 2011年12月21日 by T—ADS

G30 Students and Toshi went to Tsukiji Fish Market, the world’s largest fish market, this morning and bought all kinds of fresh fish for our Christmas Party. After busy making components by evolutionary development processes, we will now get our hands sticky and make our own sushi!

1st Year Workshop Reviews

Published 2011年12月8日 by T—ADS

1st year students have started their design studio Workshop 2 project. The aim of this workshop is to recreate their 1st Workshop within digital environments, translating all material behaviors into parametric logic and evolutionary processes.

Cybernetic Urbanism G30 Studio Projects

Published 2011年11月28日 by T—ADS

While our 1st year students are exploring the topic of customisable mass production processes based on the logic of evolutionary development, our 2nd year students are continuing to work on their Cybernetic Urbanism project. The main objective of this studio project is to develop an artificial life-like urban ecology integrating natural and human environments via biological and industrial processes.

Here are videos of their earlier projects posted on TUESDAY, 5 JULY 2011.

Another work-in-progress video from our current studio. Team Oil Killer is developing an architectural prototype that made of recycled crude oil collected from an oil spill site, which would then function as both energy storage (solidified crude oil) as well as building materials for creating a public space for a local community. The main material used for the project is human hair, also recycled, acting as an oil absolving matt. Once the matt is saturated with the oil, it is taken out of the water and then solidified to become a roof structure, which can be disassembled when required as energy supply for an emergency situation caused by a natural disaster. The project also challenges the conventional oil storage facilities in an urban context by turning inaccessible industrial territories into a potential public space while maintaining its function as energy storage.

This video shows the current state of our Stick team’s project. Their ambition is to develop a manufacturing system that integrates the potential of mass-production, which optimises efficiency in terms of the amount of material and production time, and the logic of mass-customisation, which maximises the possible variations in terms of formal outputs. Their project explores the issue of discarded logs in forests in Japan. Due to the increase in cheap lumbers being imported from Europe and North America, Japanese forest industry has lost its grip on competitive global lumber markets. As a result, many forests have now become abandoned causing problems for both their economy and ecosystem. The project also aims to bridge a link between Japan’s wood working traditions and computational fabrication techniques.

This project is built on Frei Otto’s experiment on Form-Finding, which is a formal and structural optimisation process based on material’s inherent distributional logic.