Robotic Fabrications

Robotic Fabrications AA Visiting School is led by director Emmanuel Vercruysse and tutor Zachary Mollica, and supported by a diverse range of expert practicitioners - from foresters to roboteers - at the Architectural Association's Hooke Park campus. Operating as an experimental research branch of the AA's Design + Make graduate school programme, we re-invent and hijack traditional making techniques and tools – applying them as innovative processes for architecture

The pace of Robotic Fabrications is furious, offering a hands-on introduction to the world of robotics through the format of a 10-day visiting school. Prototyping complex timber structures through the hybridisation of analogue and digital tools, we aim to foster a critical approach towards design-through-making where making is central to the act of design.

The workshop is open to current architecture and design students, young professionals and anyone interested in the relationship between fabrication and technology. We seek interesting and interested people.

[Director]

Emmanuel Vercruysse

Emmanuel is an artist, architect and craftsman with a passion for design-through-making. Trained in both furniture design and architecture he works through iterations of drawing, craft and code, and approaches design as a tacit process that oscillates between intuitive acts and precise operations. He is co-director of AA Design and Make at Hooke Park, co-founder of art practice LiquidFactory, the field robotics group RAVEN and a member of the design collective Sixteen Makers.

[Studio Tutor]

Zachary Mollica

Zachary is a Canadian architect and experienced maker whose work explores the integration of innovative digital methods alongside traditional craft knowledge. Completing the Design + Make programme he led the development of the ‘Tree Fork Truss’ within the Wood Chip Barn student project, and after graduating with distinction refused to leave the woods - staying on as the programme’s studio tutor.

[Workshop Manager]

Charlie Corry Wright

Charlie is Hooke Park’s Workshop Manager - living on site with his family since 1994. He has a diverse background including mechanical engineering, forestry, furniture making and timber framing. Charlie guides all making activities at Hooke Park, from bench work to building site, and has also lead the development of Hooke Park’s CNC and robotic fabrication facilities - including the manufacture of bespoke tools and devices.

[Robotics Developer]

Michael Arnett

Michael is an architectural graduate, maker and robotic fabricator whose work focuses on the combination of traditional and digital fabrication techniques. Exploring the architectural language arising from a mixture of traditional and contemporary he has been involved in a combination of research and live-builds and is now Hooke Park’s robotics developer.

[Collaborator]

Pradeep Devadass

Pradeep is an architect, researcher and computational designer focussed on the development of digital fabrication and computational tools for architecture. A graduate of the AA’s Emergent Technology program, he was Hooke Park’s first in-house robotics developer.

[Collaborator]

Gary Edwards

Gary is an architectural graduate, researcher and computational designer. Having studied in Unit 23 at the Bartlett he is no stranger to analogue and robotic methods of fabrication. He works closely with Free and Open Source communities developing bespoke design tools that bridge digital and physical realms while maintaining user freedoms.